What was your favorite object from today’s visit to the Asian Civilizations Museum?
This sculpture is my favourite object from the visit to the Asian Civilizations Museum (ACM). It’s interesting to witness an unconventional depiction of Buddha or a bodhisattva. Sure it has recognizably Asian features such as the arched eyebrows, slanted eyes, and mouth. The figure looks like a fierce ancient Chinese warrior. Yet the mustache, beard and stylized Mediterranean curly hair portray Hellenistic influences. The elaborate crown on the figure’s head allows for interpretation of the Buddha as a Greek king. This could be one of the many representations of Siddhartha as a princely jeweled figure prior to his renunciation of the palace life.
Early Buddhism and Buddhist art represent Buddha through symbolism (remember: aniconism). Buddha is usually represented through symbols such as the stupa, empty throne, footprints, parasols, wheel, Bodhi tree, etc. Some scholars suggest that the first anthropomorphic representation of Buddha is a result of Greco-Buddhist interaction, probably in Gandhara. Look at this… Familiar isn’t it? The wavy hair tied into the typical Buddha top-knot, the Greek himation (toga covering both shoulders), the halo, and contrapposto stance of the upright figure, and also the realism of the sculpture.
Greco-Buddhist statue of standing Buddha, Gandhara (1st–2nd century), Tokyo National Museum.
Another interesting historical and artistic aspect is the suggestion that the Greco-Bactrian king Demetrius I may have been the prototype for the image of Buddha. The earliest Hellenistic statues of Buddha portray him in a style reminiscent of a king. A characteristic associated to both Buddha and Demetrius is that they share the same protector deity. Vajrapani is the protector and guide of Gautama Buddha. In Gandharan art, we can see the Buddha being protected by the Greek god Heracles (similar to the back of Demetrius’ coins that portray the king protected by Heracles). The Greek hero Heracles is adopted to represent Vajrapani.
Edit / 20th October 2015: Something interesting! Just read a news update on ACM tonight.
This 11th-century bronze sculpture depicting Hindu goddess Uma Parameshvari will be returned at the request of the Indian government. The ACM said it had bought the sculpture from disgraced New York art dealer Subhash Kapoor’s now-defunct gallery Art of the Past for US$650,000 (S$900,000) in 2007.PHOTO: ASIAN CIVILISATIONS MUSEUM
Citation:
Dehejia, Vidya. “Buddhism and Buddhist Art”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
Sanujit. “Cultural links between India and the Greco-Roman World”. Ancient History Encyclopedia. 2011. Web. http://www.ancient.eu/article/208/
If you could have a room of your own, how would you set about decorating it? Chinoiserie? Japonaiserie?
I’d choose Chinoiserie if given the choice between the two to design and decorate a room/apartment of my own. Chinoiserie gives a soft, sweet and feminine touch to the interior. The wallpaper and pillow fabric covers depict the typical Chinoiserie imagery of pretty florals, green leaves, and little birds gracefully perched on gentle branches of the trees. The clean design and opened windows allow the sunlight to enter the living space thus creating a wonderful area to read or indulge in afternoon tea sessions comfortably be it on your own or with your friends.
I believe this could be the small corner of either a dining room or a bedroom. I love the reflection that gives a sneak peak of the blue and white porcelain vase placed on top of a wooden wardrobe. The wallpaper design is faint yet soft and pretty still. Black lacquer furniture with golden details gives the room an elevated sense of beauty and sophistication. It reflects the owner’s high taste, eye for details, and status. I absolutely love the white-blue design and texture of the seat’s fabric cover!
I’d keep the palette to white, cream, brown or mostly blue and white. I love the blue and white design of this sink and water tap that has both Chinese and Turkish influences.
Azmeera: Focus on textiles / fabrics / clothes / fashion
At-home dress, ca. 1850. English. Chinese aubergine silk damask and velvet Purchase, gifts in memory of Paul M. Ettesvold, and Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1994.
An at-home dress, made of Chinese patterned silk, uses an export textile in a Western garment. Arguably, Asian textiles were associated in the Western mind as much with private leisure as with ceremony. Many Eastern textiles entered Western dress first as intimate boudoir and other at-home garments such as robes and banyans, suggesting the qualities of exoticism and erotic mystery associated with far-off lands. The selvage at the back waist reveals Chinese characters indicating the textile’s manufacturer, and the flaring sleeves are what the West calls the pagoda style.
In the field of textiles there have been two great periods of Chinese influence. The first, in the 14th century, has already been described in the section on Italian silks. The other great period began in the 17th century with the further opening up of trade with the East via the Cape of Good Hope.
On the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in the seventeenth century, when trade resumed and artifacts flowed West again, the prized commodities that had to travel so far to the Italian port cities and to Portugal, England, and Holland were the most portable, and most telling of the East’s customs and culture. Easiest of all such products to import because of their relatively light weight, import textiles from China prompted fascination with the technical skills involved in weaving, hand-painting, and needle-work of Chinese silk. Textiles were accompanied by other luxury objects. The porcelains carried to the West in the same period provided depictions that showed the West how costume was worn in China.
