Highlights
The Namazu-e Album at the Royal Ontario Museum and Its Online Exhibition
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, Canada, owns an accordion-style album containing eighty-seven woodblock prints depicting and satirizing social situations after a large earthquake hit the city of Edo (today’s Tokyo) in 1855. An online exhibition of this album, Aftershocks: Japanese Earthquake Prints, which displays a selection of forty-two prints, was launched on the ROM website in November 2022 and will be available for several years.
The Secret of Colours: Ceramics in China and Europe from the 18th Century to the Present
The Baur Foundation, Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva holds a remarkable collection of Chinese enamelled porcelain dating from the reigns of the Kangxi (1662–1722), Yongzheng (1723–35) and Qianlong (1736–95) emperors. This collection will be the subject of an exhibition opening September 14, 2022, examining how the palette of coloured enamels developed as a result of interactions between China and the West. Technological exchange in the field of enamels has recently given rise to an extensive literature dwelling as much on the historical as on the physical and chemical aspects of this art form (Bellemare, 2021; Colomban et al., 2022; Shih, 2012).
Hua Fengxiang and His Three-hundred-Year Zisha Tradition
Zisha is a special purple-hued stoneware particular to Jiangsu Province, China. Common Zisha products are mainly pots, supplemented by miscellaneous items such as flowerpots and water jars. Most Zisha is round, square, or of other simple geometric shapes and is used as a vessel to brew tea in the ‘loosing tea method’ of the oriental tea ceremony. Boiling water is added to tea leaves in the purple clay pot, creating tea soup mixed with tea leaves and tea water.
Seeing Zen in Prague: A Unique Collection of Japanese Zen Art
The Kaeru-An Collection at the National Gallery in Prague comprises 523 scrolls of Japanese Zen ink painting and calligraphy, a few items of earthenware, and one pair of screens. The collection was built over the course of the past twenty years by the Dutch collector and artist Felix Hess, with expert assistance from the professor John Stevens. Three years ago, Felix Hess donated this exceptional collection of Japanese Zen art, spanning from the 15th to the 20th century, to the National Gallery in Prague, which has recently presented part of the collection in two installations of works in the exhibition ‘Zenga: Japanese Zen Paintings from the Kaeru-An Collection’ in the Salm Palace by Prague Castle.
The Kathmandu Triennale 2077
The Kathmandu Triennale 2077, presented 1–31 March 2022, was the fourth edition of Nepal’s premier international platform featuring local, national, and global contemporary art. Organized by the Nepal Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Civil Aviation and the Siddhartha Arts Foundation, along with Para Site in Hong Kong, the Triennale discarded the Gregorian calendar for its title in favour of the Nepali Bikram Sambat alternative calendar date of 2077.
More than seventy local, national, and international nonprofit organizations, government entities, corporations, media sponsors, and individuals helped make the Triennale become a reality. Under the leadership of the curatorial team consisting of Cosmin Costinas, Sheelasha Rajbhandari, and Hit Man Gurung, the Triennale featured more than 300 artworks created by 130 artists from forty countries on display at five culturally and historically significant Kathmandu venues. English and Nepali texts accompanied all exhibition artwork, and extensive public programming was held at each location, including performances, workshops, and lectures.
Featuring a wide selection of art practices and approaches, the Triennale included performance, installation, photo, slide, and video art; mixed-media, print, acrylic, oil, tempera, and ink painting; and traditional folk art, painting, sculpture, and textiles, offering visitors unique insights into local, national, and global issues.
Sir Joseph Hotung (1930–2021)
The ancients saw jade as embodying all the virtues of a perfect gentleman, the junzi. As many people noted, Sir Joseph—the philanthropist, collector (particularly of Chinese jade), and businessman—was a gentleman in the true sense of the word and a model of civic-minded humanitarianism. He was also someone of whom it truly could be said that he left the world a better place for having lived in it. However, his name is not generally well known on the world stage because of his innate modesty and desire to maintain a low profile.
