Chosun, Mar.14,2005
Park Soo-keun to Rothko: 'Leeum' Reaches for the Stars

[image] The Blackbox Gallery, a space for temporary exhibitions in the
Samsung Child Education & Culture Center.
The Samsung Museum of Art, or Leeum, is one of the biggest private art
galleries in Korea with more than 15,000 art works. Among the some 120
traditional Korean arts, 24 of them are classified as "national
treasures" and another 41 as "treasures." Along with work by famous
traditional and contemporary Korean artists like Park Soo-keun, Lee
Joong-seop, Kim Whan-ki and Paik Nam-june, the museum also exhibits the
work of international contemporary masters including Mark Rothko,
Matthew Barney and Damien Hirst.

The building itself is a work of art. Rarely have big names of the
architecture like Switzerland's Mario Botta, France's Jean Nouvel and
the Natherlands' Rem Koolhaas come together to design one building.
Leeum opened last October, just in time for the general conference of
the international Council of Museums 2004, which was held in Korea.
After four months of trial operation, the Leeum officially opened to the
public from March 1. The name "Leeum" stands for Lee, the founder's
family name, and "um" from "museum."

Many find the idea of a museum intimidating, worried that they do not
know enough about art or have no way of interpreting the work. But at
the Leeum, the curators hope, such worries are unnecessary.

The Leeum is divided into two parts. Museum 1 houses the permanent
collection of antiquities, and Museum 2 has both permanent and changing
exhibitions of contemporary art from home and abroad. The best way to
see them is in that order.
[image] Robert Mangold’s “Plane/Figure Series E” (left), and Ellsworth
Kelly’s “Diagonal with Curve VIII.”

In Museum 1, visitors can marvel at Goryeo celadon on the fourth floor,
Chosun white porcelain on the third floor, ancient calligraphy and
paintings on the second floor, and Buddhist art and metal crafts on the
ground floor. Museum 2 houses modern and contemporary Korean arts on the
second floor, foreign contemporary arts on the ground floor and
international arts on the first floor underground.

Aids to enjoyment
[image] Museum 2, where modern and contemporary works from Korea and
abroad are exhibited.

The Leeum offers visitors state-of-the-art aids to guide them through
sometimes unfamiliar territory. Audio-visual information is activated
automatically by sensor, while the research corner offers more detailed
and specialized information on works of art.

But it is not only the exhibits that catch the attention of visitors.
The buildings themselves are works of art by some of the leading
architects of our time.
[image] The Leeum lobby.

Mario Botta has made the Museum 1 exhibition hall a quiet and informal
space. The rotunda, which he calls "a space for people," is a charming
structure illuminated by bright natural light coming through the skylight.

The more severe, artificially rusted stainless steel and glass used for
Museum 2, designed by Jean Nouvel, provide a striking contrast. The
temporary exhibition hall, dubbed "Black Box," is the piece de
resistance. Designed by a pioneer of futuristic architecture, the
Netherlands' Rem Koolhaas, it is a big draw for architecture students
from around the world for its use of material and space.

A single visit cannot do justice to the richness of the treasures on
offer at the Leeum. There is enough to see for dozens of visits,
structured by theme or era, or simply to take a more in-depth look at
one or two favorite exhibits.

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200503/200503140017.html

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San Francisco Examiner, Monday, March 14, 2005
China seeks to limit art imports
By Tamara Grippi

San Francisco art dealers and museum curators are alarmed with the
Chinese government's efforts to sharply restrict artifacts from entering
the United States.

Emily Sano, director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, was one
of several museum directors who testified about the negative effects of
such a closed-door policy before the federal Cultural Property Advisory
Committee in Washington, D.C. last month.

Last year, the People's Republic of China filed a request under the 1970
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) Convention, asking the U.S. government to restrict the import
of artifacts dating from the Paleolithic Period through the Qing
Dynasty, which ended in 1912.

Citing concerns about widespread pillaging of archeological sites and
smuggling of artifacts, the Chinese government asked the U.S. to stop
the flow of imports to this country.

