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In the Company of Spirits

(Spring 1999)

The title of this exhibition, “In the Company 
of Spirits,” held in our gallery in New York 
between March 16 and April 17, 1999, was inspired by the various funerary 
objects that accompanied the soul in the 
afterlife and has several additional levels of 
significance. Centuries after their creation these 
works of art are still able to make manifest 
something of the spirit of those times past. 
Painting and calligraphy especially can be 
profoundly imbued with spirit on many levels, 
embodying in a single stroke or in the work as a 
whole the mind-spirit of the artist. Paintings can 
convey the spirit of the images depicted, the 
spirit of mountains and water, rocks and trees, 
and they can also serve to evoke the spirit of long 
gone times and places. The calligraphy album by 
Dong Qichang, to take one example, evokes 
not only the 17th-century context of its creation 
but also, through verbal and visual statements 
by the artist, conjures quite clearly the entire 
history of calligraphy from its beginnings in the 
second century down to our own time. Objects 
which have inspired joy in their use or 
admiration through their study bring us into the 
company of our distant predecessors in these 
pleasures and endeavors. Possessing an essence 
very much its own, the zitan painting table, for 
example, will make manifest to most viewers the 
esprit of the literati world. It is our hope that this 
exhibition will illustrate some of the connections 
or bridges between the intangible world of the 
spirit and the corporeal-and therefore 
mortal-world in which we all now live.

Kaikodo Journal XI

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