/ARTS WEEKLY/GERMANY: Chinese Summer Comes to Berlin

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Clive Freeman

BERLIN, Aug 12 2003 (IPS) - On a blazing hot afternoon, perspiring visitors ascend the steps to Berlin’s imposing Altes Museum with its Greek columns. The museum is exhibiting art works spanning some 2,000 years of Chinese history.

On display are 400 Chinese art treasures from the royal palace museum in Taipei in Taiwan. Only twice before has permission been given for them to leave the island, once for an exhibition in the U.S, and later to Paris in 1998.

Berlin officials say it took lengthy negotiations before an agreement was reached to allow exhibition of works from the celebrated collection in Berlin. The collection includes priceless Chinese vases and bowls, pottery and porcelain, and rare calligraphic scrolls.

Nervous about the intentions of mainland China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, Taiwanese authorities had first baulked at the idea of sending the art works abroad, fearing they might not see them again. The treasures are claimed as Chinese inheritance.

A breakthrough came only after Berlin was able to offer firm assurances on their safety, and indemnification against loss or damage under a 1998 law covering art works.

Following upheavals in China after World War II, a huge collection of Chinese art was removed from Beijing to Taiwan, sealed in some 2000 chests. This was around 1949 when Taiwan became the last refuge of Chinese nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek.

Now that it is here, the exhibition, titled ‘Schaetze der Himmelssoehne’ (Sons of Heaven Treasures), is proving to be one of the cultural highlights in Berlin this summer.

Beautiful examples of early Chinese landscape painting and calligraphy are featured in the exhibition. Berlin art critic Dieter Strunz calls the collection "art works of breathtaking beauty."

A red enamel box with an inscribed landscape, and figures from the Yung-le period (1403 to 1424) are among the objects on display. So are works from the Sung dynasty (960 to 1279) such as the painting showing a lotus plant and a swooping kingfisher in autumnal landscape.

Landscape painting reached its peak in the Sung dynasty, when masterpieces were conceived in ink colours or monochrome on absorbent silk or paper. Though secular in subject, they were Buddhist or Taoist in spirit.

After the 12th century, as is evident at the exhibition, more intimate subjects appeared, with the Ming period producing paintings of highly decorative quality. The development of Chinese pottery roughly paralleled that of painting.

Also highlighted in Berlin are many jade ornaments. A Hindustan jade bowl has a bird head with a rope-patterned handle. Another is carved in the shape of a dragon.

Other choice objects include an incense perfumer with floral decorations, a beautiful round treasure box filled with antique jade carvings and other miniatures; a square vase depicting landscape panels, and a vase displaying ladies playing music.

Yumiko Urae, a Japanese film critic working in Berlin, peers at a Tibetan type pagoda, complete with a jade Buddha. "I’m a fan of Chinese art," she says. "I can see why since the 18th century it has so strongly influenced the work of many Western artists."

A curiosity comes at the end of the exhibition: near the exit are a sequence of quaint illustrations of German chemist Justus Liebig’s famous meat extract discoveries, which became popular in 19th century China. In almost 50 years of teaching, Liebig (1803-75) profoundly influenced the training of leading chemists, and made valuable contributions to agricultural chemistry, including the development of artificial fertilisers worldwide.

While the 400 objects shown in Berlin represent only a fragment of about 650,000 treasures kept in Taipei’s royal palace museum, they offer a unique glimpse of the nature and value of Chinese art down the centuries.

City officials are delighted, which is why the show gets big billing at the Altes Museum on the city’s famous "museum island", just yards away from Berlin’s huge Protestant cathedral.

The exhibition runs in Berlin until October 12, and then moves to Bonn.