The 11-person advisory committee, appointed by President Bush, has not
yet submitted its recommendation, which will be reviewed by the state
department.

In the past, the U.S. has approved requests limiting the import of
certain artifacts from a dozen different countries, including Cambodia,
Italy and Guatemala.

Many in the Asian art field were taken by surprise by the scope of
China's request, which covers all objects older than 100 years.

"It's everything under the sun, from day one, starting 7,000 years BC
all the way up to 1912," Sano said. "That kind of blanket embargo is
absolutely unthinkable."

Such restrictions would discourage interest in Chinese art and would
hurt the museum's ability to attract donors, Sano said.

The impact to the commercial market would be damaging too, according to
Dessa Goddard, director of Asian Works of Art at Bonhams and
Butterfields in San Francisco.

"My clients who collect Chinese art on a large scale will have a lot of
difficulty buying at a Hong Kong auction and bringing pieces back into
the U.S.," Goddard said.

It its written request, the Chinese government argues, "the worldwide
popularity and high prices for Chinese archaeological artifacts have
encouraged illegal excavation and smuggling of cultural property."

The petition points to the interception of a shipment destined for the
U.S. containing more than 2,200 pieces of smuggled items including
"ancient porcelain, Buddhist stone statues and Tibetan sutras."

Requests for comment from the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco
were not answered.

American art dealers and curators argue the U.S. market dwarfs in
comparison to the market within China itself and the U.S. is being
unfairly blamed.

The increase in excavations in China is due in large part to widespread
construction in China, spurred by booming economic development, said
James Lally, a New York City Chinese art dealer.

Lally and others dispute claims that U.S. collectors are consuming the
lion's share of Asian art. He said figures posted by a Chinese Web site
tracking the sales of the 47 top Chinese art auction houses that showed
2004 sales within China reached $680 million compared to $35 million in
the U.S.

"Sotheby's and Christies and Butterfield are not smuggling things out,"
Lally said. Everything is legitimate. … Fully declared when it leaves
and fully declared when it arrives."

Patricia Berger, professor of Chinese Art at the University of
California at Berkeley, said the proposed restrictions could backfire.

"If it's too draconian, then the underground market flares up again,"
she said.

Goddard argued that China should take responsibility for regulating the
busiest marketplace for Chinese art, Hong Kong — "which they have every
ability to do."

http://www.sfexaminer.com/articles/2005/03/14/business/20050314_bu01_china.txt

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday, Mar. 13 2005
Spotlight shines on Asian arts
By David Bonetti

[image] Guanyin--a Buddhist deity--is an 11th-century Chinese wood
sculpture from the Northern Song Dynasty. (Courtesy SLAM )
Guanyin (above) - a Buddhist deity - is an 11th-century Chinese wood
sculpture from the Northern Song Dynasty. Guanyin, portrayed as a
princely, androgynous man,"is one of the finest sculptures of its type
in the world," says Steven Owyoung, the St. Louis Art Museum's curator
of Asian art. This water jar (right) from the Neolithic period -
4,000-3,000 B.C. - was given by Edith Spink in memory of her husband,
C.C. Johnson Spink. The museum's collection has been enhanced greatly
because of bequests and donations of collectors.The art museum purchased
this Head of Buddha, which is from India from the Gandharan period, 4th
century.

Grain Vessel is from China's Eastern Zhou Dynasty of the first half of
the 6th century B.C. The bronze piece is a gift to the museum from J.
Lionberger Davis, one of three major local collectors of Asian art who
have shaped the museum's collection.

"Everything has its beauty, but not everyone can see it."
- Confucius

The St. Louis Art Museum's recent reinstallation of its Asian art
collection is more than just a repainting of galleries and a relighting
of old familiar objects, although many very old - try 4000 B.C. - and
familiar objects are on view, perhaps to better advantage than ever
before thanks to the subtle repainting and relighting. And there are
many objects not previously seen, including an important gift from
Robert E. Kresko, a local philanthropist, of later Chinese bronzes (see
the news brief on Page 2 for more information). But the reinstallation
also reflects the changing philosophy of museum design and presentation
and the growing international interest in the traditional arts of Asia.

