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FEBRUARY 2012
A Fragile Heritage, China Counts its Lost Ruins
January 2012
A Chinese Conundrum: Hong Kong Sales Slow Down
NOVEMBER 2011
Hong Kong Autumn Sales: Reading the Mixed Messages
OCTOBER 2011
Museum der Kulturen Basel Opens After Refurbishment
September 2011
Cover: World Heritage List New Sites
JUNE 2011
Thai Border Clashes Continue Around Preah Vihear Temple
May 2010
National Palace Museum: Director Chou Kung-shin
National Palace Museum: Director Chou Kung-shin
Dr Chou Kung-shin (b.1947, Hengyang, Hunan), whohas had a long and distinguished career both in the museum world as well as inacademia in Taiwan, was appointed Director of the National Palace Museum (NPM),Taipei on 20 May 2008. Dr Chou who is trilingual, studied French language andliterature at the Fu Jen Catholic University, Taipei and History of Art at theChinese Culture University, also in Taipei. She launched her 27-year career atthe NPM as a gallery guide in French, English and Chinese and then served asSecretary under the Directors, Chiang Fu-ts'ung (1965-1983) and Ch'in Hsiao-yi(1983-2000). Joining the exhibition department in 1983, Dr Chou went on tobecome Researcher and Chief Curator and began to write and publish extensivelyon various aspects of Chinese as well as European art.
Golden Horn of Plenty
Golden Horn of Plenty
It has taken a lot of travelling to bring a sense identity to the people of Turkey. The2005 Royal Academy exhibition Turks: Journey ofa Thousand Years was ablockbuster show accompanied by a stunning 500-page catalogue, and yet somemystery remains about how these East Asian nomads ended up as highly settled,honorary members of the European Union. It is all part of the Ottoman enigmathat has been worrying Western powers for centuries.
Rashid Rana
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Rashid Rana
Pakistani artist Rashid Rana is an artist's artist, working in the multiple mediums of video, photography and painting, Rana employs the very undoing ofhis medium as the pivotal point from which many of his works develop. Incredibly dynamic and purposely complex, Rana engages with his cultural identity in Pakistan with a sophistication that it is almost impossible to be unmoved by. Conceiving of works that are wonderfully intricate for the constitution of their parts, Rana's billboard-style images read like documentary photography that rest upon the eye reassuringly, yet his ambition for seeing everything in the round, thinking as French painter Georges Braque would have with his early inventiveness for Cubism, means that Rana's works are far more detailed and destabilising than at first they might appear. Revealing compositions of multiple narratives that deal in the fragile of infusion of social detritus and natural beauty, Rana's works are rich in spectacle. In this interview with Asian Art Newspaper, Rashid Rana explores his motives, his personal ambition for contemporary art from Pakistan, a reluctance to be preoccupied by cultural identity and his comparison to footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.
Asia Week Auction Reviews: New York
Asia Week Auction Reviews: New York
The Japanese market continued to perform poorly, with the exception of outstandingmaterial. Snuffbottles continued to exist in a universe of their own andperformed well. Indian, Himalayan, Southeast Asian sold poorly, or well, depending on the proximity of estimates to reality. Indian Moderns and contemporaries sallied forth with post-June 2009 strength and prices for Chinese art resembled telephone numbers, averaging 91% over the high estimates. The week was both a physical and mental marathon with too much to do and not enough time in which to do it, leaving everyone with the task of sorting the must-do list from the if-I-have-time/inclination/energy list. Between the auction viewing, the auctions themselves, the JADA exhibition, the AADNY members' openings, the institutional exhibitions and the obligatory large receptions, the overall level of enthusiasm was underwhelming.