About Town: Hiroshi Sugimoto

Here at the Asian Art Museum we are getting excited about our spring show, Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past. One of the artists featured in the show will be Hiroshi Sugimoto, who recently opened Photogenic Drawings at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco (until February 25).

The works on view at the Fraenkel are very different from the pieces we will have in Phantoms, so if you’re in the Bay Area the next few months offer a great opportunity to get to know Sugimoto’s work.

And if you want to get to know the artist as well, Art21 has some great videos and other information. In this one, Sugimoto takes us on a guided tour of his “cabinet of curiosities.”

Curator Talk: Michael Knight on the Ming Dynasty

Our own Senior Curator of Chinese Art, Michael Knight, will be giving a talk on the arts of the Yongle reign (1403-24) of China’s Ming dynasty. The Yongle (“Eternal Happiness”) emperor was certainly among the most dynamic of the Ming emperors, and also the most active in the arts. What cool things will you learn?

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A Gallery Guide to Dragons

Snuff bottle with dragons, Qing dynasty, approx. 1800-1900.

Lunar New Year will be celebrated on Monday, January 23 this year. It is the Year of the Black Water Dragon, which many people believe will bring good fortune and prosperity. Dragons are considered good luck because they symbolize fertility and bring rain – given the weather we’re experiencing in San Francisco today it looks like the dragon has arrived a little early.

In Chinese tradition the dragon is an ancient symbol of rank and power and emperors wore dragons on their robes. Dragons with five claws represent the Emperor, and dragons with fewer claws represent other members of the royal family.

We have a lot of Chinese dragons here at the museum, so we’ve highlighted a few you can visit this weekend in anticipation of the Year of the Dragon. The snuff bottle above and the two pieces below are in our China galleries.

This glorious rug is from Qing dynasty China, approx. 1700-1800.

Detail from bottle with a dragon and a phoenix; Ming dynasty.

There are more Chinese dragons to be found in the Loggia at the top of the grand staircase. Here’s one you can look out for:

Jar with dragons amid clouds, Ming dynasty. From the Avery Brundage collection.

There are many more dragons, large and small, in the museum’s collection. Tell us about your favorite in the comments!

New Year Food

With humans, it always comes back to food. We love our feast days, and most of our celebrations have some kind of special food associated with them.

New Year is no exception. I celebrated new year recently with a friend for whom sour cream and cheddar chips are an integral part of the evening. He also cooked us a Chinese roast duck; much closer to my ideal celebration.

We spoke to a couple of Bay Area experts about two specialties that are close to us at the museum: Japanese mochi and Buddha hands.

Last weekend, we celebrated the new year here at the museum with mochitsuki (mochi pounding). Local Japanese teacher Yoko Hara writes:

I am from Tokyo, but I’ve never seen mochitsuki there. We bought freshly made big square mochi (Tokyo style) and my father used to cut it into small rectangular pieces. So mochitsuki by Kagamikai was a surprise and delight.
We used to live pretty close to the old site of Asian Art Museum so when my children were still young, we used to enjoy the mochitsuki with Taiko drumming every year. Being a Japanese Teacher, I now spread the word about this lovely event to all my students and friends.

Buddha’s hand has become a common sight at Heart of the City Farmers’ Market, which takes place on Wednesdays and Sundays right behind the museum. Former curator Terese Bartholomew, now a board member of the San Francisco Botanical Garden, shares her knowledge of this funny-looking cousin of the lemon:

One interesting citrus that has appeared in the farmers’ markets in recent years is the Buddha’s hand citron (Citrus medica ‘Sarcodactylis’). This yellow citron with wavy tentacles takes its common name from the shape of its fruit, which resembles the idealized fingers of the Buddha. This fragrant fruit is used as an altar offering during Chinese New Year. The fruit runs completely to rind, and is not edible unless preserved with salt or sugar. Sliced into pieces, the fruit can be prepared the same way as candied citron; dipped in chocolate, these make a most delicious snack. The Buddha’s hand citron is beloved by the Chinese because its name, foshou, puns with blessings and longevity.

Tell us what’s on your Lunar New Year table – or share your recipes for Buddha’s hands.

Making the Connection: from Maharaja to Manjusha

Bay Area jewelry designer Jyotsna Singh is the granddaughter of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, whose extraordinary Cartier necklace is one of the stand-out pieces in our exhibition, Maharaja: The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts. We’re thrilled to be able to cement the family connection by offering some of Jyotsna’s Manjusha jewelry line in our store.

Manjusha, which means a treasure chest of jewels, presents collections of unique fusion jewelry that combine the majesty of the old with the intensity of the new.  Inspired by the beauty of royal Jadau designs, Jyotsna’s jewelry is reminiscent of a bygone era of royal palaces and princely extravagance.