The Asian galleries are the fourth department to be reconceptualized and
reorganized since Brent Benjamin became museum director in 1999.
Earlier, galleries devoted to the Oceanic, African, American and
arms-and-armor collections were reinstalled. Galleries for early
European art will be rehung in 2006 and those for ancient art in 2007.

Benjamin stresses that the reinstallations are part of his policy to
bring attention to the museum's permanent collection. "The permanent
collection is a great resource here in St. Louis," he says. "It would be
conceptually impossible to mount an exhibition equal to it. But in the
course of doing special exhibitions, the museum has learned a lot about
display and interpretation that had not until now been applied to the
collection."

Benjamin says that the museum's primary goal is to present the
collection at its very best - "to put our best foot forward." "We look
at everything we put out in the galleries on the basis of quality -
everything is an A or A+ work," he says. "We want the public to see the
best we have to offer, and through text labels, we want them to
understand what the objects mean and represent. The last thing we want
as a public institution is for our visitors to feel ill-at-ease."

Chief curator Andrew Walker says that the reinstallations also give
curators an opportunity to get a better understanding of their
department's strengths and to identify areas where future growth might
be focused. The most dramatic change in the Asian galleries is that the
exhibits were previously organized in terms of medium - for instance,
ceramics, whether made in China, Japan or Korea, were shown together -
but now they are organized by culture. Walker says that one advantage of
the reconceptualization is that Japanese lacquer work, which didn't fit
in anywhere before, can now be shown in vitrines devoted to Japanese art.

In the current scheme, China dominates. Of eight galleries, Chinese art
is shown in five. There is one gallery for Indian art, one for Japanese
art and one for scroll paintings and screens from the three East Asian
cultures of China, Korea and Japan. A single vitrine of Korean ceramics
in a gallery devoted to Chinese ceramics reflects the fact that the
museum does not own very many works of Korean art. The museum also
possesses few examples of Southeast Asian, Indonesian or Philippine art.

China's dominance is a function of local collecting activity and China's
cultural role. The three major local collectors of Asian art that have
shaped the collection - William K. Bixby, Samuel C. David and J.
Lionberger Davis - favored Chinese art.

Quality outshines quantity

Steven Owyoung, the museum's curator of Asian art, has overseen the
department since 1983. He first installed the collection in 1987, and he
is quite pleased with the results of this reinstallation. "I feel that
this installation brings out the qualities of individual works very
well," he says. "When we put an object in the gallery, it shines." The
key to that is casework created uniformly for the department and the
lighting. "The lights are now down close to the objects, not 20 or 30
feet above as they were before. The entire installation is meant to
focus attention on the artworks themselves," Owyoung, a small, somewhat
puckish man with a discreet ponytail, points out. "The molding and
colors of the casework were chosen so that they would fade away. They
are there primarily for protection of the objects, and the goal was that
you wouldn't see them at all."

The St. Louis Art Museum can't boast of a large collection of Asian art.
Its current count is 2,800 objects, 587 of which Owyoung has acquired.
And 150 are currently on view. But Owyoung is quite confident that the
quality of the collection outshines its relative smallness. "We have put
out all our A+ material," he says in the curious grading lingo museum
people use to talk about art. "Most of the objects are extremely rare,
extremely beautiful."

Gwen Bennett, Chinese archeologist in the Washington University School
of Art, agrees. "While small, the collection is of very high quality."

Owyoung, a painting and calligraphy specialist, was hired to build that
part of the collection. "The museum can be very proud of its collection
of ancient Chinese bronzes, which are rightly seen as the stars of the
collection," he says. "I have to choke on that as a painting and
calligraphy expert, but that's the fact."

But Owyoung is proud of a number of the paintings he has acquired. One
of the treasures, "Lotus and Ducks," a pair of late-13th-century Chinese
hanging scrolls on silk from the Southern Song dynasty, is on view. The
mated pair of waterfowl in the paintings are symbols of marital fidelity
and happiness, Owyoung wrote in the museum's new handbook. Such pairs of
paintings were traditionally given to newlyweds in hope of productive
family life since each lotus blossom hides a pod filled with seeds,
symbolizing abundance and, hence, many children. By any measure, the
paintings are beautiful, sensuous and alluring.

