The Story Behind the Shelter Art Along the New CATS Gold Line

https://qcnerve.com/art-on-the-cats-gold-line/

June 2022

Hello Friends,
I invite you to join me on Sunday, June 12, 2022, from 2:00-4:00 pm for the opening of “Spheres and Sinospheres,” a solo exhibition curated by Sara Henry at the Voelker Orth Museum located at 149-19 38th Ave., Flushing (Queens), NY.

In the Middle of the Dream, limited edition archival print, 2011

The show features examples from three different series of my work including Mandala paintings from the 2010’s, oil paintings on paper informed by Chinese Folk Art from the 2000’s, and a small gouache and oil marker on paper from my current geometric abstraction series.

Caravan, oil on paper, 22 x 30, 2007

The official name of the museum is The Volker Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Garden. It occupies a two-story house that was constructed in 1891. The house was purchased in 1899 by a German immigrant named Conrad Voelcker, who moved in with his wife Elizabeth and infant daughter Theresa. After Voelcker’s death in 1930, the house became the home of his daughter, Theresa Voelker  and her husband, Dr. Rudolph Orth. Their daughter, Elisabetha Orth, who lived in the house most of her life, established the organization which now runs the museum in her will. The property was designated a New York City Landmark in 2007.

This exhibition was the brainchild of Sara Henry, an Independent Curator and Art Writer, Professor Emerita of Art History and NEH Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Drew University.

Arabesque 4, oil on canvas, 30 x 30″, 2016

Nature Provides Mural featured in CODAmagazine: Art and Wellness

Nature Provides, mosaic, glass and brass sheeting, 8 x 18′, Patient Services Center, Western State Hospital, Lakewood, WA

Client: ArtsWA

Overview

Mosaic, glass, and brass sheeting mural, 8×18-ft, commissioned by Western State Hospital, Lakewood WA for a Patient Services Center in construction. I was selected by the Selection Jury, consisting of a selection of 8-10 women (plus the building architect) who would be working at the Center. The Center will house food preparation services and medical prescription services that serve the patient population. Western State Hospital is a historical hospital established to care for people diagnosed with psychological, emotional and/or mental problems, and it continues to be so.

Goals

I met with the Selection Jury and the building architect who told me they were looking for artwork that would refresh them in the course of their working days, perhaps energizing them since their work is demanding and fatiguing.

Process

The first time I met with the Selection Jury they directed me regarding the type of imagery they wanted to see. I went through a process of making designs following their instructions. We went back and forth many times until finally they said to the Project Manager that my proposals didn’t feel like the installed projects they had seen when they selected me to be the artist. Chuck Zimmer, the ArtsWA Project Manager finally explained to them that I was trying to follow their directives, but that what they originally liked about my work was its sense of energy and play, at which point they decided to give me free range to create what I wanted.

Additional Information

Freed of their instructions I was able to step away from a literal depiction of their ideas, and instead, design an abstract mural that metaphorically and sensually fulfilled what they were looking for.

Musings in the Midst of the Covid 19 Pandemic

IN THE MIDST OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

LIVING, READING, PAINTING IN NYC

Saturday, November 21, 2020

I read a book recently, The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey, that I wish I had read while I was still teaching. The book was published 30 years ago, is still in print, and has sold close to a million copies. It is only superficially about tennis.

Gallwey’s theory is that we are each made up of two people, one guided by the brain (the ego-driven self) that has internalized all the things we are told growing up, and the other, guided by the body (the inner self) that has its own inherent needs, its own demands and requirements. It is this inner self that should be guiding us through life, but socialization and education tend to fight against it. The inner self, Gallwey believes, is endowed with an instinct to fulfill its nature: it wants to enjoy, learn, understand, appreciate, express itself, rest, be healthy, survive, and be what it is in order to make its unique contribution in the world. This self comes with a constant gentle urging; the person who works in concert with his/her inner self will be attended by a certain type of contentment.

Gallwey writes that the first rule of successful living is recognizing that this inner self has all the gifts and capabilities with which we hope to accomplish anything, and it has its own requirements to live in balance with itself. To be able to listen to this self you have to let go of all good/bad judgments (of ourselves and others). Ultimately you want to be someone who is able to let go of anything — if necessary — and still be okay. Gallwey says we need to give priority to the demands of the inner-self in relation to all the external pressures from the ego-driven self.

