Japanese Woodcut Prints

A friend sent me this article from the NY Times, on a Japanese woodcut exhibition. I am posting an excerpt below. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article. It is accompanied by a nice slide show.

Fleeting Pleasures of Life in Vibrant Woodcut Prints

By KEN JOHNSON

The cult of celebrity and the commercialization of art are not unique to the West. In 19th-century Japan kabuki actors and high-priced geishas were idolized by commoners, and the sale of colorful woodcut prints portraying them became a big, competitive business.

In 1842, fearing an erosion of national moral fiber, the government reacted to the mania for kabuki and for ukiyo-e, the paintings and prints that depicted the fleeting pleasures of life in the entertainment sectors of major cities. Laws were created to limit the extravagance of kabuki theater and to prohibit yakusha-e (actor prints) and bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women). It was as if the United States had clamped down on Hollywood movies, paparazzi and the tabloids.

Looking at Japanese prints today, you might not realize what a rough-and-tumble commercial world they came out of. Their formal elegance, poetic beauty and technical refinement suggest a more serene, creative environment. So “Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print, 1770-1900,” an exhibition of many splendid prints at the Brooklyn Museum, offers a useful and informative corrective.

Organized by Laura Mueller, a doctoral candidate in Japanese art history and a curatorial intern at the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the show presents 73 woodblock prints from the Van Vleck collection, a renowned repository of more than 4,000 Japanese prints owned by the Chazen. With 22 more prints from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, the exhibition tells the story of a group of artists that dominated the ukiyo-e print business for much of the 19th century.

It is not a masterpiece show, though there are some terrific works in it. Utagawa Toyokuni’s “Fireworks at Ryogoku Bridge” (1825) is spectacular. On a two-and-a-half-foot square made by conjoining six prints, it depicts yachts loaded with languid geishas passing under a great wooden bridge, on which a crowd has gathered to observe fireworks bursting against the night sky. With its scores of lively people, precisely delineated details and blocky diagonals thrusting every which way, it is a marvel of formal compaction.

Also extraordinary is Toyohara Kunichika’s dramatic wide-angle picture from 1894 of an actor dressed in a sumptuously patterned costume surrounded by vividly colored flames. With a fierce expression on his face, he poses with extended arms; holding a sword in one hand, he prepares to commit seppuku, or ritual suicide.

The exhibition’s sole example of the popular erotica called shunga warrants a close look too. Produced in 1851 by Utagawa Kunisada, “An Illustrated Account of Coupled Genji” consists of three lavishly printed volumes, with double-page spreads showing men and women in luxurious robes engaging in sexual intercourse with delightful urgency.

There are many more compelling works in the show, including land- and seascapes by Utagawa Hiroshige, one of the most famous of all ukiyo-e artists. But there are comparatively nondescript works, too. Prints from the 1770s by Utagawa Toyoharu are historically significant because he founded the Utagawa school and because of his innovative use of Western-style deep perspective. But his blandly illustrative works lack the bold, sensuous qualities of prints by his immediate followers Utagawa Toyohiro and Utagawa Toyokuni.

Chinese Art

As I am anticipating shovelling about a foot of snow from the driveway tomorrow morning, I am reading an article sent to me by a friend regarding an art show in the New York Times. If you click on the title of this post you'll be directed to the article. I have included an excerpt below.

The original article includes a slide show that is well worth seeing. Enjoy.

- The Snow Shoveling Daoist

The Art Is in the Detail

By HOLLAND COTTER

From his terrace, the world is blue and green — mountains and trees — or almost green. Spring is on the way; the geese are back. One, then two, alight on the river, with more still invisible but close behind. Pavilion living! The only way. With the city somewhere down there, and nature everywhere up here, he watches mist rise. River meets sky.

The calm watcher is the fourth-century scholar-artist Wang Xizhi, father of classical calligraphy and model for living an active life in retreat. He is depicted by the painter Qian Xuan, another connoisseur of reclusion, in a 13th-century handscroll at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The scroll is in “Anatomy of a Masterpiece: How to Read Chinese Paintings,” a spare, studious show that offers, along with many stimulations, a retreat from worldly tumult — the religious fervor, the courtly pomp, the expressive self-promotion — that fills much of the museum.

This exhibition is also a refuge from the hurly-burly of Asia Week in New York, which is now in session and has mushroomed into three weeks this year. Dealers are in town from abroad with special shows; others arrive next week. Two art fairs are returning. Add a passel of events devoted to contemporary Asian art, along with the auctions, and the situation is clear: a marathon stretch of looking, judging, sorting, tsk-tsking and oh-mying, not to mention wheeling and dealing. Naturally, the urge to get away from it all can be strong.

I mean, isn’t part of the point of our Western passion for Asian art to find a serenity that we can’t seem to cook up on our own, a metabolic slow-down, a less-is-more state of grace? One 15th-century Chinese writer recorded such an ideal in a lifestyle wish list that includes: “A nice cottage. A clean table. A clear sky with a beautiful moon. A vase of flowers. No cares of the world.” He was describing the optimum environment for looking at art, but also for living artfully.

