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Asia in a nutshell, Louvre Abu Dhabi's spectacular offering

About 225 artworks of the 620-strong collection at Louvre Abu Dhabi originate from Asia. Ornella D'Souza explored the highlights

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(Clockwise) Louvre Abu Dhabi; Maitreya Buddha, 1100-1200, Nepal; Lion bracelet, 8-7th century BCE; Iran; Bactrian Princess, Central Asia, 2nd millennium BCE; Bernard II Van Risen Burgh’s red lacquer chest of drawers, 1696-1766; Ewer, 1640, India; Osman Hamdy Bey’s A Young Emir Studying, 1848, Istanbul
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Deepika Padukone may be turning heads as the unibrow queen in Padmavati, but there's another single-brow royalty who is garnering attention at the Louvre Abu Dhabi (LAD), the west Asian outpost of the famed art museum in Louvre which opened on November 11.

We're talking about a 25.3cm-tall statue of a princess from Bactria, Central Asia dating back to the 2nd millennium BCE; made from two minerals, chlorite and calcite, her face etched with a single-eyebrow. Despite her antiquity, she's not chipped anywhere, stares back at you with hollow eyes, sports a helmet sort of hairdo and wears an oversized robe that resembles a pineapple. For the curators, she's at par with the other masterpieces at the museum – Da Vinci's La Belle Ferronnière (1495-1499), Piet Mondrian's Composition with Blue, Red, Yellow and Black (1922), Jackson Pollock's Number 26 A, Black and White (1948) and Ai Weiwei's crystal-and-light installation of the Babel Tower.

The Bactrian Princess is one of 225 artworks at LAD which trace their origins to Asia – from Turkey in the west to Japan in the east, from China in the north to Iran down south. These pieces merge into the larger narrative of 620 objects that form the entire LAD collection. Spread out across 23 galleries under the 7,500-ton latticed dome, the objects are bunched together in groups transcending geography, nationality and time period, so that viewers can compare their craftsmanship and history. 

While some have been acquired for LAD, others are loans from 17 French museums and private collectors. "We've scrolls from Oman, silks and ivory caskets from China, a beautiful Ottoman Empire carpet, Mughul and Company school miniature paintings, a dagger from Madurai with Shiva on the blade. At the gallery dedicated to First Empires, we wanted to represent Chandragupta Maurya, but didn't find the right pieces as there are so few out there," says Andre Guilem, Curator of Asian Art, LAD.

In Gallery 1, three funerary masks – one each from northern China (907–1125), Lebanon (600–300 BCE), and Peru (100 BCE–700 CE) – are juxtaposed to highlight their radically different designs. Another vestibule has two ewers, one Chinese (600-900 CE) and another Iranian (1100-1300 AD), with identical bird heads for necks reflecting that the two artists separated by centuries and thousands of miles had a shared intuition.

Guilem also picks other highlights: A reliquary shaped like a stupa from the Kushana period; Japanese ink on paper paintings from the 1850 Edo period showing views of Mount Fuji and Tsukuda Island; two bronze gui vessels dating back to 11th century BC China, and a sandstone and red lacquer statue of Meditating Buddha protected by snakes from Cambodia (1100–50AD). The last two are from the Musée Guimet, Paris. There's a red, Chinese lacquer chest of drawers (1740-45AD) made by a famous carpenter, Bernard II van Risenburgh, in France, to represent the exchange of goods between Asia and the Mediterranean and between Europe and America.

Important in the Asian context is the section on Universal Religions, which has relics, books and manuscripts. For instance, two Buddha heads are displayed next to each other, one from Mathura (400-500AD) and another from the Northern Qi dynasty (530-80 AD), to show the Gupta influence on China. "Next to this we've placed a tactile representation of the heads and a screen showing a film that further elaborate these differences," says Guilem. There's also a touch screen on which viewers can access a digital copy of an ancient text called Maha-parinibbana Sutta from the Pala dynasty, too fragile to be put on display.

The LAD is also looking to collect more Asian artefacts, says Guilem. "We've acquired 150 paintings from India, mostly of Krishna, that we plan to showcase on rotational basis. We're soon acquiring a few Gandharan works from Pakistan," he adds.

Related post: http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-louvre-abu-dhabi-houses-a-vast-indian-collection-with-objects-dating-from-12th-century-bc-to-sh-raza-s-bindu-2558839

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