Asian Art

This article deals with an important festival in Tibet dedicated to the future Buddha Maitreya. It was held on three days in summer when three giant thangkas showing Buddhas Amitābha, Śākyamuni and Maitreya were put on public display. Introduced in the seventeenth century, it became a defining feature of the monastic life in the Dge lugs monastery of Bkra shis lhun po, the seat of the Panchen Lamas. It attained a supra-regional importance, which even extended to Mongolia. Based on a number of textual sources, this essay examines various aspects of this festival, how it was funded, who participated, and which rituals and ceremonies were conducted. It also analyses the history and iconography of the three giant textile thangkas by discussing in detail the contributions made during the reign of each respective Panchen Lama from the past to the present. In sum, the article argues that this festival has to be seen in the context of a special bond the Dge lugs school of Tibetan Buddhism maintained to have with the future Buddha Maitreya

This folio documents the exhibition RETURNS, curated by David Teh for the 12th Gwangju Biennale, 2018. The exhibition was conceived as a walk-in magazine, a lounge space in the Biennale Hall populated by a series of art historical vignettes mounted on large, moveable plywood displays. Each carried a story drawn from the first four editions of the biennale (1995-2002), informed by research in the Gwangju Biennale Foundation archives. The vignettes were also distributed for free as A3 cards, with designs by Ella Sutherland based on her analysis of printed matter from the early editions. This loose-leaf exhibition history has been bundled as a PDF folio for wider dissemination. Texts by David Teh, SooJin Lee & Grace Samboh. Design by Ella Sutherland. Special thanks to Han Jungsun and Cho Inho.

서문_까다로운 대상: 2000년 이후 한국 현대미술


1부 실제는 나의 힘

1 physics 1 평면 각뜨기와 양생 | 강홍구의 <언더프린트>
2 individual 1 자본주의 작가 시스템을 타고 넘기 | 함경아의 <악어강 위로 튕기는 축구공이 그린 그림>
3 physics 2 21세기, 현미경적 세부의 스펙터클 | 함진의 동시대 세계
4 meta-physics 1 내 섬세함에서 섬세한 우리의 존재로 | 우순옥의 <잠시 동안의 드로잉>
5 physics 3 집 속에서 나와 집으로 | 서도호의 '나는 누구, 여긴 어디?'
6 physics 4 표면-파사드 인물 주체 | 오형근의 <아줌마>에서 <소녀들의 화장법>까지
7 physics 5 완벽한 꿈세계와 회화의 이미지 | 정소연의 <홀마크 프로젝트>
8 physics 6 숭고의 꿈을 (괄호) 치고 | 공성훈의 그림들
9 meta-physics 2 리퀴드·뉘앙스·트랜지션 | 함양아의 미술에서 비디오적인 것
10 physics 7 플라이낚시꾼의 가짜 현실성 미술 | 진기종의 'On Air'
11 physics 8 이 세대의 이미지 조립 원형극장 | 전채강의 '오늘의 사건들' 회화
12 individual 2 그림의 시작-구석에서, 예술이 되다 만 것들과 더불어 | 김지원의 회화 매트릭스
13 physics 9 풍경사진의 넘치는 아름다움, 불편한 인식 | 정주하의 '서쪽' 바다
14 physics 10 간유리의 아름다움, 실제로 | 조혜진의 섬 혹은 집