“Anatomy of a Masterpiece” has all the elements on his list, and one more: instruction. The curator, Maxwell K. Hearn of the Met’s Asian art department, has given the museum’s lofty Chinese painting and calligraphy galleries the intimacy of a teaching collection, with a limited number of objects accompanied by short labels and photographic enlargements of details. The labels are thematic and ruminative, approaching paintings through ideas rather than dynasties. The photographs are a revelation.

To many visitors Chinese brush-and-ink painting, with its faint images on time-darkened silk, has a generic look; entire galleries register as a soft brown blur. Close and repeated looking slowly reveals those images and brings them to life in a startling way; partly this is a matter of individual vision evolving, sharpening. But photographs speed the process, cutting through obscuring patinas, clarifying what is otherwise hard to see, and in dramatic ways.

I can easily imagine Mr. Hearn’s photo-supplemented show creating converts to Chinese painting; it is museology as consciousness-raising. (Yale University Press is publishing an accompanying book.)

Mr. Hearn has the immense advantage of working with some of the most famous Chinese paintings in existence, and he opens with one of them, “Night-Shining White,” a picture of a spirited horse by Han Gan, who lived in the ninth century during the Tang dynasty. By that point the criteria for a successful painting had been established, and the first was the ability to convey a subject’s vitality, or life-energy.

Han was a master of this, bringing an animal to life with contour lines and calligraphic strokes that look almost joltingly vibrant. And if that dynamism escapes us, the testimony of generations of connoisseurs is there to confirm it: the horse is hedged in by a halo of seals applied by scholars and artists over the centuries. Each is a stamp of approval; together they are a storm of applause.

During the Tang dynasty, figure painting was the prestige genre, and landscape subsidiary. With time this hierarchy was reversed. Landscape became the big picture, figures mere dots to establish scale. And the scale was tremendous: towering mountains, limitless vistas, sourceless rivers, as befitted an image of nature that was an emblem of creation itself, a vision of matter forever consolidating and evaporating .

Netsuke

Unique to Japan are small functional sculptures called Netsuke. A netsuke was used to secure the cords of a pouch back in the days when men did not carry wallets. Below is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on netsuke. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article. Please do, as there are some pictures there of many more netsuke.

As today is the Chinese New Year, I added a picture of a rat netsuke to accompany the article.

Japanese artists starting in the 17th century cleverly^{[citation needed]} invented the miniature sculptures known as netsuke (Japanese:根付) to serve a very practical function. (The two Japanese characters ne+tsuke mean "root" and "to attach".) Traditional Japanese garments - robes called kosode and kimono - had no pockets. Men who wore them needed a place to keep personal belongings such as pipes, tobacco, money, seals, or medicines.

The elegant solution was to place such objects in containers (called sagemono) hung by cords from the robes' sash (obi). The containers might take the form of a pouch or a small woven basket, but the most popular were beautifully crafted boxes (inro), which were held shut by ojime, sliding beads on cords. Whatever the form of the container, the fastener that secured its cord at the top of the sash was a carved, button-like toggle called a netsuke.

Such objects, often of great artistic merit, have a long history reflecting important aspects of Japanese folklore and life. Netsuke production was most popular during the Edo period in Japan, around 1615-1868. Today, the art lives on and carvers, a few of whose modern works command high prices (US$10,000 or more), are in the UK, Europe, the USA, Japan and elsewhere. Prices at auctions in the USA for collectible netsuke typically range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. Inexpensive molded, faithful reproductions are available in museum shops and elsewhere for $30 or less.

The Strandbeest

Kinetic sculpture. What an interesting idea. Sculptures that move of their own accord. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to a page that has video links to some demos of this artist's works, as well as to his own web site, etc.

Directory:Theo Jansen:StrandBeest Kinetic Sculptor

From PESWiki

For the past fifteen years, Theo Jansen has been creating/evolving "beach animals", immense multi-legged walking critters designed to roam the Dutch coastline, feeding on gusts of wind. They are made from commonly available tools like plastic tubing, cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, hose, tape, and all sorts of other stuff.

Over the years, successive generations of his creatures have evolved into increasingly complex animals that walk by flapping wings in response to the wind, discerning obstacles in their path through feelers and even hammering themselves into the sand on sensing an approaching storm.

His animals have legs, muscles (pneumatic pistons within the plastic tubing), stomachs (plastic bottles for storing air), and nerves (collections of on/off values that work pretty much like logic gates). [1] (http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/01/66356)

Eventualy he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives

Bonsai Aesthetics

This article is copied from an article by the same name at www.answers.com. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to that article where there is much more information, links, pictures, etc.

Bonsai Aesthetics vary according to the style of bonsai which is sought and according to individual tastes. The discussion of bonsai characteristics may be discussed in two parts: general aesthetics and aesthetic schools.

General Aesthetics

The following characteristics are desirable in many Japanese bonsai and other styles of container-grown trees, whatever the style:

Miniaturization

By definition, a bonsai is a tree which is kept small enough to be container-grown in while otherwise fostered to have a mature appearance. One way in which bonsai are classified is according to size. Mame are ideally less than 10 cm (4 inches) tall and can be held in the palm of the hand. Shohin are about 25 cm (10 inches) tall, while other bonsai are larger and can not be easily moved.[1]

Gravitas

This is the trait which all of the remaining points of aesthetics seek to create. It is a sense of physical weight, the illusion of mass, the appearance of maturity or advanced age, and the illusive quality of dignity.

