Nov 4th 2004 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition

Chinese artefacts at the New York Met
A new exhibition from a neglected period in Chinese history

NEW YORK'S last big show of Chinese art was a dazzler. The Guggenheim Museum's “China: 5,000 years” in 1998 showed 500 greatest hits of Chinese art, from a Neolithic pot to contemporary paintings. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's current exhibition, “China: Dawn of a Golden Age”, is less spectacular in scope, focusing instead on a span of four, relatively unexplored centuries in China's early history. Still, it makes a strong point. China's society has often been more diverse, culturally and ethnically, than some Chinese today might care to admit.

The exhibition covers a period between periods: broadly, the interlude from the fall of the proto-fascist Han empire in the third century to the glory days of the cosmopolitan Tang empire in the middle of the eighth century. Disunity marked the period. Buddhism was not yet the unifying influence it was to become. Meanwhile, mounted nomads on China's northern borders struck deep into the empire, undermining the old order, establishing new dynasties and transforming society. These chaotic times are far less well known than the rule of the Han and Tang.

New York
China, United States
The arts
“China: Dawn of a Golden Age” is currently showing at New York's Metropolitan Museum.

The first sight to greet a visitor to the show is a colossal stone chimera, a hybrid of lion and bird, in the museum lobby. In the exhibition proper, seven sections each represent separate geographical areas that would eventually come to form part of the Tang empire. The centrepiece of the first room is a Han-period set of 14 cavalry men flanking parasoled chariots. This procession, leading a person of importance into the next world, gives a flavour of the imperial order that was soon to be brought crashing down.

In the following sections, displays of gold, bronze, stone, textiles, paintings and even wooden carvings preserved in arid regions all tell of the influence of nomadic tribes and of a thriving exchange along long-distance trade routes that stretched over the Pamir Mountains to China's west. In the exhibition's concluding part, where the yellow walls are meant to suggest the beginning of the golden age, a big, crowned Buddha and parts of a marble sarcophagus with vivid reliefs are just two of the show's highlights.

Many of the exhibits speak of energetic cultural exchange. For instance, the sarcophagus dating from the Sui dynasty (581-619) appears to have held a community leader from central Asia, probably incorporated into China's civil administration; unearthed near Taiyuan just a few years ago, its intaglios depict Zoroastrian themes from Persia. Elsewhere, a lovely gilt-silver ewer from the fifth or sixth century is of Sogdian origin, while its voluptuous figures appear to be drawn from the story of Helen of Troy.

It took seven years for James Watt, head of the Met's Asian art department and the exhibition's curator, to bring the 250-odd works to New York. Many have been only recently been excavated. Past exhibitions of China have emphasised imperial art. Here, objects of daily life also feature.

Yet the main effect of the exhibition, which runs until January 23rd, is to show China's cosmopolitan wealth and diversity. Voltaire, among others, developed the idea in the West of China as a monolithic culture, an idea that its rulers were not readily going to contradict. It has influenced the West's view of Chinese art history to this day. In reality, says Mr Watt, China is as heterogeneous as America has ever been.
http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3352721&sponsorTranMode=DE

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China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200–750 AD
October 12, 2004–January 23, 2005
Special Exhibition Galleries, The Tisch Galleries, 2nd floor

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/China/index.asp
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId= {8DC7B584-ACB9-4D15-ABCB-2B0CE09C6652}&HomePageLink=special_c2b

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Rheinischer Merkur, Nr. 45, 04.11.2004
PEKING / Die Hamburger Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner bauen Chinas neues Nationalmuseum

Alles unter einem Dach

Ein Schatzhaus von gigantischen Dimensionen entsteht in der Hauptstadt. Die deutschen Baumeister verbinden Tradition mit aufregender Moderne.

Autor: WERNER SCHULZE-REIMPELL
[image] ATEMBERAUBEND: Die Eingangshalle des neuen Kulturpalastes, ausgelegt für 15 000 Besucher pro Tag, als Computersimulation. Foto: gmp

Wenn in China etwas Großartiges gebaut oder ein städtebaulicher Akzent gesetzt werden soll, sind von Gerkan, Marg und Partner (gmp) meist zur Stelle. Längst haben die Hamburger Architekten auch in Peking und Schanghai Büros. Nahe Schanghai entsteht zurzeit Luchao, eine am Reißbrett in Hamburg entworfene neue Stadt für 80 000 Menschen (RM Nr. 6/2003). 33 Projekte allein in China kommen inzwischen zusammen. Darunter die deutsche Schule in Peking, ein Bahnhof und eine Universität der schönen Künste in Schanghai, Hochhäuser, Ausstellungshallen, Sportzentren und die Erweiterung einer Flughafenhalle mit Pfeilern, die von Lotusblumen inspiriert sind.
Das ist Prinzip: Immer zeigt sich das Bestreben, mit der Architektur einen Dialog zu eröffnen zwischen den eigenen Vorstellungen und den charakteristischen Besonderheiten einer anderen Kultur unter Berücksichtigung auch der mentalen und klimatischen Gegebenheiten.

So stark gmp in China mittlerweile involviert ist und vom dortigen Boom profitiert – neunmal war Meinhard von Gerkan in diesem Jahre schon dort –, so beschränkt sich die Arbeit doch nicht damit. Kürzlich gestalteten die Hamburger das Berliner Olympiastadion neu, entwarfen sie eine Parkrotunde für den Flughafen Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel und konzipierten am Persischen Golf eine „Dubai Sports City“ mit vier Stadien und einem Einkaufszentrum von immenser Größe.

Der 1935 in Riga geborene, früh verwaiste Meinhard von Gerkan, der zuerst ein Physik-, dann auf Rat seines Kommilitonen Otto Schily (heute Bundesinnenminister) ein Jurastudium begann, lernte Volkwin Marg an der Technischen Universität in Berlin kennen. Nach dem Examen machten sie sich gemeinsam 1965 selbstständig. Derzeit beschäftigen sie mehr als dreihundert Mitarbeiter. Ihr Architektenbüro gewann bislang über 150 erste Preise und viele Auszeichnungen. Beide wurden bald auch Professoren – der eine in Braunschweig, der andere war es in Aachen.

