• Tag Archives asian art

  • First Titian Tour

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                         Full Bridgit Moon

    First Titian tour today.  If I examine my own touring skills, as I try to from time to time, I find that I’m better touring old master’s of Western art and Asian art than I am art of the Americas.  The Thaw collection, which I admired, found me at my clunkiest, a bit wooden perhaps, more didactic.  In talking with Allison today it occurred to me that it might be as simple as the fact that I know far more about Asia and Europe than I do about the native peoples of this continent.  It’s much harder for me to talk about historical context with art of the Americas because I just don’t know it as well.

    When I tour Western art or Asian art, I can draw on many years of reading history, going to museums, thinking, traveling; but, when I tour either art of the Americas or Africa for that matter, the context is just not in me, literally.  In that way then those objects do become more like ethnological artifacts than art objects.  As a result, I find myself a bit more distant from them, put in a more scholarly mode, not as engaged.

    At a different point in my life I would have wanted to fix this, to dive into native peoples history and ways, stuff I studied in college, but from an anthropological perspective.  The same situation with Africa.  Today I want to deepen, not broaden my knowledge of art history, so I’m going to continue working with Asian and Western art.  In those areas I still have so much learn and my passion is there.

    The Titian show is in my sweet spot though and a lot of fun.


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  • Korean soap operas and the Silk Road

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Back from a night at the U of M’s Institute for Advanced Studies.  The occasion was a lecture on Chang’an, the capital of the Tang empire and site of the present day city of Xi’an.  The lecture, as well as a pipa concert on Sunday at 3 PM at Kaufman, celebrates the 25th anniversary of a relationship between Minnesota and Shaanxi province as sister states.

    A supper preceded the event, paid for by somebody, and had a variety of Chinese dishes, whether indigenous to Shaanxi or not, I do not know.  Over supper I met a Korean woman, a Catholic, who is a professor of history at the Catholic University of Seoul.  She’s here on a one year research fellowship to study Asian history.  Why Minnesota?  We have a good Asian history contigent here at the U.  Her name was Seon-Hye.  Next to me was a graduate student in history, a Chinese woman, who has as her dissertation project women’s writing in China from the 18thC on.  Seems women wrote poems to celebrate their locality.  Beside her was Yoshimi, a Japanese graduate student.  We got to talking about Korean soap operas.  Yoshimi said they were very popular in Japan, so much so that Japanese young women take tours to Korea to see sites where their favorite soap operas happen.   The Chinese woman, whose name I didn’t learn, agreed, saying the Korean dramas were very popular in China, too.  

    Huang, a young Mandarin man, is a student of the Qin dynasty.

    The lecture that followed supper was on Chang’an and its cosmopolitan nature, demonstrated through art and a mini-history of the silk road.  The lecturer was Kathy Ryor, a professor from Carleton College. 

    Also picked up a pair of new sunglasses today.  Snazzy and gray/blue in tint.  Gives the world a slight wintry cast.


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