Leaf Reduction

Leaf reduction is a related to the general miniaturization described above but is something which varies over the life cycle of a particular bonsai. For example, a bonsai’s leaves might be allowed to attain full-size for many years in order to encourage vigor and growth of some other aspect of the bonsai. It is usually desirable to attain a degree of leaf reduction prior to exhibiting a bonsai. Leaf reduction may be encouraged by pruning and is sometimes achieved by the total exfoliation of a bonsai during one part of its growing season. Conifer needles may be more difficult to reduce than other sorts of foliage.

Lignification

This refers to the “woody-ness” of a bonsai’s trunk and branches so that they have a mature appearance. This typically means the surface is encouraged to become rough and brown. In some cases this aesthete will vary, such as in a birch tree bonsai attaining the white colour and exfoliating bark of a mature specimen.

Nebari

Also known as "buttressing", nebari is the visible spread of roots above the growing medium at the base of a bonsai. Nebari helps a bonsai seem grounded and well-anchored and helps a tree look old, mature, and more akin to a full-sized tree.[1]

Ramification

Ramification is the splitting of branches and twigs into smaller ones. It is encouraged by pruning and may be integrated with practices that promote leaf reduction.

Deadwood

Bonsai artists sometimes foster certain types of deadwood to be produced by and remain on a bonsai tree, just as such things as bare, dead branches may occur on full-sized trees. Two specific types of deadwood are jin and shari. The presence of deadwood is more optional and less typical than most of the other points mentioned here.[1]

Curvature

Like deadwood, curvature is optional. Bonsai that achieve a sense of age while remaining straight and upright can be especially impressive, but many bonsai (including the stereotypical bonsai illustrated above) rely upon curvature of the trunk to give it the illusion of weight and age. Curvature of the trunk that occurs between the roots and the lowest branch is known as tachiagari.[1]

Aesthetic schools

The art of artistically growing small trees in containers may be divided into two primary "schools" of practice:

Japanese (bonsai)

The term "bonsai' properly refers only to this, the Japanese art of growing miniature trees. The Japanese aesthetic is centered on the principle of "heaven and earth in one container". In its perfection, bonsai is an expression of Zen Buddhism and expresses how the past, the present, humanity, the elements and change all are intertwined into this unique method of meditation and expression.[2]

The Japanese bonsai are meant to evoke the essential spirit of the plant being used: in all cases, they must look natural and never show the intervention of human hands. However, the art of bonsai also has strict criteria for success and rigid rules which are rarely broken. For example, tree branches must never cross and trees should bow slightly forward, never lean back.[3]

Chinese (penjing)

The Chinese art of growing miniature trees, properly called penjing, seeks to capture the essence and spirit of nature through contrasts. Philosophically, this craft is influenced by the principle of Taoism, specifically the concept of Yin and Yang: the conceptualization of the universe as governed by two primal opposing but complementary forces. Inspiration is not limited to nature, but also from poetry and visual art, of which factor similar aesthetic considerations. Common themes include dragons and the strokes of fortuitous characters. At its highest level, the artistic value of penjing is on par with that of poetry, calligraphy, brush painting and garden art.[3]

Penjing has less emphasis on technical perfection, and the art is not as rigidly categorized as the art of bonsai, and such things as tangled roots or pruning scars (which are against the bonsai aesthete) are allowed if it fits the overall design. Miniature images places next to a miniature tree (such as miniature pagodas and tiny men with fishing rods) belong strictly to the realm of penjing and are anathema to the realm of bonsai.[3]

Art

What follows is an excerpt from an article in the LA Times about the Santa Ana Museum. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the original article.s

Bowers' new space conquest
Chinese art from several millenniums and photographs by Ansel Adams inaugurate a wing at the Santa Ana museum.

By Scarlet Cheng

Special to The Times

February 16, 2007

Seven years ago, Anne Shih was visiting the Shanghai Museum, a stronghold of Chinese art and antiquities, when she tossed out a suggestion to Director Chen Xiejun: What about an exhibition loan to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, where Shih is a board member? All right, she remembers Chen saying, if you can build a new space to house the show, we'll arrange it.

Today, not only is that new space built — 30,000 square feet at a cost of $15 million — but "Treasures From Shanghai: 5000 Years of Chinese Art and Culture" highlights its opening Sunday, the first day of the Chinese new year. A photography exhibition, "Ansel Adams: Classic Images," inaugurates a second gallery in the new wing.

On Main Street in Santa Ana, the Dorothy and Donald Kennedy wing spans half a block in glass, metal accents and a cladding of troweled plaster painted to match the existing architecture. The city opened the original Spanish-style museum in 1936 to feature Orange County history. In 1992, the Bowers reopened after an extensive remodeling that greatly expanded the facility, and it broadened its mission to showing a wide variety of art and artifacts. Bowers President Peter C. Keller pushed for the latest expansion, both to gain more exhibition space and to improve existing facilities. To pay for it, the museum obtained $4 million in state funding, with most of the remainder coming from private sources, including $2 million from benefactors Dorothy and Donald Kennedy. The latter is First American Corp. chairman emeritus and chairman of the Bowers' board of governors.