2부 퓌시스-메타 혹은 메타-퓌시스

15 meta-physics 3 하나의 전시가 문제 | 최수정의 과잉 및 정신분산적 미술
16 physics 11 나는 볼 수 없다―some과 such의 미학 | 함경아의 '유령 같은 과정'
17 meta-physics 4 오리지널-페이크 | 준양의 '시차적 한옥'
18 physics 12 정전停電의 테크닉 | 박찬경, 한국 현대사의 유령과 미술
19 meta-physics 5 '보안여관'의 유혹 | 미디어 아티스트 이준과 소설가 한유주의 다원예술
20 meta-physics 6 말&이미지 | 최승훈+박선민의 '신문-시'
21 meta-physics 7 사랑-미술 | 손정은의 존재론
22 individual 3 뿌리로서의 미술과 음악 숭배 너머 | 김은형의 경우
23 individual 4 이처럼 시적이고 지적인 세계 | 베르나르 프리츠의 회화
24 physics 13 향유의 횡단 | 이동욱의 'I don't know anything'
25 physics 14 관심과 사랑 | 김용철 미술의 두 에너지
26 individual 5 유토피아·不在·生 | 배병우의 反/미학적 사진
27 meta-physics 8 소진하며 아름다워진 것들의 에코그래피 | 정현의 조각
28 individual 6 불가능한 시각을 위한 反빛 | 곽남신의 그림자
29 meta-physics 9 유크로니아의 예술 행위 | 조덕현과 꿈
30 meta-physics 10 동양/서양에서 온 꽃의 미학적 가치 | 코디최의 시각예술
31 meta-physics 11 우리의 메타-퓌시스를 위하여 | 故 이종호 건축가, 서울 세운상가, 벤야민 미학 강의, 나

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주註

Buddhism has provided solace to several people in a world of chaos and human isolation. Charting new trajectories of Buddhist travels provide new experiences of Buddha’s footprints for seeking spirituality and internal peace. The sojourn starts from Bodh Gaya proceeds to Sarnath, Kolkatta, and ends in Yangon. The suggested traveling trail traces the footsteps of the Buddha that endeavors to capture a glimpse of the historical reality in Bodh Gaya and Sarnath. The article seeks to unravel the role of Buddhism in the creation of an Asian identity and elements of trade, oral historicity, and illustration of Buddhism in the creation of National identity.

"Oh foglia appassita del Fiume Mekong ed altre poesie"
Antologia poetica di Htilar Sitthu (U Soe Nyunt)
Libera traduzione di Htilar Sitthu, 1988 "O withered leaf from the River Mekong and other poems"  Innwa Pub. House, VII edizione.
Recensioni ed introduzione

16/03/2017

Visual and cultural analysis of Meiji shōnen kaiko 明治少年懐古 (Reminiscences of a Meiji youth, 1944), an illustrated book that nostalgically recalls Japan's late nineteenth and early twentieth century period of modernization. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: https://pulverer.si.edu/node/440/title/1.

[Free Virtual Conference at SOAS] The Eventbrite registration link and the conference programme will be available soon next week! Keep eye on it. Contact [email protected] if you would like to be put on the mailing list.

Register via: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/imitation-or-appropriation-intermediality-in-qing-imperial-art-and-culture-tickets-150024442145?internal_ref=login

Yokai is a catchall Japanese word for ghosts, demons, monsters, shape-shifters, tricksters, and other kinds of supernatural beings and mysterious phenomena. Although sometimes scary, these frightening beings are often portrayed as playful, relatable, and even cute; the experience of fear can also be amusing and fun. Explore all kinds of yokai and the ways that they became pop-culture sensations in Japan in this online exhibition.

https://yokai.moifa.org/#/

This paper examines the set of fifteen prints included in the seventeenth-century Chinese text Song nianzhu guicheng. This catechism was translated by Portuguese Jesuits serving in the China mission and consists of instructions for spiritual meditation on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. The processes of visual acculturation of Christian art will be examined in the context of the transmission of doctrine and instructions for spiritual meditation. The paper discusses the Chinese visual experience and the particular circumstances of the Catholic missions in China during and after the Nanjing persecutions. This paper demonstrates that although the illustrations of the Song nianzhu guicheng were executed and adapted by Chinese artists, the ontological principles of European Renaissance art and the precepts of Christian iconography are still a structural component in the Jesuit methods of teaching and preaching.

A catalogue essay for the exhibition 'Video: an art, a history, 1965-2010' held at the Singapore Art Museum in 2011. The essay identifies three salient characteristics of electronic media that may be specific to their use and amplitude in Southeast Asian contemporary art.