Es ist also keine Überraschung, dass von Gerkan, Marg und Partner den Wettbewerb für den Bau des chinesischen Nationalmuseums in Peking gewannen. Errichtet werden soll es auf einem zentralen, politisch exponierten Platz, dem im Westen unrühmlich bekannt gewordenen Tiananmen-Platz, wo im Juni 1989 ein Massaker an demonstrierenden Studenten stattfand. Diesen Platz, der auch für militärische Aufmärsche genutzt wird, dominiert die Große Halle des Volkes, Chinas „Parlament“. Gegenüber auf der Ostseite des Platzes befinden sich das Chinesische Historische Museum und das Revolutionsmuseum, die durch ein abweisendes Eingangsgebäude voneinander getrennt sind. Für gmp ist die Aufgabe, an der Stelle dieses funktionslos werdenden Hauses ein alles umfassendes Museum zu bauen, das die beiden schon vorhandenen Museen unter einem Dach integriert, gleichsam in einem alles vereinenden Nationalmuseum verschmilzt: Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, politische Erinnerung und Kunst.

Der gesamte Museumskomplex soll sich durch eine transparente Architektur und ein großes offenes Foyer zum Platz hin öffnen. Durch gleiche Dachhöhe werden das Nationalmuseum und die Große Halle des Volkes glücklich miteinander korrespondieren, ja, die räumliche Qualität des Tian- anmen-Platzes kann dadurch verbessert werden.

Schimmernde Bronzeplatten
Im Museum selbst ist alles gigantisch in den Maßen, aber auch hinsichtlich des Investitionsvolumens von rund 280 Millionen Euro. Das National Museum of China wird eines der größten der Welt sein mit einer Bruttogeschossfläche von 170 000 Quadratmetern, ausgelegt auf 15 000 Besucher pro Tag. Bis zu 5000 Interessenten können zugleich Einlass bekommen und sich verteilen in den verschiedenen Sälen neben, über und unter der überdachten großen Halle, die als eine Art Verlängerung des Tiananmen-Platzes gedacht ist und auch für Zeremonien und öffentliche Anlässe aller Art vorgesehen sein soll. Ihr Vordach bietet Schutz vor Regen und Schatten während der Sommerhitze. Das Eintrittsbillett ist eine Magnetkarte, die überallhin Zugang verschafft. In diesem Foyer kann man Snacks, etwas zu trinken und Souvenirs kaufen sowie Informationen über die Ausstellungen und Veranstaltungen bekommen.

Getreu der Dialog-Maxime der Architekten werden bevorzugt Materialien gewählt, die in der Tradition der chinesischen Baukunst stehen. Das alles überwölbende Dach wird mit Bronzeplatten verkleidet werden, die auf der vom Platz sichtbaren Unterseite mattgolden schimmern. Durch nächtliche Beleuchtung soll das Museum wie eine festliche Erscheinung wirken und „Bedeutung und Würde des Tiananmen-Platzes unterstreichen“, wie es in der Projektbeschreibung heißt. Gestützt wird das weit auskragende Dach in der Art alter Konstruktionsmethoden von monumentalen Pfeilern aus tiefrotem Naturstein, während der Fußboden mit Granitplatten belegt ist. Traditioneller chinesischer Architektur verpflichtet sind auch Treppen, Rampen und Podien, welche wechselnde Aussichtspunkte in das Große Forum ermöglichen. Die Treppen, in die Bänke zum Sitzen eingelassen sind, überbrücken aber auch die Höhenunterschiede zwischen dem nördlichen Eingang und den Ausstellungsräumen im alten Museum. Vom westlichen Innenhof des alten Gebäudes führen Treppen zum Großen Forum hinauf, flankiert von Wasserbecken, die im Sommer für ein gutes Klima sorgen sollen. Aber natürlich wird es auch Aufzüge geben, jeweils für bis zu fünfzig Personen.

Ausstellungsräume sind überall und alle sind miteinander verbunden. Die weitaus größten werden sich über und unter der Halle des Großen Forums befinden. Für kleinere zeitweilige Präsentationen sind die U-förmigen Flügel der beiden alten Museen vorgesehen – für internationale Wechselausstellungen der Nordflügel, für chinesische Malerei der Südflügel.

Raffiniert ausgedacht ist die Inszenierung der archäologischen Objekte in der großen Halle selbst auf 14 400 Quadratmetern Fläche. Es wird gleichsam die Vorstellung geweckt, der Besucher befände sich auf einem Ausgrabungsfeld, wo gerade eben die bedeutendsten Schätze chinesischer Kultur und Geschichte von Archäologen freigelegt worden sind – und der Besucher ist dabei. Hervorgerufen wird dieser Anschein durch Perforation des Fußbodens in der Halle, in der die Ausstellungsschätze in Vertiefungen eingebettet sind.

Die Geschichte Chinas ist aber sowieso präsent, weil der Besucher im Museum durch die vielen Fenster das historische Ambiente der Stadt vor Augen hat. Der Standort im Herzen von Peking ermöglicht immer wieder Blickkontakte auf die Verbotene Stadt und zum Himmelstempel. Die beste Aussicht bietet das Panoramarestaurant auf dem Dach der alten Museen. Abgedeckt ist jedoch die Sicht auf das Ministerium für Volkssicherheit.

Größe muss einfach sein
Auf der östlichen vom Platz abgewandten Seite lädt eine Gartenterrasse zum Verweilen, Essen und Trinken ein. Dort sind, umgeben von Wasser in einem typisch chinesischen Steingarten, drei artifiziell gestaltete Baukörper in frei schwingender Architektur für die Academic Reporting Hall, eine Art Hörsaal, ein Haus für feierliche Veranstaltungen, Bankette oder auch Staatsempfänge sowie für ein digitales Kino vorgesehen, zugänglich über Rolltreppen.