As of Sunday, museum admission, except for students, seniors and children younger than 5, will become uniformly $17 on weekdays and $19 on weekends — eliminating a general admission fee of $5. The latter was only for viewing a few permanent collections anyway, says Keller. "We're trying to simplify matters," he adds.

The new wing was designed by Robert R. Coffee Architect + Associates of Newport Beach. "We wanted to use materials that were compatible and more or less carried forward what was done in the past," Coffee said during a walk-through of the space last week as workers were still adding display cases and other finishing touches. "There was an effort to give an updated image, that we're moving into a new century and the museum is making a great transition."

China's Hidden Treasures

Below is an excerpt from an article at the NY Times. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article. At the NY Times site, there is also a slide show. Enjoy.

Rare Glimpses of China’s Long-Hidden Treasures
By KEITH BRADSHER

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec. 27 — After four years of renovations that closed two-thirds of the building, the museum housing the world’s most famous collection of Chinese art is reopening this winter and holding a three-month exhibition of its rarest works.

The National Palace Museum, home to the best of the 1,000-year-old art collection of China’s emperors, is often compared to leading Western institutions like the Louvre, the Prado and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But while this museum’s holdings are magnificent, the institution has been known for being a highly politicized place where priceless porcelain sat in poorly lit display cases and where invaluable paintings were kept in a damp manmade cave for fear of Communist attack from mainland China.

That has now changed. Heroic statues of Chiang Kai-shek, Taiwan’s former leader, and of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China, have been banished. New lighting, air-conditioning, climate-controlled storage vaults and other features rival the newest museums in the West. Even the wall labels attached to the artwork are now written in clear and specific Chinese, English and Japanese.

And after many years of hiding its most valuable and most fragile artworks — those from the Northern and Southern Sung dynasties that ruled China from 960 to 1279 — the museum has brought them out for a “Grand View” exhibition that opened on Christmas. Four of the best known Northern Sung dynasty paintings — one of them on loan from the Metropolitan Museum in New York — are being shown together for the first time, along with other rare paintings, scrolls and some of the world’s earliest printed books.

The four paintings are magnificent landscapes that tower over visitors but still have the exquisite detail of miniatures. The Chinese characters of the name of one artist are so subtly hidden in the trees of one painting that they went unnoticed until this century. A deputy director of the museum is credited with discovering them, although rumor says that a janitor was really the first to find them, said Ho Chuan-hsing, a museum specialist in early paintings and calligraphy.

Many of the pieces are so fragile that they are never lent to museums elsewhere. Some will only be on display here for half the exhibition: either from Christmas to Feb. 7 or from Feb. 8 to March 25. Museum policy allows these works to be shown only for 40 days, after which they are loosely rolled and placed in a vault to rest for at least three years; the exhibition here will not go on tour.

Art scholars describe the “Grand View” as unique.

Xu Bing

Xu Bing is a contemporary Chinese artist. His most famous work is "A Book from the Sky" where he handcrafted woodblock characters over a three year period, printed books and scrolls, and put them on display.

His work is very interesting. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to his website. Please pay him a visit.

The art of Julian Beever

The following is from Wikipedia. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to Beever's website.

Julian Beever is a chalk artist who makes 3D chalk drawings on pavement using a projection called anamorphism that creates the illusion. His street paintings appear to defy the laws of perspective.

Besides the 3D art, Julian paints murals and replicas of the works of masters. Also, he is often hired as a performance artist and to create murals for companies. Julian is into advertising and marketing, as well. He has worked in the U.K., Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, the USA and Australia.

Since 2004 a chain letter containing his art (sometimes mixed with similar art by Kurt Wenner) has been circulating the Internet. Many people have speculated that his work is a result of digital photo editing. These images are actually authentic.

Japanese woodblock artist Hokusai

This is an excerpt from an article in the NY Times. It's an art review of an exhibition of the Japanese Woodblock artist Hokusai, whom I've previously written about. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article, which includes more pictures. Enjoy.

Art Review

Hokusai in Washington: A Retrospective of the Restless Japanese Master
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: April 7, 2006
WASHINGTON

BECAUSE so many of the works are on paper, the lights are low throughout much of the consciousness-altering Hokusai retrospective at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Such conservational precaution seems visually fitting for once. In this exhibition, Katsushika Hokusai charges out of the dimness of art history as if on a golden chariot, glittering and clattering with genius, armed to the teeth in talent.

Hokusai, who was born into an artisanal family, said he started drawing at 6. His career, which had great periods of success and also of neglect, spanned 70 years of unremitting activity in painting, woodblock prints and printed albums. This show of 150 works barely scratches the surface of his output, frequently described as sufficient for at least a dozen artists.
Famous as a precursor to Impressionism, Hokusai (1760-1849) may be the best-known Japanese artist in the West. His woodblock prints began to influence artists and designers in Europe almost as soon as they began to be seen there in the 1850's. Especially influential were his "36 Views of Mount Fuji," from the early 1830's, especially "The Great Wave," a work almost as widely quoted, imitated and parodied as Munch's "Scream."

