113 ORS OF ASIA

From June 21 to 18 September 2017 at the National Museum of Asian Arts Guimet.

113 from Asia

The National Museum of Asian Arts - Guimet examines its collections in a new light: that of gold. The exhibition sets the framework for the exchanges of the precious metal and the reasons for its rarity, whether it is gold powder in Japan, or monetary issues of copper, ligatures of sapeces in China.
Throughout the Asian continent gold plays a central role in Buddhist symbolism, Tantric Buddhism and, to a lesser extent, Hinduism and Jainism. The statuary offers the opportunity to grasp in a particularly striking way these factors of unity on the scale of the continent. Stimulated by the frequent mention of gold in the sutras, the patchwork clothes of the companions of the historical Buddha become the pretext for the creation of luxurious patchworks with gold bands.
As a vector of eternity, gold holds in the funeral adornment as in the conservation of the memory a function of first order. Gold writing is ubiquitous in Asia for the notation of religious texts.
Matter with a malleable symbolism, gold is also invested in Asia as elsewhere the symbol of power.
These splendours are evoked in Asia through the archaeological material but also the production of luxury objects in Mughal India.
In Japan, gold is spreading, in this abundant country supplying gold powder for Asia on all objects intended for a high middle class flourishing in the Edo period.
Paradoxically, he serves a praise of the impermanent and the "floating world" that develops then. 113 exhibits will tell the fabulous seduction of the precious metal in Asia.