What might not be apparent is the paintings' rarity. "There are only six
matched pairs of lotus and duck paintings in the world," Owyoung points
out. "There are only two in the United States; the other is at the Met.
I've come to the conclusion that ours is the earliest that has survived."

Another recently acquired painting on view is Japanese, a
late-17th-century Qing Dynasty hanging scroll by Daoji of a mountainous
landscape with friends fishing and talking together on a boat languidly
floating in a river. "This was one of the first works acquired under
Brent Benjamin's directorship," Owyoung recounts. "I had just arrived in
a gallery in New York. The painting had just been hung. I took one look,
and I wanted it for the collection. I called Brent Benjamin and told him
what I had found. He said, 'Put it on hold and send it to St. Louis.'
That's how we got it."

Owyoung says that there are always many Asian scroll paintings and
screens on the market, but relatively few of high quality. The key to
finding superior - or A+ - works is access to good dealers. Dealers of
traditional Asian art are often scholars as well as businessmen. "Some
of the best teachers are dealers," Owyoung says.

Collectors are encouraged

Another purpose of the reinstallation, Owyoung says, is to show the St.
Louis community that there are many active collectors of Asian art
affiliated with the museum. The truth is that museum collections grow by
leaps with the bequests and donations of committed collectors, those
individuals who somehow catch the bug to focus their acquisitive
activities in certain areas. The Asian collection here has benefited
from a number of those collectors in the past, and it is encouraging a
number of current collectors.

Among the most prominent is Kresko, whose collection of later Chinese
bronze works fills an entire gallery. In this case, later means 12th to
18th century A.D. - the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Since the
museum's strength in Asian art is ancient Chinese bronzes - works made
between 1,500 B.C. and 100 A.D. - this recent gift makes a marvelous
complement.

Owyoung observes that his advice to local collectors is to augment
rather than duplicate existing collections. He adds that in addition to
the Kresko collection of bronzes, other serious collectors in the area
are focusing on Japanese prints, Japanese painting and Chinese ceramics;
one collector has assembled what he terms as an eclectic collection of
objects.

Not all of the museum's treasures are gifts. Consider "Lotus and Ducks,"
that pair of 13th-century scroll paintings. One of the great works in
the museum is an 11th-century Chinese wood sculpture from the Northern
Song Dynasty of a Buddhist deity called Guanyin. Purchased in 1947, it
has been reinstalled to dramatic effect in the galleries. A saintly,
enlightened being who remains in the material world to aid in the
salvation of mortals, Guanyin is portrayed as a princely, androgynous
man, wearing a crown and draped in jewels. According to Owyoung's
handbook entry, his relaxed pose is known as "great royal ease." The
work exudes a dynamic serenity that suggests personal transformation. It
has been reinstalled above eye level on a simple cubic pedestal, at the
height it would have occupied originally. It appears to peer down on the
viewer with great benevolence.

"It is one of the finest sculptures of its type in the world," Owyoung
says. "There are many like it in museums across the world, but this one
has suffered very little from later alterations or restoration. We are
seeing close to what one originally saw." One suspects it exceeds the A+
classification, residing in a category of its own.

Although traditional Asian art has always attracted connoisseurs in the
West, it has been a harder sell with the general public. But, thanks to
the greater ease of travel and communication, not to mention the
popularity of East Asian, especially Japanese, pop culture among Western
youth, that might be changing. Owyoung attributes collectors' initial
attraction to the works' exoticism. "Asian art is so different from
Western," he says. "This strangeness attracts many people. And as they
get involved, they discover that the objects that dominate Asian art are
beautiful, subtly made and refined.

"Today, people are exposed to so many things all over the world. A
Japanese pop singer today will have a No. 1 song in China or Korea. That
was unheard of 20 years ago. Knowing just a little bit about a culture
can lead to a greater interest. One of the great London dealers of
Japanese prints was inspired by a Japanese print his parents hung in his
bedroom as a child."