Gallwey arrived at this philosophy through teaching tennis. He discovered that his students learned better if — instead of telling them what to do — he simply demonstrated actions, which allowed the students to by-pass, and not be distracted by his verbal instructions. This allowed the student’s body intelligence to kick in and emulate the demonstrated movements. Gallwey also says that there is no one right way to do anything in tennis; each person should be allowed to find his/her own way based on the uniqueness of their bodies.

I stumbled on this exact same notion teaching art which, like tennis, is a physical activity. I urged students stop thinking and simply allow themselves to try different things, a process that allowed their embodied intelligence to take over. I liked to refer students to the way they doodled, since doodling is an automatic, mindless activity guided by the hand, and relies on comfortable and natural gestures.

In 1974 when Gallwey wrote The Inner Game of Tennis, Zen Buddhism was not as prominent or as pervasive in American culture as it is today; reading Gallwey’s writing the philosophical parallels between his thinking and that of the American version of Zen Buddhism is inescapable. Both philosophies are founded on the belief that attachment to outcomes is what trips us up: as he said, “the aim is to be able to let go of anything — if necessary — and still be okay.” Gallwey extends the principles of his thinking to all activities, whereas when I was teaching, I thought these principles applied only to art making.

Gallwey and I both believe that, each person is actually born right and perfect for who he/she is, and that simply allowing ourselves to follow our innate sense, the one we come into the world with (placing this guidance ahead of what society and education tells us) we can realize our potential, and fulfill our destinies. To put it more succinctly, I believe what Miles Davis said, “The genius is the guy who is most himself.”

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

When I was in college a friend said she didn’t know what she wanted to do in life. I suggested she try figuring it out through a process of elimination by making a list of what she doesn’t want. She liked the idea but was troubled that she had to resort to using such a backdoor-way of finding out something so important to her.

It did seem like the majority of my students didn’t know what they wanted to do in life. I assured them that life is circumstantial, and they would find the right path more or less by stumbling across it. My students, being art majors, were in a particular quandary because even if they knew they wanted to pursue an artist’s life they needed to figure out day jobs to maintain themselves. Professions in the arts and liberal arts do not come with a directed path the way medicine, law, or accounting does.

In truth I think the majority of people find it hard to “figure out” what they want to do, in part because the brain isn’t the right organ to consult — or I should say — the brain is probably good at figuring it out if your path is straightforward — like —”I think I’ll go to Law School,” but not so good if your options are wide open. It’s no wonder that for multiple millennia young people tended to follow professionally in their parents’ footsteps. First because they had a way in, they had a sense of what was involved in that line of work, i.e., if it was farming, they grew up on a farm doing farm work. In those days it was probably easier to figure out that you didn’t want to enter your father or mother’s trade— to be a coal miner, a grocery clerk, a seamstress, a washerwoman, a milliner, a clergyman, a financier, or whatever.

But in our day, white collar jobs don’t involve working with your hands or using your body; they are usually some form of office work, and what exactly people do in offices is pretty opaque.

Why is it so hard to think through what path you should take in life? I think part of it is that school learning does not teach you to value or possibly even recognize the skills you have. Students have a very narrow way of viewing their skills, for example, they invariably overlook their personal skills — being organized, being outgoing, being good with people, being efficient, being good with money, being able to do public speaking, having patience, having an eye for detail, being able to organize people. Whether you succeed at a job relies at least as much on these personality qualities.

An artist friend of mine, Carmen Lizardo, tells an amazing story. She was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and came to the U.S. after high school. Before applying to college, she went to the Brooklyn Library and took an aptitude test. Her results came out: artist, artist, artist. Carmen knew nothing about art; curious, she went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art — the first art museum she ever entered — and she knew immediately that this was the world she wanted to inhabit. Indeed, she has turned out to be a wonderful artist.

I would love to get my hands on the aptitude test she took. It seems like every kid in school would benefit from taking such a test.

Saturday, September 26, 2020

A gripe I have with the public education system is its misguided reverence for book learning over hands-on learning. Book learning treats students as if everything important about them exists only from their neck up.

Embodied learning is at least as important, if not more so, than intellectual learning. There are two distinct ways of learning —academic learning that feeds information directly to the brain, and embodied learning which is used to acquire physical skills. Athletics and visual and performing arts are generally taught in gyms or playing fields, in art studios, and in conservatories.

