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East-West Dialogues: The Great Silk Road

by Chris Istrati

July 27, 2004

“Light, light, the visible reminder of invisible light.”
T.S. Eliot

The light we see in the stars tonight has traveled for millions of years; we gaze at time past while looking into time future. Physicists, exploring nature's laws, claim that light can be measured as both a wave and a particle, a paradox that exposes the limits of reason and a paragon that inspires the soul to seek pinnacles of truth.

Great art can act like light, touching the spiritually sublime and exposing the depths of life where chaos swirls in creative currents. Great art can behave like a wave or like a particle, depending on the observer's orientation. Like a particle, a work of art can strike with a sudden shock of insight, a moment of explosive truth; or like a wave, it can quietly set off ripples of meaning that expand understanding and transform reality. Great art, uniting reason and the imagination, can bind east and west, time past and time future, and unite humanity in time present with a new vision in the light of truth.

Such were the artistic revolutions of the Renaissance in Europe and the Meiji Restoration in Japan , when the currents of East and West met and melded in new refractions of creative energy. Such is the art of Central Asia today, where a new Renaissance and Restoration arise from the flow of east and west.

On September 17, 2004, the National Museum of Fine Arts “Gapar Aitiev” will open a new cycle of culture-linking art with an international exhibition entitled “East-West Dialogues: The Great Silk Road .” This will be the fifth annual convocation of its kind, a gathering of artists from Europe and Asia that have been meeting in Bishkek , Germany and Japan for the past five years. Like a conference of birds out of Alisher Navoi's poem, the artists will dialogue about art and life, and then the exhibition will migrate to Almaty on October 17. After the New Year the caravan of culture will travel to an exhibition in the Moscow Kremlin, and then roost in other venues along the Silk Road .

The goal of the international cultural exhibition project, “East-West Dialogues: The Great Silk Road,” is to bring a creative light to a part of the world that once lay in darkness; to set off ripples of understanding between cultures that once stood as far apart as east from west, as distant as time past and time future. The exhibition features conversations between calligraphy and painting, duets between paper and textile, and dialogues between stone and metal. If iron could speak to jade, what would they say?

The dialogues are evocative yet suggestive, colorful while muted, bold but ambiguous. The language of art cuts across cultures yet each piece holds secret meaning for those fluent in that specific medium. The unspoken question posed by the exhibition remains, “Can East and West truly understand each other, even when they communicate together?”

For more than a thousand years, the Silk Road linked east and west, serving as a conduit for communication as well as for commerce and conquest, an information superhighway of the ancient world. This network of roads traversed more than 10,000 kilometers, crossing some of the world's highest mountains, most desolate deserts and endless steppes. The length and breadth of the Silk Road created a new world view that was greater than the sum of its parts. In the hub of the network bubbled the boiling pot of Central Asia .

Filled with high hopes and deep disappointments, the ancient Silk Road witnessed empires rise and fall, religions emerge and disappear, peoples grow in power, then suffer great loss. The Silk Road has been tramped by the armies of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane and treaded by merchants and explorers like Marco Polo and Ibn-Batuta. Spiritual pilgrims threaded the Silk Road: Buddhist monks in saffron robes, Nestorian Christian priests carrying Syriac scriptures, Sufi holy men whirling in ecstatic dance, Franciscan friars with compassion for the vast masses of Asia , and Orthodox Russian monks caring for their frontier flock.

Art also flourished along the Silk Road . Sometimes artists were inspired by spiritual visions, such as the cave frescoes of Dunhuang, the Buddha statues of Bamian, the minaret and mausoleum of Uzgen, the Registan of Samarkand, the prayer carpets of Hotan, or the poetry of Yusuf Balasaghun. Sometimes artists were inspired by the sacred in the quotidian, such as the gold belt buckles of Scythian warriors, the silver livery used to dress the horses of Kyrgyz nomads or the glazed pottery of Uzbek villagers. Art has ever filled every niche of human life carved out of the deserts, steppes, mountains and river valleys of the Silk Road . Today art continues to enjoy a new spring in a new world order.

