Courtesy Rubin Museum of Art

                                    "Tenzin Gyatso, Ocean of Wisdom," 2005, by Losang Gyatso, part of "The Missing Peace," which opens at RMA today.

Dalai Lama appears at the Rubin Museum,

in spirit and acrylic 

By Stephanie Murg

The Dalai Lama wears flip-flops, but he is also partial to brown Dexter laceups, size 7 . The footwear preferences of one of the world's most well-known spiritual leaders are just one of the many things to learn at the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA), the first major Western museum entirely devoted to the art of the Himalayas and surrounding regions. Opening today at RMA is "The Missing Peace," an exhibition in which contemporary artists from Marina Abramovic and Laurie Anderson to Bill Viola and William Wiley offer their interpretations of the Dalai Lama, 70 years after he was recognized as the reincarnation of the thirteenth Dalai Lama and plucked from a village in northeastern Tibet at the age of two.

The Rubin Museum itself is just over two years old. Its six-story home at 150 West 17th Street was once the flagship Barneys store, and the museum's atrium retains the luxury retail mecca's Andree Putnam staircase, a dazzling helix of steel and marble. From the moment one enters RMA, tugging on oversized door handles designed by architect Erich Theophile and hand-cast by metalsmiths in Katmandu (after consulting with local priests for design accuracy), it is clear that this is no ordinary museum.

Legendary designer Milton Glaser is to thank for, among other things, the stunning cast bronze mural that floats behind the admission counter, mesmerizing visitors with an inset screen of swirling mandalas. The RMA's bold palette is that of a Tibetan painting, with walls painted vermilion, ochre, and shades of green ranging from patinated copper to viridian, and the museum's low-ceilinged, almost domestic scale makes the color scheme warm and friendly rather than imposing. From its sleek logo, which resembles a poker chip, to the outstanding lighting of the exhibits, every facet of RMA is exceedingly well-designed.

RMA founders and patrons Shelley and Donald Rubin envisioned the museum as a cultural and scholarly institution, and for most visitors, the art of RMA presents a substantial, wonderful challenge. "It is the familiar that usually eludes us in life," begins the quote by philosopher and critic William Barrett on a placard outside the museum. "What is before our nose is what we see last." And perhaps this is the problem most people have when encountering the art of the Himalayas: it is vaguely familiar - the stuff of tapestries, vases, and exotic screens - so they don't bother to look any deeper, or simply don't know where to start.

"There's no doubt that these images are hard to penetrate," said Donald Rubin in a recent interview in Orientations, a magazine for collectors of Asian art. "But for me the first step is just to breathe it in, to inhale the energy."

For Caron Smith, chief curator and co-director of RMA, Himalayan art requires and rewards a closer look. "A visit to RMA requires actively bringing to bear one's previous experience, looking closely at the material at hand, discriminating carefully, and shaping the imagination," says Smith. "The fundamental aim of the Museum is to provide this adventure in learning through art."

And RMA offers many ways to learn. On a recent day at the museum, the schedule of events elegantly projected onto a wall near the entrance began with a morning family program called "Moving through Art," and ended with Michael Musto hosting a 9:30 p.m. screening of "Lost Horizon," the tale of a group stranded in the land of Shangri-La (Tibet) made into a splashy, obscure 1973 movie musical. Diverse events such as these provide "opportunities to bring alive this art that so many people don't have familiarity with, that may seem daunting to even figure out how you start to look at it," says Karen Kedmey, manager of media relations at RMA.

"The names [of the artists and their subjects] are difficult, so when I try to read something, my eyes tend to do this," says RMA intern Alanna Schindewolf, turning her pupils toward her nose. "You really have to concentrate." Schindewolf came to the museum with only basic knowledge of Tibet and Mongolia. "But I'm learning, slowly but surely," she says. "If you can learn more about the history and symbols, the art can come to mean a lot more."

Walking with his holiness

The museum's latest exhibition offers a good jumping-off point as well as a chance to see what happens when some of the world's leading contemporary artists all focus on the same topic. Sponsored by the Dalai Lama Foundation and the Committee of 100 for Tibet, "The Missing Peace" is, in the words of Kasur Tenzin Tethong, former cabinet member to the Tibetan government in exile, a chance "to walk with the Dalai Lama today; walk with him on his journey of peace and hope, rather than trail in his footsteps in the future."

Given the conception of the show as a walk, the focus on shoes by two of the artists is no surprise. "Tenzin Gyatso, Ocean of Wisdom" (2005) depicts his Holiness's cartoonishly rendered foot shod in a bright blue flip-flop. It is the work of Tibetan artist Losang Gyatso, who sought to represent the Dalai Lama as both a physical and mystical being, a spiritually and politically unifying force. "The traditional brocade and leather Tibetan boots that covered the Dalai Lama's feet are substituted by the flip flops that are so common in the lowlands of India where we [Tibetans] have become refugees for the last four decades," says Gyatso, who now lives in Colorado. In a whirl of Sanskrit markings, the painting's stylized foot remains firmly in the center of a symbol known as the mandala of Chenresig, the patron deity of Tibet that embodies compassion and empathy.

Gyatso's work also had a more earthbound inspiration, a photograph taken during the Dalai Lama's recent visit to the White House. "[President Bush and the Dalai Lama] were both seated, with Mr. Bush striking an overly casual pose with one foot resting on the other knee, and the Dalai Lama was sitting in what might be considered an appropriate manner for someone visiting someone else's office: friendly and respectful, but with flip flops on," says Gyatso. "There was so much going on in the photo but in the end, the Dalai Lama looked more comfortable in the White House than Mr. Bush did. This led me to consider the Dalai Lama through the way in which he manifests total comfort in his own being and with that of others. This is a feat that's practically impossible for most of us to achieve."