"The Great Wave," from the final half of Hokusai's career, is prominently displayed in the exhibition's introductory gallery, which briefly encapsulates his range of mediums. It is a fierce physical image, and only slightly less daunting than the opening work: a late hanging scroll of a levitating demon with red skin like live embers, who swirls out of a coil of smoke and cinders.
Represented here by an unusually fine imprint, "The Great Wave" shows a monstrous form curling over three small boats like a huge paw thrust out of the earth. Its repeating curls of foam suggest multiple claws, fully extended; spumes of spray may as well be flying clods of dirt. Fuji, snow-capped, low and distant, almost reads as another whitecap, but the famous landmark could be the last bit of dry land glimpsed by the boats' panicked fishermen. The wave's deep trough reflects the influence of European perspective, which Hokusai gleaned from engravings and printed books that circulated in Japan. You can also see signs of things to come: van Gogh, Gauguin and Art Nouveau.

This exhibition, which has been organized by Anne Yonemura, senior associate curator of Japanese art at the Freer and Sackler galleries, expands our understanding of Hokusai's achievement far, far beyond "The Great Wave." It gives his development and sensibility a depth and detail that is still too infrequently accorded Asian artists of the past, and anoints him as an unusually immediate art historical giant: a leading figure in Edo Japan and a point of origin not only for Impressionism but also for large chunks of popular culture — an ancestor of comic books, animation and action figures.

The show's variety is almost too much to take in, and its organization — half chronological, half thematic — can seem a bit hectic at first. But the palpable restlessness is mostly Hokusai's. Something close to an electrical current courses through his art as he moves from style to style, subject to subject and even name to name.

Though he spent nearly his entire life in the thriving metropolis of Edo, the future Tokyo, he moved 93 times, by his count, during his 89 years and changed his name with each shift in interest, as if confidently posting his latest sense of self. No subject — plant, animal, mineral or supernatural — was beyond the reach of his skills, sense of humanity or powers of observation, or for that matter beyond his interest in history, literature and poetry. All styles seemed open to him — Japanese, Chinese and Western. And in nearly any image involving living beings, there is always an element of humor, however gentle, that enlivens his subjects, giving them the force of individual personality.

Hokusai had great luck when he needed it. In 1779, at 19, he entered the studio of Katsukawa Shunsho (1726-1792), one of the greatest artists of the ukiyo-e prints, inspired by the pleasures of city life — the "floating world." (Several of Shunsho's prints are on view through today at Sebastian Izzard on East 76th Street, one of several fine exhibitions lingering from Asia Week.) Shunsho named his talented acolyte Shunro; under that pseudonym Hokusai displayed a gift for innovative poses in the portrayals of the courtesans (or geishas) and actors that were the staple subjects of ukiyo-e.

"Hokusai" is at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1050 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, (202) 633-4880, through May 14.

Asian Art in Manhattan

What follow is an excerpt from an art exhibition review from the New York Times. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article, which includes more pictures of the artworks.

Enjoy ...

Art Review
Artistic Treasures Take Manhattan During Asia Week

By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: March 31, 2006

ASIA WEEK is upon New York, and it is bigger than ever. Two substantial Asian art fairs have taken over the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, at 67th Street, and the Gramercy Park Armory, on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street. And about two dozen special gallery exhibitions are spread around the Upper East Side. Timed to coincide with the fairs and mounted by local and visiting dealers, some are sublime. Quite a few are at a single address — the Fuller Building at 57th Street and Madison Avenue — almost making up a third fair, and a very tony one at that.

But this year the movable feast that is Asia Week is more in flux than usual, jostled by changes from all sides. These include the exploding economic growth of China, which has created a market there for Chinese art of all kinds, driving up prices and limiting the dwindling amount of top-quality historical material coming to the West. Adding to the overall shortages are the complex issues of legitimate provenance and new attitudes regarding exports.

Locally, the impetus for it all — the revered uptown International Asian Art Fair, before which Asia Week did not exist — is very much in transition. The fair's purview has been expanded to include art from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, much like its less patrician rival, the New York Arts of Pacific Asia Show. This year's fair also includes unprecedented quantities of contemporary Korean, Japanese and Chinese art.

Some of the International Asian Art Fair's most respected veteran dealers have not returned this year, among them Doris Wiener, Grace Wu Bruce, Roger Keverne, Sydney L. Moss Ltd. and John Eskenazi. The reasons are complex, and a certain amount of eye-rolling about the fair's new shape is inevitable. But often the cause seems to be the dearth of good material or simply individual shifts in ways of working. Ms. Wiener, the doyenne of dealers of ancient Indian and Southeast Asian art, is simply taking the year off. Mr. Eskenazi is scaling back his business to concentrate on curatorial projects.

International Asian Art Fair

In truth, the International Asian Art Fair is not what it used to be: a place for relatively hushed (given the setting), awe-inspiring, finely tuned presentations of museum-quality works. And it is not what it may someday become. At this point it seems bewilderingly suspended over three quite different alternatives. It could become a fair devoted to the best from a range of non-Western cultures, a fair of contemporary Asian art that is prone to hollow reiterations of past glories, or a routine fair of older Asian material dominated by familiar examples of, say, Tang and Song dynasty ceramics.