Den Augen der Museumsbesucher entzogen, sind die Arbeitsplätze der Verwaltungsangestellten und der Wissenschaftler auf einen begrünten Innenhof orientiert, in dem das Personal relaxen oder Picknick machen kann.

Die Archive sind buchstäblich die Basis des Nationalmuseums. Sie befinden sich siebeneinhalb Meter unter den Schauräumen, zugänglich von der Tiefgarage mit 870 Stellplätzen – der wachsenden Motorisierung des Lebens auch in China trägt das allerdings kaum Rechnung. Vorgeschlagen haben die Architekten im Norden des Gebäudes den Bau einer U-Bahn-Station.

Der Entwurf von Meinhard von Gerkan und Stephan Schütz, der auch Projektleiter ist, für das der Vergangenheit verpflichtete historische Museum ohne zeitgenössische Werke verzichtet bewusst auf eine „sensationelle architektonische Geste“, sondern setzt auf eine klare Silhouette und ganz einfache schöne Formen. Im Sommer sollen chinesische Firmen mit dem Bau beginnen. Als Bauzeit sind nur zwei Jahre angesetzt: 2007 könnte das National Museum of China mit Exponaten aus mehreren Jahrtausenden eröffnet werden.

http://www.merkur.de/aktuell/ku/ku_044501.html

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International Herald Tribune
Hong Kong auctions set records
By Le-Min Lim and Clare Cheung Bloomberg News Thursday, November 4, 2004

HONG KONG Sotheby's Holdings and Christie's International said Wednesday that auctions this week had been their most successful in Hong Kong.

The auction companies said they had taken in a combined 1.3 billion Hong Kong dollars, or $167 million, for items including an 88.88-carat diamond, paintings and porcelains.

New York-based Sotheby's, the world's largest publicly traded auction house, said it had raised 590 million dollars, 32 percent more than what it fetched in April and 68 percent higher than a year ago. Christie's, based in London, said it had raised 715.2 million dollars, up 5 percent from April and an 83 percent increase from a year ago.

"The bidding war is quite intense," Li Zhongjie, a jeweler from southern China, said Monday during the Sotheby's auction.

Christie's and Sotheby's hold three-day auctions twice a year in Hong Kong, where visitors from China account for more than half of tourist arrivals. About 210,000 people in China were millionaires in U.S. dollar terms, based on the 2003 World Wealth Report from Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

"Strong interests from mainland China continued to drive the sale of Chinese paintings to new heights," Henry Howard-Sneyd, managing director of Sotheby's China, Southeast Asia and Australasia, said in a statement.

Asians accounted for about 80 percent of the bidders at Sotheby's, said a spokeswoman, Kaye Shu.

Shares of Sotheby's, which trade in New York, are up 34 percent this year.

Christie's said it had raised more than 490 million dollars from the sale of Asian art, a record for any series of Asian art sales. The company said it sold 230 million dollars in paintings, more than double its target. The most expensive were two paintings, one from the Ming dynasty and the other from the Qing dynasty, that sold for 9 million dollars apiece.

"A rebound in the local economy and active participation by bidders from China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia helped drive this auction," said Anthony Lin, chairman of Christie's Asia.

Shu of Sotheby's said paintings appealed more to bidders in Asia, while the ceramics attracted more Western buyers.

Earlier in the auction, Sotheby's said it had set a record for Qing dynasty porcelain. A ruby-ground famille rose vase from the period of Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century sold for 41.5 million dollars to Eskenazi, a London dealer, the auction house said.

Christie's said it set record prices for Chinese porcelain in the latest auction, including an early Ming blue-and-white "Dragon & Phoenix" brush-washing plate from the Yongle period in the 15th century that fetched 26.4 million dollars. A Cizhou meiping vase from the Northern Song dynasty was sold for 13.5 million dollars, a record for a Cizhou vase.

At Sotheby's, the 88.88-carat emerald-cut diamond sold for 47.3 million dollars, a record for a Western jewel sold in Asia and the most expensive item sold at auction in Hong Kong in recent years, the company said.

The previous record for a Western jewel sold in Asia was a 10.8-carat blue diamond ring, which sold for 33.1 million dollars in Hong Kong in April, Sotheby's said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/03/bloomberg/sxauction.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&sid=ajp2IMasW4UY&refer=uk#

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ChinaDaily.com
Chinese antiques stolen from museum
By Yu Zhong (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-11-02 21:37

The British Museum is still working closely with local police to trace 15 Chinese antiques stolen last week.

"We have no new information about the lost pieces so far. The case is still in the hands of the police," Hannah Boulton, a press official with the museum, told the China Daily.

Fifteen items, mostly jewelry including hairpins, earrings and fingernail guards dating back to between 700 to 1400 AD, may have been stolen Friday evening, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The museum told Xinhua that the items were found to be missing on Saturday.

Police suspect the robbery is linked to the theft of 9 Chinese art objects worth about 60,000 pounds (US$108,000) from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London last month.

The museum gave no estimate of the value of the stolen pieces.

"We do not put financial values on our pieces, but these are obviously expensive and historically important," said Boulton.

She said the museum has also appealed to dealers and collectors to watch out carefully for the missing pieces.

Boulton refused to make any comment on the security system of the museum, but said the museum has had it strengthened after the theft.

Founded in 1753, the British Museum houses one of the world's greatest collections of antiquities and artifacts, totalling around 7 million items.

The four kilometres of galleries and corridors in the museum are patrolled daily by a security force and feature a sophisticated alarm system.

This is not the first theft of Chinese antiques in England.

On October 4, thieves forced open a cabinet in the Victoria and Albert Museum and stole 9 Chinese objects including three small cups, two miniature animal figures, a bowl, two small ornamental plaques and a small ritual cylinder -- all made of a dark green-brown coloured jade.

All date from between the 15th and 19th centuries, except the cylinder, which is dated earlier than 1,000 BC, AFP reported.

"This appears to have been a well organized theft and the intention may be to sell these objects quickly," the agency quoted Mark Jones, the museum's director, as saying.