Who knows what the kids hooked on manga and anime today will look at
when they get older?

The collectors

The St. Louis Art Museum's Asian art collection is largely the result of
gifts and bequests from three St. Louis collectors of the first half of
the century, each of whom lived colorful lives of travel, civic duty and
a passion for art.

William K. Bixby (1857-1931) came to St. Louis in 1881 as a purchasing
agent for Jay Gould's railway system. He retired in 1905 at age 48 to
devote himself full time to collecting. In 1919, he went on an extended
tour of East Asia to purchase art for himself and the new museum. He
brought back treasures in all mediums, among them a Song Dynasty scroll
"Fish Swimming Amid Falling Flowers," one of the great works in the
museum, not currently on view because of conservation concerns. "Mr.
Bixby was an extraordinary man, larger than life, but down to earth,"
says Steven Owyoung, the museum's curator of Asian art. "He was a friend
of Charles Freer - both were among the directors of the 1904 World's
Fair. When he discovered that Freer was going to give his great
collection of Asian art to the nation, Bixby got the idea to do
something similar for St. Louis."

Samuel C. Davis (1871-1940), brother of Dwight F. Davis, after whom the
Davis Cup in tennis is named, developed a taste for Chinese art in 1893
while taking a world tour after graduating from Harvard. Davis
specialized in Chinese ceramics, and in 1940, he gave the museum 202
pieces of ceramics along with 23 other works, dividing his collection
with his alma mater. Davis purchased much of his collection from C.T.
Loo, the leading dealer in Chinese antiquities in the United States at
the time. Owyoung credits Loo with introducing American collectors to
the authentic Chinese taste in art, which eventually replaced the
Victorian taste that had prevailed. "Loo gave Davis great things,"
Owyoung says. "Our Northern Song celadon dish, for instance. It was
extraordinary that Loo had it, but it was even more extraordinary that
he let Davis buy it."

J. Lionberger Davis (1878-1973). A lawyer, banker and civic activist,
Davis (who was not related to Samuel C.) collected broadly and
eclectically, giving the museum an important collection of old master
prints (including 15 Rembrandts) in addition to the ancient Chinese
bronzes - wine vessels and goblets that were used for ritual purposes -
that were his passion. Owyoung says that Davis also worked with Loo.
"The quality of his bronzes is exceptional, some of them are among the
most important in the world, and Davis gave the best of the best to us."

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/visualarts/ story/837D6411702870CB86256FC100379C48?OpenDocument

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Forbidden City embraces modern photography
www.chinaview.cn 2005-03-14 09:17:40

BEIJING, Mar. 14 -- An International Photography Exhibition will be
held in the Imperial Palace to celebrate 80th anniversary of the
Imperial Palace Museum.

The themed of the exhibition is 'A Dialogue between Civilizations'
and includes 300 works by 36 photographers from both home and abroad.

Some of the world-renowned photographers participating in the
event, include fashion photographer, Annie Leibovitz, National
Geographic photographer, William Albert Allard, and war photographer
James Nachtwey.

This is the first time the 500-year-old Forbidden City has opened
its gates for an exhibition of modern photography.

The exhibition will run from October 1st to 31st.

(Source: CRIENGLISH.com)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-03/14/content_2694052.htm

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Ancient knife proves longer astronomical history
www.chinaview.cn 2005-03-12 09:51:05
[image]

XINING, March 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Archaeologists in northwest China's
Qinghai province claimed that a 5,000-year-old stone knife with designs
of constellations will extend China's history of astronomical
observation by 1,000 years.

The finely-polished stone knife, six centimeters long and
threecentimeters wide, was unearthed at the Laomao Ruins, a New Stone
Age site nine kilometers west of Lamao Village in Qinghai.

Archaeologists also unearthed many other relics from the site
including pottery pieces, stone and bone tools.

Liu Baoshan, head of the Qinghai Provincial Cultural Relics
andArchaeology Research Institute, said seven holes on the stone knife
clearly form the Big Dipper and another three holes form theof the Altair.

