MetaFilter posts tagged with China and Art

Ai Weiwei hospitalised

WPW — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:41:46 -0800

Ai Weiwei, one of the leading Chinese artists of his generation, has undergone emergency brain surgery after being beaten by police. Ai attracted the attention of the authorities for his involvement in the Sichuan Earthquake Names Project, which aimed to gather the names of schoolchildren killed in the 2008 earthquake in southern China. He was confronted by police on 12 August in the city of Chengdu and beaten. The officers threatened to kill him. Since the attack he has complained of dizziness and headaches. In mid-September he entered hospital for surgery. “What does that say about our state, which is just getting ready to celebrate its sixtieth year of existence, when this is the answer to legal investigations?” Ai told the German media. He has since released pictures of himself in hospital. The attack and subsequent events have only filtered through to the Western media slowly, but could reignite the debate within the creative professions about engagement with China. Previous posts on Ai Weiwei, Sichuan.

miniature interiors

nickyskye — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:32:54 -0800

Carving a snuff bottle for painting. Types of snuff bottle painting: slide show. Step by step process of painting inside. A painting in its cultural setting. Some contemporary images: Tornado on the highway l aurora. With a special 90-degree-angle paintbrush used to paint inside glass or crystal objects, artists can achieve exquisitely unique paintings.Some of the painting tools used: the bamboo pen l writing brush l lily magnolia. A few masters who paint the interiors of snuff bottles. "Hengshui, a county in Hebei Province, is known as the home of interior painting, an art form that is very special to China. As a result of its superlative craftsmanship, interior painting has been praised as a peculiar and magnificent treasure for collectors." The history of inside-painted snuff bottles. Hengshui Inner-bottle Painting Wang Xisan, Painting inside Crystal Snuff Bottles

The T'ang Dynasty

homunculus — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:00:12 -0800

China's Golden Age.

Moasics: they aren't just for Roman bath houses anymore!

orange swan — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:27:46 -0800

Uh oh, you smashed a dish while you were washing up. But you don't get upset, because you know what to do with the pieces. Being both cultured and crafty, you not only know about the long and illustrious history of mosaic art but also that you can make mosaics from china and ceramic shards as well as pebbles, beads (new or removed from old jewelery), shells, marbles, or even lego or Scrabble tiles. So you take those pieces of your broken plate (and others that klutzy you has broken in the past) and, following some basic instructions, make numbers for your house, a fire place surround, a birdbath, a flower pot, a table or two or four, a tray, picture or mirror frames, a wall mural/homage to Hitchcock, or even a floor. By now you're wishing you had a spare basilica or Roman villa so you could really go nuts. And, besides planning on picking up some thrift shop china, you're eyeing that 48-piece reindeer-and-elves Christmas dinnerware set your mother-in-law gave you a few years back and thinking it's really too bad you're so clumsy and likely to break it in the very near future.

pathos and pathology

nickyskye — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:00:17 -0800

"Hidden within the basement archives of Yale University's Historical Medical Library lie the original oil painting collection and personal papers of the first American surgeon to practice in China." Extraordinary paintings of compassion in a medical setting. [Warning, these are graphic depictions, some NSFW] Elegant, disturbing and moving portraits of patients by Lam Qua, commissioned by a medical missionary named Peter Parker in the 1830's. [No, not that Peter Parker. Via MeFite tellurian's awesome blog]. Lam Qua and the development of a westernized medical iconography in China. The Reverend Dr Peter Parker, a graduate of Yale, established the first American hospital in Guangzhou (formerly Canton) in 1835 and successfully introduced Western surgical techniques including amputation, anesthesia, and reconstructive surgery. The Mysteries of Lam Qua, Medical Portraiture in China 1836-1855 Lam Qua, a Western-trained Chinese painter who also had workshops in the Thirteen Factories area, was commissioned by Parker to paint pre-operative portraits of patients who had large tumors or other major deformities. Previously.

The Caves of Dunhuang

homunculus — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:15:47 -0800

Buddha’s Caves: The Caves of Dunhuang.

"the precious jewels of Jao-chou"

paduasoy — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:13:30 -0800

In 2006 in the Fitzwilliam Museum three enormous porcelain vases from seventeenth or eighteenth century China were smashed by a museum visitor who fell down the stairs. This presentation "follows the vases' progress from scattered fragments to their redisplay in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The site includes slideshows, film clips of the conservation process and a timelapse of one of the vases under reconstruction". Also: interview with the visitor who smashed the vases - My precious vase hell; two versions of a picture of the visitor sitting among the shards, Daily Mail and Times; information about the man's arrest (he was released without charge); the lack of insurance; the columnist Craig Brown on the affair; and an article on the reconstruction. And here're are translations of three letters written by Père Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles about porcelain manufacture in China around the same time the vases were made.

Chinese ice sculpture festival

dhruva — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:16:49 -0800

Harbin Ice and Snow World 2007 "Welcome to... Beijing after an ice storm? No, this is “The Eighth Annual Harbin Ice and Snow World”, China’s premiere winter event." Previously on MeFi.

