The Robb Report Collection, July 2006

Sacred Art: Bringing Buddha Home
by Jean Penn

“BUDDHA HAS BECOME AN American pop icon” says Darrell Hallenbrook, a 35-year-old financial advisor with Morgan Stanley in Beverly Hills, Calif. As a practicing Zen Buddhist for more than a decade, Hallenbrook honors his collection of Ming Dynasty Buddhas as spiritual tools, not just as decorative pieces for display. He believes the ubiquity of Buddhist iconography in today's world – From iMac commercials to children's cartoons – is indicative of the “disconnect” from the deity's original spiritual significance. “People of my age has the perspective that they can pick and choose when it comes to religious symbolism,” he says. “So why not have some Buddha's in house?”




Hallenbrook certainly has a point. No longer exclusive to the homes and gardens of such Buddhist-embracing celebrities as Uma Thurman and Richard Gere, Buddhist statuary is as main stream as the sound of trickling sound of water in the garden, yoga and green tea ice cream. Furthermore, the statues are everywhere- populating major museum exhibits, residential homes and gardens, trendy nightclubs, bars and restaurants, and spas from coast to coast.




Is the assimilation and proliferation of Buddhist art into everyday life a sign that Zen is among us, or that the Far East is winning the spiritual and decorating wars? Does it mean that collecting Asian art, which historically has been a more serious endeavor in Europe than in the United States, is finally catching fire in the western world? Or is it something about the Buddha's enigmatic smile that calms the spirit and centers the soul?




The answer, Grasshopper, is, “how much study does it take to learn how little you really know?”



Our Journey begins with a former Buddha collector, Ron Rifkin a second seasoned Broadway, movie and TV actor who won a Tony in 1998 for Cabaret and currently stars on the hit TV series Alias. At one time, his Tribeca loft was fulfilled with Buddhas and Hindu deities, most of which were purchased from Sotheby's auctions during the late 1970's. Now, only one graceful, 5 foot tall gold-leaf Thai Buddha remains in his Manhattan home; serene, mindful, wisely contemplating the Hudson River . “Some thought it was odd, me being a Jew.” Says the actor of his purchases. Rifkin, who says he is acquisitive by nature, was studying with Hindu Monk during his Buddha buying craze. “One person in particular said to me, ‘OK, RON, that's enough…… it's starting to look weird.'” Although his initial response was anger, Rifkin's quest for Eastern philosophies came to an end, and his interests shifted to other acquisition.



These days, very few people would label Rifkin as weird. Educated, successful professionals in their 30's and 40's many of whom are hyphenated Buddhists, those who cling to their inherited faith but have adopted the Buddhist rituals of chanting, meditation, and using incense—are especially likely to amass Buddhist statuary. However few collectors are on a spiritual quest. Other say their Buddhas found them—when they weren't even looking.



Jonathan Pontell, a Hollywood producer of Ally McBeal, The Practice and L.A. Law, Discovered his Buddha attraction while shopping for Japanese prints at the Arts of Pacific Asia Show in Los Angeles a few years ago. It was a 17 th – century wood-carved Chinese Buddha that captured his heart. He was immediately drawn to it's ethereal, a peaceful quality. Now the sitting Buddha rests on a living room table among some 16 th century Catholic saint statuary.



At the Show, Pontell also met Jon and Cari Markell, owners of Silk Roads Design Gallery in Los Angeles. The store specializes in collectible Buddhist and religious art, much of which has been exhibited in museums. The Hollywood crowd that shops at the Markells' store—film producers and directors, actors and set decorators—receives an education about the proper use and display of their purchases. Pontell finds himself stopping by the Melrose Avenue gallery whenever he has time on his hands. “I don't see out to buy.” he says. “But more often than not, I take home a Buddha.”



Los Angeles business man Robert Snukal, a serious collector of Asian Art, has been pondering the easy adaptability of the Buddha image into our culture, and loss of its original significance. “Unlike Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Buddhism has no notion of terminus—no transcendental reference, no insistence on differences between right and wrong,” he says. “To us, it's an image of spirituality that's devoid of specific content, [so] we have no trouble on assimilating it into everything.”



Snukal and his wife, Sheila, collect Tang and early Ming dynasty Buddhas and have shared the collection with the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena. But, like many Asiaphiles, Snukal is attracted to the infinite stylistic versions of the Buddha, revered and adopted with a different fervor on every culture. The Snukal collection revolves around 25 Buddhas, including numerous Sino-Tibetan gilt bronzes. Two life-size bronze Buddhas. One Japanese and 12th and 13th century Chinese stucco Buddhas. Each features the same small circular mark on its forehead, a cranial protuberance (ushnisha) and long ear lobes. However, they vary greatly in appearance from culture to culture, with some becoming multicultural hybrids.