It is important that it was not Chinese textile design but the designs on Chinese porcelain and lacquer that inspired the European textile chinoiserie referred to above. This inspiration lasted right through the 18th century and can be found in every branch of the textile arts. Exotic flowers, foliage imitating bamboo, pagodas, fantastic architecture, and quaint figures are there in great variety.
The two most important kinds of decorative textiles produced in China for the European market during the 18th century were embroideries and painted silks.
Almost without exception, the precious cloth was readily made into Western tailored garments. Thus, a French eighteenth-century cloth-of-silver dress is identifiably of the period, recognizable by its silhouette – with extended centre-back pleats from neckline to hem and panniered lateral extension – and by its floral pattern. Amidst rococo roses, however, reside pagodas and palm trees. These are fashionably present as they are in Georgian design, “Chinese Chippendale” mid-eighteenth-century furniture, Jean-Baptiste Pillement’s fantasies, and the colourful wallpapers with Chinese themes that adorned Enlightenment boudoirs.
The faraway dream of Cathay and of forbidden cities suggested to the European imagination a set of ceremonies and court life to rival those of Europe. Little was known of the Chinese court, and its ritual was therefore concocted in fable and reified images purporting to depict the most magnificent and densely peopled festivals and rites. Thus, images of full-dress ceremony would appear stately in the manner of the eighteenth century of the first half of the nineteenth century. After the Prince of Wales (later George IV) had the Brighton Pavilion built in the 1780s, the extravagance of exotic fabrication seemed capricious and profligate, discordant with the intense economic matters of empire. Likewise, textiles assumed a new sobriety. By the 1850s, however, exoticism was tempered increasingly by an ethnographic respect and accuracy, as the bourgeoisie that was looking for an East beyond formal gardens and enigmatic ceremonial pomp sought and delighted in a bona-fide Chinoiserie […] An at-home dress of the 1850s is characterisetic of this nineteenth-century change in attitude. The ebullient and inventive Chinoiserie of earlier times now became a deliberate and self-conscious use of Chinese materials and symbols. Floral medallions might not be taken in the West to be direct symbols of China, but they were surely locatable to the constraint and gravity characteristic of China. To wear a Chinese dress at home was not a frivolous and fanciful gesture; it was an imperial act, signifying worldly knowledge.
Other possible objects:
Dress (Robe à la française), 1740s England; textile Dutch or German Silk, linen, pigment; L. at center back 58 in. (147.3 cm) Purchase, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1995.
This painted silk gown is The Costume Institute’s earliest example of the eighteenth- century fashion for exoticism and chinoiserie. The gown’s bold, somewhat fantastical floral pattern, with its use of dense areas of saturated color, is not, however, typical of the more commonly seen Chinese export silks, with their delicate and naturalistic designs.
Technical analyses of The Costume Institute’s examples of Chinese export textiles by the Museum’s Objects Conservation Laboratories revealed pigments bound in animal glue with underpainted designs in lead white outlined in silver and black paint. In contrast, the analysis of this gown disclosed the presence of a plant gum binder but no underpaint or silver and black painted outlines. Four pigments were used to create the palette—Prussian blue, gamboge, and red and brown lake—suggesting that the gown is most likely of European manufacture.
As early as the late eighteenth century, factories had been established in England, France, Holland, and Germany to replicate Chinese painted silks. Huguenots had begun to produce silks in Germany with the support of the Prussian governor, and it is likely that this textile is of Dutch or German origin. In addition, evidence suggests that the gown itself was constructed in England and thus is an exceedingly vivid surviving example of the intersecting transits of culture and commerce that permeated the period.
References:
“At-home dress [English]” (1994.302.1) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1994.302.1. (October 2006)
“Dress (Robe à la française) [England; textile Dutch or German]” (1995.235a,b) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1995.235a,b. (September 2008)
Richard Harrison Martin, Harold Koda. Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.). GoogleBooks. Web.
What is a family portrait? What are some famous family portraits? How would you take a family portrait now?
Family portrait captures the moment and relationship between family members. It may be both formal and informal. The smiling faces and warmth of hugs between members depict a close bond whereas rigid poses, serious faces and relatively wide spaces between the members may portray a distant and cold relationship, or an aristocratic family that operates on propriety and authoritative stance.
Angelina Jolie walks down the aisle in a custom Atelier Versace gown featuring her children’s colourful artwork in first photos from her wedding to Brad Pitt.
This photo presents the parent sharing their wedding day with their children is so different from conventional and conservation practice of marrying first and having children later. I love family portraits of the Jolie-Pitt family. Children from diverse backgrounds, and love love love. Family that transcends blood ties and boundaries. I think the idea of including personal touches of artworks by her children to her wedding veil is beautiful.
