Status, symbol in 'Portraits From Asia'

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Now is a good time to compare the pros and cons of Western and Asian portraiture with "Facing East: Portraits From Asia" at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. It's a stunning exhibit of portraits from cultures as far apart as China, Japan, India and Egypt over a 5,000-year period.

First, think about the kinds of portraiture best known in the West: realistic Egyptian funeral portraits and Roman sculpture; Leonardo da Vinci's dreamy, introspective "Mona Lisa"; Pierre Bonnard's symbolist paintings of his mistress and future wife, Marte; Rembrandt van Rijn's moving self-portraits; and the impressive American presidents and first ladies back on display at the newly reopened National Portrait Gallery here.

Portraiture, always concerned with status and symbol in the West, plays the same role in Asia -- as the Sackler's intriguing exhibit amply demonstrates.

The exhibit also lays to rest the disparagement of the genre in the East by Western scholars.

To clarify things, curator Debra Diamond, the Freer and Sackler galleries' associate curator for South Asian and Southeast Asian art, divided the show thematically into three major sections: Projecting Identity, Portraits and Memory, and Likeness and Identity.

In the main Projecting Identity segment, the impressively bearded, more-than-life-size painting of Persian ruler "Fath-'Ali Shah as Warrior" (signed Mihr-Ali, Qajar dynasty, A.D. 1814) is the exhibit's dramatic entrance work. The Persian king assumes a godlike status, much like pharaonic statues in Egypt and god-king images ("devarajas") in Cambodia.

This ruler is remembered for energetically promoting the arts after he became Persia's first shah in 1797, resulting in hundreds of his portraits being sent to neighboring India and Russia.

They became, as the curator says, his "calling card."

By contrast, a more contemporary, equally dramatic, take on Projecting Identities is photographer Jannane al-Ani's two "Untitleds" (1996) -- enormous, horizontally composed portraits of five female members of her family.

Acting as reflective compositions -- they're hung opposite each other -- the photographs "read" from left to right, first with a fully veiled, burka-dressed, come-hither-eyed young woman, then with an unveiled woman at center and, finally, an older woman, possibly the mother, at the outer ends.