Left to right: Illustration from A History of Chinese Civilization (Ritual vessel ding, approx. 1050–1000 BCE. China, early Western Zhou dynasty. Bronze. Asian Art Museum, The Avery Brundage Collection, B60B2+; photo by Kaz Tsuruta) and covers of Modern China Studies; 1616: The World in Motion; and Along the Yangzi River: Regional Culture of the Bronze Age from Hunan. (See below for larger images.)

Asian Art Museum staff have been busy on the publication front beyond our own upcoming exhibition-related publications such as Phantoms of Asia by assistant curator of contemporary art Allison Harding (with Mami Kataoka of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo) and Out of Character: Decoding Chinese Calligraphy by senior curator of Chinese art Michael Knight.

Associate curator of Chinese art Li He has been particularly active. Her “Controversy and Uncertainty in the Study of Liao-Dynasty Ceramics: Beginning with the Collection from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco” was recently published in Latest Works on the History and Archaeology of the Liao-Jin Period (Liaoning Provincial Museum). Her presentation on “Interactions between Jingdezhen and Islamic Ceramics” from an International Symposium on the Imperial Kiln Jingdezhen, will be published this year by the Jingdezhen Municipal Bureau of Culture. In addition, she has been asked to be an advising editor in visual arts for a multivolume series, The History of Chinese Civilization, a project sponsored by Ministry of Culture, China; an English-language version will be released by Cambridge University Press.

Dany Chan, assistant curator for exhibition projects, recently published an article in Modern China Studies entitled “Painting Mao’s Words: Lee Chun-yi’s Exercise in Landscape Painting.” In China, the two art forms of painting and poetry have a long tradition of interconnection. The article presents a re-interpretation of this tradition by contemporary artist Lee Chun-yi through an examination of a selection of his landscape paintings incorporating the poetry of Mao Zedong. Chan argues that Lee strove to overcome the expected political associations of painting Mao’s words and move toward an apolitical, artistic interpretation of the play between word and image.

My own 1616: The World in Motion, an overview of the incipient globalism of the early seventeenth century, will be published in March by Counterpoint Press. “With a masterful command of facts and data,” says former Asian Art Museum director Emily Sano, “Christensen shows how separate threads affected one another, transformed discourse, and contributed to the development of a truly global culture fully four centuries ago.” In the judgment of John E. Wills, Jr., coeditor with Jonathan Spence of From Ming to Ch’ing: Conquest, Region, and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century China, “With its stories of restless spirits and restless feet and its truly amazing images from Japan to Persia to Rome, this book will surprise and delight every reader and provide new insights into an interactive early modern world.”

Other praise comes from Evan S. Connell (“outstanding”), Lawrence Weschler (“a brimmingly generous intellectual feast”), Peter Laufer (“unforgetable”), and Gary Snyder (brilliant, creative”). Kirkus Reviews calls the book “well-researched and entertaining…. a unique reading experience.” It recently received a starred Publishers Weekly review. I hope it merits a fraction of these kind comments.

The middle Yangzi River valley is one of the cradles of Chinese civilization, and museum director Jay Xu somehow found time to delve into its legacy of bronzes in “Ancient Bronzes in Hunan: A Survey,” published in Along the Yangzi River: Regional Culture of the Bronze Age from Hunan (China Institute). Xu observes that despite changes in the style and scale of bronze production, the technique of piece-mold casting “ties together all regional bronze traditions across ancient China.” According to Holland Cotter of the New York Times, this book “belongs in the library of anyone interested in Chinese art research.”

Boy at Writing Desk. Japan, Edo Period (1615–1868). Netsuke; ivory. Transfer from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. Ney Wolfskill, B81Y93.

We recently received the following letter from Mike Thompson, a friend of the museum who is teaching English near Tokyo. He has given us permission to share it. The letter speaks to the rebuilding that must occur within the heart after a major tragedy such as Japan has experienced.

