HELL: ARTS OF ASIAN UNDERWORLDS

JUN 16–SEP 18 OSHER FOUNDATION GALLERY

What’s your own personal idea of hell? Maybe it’s getting stuck in an endless, bumper-to-bumper traffic jam during rush hour, or being forced to sing a cappella in front of an enormous audience; it might just be the sheer horror of having to face a Monday morning without a cup of coffee.

To us mere mortals, the underworld remains an elusive idea — a place whose only boundaries are the human imagination. As a result, it has proved a great inspiration to artists through the years. Curated by Jeff Durham, the museum’s associate curator of Himalayan art, Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds explores its subject via a generous variety of genres and media, from maps, puppets, and 20th-century paintings to 1,000-year-old Cambodian sculpture. The exhibition brings together traditional imagery from Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, and the Philippines, as well as contemporary visions by Asian American artists borrowed from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. “These depictions are aesthetically sumptuous, often gruesome, and sometimes even humorous,” says Durham, “but they always reveal something fundamental about how we imagine the ultimate catastrophe of cosmic condemnation.”

What’s that you say — a visit to Hell doesn’t sound like much fun? Never fear; according to this show, it might not be as bad as you might think. For one thing, it seems there’s never a dull moment: the Asian Art Museum’s Hell is populated by a cast of colorful and surreal characters, and the imagery on view is often surprisingly entertaining. Yoshifuji Utagawa’s Meiji-era woodblock print Newly Published Comic Picture of Cats undermines the putative seriousness of the hell-realm by populating it with felines (which may not seem farfetched to viewers who suffer from allergies). What’s more, there may be a way out: in some traditions presented here, the condemned will encounter guides in the realms below who can offer them a second chance.

Hell’s bold juxtapositions — the staid and the lurid, the grotesque and the goofy — will stimulate the imagination and tickle the funny bone. So, if a fellow member suggests they’ll see you in Hell, we hope you’ll reply with a smile: “Hell yes!” n provided by the following endowed funds: Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Endowment Fund for Exhibitions and Kao/Williams Contemporary Art Exhibitions Fund. Kayu kepuh (Gateway to the Underworld) shadow puppet (Wayang kulit), from Wayang Cupak Tabanan Set, early 20th century. Indonesia, Bali. Water buffalo hide, water buffalo horn, pigments, metal wire. Yale University Art Gallery, The Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection, 2018.130.6.2. Photograph courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery. Newly Published Comic Picture of Cats (Shinpan neko no giga) (detail), 1883, by Utagawa Yoshifuji (Japanese, 1828–1887). Japan, Meiji era (1868–1912). Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper. Susan L. and C. J. Peters. Photograph by Tom Dubrock.