{"title":"Review: Interwoven, A Digital Public Platform To Connect Artworks Across Museums","authors":"Deepthi Murali","doi":"10.3998/ars.5201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.5201","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54021,"journal":{"name":"ARS Orientalis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138997821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From small-scale shrines to handheld icons and votive tablets, portability has long factored into the design and reception of Buddhist art. This article charts the uses and design of portable objects that are as instrumental and effective as their monumental counterparts in disseminating Buddhism in Japan. The article first examines the circulation of miniature icons that served as diplomatic gifts in the sixth and seventh centuries. It then turns to figurative plaques from Tang-dynasty China (618–907) that were modified for votive and architectural uses in early Japan. Lastly, the article examines the reasons underlying the enduring popularity of portable shrines in the archipelago. In sum, this article asks: What factors determined the size, scale, and materiality of Buddhist art? More importantly, how does the case of the portable speak to the discipline of Buddhist art that often preoccupies itself with the monumental and the site-specific?
{"title":"Portable Faith: Toward a Non-Site-Specific History of Buddhist Art in Japan","authors":"Chun-Wa Chan","doi":"10.3998/ars.4980","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.4980","url":null,"abstract":"From small-scale shrines to handheld icons and votive tablets, portability has long factored into the design and reception of Buddhist art. This article charts the uses and design of portable objects that are as instrumental and effective as their monumental counterparts in disseminating Buddhism in Japan. The article first examines the circulation of miniature icons that served as diplomatic gifts in the sixth and seventh centuries. It then turns to figurative plaques from Tang-dynasty China (618–907) that were modified for votive and architectural uses in early Japan. Lastly, the article examines the reasons underlying the enduring popularity of portable shrines in the archipelago. In sum, this article asks: What factors determined the size, scale, and materiality of Buddhist art? More importantly, how does the case of the portable speak to the discipline of Buddhist art that often preoccupies itself with the monumental and the site-specific?","PeriodicalId":54021,"journal":{"name":"ARS Orientalis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138996629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing on Zhong Kui’s legendary identity as a demon queller, this study suggests that Gong Kai (1222–1307) created a veiled autobiographical work, Zhongshan Going on Excursion in the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC, that combines painting and inscription to project his unfulfilled aspiration to clear the nation of destructive evils. The demons to be expelled in his life as a Song patriot living into the Mongol Yuan were the powerful and abusive ethnic others, not limited to the ruling Mongols. Conflating himself with Zhong Kui by constructing a new, self-referential biography and image of the demon queller, Gong Kai conveyed his xenophobia during the dynastic transition through two topical allusions, the Muslim merchant-official Pu Shougeng’s fatal blow to the Song revivalist cause in Quanzhou in late 1276 and the Tibetan Buddhist leader Yang Lianzhenjia’s desecration of Song imperial tombs in Shaoxing in 1285. In the painting, Gong Kai confesses his resignation to the brutal new realities under alien rule by portraying Zhong Kui in an uncharacteristically subdued demeanor.
{"title":"Xenophobia and Resignation in the Wake of the Mongol Conquest: Topical Allusions in Gong Kai’s Zhong Kui Scroll","authors":"Shi-yee Liu","doi":"10.3998/ars.4983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.4983","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on Zhong Kui’s legendary identity as a demon queller, this study suggests that Gong Kai (1222–1307) created a veiled autobiographical work, Zhongshan Going on Excursion in the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC, that combines painting and inscription to project his unfulfilled aspiration to clear the nation of destructive evils. The demons to be expelled in his life as a Song patriot living into the Mongol Yuan were the powerful and abusive ethnic others, not limited to the ruling Mongols. Conflating himself with Zhong Kui by constructing a new, self-referential biography and image of the demon queller, Gong Kai conveyed his xenophobia during the dynastic transition through two topical allusions, the Muslim merchant-official Pu Shougeng’s fatal blow to the Song revivalist cause in Quanzhou in late 1276 and the Tibetan Buddhist leader Yang Lianzhenjia’s desecration of Song imperial tombs in Shaoxing in 1285. In the painting, Gong Kai confesses his resignation to the brutal new realities under alien rule by portraying Zhong Kui in an uncharacteristically subdued demeanor.","PeriodicalId":54021,"journal":{"name":"ARS Orientalis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138999607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Much scholarship concerning the maritime ceramic-exchange networks between China and the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean worlds has concentrated on the importation of Chinese blue-and-white porcelains and local responses to these wares. Celadon ceramics, however, were among the earliest Chinese wares to be traded—and emulated—within these exchange systems. Foregrounding examples from the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, this article will consider textual evidence, manuscript paintings, archaeological finds, and extant objects, in order to explore the reception and emulation of Chinese celadon ceramics within these regions, with a focus on West Asia. Cutting across previously published, somewhat siloed studies, the discussion will place these celadon-exchange histories into a broader framework, tracing varying responses toward these materials in the context of transregional geographies.