At the center of the “East-West Dialogues” exhibition four core artists from east and west feature four great arts: calligraphy, jewelry, painting, and poetry. Ryuseki Morimoto from Osaka , Japan , displays banners of ink-washed calligraphy. His most dramatic effects are drawn with the graphic lines of black and white “kanji” script sweeping across red and black blocks of color. As a self-styled “missionary of calligraphy,” Morimoto is a recognized international artist. Calligraphy is often considered the unique contribution of Oriental art, though Celtic monks who copied medieval Bibles may dispute the claim and Turkish scribes who recorded the Koran.

Morimoto's calligraphy engages in conversation with the unique wall hangings of Yuristanbek Shigaev, a painter popular both at home in Kyrgyzstan and abroad. Shigaev's playful, at times riotous, symbols of women, birds and fish seem to argue for a more vibrant cultural expression next to Morimoto's simple Japanese signs that speak a gentle eastern wisdom. Shigaev's chosen medium is acrylic on textile fabrics, compositions that can be rolled up into portable decorations for a nomadic lifestyle.

A true dialogue seems to emerge in the language of jewelry. The West is represented by Michael Zobel from Constance , Germany , while Victor Syrnev, a Russian who moved to Bishkek at the age of twenty-four speaks for the East. Zobel's “objects d'art” are strong and heavy, as if forged in the fires of the Nibelungen and brought to Kyrgyzstan on the wings of Valkyries. Rings, bracelets and collars are shaped in spheroids and squares, geometric abstractions in pewter and bronze. His birthplace in Tangiers , Morocco , however, gives his art a Moorish quality that bridges eastern and western sensibilities. Here a gold palm in a desert oasis gleams against an amethyst dust storm; there a nautilus of copper, gold and silver lies encrusted on a chalk cliff.

In contrast, Victor Syrnev's jewelry shines light and lacy. The curves of gold and white brooches evoke the ancient art of Scythian jewelers, while a bronze reindeer sprouts a tree of gems. Green shades of jade hint at the mysteries of the ancient trade along the Great Silk Road , while pearl necklaces whisper of their travels across desert sands from under the shadows of Mt. Fuji . A lapis lazuli pendant ripples pools of mystery and allure like a Tien Shan mountain tarn under a summer sky. In a Syrnev signature piece, gold leaves fall on a golden head that sits on a golden neck, as if somehow the mind is the true medium of art, the source of understanding across cultures and worlds.

The poetry in the exhibition comes from the pen of the German literary giant, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who, inspired by a 14 th century Persian poet called Hafiz, wrote a series of poems published in 1819 under the title “Der West Ostriches Divan” (West Eastern Dialogues). Extracts from Goethe's collection are juxtaposed with fragments of a seventeenth century Persian miniature painting by Riza-i-Abbas. The poetry is able to connect with the painting at a timeless, universal human level.

Another dialogue across cultures involves the public reading and performance of the Manas Epic in both English and Kyrgyz. The Manas Epic will be dramatically recited in English using the outstanding Walter May translation, and performed in the original language by one of the few authentic modern manaschi , the bards of Kyrgyz lore. The alternation of languages will tell the foundational story of the Kyrgyz people, an epic that transcends time, culture, and geography.

The point of the exhibition is that understanding can only come through dialogue: by patiently listening and probing the nuances of creative language one can hope to build concord and harmony, find resolution in tension, and achieve a synthesis of peace from a dialectic of discord. The signs and symbols of art communicate a visceral truth that transcends all the variety of cultural expressions.

The modern Silk Road is still a highway of dreams and visions, offering great beauty and hope in the face of great challenges. Central Asia is still a contested field between East and West, between atheists and believers, the arena where the values of democracy and capitalism meet the practice of communism and statism. Today, the treasures of the old Silk Road still beckon to traders, armies, and religions. So too, the art of the Silk Road continues to thread together a necklace of pearls cultured from the irritants of life, a silk tapestry woven from the silk cocoons of imaginative, inspired, creatively light artists.