ZIMINZHONG: CHINESE CLOCKS
A major new exhibition featuring 23 mechanical clocks from China, zimingzhong, are currently on loan from The Palace Museum. The exhibition takes visitors on a journey through the 18th century, from the Chinese trading port of Guangzhou to the Forbidden City in the centre of Beijing. Translating to ‘bells that ring themselves’, zimingzhong are more than just clocks: they present an enchanting combination of a flamboyant aesthetic, timekeeping, music, and sometimes movement using mechanisms new to most people in 1700s China.
Wang Xudong, Director of The Palace Museum, commented on the theme of the exhibition, ‘In the 1580s…
MANILA GALLEON
This is the museum’s first large-scale exhibition tracing historical trade links across the Pacific that connected Asia to the Americas and Europe. Featuring over 140 objects spanning the 16th to the 20th centuries, the exhibition allows visitors to discover how the movement of people, goods, and ideas through the Philippines and Mexico created a distinctive cultural and artistic heritage that was shared between seemingly distant regions. Looking at Manila as a precursor of Singapore, the exhibition also reflects on the unique qualities of the blended society and highlights the impact and importance of port cities on global affairs…
INDIAN SKIES
Howard Hodgkin’s (1932-2017) collection of Indian paintings includes works created at the Mughal, Deccan, Rajput, and Pahari courts dating from the 16th to the 19th century. It presents a unique and personal vision of India’s great painting traditions. The artist Howard Hodgkin had been a devoted collector of Indian paintings since his schooldays in the late 1940s. He first encountered Indian paintings as a student at school, which was later fostered by a chance encounter in London, in 1959, with Stuart Cary Welch, the great American scholar and collector of Indian art, rekindled his passion. Progressively refined over the years, his collection has grown slowly but steadily, and has long been considered one of the finest in the world. It is above all a personal collection, formed by an artist’s eye….
MASTER WEAVER ITARO YAMAGUCHI
The second part of the exhibition exploring visual culture influenced by The Tale of Genji in Paris, is dedicated to Itaro Yamaguchi (1901-2007), a master weaver from the Nishijin district of Kyoto, who wove and donated to the Guimet Museum four scrolls illustrating the epic tale.
These scrolls represent the culmination of a life dedicated to weaving. Made by copying painted scrolls from the Heian period (794-1185) and a hybridisation with the high technicality of Western Jacquard mechanics – and its digital avatar – the four scrolls are on show for the first time together in their entirety. To put the creation of the scrolls into context, they are presented with everyday objects, preparatory drawings and other woven works by the master….
Asian and Islamic Works of Art
Chinese, Japanese & South East Asian
On Wednesday, 11 November, over 700 lots spanning many epochs and categories of Asian Art, from Chinese archaic bronzes to Japanese prints and Singaporean …Read More »
The latest shows from around the world
THE MAGIC OF EXPLORATION
From biennials and triennials to art summits, fairs, and cultural tours – countless art events now dot the globe and compete for attention and …Read More »
Object of the Month – February 2022
This month marks the New Chinese Year – and 2022 is the year of the tiger. To mark the event, we’re posting a Chinese …Read More »
Wang Keping
The Rodin Museum invited Wang Keping to take over the sculpture garden as his studio during May and early June. The project is a …Read More »
Tranquebar and The Danish Connection in India
Tranquebar (Tharangampadi) is a village in Tamil Nadu with an intriguing intercultural history – it has been the home to two Danish East India …Read More »