There it is now, half the hand of the Buddha.

Two and a half beautiful bronze fingers, golden, green, mysteriously shimmering and despite their disability still majestic and sacred.

What happened to her?

Where is the rest of the "Colossal Buddha" that she once belonged to?

Presumably, says Stephan von der Schulenburg, looters damaged the figure during a hasty raid.

Almost all objects from Thailand of the Sukothai period in the 13th and 14th centuries that are in the showcases here probably have such a history: they are only preserved as fragments.

But Schulenburg, curator for East Asian art at the Museum Angewandte Kunst (MAK), is interested in exactly that: the incompleteness.

Anna Sophia Lang

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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A perspective that above all a museum with a collection like that of the MAK can offer.

In which the point is not that every object has to be in perfect condition, but that you can sometimes find out more about a time, an artist or a technique from fragments than you would have learned otherwise.

Schulenburg, who has been fetching pieces from the museum's depot since 2016 in the "meet asian art" series, this time selected almost 50, all of which are damaged or at least incomplete and no longer fulfill their original function.

Anyone who takes a little time for the cabinet exhibition on the first floor of the museum and reads the wonderful descriptions in the large-format accompanying flyer will realize how much beauty and history there is in the fragments.

"A rare poise and quiet power"

Whether this is the torso of a Thai Buddha, which the former Städelschule rector Raimer Jochims said one could believe was conceived in this way: "As a whole, it radiates a rare balance and quiet power." Whether it's the Japanese sword guards are, which in their individuality and delicacy seem almost like an expression of the respective character of the samurai whose swords they belonged to before the Meiji Emperor issued a ban on carrying swords - and countless were sold, also abroad. Or the fragments of two steles from present-day Pakistan, thought to have been made sometime between the 1st and 5th centuries BC, which still show remarkably fine detail from scenes with various Buddha images.

Chinese and Korean pieces also feature in this edition of the exhibition series, which in previous installments has explored bowls, animal and mythical creatures in ancient China, the color of jade, Wanli-era blue-and-white porcelain and Japanese cloisonné work has. The question of where the objects come from and which way they have taken - whether a legitimate one - plays a role again and again. Schulenburg explains how difficult it is to find out, using the example of a stucco Buddha head, a loan from a private collection that is part of the current exhibition.

For two years he and his colleagues have been searching for the origin.

What is clear is that the piece was exported from Thailand “during a critical phase”, as Schulenburg says.

Namely after 1961, when such items were only allowed to leave the country with the appropriate permit and papers.

The MAK therefore contacted the Thai Consulate General in Frankfurt and the Embassy in Berlin, conferred with the National Museum in Bangkok and researched documents in the Federal Archives about the man who gave the Buddha to its current owners.

Despite all efforts, it is still unclear how he came into possession of it.

fragments.

On the Incomplete in East Asian Art The exhibition runs until September 18 at the Museum Angewandte Kunst, Schaumainkai 17, in Frankfurt.