Sir Joseph, the grandson of Sir Robert Hotung, was born in Shanghai in 1930 and was educated in China, first in Shanghai and then at St Louis College, in Tianjin (1948–49). He spent many of the war years in Shanghai, and for Sir Joseph, as for many others there, this period was one of deprivation and uncertainty. But he regarded those years as character building; he said his resilience and determination were nurtured during that time. He subsequently spent a year at university in Hong Kong but then decided to go to the United States to take a degree in economics at Catholic University in Washington, DC, where he graduated cum laude.
‘Matthew Wong: Blue View’ at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada, 13 August, 2021–18 April, 2022
The first non-commercial exhibition of the paintings of the late Hong Kong–Canadian artist Matthew Wong (b. 1984, Toronto–d. 2019, Edmonton), ‘Blue View’ at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), displays the most recent works made by Wong before his untimely death by suicide. A protean image maker, Matthew Wong painted inventively in oil and gouache, mobilizing a vast knowledge of Euro-American and East Asian painting that far surpassed the sources he noted in interviews (for example, Vogel, 2022). Wonderfully, the AGO exhibition, organized by the museum’s chief curator Julian Cox, presents Wong’s paintings without over-interpreting them: the catalogue text and didactic materials in the galleries are brief. These laconic statements permit Wong’s paintings, which reward close looking, distant views, and repeated encounters, to be seen for their considerable technical strengths.
An Interview with Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang
In what is the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s largest capital gift ever, Oscar L. Tang and his wife Agnes Hsu-Tang have pledged $125 million for the renovation of the museum’s Modern Wing, which encompasses 80,000 square feet (7,400 square metres) of galleries and public space. The redesigned wing—to be named in honour of the couple—is not only an update of the physical space but is a ‘re-envisioning’ of the Met’s display of modern and contemporary art to incorporate a more interdisciplinary, encyclopaedic, and global approach. Mr Tang is a trustee emeritus and generous decades-long benefactor of the Met, as well as chair of the museum’s Asian Art Visiting Committee. Agnes Hsu-Tang is a respected academic and international cultural heritage policy adviser and a member of the Met’s Modern and Contemporary Art Visiting Committee.
From Lion to ‘Idol’: An Early Reception of Chinese Sculpture in America
Quite possibly one of the earliest Chinese stone lions to reach the United States can be found in the permanent collection of Union College in Schenectady, New York (Fig. 1). It was gifted to the college in 1874 by John Marshall Willoughby Farnham (1829–1917), a Union alumnus and Presbyterian minister who dedicated his life to missionary and humanitarian work in China. Farnham acquired the lion sometime between 1860 and 1862, when it was unearthed during the construction of fortifications against the Taiping rebels in the vicinity of his school for boys, which was located near the south gate to the city of Shanghai. He installed the lion in front of his school for some years before sending it to Union College. Reified as a guardian figure by Farnham, the sculpture would be received in a most unconventional manner after crossing the globe.
‘Renaissance Venice: Life and Luxury at the Crossroads’ at Gardiner Museum, Toronto 14 October 2021–9 January 2022
After a year-long delay as a result of the ongoing global pandemic, the much-anticipated exhibition ‘Renaissance Venice: Life and Luxury at the Crossroads’ finally opened at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Founded in 1984 by the philanthropists George and Helen Gardiner, the Gardiner Museum is Canada’s only museum that specializes in ceramic art. The major pieces in the permanent collection range from ancient American sculpture, Italian majolica earthenware, European court porcelain, a well-published collection of Japanese export art, and Chinese Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) period porcelain.