Shortfalls in museum security were highlighted in September when thieves made off with "The Scream" and another world-famous painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch from the Munch Museum in Oslo, the AFP reported.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-11/02/content_387908.htm

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The Washington Times, November 02, 2004
London artifact heists thought related

London, England, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- British police believe two recent heists of high-end antique Chinese jewelry and ornaments from two London museums could be connected, The Independent said.

The most recent theft occurred sometime between 10 a.m. Friday and 10 a.m. Saturday at the British Museum's oriental antiquities gallery, where about 15 small items such as hairpins and jewelry dating from between the 12th and 16th centuries were taken.

"We believe the theft took place while the gallery was open to members of the public," a police spokesman said, noting no glass cases had been smashed, no alarms were triggered and there was no sign of forced entry.

On the afternoon of Oct. 4, the Victoria & Albert Museum lost nine Chinese jade cups and bowls worth $110,000.

Alexandra Smith, operations director of the Art Loss Register, said it seemed likely the thefts at the British Museum and the V&A were linked.

"Just because people are stealing from museums doesn't mean it is a big, organized thing," Smith said. "But it is amazing that someone had the guts to do that from the British Museum."

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041102-092416-4840r.htm

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The Independent
Theft of medieval Chinese jewels from British Museum follows raid on V&A
By Louise Jury, Arts Correspondent
Published : 02 November 2004

Police investigating the mysterious theft of medieval Chinese jewellery and ornaments from the British Museum late last week believe the raid could be linked to the theft of Chinese jade from another London gallery last month.

About 15 small decorative items, including hairpins, nail guards and jewellery, were taken from the British Museum's oriental antiquities gallery between 10am on Friday and 10am on Saturday. A police spokesman said no glass cases had been smashed, no alarms were triggered and there was no sign of forced entry. "We believe the theft took place while the gallery was open to members of the public," he added.

The museum refused to put a value on the items but called them as "historically important pieces" dating from between the 12th and 16th centuries.

Four weeks ago, the Victoria & Albert Museum lost nine jade cups and bowls worth £60,000. In the well-organised theft, on the afternoon of 4 October, thieves used instruments to break into a cabinet in its ceramic galleries. Three small cups and a bowl, two small ornamental plaques, one small ritual cylinder and two small animal figures, all made of dark, green-brown jade, were stolen. Most dated from between the 15th and 19th centuries but the cylinder was dated earlier than 1,000BC.

A V&A spokeswoman said: "There may be similarities to the theft at the V&A last month and we are speaking to colleagues at the British Museum."

There has been growing interest in oriental items, particularly among the emerging nouveau riche in China and wealthy residents in Hong Kong keen on reclaiming parts of their cultural heritage.
All the major auction houses in London have major Asian sales next week. Among them is the auction at Christie's of a dazzling collection of items which belonged to the 19th-century millionaire merchant banker Alfred Morrison, at Fonthill House, Wiltshire.

Many were purchased directly from Lord Loch of Drylaw who had brought them to Britain after the Imperial Garden in Beijing was attacked. It was burnt by British and French troops in 1860, partly restored then sacked and burnt again in 1900 by troops from Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Italy and Austria.

Alexandra Smith, operations director of the Art Loss Register, said it seemed likely the thefts at the British Museum and the V&A were linked, but it was also possible that the second one was a copycat attack.

"That happened in country houses where there was a spate of them," she said. But it was difficult to know whether it was a gang or simply opportunists.

"Just because people are stealing from museums doesn't mean it is a big, organised thing. But it is amazing that someone had the guts to do that from the British Museum."

The demand for Chinese items seemed evident from the auctions just held in New York and Hong Kong and now in London, Ms Smith added. "If there are big sales, it does tend to mean there's a demand."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=578438

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The Art Newspaper
11/02/2004
Sotheby's And Christie's Go To China
James McDonald for The Art Newspaper

China opens its doors to foreign auction houses from December 11, as part of its obligations as a member of the World Trade Organization. From next month, firms specializing in the sale of art and antiquities will be allowed to operate within China for the first time but will be bound to respect the country's cultural protection laws. According to a draft law available on the Ministry of Commerce's website, the auction field will be opened to fully-owned foreign firms that meet specified minimum capital limits and other corporate requirements.

The move opens up what is potentially the world's largest market with its growing number of collectors to Western auction houses although the crucial question of what the firms will be allowed to sell has not yet been answered.

"It may be all right [to sell] cars or real estate, but not art," said Ben Kong, manager of Christie's representative office in Beijing. While the Ministry of Commerce is authorized to set rules for the auction business overall, the Ministry of Culture restricts dealings in works of art, books, archives and paintings dating to before 1949, the year of the Communist revolution. Under a regulation applying from May this year, auction companies require certification from the Ministry's Cultural Relics Bureau to deal in such objects.

"Yes, they are opening the market entirely to foreign companies to hold auctions," said Henry Howard-Sneyd, managing director of Sotheby's Asia in Hong Kong. "However, auction houses will be restricted by national cultural protection laws which basically prohibit any dealing in objects, whether they date from 1949 or 1911 or whatever detail they put on it. What we are able to sell will depend on cultural protection laws rather than auction laws."

With a history of looting by foreign invaders and a continuing leakage of antiquities through smuggling, China will be cautious about allowing the sale of art and antiquities. The big international auction houses generally hold their auctions of Chinese art in Hong Kong, but can import and export listed items for previews in Chinese cities. For example, the German auction house Nagel held a preview in Shanghai last month for its November auction in Stuttgart of porcelain, ink-wash paintings, Buddhist sculpture and classical furniture, including a rare Qing vase similar to one in Beijing's Palace Museum. No one is expecting an early departure from Hong Kong similar to the exodus from Monaco that followed France's decision to allow foreign auction houses to hold sales in the country. Hong Kong is still rich compared to the mainland, and China's new wealthy elite tend to transfer disposable wealth outside mainland jurisdiction.

