NANGA PAINTING AND HYAKUSEN

Two Men in a Raft, Sakaki Hyakusen, circa 1740s, ink on paper, hanging scroll, 36 3/4 in, BAMPFA, private collection. Nanga Painting

Asian Art Newspaper discovers the work of Sakaki Hyakusen, the Japanese artist who established the Nanga School in 18th-century Japan, as well as works by Gion Nankai, Yanagisawa Kien and Yosa Buson. This is the first North American exhibition focused… Continue reading

SACRED TREASURES FROM NARA

The Nara period of Japanese history lasted a relatively short time, from 710 to 794. However, its sacred Buddhist culture, exemplified by an astounding abundance of temples and shrines, has bequeathed literally and metaphorically divine sacred treasures. This is reflected… Continue reading

JAPAN SUPERNATURAL IN SYDNEY

When I was a child I was plagued by night terrors. Grotesque Lilliputian devils would visit me in the dark hours. Ghosts and ghouls, it often seemed, were never that far behind. So it was with some hesitation that I… Continue reading

The Raffles Collection in London

Shadow puppet of the character Trigangga, son of Lord Hanuman the white monkey from the epic The Ramayana, Cirebon, western Java, late 1700s or early 1800s, hide, horn, fibre, pigment, gold leaf © Trustees of the British Museum

Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) spent most of his career as an East India Company official in Southeast Asia. He was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Java in 1811 and assumed the Lieutenant Governorship of Sumatra in 1818. Raffles is credited as… Continue reading

ORIENTALIST PAINTING IN LONDON

The classic Orientalist model of a palace guard was Sub-Saharan and unquestionably masculine, as in this vision by Fabres y Costa

There is an abundance of ambiguity in Orientalist art. For Edward Said, a scholar of literature and music rather than the visual arts, those 19th-century Western paintings were distressingly black and white – or brownish and white. The artists were,… Continue reading

Li Shan: Chinese Contemporary Art

Li Shan in front of a work in progress from his Reading series, at his Lingang New City studio, an aspiring satellite city of Shanghai, in May 2019. Photo by Michael Young

There was a moment in Kurt Neumann’s classic 1958 sci-fi horror movie, The Fly, when Vincent Price – the actor known for his roles in such films – delivered an introduction to the audience, ‘It would be unfair … to… Continue reading