Ai Weiwei, one of the leading Chinese artists of his generation, has undergone emergency brain surgery after being beaten by police. [more inside]
posted by WPW on Sep 28, 2009 - 13 comments

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. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Jan 17, 2009 - 3 comments

China's Golden Age.
posted by homunculus on Oct 18, 2008 - 27 comments

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 fireplace surround, a birdbath, a flowerpot, 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.
posted by orange swan on Sep 16, 2008 - 20 comments

"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]. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Sep 2, 2008 - 20 comments

Buddha’s Caves: The Caves of Dunhuang.
posted by homunculus on Jul 6, 2008 - 7 comments

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". [more inside]
posted by paduasoy on May 5, 2008 - 20 comments

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.
posted by dhruva on Jan 29, 2008 - 9 comments

Yue Minjun, a Chinese avant-garde artist, known for his depiction of toothy, smiling males. More at Asia's Hottest Modern Painters. Bonus: Goldfish
posted by growabrain on Nov 11, 2007 - 22 comments

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.
posted by Abiezer on Nov 6, 2007 - 18 comments

Wutaishan: Pilgrimage to Five Peak Mountain.
posted by homunculus on Aug 22, 2007 - 4 comments

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…
posted by nickyskye on Jul 10, 2007 - 11 comments

3D Glass Paintings by Xia Xiaowan. [Via Table of Malcontents.]
posted by homunculus on Apr 17, 2007 - 24 comments

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.
posted by nickyskye on Feb 6, 2007 - 20 comments

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.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Jan 4, 2007 - 5 comments

Chinese Public Health Posters from the 1930s to SARS. [via]
posted by mediareport on Nov 8, 2006 - 9 comments

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.
posted by jonson on Oct 1, 2006 - 11 comments

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.
posted by carter on May 29, 2006 - 6 comments

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)
posted by Ljubljana on Apr 17, 2006 - 72 comments

Chinese Ice Sculptures from an annual contest; nice use of colored ice & colored lights to add another dimension to the sculptures.
posted by jonson on Sep 17, 2005 - 5 comments

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]
posted by mediareport on Jun 24, 2005 - 3 comments

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).
posted by TimothyMason on May 6, 2005 - 12 comments

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.
posted by matteo on Feb 17, 2005 - 23 comments

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.)
posted by lychee on Jul 28, 2004 - 6 comments

Regeneration: Contemporary Chinese Art From China and the US.
posted by hama7 on Jul 9, 2004 - 3 comments

Tibetan Buddhist art of Sichuan Province, China.
posted by hama7 on May 8, 2004 - 4 comments

China Avant-Garde is a wonderful site for exploring Chinese post Cultural Revolution art, with excellent accompanying texts. Browse the featured artists and see an Exhibition from a Private Collection. Also, Inside Out: New Chinese Art is a beautiful site focusing on this recent "explosion of diverse work that is simultaneously exhilarating and bewildering", and you will find more great examples at Chinese Contemporary (click on the artist's name for information and all thumbnails for that artist), plus marvelous Chinese avant-garde posters at Rene Wanner's poster pages and Who's Who in Chinese Posters, and at the Hochschule der Kuenste, Berlin (view works here).
posted by taz on Jan 19, 2004 - 2 comments

Masterpieces of 20th-Century Chinese Painting, and more at Civilization.
posted by hama7 on Nov 13, 2003 - 6 comments

Wang Quingsong: Photos.
posted by hama7 on Oct 13, 2003 - 10 comments

Chinese Pop Posters. More :- Guangzhou's racing track, patrolling despair, Cuba, under New York, Bombay bazaar, and Chinese rural architecture. All from the excellent Atlas magazine - more here.
posted by plep on Jul 21, 2003 - 10 comments

Jade Cicadas in ancient China [more]
posted by hama7 on Mar 19, 2003 - 2 comments

Chinese-art.com is a web-based portal site designed to provide.. [more]
posted by hama7 on Mar 16, 2003 - 4 comments

"The National Palace Museum collects, preserves, and promotes the essence of Chinese art and crafts. Accumulated over a thousand years by Chinese emperors and royal families, its collections include ceramics, porcelain, calligraphy, painting, and ritual bronzes". [more]
posted by hama7 on Feb 27, 2003 - 7 comments

Steven Harris is a freelance photographer based in Beijing, China, and on occasion in his hometown, Boston. Steven looks for the essence of a place, the spirit of a people, and the heart of a complex story. Incredible pictures from China, Mongolia, Gaudi and elsewhere. Enjoy...
posted by Shike on Jan 28, 2003 - 6 comments

The International Dunhuang Project, developed jointly by the British Library and the National Library of China, makes thousands manuscripts and paintings from ancient caves and temples along the Silk Road viewable to the public. The artifacts were found in the Dunhuang cave in China in 1900 and dispersed to museums around the world, but now they have been brought together on the web. And if you want some appropriate music to go with it, check out Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project.
posted by homunculus on Nov 12, 2002 - 5 comments

Tales from the Land of Dragons. 100 years of Chinese paintings. From the overview :- 'In China, painting is one of the "Three Perfections," linked with calligraphy and poetry as the most refined of artistic endeavors. This exhibition ... focuses on the years in which the great traditions of Chinese painting were established, during the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties ... '
posted by plep on Nov 3, 2002 - 10 comments

The Long March - A Walking Visual Display. "Its aim is to take both contemporary Chinese and international art to a sector of the Chinese public that is rarely, perhaps never, exposed to such work. Specifically, we will bring art to those people who live in communities along the route of Mao Zedong's historic Long March. Mao's 'March' symbolized the deliverance of the Communist ideal to the Chinese proletariat. It is with this symbolism in mind that we now choose to march contemporary art out to China's peripheral population." via ArtKrush
posted by Stan Chin on Oct 21, 2002 - 5 comments