A toddler does not learn to crawl or walk by being told how to crawl or walk. A toddler learns to crawl or walk by crawling or walking, just as a singer learns to sing by singing. Embodied learning is a more complex, more holistic route to knowledge, one that is less directed by the brain, more directed by the body. The two paths to learning are fundamentally different. Book learning is verbal, logical, and slow; embodied learning by-passes the logical brain and coordinates instinct, intuition and the body.

One example is the basic mammalian instinct to suckle: a kitten or a baby does not have to be taught to suckle. Locomotion is also instinctual — a baby abandoned in the wild, if she survives, will not remain on her back. By herself she will learn to turn over, crawl, walk, and run. We are born with these types of instincts — something we knew to do before we developed language. In this way we can say embodied learning is a more fundamental route to knowledge than verbal or textual learning.

This is not a topic I might have given much thought to had I not taught studio art for three decades. As an experienced teacher, I found myself constantly advising my students to “Stop thinking!” — explaining that their minds cannot solve whatever problems they were facing with their artwork — that only by doing, by trying things out physically would they find a way forward. This was news to them: a lifetime of education had taught them to value their thinking above all else.

According to Wallace Stevens, unlike the body, the brain is never satisfied. If we eat our fill, we stop being hungry, after a good night’s sleep, we feel rested and energetic. This is not the case with the brain: our brains know no limits; it constantly wants more. Our brains also lie. I subscribe to the edict “Don’t trust everything you think.” The brain is not to be trusted. But when we feel pain, have an upset stomach, or run a fever, we know it’s true: the body doesn’t lie, nor does it get caught up in fantasies, entertain illusions of grandeur, or do any of the other suspect things that our brains are constantly doing.

I will elaborate on this topic in the next posting. In the meantime, I leave you with this factoid: A Silicon Valley executive once said that he will not hire computer programmers who have never worked with their hands; he claimed that people who have failed to acquire hand skills cannot think in certain ways. (You know what they say: muscles that are not used atrophy.)

 

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

I have fallen well short of the goal I had when I started this blog of posting once a week. I’ve been feeling like I don’t have that much to say. I considered giving up the whole thing, but recently I figured out there is something I can talk about almost endlessly, since I’ve been doing it for the last 30 years, week after week, in my role as a college painting and drawing professor.

To teach well you need to break topics down into components, or graduated steps that students can follow. When I started teaching I noticed there were things I could do, yet could not explain how I did them; I noticed I operated on a series of (almost) subconscious assumptions that needed to be closely examined; and I noticed teaching exercised skills that I had but had no occasion to use in my normal life. Ultimately teaching grew very rewarding for me because it employed many more of my capabilities than I had ever had opportunity to use before.

Recently I sat down, and in five minutes, came up with a list of a dozen topics I could write about. They included:

1. Cerebral learning vs. embodied learning
2. The advantages of painting and drawing in being immediate and extremely flexible mediums
3. What “process art” is about
4. The counter-intuitive fact that 2-D painting and drawing mediums have surpassing capabilities to evoke space compared to 3-D mediums, including film and installation
5. The difference between narrative and non-narrative art
6. The difference between using symbols vs. inference in art
7. The basic difference between believing your body vs. believing your brain
8. The argument against an academic art education
9. The importance of Formalism as taught by the Bauhaus
10. The particularity of individual color sense
11. Why I distrust Theory (capitalization mine)
12. Why my students thought I could read their minds
13. The importance of visual thinking — focusing on Einstein as an example. (Admittedly I would have to do a fair amount of research to carry out this topic.)

I promise to cover each of these topics, in no particular order, in upcoming blog postings. But I revoke my promise to post once a week. I think once every three weeks is a more realistic goal.

 

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

My friend, Janet Zweig, sent me a link to a July 29, 2020 New York Times Magazine feature about swifts, birds that are known to stay airborne for as long as ten months at a stretch. It was  written by Helen Macdonald, author of the memoir, H Is for Hawk. The article is so beautifully written it is almost transcendent, and does absolute justice to the subject, an otherworldly creature.

According to Wikipedia, swifts belong to the same family as hummingbirds and share the unique ability to rotate their wings from the base. Swifts and swallows look similar, but according to singita.com swifts are usually black and white or grey in color whereas swallows often have a russet color on their heads, throats, or rumps. Swallows can also be distinguished by an iridescent blue that appears on their wings and backs.