Here, Jyotsna talks about her special relationship with jewelry and the experience of seeing her grandfather’s necklace for the first time.

Chinese Artist Chang Dai-chien: Bigger than Picasso?

Chinese artist Chang Dai-chien (also known as Zhang Daqian) may not have the kind of name recognition that Pablo Picasso enjoys, but in 2011 he ousted the Spaniard as the biggest auction earner in recent years. Chang’s works made $506.7 million in auction sales last year, according to Artprice, and two other Chinese artists were in the top five earners.

Here at the museum, we were excited to see Chang’s name in the news because one of his paintings, Clouded Mountain, will soon go on view in our China gallery.

As a preeminent painter of twentieth-century China, Chang integrated modern sensibilities into traditional Chinese painting. In 1956 he made his first pan-European tour, at which time his eyesight began to deteriorate. During this time, he unexpectedly developed his most innovative painting technique of splashed ink and color. Clouded Mountains exemplifies the splashed ink technique. The poem, inscribed by Chang, reads:

I was in the mood to paint in the middle of night
My wife and son were awakened from their dreams
Ink overturned and running out of control
Emerging from the summer clouds a celestial mountain

Chang’s painting will go on view on January 24.

Bye bye Buncheong

Translated Vase, Yee Sookyung, 2007. Courtesy the artist.

This weekend our Korean ceramic exhibition, Poetry in Clay, is leaving us.

If you haven’t had a chance to explore this showcase of buncheong ceramics, you’d better hurry in. Even if you have seen it, I’ve found it’s an exhibition worthy of a second look.

While some people, like our marketing manager Jenn, immediately connect with the beauty of these pieces, for others (myself included) it’s a slower process. My co-worker Amelia came to appreciate the works through the class narrative that forms part of the context of the exhibition. For me, the way in was through the contemporary works, especially the vessels made from soap. That’s right, soap. I’m not giving you a sneak preview; you’ll have to come see them for yourself.

Luckily, some of the contemporary pieces (such as the Translated Vase, pictured) will remain on view in the loggia until April, but the juxtaposition of old and new is central to this show, so to get the full experience you’ll need to join us this weekend – perhaps on our Target First Free Sunday on January 8. Hope to see you there.

Building the Belfry

On Saturday, we welcomed the new year with the 26th annual Japanese bell ringing ceremony. In this annual tradition visitors, led by a Buddhist priest, mark New Year by ringing a 2100-lb., sixteenth-century Japanese bronze bell originally from a temple in Tajima Province in Japan. Now part of the museum’s collection, the bell will be struck 108 times with a large custom-hewn log. According to custom in several Buddhist cultures, this symbolically welcomes the New Year and curbs the 108 mortal desires (bonno) which, according to Buddhist belief, torment humankind.

This video shows our preparations team building the belfry and hanging the bell ready for is ceremonial duties.

Happy New Year

This weekend, we say farewell to 2011 and welcome 2012.

We hope you will join us for our annual Japanese Bell Ringing Ceremony on Saturday, December 31 at 11:30 am. As our own Saly Lee told us in an earlier post, Japanese people celebrate the start of the Year of the Dragon on January 1; we’ll be celebrating all over again come lunar new year!

We will be closed for New Year’s Day on Sunday, January 1. We hope you have a wonderful holiday with family and friends, and look forward to welcoming you for our first Target Free Sunday of the year on January 8.

Rhino Horn Art

It is an awkward fact that great artworks are sometimes created amid deplorable circumstances. Next week the popular PBS program Antiques Roadshow will air a segment featuring a record-breaking appraisal of Chinese rhinoceros horn carvings (check their site for local scheduling). It is hard not to think of the current plight of the rhinoceros when viewing artworks made from rhino horns, or indeed of that of the elephant when viewing objects made of ivory. The rhinoceros was almost extinct in China by the time of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) due to hunting and habitat destruction. On November 10, 2011, the western black rhinoceros was declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and all rhino species are currently endangered. So what are we to make of rhino horn art?

The rhinoceros was of special importance to the ancient Chinese, as the museum’s famous rhinoceros-shaped vessel, which probably dates from 1100–1050 BCE, attests. Rhinoceros horn was (and still is) valued for its medicinal properties, and considered an antidote to poison. Often carved into cups, it became a prized medium of artistic expression, and Chinese artists created great works of art from it; the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was one of particular excellence.

This example from the turn of the seventeenth century, which depicts an immortal paradise, closely follows the shape of the original rhinoceros horn.

More examples of rhino horn objects are on view in Gallery 17, on the second floor of the museum. By displaying these objects we hope to improve understanding of traditional Chinese art and to heighten awareness of the current threat to an animal long esteemed in Chinese culture, and admired by people the world over. For information about rhino conservation visit the World Wildlife Fund.

What do you think? Use the comments to share your views on antique art works that use materials from endangered species.