Pakistani Buddhist art defies odds to show in NY

[Karachi]

y Sebastian Smith (AFP) – Aug 10, 2011 NEW YORK — A remarkable trove from Pakistan's little-known Buddhist past has gone on show in New York in an art exhibition that defied floods, riots and explosive US-Pakistani relations before finally crossing the world.
The against-the-odds exhibition, "The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara," features sculptures that have mostly never before been seen in the United States.
Unveiled this week at the Asia Society, the works trace the dizzyingly complex pre-Islamic history of the Gandhara region located in the northwest of modern-day Pakistan.
The area includes the Swat Valley, synonymous today with Taliban-linked guerrilla groups and extremist revolts against Pakistan's government.
But as the exhibition makes clear, Gandhara once was a cradle of culture and art, as well as the target of an endless stream of empires, in a flourishing period that ran from the first century BC through the fifth century AD.
"Despite images of Pakistan as a place of violent extremism, the region has an ancient tradition of tolerance and pluralism," said Asia Society Museum director Melissa Chiu.
The stone carvings and works in gold and bronze mirror influences from as far apart as ancient Greece and Rome, India, Persia and, increasingly over time, Buddhism.
The Buddha figures, including one of just three so-called "emaciated Buddhas" in the world, and the other pieces have survived more than a millennium and a half intact, their mixed styles testifying to cultural fusion and experimentation.
But the tale of how they traveled from museums in Lahore and Karachi to Manhattan is hardly less remarkable than their passage through the ages.
Chiu told AFP the Asia Society had been working nearly two years to bring the approximately 70 objects to New York.
With nine or 10 layers of bureaucratic approval required, it was always going to be difficult, and then negotiations became sidelined in the emergency caused by catastrophic flooding last year.
Next, with acres of paperwork already sorted, the country's government dissolved its culture ministry as part of a shake-up. "We'd had an agreement with the ministry of culture," Chiu recalled ruefully.
An opening for March was planned and abandoned -- an unusual move in the international art world -- as tensions, in part linked to a CIA operative's shooting of two Pakistanis, grew between Pakistan and the United States.
The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan during a May raid by US Special Operations Forces made the hoped-for deal even more tenuous.
Finally, agreement was reached. But even as work began to pack and ship the precious artifacts, the exhibit's fate hung in the balance.
"In Karachi, they had all these riots the week this was being packed," Chiu said. Terrified packers refused to leave their houses and, in the end, "museum staff went around to the houses to collect them."
Chiu called the exhibit "a once in a lifetime opportunity," saying the difficulties in pulling it off should inspire optimism.
"What's interesting is there were so many people in Pakistan who helped, who put their necks on the line to make this happen -- to show Americans another side of Pakistan, its long cultural heritage," she said.
Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations in New York talked with Chiu every day for months. "Then, he called the president and other ministers to get help."
Among the highlights of the show, which opened Tuesday and runs through October 30, is the extraordinarily carving "Vision of Buddha Paradise."
The stele features a crowded scene not only in relief but carved out, so that multiple details stand almost free of the background from which they have been cut.
Although Pakistan is now overwhelmingly Muslim, the artworks are carefully guarded and revered in their home museums. There's another echo that lives on, Chiu noted with a mischievous smile: the twirly mustaches sported by many in the sculptures.
In Pakistan today, "everyone has a mustache. It's de rigeur for men."




AFP: Pakistani Buddhist art defies odds to show in NY

[Karachi]

Museum exhibit highlights Pakistan's Buddhist roots

By Emanuella Grinberg, CNN
August 21, 2011 4:43 a.m. EDT

CNN) -- A statue resembling the goddess Athena and jewelry bearing images from Greco-Roman mythology may not be objects you'd expect to see in a museum exhibit of Buddhist art from Pakistan. Their presence among carvings of Buddha and Indian deities is meant to serve as a reminder of Pakistan's oft-forgotten multicultural roots, which form the basis of a new exhibit, "The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara."
The show, which runs until October 30 at New York's Asia Society, is the first to bring works of Gandharan art to the United States since 1960. The pieces, on loan from museums in Karachi and Lahore, highlight Pakistan's history as a crossroads of cultural influences, despite present-day associations of the country as an incubator of religious extremism, museum director Melissa Chiu said.
"When we think of Pakistan, Americans might associate it with the place where Osama bin Laden was captured, with terrorism and natural disasters," she said. "But actually, it has a much longer history that dates back to an ancient culture that gives us a sense of a pluralistic tradition that was all about tolerance."
At its height, Gandhara encompassed present-day Peshawar in northwest Pakistan and parts of eastern Afghanistan, the Hindu Kush, and northwest India, making it a major center of trade, commerce and the development of arts and education. Pakistan may be 95% Muslim today, but Buddhism flourished in Gandhara between the 2nd century B.C. and 10th century A.D., giving rise to a distinct style of Buddhist visual art.
The statue of Athena and a gold carving of Aphrodite in the exhibit demonstrate the early influence of Greco-Roman culture in the region, which began with its conquest by Alexander the Great. Themes from classical Roman art persisted in Gandharan art even as Buddhism began to flourish in the first century A.D., fostered by Silk Road trade and cross-cultural connections from the Mediterranean to China.
Depictions of the Buddha and the concept of bodhisattvas, or "enlightened beings," became the main icons of Gandharan art. A section of the exhibition, "Buddhas and Bodhisattvas," explores the diverse visual imagery of Buddha and bodhisattvas in Gandhara and how it relates to the multifaceted nature of Buddhism in the region.
A carving of a standing Bodhisattva bears drapery and folds reminiscent of what you might find in classical art; another flaunts a chiseled torso reminiscent of, well, a Greek god, Chiu said.
"A number of sculptures show us the narrative of the life of Buddha, where we see Buddha represented as person, in symbols, footprint, but it's his representation in human form that went on to influence art that went to China, Japan, Korea, other parts of Asia," she said.
Getting the pieces to the United States is a tale of bureaucracy in true form two years in the making, but the initiative never suffered from a lack of desire, Chiu said.
As an international team begins rebuilding two massive Buddha statues in Afghanistan destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, the exhibit also demonstrates Pakistan's dedication to preserving its multicultural heritage, Pakistan's representative to the United Nations said.
With Buddha at its thematic core, the exhibit also highlights lessons of tolerance and humanity of enduring relevance, especially in a time when relations between the U.S. and Pakistan are not at their best, UN Amabassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon said.
"Buddha represents a human being whose ethereal qualities were so magnified by his enormous wisdom that his values of himself, which were espoused by Gandhi and so many others, became his contributions to mankind," said Haroon, who was instrumental in helping secure the works on loan from the National Museum in Karachi and the Lahore Museum in Lahore.
"This was one of the great periods of the world of fundamental equity, of human rights and so many other important principles, which are important to Pakistan and the United States today," he said.
"We're constantly going to strive for a better understanding of each other and a better relationship, and despite what's happening between the U.S. and Pakistan, there are very strong grounds for us to coexist in peaceful fashion."


Museum exhibit highlights Pakistan's Buddhist roots - CNN.com