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Vase, China, Qing dynasty, Qianlong period (1736-1795). Nephrite.
Crow Collection of Asian Art. |
Qualities of Jade
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - Sunday, January 06, 2013
Jade is more than a stone; it is an ideal. Some 2,500 years ago, Confucious (Kong Qiu or Kongzi, 551-479 B.C.) provided a list of likenesses between particular sensual qualities of carved jades such as luster, surface angularity, and veining patterns and qualities of perfected human character such as benevolence, loyalty, and virtue. Confucius elaborated his meaning in a passage from the Book of Rites:
Anciently, superior men found the likeness of all excellent qualities in jade.
Soft smooth and glossy, it appeared to them like benevolence.
Fine, compact, and strong—like intelligence.
Angular, but not sharp and cutting—like righteousness.
Hanging down (in beads) as if it would fall to the ground like (the humility of) propriety.
When struck, yielding a note, clear and prolonged, yet terminating abruptly—like music.
Its flaws not concealing its beauty, nor its beauty concealing its flaws—like loyalty.
With an internal radiance issuing from it on every side—like good faith.
Bright as a brilliant rainbow—like heaven.
Exquisite and mysterious, appearing in the hills and streams—like the earth.
Standing out conspicuous in the symbols of rank—like virtue.
Esteemed by all under the sky—like the path of truth and duty.
For this exhibition, Chinese carved jades haves been chosen from the Crow Collection and matched with each of the equivalencies in Confucius's text. Viewers are invited to test the relationship of sense qualities and character traits for themselves, and to seek understanding of these likenesses from within their own experience.
This exhibition is in partnership with Confucius Institute.
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Qiu Anxiong, New Book of Mountains and Seas, Part 2: Slaughterhouse (detail), 2007. Arcrylic. Collection of the artist. |
Qiu Anxiong: Animated Narratives
Saturday, October 15, 2011 - Sunday, February 05, 2012
This exhibition of work by emerging Shanghai-based artist Qiu Anxiong includes paintings and video art. Qiu's unique videos are created by a stop-motion animation technique from images of his paintings. Together the paintings and videos in this exhibition offer insight into Qiu's process: how he creates an image in paint, how it evolves and is recorded, and its final result in video as part of an ever-changing series of images. The result is hauntingly beautiful moving images that range from mythical stories to urban transformation.
Although the paintings are acrylic on canvas, they appear at first glance to be ink paintings. The landscape images in particular refer to traditional Chinese landscape scroll paintings, with their craggy mountains and still lakes. In some of his videos, Qiu shows the transformation of an idyllic natural landscape to one that is polluted, industrialized, and urban.
Qiu came to international prominence when his work was shown in the 2006 Shanghai Biennial. With a video titled New book of the Mountains and Seas, 2006, he was able to capture an approach to tradition in China at a time when few artists were considering the subject. He writes: "These days, most people consider new and old to be mutually exclusive concepts. The new is completely novel; the old, totally outdated....No one has really thought deeply enough about the intimate relationship between the new and the old. Most people in China automatically equate new with all things Western." One can argue that Qiu's art, through both his chosen medium and subjects, sets out to question prevailing assumptions about tradition and change in Chinese society.
Qiu Anxiong was born in 1976 in Sichuan Province, where he studied at the Sichuan Art Academy until 1994. After completing further study in Kassel, Germany, he returned to China to settle in Shanghai. He has shown his work internationally, including in contemporary art biennials in Sydney, Thessaloniki, Seoul, Sáo Paulo, Busan, and Nanjing.
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Festival of the Blossoming Peachtrees in the Paradise of the Queen Mother of the
China, 17th century. Hanging scroll, ink and colors on silk
Loan from the Crow Family |
Fabled Journeys in Asian Art: East Asia
Saturday, July 16, 2011 - Sunday, August 05, 2012
This summer, the exhibition Fabled Journeys in Asian Art will expand to include East Asia. Viewed as a companion exhibition to Fabled Journeys in Asian Art: South and Southeast Asia, which opened in January 2011 in Gallery 3, the East Asian complement draws on works of art from the Crow Collection with distinctive literary and cultural terrain.
The first section of the East Asian portion of the exhibition presents selected paintings, carved jades, and porcelain sculpture inspired by Taoism, which developed in China. Another focus of the exhibition is journeys figured in images of women—with their own expressed balances of yin and yang. The third section of the exhibition features large ceramic horses and camels made for journeys into the afterlife in burial tombs. They are emblems of China’s “this-worldly” expansion into Central and western Asia during the Han and Tang dynasties along roads that came to be known as “the Silk Route.”
Looking farther east, the last section of the exhibition is an array of objects touching on the transmission of Buddhism to Japan, the transportation and exploitation of ivory for finely carved objects, and the search in Japanese ports by Western traders for porcelains that delivered the qualities of form, color, and translucency prized in Asian ceramics, ivories, and jades.
A journey is a compelling metaphor that has perhaps lost some of its caché in our time of high-speed travel and instant communication; however, whether swift or slow; internal or external; linear, ambling, or circular, a journey is a dynamic undertaking that addresses change, among the most persistent and puzzling qualities of our experience of ourselves and the world.
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