This said, some of the fair's stalwarts have put up wonderful work this year, including Nancy Wiener (daughter of Doris Wiener), whose display of Southeast Asian sculptures is overseen by a serene 10th-century Khmer sandstone statue of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. Hiroshi Yanagi's handsomely shadowy booth features eight carved-wood Buddhas and Shinto deities dating to Heian period. Sandra Whitman is presenting a rare and enormous 17th-century Chinese kilim rug in shades of apricot and white; its four panels are woven with schematic cranes, stenciled with traditional Chinese carpet motifs and bordered by a bold expanse of continuous stripes that, like the kilim technique, reflect the Mongol influence. Uragami Sokyu-Do features Liao dynasty ceramics.

One can see engrossing displays of textiles at Linda Wrigglesworth Ltd. (Chinese and Tibetan court costumes) and at Tai Gallery/Textile Arts. Carlo Cristi has marvelous material from Tibet, Nepal and Central Asia, including an unusual eighth-century Tibetan conch shell carved with 10 avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu. Erik Thomsen has Japanese ceramics and lacquer, including an unusual 13th-century Suzu storage jar with a herringbone-textured surface. At Gregg Baker, a wonderfully self-referential Japanese screen depicts a cluster of screens painted in different styles.

Hokusai

This is adapted from the Wikipedia article on Hokusai. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article.

The picture is entitled The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and it is one of the most famous Japanese Woodblock Prints. It was created around 1823 - 1829 by Katsuhika Hokusai (1760-1849), as part of his collection, "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji."

Together with Ando Hiroshige (see September 2005 archive), Hokusai is considered one of the outstanding masters of Japanese ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world" school of printing making. Hokusai is also renowned for his erotic prints in the shunga style. His "Fujujuso" a series of twleve prints celebrating the glory of flesh and passion, is considered one of the greatest shunga works.

His work, which reportedly numbers as many as 30,000 pieces, was an important inspiration for many European Impressionists, such as Claude Monet.

Woodcut, a type of relief print, is thought to be the earliest printmaking technique, dating back to 9th century China. The artist draws a sketch on a plank of wood and then uses sharp tools to carve away the parts of the block that he/she does not want to receive the ink. The raised parts of the block are inked with a brayer, then a sheet of paper, perhaps slightly damp, is placed over the block. The block is then rubbed with a baren or spoon, or is run through the press. Separate blocks are used for each color. Sometimes a given block may be applied multiple times to attain certain effects.

Take another look at The Great Wave. You can't help but appreciate the work and the precision that goes into each an every woodblock print.

A bio and gallery of his work can be found at:
http://www.monks.demon.co.uk/hocus.htm

Tang Dynasty Art

The Tang Dynasty was not only a Golden Age of poetry in China, but off all the arts. I particularly like the horse sculptures produced in that era.

Ando Hiroshige

Ando Hiroshige was one of the giants of popular Japanese are in the first half of the 19th century; the last great creator of Japanese wood block prints, or ukiyo-e.

In all, he produced over 5400 works, including some of his most famous collections, 100 Famous Places of Edo, and 53 Stages of Tokaido.

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to a website that contains many of his prints. They are simply beautiful.

Falun Gong Art Exhibition

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the website mentioned in the article.

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----------------------------------------------------------------------This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate.The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/04/BAGBLDIP301.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, July 4, 2005 (SF Chronicle)SAN FRANCISCO/Provocative art from Falun Gong followers/Paintings on tour to publicize China's alleged persecutionVanessa Hua, Chronicle Staff Writer

After a one-week run in the lobby of San Francisco's Federal Building, an exhibit of gruesome paintings put on by China's controversial Falun Gong movement is heading to Chinatown and other Bay Area locations. The show, which also includes depictions of more peaceful moments in a believer's life, has toured more than 30 cities across the United States, at times drawing complaints.

One of the paintings shows a woman being crushed between two boards,another a woman being beaten by police as cherubs fly above and a third, by Oakland artist Yao Chongqi, called "Unwavering Spirit," depicts a woman who police have poked with a cattle prod who is bleeding from the head as she slogs through snow. The exhibit of more than 40 pieces aims to publicize how the Chinesegovernment allegedly has tortured Falun Gong followers. It reaches viewers on a deeper level than demonstrations, leafleting and other forms ofprotest, organizers say.

"People usually appreciate artwork and are more into it," said exhibit organizer Huy Lu of Daly City. "They really watch it and look at thedescriptions. Sometimes when you see the truth, it's not easy to accept, but that's what is going on." The U.S. General Services Administration, which manages the FederalBuilding and approved the Falun Gong application, offers the space foreducational, cultural and recreational activities, said local spokeswoman Bethany Kirchoff.

Building managers did not consider the content of theFalun Gong artwork when reviewing its application, Kirchoff said. But she said they reject many requests including those that involve politicalsolicitation. Lu said he wanted to display the exhibit in the Federal Building because it would reach a large audience of government workers, and the space was free. The Mount Sinai
School of Medicine in New York yanked the exhibit last fall within a day, after visitors and staff said it disrupted thehospital's healing atmosphere. Workers at San Francisco's Federal Building said the exhibit was both disturbing and enlightening. Jose Saucedo, a painter for the building,deemed the exhibit "very emotional." "It's real, and it's happening. There are so many persecutions," he said.