Feet and shoes (usually Prada heels) often appear in the work of Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury, and for "The Missing Peace," she offers a photograph of a pair of the Dalai Lama's scuffed brown Dexters. The shoes glow with electricity, an effect realized through a process known as Kirlian photography, which Fleury used in an attempt to capture the Dalai Lama's aura. When told about the work, his Holiness reportedly laughed and noted that since the shoes had been resoled several times, the resulting aura might be that of his cobbler.

Fleury's piece, like the others on view, was donated to the exhibition, now on the third leg of its world tour, and will eventually be sold in a fundraiser for the sponsoring organizations. This piece is a perfect fit for the world-renowned art collection of Ted Alfond, whose father founded Dexter Shoes.

While Fleury and Gyatso, along with Richard Avedon, Chuck Close, and Chase Bailey, contributed figurative works tied to the Dalai Lama's physical being, other artists took a more abstract approach. Randy Jayne Rosenberg, who curated "The Missing Peace," says that the starting point for this exhibition was a question: Who is the Dalai Lama and what universal themes do his life and work embody?

Detroit-born Ken Aptekar, known for riffing on historical paintings and playing with text, answered Rosenberg's question with "I Saw the Figure Five in Gold" (2005), a reworking of a painting meant as a portrait based on a poem inspired by a fire truck. (Whew!) Aptekar's starting point was Charles Demuth's 1928 painting "The Figure 5 in Gold," created as a portrait of Demuth's friend William Carlos Williams and based on Williams' poem "The Great Figure," 32 words in 13 lines inspired by a noisy fire engine (No. 5) zooming down Ninth Avenue. "The abstract imagery and the approaching number fives in the painting become an image of [Williams]," says Aptekar. "I decided to make my portrait of the Dalai Lama a sort of reincarnation itself of another painting."

Aptekar's knowing tweaks included squaring off the canvas, imbuing the formerly vertical surface with what he calls "mandala-like symmetry." He also warmed up the colors, nudging Demuth's cadmium red and bright yellow into warm hues of burgundy and saffron, colors Aptekar associates with the Dalai Lama. The reworking also reverses the images, so that the number fives recede, and substitutes the Dalai Lama's name, "Lhamo," and nickname, "Kundun," for the original shout-outs to "Carlos" and "Bill."

"By not making these names backwards as they would normally appear by reversing the entire image, I've bridged the gap between the Demuth portrait and my own of the Dalai Lama," says Aptekar, who was attracted to the original work by its vibrancy and positive energy. "I wanted to communicate something of the Dalai Lama's indefatigable spirit, his intelligent ebullience, the musicality and vibrancy of his culture," he says. "And I wanted to paint a paean to an honest leader of a country who stands above all else for peace."

Working Within Tradition

In RMA, "The Missing Peace" gains extraordinarily rich context. Interspersed among the contemporary Dalai Lama-themed works are a selection of paintings and sculptures from the museum's collection of over 2,000 works of Himalayan art. "By including historical portraits of the Dalai Lama, we are attempting to demonstrate that these contemporary works of art are a part of a larger historical production of portraiture and interpretation of the Dalai Lama," says Kedmey. While RMA's collection spans the second to the 19th century, living artists have played a role in the museum's programming since its inception. The museum's sixth floor is currently an open studio of sorts for artist-in-residence Pema Rinzin.

Rinzin, a Tibetan, studied tangka (scroll) painting from 1979 through 1983 in Dharamsala, India and taught at the Tibetan Children's Village School there from 1984 through 1992. He has since worked in Japan and exhibited in Germany. At RMA, his vast murals-in-progress dominate the rear of the sixth-floor exhibition space and invite visitors to watch, learn, and ask questions. "People are always really surprised about the color," says Rinzin of his intense palette of jewel tones. "I also noticed that young artists are very interested in my work. Especially graffiti artists, who copy from my painting and from Tibetan art." Rinzin points to the works of Brooklyn-based artist David Ellis, whose snaky line drawings and billowing abstract patterns are often inspired by Tibetan art. Rinzin and Ellis are pondering a collaboration.

"Pema works in the tradition of Himalayan artists but brings his very contemporary artistic and life experiences to his art," says Kedmey. "Visitors have been thrilled, surprised, enchanted, and fascinated by his work." Unlike most Tibetans, Rinzin studied Western art for nine years. Among his favorite artists is Jackson Pollock. "He put American abstract expressionism on the map, but the idea comes from China," says Rinzin.

Like Smith, Rinzin emphasizes the importance of looking at each Tibetan artwork individually, which is an acquired skill. "When you look at Western paintings, they're more like humans, each expressing their own thoughts. You can easily consider each painting on its own," says Rinzin. "With Tibetan painting, I can see this too, how the artist puts emotion into their painting, how good they are, how they express themselves individually." To help visitors separate the "national treasures" from the more amateur efforts, Rinzin's critical musings are displayed on wall texts that accompany selected works on view.

The cover of the exhibition catalogue for "The Missing Peace" features the work of Spanish-born artist Salustiano. His canvas portrays the Dalai Lama in his next incarnation: a sullen young girl with hair the color of blood. She peers from a bright red ground etched with the Tibetan word for reincarnation. Salustiano sought to "represent the [Dalai Lama's] compassion, the non-violence, but powerfully." He describes the work as "a strong idea whispered in a low voice."

Salustiano's explanation of what the Dalai Lama represents to him works equally well as a description of the Rubin Museum: "A smile, a silence in a world where everyone screams. Something unique, an instant of calm in a rapidly moving world."