Behold, one of the smaller Northern Wei Buddhas we weren't able to see inside the fabled Longmen caves. The sublime folds and serene smiles make this perhaps my favorite period in Buddhist art. I've admired it before, but saw it with new eyes at the Princeton Art Museum on Friday, having stood outside the UNESCO listed grottoes where it long lived (they don't let tourists in). One wonders at its journey here. It was
a gift of an alumnus, c. 1940-42, a time when the Japanese invasion turned China inside out and much art was spirited out in different ways and for different reasons - though it might have been prised from its perch already earlier in China's century of repudiation of its religious heritage. It might be smiling at the irony that a college in New Jersey spared it the fate of its defaced fellows during the Cultural Revolution.
