Bonhams kicked off Asia Week New York today with their auction view. (well to be fair, Manhattan Art & Antiques Center had a small but sweetly formed gathering Wed night. Seek and ye shall find- I didn't find Rome but...)
Eye-catching was this sculpture at Bonhams tonight and he/r foster parents’ story. (read the story on Bonhams' link!) Maitreya is believed to return to earth to preach the teachings of the Buddha after a period of great turmoil where the Buddha's teachings have been forgotten. How very..ummm…de jour!
So: ummm, more cloisonné that's.....a technique
just so not to leave anyone out of the 'cocktail party': a 10-panel screen of Pyongyang and its environs
Joseon dynasty (1392-1897) C19th (Please note that this painting bears the signature and seal of Il-Jae (1865-1938) and the dating of this lot should read 19th/20th century.)
tbc...
some 'elevator music photography'..
Andrew the 'gnu'...(no effects, exactly as 'gnu'd' on my dinosaur Nokia phone...!)
do they need some help ‘alfred’…
is my 'butt' real or...? take yor hands off me, I'm finally a star at least for a few human moments...like: religion never promulgated 'stars'...Lot 320 (Christie's)...
elevator music photography never became so real! ;)
I stayed the course of 5 hours of Asia Week lectures at Christie's this afternoon. Not a moment of my life wasted! (I couldn't be diplomatic about so myself even if i tried...) Could u do that like everyday to keep some of us: alive (TED talks and podcasts are great, but..being alive...being alive;)(
I'll write up some of this ...but being there, well. Is everything.
Asia Week New York is always an exhilarating event and a confluence of minds. That said: a lecture at Christie's by Noelle Giuffrida on Sherman E. Lee highlighted the problems any art but Asian art in particular must confront for the meeting of minds. Lee was in no way an iconoclast rather a clear sighted shaman of Asian art. His 1954 Cleveland Art Museum show Chinese Landscape Painting was the first of its kind in America. He felt that Westerners might find all the mountains etc of Chinese landscape a bit much but what about Western art with its "numbers of nudes and apples without end"! It was noted that Mr Lee was "a unicorn and the hubris to do these things". Such a well-rounded knowledge of all things was rare in the community. Art historian Michael Sullivan wrote of Lee: "scholars today can tell you everything but have no sense of whether the painting is good or bad. And do not care."
While these fields may well be deemed elitist that is in the good sense of the word. And there is that sense that is crucial to human cultural survival. The bad elite is Sullivan's arrow unable to hit anything.
A fascinating lecture on Song Dynasty ceramic glazes by Robert D. Mowry. There is not a shred of documentation to show how they achieved any of it, so we can only surmise from modern techniques.
There was also the unsettling fact from Abhishek Poddar (whose family is building the first new art museum in India) that Indian government annual subsidy for all museums and monuments was $400 million- the equivalent of the annual Louvre subsidy in Paris. Thus India is losing 1% of its cultural heritage per annum through lack of government funding.
Asian art with all its deities may well seem very bewildering to the newbie. But I met a guy who knew it all and explained that "there are tricks". He said "start with the hats". If you see the equivalent of a 'fireman's' like hat then that is most probably that particular genre. Then you may spot the hose. But the hose and the chef's hat don't go together. And so on. That was the clearest explanation of a beginners guide to Himalayan/Indian art I have ever heard.
And you have until August to see Ranjani Shetter's Met Museum installation Seven ponds and a few raindrops.
Founded in San Francisco in 1974, how Arion Press has survived all these decades is a miracle. They publish limited edition books usually pairing great writers of the C20th with great contemporary artists to illustrate. Sculptor Joel Shapiro created woodcuts for Hart Crane's The Bridge and the 'book' is 50ft long Chinese scroll.
VIDEO HERE (shot spontaneously at Pace Prints on my old camera phone so please forgive the quality)
