Clik here to view.
Travels in California, part 4: Japanese tea garden
On our previous visit to the Japanese tea garden we managed to choose a misty autumnal morning. This time we visited in February, which meant we had brilliant spring sunshine, not a cloud in the sky –...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Travels in California, part 5: surprise Korean ceramics
I was bowled over to discover that – unique among airports – the airport at San Francisco operates an accredited museum within its terminals and, what’s more, our visit coincided with a show of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Travels in California, part 6: Xu Bing at LACMA
We had limited time at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) so our visit was short but very sweet – in particular, this show by contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing (b. 1955), which was the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: Shanghai Art of the City
This lavish hardback gives a fascinating account of Shanghai’s visual culture in the 20th century, starting with the China Trade paintings of the 1850s (topographical works that showed the premises of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chinese chicks for Easter
These lively chicks are the work of An Lin (b. 1930), an artist from Chengdu, Sichuan Province. She studied at the Sichuan Art Academy and is a member of the Chinese Artists’ Association. This is a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ceramics and glass: a talk on contemporary Chinese art
I was glad that I had the chance last night to hear Kate Newnham, Senior Curator at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, describing her work on a show of contemporary Chinese ceramics and glass, which she...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Beautiful book covers: my Korean fiction bonanza
I read a great many books, but I was struck recently by the fact that I had finished three Korean novels in as many months, which seemed unusual, even for me. I thought this was more by chance than...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Netsuke from the world of medicine
The Museum of the History of Science seems to be a popular stop on Oxford’s tourist circuit, given the crowds we encountered on a weekend visit. It houses a great variety of scientific and medical...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clandon Park in ruins after fire
The National Trust suffered a bad fire last week at Clandon Park, a Georgian house in the Surrey countryside. The fire broke out on the evening of 29 April and spread through the building, continuing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cotswold Farm: Arts and Crafts with Chinese porcelain
Last weekend I joined a field trip to Cotswold Farm, an Arts and Crafts house with terraced gardens and terrific views. In the main, we were there to see the ceramics, but my overriding impressions...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Open air sculpture at RHS Wisley
A visit to the RHS Garden at Wisley provided an unexpected glimpse of contemporary sculpture by various artists, including works by Yuelong Shi and Hongxun Jin. The garden is the setting for an open...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: Ming 50 years that changed China
This colourful volume is the catalogue for the 2014 Ming exhibition at the British Museum. I have written before about the Ming exhibition and the 2014 Barlow Lecture by Prof Craig Clunas (University...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yoshida Hiroshi prints at the Ashmolean
Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) was a leading figure in Japan’s Shin Hanga (New Print) movement, seeking to revive traditional ukiyo-e printing by combining Japanese techniques with Western elements. From...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Three years and counting
Anniversary time! I'm excited because this week it's three years since I started writing here on Asian Art Brief.It always interests me to see which material proves most popular, so in a spirit of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: Paper Cutting
I was delighted when I came across this book by chance in the local library. I had been meaning to learn more about paper cutting after a recent visit to the Ashmolean, where I encountered works by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wastelands: contemporary Chinese art at OVADA
I went exploring this weekend to a warehouse in a less-than-popular part of Oxford, to see a show of contemporary Chinese art. The space is run by OVADA – the Oxfordshire Visual Arts Development...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tales of the City: new focus
Exciting times are afoot here at Asian Art Brief. We relocated 10 days ago from the UK to the Bay Area. Yes, that's California, USA. The sun is shining as I write this.Regular readers might remember...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Exquisite Nature at the Asian Art Museum
Exquisite Nature was the first exhibition that I saw following our move to San Francisco - a display of classical Chinese painting, loosely themed around the natural world. It occupied just one...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Talk by Karen Fraser: Looking West
This was a talk that I attended in the crazy days before Christmas, and it’s only now that I’m catching up with myself. Dr Karen Fraser (Santa Clara University) spoke at the Asian Art Museum about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Looking East at the Asian Art Museum
I visited Looking East a couple of months ago, soon after it opened. It is both a celebration of japonisme in all its guises, and an opportunity to see some real treasures from the Museum of Fine...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: The White Road by Edmund de Waal; The Porcelain Thief by Huan Hsu
2015 seemed to mark the arrival of a new genre – the porcelain memoir. I read The White Road by Edmund de Waal and The Porcelain Thief by Huan Hsu within a couple of months of each other. The two...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Japanese porcelain at the Legion of Honor
On a visit to the Legion of Honor museum in Lincoln Park, I discovered that objects in the porcelain galleries had come from the Japanese Palace (or Japanisches Palais) created by Augustus the Strong....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bonnard at the Legion of Honor
Following on from my last post on Japanese porcelains, another highlight at the Legion of Honor museum is their current temporary exhibition on Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947). This runs to several...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Architecture of Life at BAMPFA
We made a family visit recently to BAMPFA, the newly reopened arts centre for the University of California, Berkeley. The acronym stands for Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and while the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hidden Gold at the Asian Art Museum
Hidden Gold is being held to mark the 50th anniversary of the Asian Art Museum. It brings together a diverse selection of pieces from the museum’s collections, each golden in some respect, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: Listening to Stone by Hayden Herrera