Swift in flight.

Swallow in flight.

Swedish researcher Susanne Akesson, said in National Geographic, “They feed in the air, they mate in the air, they get nest material in the air.” Because their wings are so long and their legs so short, “they can land on nest boxes, branches, or houses,” but due to their built they can’t really land on the ground, nor are they able to take off from a flat surface.

Their nests, which they like to build in obscure, dark and hard to reach places, are bonded together and attached to vertical surfaces with their saliva. The nests can be found in building hollows — under tiles, in gaps between windowsills, under eaves, and within gables.

Two swift nests attached to wood surfaces.

Swifts mate for life, and they are long-lived. They start to breed at the age of four and typically live another four to six years. One swift was documented to live to the age of twenty-one.

Except during breeding season swifts tend to not land at all. They may have adapted their habits to match their feeding needs: their main source of food is high altitude insects: when hunting they store the insects in a special pouch at the back of their throats. The food is bound into a ball with their saliva; they may bring it back to their nests, or save to eat later. Once their broods are tipped out of the nest, the swifts never return. They travel in groups and can ascend as high as 10,000 feet. They fly so high they can orient themselves visually by looking down.

Chimney swifts.

According to Wikipedia, “They often form ‘screaming parties’ during summer evenings, when 10–20 swifts will gather in flight around their nesting area, calling out and being answered by nesting swifts. Larger ‘screaming parties’ are formed at higher altitudes, especially late in the breeding season.

White-throated swift.

Swifts make massive ascents each day, once at dawn, and once at dusk. One researcher speculated that maybe “this is when they sleep… they take power naps by gliding on the way down.” [newscientist.com]

A swift was recently recorded to be flying at the speed of 69.3 mph. “And in a recent study, one of the tagged birds soared 40 miles without a wing-flap.” [Merrit Kennedy]

Swifts come in a range of sizes from the pygmy swiftlet that weighs less than an ounce, to the purple needletail that weighs 6.5 oz. The common swift weighs about 1.3 oz.

This is the link to the Helen Macdonald article, (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/magazine/vesper-flights.html)

 

Friday, July 31, 2020,

Last month I listened to an audiobook by an astrophysicist, Max Tegmark, called Our Mathematical Universe, that I can’t get out of my mind. People say we are living in the Golden Age of Space Exploration, but I personally have not been paying much attention. This book, however, is so well written and accessible, it is like a primer for the uninitiated.

Did you know that space is infinite? Max Tegmark says that it is. I find this almost unimaginable — how can anything be infinite? And this infinite space is currently expanding, in the sense that things are moving farther and farther apart. Scientists document this by looking into space, which is the same as looking into the past. Things are so far away it can take millions of years for the light to reach us. The measure between forms decreases the farther away it is, and this increase of distance as it gets closer to us records the expansion of the cosmos.

The creation of everything that now exists happened about 13.7 billion years ago when the Big Bang occurred. We think of the Big Bang as the start of everything, but Tegmark, cautions that the Big Bang, instead of being the beginning of everything, may actually have been the end of something.

Did you know that 85% of the matter in this infinite space consists of dark matter? Dark matter isn’t dark — it’s invisible, and passes through everything, even us. Dark matter cannot be found within the electromagnetic spectrum (EM)]. EM radiation is energy that travels and spread out as it goes; the lamp by your bed side or radio waves are examples of EM radiation. Dark matter does, however, have mass: it accounts for about a quarter of the mass in existence. Scientists study dark matter by looking at the effects it has on visible objects. Dark matter and dark energy are the yin and yang of the cosmos. Dark matter causes attraction (through gravity) and dark energy produces a repulsive force (anti-gravity — it is the force that is making the cosmos expand over time). The visible world, that is, matter that we can see, accounts for only about 5% of the matter in space.

Much of what we know has been discovered through the Hubble space telescope. This is an image of the Hubble telescope. And the two images below were taken from it.

This is apparently a quasar, which are ultra-bright cores of distant active galaxies. An outflow like this one from a quasar functions like a tsunami in space, wreaking havoc within its galaxy.

This is apparently a black hole. Who knew black holes were so beautiful?

I followed along with the book pretty well until about half-way through, when things got difficult. Since it was an audio book I had to re-listen to passages two, three, sometimes four times before I felt like I could move on; the second half of the book is mind-blowing.