Liu said China has along history of astronomy. The Collection of
Ancient Texts records the world earliest solar eclipse in 2137 B.C. and
there were records of astronomical phenomena during the Xia (2100
B.C.-1600 B.C.), Shang (1600 B.C.-1100 B.C.) and Zhou (1100 B.C.-221
B.C.) dynasties.

Sawtooth on both end of the knife also means that the stone tool is
very unique, Liu said. Stone knives with sawtooth have notyet been
unearthed in the area.

Liu and his colleagues found that the stone knife had never been
used, so they asserted that the knife was possibly a ritual implement
used by a holy man.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-03/12/content_2686446.htm

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BBC 2005/03/11 12:53:41 GMT
Shanghai art attracts world's gaze
Much of China's contemporary art scene is based in Beijing - but
recently, artists from Shanghai have been attracting major attention.

Exhibitors at the Shanghai Biennale art museum, started in 1994, are
becoming increasingly influential and many curators based in Beijing and
overseas are now becoming more interested in Shanghai artists.
[image] Zhou Tiehai's covers were a protest at Western ignorance of China

"People are coming by now - there are museums, so it's better," Lorrenz
Hebling, the curator of Shanghai Biennale, told BBC World Service's The
Ticket programme.

"A few years ago, people saw Chinese are as tourist art, not serious.
Now it's surely better - people are starting to remember the names of
the artists, they're writing them down. They didn't do that before."

Freer to experiment

The city's art centre is in a warehouse district in Old Shanghai - one
of the few areas of the city that has not undergone massive
transformation in recent times.

The Shanghai Biennale is the centre for the contemporary art scene in
Shanghai, with up to 40 studios working around it.

The gallery's works tend to be on the large side - one is a five-metre
high picture of a screaming face; another features a large number of
small terracotta figures climbing over each other.

Chinese art had begun to attract international interest in the 1980s,
until the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were dramatically put down
by the government.
[image] "Before, in China, art was not noticed - now it is just a job,
like a teacher" Shen Fan

This ushered in a period of conservatism amongst Chinese artists. But
now they are feeling freer to experiment again.

"When I was in school, China was quite closed," said Zhou Tiehai, a
Shanghai-based artist who exploits both Western and Chinese traditions
in his works.

"As a young artist, we didn't have a lot of chances.

"During that time, exhibitions would be closed by the police."

Tiehai has swiftly become very collectable, and known to art critics
worldwide.

His most famous works include superimposing his face on Western magazine
covers, and a portrait of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani as a
heroic Mao-type figure - with two balls of dung beneath.

Tiehai said he welcomed the attention from foreign collectors and art
experts.

"In the early 1990s, artists didn't have a chance to show abroad," he added.

Shen Fan, described as the leading abstract painter in Shanghai, said
the artistic boom in Shanghai had been incredibly rapid.

"Before, in China, art was not noticed," he said. "Now it is just a job,
like a teacher."

Shen Fan experiments with traditional Chinese forms such as calligraphy
and tries to change them into something more abstract.

"Some years ago, I had an exhibition in Germany - they asked me if my
painting fitted in the Chinese traditional culture," he added.

"But my friends in China don't think so."

Diluting art?

This is an important point about modern Chinese art - and what concerns
some critics who feel that Chinese artists are sacrificing tradition to
attract a Western audience.

Zhou Tiehai's most famous works, for example, involve superimposing Joe
Camel, the cartoon face of Camel cigarettes, onto images such as nude
models.
[image] Chinese art briefly became more conservative after Tiananmen Square

"A lot of people use the symbols, like Mao and the cultural revolution,"
he told The Ticket.

"I think that's too easy - so I decided to use Western images."

But he dismissed claims that Western success diluted Chinese art,
comparing it to football.

"A Brazilian player can play well for a football team that plays in
England," he argued.

"It does not make much difference [to his performance] if he is from
Brazil or from England."

And Ludovic Bois, of the Chinese Contemporary Gallery in London, said
that certainly in England the hype about Chinese art is being overlooked
anyway.