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Hello Friends,

I would like to update you on the situation in Japan. The radiation danger is still present, but our lives have returned to something approaching normal. My friend Tom Gally has a web site where he has been culling the Japanese news outlets and translating them into English for his family and friends, and he said I could give out his link. His sources are better than mine, and he has links to other web sites with earthquake / tsunami / nuclear recovery information. His page has his daily routine for his family members to read, but also general information about post-disaster Tokyo that might be interesting (I met Tom in the student dormitory at UCSB many years ago, and now he teaches at the University of Tokyo):

http://www.gally.net/updates/index.html

Along with milk and spinach, now add cauliflower, broccoli, most leafy green vegetables and tap water to the radioactive contamination list! Bottled water is being rationed and distributed to families with infants. Nobody really knows how far the fallout from the Fukushima reactors will spread, or how long this will go on. The news can be depressing. Some workers have been hospitalized for radiation sickness. As the death toll climbs, individual stories are coming up in discussions with friends and colleagues—A 24-year-old American woman who was a schoolteacher in Fukushima drowned. A bus with kindergarten children was caught in the tsunami and the children died, but the bus driver was swept onto the roof of a two-story building and lived. But then there is this—a grandmother and her grandson were rescued from the wreckage of their house nine days after the earthquake. And we are hearing about babies that were miraculously born in the midst of the deluge and survived.

Today was a good day. I attended the graduation ceremony for sixth graders at Haijima #1 Elementary School in Akishima where I’m the English teacher. It was refreshingly happy: 79 kids I’ve known for four years with scrubbed faces, wearing new clothes and junior high school uniforms, loud voices, singing and crying. But the speeches from the principal and the board of education official were somber, and poignant. They noted that other kids in northern Japan have no school buildings left in which to hold their graduation ceremonies, to say nothing of the children of the same age who were lost in the tsunami. The population of Japan is shrinking, and the next generation is the nation’s most precious resource. You children face an enormous challenge, we are counting on you … words to that effect. The speeches were also was a kind of pep talk reminding the students that Japan as a nation has faced and overcome adversity in the past. Do your best. Be happy.

Graduations in Japan are very formal affairs—in fact most ceremonies in Japan are formal. Men wear black suits with white shirts and WHITE NECKTIES! Some mothers of children and teachers were wearing kimonos, and one teacher wore a hakama, a very traditional, formal kimono reserved for graduations, weddings, meeting the emperor, or winning the Nobel Prize. The fifth-grade students attend the ceremony, and all of them play the graduation theme “Pomp and Circumstance” on recorder flutes as the graduates march into the school gym that is decorated in red and white, auspicious colors. Each graduate’s name is called out and they receive their diplomas on stage. They sing the school song (one student played the piano, quite well). Then the fifth graders shout out a very scripted “THANK YOU!” and the sixth graders sing a tearjerker SAYONARA song to them, and everybody weeps. We all go outside in the warm sunshine and pose for pictures and laugh and smile with parents and kids, and say goodbye. The new school year starts in April, and the new sixth graders will lead the school entrance ceremony—I just love this—where the older kids carry the first graders on their backs into the same gym, now decorated with paper cherry blossom flowers. At my daughter’s school they had a trust-building event in summer where the older kids form a human chain across the nearby Tama River, and one by one the little kids are helped to cross the moving water.

Today was a beautiful spring day in Tokyo. I felt emotional thinking of what has happened here in the past two weeks, the tremendous loss of life, lost cities and towns, but next month I start a new school year and meet new kids for the first time, and I get the privilege of making memories.

I’ll close with some lyrics that I remembered. Surfing the Internet these days, I came across the No Nukes rock concert from more than a decade ago. by Musicians United for Sane Energy. An understated but powerful sentiment in Japan is a strong reaction against the use of any atomic power at all by many people, especially the older generation. Among the musicians performing at the concert was Jackson Browne, a songwriter I like (my bandmate called him “America’s favorite crybaby!”). I remember his song “For A Dancer” that says:

Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down

Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found

Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
Go on and make a joyful sound

At least today, I heard a joyful sound from the children, and it was a good day for me in Japan, my adopted home.

—Mike Thompson

Bali Temple Explorer is now live, both on our website and in the galleries. This remarkable interactive film by Martin Percy, produced by unit9, lets you explore a complex of three small temples located near the village of Bedulu in Bali. You can travel through the site by clicking on the video images, and a menu at the bottom of the screen offers a map and commentary. The museum is grateful to Martin Percy and unit9 for making this interactive experience available as a complement to our Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance exhibition. Let us know what you think!

