Poll: Your favorite Shanghai era

The museum’s Shanghai exhibition is organized into four main time periods. One of the themes that runs through the show concerns the attitudes to women expressed in Shanghai art. These four images of women will give a taste — but only a taste, since in each period the range of artistic activity is of course much wider than these images suggest — of the various phases in Shanghai’s artistic development. Asking you to name a favorite is a little silly, like asking what’s your favorite color, as if you would want everything in the world to be green or whatever; still, suppose you only had a few minutes to catch the show — which section would you head for?

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Shanghai web materials

Blog readers who are interested in our Shanghai show, which opens February 12, should keep an eye on the Shanghai exhibition web page, which is the central hub for all of our Shanghai materials. There are several things already up, and more will follow soon.

Today Nico supplied a reading list from the standpoint of a retail book specialist (as distinguished from a curator’s bibliography, which would likely be somewhat different). Nico is well informed and her judgment is sound, so this list would be an excellent starting point for learning about Shanghai. A portion of the page is shown above (click the image to see the rest).

The show spans the history of Shanghai, from its mid-nineteenth century treaty port days to the present.

The Lady from Shanghai

The Lady from Shanghai is a classic noir film, released in 1947, starring Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. It’s melodramatic but probably not quite as straightforwardly so as this trailer suggests. It doesn’t have much to do with Shanghai, but the title no doubt carried connotations of sexuality and decadence that American audiences of the period associated with that city.

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This museum is frightening!

Skull with two snakes coiled around it. Japan, 1800-1900. Netsuke; ivory. The Avery Brundage Collection, B70Y199.

Happy Halloween, or Samhain, or Ancestor Night, or Day of the Dead, or whatever you want to call this day, which many cultures consider the true beginning of winter (it is the cross-quarter day between the equinox and the solstice — what in the U.S. we call the beginning of winter, December 21 or 22, is actually midwinter by this reckoning).

As everyone knows, on this day ghosts and demons come among us. The Asian’s collection contains a lot of images that are appropriate to Halloween, such as the Japanese netsuke shown above (not all are on view in the museum now, or at any given time).

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Praise for Emerald Cities, and the best time to visit

The best time to visit is now. This exhibition had a relatively modest PR budget, so its opening was softer than that of some other shows. But everyone I’ve talked to who has seen it says it is fantastic. That means it will be a word of mouth show, where attendance is likely to build as time goes by. Visit soon if you like a little elbow room.

Okay, fair warning: as you may have gathered, I like this show, and what follows are excerpts from and links to some of the press and online reviews (and a couple of videos), which I hope might convey something of the quality of the show. If a litany of praise is not your thing, then you can stop reading here. But if you’re considering visiting and want to hear what others are saying, then read on . . .

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Invitation to a Discussion

In this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, David Henry Hwang, whose most recent play, Yellow Face, is making its Bay Area premier, talks about race and multiculturalism. Here is a bit of what he had to say:

Whenever we talk about race or culture in this country, the discussion usually immediately becomes quite rigid, and people go to their established positions and become entrenched there. When that happens, there’s no real room for exchange, for dialogue, for really opening one’s mind to other perspectives. And humor, it seems to me, does allow for that possibility. It allows for people to relax, to open their minds, because when you’re laughing at something, then you wonder, well why am I laughing at it, it gives you an opportunity to rethink some assumptions.

The Asian Art Museum has recently been at the receiving end of some biting humor. An anonymous person (or persons), concealing identity through a privacy service, has created an imitation of the Asian Art Museum website, giving it the domain name asiansart.org and calling it a parody.

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Burma or Myanmar?

Governments, news organizations, and others around the world have struggled with the question of whether to use the name Myanmar (pronounced “myan-mah”) to refer to the country traditionally known as Burma.
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Bird-men of Siam

Among the most intriguing figures in the upcoming (October 23, 2009–January 10, 2010) Emerald Cities show are these mythical bird-men.  These creatures inhabit an Eden-like forest of Buddhist legend. At the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok sculptures of bird-men and bird-women surround one of the major buildings.

These figures are made of wood, and it is remarkable that they have remained as well preserved as they have; still, each has suffered significant damage that has called for intensive repair work by the museum’s conservators. Similar wooden figures were used over several centuries in various sorts of ceremonies. In the late nineteenth century, under Rama V, such statues were placed high on poles and lamposts along the boulevards of the city.

In addition to these bird-men, the exhibition will also have a bird-woman on display. Another view of the image on left is used on the cover of the exhibition catalogue.

Left: Mythical bird-man, approx. 1775-1850. Central Thailand, wood with remnants of lacquer, gilding, and mirrored glass inlay. H. 125.7 x W. 29.8 cm. Gift from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Southeast Asian Art Collection, 2006.27.24.

Right: Mythical bird-man, approx. 1775-1850. Central Thailand, wood with remnants of lacquer, gilding, and mirrored glass inlay. H. 128.3 x W. 27.9 cm. Gift from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Southeast Asian Art Collection, 2006.27.23.

Hiroshima survivor visits Samurai show

On August 6, 1945, eight-year-old Takashi Tanemori was playing hide-and-seek with friends in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell less than one mile away.

The blast killed his parents, a brother, a sister, and other members of his family. Takashi, whose father was of samurai class, became an Oyanashigo—a street urchin, who survived by scrounging from garbage cans and refuse piles.
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Shanghai: Art of the City
the catalogue cover

When I showed pages from our upcoming Shanghai catalogue previously I was not ready to show a cover. It looks now like this cover will probably be it. The image is a detail from a poster from the deco period. The image below shows the front cover together with the spine and back  cover.

What do you think? What qualities does this convey to you?