"The English are not really there as big collectors," he said. "They are
missing the boat.

"The media has not really been covering this very well... most of the
buyers are from Europe and America, and the English are not quite there."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4337989.stm

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gov.tw, 2005/03/15 15:08:42
Artists play guinea pig in NPM experiment
SOURCE: Taiwan Journal

Of the Chinese antiquities in the collection of Taipei's world-renowned
National Palace Museum, "which do you personally feel are most
precious?" asks acclaimed Taiwanese television and film director Wang
Shaudi in the opening frames of her documentary "Behind the Palace,
Beyond the Horizon." Answering her own question, she says that the most
precious among them ought to be those that arouse one's own most
heartfelt emotional response.

The 76-minute documentary, which premiered in Taipei March 1 and was
screened on Public Television the next weekend, is the first of a
projected series of cinematic productions commissioned by the Palace
Museum with the aim of spurring people to reflect on the museum's
meaning. At the premiere, museum director Shih Shou-chien described the
documentary as an approach to solving the problem of how to help young
people realize how close the museum's collection is to them. "It would
be a pity if this precious Chinese art collection could not have any
function for contemporary people," he said. When viewers fully
appreciate it, they can see not only the past but have new visions of
the present and future. He said he hoped that its antiquities can
function as creative resources through dynamic interaction between them
and the public.

Wang's strategy for exploring these questions was to conduct and
document a fascinating experiment. She invited artists of diverse
disciplines and cultural backgrounds to come to the museum, spend some
time communing with the works in its collection, and see what creative
inspirations might flower from that interaction.

Among those who accepted the invitation to be her guinea pigs were
internationally renowned masters of animation, ceramics and even fashion
design. Also volunteering themselves were students from the College of
Design of Taipei's Shih Chien University, who accepted her challenge as
part of their graduation projects.

Over a period of several months, Wang and her crew kept watch over their
brood of artists, recording the different ways in which the creative
power that went into artifacts from so many centuries and millennia ago
catalyzed fresh visions that, nevertheless, manifest a continuity of
that original power. As she herself put it, the process of interaction
between these artists and the museum's collection was a "circulation of
creative energy." One of the participants was 65-year-old Gerrit van
Dijk, founder of the Dutch Institute of Animated Films. Originally a
painter, he turned to animation in 1971 and, in that field, has won
several honors, including Golden Bear awards at the 1989 and 1998 Berlin
Film Festival.

What captivated van Dijk the most during his visits to the Palace Museum
was the "unbelievable sophistication" of woodblock engravings carved by
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) artist Siang Nan-jhou in collaboration with
painter Chen Hong-shou as illustrations for Tang Dynasty (618-907)
novelist Yuan Jhen's love story "The Romance of the Western Chamber."
Consequently, during his one-month stay in Taipei, Dijk created a short
animation titled "Letter," in which one of the most eye-catching scenes
is the morphing of the image of a Dutch woman taken from a centuries-old
oil painting into an image of the Western Chamber heroine, as portrayed
in the Ming Dynasty engravings.

In order to discover how the artists' creative process might be related
to their daily lives--especially in the case of those for whom Taiwan is
a strange new environment--Wang's team sometimes accompanied them on
their walkabouts in Taipei. The documentary, for example, shows Dijk
chatting with street vendors and, out of curiosity, buying a pack of
Taiwan's cheapest brand of cigarettes.

"Letter," indeed, incorporates Dijk's impressions of Taiwan. In one
scene, the ubiquitous "little green man" in Taipei's pedestrian traffic
lights jumps out of the light to ramble about on the streets.

Participant Jean Girel is one of only two ceramicists ever to be named
by the French government as a Maitre d'Art, an honorific that is
equivalent to the Living National Treasure accolade bestowed by the
Japanese government on outstanding Japanese artists and artisans.