Howard-Sneyd also points to significant competition inside China from local auction houses that have established themselves in the past 15 years, such as China Guardian (known as Jiade) and Henhai, which is connected to the culture bureaucracy. "I'm not sure that making it legal for foreign companies to hold art auctions in China necessarily means that everyone is going to pile in there," he said.

http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/collecting/2004/11/02/cx_1102hot.html

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artdaily.com
nov. 1, 2004

Masterworks of Chinese Painting: In Pursuit of Mists
[image] Chen Hongshou, Birds, Flowers, and Landscapes, 17th century. Album leaves: ink and color on silk. Each: 8 1/4 x 6 inches. Lent by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, gift of James Cahill 1996.

WEST PALM BEACH, FL.- Masterworks of Chinese Painting: In Pursuit of Mists and Clouds is a remarkable exhibition drawing on the superlative collections made by world-renowned Chinese art historian James Cahill. For over 50 years, Professor Emeritus James Cahill acquired Chinese paintings for the University of California, Berkeley Museum and his own family collections. The exhibition includes 55 paintings in traditional Chinese formats-hanging scrolls, fan paintings, hand scrolls, and album leaves-dating from the 12th to the 20th century. Images of birds and flowers, figures from history and legend, and monumental landscapes testify to the extraordinary beauty and ancient traditions of Chinese painting. The exhibition will be on view at the Norton Museum of Art through January 9, 2005. To complement the exhibition, the Norton will be displaying its most important painting from the permanent collection, Tang Yin's (1470-1523) hanging scroll, The Nine Bends River (Purchase, the R.H. Norton Trust, 62.8).

John Finlay, the Norton's Elizabeth B. McGraw Curator of Chinese Art, comments, " This wonderful exhibition complements our own collection of Chinese art. Our founder, Ralph Norton concentrated on acquiring jades, bronzes, and Chinese ceramics. This exhibition is a rare occasion to be able to see the myriad forms of Chinese painting."

Professor Cahill's seminal work, "Chinese Painting," published in 1960, was the inspiration for John Finlay to enter the world of Chinese art. Finlay will give a lecture for Museum Members on Friday, October 15, 2004, entitled "Chinese Painting: The Basics. Charles Mason of the Harn Museum in Gainsville (a former student of Professor Cahill) will lecture on January 9, 2005. Family activities will include First Saturday Family Studios and Sunday Fundays featuring, Chinese painting Feng Shui, kite making and Chinese cooking.

Professor Cahill's Collecting Philosophy: "It is like clouds and mists passing before my eyes, or the songs of birds striking my ears. How could I help but derive joy from my contact with these things? But when they are gone, I think no more about them. In this way, these two things [painting and calligraphy] are a constant pleasure to me, but not an affliction." -Su Dongpo, eleventh-century statesman, poet, and connoisseur, on collecting. Translation by James Cahill.

Professor Cahill began collecting Chinese paintings in 1955 while on a Fulbright fellowship in Japan, where he was completing his dissertation on fourteenth-century (Yuan) painting. It was there that a noted Japanese scholar bestowed on him the name Ching Yüan Chai, which roughly translates as "Studio of One Who Is Looking Intently at the Yuan Dynasty." Throughout his long teaching career, James Cahill used these collections as a means of gaining a better personal understanding of art, as an opportunity to explore areas of connoisseurship, and as a tool for teaching others these same disciplines. For Cahill, collecting enriched the scope and depth of his comprehension of the intricacies of Chinese painting and culture. Cahill has remarked, "Collecting has deepened my understanding of Chinese painting-forcing me to make judgments of quality and authenticity."

The Berkeley Art Museum and Cahill family collections consist of works from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, including major figure paintings and a selection of bird and flower subjects. The greatest strength, however, is landscape paintings. Considered the highest category of painting in China, the landscape embodies the ideals of the Confucian scholar. This is the area of Chinese art in which we find the most daring experiments, the greatest developments, and the most intense art historical scrutiny.

Norton Museum of Art Chinese Collection: The Norton has a distinguished collection of Chinese art. Many of the works in the collection were selected by the Museum's founder, R.H. Norton, with an eye to acquiring the best examples from the most important periods in China's long history. Highlights include bronze ritual vessels of the Shang (circa 1450-1100 bce) and Western Zhou (circa 1100-771 bce) dynasties.

An outstanding group of ancient jades dates from the Neolithic Liangzhu culture of the 3rd millennium bce to the Han dynasty (221 bce-206 ce). Chinese ceramics include models and figures for the tomb and burial as well as ceramic vessels from the Tang (618-906) to blue and white porcelains of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasty (1644-1911).

The Chinese collection also features outstanding examples of Buddhist sculpture, including a head from a colossal Buddha of the 8th century and a seated limestone Bodhisattva from the Northern Wei, the brief period between 386 and 535. The most recent additions to the permanent collection include almost 100 examples of Chinese Export porcelain.

Masterworks of Chinese Painting: In Pursuit of Mists and Clouds is organized and circulated by The Berkeley Art Museum and is guest curated by Julia M.White, Curator of Asian Art at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. The exhibition is made possible by Dorothy Dunlap Cahill, Hsingyuan Tsao, and James Cahill, Nicholas Cahill, and Sarah Cahill, and by an anonymous donor. Major support is provided by United Commercial Bank, the Shenson Foundation, and Jane R. Lurie.

Local support is provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, John and Heidi Niblack, and Mr. and Mrs. William Aylward.

http://www.artdaily.com/section/news/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=11489

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NYTimes.com, November 2, 2004

The Long-Distance Treasure Hunt
By JULIE SALAMON

Ximude, the director of the Jerim League Museum in
Tongliao, a city in Inner Mongolia, was perplexed by the
American visitor's strange interests. Why was he mesmerized
by tiny objects that Ximude didn't find all that
significant - a three-inch-long gold pendant in the shape
of a crouching horse, or the miniature plaque, 21/2 by 4
inches, showing a female figure flanked by two animals?

"After we look at these, I'll take you hunting," he told
the American. "That's much more fun."

