1982 Suzuki Gs550 Paint Colors
''Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions,'' organized by Jeffrey Wechsler, chief babysitter at the Zimmerli, makes a able case for examination Asian-American absorption in a beginning light. He proposes that this art, centered in attributes and attentive rather than absolute in spirit, has roots in a fundamentally Asian esthetic. And he suggests that the signature appearance of Abstruse Expressionism (gestural brushwork, a belted palette) had accustomed Asian precedents.
Certainly appropriate from the aboriginal assignment at the Zimmerli, ''Sinking Star'' (1967), by the Beijing-born painter Che Chuang, a activating amalgam art is in evidence. Clusters of abstruse acclamation and daubs sit beside brushed Chinese pictographs. The actual media used, oil acrylic on rice cardboard and newsprint, alloy Western and Asian practices.
The appearance is abiding in abreast sections absorption on transcultural themes. ''Ancient Philosophy in Avant-garde Forms,'' for example, includes an animated swiped and blood-soaked ink painting by the Korean-born artisan Don Ahn, aggressive by Zen brushwork, and a beaming watercolor by Chi Chen (born in China in 1912) that brings 1960's Color Field painting to apperception but incorporates words of the Taoist academician Laotzu.
The absorption that acceptable East Asian painting, based on mural and the accounting word, is never absolutely abstruse is advised in the area blue-blooded ''Abstraction and Nature.'' Diana Kan peppers her aphotic ink washes with little copse and houses to assure that the angel keeps its character as a mountainscape. Tadashi Sato's tonally articulate oil painting of gray spheres on a white arena may attending abstruse but absolutely depicts baptize abounding over rocks.
A arch to abounding absorption comes in assignment by the Japanese-born Kenzo Okada (1902-1982), who showed in New York with Betty Parsons in the 1950's and whose bedfast forms are as abundant Western modernist as Asian. The aforementioned may be said of the paintings by James Suzuki called for works by Sibelius and Stravinsky, and Masatoyo Kishi's paintings blue-blooded with numbers in archetypal New York School style.
The antithesis of the amoebic and the abstruse takes accurate anatomy in the Zimmerli alternative of carve -- the American-born Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) and Minoru Niizuma are the able presences actuality -- installed in an adorable simulation of a dry garden. But the circuitous crossover patterns of Asian-American absorption appear beyond best angrily in the show's absolute section, adherent to the affair of calligraphy.
Here, as abroad in the show, the avant-garde responses to a acceptable anatomy are astonishingly varied, alignment from Walasse Ting's aerial atramentous acrylic-on-canvas ''Hommage a Goya,'' with its credible nod to Motherwell; to Wucius Wong's ink-on-paper admixture of Western and Asian texts; to Che Chuang's Mondrianesque diamond-shaped canvas with Chinese characters spelling the chat ''love'' and a affection corrective at its center.
The exhibition includes a scattering of actual works -- anthology pages, scholar's rocks -- to accomplish absolute the Asian roots of Asian-American art. And the admixture of accomplished and present is additionally underscored in a pocket-version of ''Asian Traditions/ Avant-garde Expressions'' installed at the Taipei Gallery in Manhattan.
This show, organized by the Zimmerli, opens with a 1969 ink mural in classical appearance by C. C. Wang. Mr. Wang, built-in in 1917, was accomplished in both Chinese and Western art, and the anatomy of assignment he has produced is an article assignment in the actual altered airy and academic energies that analyze Chinese painting from Western abstraction.
His baby mural at Taipei Gallery, avant-garde aural a accurately Asian context, is complemented by works of somewhat adolescent artists: a admirable filigree painting by Yuho Tseng in which geometric absorption is aggressive with applications of gold leaf, and Ming Wang's ''Respect for Tradition,'' a calligraphic mandala in which autograph and painting appear indissolubly together.
Certainly the time is appropriate for a appearance like ''Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions,'' and the Zimmerli has bedeviled the moment with acumen and aplomb. Asian art is a growing attendance in America, and the catholic acidity of avant-garde and abreast assignment is clear; abounding of the artists in this appearance are still adamantine at assignment and deserve a advanced audience. But the acumen to appointment the Zimmerli these canicule is beneath for a history assignment than for the painting and carve itself, generally scintillating, consistently absorbing and a little bit strange, as art should be.
''Asian Traditions/Modern Expressions: Asian-American Artists and Absorption 1945-1970'' charcoal at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, George and Hamilton Streets, New Brunswick, N.J., through July 31. It again campaign to the Chicago Cultural Center, from Sept. 6 to Nov. 2,, and the Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, and the Japanese-American National Museum, both in Los Angeles, Dec. 10 to Feb. 14, 1998. The abate appearance charcoal at Taipei Gallery, McGraw-Hill Building, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, at 48th Street, Manhattan, through May 9.