Sometimes it’s a joy to try something different. I knew next to nothing of the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), when I picked up this recent biography by Hayden Herrera. It was a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Movies: Sweet Bean
I enjoyed a rare trip to the cinema to see the new Japanese film Sweet Bean, directed by Naomi Kawase. Masatoshi Nagase stars as the manager of a small shop selling dorayaki, a sweet made from two...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: Looking East by Helen Burnham
This slim but attractive hardback is the catalogue for the Looking East exhibition, held earlier this year at the Asian Art Museum. Introductory essays by Helen Burnham and Sarah E. Thompson set the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Asian art in the Musee du quai Branly
It is a decade since the 2006 opening of the Musee du quai Branly in Paris, under the auspices of President Jacques Chirac. The collections span Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, and the focus is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: 101 Japanese gardens you have to visit - in North America
Visually stunning, this glossy hardback features 26 Japanese gardens from the United States and Canada, each photographed in loving detail. A further 75 gardens are listed (without illustrations) in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Black and white and nacreous all over: Korean mother-of-pearl lacquerware
An exhibition of Korean mother-of-pearl lacquerware, on view at the Asian Art Museum, is one of those small but precious shows that invites you to delve deep into one particular subject. A selection...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A trio of pebbles: Korean mother-of-pearl lacquerware, part 2
These massive, lustrous pebbles dominate the final section of the current Korean mother-of-pearl lacquerware exhibit at the Asian Art Museum. They are displayed in an adjoining gallery, alongside other...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bamboo basketwork: a contemporary Japanese art form
We took a trip to Sonoma back in April, to see this fabulous exhibition of contemporary bamboo artworks. The exhibit has been on tour in several locations and showcases the work of 17 Japanese bamboo...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The brave new world of digital art: interactive exhibits at PACE
This digital art show at the PACE Gallery in Menlo Park has proved very popular. Slated to close on July 1, it has been extended to mid-December. I booked tickets in what would have been its last...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Embracing the surreal: video animations by Tabaimo
This exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art showcases the work of Japanese artist Tabaimo, who creates bold video animations in a style influenced by manga and anime. It works well as a complement...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Recharging in the San Mateo Japanese garden
I was hoping to visit the Japanese garden in San Mateo Central Park after reading about it in the book Quiet Beauty: The Japanese gardens of North America. Happily, I managed to make that visit earlier...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ten days left to see Chinese treasures from Taiwan
The jewel of the 2016 schedule at the Asian Art Museum has been the show Emperors’ Treasures, which presents choice artworks on loan from the National Palace Museum, Taipei. This show is now in its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
San Diego visit, part 1: Brush and Ink
I visited San Diego over the summer and saw two exhibitions of Asian art in the Balboa Park complex. First up was Brush and Ink at the San Diego Museum of Art, an inspiring selection of Chinese...
View ArticleClik here to view.
San Diego visit, part 2: Japanese art at the Mingei International
Continuing the San Diego theme from my last post on Brush and Ink, I want to highlight an exhibition I saw at the Mingei International Museum, showcasing folk art and craft objects from Japan. It was a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Movies: Miss Hokusai
Screened during the Mill Valley Film Festival, this anime movie opens a window onto the household of Hokusai, the great 19th century Japanese artist, and in particular his daughter O-Ei. The film is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: Kimono for modern times
This elegant history of kimono focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries - of which the cover photo is emblematic. It shows a woman's summer kimono with a design of plovers in flight over stylised waves,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
San Diego visit, part 3: Japanese Friendship Garden
I visited the Japanese Friendship Garden during the late afternoon - a quiet, mellow time of day when the visitors had thinned right out. It occupies a 12 acre site in Balboa Park, the cultural complex...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shapes to conjure with: contemporary Japanese ceramics
This exhibition of Japanese ceramics is small but transformative, giving the visitor space to focus not on traditional ceramic forms but on what happens when those forms are set aside. Each of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Japanese ceramics in Sacramento
Writing my last post on The Sculptural Turn led me to reflect on another wonderful collection of contemporary Japanese ceramics, in the Crocker Art Museum of Sacramento. I visited in June 2016, and the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: The Art of Rivalry by Sebastian Smee
The Art of Rivalry by art critic Sebastian Smee is a biography with a difference. Looking at four pairs of artists from the modern era, it explores how they influenced one other. There is a single...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Japanese Photography at SFMOMA
I was recently at SFMOMA, my first visit since it reopened last summer after a big three-year renovation project. My eye was drawn to this exhibition of Japanese photography, a thematic presentation,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
In Cutting Back, author Leslie Buck chronicles her four-month stay in Kyoto at the turn of the millennium. Unusually, for a woman and a westerner, she was taken on as an apprentice at a big-name...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Extravagant tomb treasures from China
Currently showing at the Asian Art Museum is Tomb Treasures, a major exhibition of archaeological finds from Chinese royal tombs. I sighed inwardly as I approached this one because, much as I love...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books: Black Dragon River by Dominic Ziegler
This is a densely-written account of one man’s journey along the River Amur, at the boundary between Russia and China, and to the north-east of Mongolia. The man in question is Dominic Ziegler, an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Movies: After the Storm
This poignant Japanese film explores the day-to-day life of former writer Ryota (played by Hiroshi Abe). After failing to live up to his early promise, he holds down a job as a private detective and...
View Article