But his visitor, James C. Y. Watt, a curator at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, had no time to play. He was on
another kind of hunting expedition, scavenging vast areas
of China for remnants of the historical period that would
eventually be illuminated in "China: Dawn of a Golden Age,
200-750 A.D.," which opened last month at the Met.

Behind this prodigious exhibition is a story of curatorial
obsession and adventure, as well as a glimpse at how
China's internal bureaucracy has subtly opened up recently,
at least vis-`-vis the art world. American specialists
found their Chinese museum counterparts accessible in a way
that would have been unheard of just a few years earlier.

On that monthlong trip, taken in 1998, Mr. Watt - who would
become chairman of the museum's Asian art department in
2000 - traveled alone to 15 cities by train, car and
airplane. Well, alone except for the five or six days he
spent with Chen Kun, director of the Guyuan Museum, who on
a whim drove Mr. Watt hundreds of miles in his
Chinese-brand Volkswagen car at breakneck speed to tiny
museums in obscure cities. Mr. Chen's chief curator went
along for the ride, talking shop with Mr. Watt in the back
seat or over lamb served up in a roadside tent in the
autonomous region of Ningxia, populated mainly by Muslims.

Slender and bookish, Mr. Watt, 68, doesn't automatically
bring to mind Indiana Jones, especially when he's sitting
in a three-piece suit in his orderly office at the Met,
speaking rapturously about the Roman influence evident in a
gilt bronze cup decorated with figures and a grapevine. But
his trek to remotest China was crucial to his ambitious
quest: to use archaeological artifacts to illustrate how
China, during the Tang dynasty in the seventh and eighth
centuries, absorbed influences from all over the world,
synthesized them and created a new multiethnic Chinese
culture.

While many of the objects are small, the scope of the
exhibition was always grand, in both its concept and its
logistics. Surprisingly, it was inspired not by scholarly
meditation on ancient China, but by a newcomer's impression
of New York, circa mid-1980's. From the time Mr. Watt moved
to the city 19 years ago, he was struck by how his new home
seemed to be a microcosm of international living that for
him echoed a different time, a different place. "I realized
that New York is like eighth-century China," he said.
"Nobody is a stranger, just as nobody was a stranger in the
capital of China in the Tang dynasty."

The thought of an exhibition did not occur until much
later, when Philippe de Montebello, the museum's director,
approached him and Wen C. Fong, then chairman of the Asian
art department, in 1997 about doing a China show. The
Metropolitan had put on "Splendors of Imperial China" the
year before, but that blockbuster consisted of objects
borrowed from Taiwan.

The museum hadn't had a Chinese China exhibition since
1980, but other museums were staking out the territory. Mr.
de Montebello couldn't help but notice that a few blocks
away the Solomon R. Guggenheim was putting together a huge
show for 1998, "China: 5000 Years."

"I said, 'Do you want a big one or a modest one?' " Mr.
Watt recalls asking. Mr. de Montebello replied, "Big one!"

A few months later Mr. Watt set out on that initial
scouting trip, armed with notebooks, a camera and a
suitcase full of gifts, mainly ties decorated with images
of the Statue of Liberty. He returned with three thick
albums filled with photographs of some 1,000 objects and
dozens of ties he received as gifts from his Chinese hosts
("mostly unwearable," he said).

That was only the beginning. After his trip, Mr. Watt
returned to his books, seeking the historical trail that
would connect the archaeological markers. He read for two
years. He enlisted a team of longtime colleagues from
Russia, New York and China who were experts in metalwork,
numismatics, glass, textiles and Buddhist art. It would
take several visits by each of them, together and
separately, scouting storage rooms and exhibition halls, to
finally settle on the 247 works - 350 if you count multiple
parts - now on display. In all, 46 lending institutions
were involved, including the Palace Museum in Beijing as
well as archaeological institutions in the boondocks of
China.

Mr. Watt was not averse to including larger-than-life
objects: the show's grand finale is a carving of a giant
Buddha, nearly eight feet tall. But he was preoccupied with
items that would indicate how other cultures - Central
Asian, Roman, Persian, Hellenistic, nomadic - had
infiltrated the everyday fixations of the Chinese (mainly
the upper classes) through custom and style: how they
decorated themselves, their tombs and their homes; what
they drank out of; what they wore; the stories they told;
how they prayed. Evidence of such influences might crop up
in the fold of a drape, a statue's facial features, a
textile design. Above all, he was looking for the
melting-pot ingredients that made it possible, during the
Tang dynasty, for a Turk to achieve the top position in
China's civil and military service, and for intermarriage
between nomadic peoples and Chinese.

This ancient story was, for him, rooted in the present in
more ways than one. Major construction in China over the
past 30 years has turned the country into one big
archaeological site. More than 100 of the works in the show
were unearthed in this period.

"It is almost impossible to dig anywhere in China without
finding something; even if you have a little plot of land
behind your house, you can't do gardening without this
stuff spilling out," Mr. Watt said. He regularly monitored
new discoveries by reading archaeological journals from
China, including some posted on the Internet. (An assistant
downloads them; Mr. Watt doesn't know how to turn his Met
computer on.)

It was by reading these archaeological abstracts that he
discovered, for example, the tiny objects from the second,
third and fourth centuries that so fascinated him at the
little Jerim League Museum in Inner Mongolia. While those
pieces were unearthed in 1984 and 1990, other, even newer
archaeological finds gave the show a sense of immediacy.
Eight pieces excavated since 2000 were added to the
exhibition at the last minute.

Some of the show's finest objects turned up in the
strangest places. Angela F. Howard, a professor at Rutgers
University and Mr. Watt's consultant in Chinese Buddhist
art, made three trips for the exhibition, always traveling
within China with a longtime colleague, Li Chongfeng,
chairman of the archaeology department at Beijing
University. To look at a stunning sarcophagus from the
sixth century that was excavated in 1999, she had to visit
the local police station in Taiyuan, in Shanxi Province.
"It had been placed there for fear it would be stolen and
taken out of the country," she said.

In Sichuan Province, she had to contend with monks who
didn't want their exquisite standing bodhisattvas to leave
the temple where they were on display. (Beijing officials
intervened on the museum's behalf, and the statues made it
to New York.)