What grabbed 58-year-old Girel's attention during his visits to the
National Palace Museum were Sung Dynasty (960-1279) porcelains and,
dating back several millennia, animal-shaped bronze wine containers and
other bronze vessels decorated with animal patterns. Deeply moved by the
ancient bronze artisans' worshipful respect for the cosmos and nature,
he created a set of 11 porcelains in the form of dishes mounted on a
square pedestal holding bird, turtle and other animal figurines with
shapes similar to those of the ancient bronzes. At the ceramics studio
of National Taipei Teachers College where he set up shop, he
experimented with combinations of brown, blue to green glazes in the
attempt to simulate the hues of bronze and jade.

Japanese fashion designer Ito Sachico--who, at 48, is also known for her
creations in the realms of interior design, costume design for cinema
and stage, and advertising design--was inspired by the Palace Museum's
Tang Dynasty human figurines, Chinese-language characters appearing in
Buddhist sutras of different ages, and the intricate patterns of Ching
Dynasty (1644-1911) tapestries. Pulling together these threads, she
created a woman's outfit incorporating more than 10 fabrics selected
from Taipei shops.

No less interesting was the chemistry which took place between the
museum's collection and Shih Chien University students. Huang Cian-jyuan
was first intrigued by a scene of fun and merriment captured in a
painting by Su Han-chen, a Sung Dynasty painter famous for his childhood
themes, depicting an itinerant toy vendor. Subsequently, she discovered
similar paintings by artists in other eras, in which toy salesmen are
mobbed by delighted tots, conveying the feeling, as Huang put it, that
what was actually being sold was not toys but happiness.

Though having nothing to do directly with toys, the creations inspired
by these paintings nevertheless embody the child-like delight in toys.
Huang's attention was drawn to the toy containers in the paintings, made
from sections of wide-diameter bamboo. Adopting that as her medium, she
created a set of bamboo sculptures with crazy contours that elicit a
feeling of playful innocence.

Student Wang Li-wun drew her inspiration from a melange of objects,
including a Ching Dynasty snuff bottle and hookah, a Tang Dynasty
potpourri ball and a cooking stove from the Warring States Period
(475-221 B.C.). In her feeling, they were all closely related to the
sense of smell, triggering a chain reaction of flashbacks to childhood
scenes associated with all types of odors, aromas and fragrances.

The fruit of Wang's experience was a set of suspended sculptures
fabricated from plastic tubing, which, with their complex networks of
air-conducting passageways, hint at olfactory organs and intermeshed
olfactory memories.

The creative touchstone for another student, Chen Yi-jia, was a work by
Tang Dynasty calligrapher Huai Su and the sense of irrepressible flow of
power it conveyed. He was inspired to invent a curious contraption,
consisting of several wiggly multi-jointed, coarse-fiber brushes bound
together. With this tool he created a number of rather remarkable ink
paintings whose bold strokes convey a feeling of tumultuous yet
beautifully structured currents.

Wang is the winner of Taiwan's Golden Bell award for excellence in
television production, including the categories of best director, best
producer and best scriptwriter. Her films, mainly about and for children
and young adults have won international recognition. Her 1997 animated
film "Grandma and her Ghosts," received a Certificate of Merit at the
1999 Chicago International Children's Film Festival, and her 2004 drama
"Bear Hug" was selected from among 215 as one of the nine finalists in
the 2004 International Film Festival for Children and Young Audience in
Chemnitz, Germany, in addition to winning a Golden Horse--the Oscar of
the Chinese-language film industry--for Best New Actress.

The next installment in the series of cinematic works commissioned by
the National Palace Museum, soon to be released, is a drama called "The
Passage" featured at the latest Tokyo International Film Festival.
Directed by Cheng Wen-tang, another Golden Bell winner, it tells the
story of how visits to the museum transform the protagonists' lives.

As for productions to come, museum representatives are cooperating with
other directors, including Wang jyun-jie and Peng Wun, to produce short
clips to be aired in public spaces such as airports and buses. They also
hope to lure renowned Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki to come and see
what new inspirations might be sparked by hanging out at the palace.

http://publish.gio.gov.tw/FCJ/current/05031151.html
http://english.www.gov.tw/index.jsp?id=14&recid=104497&viewdate=0

__________________

with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de

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