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Saturday, February 08, 2003

By Mary Thomas, Post-Gazette Art Critic

"Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits," a sumptuous exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum, which originated at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, affords a too infrequent opportunity to see Chinese art in a Pittsburgh museum and expands the experience beyond the better-known landscapes.

	"Ancestors" continues through April 27 at 117 Sandusky St., North Side. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays and until 10 p.m. Fridays. Admission is $8, $7 seniors, $4 children/students, free to members and after 5 p.m. Friday. For information, call 412-237-8300 or visit http://www.warhol.org.

The 34 portraits, most of them painted on silk and nearly life-sized, were created between 1451 and 1943 as ritual objects, not artworks. They came into the Smithsonian's possession through the late Richard Pritzlaff, a New Mexican rancher who had the foresight to purchase them during an opportune historic moment and the determination to see that they found a permanent home at a respected institution.

Such paintings would normally have been kept within the families of those portrayed and exhibited only on those occasions set aside for the veneration of one's ancestors, a custom that, it was believed, could reap benefits for the living descendants if carried out properly. In the early 1940s, war with Japan and resultant economic and domestic upheaval in China made the portraits available, and Pritzlaff recognized their aesthetic worth at a time when Chinese portraiture was not generally being collected.

Usually both husband and wife were painted, as with the splendid portraits of Prince Hongming and Lady Wanyan, regal in their opulent court robes and jewels. The minimal setting, including chair and fine carpet, is typical, the intermingling patterns of carpet, drape and clothing frequently creating an abstract world of great beauty within which the realistically depicted face floats. The portraits are infused with dignity and power.

While they are generally painted in a flat, frontal posture inspired by Buddhist and Taoist religious art, there are also examples that show the encroaching influence of Western style and, later, of the introduction of photography to China.

Beneath the visual dazzle of such finery are subtexts of class and gender that are equally engaging. Labels explain, for example, that certain accessories -- such as the three-eyed peacock feather and yellow jacket in "Portrait of Chun- ying, Prince Rui" -- were reserved for persons of rank, reflecting a stringently hierarchical society. Women are posed modestly, their hands and even shoes usually tucked out of view beneath billowing robes.

Among the informal portraits are those of a prince in a relaxed pose coupled with a poem he'd written, an erotic "Beauty Holding an Orchid" and a "spurious" empress created for the foreign trade.

Supplementing the Chinese scrolls are 10 of Andy Warhol's double portraits, judiciously selected from the museum's collection. Rather than appearing out of place, as one may presume, they illustrate that portraiture is an evolving genre, with similarities that continue through time while the stylistic tastes of its period are simultaneously incorporated. In the catalog, the authors make comparison with the works of another high profile contemporary artist, Chuck Close.

The display given at the Warhol, presenting the scrolls within bold red shadow box framing, further contemporizes the show by introducing an urban American Chinatown pizazz while also speaking to traditional China and even Mao's Communist state.

After a politically induced hiatus, there is renewed interest in ancestor veneration in China, according to Jan Stuart, associate curator of Chinese art at the Freer Galley of Art and the Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, who met with Pritzlaff to evaluate his collection for the museum. But the Smithsonian hasn't received any requests to return the portraits, some of which are not identified because families often removed personal information before selling them. While some portraiture is still being commissioned, photographs are now the more common medium of representation.

Stuart curated "Ancestors" with Evelyn Raw-ski, professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, and they're also the authors of the very readable exhibition catalog, a fascinating excursion into history, art history and anthropology. It's well illustrated with lush full-color reproductions of the portraits and photographs of cultural material that furthers the understanding of the scrolls and includes biographies of some of the sitters, a detailed index and a glossary of Chinese characters ($39.50 paper).