Tegmark maintains that we can no longer talk about the universe because it is believed that ours is only one universe out of an infinite number of universes, which is referred to as the multiverse. So far so good. But then the author starts talking about parallel universes.

There are at least five theories why a multiverse is possible, and Tegmark, pursues this line of thinking.

1. No one knows what the shape of space-time is, but one prominent theory says that it is flat and goes on forever, which presents the possibility of there being many universes out there. But particles can only be put together in so many ways, which means that within infinity, things would have to start repeating.
2. There is a theory of “eternal inflation” that says when looking at space-time as a whole some areas of space stop inflating, like how the Big Bang inflated our universe, but other areas of space will keep on inflating. This is visualized as a series of bubbles. We are in one bubble, but there may be another bubble just beyond ours that exists but is not connected to us. In this and other subsequent bubbles (universes) there may be laws of physics different than our own. Max Tegmark believes there are at least three levels of universes, but probably more.
3. Following the laws of how subatomic particles behave (quantum mechanics) there would be a range of universes.
4. Now we come to mathematical universes (which explains the title of Tegmark’s book, Our Mathematical Universe). The structure of mathematics may change depending on which universe you live in, and Tegmark says there is at least one purely mathematical universe “that can exist independently of me that would continue to exist even if there are no humans.”
5. And finally, parallel universes: Going back to the flat conception of space-time, the number of possible particle configurations is limited to 10 to the 10^th power to the 122^nd power worth of possibilities. In an infinite space, with an infinite number of cosmic patches, the particle arrangements within them must repeat an infinite number of times. In this scenario there is a universe out there exactly like ours containing someone exactly like you.

Finally, let me leave you with one more thought, something that Einstein believed — that time is an illusion — it is just a very persistent illusion.

 

Thursday, July 24, 2020

I have been designing and installing public art for almost twenty years. I remember because my first and second public art projects were delayed and affected in different ways by the occurrence of 9/11. Security at the Seattle-Tacoma Int’l Airport had to be rethought and reconfigured, pushing back the installation schedule of the mosaic columns project from 2001 to 2004. The other project, at P.S. 58, a pre-K to 9^th Grade school in Maspeth, Queens, was renamed The School of Heroes because Maspeth was the home of two Fire Stations, one of them a Haz-Mat Unit, that suffered big tolls in casualties on 9/11. My commission was to install painted panels in the Auditorium; I ended up using the two large panels on either side of the stage to depict scenes referring to 9/11.

I bring this up because I am a finalist for a project in New Jersey that has me doing something I have never done before. I have always known that my studio work and my commission work live in very different parts of my brain. They use different skills: the studio work — painting and drawing — is an intuitive, searching process where most of the time I do not know what I want or where I am going: I simply follow my nose. Because my work is so process-driven I start my paintings and drawings with almost no idea of what I want to do. All the thinking and planning occurs on the surface of the artwork. I add, sometimes I subtract, but the work is built overtime in layers.

The commissions are very different; they are designed with specific things in mind. For example, the budget is the first thing I consider because it determines what I can afford to do. Materials and fabrication costs vary greatly; anything that is handmade is expensive, whereas processes that can be machine made or programmed into a computer, are much more affordable. I am also guided by a site, a space, a size, and an anticipated audience. In the commissions I borrow from the visual vocabulary I have developed in my studio work. The fun of doing a commission is being able to translate my visual language into different materials, at times build them in monumental sizes, and I end up with a permanently installed artwork that lives in public.

The New Jersey project involves designing laminated glass that will fit into windscreens like this drawing. Architecturally speaking, these are quite elaborate windscreens that look and feel like formal double doors or stately arched windows. But they are in fact what they claim to be, windscreens located in the open air at above ground train platforms.

I was quite intimidated when I first realized that this was the structure I had to design for. To have to consider how the arch and the partitions would affect a composition seemed complex and the notion that I had to come up with a total of seven designs in a month or less seemed overwhelming.

Then I got a bright idea. I decided to see what it would look like if I took some of my current gouache and oil marker drawings and inserted them in.

I quite liked the effect

 

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

I am going to address the development of my recent studio artwork. I knew by mid-2018 that the Mandala paintings I had been producing since 2011 had come to an end. When I was a young artist, the end of a series caused me great distress; I had a bad habit of wanting to hang on, to try and extend the life of a series. The trouble is that, as artists, we don’t have that much control over what we do — the artwork has a life and will of its own quite separate from the will of the artist. You know a series is at an end when the interest, excitement, sense of exploration is gone. Refusing to acknowledge this fact leaves you stuck in place, making weaker and weaker work.

