This year New York’s Asia Week has stretched into Asia Fortnight. The two art fairs, the New York Arts of Pacific Asia Show and the New York International Asian Art Fair, that usually coincide on a single weekend took place on consecutive weekends.

Installation view of the New York Arts of Pacific Asia Show at the 69th Regiment Armory. (Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times)

A broad cultural sampling is displayed at the Arts of Pacific Asia Show  (Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times)

Here are a few of this year’s many high points, with many more waiting to be discovered as you poke around.

A blue and white brushpot from the Kangxi period of China. (Photo: Jan Van Beers)

The New York Arts of Pacific Asia Show

This fair still offers total, slightly crazed immersion in the different universes crowded under the umbrella of Asian art, Roberta Smith writes. But this year, fewer and more carefully selected dealers (72 down from 92 last year) are arrayed in larger booths. It all feels less dense, more aerated.

Jan Van Beers, one of three dealers who shifted from the uptown to the downtown fair this year, has a fine selection of Chinese porcelains, including a blue-and-white brush pot (Kangxi period, 1662-1722). Its wraparound landscape includes an outdoor tea ceremony and is notable for its intense blues and crisp angular forms.

A rare Bonsai container from 14th-century Vietnam. (Photo: Nankai, Tokyo)

At Nankai you can get something of a crash course in Vietnamese ceramics with several dozen vessels, mostly from the 12th to the 15th centuries. At Judith Rutherford the textiles include a bamboo vest and jacket from 19th-century China. At Joss Graham more textiles share the space with Indian paintings, including two Indian paintings of hell in which the damned, seen against a brilliant aqua background, are tormented individually in little tubs.

Two Tang court ladies at at J.J. Lally (Photo: J. J. Lally & Co)

The Fuller Building

For the last few years the concentration of dealers in the Fuller Building, at 41 East 57th Street in Manhattan, has constituted a de facto fair without the entrance fee. Pick up a list of exhibitors in the lobby and work your way downstairs from the top, starting with “Two Thousand Years of Chinese Sculpture” at J. J. Lally; it opens with two Tang court ladies, a not unfamiliar convention, but these are exquisite both in pose and in the soft colors and patterns of their hand-painted robes.

For Chinese landscape painting Sydney L. Moss has outstanding examples in most of the important forms: hanging scrolls, hand scrolls, albums and fans. The landscape in a hanging scroll by Chiao Ping-Chen, a Kangxi period painter, includes a portrait of a Tibetan Buddhist monk and achieves an unusual hybrid of Chinese and Western painting conventions.

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An Indian court painting of Hanuman at Francesca Galloway. (Photo: Francesca Galloway)

If Japanese art is your thing, Carole Davenport is concentrating on ceramics and Mika, as usual, makes its tiny space feel almost voluminous with a few choice objects. Next door Francesca Galloway’s exhibition of Indian court painting is an almost relentless succession of treasures, starting with a painting of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman visible at three points (near, far and farther) as he flies across a heaving gray ocean.

A 19-century carpet depicting a flayed elephant. (Photo: Rossi & Rossi Ltd)

Rossi & Rossi is concentrating on wonderfully ghoulish Tantric carpets from 19th-century Tibet and China. Used in exorcism ceremonies, they depict flayed elephants, tigers and demons, sometimes surrounded by bones and body parts.

“Scenes of Lovemaking” by Sugimura Jihei

Madison Avenue

At Sebastian Izzard (17 East 76th Street) “Early Images From the Floating World: Japanese Paintings, Prints and Illustrated Books, 1660-1720” focuses on early guides, how-to sex manuals (for brides and courtesans alike) and erotic prints pertaining to the red-light districts of Edo-period Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto. Color wood-block printing had not yet been invented, so all the color in these prints is applied by hand and is out of this world. It is most heavenly in the rare and abundant boldly composed prints of Sugimura Jihei, a generally overlooked master of the genre.

A hexagonal pyriform vase from Korea. (Photo: E & J Frankel)

At E. & J. Frankel (1040 Madison Avenue, at 79th Street) pillars of the New York Asian art world, a marvelous exhibition of works from the Julia and Vance Hall collection of Korean art gives pride of place to ceramics from the Silla, Koryo and Choson dynasties, ranging from the 7th to early 19th centuries. It richly illustrates Korea’s importance as an active, transformative conduit between China and Japan. Pieces like two tall, narrow-necked subtly asymmetric vases show how the Koreans relaxed Chinese forms, setting the stage for an appreciation of irregularity that the Japanese would cultivate into a love of accident.

A terra-cotta Gupta roundel of Vishnu at John Eskenazi. (Photo: John Eskenazi)

The northern-most stop is a display of superb Asian sculpture assembled by John Eskenazi, a London dealer camped out in spacious quarters on 24 East 80th Street. Attractions include a fabulously fluid fifth- to-sixth-century terra-cotta Gupta roundel of Vishnu carried through the air by Garuda (while this bird spirit was still a man); a Nepalese strut from around the 15th century that is carved from wood and stacked with goddesses; and a Gandharan Bodhisattva head whose ornate headdress predicts some of Caravaggio’s. It is a fitting conclusion to the cornucopia of Asia art, here for the seeing, this weekend.

Lire l'article "Monkey Gods to Textiles: Far East on the East Side" de Roberta Smith http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/arts/design/21trib.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

New York Arts of Pacific Asia Show, Gramercy Park Armory, Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, Friday through Monday, (310) 455-2886, asianart.com. Hours: Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.-7:30 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Monday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Last admittance Monday at 4:30 p.m.