Chinese Bird and Flower Paintings
China’s artists have for centuries linked flora and fauna with auspicious meanings and scholarly virtues. There are flowers and plants associated with the four seasons and twelve months that convey a sense of time passing and celebration of the unique characteristics of the season. It is believed that bird-and-flower images and motifs became popular in China as early as the Tang dynasty (618–907), but by the end of the Northern Song period (960–1127), this specific category of painting took on a clearly defined social relevance…
RUMI
The mystic writings of the Persian poet known as Rumi (1207-1273) are generally considered to be the supreme expression of Sufism, the mystical trend in Islamic thought and culture. Rumi was born in 1207 in the oasis of Balkh, in what is now northern Afghanistan, to a Persian-speaking family.
Japan in Vienna
It is believed that Japonisme has its beginnings in the workshop of a printer in Paris, when, in the 1856, the painter and printmaker Félix Braquemond (1833-1914) came across, by chance, examples of Japanese manga (kacho-ga) by Hokusai that had been used for packaging porcelain in the 1850s. In the last half of the 19th century, when Japan had reopened to the West and the great civilizations encountered each other, the time was…
FUKUDA
Fukuda Kodojin (1865-1944) was among a handful of scholar-artists who continued the tradition of literati painting (nanga) after 1900. Kodojin’s painting style is characterised by bizarre mountain forms rendered in vivid colour or monochromatic ink that often include a solitary scholar enjoying the expansive beauty of nature. In addition to painting, Kodojin was also an accomplished poet and calligrapher with deep knowledge of Chinese literature. In the late 1920s, a group of prominent admirers that included the then-prime minister of Japan…
Asian and Islamic Works of Art
Chinese, Japanese & South East Asian
On Wednesday, 11 November, over 700 lots spanning many epochs and categories of Asian Art, from Chinese archaic bronzes to Japanese prints and Singaporean …Read More »
The latest shows from around the world
THE MAGIC OF EXPLORATION
From biennials and triennials to art summits, fairs, and cultural tours – countless art events now dot the globe and compete for attention and …Read More »
Object of the Month – February 2022
This month marks the New Chinese Year – and 2022 is the year of the tiger. To mark the event, we’re posting a Chinese …Read More »
Wang Keping
The Rodin Museum invited Wang Keping to take over the sculpture garden as his studio during May and early June. The project is a …Read More »
Tranquebar and The Danish Connection in India
Tranquebar (Tharangampadi) is a village in Tamil Nadu with an intriguing intercultural history – it has been the home to two Danish East India …Read More »