SEP 2007
VOLUME 38 - NUMBER 6
The four features on Chinese art focus on new research and findings in bronzes, textiles and Buddhist sculptures. Jay Xu's article on a ding in the AIC and Nancy Steinhardt's on Liao textiles in the Abegg-Stiftung show how museums and institutions - despite limitations often imposed by funding and bureaucracy - can still make selective acquisitions that significantly enhance their holdings and further understanding of the field. An exhibition at the China Institute and an ongoing project at the University of Chicago reveal that extraordinary creativity that accompanied the flowering of Buddhism during the Northern Qi and Northern Zhou periods. Annette Juliano introduces unpublished images - many archaeologically retrieved - from the Beilin Museum in Xi'an, and Katherine Tsiang discovers sculptures in US and Japanese collections that once stood in the cave-temple site of Xiantangshan.
Living almost three centuries apart, Konoe Nobutada and Otagaki Rengetsu represented opposites in Japanese soceity - a man and a woman, a courtier and a nun. Yet, as revealed by Audrey Seo and Sandra Sheckter, the paintings of Nobutada and the ceramics of Rengetsu possessed the quintessential Japanese aesthetics of eschewing ordinary beauty.
Auction reports from Beijing, London, Hong Kong and Paris chart the bullish Asian art market. With the onset of the busy autumn, we bring previews of fairs and gallery shows.
In her commentary, Elaine Kwok explores the ironic phenomenon of how interst in the West in contemporary Chinese art may have stimulated the domestic market.
FEATURES
Twenty Years of Collecting Chinese Lacquer: Klaus Naumann Talks to Mike Healy
Sandra Sheckter. Ceramic Conversations in the Art of Otagaki Rengetsu
Audrey Yoshiko Seo. Konoe Nobutada: Minimalism in an Age of Grandeur
Katherine R. Tsiang. The Xiangtangshan Caves Project: An Overview and Progress Report with New Discoveries
Annette L. Juliano. Beyond the Forest of Steles: 5th and 6th Century Buddhist Sculpture in the Beilin Museum, Xi'an
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt. Dragons of Silk, Flowers of Gold: Liao Textiles at the Abegg-Stiftung
Jay Xu. Captain Wang Speaks: The Re-emergence of a Western Zhou Ding
PREVIEWS & REVIEWS
Autumn Fairs in Paris
Fair Preview: ShContemporary
Frederick Baekeland. Book Review: Stephen Addiss: 77 Dances, Weatherhill, Boston, 2006
Susan Whitfield. Book Review: Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages, Riggisberger Berichte, Volume 9, Edited by Regula Schorta, Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg, Switzerland, 2006
INTERVIEWS
Margaret Tao. An Interview with Joan B. Mirviss
NEWS
Hiram Woodward. Obituary: Henry Ginsburg (1940-2007)
Michael Henss. Obituary: Gerd-Wolfgang Essen (1930-2007)
COMMENTARY
Elaine Kwok. Commentary: Moving East, Looking West: China's Emerging Market for Contemporary Art