Highlights of Asia week 2012

Asia Week New York 2012 is a collaboration among Asian art specialists, 5 auction houses, and 17 museums and Asian cultural institutions in the metropolitan New York area from March 16-24, 2012. Here are some country-specific recommendations for the event courtesy The New York Times.

Japan

The signal event for Japanese art is the Japanese Art Dealers Association fair (Fletcher-Sinclair mansion, 2 East 79th Street). Devoid of booths, this is less a fair than a collaborative exhibition of some 120 works that range through numerous mediums and about eight centuries.

Mika Gallery will show a large and splendid 17th-century Edo period Buddhist mandala, a result of many, many wood blocks. Erik Thomsen will contribute several screens, including a gold-leaf-ground, richly colored Rimpa-style rendition of the four seasons.

Koichi Yanagi has a spare presentation of rarities, including a 14th-century star mandala and the expansive ‘Landscapes of the Four Seasons’, a pair of six-panel screens in ink and gold by the 17th-century master Kano Tan’yu. Further excursions into Japanese screen painting are possible at Erik Thomsen.

China

There are several outstanding exhibitions of Chinese material, but the emphasis is changing. J. J. Lally, arguably the dean of New York Chinese art dealers and especially known for his extraordinary exhibitions of ancient bronzes, has shifted his attention this year to rarer metals.

Chinese ceramics receive lavish attention from two private dealers who serendipitously do business in the same building. Eric J. Zetterquist is celebrating his 20th anniversary with a display of Song and Tang vessels reflecting his characteristically impeccable taste.

More Chinese ceramics can be glimpsed in “Magnificent Obsessions” at Kaikodo. The thirst for Chinese bronzes may be slaked by Galerie Christian Deydier of Paris.

South Asia

One highlight of Asia Week is the trove of extraordinary objects with which the London dealer John Eskenazi almost annually reshapes and refines knowledge of the glories of South and Southeast Asian art.

Contemporary Asian art is an increasing presence among the riches of Asia Week. Chambers Fine Art in Chelsea is participating for the first time, with a show of the wizard of cut-paper technique, Wu Jian’an.

India

Kapoor Galleries present a large marble Jain tirthankara (an enlightened being not unlike a Buddhist bodhisattva) from 12th-century Rajasthan . The gallery’s dazzling display of Indian paintings is worth watching.