Many Chamber, oil on canvas, 48” H x 72” W, 2015

This painting, Many Chambers, is for me a high point of the Mandala Series. The Mandala series, was my attempt to bridge — for lack of a better term — my conflicted ethnic identity. I knew that my visual aesthetics was rooted in Eastern Art, in the Middle Eastern and Far Eastern love of pattern and decoration; as opposed to Western Art and its roots in a Greco-Roman tradition that emphasizes the human figure and man’s centrality in the world. The Mandalas allowed me to use an iconic circle, or circles, within a rectangle that I could “decorate” to my heart’s content. In doing so I could draw as much as I wanted from Western art traditions. In Many Chambers, I added pearls, lace, and references to Medieval shields.

When I moved to New York City in January 2019, I was fortunate to have a three-month Artist Residency at the Carter Burden-Covello Center at E. 109^th St. I spent months flailing in the studio trying out different mediums. Nothing worked until looking at architectural and perspectival diagrams, I got an urge to make linear compositions using oil markers, and traditional drafting tools like rulers, compasses, and trammel points.

North Star, oil and oil markers on canvas, 30 x 30”,  2019

The painting, North Star, is emblematic of the work I was making at the end of my three-month residency. What this transitional body of work made clear to me is that I absolutely did not want to rely on the use of symbols. I have relied on symbols in my work since forever. I was finally ready to admit to myself that I did not believe the symbols I have been using. In North Star I rely on the symbolic use of “the heavens” by employing a sky background and planet-like globes.

Untitled 2019-14, gouache, oil, oil markers on paper, 6 x 9 inches, 2019

It was in the following two months that the work in the studio cohered for me. I left off working on canvas and began to make small drawings with gouache, oil, and oil markers, which began rather mandala-like until they became more spatial.

Untitled 2019-22, gouache, oil, oil markers, 6.75 x 10 inches, 2019

Perhaps I need to explain the difference between “symbols” and “inferences.” The current work, although abstract, sometimes infers space, globes, sky, etc. but they are not symbolic because the artworks do not live or die depending on the “meaning” of any symbol. The artwork succeeds on its own terms — without relying on exterior meaning.

I came to perceive the 2019 drawings in the aggregate to be focused on the slow process of unveiling, recognizing, seeing, knowing and understanding.

They speak to the presentation of the self. People are complex, layered: we are comfortable with certain aspects of ourselves which we foreground or project outwardly; keeping in the distance, obscured, layered — aspects of ourselves that feel more tender, vulnerable, private. Perhaps because I am aware of this tendency in myself, I saw the layering, the veiling, as choices we make in what we reveal, how much, and when.

Alternately the drawings can be looked at as being about the time it takes to acquire knowledge, information, acquaintanceship. We are taken in by the large, bright, obvious aspects of people and things. Truly getting to know somebody or something is a slow process. We are often fooled by the presentation — people, after all, are known to lie to themselves; thus it takes time and we discover things in layers: it takes discernment and long exposure to perceive the deeper truths.

The drawings from 2020 are related to their predecessors yet seem different. I perceive a more concrete and focused presentation of the environment. Instead of being focused on objects in space, the specificity of each environment/situation dominates each picture.

Untitled 2020-06, gouache, oil markers on paper, 8.75″ H x 11.75″ W, 2020

It was not until this drawing, Untitled 2020-06, appeared that I began to read the series as focusing on navigation within constraints. We have to abide by the laws of nature and the laws of man; we are all socialized to live within society, to play by the rules. Although we live within guardrails, it is our job to navigate a personal way of going through life, of being in the world that gives us enough flexibility to be ourselves, to fulfill our needs, to accomplish our personal, or societal goals. I think these works reflect this particular aspect of the human condition — of the need to learn how to flourish within constraints.

 

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

The first (and only) blog I kept was in 2017 chronicling the months I spent in the Far East. I wrote the blog more or less as a record for myself since I didn’t expect anybody to read it, although I came to learn that many friends and family did.

My excuse for starting this blog is that in the midst of the pandemic, I spend a lot of time alone, and talk to few people.  To break out of my isolation I decided to keep a weekly blog — that means one entry a week — nothing that will strain either me or my readers — should there be any…

To locate myself I took a selfie in front of my Upper West Side apartment building where the Cafe Luxembourg is located.

