Art: From a Peking Palace

• Share

In the 5th century there lived in China a great painter named Chang Seng-yu, who one day finished a mural of four white dragons without eyes. When observers protested the omission, Chang pointed out that to give such fierce dragons sight might be dangerous. His critics persisted; Chang gave in and painted eyes on two of the dragons. "At once," the story goes, "the air became filled with thunder and lightning, the wall broke down, and the dragons ascended on clouds to heaven. But the two other dragons who had no eyes remained in their places."

The legend, one of a legion of its kind, contains a truth about the art of China more telling than any archaeological find: for centuries, the Chinese attributed almost magical powers to their artists. This week gallerygoers who care to risk the dragons will be able to rediscover the magic at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Works ranging from bronze urns and jade dishes to scroll paintings more than 1,000 years old will be shown in one of the most spectacular exhibitions of Chinese art ever seen. The treasures were selected by a jury of Chinese and American experts from an estimated 35,000 items that were saved from the Palace Museum in Peking when first the Japanese invasion and then the Red conquest sent them on travels that ended in great caves in Formosa. The show opened in Washington in May, and before returning home will stop off at Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

Animals & Ogres. Like the art of many ancient peoples, the earliest treasures of China were recovered from tombs. As far back as the 11th century B.C., bronze vessels were deposited in the tombs of great men to serve the needs of the body that remained bound to the earth; there was no higher function for the artist than to turn out these ritual vessels. The intricate decoration not only warded off evil but provided a gateway for the artist's imagination. Fantastic animals, ogres' heads, symbols of the yang and yin, and finally the human figure, all made their appearance, and the bronzes themselves were never surpassed in the workmanship of later artisans.

By the year 220 B.C., the teachings of Lao-tse had taken root, Confucius had propounded his doctrine of the "superior man." and the artists of China had become masters of pottery, of glassware, of porcelain and jade, and of sculpture. By that year the head of the powerful state of Chin, which ruled in the west, had risen up against his neighbors and conquered the land that has borne the name of his state ever since. The conqueror styled himself Shih Huang-ti, the First Emperor —an appellation that required him to destroy the palaces, monuments and records of all previous emperors. The wholesale destruction had an ironically tonic effect. The Chinese had, as they were always prone to do, fallen victim of their own achievements, and art had become mere imitation of the past. Now, suddenly, much of the past was gone, and the artists could begin anew.