Isabella Gardner created spaces of private meaning in the Museum. The 1915 Second Chinese Room was just such a space, where she fantasized and projected romantic ideas of ritual and mystery onto a Buddhist shrine of her imagination.

Artist-in-Residence Stefano Arienti’s interest in Asian art and culture led him to concentrate on the history of the Gardner Museum’s Asian collection and on the Chinese Room in particular. Working with found images and other materials from the Gardner archives, the artist transformed his sources through drawing, by burning, tracing and transferring photocopies of original digital images. These drawings were as a frieze on an historical wall, a canon of human gesture, and linked ideas about what is classical and permanent in art to all that is intangible, immaterial and fleeting.

The Asian Shore installation integrated harmoniously with the architecture and the display practices of the museum, which appeal to the senses and give further expression to the way perception is tempered by ambiance. The work included a set of sliding 17th century Japanese doors with painted bamboo shoots that are usually displayed, on the reverse side, in an upstairs passageway, as well as, a series of rugs that the artist dyed to reveal unexpected patterns. The drawings, the sliding doors and especially the expanse of red and black surface created by the rugs enveloped viewers in a way that is both intimate and reassuring. Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to go into the room, take off their shoes, sit on the rugs and enter into a sensual and meditative encounter with art.

This exhibition traveled to 2008 Gwangju Biennale.

Stefano Arienti was an Artist-in-Residence in the summer of 2004. He lives and works in Milan.

Publication: The Asian Shore

Learn more about the artist

A Conversation between the artist and curator

Artist Stefano Arienti and Curator of Contemporary Art Pieranna Cavalchini.

Pieranna Cavalchini (PC): How did you get interested in Asian art?

Stefano Arienti (AC): I began a more in-depth and systematic study of Asian art as an alternative to the first grand tour of contemporary art in 1997: Venice, Basel, Kassel, Muster, etc. that year, and also my first trip to India.

PC: What kind(s) of Asian art are you particularly drawn to?

SA: Visiting India, the architecture-sculpture and textile art, including a greater interest in carpets, but studying the ancient Orient, the pictorial traditions of China and Japan.

PC: As an AIR you spent over a month at the Gardner? How did your perceptions of the Museum change over time?

SA: Living inside the museum, one can travel in time, for example to the time of Isabella, delving into American history from a century ago, with interesting parallels to today, two periods of bellicose stability, expansion, and upset. The evolution of the institution of the museum follows changes in the world and in ideas, but it does not tell us in advance what will come.

PC: Aside from the Chinese Room is there a work of art or an aspect of the museum that you are particularly drawn to?

SA: A collection tied to a specific person in her time, with an installation that has remained untouched by museography, where each person can construct whatever path he or she desires, always coming back to look at the same things, side by side, but with a different interest. One can discover thousands of things and spontaneous new associations of ideas emerge.

PC: What do you mean by the title The Asian Shore?

SA: It is a literary quote from a story by Thomas Disch, it is a shore of arrivals and departures, inhabited by the undertow of time, where one can really take a rest.

PC: You are using a very unique drawing technique in this exhibition. Wood burning and carbon transfer on paper. What make you choose this particular technique for this particular installation?

SA: A technique discovered by chance, years ago, but refined more recently, it allows me to directly transform the forms and tones of photographs into drawing, with a very controlled and selective use of what was already contained in the image. It is a slow and by no means immediate way to probe complex images. I have used it most frequently on rare archival images, as for example those from Leonardo’s ceiling in the Sala delle Asse in Milan, which are no longer recognizable.

PC: You have been working with rugs for several years. Why? What is it about rugs that appeals to you?

SA: Objects extremely rich in history, which we walk over unconsciously; while decorative, they give us so many images, motifs, and designs, a world to be investigated, which becomes painting as soon as they are touched, and in some way they are also ideal bases for sculptures, as soon as one pauses on them.

PC: What made you decide to include the Chrysanthemum and Bamboo sliding doors in your installation at the Gardner?

SA: The desire to know and appreciate a masterpiece hidden in the recesses of the museum, the signs of the bamboo curtain are connected to the scheme of my drawings, so that my Asian shore of carpets also has a cane thicket

The Second Chinese Room
Like many other 19th-century Americans, Isabella Gardner was fascinated with Asia, and in 1883 she embarked on a lengthy journey through Japan, China, Southeast Asia, and India. She was not yet a collector, although she bought a few souvenirs. During the construction of her museum, around 1900, Isabella bought many Asian objects from dealers in Boston—mostly decorative carvings and trinkets, which were used in the museum. In 1903, when her museum was first opened, most of galleries were devoted to Renaissance art although one room was called the Chinese Room. In t ypical Victorian fashion, it was filled with a mixture of Japanese screens, Asian textiles, 19th-century paintings, and Italian furniture. In 1915, Isabella Gardner undertook a major renovation of her museum. The old Chinese Room was dismantled and much of her Buddhist sculpture was moved into a new space. This dark, atmospheric setting was arranged like a shrine, decorated with large-scale Buddhist sculptures. One table was reserved for objects associated with Okakura Kakuzo, the recently deceased author of The Book of Tea. A devout Episcopalian, Gardner was fascinated by all of the world’s religions. Gardner’s friends found the Second Chinese Room awe-inspiring and tomb-like, but it was never regularly open to the public. It was a romanticized and very personal interpretation of a Buddhist temple, which seemed too much a jumble for many scholars: the room was dismantled and for the most part sold in 1971. The museum mourns today the loss of the Chinese Room and is seeking ways to redress this.

Programs
Saturday Talk
June 29, 2007, 1:30PM
Stefano Arienti joins Curator of Contemporary Art Pieranna Cavalchini to discuss the exhibition.

Conversations
Tourist and Collector: Isabella Stewart Gardner's Passion For Asia
Thursday, September 27, 2007, 6:30PM
Nuriko Murai, Professor at Temple University, Tokyo and Gardner Museum Curator Alan Chong discuss Isabella's Asian collection and travels.

List of works in Stefano Arienti: The Asian Shore
Individual works in the The Asian Shore, an installation by Stefano Arienti.

1. Seconda stanza cinese (Second Chinese Room), 2007
100 drawings (each 42 x 29.7 cm)
Collection the artist, Milan

2. Chrysanthemums and Bamboo, Japanese, Rimpa School, 17th-century
Set of four sliding doors (fusuma)
Isabella Stewart Gardner Collection, Boston
Paint and gold on paper (each door: 167 x 187cm)
Set of four sliding doors (fusuma). Bamboo side on view in the gallery. Chrysanthemum side on view in the 2nd floor elevator landing

3.Aubusson rosso (Red Aubusson), 2006
Red-dyed rug (237 x 300 cm)
Courtesy the artist and the Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

4. Garabagh nero (Black Garabagh), 2006
Black-dyed kilim rug with drawings in white thread (198 x 134 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York.

5. Nain rosso (Red Nain), 2006
Red-dyed rug (207 x 130 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York.6. Sumak amaranto (Amaranthine Sumak), 2006

6. Amaranthine, 2006
Dyed wool rug (201 x 122 cm)
Courtesy the artist and the Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

7. Cinese nero (Black Chinese), 2006
Rug black-dyed wool rug (210 x 220cm)
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

8. Savonnerie rumena (Rumanian Savonnerie), 2006
Black-dyed wool rug (210 x 210 cm)
Courtesy the artist and the Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York

9. Ensi cinese nero (Black Chinese Ensi), 2006
Black-dyed wool rug (107 x 152 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York