This month From the Archives looks at an exhibition on the ancestor culture of Indonesia, which was the first large exhibition to explore works of art made in Southeast Asia to honour the ancestors and the spirits of nature. It… Continue reading
I first met Chinese artist He Gong in May 2019, in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, when I visited his studio in the Lushan Art Village on the southern fringes of the city. The studio was located in a… Continue reading
The centenary exhibition, Collectors, Curators, Connoisseurs: A Century of the Oriental Ceramic Society, celebrates the story of the Society, of many of its founder and key early members and the central role it has played in making the UK the… Continue reading
Although little is known of the lives of the nomadic tribes who over 2,500 years ago roamed the Asian steppe situated in today’s Kazakhstan, the region’s semi-arid climate has provided the perfect temperature and humidity in the ground’s permafrost for… Continue reading
The Olympic Games may be over in August, but the spirit of international collaboration is alive with an exhibition of Islamic art at the Tokyo National Museum, which runs until January 2022. Japan is the perfect destination for travelling exhibitions.… Continue reading
Social intercourse to change from a single individual to a group is universal. People come together for a multitude of reasons of creating a relationship, almost always of a mutually beneficial nature. There are end-purposes in almost all human endeavours,… Continue reading
The Asian Art Museum own some rare ink-on-paper drafts of portraits of Bunmu (renowned military) meritorious officials. Part of this exhibition on Korean art and Korean portraiture is influenced by what came to light during a 2012 conservation and subsequent… Continue reading
Since time immemorial, China has been interested in the ‘Great Narrative’ of the universe. Even before the first dynasties were established, stargazers recorded the movement of celestial bodies. Cosmology and then astronomy became a science of the State and the… Continue reading
It is impossible to write about the Bulgarian artist Maryn Varbanov (1932-1989) without writing about his wife Song Huai-Kuei (1937-2006), too. They became lovers in an austere Beijing in the 1950s. He was an ambitious tapestry artist who went on… Continue reading
The prints designed by Japanese artist Ito Shinsui (1898-1972) feature traditional subjects, bold colours, and realism that went beyond 19th-century norms, a combination that achieved remarkable commercial success. In his homeland his reputation rested upon his paintings (from his later… Continue reading