An Interview with Robert and Lisa Kessler
Robert and Lisa Kessler are patrons of the Denver Art Museum. Although they collect across categories, they are perhaps most well-known for their collection of contemporary Japanese ceramics which they exhibited in, ‘From the Fire Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Robert and Lisa Kessler Collection’, from 25 September 2016 to 19 November 2017 at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition featured 65 pieces created by 35 Japanese artists and included pieces made by both master ceramists, designated as Living National Treasures in Japan, as well as by emerging artists. At home, they have built a Japanese and Chinese scroll collection room along with a Japanese garden to house their collection. We speak to them about their collecting journey.
Discovering Chinese Art in Wroclaw—Insights from the Neisser and Nowicki Collections
In the 17th and 18th centuries, a fashion for Chinese and Japanese culture as well as for chinoiserie and japonaiserie appeared in European applied art. Remarkable collections of Chinese art that have yet to be studied in depth emerged in both German and Polish regions. This article will discuss two prominent collections of Chinese art in Wrocław (known as Breslau before 1945)—the Neissers and Nowicki collections. They are, respectively, representative collections of Chinese art in Central Europe at the turn of the 20th century and the second half of the 20th century.
Nordic Private Collections of Chinese Objects
The latest publication by Minna Törmä explores the development of four private collections of Chinese art by people from Nordic countries. Törmä’s research may be seen as a continuation of her interest in the Finnish-born Swede, Osvald Sirén (1879–1966), a preeminent historian of Chinese art in Europe. Sirén was one of the first academically trained art historians who visited China to conduct research on Chinese art history, in contrast to others who went on exploratory excursions or archaeological activities and extracted objects for museums or institutional studies.
For the Love of Broken Porcelain
In 1960, while planting a rose garden on the grounds of a 600-year-old palace in Delhi, members of the Horticulture Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) dug up a large hoard of broken blue-and-white dishes and bowls. These ceramics were thought to be Mughal porcelains. While this was duly noted in a brief entry in the ASI’s journal, Indian Archaeology 1961–1962: A Review, the discovery was regarded at the time as unimportant. The porcelain was put into storage, and the exact location of its discovery was forgotten. However, the collection was and remains the world’s largest collection of Yuan dynasty (1260–1368) blue-and-white porcelain.
Textiles in Burman Culture
Sylvia Fraser-Lu is a respected author in the world of Southeast Asian textiles. Her painstaking research and attention to detail ensure this book will be an important source for students and textile enthusiasts. A comprehensive text is accompanied by relevant colour and black-and-white plates. The author carries the reader through the history of textiles from early settlements to the workshops of today. Chapters on techniques and production highlight areas of the country where beautiful fabrics continue to be produced.
Buddhist Art Initiative: Connectivity as a Driver for Change
The creation of Buddhist sculptures, paintings, and ritual implements, and the use of a wide range of symbolic representations in Buddhist visual culture, served originally to support religious practice and lead believers to the Buddha’s teachings. Whether as a devotional object, a donation for merit making, a visualization tool used in ritual, or a vehicle for the path of meditation, Buddhist art fulfills its spiritual purpose all the more when it evokes transcendence of all form, the illusory realm of phenomena, and when it assists believers in attaining deeper levels of realization.
Perspectives of/from India in Salem: The Peabody Essex Museum’s Indian Art Galleries
When one thinks of India … Salem, Massachusetts is not likely the first thing to come to mind. And yet, the port city served as a vital node in the transoceanic trade networks of the 18th and 19th centuries, connecting the newly independent United States of America to important trading centres in India, China, Japan, Zanzibar, and other regions across the globe. Today, the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) serves as a visual testament to the city’s legacy of global connectivity.
Henri Bertin and the Representation of China in Eighteenth-Century France
John Finlay’s long-anticipated book highlights a sizeable number of understudied Chinese objects in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. They are part of the legacy of Henri Léonard Jean Baptiste Bertin (1720–92), a French statesman who maintained an extensive, decadeslong correspondence with the Jesuit missionaries in Beijing. Known as the cabinet de curiosités chinoises, Bertin’s collection comprised several hundreds of paintings, books, and artefacts of various kinds that he received from Beijing.