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THE NEW YORK TIMES SATURDAY SEPT. 27, 1975 16 L THE NEW YORK Art: The Voluptuous Benignity of Nepal Br By JOHN H. RUSSELL The combination of spirituality with nonstop lovemaking is hard to beat. Put into action, it would make theologians of us all. Quintessentialized in art, it exerts a thralldom that is the more commanding for being comparatively recent in date. You don't have to have a long white beard to remember a time when Tantric art was a matter for specialists only and the kingdom of Nepal was virtually closed to travelers from the West. All is changed, in this context. Troops of young people - American, British, French predominantly - have invaded Katmandu. Tantric art is one of the hottest things in art publishing. The voluptuous benignity of Nepalese art has endeared itself to American collectors. "We came, we saw, we loved": that is the general idea. In practical terms much of this was set in motion by Gordon Washburn when he asked Stella Kramrisch to organize an exhibition of Nepalese art for the Asia House Gallery in 1964. At least one visitor (to quote his own words) "sort of wandered into the Asia House Gallery almost by accident," only to leave it as a convert to Nepalese art; and now, only 11 years later, Allen Wardwell and Pratapaditya Pal of the Los Angeles County Museum have organized a show called "Nepal, Where the Gods Are Young." This will be at Asia House, 112 East 64th Street, through Nov. 23, and it will then be seen in Seattle and Los Angeles. It presents us with a world in which, as Dr. Pal points out, the concepts of old age and death have no place. All goddesses are 18 years old, all gods have the bloom of first youth. All couples are tireless and perfectly matched. At moments when their European counterparts would have fallen on their knees, prayerbook in hand, these full-fleshed little Nepalese leap into each other's arms like bejeweled gymnasts. We cannot be surprised that they were characterized above all by tolerance, harmony and a feeling for Angst-free coexistence. We can also see why these bronzes should have played so direct a part in the life of the households that were lucky enough to possess them. They were considered, so Dr. Pal tells us, as living entities "to be continuously bathed, clothed, fed and put to sleep," rather than as objects of art to be set apart on a shelf. How far is the Katmandu valley from our Occidental theocracies! [[image]] Bronze sculpture of Vasudhara, dating from 12th century, is in current exhibition at the Asia House Gallery. Among other exhibitions: New Drawings by James Rosenquist (Leo Castelli Gallery, 4 East 77th Street): We have just lost our friendly neighborhood Rosenquist: the one called "Hello, Hello, Hello" that was wrapped around the Manhattan telephone director. The New York Telephone Company's resident art critic gave subscribers a quick rundown of its component images - "The triangle, circle and square hung in a paper clip represent the universe held together with a laser message. The circle of lightning with receiver holes brings good news..." - and the cover brought to city life something of Mr. Rosenquist's own larky, inquisitive and intermittently euphoric personality. "Technology works!" he seemed to say. "Enjoy it!" The 1975-76 director has reverted to more folks images - Rin-Tin-Tin at the receiver, for one - but Mr. Rosenquist's new work at the Castelli Gallery shows him drawing with undiminished zest on themes built up primarily from objects in daily use - the ladder, the nail, the paper clip. The images are for the most part disposed laterally, three to each sheet, and Mr. Rosenquist now allows himself a freer, more brushy and less impersonal form of expression than was the case 10 years ago. These are not "drawings" in the Beaux Arts sense. There are passages of stripe painting in which the color sings out like trumpets at nightfall. There are sheets with disks of crumpled paper collaged on to them; another incorporates a child's view of a house, and a third looks back to cubist papier colle with a great slashing torn-out piece of The Wall Street Journal stuck down the middle of it. In "Sun Clips" the coiled bands of color to right and left recall Robert Delaunay, and the clips themselves are realized with a fat, slow-moving quality that once again has nothing to do with pop art. The new work stands for an art in which the painter's hand is everywhere present; and it makes an enlivening and unpompous beginning to the season. Early Children's Books and Their Illustration (Pierpont Morgan Library, 29 East 36th Street): The best children's books just have to be immortal, so constant is the supply of new readers for them and so reliable the delight to which they give rise. But in physical terms, and in relation to the beating they take from young readers, they are fragility itself. So it was with its usual pertinacity that the Morgan Library sought out just the original editions that we never hoped to see intact: the first "Alice," the first "Book of Nonsense" by Edward Lear, the first "Baby's Opera" by Edward Lear, the first "Baby's Opera" by Wal... Comparable co... here), the first... trated by Gust... for those... Children's book.. Diminutives, ... originals of the.. flinching mast... liam Blake's... noncence," and inson Crusoe." 30. 20th Century... Sculpture (we.. 794 Lexington 61 st Street): Should be on... in a great city... bookstore with... ry above it. New York is... an elongated... the art history... upstairs the k... room that we.. found earlier.. the New York... glitz or the Be... theim and C... namees held in... John Marin,K.. Aeistide Maillo Mann and Wa.. sky, together newer and less.. On View at is that rarity, male bronze by... mona Robed"... 1922, and I co... anyone who has... of the stocky,... naked figures... so much of Ma.. Maillol here rem,,,, drapery can ... and that the.. has a majesty... eration musy re... self. South Vietnam... Now On U.S... Special to The N... Washington.... The State De... added Cambodi.. Vietnam to the... Where American.. Be invalid unle... approved by the... State... In formal not... in the latest Fe... the department... the current ban passports by Am.. ing without perm... North Korea and... In the Accompa.. tion the departn... as the result of t.. take-over in Cam... hostility" to the continued. It al... were no diplom.. there to protect... the result of the... South Vietnam,... said "conditions... unsettled".... Rita Reif's port today wi... on Page 31.