Descriptions and photos of 14 old lacquerware boxes from Burma, Myanmar. The boxes are more than 100 years old and of exceptional quality, most likely from the Shan State. Some are betel boxes, and the majority is made from a base of horse hair and bamboo, lacquer, dyes and gold

This article examines Chang Chao-tang’s photography in its social and
cultural contexts and reads his photographic images with a special focus
on the temporal–spatial syntax at work: “superimpositions” between
“the sculptural” and/over the natural, the still life and/over the transient, and so on. Through this two-pronged analysis of both the
social–historical and the formal, the article addresses questions regarding
how Chang’s photographs manage to be both “Surrealist” and “real,”
and how exactly Surrealist imagery and the social documentary work
together in his art.

This essay investigates Kukuli Velarde’s intervention in the permanent collection display of the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan during 2014 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale, Terra Nova: Critical Currents / Contemporary Ceramics. Velarde’s intervention is used by the author as a vehicle for developing a model of artistic agency via a strategy of Virtual Ventriloquism. It  debates the problematic nature of the Yingge Museum’s permanent collection display, and encourages the development of a more sophisticated approach to the historical narrative of Taiwanese ceramics, and especially a more just and contemporary representation of the ceramics traditions of Taiwan’s first nations.

This paper examines the architectural history of one of the most iconic buildings in China: the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City in Beijing. First built in 1420 during the reign of the Yongle emperor of the Ming dynasty, the hall was destroyed by fire and rebuilt four times in its long history. The final reconstruction took place in 1695 during the reign of the Kangxi emperor of the Qing dynasty. Each act of rebuilding the hall was an exercise in decision making, involving a host of ideological and practical problems. In addition to shedding light on the complex process of reconstruction in traditional China, this study aims to demystify the original Yongle-era hall. I argue that this building would have been one of the largest and grandest in premodern Chinese history. It set high standards that not only burdened each subsequent reconstruction with an enormous number of constraints, but ultimately made it impossible to ever reproduce the original building. Each reconstruction of the hall can therefore be considered a simulacrum of the original hall, constantly gesturing toward it in an effort to reach its ideal, while continuously regressing from it on account of practical limitations.

Blue-and-white porcelain is a white-bodied porcelain decorated with cobalt-blue pigments which is once-fired at a temperature of 1,200 degrees Celsius or above. Until the early 20th century, blue-and-white porcelain was still considered an invention of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). However, in 1929 R. L. Hobson discovered in the collection of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art a pair of elephant-handled blue-and-white vases decorated with dragons amid clouds that were inscribed with the date of the eleventh year of the Zhizheng era (1351), thus dating the invention of blue-and-white porcelain to the earlier Yuan dynasty. Today, Yuan dynasty blue-and-white porcelain continues to attract much attention from academic researchers and art collectors. At that time, producers of celadon wares working at the Longquan kilns in Zhejiang were seeking to compete with the underglaze blue porcelain of Jingdezhen, but celadon proved to be a poor rival to exquisite blue-and-white wares with their decorative patterns.

Outside the Yuan Court, blue-and-white porcelain wares were used as ritual vessels in monasteries and temples and were also seen in cellars and tombs. Overseas, blue-and-white porcelain found their way to Southeast Asia, Central Asian trade centers such as Khara Khoto, and even as far as palaces in India, Iran, and Turkey. During the Yuan dynasty, Jingdezhen’s underglaze blue porcelain was unrivalled—the products of other kilns in China and abroad simply could not compete.

As the Yuan dynasty gave way to the Ming, the rise in popularity of blue-and-white porcelain was meteoric, and the craze spread from Jingdezhen, taking other kilns by storm. The first place to be caught up in the craze was, surprisingly, Yunnan in China’s southwest corner. Yunnan already had a sophisticated tradition of high-temperature celadon manufacturing. Inspired by the underglaze blue wares imported from Jingdezhen, during the Hongwu reign (1368–1398) in the early Ming dynasty Yunnan successfully produced its own version of blue-and-white porcelain. The Yunnan kilns used local cobalt pigments that had a gray tint, but their wares were similar to the Jingdezhen porcelain in that they also had a multiple-layer design. Unfortunately, Yunnan blue-and-white porcelain was produced only during the Ming dynasty and was discontinued when the Qing dynasty took over.