{"title":"Green with Envy: Celadons, Circulation, and Emulation in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean Worlds","authors":"Denise-Marie Teece","doi":"10.3998/ars.4982","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.4982","url":null,"abstract":"Much scholarship concerning the maritime ceramic-exchange networks between China and the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean worlds has concentrated on the importation of Chinese blue-and-white porcelains and local responses to these wares. Celadon ceramics, however, were among the earliest Chinese wares to be traded—and emulated—within these exchange systems. Foregrounding examples from the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, this article will consider textual evidence, manuscript paintings, archaeological finds, and extant objects, in order to explore the reception and emulation of Chinese celadon ceramics within these regions, with a focus on West Asia. Cutting across previously published, somewhat siloed studies, the discussion will place these celadon-exchange histories into a broader framework, tracing varying responses toward these materials in the context of transregional geographies.","PeriodicalId":54021,"journal":{"name":"ARS Orientalis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138998094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Raku ceramics were first produced in Kyoto in the late sixteenth century, and have continued to be made and used in the context of ritualized Japanese tea culture (chanoyu) up to the present day. This essay examines the interest of Charles Lang Freer in Raku ceramics, and considers how his acquisitions—largely collected between 1895 and 1910, a period of some turmoil in the Japanese art market—serve as a useful index to changing assessments of the Raku ceramic tradition and its place in the broader landscape of arts associated with traditional tea culture in Japan and abroad.
{"title":"Defining Raku Ceramics: Translations, Elisions, Evolutions","authors":"Morgan Pitelka","doi":"10.3998/ars.4986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.4986","url":null,"abstract":"Raku ceramics were first produced in Kyoto in the late sixteenth century, and have continued to be made and used in the context of ritualized Japanese tea culture (chanoyu) up to the present day. This essay examines the interest of Charles Lang Freer in Raku ceramics, and considers how his acquisitions—largely collected between 1895 and 1910, a period of some turmoil in the Japanese art market—serve as a useful index to changing assessments of the Raku ceramic tradition and its place in the broader landscape of arts associated with traditional tea culture in Japan and abroad.","PeriodicalId":54021,"journal":{"name":"ARS Orientalis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138998413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kōno Michisei’s (1895–1950) Self-Portrait (1917) is celebrated as a masterpiece of Taishō-period (1912–1926) painting in Japan but remains little-known overseas. This article seeks to reintroduce and contextualize this rare example of a Japanese oil painting in an American collection with an exploration of the artist’s conception of his self-portrait between the dynamic currents of Taisho period yōga (Western-style painting) and his own worldview. Kōno stood on the fringes of the Tokyo avant-garde as artists sought to overcome the naturalism advocated by the academy in pursuit of an art more true to the individual. After years of studying prints of the old masters amid the rural environs of his hometown, Nagano, and inspired by a uniquely spiritual outlook, in Self-Portrait, Kōno synthesized the grand portrait mode of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) with his own conception of artistic beauty to create a highly idiosyncratic expression of the self.
{"title":"An Artistic Nature: Kōno Michisei’s Self-Portrait (1917)","authors":"Helen Swift","doi":"10.3998/ars.4987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.4987","url":null,"abstract":"Kōno Michisei’s (1895–1950) Self-Portrait (1917) is celebrated as a masterpiece of Taishō-period (1912–1926) painting in Japan but remains little-known overseas. This article seeks to reintroduce and contextualize this rare example of a Japanese oil painting in an American collection with an exploration of the artist’s conception of his self-portrait between the dynamic currents of Taisho period yōga (Western-style painting) and his own worldview. Kōno stood on the fringes of the Tokyo avant-garde as artists sought to overcome the naturalism advocated by the academy in pursuit of an art more true to the individual. After years of studying prints of the old masters amid the rural environs of his hometown, Nagano, and inspired by a uniquely spiritual outlook, in Self-Portrait, Kōno synthesized the grand portrait mode of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) with his own conception of artistic beauty to create a highly idiosyncratic expression of the self.","PeriodicalId":54021,"journal":{"name":"ARS Orientalis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138996505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Toward an Ethics of Place: Asian Art in/and Digital Art History","authors":"Stephen H. Whiteman","doi":"10.3998/ars.4988","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.4988","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54021,"journal":{"name":"ARS Orientalis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139000344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ernst Herzfeld’s (1879–1948) papers on his excavation of the Abbasid city of Samarra, held at the National Museum of Asian Art Archives, include two maps indicating the existence of a large circular basin at the center of the square domed chamber south of the Caliphal Palace’s throne room. The details of this basin are provided in an orthographic drawing, and the captions of two photographs tersely attribute it to the palace. Now in the Madrasa al-Sharābiya in Baghdad, this basin has sometimes been identified as Qaṣʿat Firʿawn (Pharaoh’s Bowl), a large basin cited in medieval sources as having been part of the fountain of the Great Mosque of al-Mutawakkil. Strangely enough, not the slightest mention of this basin has been found in the written records of the excavations or in the published reports. A careful examination of other documents in Herzfeld’s archives and publications, as well as a number of reports of the Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities, has established that the basin must have been discovered under unknown circumstances at an unspecified location in the palace several years after Herzfeld’s excavation. Furthermore, the study of medieval textual sources and other data related to the basin has shown that the latter is not Qaṣʿat Firʿawn but might well have been a similar basin. Originally a Roman labrum, the basin in question was repurposed during the Abbasid period as part of a low fountain with a unique water-circulation system that bears some similarities to the fountains of Islamic Spain.