“The Buddhist image is central to Eastern art, and it's fascinating to see it in all its different varieties,” says Snukal, pointing to the large stone Buddha that stands stoically in the living room's bay window, its face serene and quiet despite the loss of a right arm. It is, Snukal says, about 2nd or 3rd century from Gandhara, an area that is now eastern Pakistan and Afghanistan. “It was the farthest extent eastward of Greco-Roman civilization,” he continues. “As far as Alexander got on his conquest.”



There are many different Buddhas. The historical Buddha originated with Prince Siddhartha Gautama who, at age 29, left his privileged life for a spiritual quest and achieved a state of perfect knowledge and peace (nirvana) under a bodhi tree. He died kin 481 B.C.; however, his teachings reveal that he is not the only Enlightened One. Many Buddhas existed before him and many more would follow after his death. The reason for life, Gautama believed, involved striving to be and Enlightened One, or Buddha.




In the Buddhist pantheon, several bodhisttvas (individuals who are destined to become Buddhas in this or another life) exist as well, and they are often depicted in female form. These enlightened beings, who elected to remain on Earth to help others, play different roles on different cultures. One of the most popular in China is Guanyin, the goddess of compassion, who is ready to dispense favors and is usually exceedingly well dressed. “She's the most revered woman in the world, other than the Virgin Mary,” says Cari Markell of Silk Roads, explaining that in China, Japan and Korea, where the Mahayana school of Buddhism is Practiced, Guanyin images are more common than that of the historical Buddha. Silk Roads' inventory of Ming and Ching dynasty items, which range from the 16 th to 19 th centuries and are no longer available for export from mainland China, are priced from $800 to $60,000.



“A good Buddha is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars as opposed to tens of thousands as in the past.” Says Izzy Chait of I.M. Chait Gallery of Beverly Hills, an art auction company whose wide range of offerings includes Asian artwork. “That is what you would pay for something really rare and beautiful,” he says, referring to a 14 th century Tibetan gilt bronze, a large Ming gilt bronze, and a 15th or 16th century Japanese Buddha. “As these things come up on the market, they are either bequeathed to a museum or passed on to an heir,” says Chait, who has been negotiating the purchase of a 19th century Japanese bronze, approximately 10 feet tall, for several weeks.



From the Arts of Pacific Asia Show on Los Angeles to the annual International Asian Art Fair in New York in spring, the wood on the street was that prosperous Chinese are continuing to buy up all the Buddha art and return it to their homeland. “ China is still a poor country, but there are more millionaires there than in the United States,” says Silk Roads owner Markell.



James Carona, of Heather James Art & Antiquities in Palm Desert , Calif., agrees. “I hear that Chinese museums are coming here to buy,” he says, adding that he recently shipped a lacquer Ming Buddha, sight unseen, to a buyer in Shanghai. His inventory includes a 146 inch, 3rd to 4th century seated stucco Gandharan Buddha.



The new Chinese laws that ban the export of Asian and Buddhist relics, meanwhile, delineate what is available on the market even further. Asian art dealers now rely on estate sales in the United States and abroad to restock their inventories. Especially hard to find are large-size Buddhas that once resided in temples around the world. Edith Frankel, of E&J Frankel Ltd. in New York, says most of her acquisitions are international: “We tend to recycle, in that we handle old collections over and over.” Some major Buddhas she recently sold include a Ming dynasty larger-than-life-size seated wooden Buddha for $25,000, a seated limestone Tang dynasty Buddha for $85,000, and a white Hanbaiyu marble Buddha head for $35,000. Her current inventory runs the gamut from a black marble Buddha from the 6th century, priced at $200,000, to a small Tang head for $6,500.



Meanwhile, in Los Angeles , a life-size reclining Buddha sold for $40,000 at Silk Roads last year. Today, however, Markell says he could have sold that piece for $75,000. Markell, among other local dealers, confirms that while a higher concentration of serious Asian collectors resides on the East Coast, Buddhist sculptures seem to be more in demand on the West Coast. Nevertheless, the recent wave of Buddhist art exhibits across the country should increase demand for them everywhere.




Chait, who has collected Buddhas for more than 35 years, says the spiritual figures even appeal to children. “The Tibetan Buddhas can be wild and demonic,” he says. But it is the standing or seated serene Buddha, typically depicted in most countries, that resonates with collectors the most. Chait points to the permanent collections at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and New York 's Metropolitan Museum of Art. “There could be traffic, commotion, all sorts of negative energy outside, but walk into one of those rooms and suddenly you feel peaceful and quiet. You get this feeling. It communicates straight to the soul.”



You don't even have to be a true believer to feel it.