Exhibit volunteer Ivan Velinov, 33, of San Francisco, said he tried to explain to viewers why the persecution of Falun Gong should matter toAmericans.

"Everything in stores is made in China. All the factories are moving to China," said Velinov, a Bulgarian immigrant who began practicing FalunGong about 2 1/2 years ago. "China is influencing our society. But China is the No. 1 violator of human rights. The Chinese consulate in San Francisco did not return calls for comment.

Several Chinatown community leaders said they had no objections to the upcoming Falun Gong exhibit. "I am pro-democracy," said businessman Allen Leung. "We have freedom of expression." He said he liked the martial arts and positive psychological aspects of Falun Gong, though not what he sees as its superstitious elements. Feng Wang, 34, a senior manager at a high-tech company, said Falun Gong helped her become less stressed and more healthy, truthful andcompassionate. Adherents of Falun Gong, who practice traditional Chinese breathingexercises for physical, mental and spiritual well-being, were rounded up in China in 1999, and some of their leaders were convicted of organizing a cult. The group's ability to organize protests of more than 10,000demonstrators via word-of-mouth and the Internet alarmed the Chinesegovernment, which fears large gatherings as threats to Communist control.

Independently confirming Falun Gong followers' reports of persecution is almost impossible, said Mickey Spiegel, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in New York. But she said some no doubt happens. Spiegel said since the crackdown, Falun Gong followers have done whatever possible to keep the movement visible.. To see the Falun Gong art exhibit online, go to www.falunart. org. The exhibit will be on display 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. July 16 and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. July 17 at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, 836 Stockton St., San Francisco. E-mail Vanessa Hua at vahua@sfchronicle.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright 2005 SF Chronicle

Terrific Water Colors

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to Tao Water Art Gallery. There are some truly beautiful water colors there.

The Gallery of China

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to a website entitled The Gallery of China.

They sell original Chinese art. What is interesting about the website is the explanations given about the symbolism of various animals, flowers, etc.

There is a LOT of stuff there. Enjoy.

A Lot of Bull

The running of the bulls reminded me of the 10 Ox Herding Pictures. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the website where I found these; where there is a lot of other Zen related information.
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Home Page
Right: The door to the outer garden,Himeji, Japan

10 Ox Herding Pictures

Around 800AD Zen teachers started using Ox herding pictures to explain the way of controlling the mind until enlightenment. There are many variations, but the standard version (below) is well accepted often seen in Zen art and literature. It is sometime explain in accompanying literature, but this perhaps it is better read, visualized and thought about several times before commentary puts fixed ideas in your head.

1. UndisciplinedWith his horns fiercely projected in the air the beast snorts,Madly running over the mountain paths, farther and farther he goes astray!A dark cloud is spread across the entrance of the valley,And who knows how much of the fine fresh herb is trampled under his wild hoofs!











2. Discipline BegunI am in possession of a straw rope,and I pass it through his nose,For once he makes a frantic attempt to run away, but he is severely whipped and whipped;The beast resists the training with all the power there is in a nature wild and ungoverned,But the rustic ox herd never relaxes his pulling tether and ever-ready whip.










3. In HarnessGradually getting into harness the beast is now content to be led by the nose,Crossing the stream, walking along the mountain path, he follows every step of the leader;The leader holds the rope tightly in his hand never letting it go,All day long he is on the alert almost unconscious of what fatigue is.










4. Faced RoundAfter long days of training the result begins to tell and the beast is faced round,A nature so wild and ungoverned is finally broken, he has become gentler;But the tender has not yet given him his full confidence,He still keeps his straw rope with which the ox is now tied to a tree.










5. TamedUnder the green willow tree and by the ancient mountain stream,The ox is set at liberty to pursue his own pleasures;At the eventide when a grey mist descends on the pasture,The boy wends his homeward way with the animal quietly following.











6. UnimpededOn the verdant field the beast contentedly lies idling his time away,No whip is needed now, nor any kind of restraint;The boy too sits leisurely under the pine tree,Playing a tune of peace, overflowing with joy.












7. Laissez FaireThe spring stream in the evening sun flowslanguidly along the willow-lined bank,In the hazy atmosphere the meadow grass is seen growing thick;When hungry he grazes,when thirsty he quaffs,as time sweetly slides,While the boy on the rock dozes for hours not noticing anything that goes on about him.










8. All ForgottenThe beast all in white now is surrounded by the white clouds,The man is perfectly at his ease and care-free, so is his companion;The white clouds penetrated by the moon-light cast their white shadows below,The white clouds and the bright moonlighteach following its course of movement.









9. The Solitary MoonNowhere is the beast, and the ox herd is master of his time,He is a solitary cloud wafting lightlyalong the mountain peaks;Clapping his hands he sings joyfully in the moon-light,But remember a last wall is still left barring his homeward walk.











10. Both VanishedBoth the man and the animal have disappeared,no traces are left,The bright moon-light is empty and shadowless with all the ten-thousand objects in it;If anyone should ask the meaning of this,Behold the lilies of the field and its fresh sweet-scented verdure.