{"title":"Did Ernst Herzfeld Find the Qaṣʿat Firʿawn (Pharaoh’s Bowl) in the Caliphal Palace at Samarra?","authors":"Fatma Dahmani","doi":"10.3998/ars.4981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.4981","url":null,"abstract":"Ernst Herzfeld’s (1879–1948) papers on his excavation of the Abbasid city of Samarra, held at the National Museum of Asian Art Archives, include two maps indicating the existence of a large circular basin at the center of the square domed chamber south of the Caliphal Palace’s throne room. The details of this basin are provided in an orthographic drawing, and the captions of two photographs tersely attribute it to the palace. Now in the Madrasa al-Sharābiya in Baghdad, this basin has sometimes been identified as Qaṣʿat Firʿawn (Pharaoh’s Bowl), a large basin cited in medieval sources as having been part of the fountain of the Great Mosque of al-Mutawakkil. Strangely enough, not the slightest mention of this basin has been found in the written records of the excavations or in the published reports. A careful examination of other documents in Herzfeld’s archives and publications, as well as a number of reports of the Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities, has established that the basin must have been discovered under unknown circumstances at an unspecified location in the palace several years after Herzfeld’s excavation. Furthermore, the study of medieval textual sources and other data related to the basin has shown that the latter is not Qaṣʿat Firʿawn but might well have been a similar basin. Originally a Roman labrum, the basin in question was repurposed during the Abbasid period as part of a low fountain with a unique water-circulation system that bears some similarities to the fountains of Islamic Spain.","PeriodicalId":54021,"journal":{"name":"ARS Orientalis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138998574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Charles Lang Freer’s purchase of the Henry Bathurst Hanna collection of Indian paintings in 1907 can seem an anomalous, almost incidental acquisition in the career of a collector whose interests for the most part lay elsewhere. Its peculiarity makes it an intriguing episode, and one that but for the presence of some remarkable pieces might arguably be relegated to a footnote in the annals of Freer’s wide-ranging and more extensive areas of collecting. A clearer picture of his motivations comes into focus, however, by considering his pursuit of the collection within the broader range of his own experiences, his milieu, and the prevailing cultural context. This article situates Freer’s interest in a particular collection of Indian art—understood narrowly at the time as concomitant with Mughal painting—against the background of the long presence of India in the United States, the growth of interest in Eastern culture and spirituality in late nineteenth-century New England, the beginnings of the appreciation of the aesthetic value of objects from India in the early twentieth century, and the burgeoning market and place for non-Western works in art museums in metropolitan cities, including the one that Freer had committed to establishing. In so doing, one may better understand the importance he placed on the acquisition of the collection, which would be a singular step that initiated a place for India within fine art museums in the United States.
{"title":"A Singular Step: Freer’s Purchase of the Hanna Collection","authors":"Brinda Kumar","doi":"10.3998/ars.4985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3998/ars.4985","url":null,"abstract":"Charles Lang Freer’s purchase of the Henry Bathurst Hanna collection of Indian paintings in 1907 can seem an anomalous, almost incidental acquisition in the career of a collector whose interests for the most part lay elsewhere. Its peculiarity makes it an intriguing episode, and one that but for the presence of some remarkable pieces might arguably be relegated to a footnote in the annals of Freer’s wide-ranging and more extensive areas of collecting. A clearer picture of his motivations comes into focus, however, by considering his pursuit of the collection within the broader range of his own experiences, his milieu, and the prevailing cultural context. This article situates Freer’s interest in a particular collection of Indian art—understood narrowly at the time as concomitant with Mughal painting—against the background of the long presence of India in the United States, the growth of interest in Eastern culture and spirituality in late nineteenth-century New England, the beginnings of the appreciation of the aesthetic value of objects from India in the early twentieth century, and the burgeoning market and place for non-Western works in art museums in metropolitan cities, including the one that Freer had committed to establishing. In so doing, one may better understand the importance he placed on the acquisition of the collection, which would be a singular step that initiated a place for India within fine art museums in the United States.","PeriodicalId":54021,"journal":{"name":"ARS Orientalis","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139000147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}