UPDATE: Bali Temple Explorer has won the 2011 Webby award in the Travel and Adventure category. Congratulations to all!

Recently poet Gary Snyder celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his groundbreaking book of poetry Riprap. Here Robert Hass introduces him in a reading on the UC Berkeley campus, where he had been a graduate student in the East Asian Studies department. Gary will be speaking at the Asian Art Museum this Thursday on the subject of “West Coast Sensibility and Traditional Chinese Lyrics.” The event is certain to sell out, so be sure to get a ticket before coming to attend.

What’s going on?

We are interested in hearing about visitor reactions to Shanghai. We will publish the results in the July issue of our members magazine, Treasures.

What kind of commentaries are acceptable?

There are no restrictions on content, except that the Shanghai exhibition must be the subject, and we cannot publish material that is plagiarized, offensive, or libelous. What we would like are thoughtful commentaries that relate to the art on view and visitors’ responses to it. Personal connections to the topic are especially welcome.

How long should the commentaries be?

We would like either half-page (about 225 words) or full-page (400-450 words) essays. There is some flexibility in length.

How do I submit a commentary?

E-mail it to tchristensen [at symbol] @asianart.org, along with a one- or two-sentence bio, which will be published with the article. If you have questions, leave a comment to this post with a valid e-mail in the post form (your e-mail address will not be shared).

Will all contributions automatically be published?

No, we will select the ones that seem to us to be of interest to readers of the magazine.

Will the commentaries be edited?

Yes, we will be in touch by e-mail. Authors will have the right to review edits.

Will I retain copyright to my writing?

You will retain copyright and right to republish as you see fit. The museum will have the right to excerpt or reprint contributions in its print and electronic materials.

Can I make critical comments if there was something I didn’t like about the show?

Yes.

What do I get?

Besides the publishing credit you will receive five copies of the magazine.

What is the deadline?

Submissions should be received by the end of April.

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?

Beginnings (1850-1911)

Shining Eyes and White Wrists, 1887-1893
By Wu Youru (1839-1897)
Ink on paper
H. 53.5 x W. 65.7 cm
Collection of the Shanghai History Museum

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High Times (1912-1949)

Southern Beauty, 1930s
By Hang Zhiying (1899-1947) or Zhiying Studio
Poster, chromolithograph
H. 78.0 x W. 54.0 cm
Collection of the Shanghai History Museum

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Revolution (1920-1976)

Peeling Corn (detail), 1963
By Yu Yunjie (1917-1992)
Oil on canvas
H. 80.0 x W. 120.0 cm
Collection of the Shanghai Art Museum

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Shanghai Today (1980-2010)

Honey, 2003
By Yang Fudong (b. 1971)
Video
9 minutes, 29 seconds
Private Collection

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 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.

Welles plays a sailor who is enticed to help navigate a yacht through Panama to San Francisco. The yacht is owned by a couple (Everett Sloane and Hayworth) who have recently returned from Shanghai. The plot soon becomes far too tangled for me to summarize.

The film is notable for a shootout in a hall of funhouse mirrors. Also, San Franciscans who remember the old Academy of Sciences will enjoy a scene shot in the aquarium there — this is where the scandalous kiss occurs that is mentioned in the trailer.

Among the themes of the Shanghai exhibition are the roles and perceptions of women in the first half of the twentieth century. This brief trailer speaks volumes about some of attitudes of the time as reflected in movies from Hollywood.

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).

Also from Japan is this dancing skeleton.

Dancing skeleton (detail). 1850-1950. Japan. Hanging scroll; ink on paper. R1999.54.17.

We have some fine witches, such as this one from Indonesia.

The witch Rangda (detail), approx. 1800-1900. Indonesia; Bali. Painted wood. Gift of Thomas Murray in memory of his father Eugene T. Murray, 2000.37.

And of course we host a host of wrathful deities, such as the terrifying Penden Lhamo, the special protector of the Dalai Lamas. In this image she holds a staff and a blood-filled skull bowl as she rides a mule through a sea of blood that represents samsara, the endless cycle of birth and death.

The Buddhist protector deity Penden Lhamo (detail), approx. 1700-1800. Tibet. Thangka; colors on wood. The Avery Brundage Collection, B62D32.

Do you have a favorite scary image from the Asian’s collection? If so, please weigh in here.