Mr. Watt, born and brought up in Hong Kong, has visited
China frequently over the years. "Before, it was impossible
to travel so quickly because of the bureaucracy," he said.
"It was very tense and not so easy to have access even
among colleagues. You had to go through these different
steps first."

"Now,'' he said, "you just go." Still, he added, he did
have to stop in Beijing first to check in with the State
Administration of Cultural Heritage. "Not so much for
clearance as notification," he said, though government
approval is still required for all foreign loans.

The Guggenheim Museum's big China exhibition in 1998
required considerable behind-the-scenes machinations,
including the intervention of Henry A. Kissinger (who is
also trustee emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum).

Mr. Watt suggested that the Met's grass-roots approach made
a difference. "A lot of people do go around China with an
entourage,'' he said. "I went by myself. We were talking to
our own colleagues. We never, from beginning to end, we
never touched any branch of the political structure."

Yet Mr. Watt acknowledged that he and his team had also
benefited from changes within China that accelerated at the
end of the 1990's and have since become more apparent.
"There's much greater awareness of the need to be open to
the outside world generally, and much greater relaxation
within China, and much greater willingness to listen to
professional as opposed to ideological reasons," he said.

That view is echoed by Kimerly Rorschach, director of the
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Until recently,
Ms. Rorschach was director at the Smart Museum of the
University of Chicago, which this summer organized an
exhibition of works by contemporary Chinese artists with
the International Center of Photography in Manhattan.

When she assembled a 1999 exhibition of contemporary
Chinese art at the Smart Museum, she said, "It was almost
impossible to go through government channels."

"It was hard to bring works out and also very difficult to
return them,'' she said. "I would say that since 1999,
that's pretty much gone away. The suspicion and the
difficulties, all that has really evaporated." That despite
the Beijing government's secretive attitude toward its
political deliberations and its tendency to chafe at or
retaliate for open criticism in the news media.

It helped that the Met show did not focus on paintings and
frescoes, objects that the Chinese can be particularly
sticky about - mainly for reasons of preservation rather
than politics, Mr. Watt said. At least one case required
personal intervention by Mr. de Montebello with the State
Administration of Cultural Heritage. The Chinese government
has a general policy against lending paintings predating
the 12th century because of their fragility. But Mr. Watt
really wanted a painted lacquer screen from the fifth
century depicting virtuous women and obedient sons, whose
subject and style reflected how one region's artists
influenced another's. Mr. de Montebello convinced the state
agency that these were not paintings, really, but
archaeological finds and therefore exempt.

For Mr. Watt, such glitches were a small part of a knotty
task that he found remarkably painless, considering that it
required the collaboration of so many specialists and
institutions in far-flung places. "In many ways,'' he said,
"it was the smoothest exhibition I've ever worked on."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/arts/design/02loan.html?ex=1100415474&ei= 1&en=89f4551d2e4091b4

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"T‘AI CHI TV" was a collaboration of Jen Eijssen & Kristofer Paetau in Antwerp, Belgium. The documentation shows and analyzes this collaboration and artistic research through pictures and an interview by Heike Wetzig & Kristofer Paetau. You are welcome to have a look at:

A web documentation to view at:
http://www.paetau.com/downloads/Tai_Chi_TV/TaiChiTV.html

A PDF documentation (1,6 MB) to download at:
http://www.paetau.com/downloads/Tai_Chi_TV/TaiChiTV.pdf

Best wishes, Kristofer Paetau

********************

Business Standard
Matei Mihalca: Beijing Underground
MIHACLA ON CHINA
Matei Mihalca / New Delhi November 01, 2004

Since the 1980s, China has had a group of creative, independent-minded people—artists, intellectuals, film-makers, musicians—who have greatly attracted Westerners.

Most of them are based in Beijing. Shanghai and China’s other cities do not have such a cultural scene. Meeting with these figures is often exciting and thought-provoking. Many are now world famous.

As Beijing’s bohemian milieu has grown more commercial over time, the free-thinking spirit of yesteryear is harder to find. The creative fountain also seems to have run dry.

But interest around the world continues to grow, with galleries and museums paying increasing attention to Chinese art. Film-makers like Quentin Tarrantino and musicians like Malcom McLaren come to Beijing as if on an artistic pilgrimage, to be feted by the local artistic community.

Why is Chinese art, broadly defined, so exciting? The answer may have less to do with art and more to do with China. Chinese contemporary art is generally rebellious, and the conflict it presents between a China many people still think of as regimented and Communist, and the art at hand may be what attracts our attention. But most works don’t manage to sustain it. The novelty wears itself off quickly.

What we are talking about is a paucity of ideas. While some of the music, art, and film to come out of China has been powerful, I have never been sure it is as powerful in a reference framework that doesn’t include China.

Great work stands on its own, irrespective of national origin; it is universal. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s City of Sadness, a film set in Taiwan after World War Two, is as much about the historic events of the transition from Japanese to Chinese rule as about how people can be the innocent victims of history.

It is a moving film because of that, and the historical details are just a backdrop. Compare Hou’s films with those of mainland counterparts like Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige, for example, and the difference is apparent.

Chinese art has been characterised by an oppositionist simplicity: East vs West, the past vs the present, commerce vs culture. China’s so-called pop art mixes symbols of Communist authority—Mao portraits, the Tian’anmen Square, military uniforms—with symbols of consumer culture: Coca Cola, Nike, McDonald’s.

Yu Youhan paints Chairman Mao alongside Whitney Houston. The Luo brothers show a Chinese peasant, hands outstretched, “welcoming the world’s famous brands”.

Liu Yan juxtaposes long-haired heavy-metal musicians, punk rockers with baseball caps worn backwards, businessmen with sunglasses and cell phones, with characters from traditional Beijing opera.

This is caricature, not art. Andy Warhol’s relationship with commercialism was more complex: he made fun of it while embracing it, hence his genius. The other problem with this type of art is that it implicitly attaches moral value to the Maoist past.