Smile, what's the use of crying

growabrain — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:11:38 -0800

Yue Minjun, a Chinese avant-garde artist, known for his depiction of toothy, smiling males. More at Asia's Hottest Modern Painters. Bonus: Goldfish

南巡

Abiezer — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:46:47 -0800

Recording the grandeur of the Qing [Flash; browser re-sizing; Flash-free topic index] Gorgeous and rich resource introducing multiple facets of Qing history via a study of the spectacular painted scrolls that recorded Kangxi and Qianlong's inspection tours through the south of their Empire.

Wu Tai Shan

homunculus — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:01:03 -0800

Wutaishan: Pilgrimage to Five Peak Mountain .

scholar's rocks

nickyskye — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:09:52 -0800

Known as scholar's rocks or gongshi, viewing stones are rocks of complex shapes that suggest worlds within worlds, microcosms in stone. In Japan they are called Suiseki, from the Japanese characters for water "sui" and stone "seki", placed on a daiza, a carved wood base. They are at once a miniature landscape and a point of imaginative departure…

Xia Xiaowan

homunculus — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:46:38 -0800

3D Glass Paintings by Xia Xiaowan. [Via Table of Malcontents.]

all dolled up

nickyskye — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:20:19 -0800

Surreal Barbie and Ken jewelry art by Margaux Lange. Previously (but her work and site have evolved since then). While in China, voodoo dolls have been banned and immediately became a jewelry/accessory craze.

Japanese Medical Prints

monju_bosatsu — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:55:00 -0800

Japanese Medical Prints. Part of the Clendening History of Medicine Library, at the Kansas University Medical Center, and donated by Dr. Matthew Pickard. The digital collections at the Clendening Library also include Florence Nightingale's letters, old school Chinese public health posters, and images from old medical and natural history texts.

Chinese Public Health Posters

mediareport — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 00:38:52 -0800

Chinese Public Health Posters from the 1930s to SARS. [via]

Porcelain Artist Charles Krafft

jonson — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 22:51:37 -0800

Charles Krafft is a porcelain artist who creates detailed munitions made of fine china, painted servingware commemorating modern atrocities, and "Spone" art, bone china made using human bones as the base material.

Howard French - Asia photos

carter — Mon, 29 May 2006 10:29:44 -0800

Howard French - Asia photos Photos from across Asia by Howard French, who works for the New York Times. Includes many photos of the 'Disappearing Shanghai' that is being obliterated by the city's relentless urbanization.

Revolutionary Oil Painting

Ljubljana — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 11:30:11 -0800

Your portrait painted like a propaganda poster. Become a socialist hero... in just 4 easy steps. To start, pick a poster from among the selection. Two weeks later, your painting is ready. (via STaAatCK)

Made you look!

jonson — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 10:43:47 -0800

Chinese Ice Sculptures from an annual contest; nice use of colored ice & colored lights to add another dimension to the sculptures.

disposable chopstick art

mediareport — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 22:49:30 -0800

Chopstick Eco-Art Choose from wine racks, hanging lamps, candle holders and more. "We genuinely hope that one day we will no longer be able to make our products as a result of heightened preservation efforts." [via The Presurfer]

Chinese Propaganda Posters

TimothyMason — Fri, 06 May 2005 05:37:04 -0800

You'll love the chubby babies and thrill to the Heroes and Villains. You'll like the heroines as well. The rest of Stefan Landsberg's Chinese Propaganda Poster site is fairly nifty as well. There are more here, and here. The Taschen volume is always on the table chez nous. (Note : I posted the site link the day before yesterday on the inside, and someone suggested that it should go on the front page, so here it is).

James Whitlow Delano, photographer

matteo — Thu, 17 Feb 2005 10:02:15 -0800

A Tale of Two Chinas, by photographer James Whitlow Delano. Whole swaths of cities have vanished, to be transformed with developments that have quickly made them look more like Houston, Qatar, or Singapore than the ancient China of our mind's eye. The old hutong, or alleyways, of Beijing that once formed a mosaic of passageways and the siheyuan, or walled courtyard houses, have been largely razed. The old brick rowhouses of Shanghai, are now being leveled and replaced by modern high-rises. Traditional marketplaces, residential neighborhoods, streets where medicine shops or bookstores bunched together, are now either gone or have been rouged up as tourist destinations, part of a new synthetic, virtual version of China's incredible past. The energy fueling this transformation bespeaks a powerful but often blind, unquestioning faith in an inchoate idea of progress that takes one's breath away, often literally. (Unrestrained growth has left China with the dubious honor of having 9 of the 10 most polluted cities in the world). Delano's new book is "Empire: Impressions from China". More inside.

Modern Chinese Artists

lychee — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 01:26:51 -0800

Fantastical paintings from Chinese artist Fang He. I think I like Subway Underpass Bird best for its vague sense of creepiness, though Chinese Pavilion No. 1 appeals to my love of old time sci-fi illustrations. Check out similarly whimsical Zhang Gong's cute phallic creatures (NSFW), or peruse the large collection of artists at Courtyard-Gallery. (Related Chinese art posts here and here.)

Contemporary Chinese Art From China and the US

hama7 — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 17:23:03 -0800

Regeneration: Contemporary Chinese Art From China and the US.