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The Ancient Art of Enlightenment
Ann E. Berman
08/02/2004
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 | | A FIGURE of Shiva as Lord of Music (Vinadhara, India, last quarter 10th century)
estimated at $400,000 to $600,000, sold for $724,300 in September 2003, a world
auction record for a Chola bronze. |
Donald and Shelley Rubin, founders of the Rubin Museum of Art in New York
City, where selections from their collection of thousands of pieces of Himalayan
art will go on view in October, have been collecting for 30 years. It all began
quite unexpectedly. “As my wife and I were strolling down Madison Avenue in
1975, we wandered into an Asian art gallery and there in the back, we discovered
a piece of Himalayan art,” Rubin recalls. “We were not art collectors at the
time, but we both connected to this piece and purchased it. Six months later we
bought another piece, and that was the beginning of it all.”
Rubin,
ordinarily a reserved man, equates his passion for Himalayan art with falling in
love. “It was not an intellectual response,” he says. “It was an aesthetic and
emotional experience. We feel the energy and power of this art, and appreciate
its ability to evoke the fundamentals of civilization. Our attraction has
nothing to do with status or investment. Its worth is more lasting, more
spiritual than that. We love its beauty, passion and flow.”
The Rubins have
plenty of company. In recent decades, prices for Himalayan, Southeast Asian and
Indian sculpture have been rising as collectors around the country discover
these sensuous, yet serene, works in stone, terra-cotta, stucco and bronze,
created between the first century and about 1600.
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