No surprise, then, that such art recycles formulas from Communist propaganda. But Chinese artists and film-makers, like Warhol, are adept manipulators of commercialism, as their success demonstrates. In this sense, there is a hypocrisy inherent in their work.

Feng Xiaogang is an exception: a talented film-maker who has embraced modern urban China, but he is looked down upon by his confreres as not being “artistic” enough.

Chinese film-makers may make, as Zhang Yimou has, films supporting authoritarian rule (Hero), they may direct TV commercials, own villas by the Great Wall, or drive SUVs, but they prefer to stand above the commercial world, in theory if not in practice.

China’s politically restricted environment has propelled artists into one of two directions: some have chosen to push the limits, and this effort has soon taken them into unchartered territory.

Others have learn to avoid the limits altogether, like director Feng Xiaogang, or they have begun to cross over to the other (government) side, like Zhang Yimou. Either way, it is the limits that have defined their choices.

In other words, art has been driven by a factor outside itself. The situation brings to mind the Stockholm syndrome, in which a prisoner builds an emotional connection with the jailer.

The true challenge of art is freedom—creation in the absence of, and separate from, limits. Freedom presents the creative mind with the ultimate challenge.

Chinese artists have been disoriented by the gradual release of controls in China. Those seeking to test the limits have had to move beyond testing political limits to testing social and moral conventions.

Masturbation, copulating pigs, dead foetuses, body parts, human blood, animal meat and entrails, and child pornography are all part of this new artistic repertoire. Like the hero of a happening by artist Ma Jian, Chinese artists began to fish in the sewer—figuratively and literally.

Honey, an installation by Peng Yu, a young woman artist, involves the severed head of an old man and the corpse of a still-born child. Other installations by Peng, concocted with male partner Sun Yuan, involved dead Siamese twins.

Another artist, Zhang Huan, spent two hours naked covered with filth from a septic tank. In a different work, Zhang placed red-hot melting iron around his wrist. San Mao had himself bolted, also naked, in a coffin filled with animal entrails.

The coffin was then broken from the outside; his body, and the animal entrails, burst out onto Beijing’s snow-covered ground. Another artist, Zhu Yu, hung a dead person’s arm—bought, like other artistic materiel in China, from a friendly local hospital—on a hook in an exhibition hall.

On different occasion, Zhu sewed a piece of his own flesh onto the body of a dead pig, aiming to provide it with life.

At a recent exhibition at 798, an “art space” in Beijing, Liu Zheng exhibited “Revolution”—a series of large-sized colour photographs of reenactments of violent scenes from China’s history, including rape scenes with pubic hair and Caesarian scars plainly visible.

I do not accuse this art of bad taste; it is borderline interesting and perhaps original. What bothers me was captured in the words of Octavio Paz: “Modern art is beginning to lose its powers of negation.

For some years now, its rejections have been ritual repetitions: rebellion has turned into procedure, criticism into rhetoric, transgression into ceremony.

Negation is no longer creative.” Pi Li, a young Beijing critic and curator, has made a similar point. “Chinese artists,” he says, “are bent on destruction, on saying ‘no.’ They can’t get themselves to say ‘yes.’

In other words, they can only deconstruct power, they cannot manifest the necessary power to construct. We challenge, we attack, we resist, but we don’t pro-actively build.” There is only so much hardcore avantgarde art one can absorb before one’s senses are numbed.

Beijing, unlike Shanghai or the rest of China, has an edge, doubtless because it doubles as the country’s political capital. It’s a difficult, in-your-face city.

It is not frightening; merely hard and uncompromising, not-pleasant or soothing. The art to come out of Beijing has such an edge, as well.

This edge has been co-opted, and softened, by commercialism but it retains certain raw elements. These raw elements may grow further if social or political conflict arises, in which case the art may seem prescient.

The literary historian C T Hsia once blamed modern Chinese writers for an “obsession with China.” This obsession still holds sway today; China is the focus of creators, whether implicitly or explicitly. Going forward, they should be preoccupied less with China and more with humanity. Depth should replace shock value.
matei_mihalca@hotmail.com

http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?hpFlag=Y&chklogin=N&autono= 171290&leftnm= lmnu5&lselect=0&leftindx=5

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The Miami Herald
Posted on Thu, Oct. 28, 2004
Fireworks Display Rejected As Art Project
CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - It was too expensive for the Smithsonian to circle the Washington Monument with an explosion of fireworks designed by Cai Guo-Qiang - his preferred form of art.

So he settled for a show, opening Saturday at the Hirshhorn Museum, of nine big drawings, made by setting off small quantities of gunpowder along lines on paper sketches.

Kristen Hileman, curator of the exhibit called "Unlucky Year - Unrealized Projects 2003-2004," said the fireworks did not fit into the show's budget. She declined to discuss figures.

Also on Saturday, the Smithsonian is starting a show at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Cai's other work, including the wreck of a 47-foot Japanese fishing boat. The artist mounts it on what he calls a beach - 7 tons of fragmented porcelain that once represented Chinese deities.

The double show will be on view through April 24.

The fireworks display would have involved a series of explosions starting above the Hirshhorn, traveling two-thirds of a mile to the Washington Monument and circling it. Then the chain of small explosions would have continued, returning to the Sackler. The path would have been shaped like a human foot.

The work's title was "Big Foot Footprint and Project for Extraterrestrials No. 6."

"It is a meditation on our history, and a reflection of our future discourse," Cai says in a pamphlet accompanying the show. The gunpowder drawing exhibited instead is about 78 inches wide and more than 22 feet long.

Also unrealized were Cai's fireworks projects for Paris in the size and shape of the Eiffel Tower, and one intended for London's British Museum.

But on Sept. 15, 2003, a Cai fireworks display called "Light Cycle" and lasting four minutes was set off to celebrate the 150th anniversary of New York's Central Park. Cai said in an interview that he was talking about a Washington fireworks project with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

ON THE NET
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: http://www.hirshhorn.si.edu
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery: http://www.asia.si.edu

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/10039124.htm

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