However, in the late 15th century, enforcement of the ban on maritime trade that had been promulgated during the Hongwu period began to slacken off, and domestic and overseas demand for porcelain spiked, leading to an expansion in production of blue-and-white porcelain in China. Yaoli, Leping, Jizhou in Jiangxi started to produce underglaze blue wares, and by the 16th century, production has spread to Zhangzhou and Dehua in Fujian and Chouzhou in Guangdong. By the 17th century, local kilns had even developed the transfer printing technique in order to mass-produce blue-and-white porcelain.

Blue-and-white porcelain mushroomed in China during the Ming dynasty, and during this 300-year period kilns in other Asian countries were also turning out impressive blue-and-white porcelain wares. Vietnam, which had the most mature ceramics industry in Southeast Asia, first turned out high-fired underglaze blue porcelain in its northern kilns in the second half of the 14th century (i.e. early Ming dynasty). Towards the middle of the Ming dynasty, as imperial kilns during the Zhengtong, Jingtai, and Tianshun reigns (1436–1464) entered an ambiguous “dark” period, blue-and-white porcelain emerged in Korea. Although Korean blue-and-white wares were of limited number and used only in the court, they still form an important chapter in the history of the Korean ceramics industry, which was long dominated by white porcelain and celadon. The Japanese invasions of Korea in the late 16th century (1592–1598, known as the Battle of Bunroku and Keichō in Japan and the Wanli Korean Campaign in China) dealt a significant blow to the Korean ceramics industry. Japan captured Korean pottery craftsmen during the war, who enabled the techniques for producing high-fired porcelain to take root in Japan’s Kyushu region, and Japan started producing blue-and-white porcelain in the second decade of the 17th century. Later on, the chaos of war-torn China during the late Ming and Qing dynasties caused the country’s porcelain industry to come to a halt, and the Qing Court once again imposed a ban on maritime trade, so Japan took advantage of the vacuum to produce export items, primarily blue-and-white porcelain, and took over the Southeast Asian and European markets from China. Until Europeans cracked the secret of how to produce this “white gold” in the 18th century, China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan were the only four countries that were able to produce blue-and-white porcelain. With the exception of Korea, which produced blue-and-white porcelain for domestic use, the other three countries all exported their immensely popular wares across the world.

The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History states: “In general, the most creative response to Chinese porcelain by other ceramic traditions arose in regions with a sophisticated culture (as characterized by density of urban life, organized religion, and some measure of literacy)”. Undoubtedly, China had the most advanced porcelain-making techniques, and the other three countries mentioned above also had sophisticated cultural traditions, and their geographical proximity to China facilitated technical exchanges. However, a fact that cannot be overlooked is that all three of these countries started to produce blue-and-white porcelain during the Ming dynasty, which indicates not only that conditions for production were falling into place, but also that they may have interacted with Ming kilns.

Art historian Jonathan Hay once commented on cultural interaction, saying:

Thus contact between cultures always brings us back to the geographical transfer of makers, objects, or images. These last two have to be distinguished, since images (whether in three dimensions or two) can also travel, sometimes very effectively, through the medium of copies. To this list can be added technologies, but since the transmission of an artistic technology usually requires the physical transfer of either a maker or an object, it tends to represent a ‘secondary’ case.

When looking at the interaction between Asian blue-and-white porcelain industries, in addition to the transfer of makers, objects, and images, other factors should also be taken into account; for example, indispensible raw materials (porcelain clay and cobalt pigment), driving forces, and sponsors. Moreover, the interaction between Asian countries cannot be understood within the monolithic, China-centric framework of the Sinitic/barbarian dichotomy, but has to take into consideration existing local traditions. This study uses cultural interaction as a point of departure and provides an overview of Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese blue-and-white porcelain created at the time of the early, mid and late Ming dynasty, respectively, and imitations across the world.

Winner of the 2018 Edward Cameron Dimock Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities

"A profoundly innovative and engaging study of cosmological thinking in texts, rituals, imagery, and architecture across the Buddhist world of the Himalayas."
-Catherine Becker, author of Shifting Stones, Shaping the Past: Sculpture from the Buddhist Stupas of Andhra Pradesh

"Offers a new perspective on the depictions of cosmological imagery. A timely topic that makes major contributions to the field of art history."
-Christian Luczanits, David L. Snellgrove Senior Lecturer in Tibetan and Buddhist Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Buddhist representations of the cosmos across nearly two thousand years of history in Tibet, Nepal, and India show that cosmology is a rich language for the expression of diverse religious ideas, with cosmological thinking at the center of Buddhist thought, art, and practice.