Nowadays, there are a lot of photography dedicated to recreating childhood photos (with family members! be it parents, siblings, or cousins). There is also a trend of parents-to-be capturing moments of pregnancy through the use of photography and time-lapse. Modern technology such as the smartphone or digital camera allows us to take photos easily anywhere and anytime we want. We can even take it ourselves by using the front camera and also by using the selfie-stick so that no one would be excluded from the family photo. My family and I usually take a family photo during celebration days such as Hari Raya or when we go for an outing or dinner at somewhere nicer than usual. I’d love to have a family portrait taken in the studio after graduation day! The conventional and professional way of documenting our family has yet found its way to our wall in our home.
I was kind of excited when I heard that there would be an Islamic Art conference in ADM/National Design Centre. I’m intrigued by Islamic Art, especially art in the Islamic Golden Age. In schools and on the national level, we are mostly taught on Western and Asian Art hence I think it’s great that there’s an opportunity to gain greater insight and exposure on other arts and cultures around the world that would help in widening our perspective and knowledge.
I attended the lecture “Transcultural Suits” by Bosnian Austrian artist and architectural historian Azra Akšamija on the 8th of October. Her works explore the role of cultural and religious identity in conflicts, especially in the recent history of the Yugoslavian war and its aftermath. Her main medium is the use of fabric/textile. By designing wearable art, she aims to “link ideas and people across physical and psychological borders, thereby creating shared forms of future heritage to promote cross-cultural empathy”.
The Nomadic Mosque: To explore the various ways of negotiating spatial relationships between Islamic traditions and modernity in the US and Western Europe. Clothes that can be transformed into prayer rugs.It aims to redefine the traditional forms and function of mosques, thus the exploration of the formal limits of mosque architecture. The wearable mosque transcends time and space, allowing users to perform their prayers in other spaces in public or so instead of a mosque.
Dirndlmoschee [Dirndl Dress Mosque] is inspired by the dirndl which is a traditional Austrian dress. This depicts an assimilation of cultures. This prayer piece can accommodate three people. When the water-resistant apron is unfolded into three connected prayer rugs, it resembles a triptych which is a popular format of altar paintings from early Christian art hence once again emphasizing the idea of cross-cultural and religious identities; to highlight the similarities between Islam and Christianity and to suggest the possibility of peace between the two.
One of her recent works is Yarn-dez-vous (2014/15-). It features textiles from the Middle East and US. The jacket unzips into a geometrical elements that form the larger quilt. The term “yarn” refers to threading and on the symbolic level, storytelling (In Homer’s The Odyssey, Penelope performs the traditional feminine role as a weaver, weaving to keep the suitors away until Odysseus returns). The term “rendezvous” refers to a meeting. Together, the art piece combines the stories of individuals from various cultural, historical, and religious backgrounds.
Overall, I find Azra Akšamija’s ideas on wearable art and architecture interesting. It reflects a progressive ideal, to overcome the violent past and suggest a possibility of reunion and people despite differences. It is enlightening and interesting that the lectures include a perspective on Islamic art and Islam in Bosnia, a slight diversion from conventional focus on the Middle East.
13th century illustration depicting a public library in Baghdad, from the Maqamat Hariri. Bibliotheque Nationale de France.
I’ve always been interested in the Islamic Art especially during the Islamic Golden Age (around the 8th-13th century). I even grabbed the opportunity to join GEM Discoverer program to Turkey to witness the majestic beauty of Hagia Sophia, The Blue Mosque, Chora Church, and every other little things 🙂 The idea of interconnection between cultures is not new and modern. It has always existed when people are more concerned with the progress of humanity and its civilization instead of destroying each other due to differences. At the heart of the golden age is the House of Wisdom in Baghdad where scholars from various parts of the world and from different cultural and religious backgrounds come together to learn, exchange ideas and information, and also translate classic works of antiquity (Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese, Egyptian) that might otherwise be lost into Arabic or Persian (later into Turkish, Hebrew, and Latin). With a new and easier writing system and the introduction of paper (supposedly the art of papermaking was obtained from Chinese prisoners of wars after the Battle of Talas), information could be disseminated all over the empire more effectively. Scholars could translate works, write their own works, and sell books. The Quran and hadith inculcate the importance of education and the pursuit of knowledge hence influencing the intellectuals’ thinking and practice. This thus led to the great success and peak of scientific and engineering discoveries and inventions during that period.
I’ll end this post with a short video clip from 1001 Inventions and the Library of Secrets (2010). Starring Sir Ben Kingsley, it features the history of science and technology in Muslim civilization during the Islamic Golden Age. A group of schoolchildren is assigned to research on the impact of the Middle Ages/Dark Ages on the modern world. Was it really dark? Was Europe really, totally dark and doomed? In Spain, Cordoba is the centre of art and architecture. Aqueducts brought drinkable water into the city and also the improvement of agriculture that yielded crops for the society. As the librarian/Al-Jazari character said, it’s all a matter of PERSPECTIVE. Watch this clip and let it illuminate and enlighten your mind…
