The Rama Epic: Hero, Heroine, Ally, Foe at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco is the most complete exploration of Ramayana-related art to be seen in the US. Exhibition curator and editor of the catalogue Forrest McGill has assembled 135… Continue reading
Confucius on Jade said: ‘The gentlemen scholars of antiquity all enjoyed the extraordinary qualities found in jade: warmth, smoothness, and a certain gloss, it had a benevolent and good character, as it is considered fine, compact, yet strong, like a… Continue reading
You get to see it briefly from Atami or Mishima, between the tunnels as you head towards Kyoto on the Shinkansen Bullet Express; a fleeting glimpse of steep forested mountains rising from the sea on the left-hand side of the… Continue reading
‘I do not believe television. I do not believe the newspapers. I do not believe movies, they all lie. Opera lies. Go to the church or temple to obtain truth? They both lie. The government lies. What I learned in… Continue reading
This ground-breaking exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is art oriented, but the art is a bold sociological coverage about the main subject, the wakashu of Edo, the great merchant-class capital of Japan which by the 1760s had become… Continue reading
THE JAMEEL PRIZE is awarded biennially for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition. The resulting exhibition of the fourth edition recently opened at the Pera Museum, Istanbul, where the Prize was awarded to a Pakistani artist, Ghulam Mohammad.… Continue reading
CANDLES FLICKER in the dark and magical shadows move across a white screen. As the music of bamboo and wood instruments starts, the adventures of mythical demons and goddesses, heroes and villains, epic battles, magic spells and unrequited love unfold… Continue reading
THIS AUTUMN, the St Louis Art Museum (SLAM) opens Conflicts of Interest: Art and War in Modern Japan, an unparalleled display of a range of Japanese art depicting and responding to the reality of warfare, featuring Japanese war prints. The… Continue reading
This is a colourful and festive exhibition of Chinese opera costumes with more levels of depth than a gold mine because what one sees on the surface is only just the beginning. Kudos goes out to the Met’s curators for… Continue reading
When Colonel Robert Kyd proposed in 1786 that a botanic garden should be established in Calcutta (now Kolkata), he probably had little idea that it would still be on the same site and have the same essential form 230 years’… Continue reading