This site ©2005 About the 'About Zen' site Site Map

Vintage Japanese Maps

Clicking on the title of this post will direct you to the maps...

In Vintage Maps, a Japan Bygone Floats Lyrically Online

April 10, 2003By JULIE LEW
BERKELEY, Calif. -- FOR half a century, a rare andextensive collection of historical Japanese maps spanninghundreds of years have been stored in the East AsianLibrary at the University of California, revealing theirsecrets only to those few who had received permission tohandle them. Now, through state-of-the-art imagingtechnology, anyone can view these fragile maps online, atwww.davidrumsey.com/japan.

So far, 210 maps - some dating back almost 400 years - fromthe 2,300-piece collection are online. The collection,which will be available for viewing in its entirety withintwo years, includes 252 maps of the city of Edo (nowTokyo), 79 maps of Kyoto and 40 maps of Osaka spanning theyears 1600 to 1867. Many are woodblock prints on handmadepaper. The collection also includes a map from 1710depicting the center of the world as the source of fourgreat rivers of India, and a 40-foot scroll map of theroads of Japan in 1687.

Visitors to the Web site can save the maps for their owncollections; analyze, rotate, enlarge and crop them; andcompare them with modern maps.

Peter Zhou, the director of the East Asian Library, saidthe library had long wanted to digitize the map collectionbut had lacked the money and the expertise to do so."Because of the complexity of the collection and the valueof the collection, we wanted to do it right," he said.
It turned out that the solution was just across the SanFrancisco Bay. But Mr. Zhou found it circuitously, at acartographers' conference two years ago in Hong Kong. Therehe met David Rumsey, an ardent map collector who haddigitized and cataloged his private collection of 150,000maps at www.davidrumsey.com.

Mr. Rumsey, president of Cartography Associates, a SanFrancisco-based digital publisher of maps and art for Webdistribution, said he had seen the library's map collectionand "was tremendously impressed.''

"They say it's the largest collection of Japanesehistorical cartography outside of Japan,'' he said.

"So Ivolunteered my services."

In 1997, Mr. Rumsey had faced a similar challenge when hedecided he wanted to open his collection of 19th- and20th-century American maps and atlases to a wider audiencethan the few hundred scholars and cartography buffs who hadvisited him in San Francisco. "I'd been fairly close withthe Library of Congress and their digitization projects,particularly in the maps arena," he said. He wanted a Website that could produce high-resolution images that wouldallow viewers to feel as though they had a map in theirhands.

"At the time, there were only two choices,'' he said. "Onewas to develop my own thing, and that was looking like along road. And the other was when I discovered LunaImaging."

Luna Imaging, based in Culver City, Calif., is known in themuseum and academic worlds for software that convertsvisual material into high-resolution images that can bemanipulated at high speeds for research purposes. Foundedin 1993 by Michael Ester, a former director of the GettyArt History Information Program, Luna met Mr. Rumsey'scriteria for his Web site so well that he embraced itssoftware and joined the company as a director in 1999.

"There's other software out there that will show an image,but Luna has a very sophisticated and unique approach," Mr.Rumsey said. "It stresses showing you the image. It letsthe image breathe. It doesn't surround the image with a lotof text and frames and branding. It lets you compare imagesside by side and lets you browse visually, by thumbnail orpage after page if you wanted. It also has a verysophisticated searching technique."

To capture the best possible image, Mr. Rumsey built hisown scanning station, using a digital camera instead of atraditional flatbed scanner to create greater depth offield. The images are scanned at 300 pixels per inch.

Mr. Rumsey's Web site offers several options for viewing.Visitors can download the Insight Java Client, availablefree at the site. The software enables users to view mapsin detail, create and save groups of images, search forspecific maps and related images, including those at otherWeb sites. "It's not just software, it's also a platformthat multiple collections can be viewed on," Mr. Rumseysaid.

A customized Geographic Information Systems browserdeveloped by Telemorphic, a Web-based mapping developer inBerkeley, can also be downloaded. It allows a user tocompare old maps with modern satellite views. If the user,for instance, wants to analyze changes in Tokyo over theyears, the G.I.S. browser can overlay one map on top ofanother, lining them up and even redrawing the old map tocorrelate with the new one.

The browser provides three-dimensional views and"fly-throughs," like zooming through the canyons ofYosemite National Park in video-game fashion, although thatoption is currently available only at Mr. Rumsey's Website. The application can allow four maps to be viewedsimultaneously.

"The digital images are even better than the originalsbecause you can amplify them, rotate them to look at themfrom different angles," Mr. Zhou said. "In practical terms,this is a better way of using the material than actuallycoming here to see the pieces."

Mr. Rumsey said that the Internet had become a lifeline forlibraries in general. "Libraries and museums are goingthrough a very interesting period where they're beginningto make their content available online," he said. "Theyhave to understand software and how it can work for them."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/technology/circuits/10mapp.html?ex=1051080218&ei=1&en=8a43d783556bab3b

I am a little teapot ...

Clicking on the title of this post will take you to an item at the Imperial Tea Court, called
the "Lotus Seed of Friendship".