PUBLICATION ON SACRED ART OF THE BODY: A FEMININE VIEW

Concordia University Gallery

November 14-December 17, 2000

Concordia University Gallery is hosting an exhibit featuring the work of painting instructor Karla Ness, whose work has been strongly influenced by her study of the mural paintings in the caves of Tun-huang in western China. The exhibit includes watercolors, frescos, acrylic paintings, as well as a series of banner paintings hung in the University Chapel, which feature imagery drawn from the Chinese figure imagery drawn from the Chinese figures found at Tun-huang incorporated with traditional western iconography. To understand the symbolic and artistic nature of Ness's creations, one must become familiar with Chinese art.

Review from Dr. Richard C. Kagan, professor of East Asian Studies and History, Hamline University.

The Silk Road and Buddhist art

14 A.D. Rome. Tiberius bans men from wearing silk clothes. Pliny later describes the see-through garments which rendered women naked. Purchases of silk in ancient Rome were blamed for creating a negative balance of trade. The opulence of the silk market created the fabulous Silk Road from Rome to China. With commerce traveled religion and art. Unimaginably beautiful works of sculpture, mosaics, frescos, and wall-paintings dominated each oasis on the route where merchants and Buddhists prayed for enlightenment and long life, sought protection from goblins and the perils of the dreaded desert, and exchanged money, and received vouchers for future expenses. Tun-huang (Blazing Beacon) was the last, and most dramatic oasis, before the last stretch of desert into China. The first rock caves of Tun-huang were built in 366 A.D. and later achieved a string of over 400 rock temples and chapels _ stretching over a mile and creating the "great art gallery in the desert."

By the end of the Tang dynasty, in 900 A.D., the glory of the road was shattered by new military invasions, political alignments, and the growth of the desert which swamped the ruins. Tun-huang was virtually forgotten and lost until the late nineteenth century. Western explorers were stunned by the discovery of the majestic and otherworldly art of flying spirits, Buddhist gods, and bright paintings of heaven and hell. They robbed the caves __ even packing off whole murals and frescos onto camels for the six-month trek to a seaport. The Chinese government authorities from the 1920s on reacted angrily _ closing off the area to foreigners, and native art speculators alike.

Karla Ness and Tun-huang

Soon after President Carter normalized relations with China in 1978, China began to open areas previously closed to all foreigners. In 1983, Karla Ness as one of the first foreigners to see the Tun-huang caves. Ness documents an historic moment in the recognition of Tun-huang's splendors for the world, and in the spiritual and artistic development of the Midwest artist who had concentrated her training in Classical painting and printmaking at Kansas City Art Institute, and Indiana University.

Since her nine-month residence in China fro 1982-83, Karla's personal mission has been to inject the lessons of the Silk Road's aesthetics into her own art. The physicality of the frescos and murals provided her with the opportunity to express movement and a story line over a large amount of space. The fresco's dimensions-even if condensed as in The Four Seasons, create a sacred place that envelopes the viewer. One must first regard the detail, the actual colors and forms, and then place each section into a sequential script. This produces multiple phases of experience.

To realize this artistic experience is to look at the art object from a Buddhist or Chinese point of view. When we go through a museum, we say that we are "looking" at art. In Chinese, we say that we are "touring" the painting, or the work of art. The Western way makes the art piece separate from us. We are outsiders looking at a different reality. For the Chinese, the art piece is a place we can travel to and through. It is part of our very existence, of our reality. The large works at Tun-huang are not meant to keep us out as an observer, but to draw us in as a participant. This is the inter-activeness of Buddhism and Karla's art.

The most transformative use of the Buddhist sense of sequential change is expressed in Karla's sculpture cum scroll, The Spirit of Giving and Receiving. A brown box, which functions much like a miniature grotto, eventually opens up revealing a scroll which pulls don onto the ground. On top of the box are three sculptures: two are of women who have their hands positioned in a Buddhist pose-one hand cupped which symbolizes receiving, and one flat which symbolizes giving. Between them is a pregnant woman who combines within her the sacred act of gathering and delivering life. The expectant mother is standing on a sculpted foot. In Chinese the word for "foot" has many meanings: "ample" and "sufficient." It also means "tripod" suggesting here the relationship among husband, wife, and child. And as a compound word with "moon" it means the birth of a child after normal gestation.

When the doors to the box open, we see the story of childhood and adulthood. Unraveling from the scroll is a story of family and the essence of the natural world. This world matches the painting in the background which is lush with green foliage, and pink flowers. In the far distance, like a Chinese painting, there is a vague sense of human habitat.

In Karla's conception, art is more than physical, it is transcending, interactive, and moving. We become part of the art. And our trip into the art transforms us, and provides us with a more intense view of our own reality and environment.

Karla's interpretation of the sacred female draws heavily from the Buddhist angels. At Tun-huang they are free flying spirits, draped in flimsy silk robes, and expressive in the motions of their large hands and airborne feet. The angels are released from their own physicality - they achieve penetration into a spiritual and emotional existence. But these are not just spiritual messengers in flight.

Their large hands and feet provide dynamic and somatic points of sensation. Theses magnified extensions of the body are poised to touch heaven, the earth, ourselves. They are the points of creation. They mimic Michelangelo's fresco where God creates Adam by transmitting life through the contact of fingertips. Just look at Karla's mother and child in The Four Seasons, to note the non-anatomical extension of the left arm with a huge hand that holds the heel of her baby between two outstretched fingers. The hands and feet are clearly the points of life in the fresco.

Bringing the Silk Road to Minnesota

The Buddhist goddess of Mercy, Kuanyin, is Karla's inspiration for all of her paintings. In an interview with Karla, she likens this Buddhist spirit with the Renaissance paintings of the Madonna. It is not in the physical representation that she finds similarities. Rather it is in the rhythmic movement of the body - downcast eyes, position of the head, and a sense of fluidity in the body posture - that she discovers a balance between the elasticity and containment of the human form, a sense of giving and receiving.

For some religions viewers, Karla's nudes may seem jarring. But it is necessary to realize that the paintings reveal a sensuality without desire, emotions without fulfillment, speculation without action, and an engine for curiosity and discovery.

Karla Ness's contribution to this Sacred Arts Exhibition Series provides a revitalized connection to and discovery of the art of the Silk Road. Her art encourages us to incorporate the world's experiences in our own visions of the sacredness of life.