In Creating the Universe, Eric Huntington presents examples of visual art and architecture, primary texts, ritual ideologies, and material practices—accompanied by extensive explanatory diagrams—to reveal the immense complexity of cosmological thinking in Himalayan Buddhism. Employing comparisons across function, medium, culture, and history, he exposes cosmology as a fundamental mode of engagement with numerous aspects of religion, from preliminary lessons to the highest rituals for enlightenment. This wide-ranging work will interest scholars and students of many fields, including Buddhist studies, religious studies, art history, and area studies.

https://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/HUNCRE.html

A.I. usually stands for “artificial intelligence.” This essay, however, uses it to mean “art intelligence” to highlight the fact of art as an intelligent technic. Artificial intelligence — a computer-simulated modeling of the mind to predict, calculate and implement human-like behavior — is an anthropocentric technology.  By contrast, art is an ontological technic that stretches beyond anthropocentrism. Art intelligence refers to an artistic cosmotechnics,  a cosmological technology enabling humans to access to the universe behind the human world in vicarious ways. In practice, this comostechnics treats all beings — human (whether or not in the “West”) or inhuman, organic or inorganic — as contemporary; and incorporates all necessary media — material or immaterial, animate or inanimate — into art production. This concept of art intelligence extends the Heideggerian understanding of art as a technics. 
A.I.通常指“人工智能”，但本文用来指“艺术智能”，以强调艺术是一种智能技术的事实。人工智能的意思是用电脑模拟人的思维的技术，从人类的角度出发预测，推算和实施人类的某些行为和举止。人工智能是具有人赋予的工具特征的人类中心主义的技术。相比之下，艺术是一种超越人类中心主义的、本体论上的技术。艺术智能指的是用艺术让人类间接地接触在人类世界背后存在的宇宙的技术。在实践中，艺术的宇宙技术把宇宙中所有的存在（无论是人类与否还是西方或非西方，无论是有机的还是无机的）都看成是当代的；把任何宇宙中的媒介（无论是物质的还是非物质的，也无论是有生命的还是无生命的）都用于艺术的审美生成中。艺术智能的概念有助于推进对艺术与科技关系的深入理解。

[By Chang-su Cho Houchins; Introduction by P.M. Taylor. This full book is uploaded here while the Smithsonian website, where it will be published online, is being revised.] The John Baptiste Bernadou Collection of nineteenth-century Korean artifacts, so thoroughly researched and presented by Chang-su Cho Houchins in this volume, represents a unique attempt by an amateur American ethnographer to record the material culture of the Korean people at a critical moment in Korea's long cultural history. John Baptiste Bernadou (1858- 1908) assembled this collection from March 1884 to April 1885 as an attache (or envoy) of the Smithsonian Institution. Both Bernadou and the Smithsonian recognized that a new opportunity to record Korean cultural heritage using the methods of nineteenth-century museum science had emerged along with the "opening" of Korea heralded by the signing in 1882 of the first Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the Kingdom of Korea and the United States of America. Long known as the "Hermit Kingdom'' for its pre-1880s isolation, Korea, or at least many of the Kingdom's elite citizens, wholeheartedly began a period of openness to the outside world as a result of the exchanges initiated by this accord.
The breadth of this collection, including everyday household furniture and utensils, textiles, clothing and accessories, ceramics, handicrafts, paintings, prints and drawings, books, maps, and musical instruments, allows a unique glimpse of pre-industrial Korean life. The catalog of the Bernadou Collection presented in this volume includes Bernadou's notes {and, in the Appendices, selected correspondence from him), but it reinterprets the collection based on Chang-su Cho Houchins's careful study of the objects in light of more recent methods and current scholarship in this field.

A paper outlining highlights of the Thavibu Art Collection, a collection of Southeast Asian contemporary art that was acquired over a period of the last 15 years. There are brief write-ups of artists as well as illustrations of six art works from each of Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar/Burma. In total there is a selection of 18 artists and works.