This is my subway, the W. 72nd St. 1/2/3 train station. Note how eerily empty the street is.

This is the exterior of my Brooklyn studio building, located near Graham Ave. on the L line.

My corner of the large studio I share with four other artists.

The messy table where I work on my gouache and oil marker drawings.

See a Map of my work on Wescover!

See a Map of my work on Wescover !

Learning to See: A Fulbright Semester Teaching Painting in Beijing

Amy surrounded by her Graduate Painting students at Renmin University of China, Beijing, Spring 2017

Learning to See:

A Fulbright Semester Teaching Painting in Beijing

I share below an essay I wrote about my Spring 2017 Fulbright semester teaching at the Renmin University of China’s Graduate Painting Program. This essay has been published by Routledge Press in a book titled Inquiries from Fulbright Lecturers in China: Cross-Cultural Connections in Higher Education.

I had a wonderful time in China, I made friends, I spent time with my Chinese relatives, I traveled widely within the country lecturing at different universities and art schools — I learned A LOT.

If interested you can read my essay below.

I.
I spent the spring of 2017 as a visiting professor in the Graduate Painting Program at Renmin University of China in Beijing. I was born in Taiwan, immigrating to the West with my family at age 4. My parents grew up in China, and we spoke Chinese at home. But despite being ethnically Chinese, I experienced two cultural gaps while teaching in China, the first one in the student-teacher relationship and the second on the subject matter of the course.

My Chinese students’ ability to understand English varied widely, but they all had handy Chinese-to-English translation apps on their cell phones. I depended on my MacBook Air as an essential teaching tool, since my Chinese vocabulary is limited to the domestic and quotidian; I carried it with me everywhere and relied on Google Translate. I would type out entire paragraphs; if the translation came out garbled, they would let me know and I would rephrase and try again. I made myself available once a week for studio visits with students not enrolled in my class; in this way, I was able to meet other art students, both graduate and undergraduate. I also took interested students on field trips to art openings, exhibitions, and studio visits.

To my delight, the Chinese have no difficulty understanding that I — who look just like them — am American. When I travel elsewhere in the world — Egypt, Italy — people sometimes have a hard time grasping this concept.

When we went out together, the students had an endearing way of offering to carry my things — coats, bags. Since Beijing is extremely dry, they were attentive in offering me tea and bottled water. But the incident that completely disarmed me happened at a class party I hosted in my apartment that devolved into the playing of games, games that were like rowdy versions of “Simon Says.”

At semester’s end, the students organized a potluck dinner in the graduate painting studio. When I arrived, one of the students handed me a bag of gifts — an ingenious eyebrow pencil and shaping knife, which she promptly

proceeded to demonstrate on me and on her classmates. (The shaping knife was used to eliminate stray or excess eyebrow hairs. The eyebrow pencil, with its three component parts, was used to delineate a contour line around the eyebrow, fill in color to get consistent coverage, and as a final touch, had a small bristle brush for separating and combing the eyebrow hairs in upward strokes.) Some days earlier I had complimented the student on her eyebrows — Chinese women are particularly attentive to their eyebrows, which are traditionally seen as a focal point of beauty. After dinner we settled down to playing round after round of the parlor game Cops and Assassins.

Compared to the Master of Fine Art (MFA) students at the State University of New York at New Paltz where I have taught for two decades, the Renmin graduate students seemed — not young in the sense of being immature — but somewhat naïve. They are younger — most of them enter the graduate program directly out of college, whereas the majority of our MFA students have had some life experience. Returning to school the American students know that spending two-years immersed in a fulltime graduate art program is a privilege; most of them pay for their own education, often with student loans. They also clearly understand that once they graduate, in spite of having an MFA degree, like most artists, they will have to take up a day job; whereas my Renmin graduate students seemed to entertain vague ideas about life after school, a condition I associate more with undergraduate students. In China students who attend public universities like Renmin pay minimal tuition; they cover their own living expenses, but those costs are also modest. [1]

I was keenly aware of my lack of knowledge and understanding of how Chinese society functioned. In the U.S., although it is helpful to have connections, you do not have to be connected to get a job. In China, I noticed that a lot of my own Chinese cousins’ children had “inherited” jobs from their fathers. That is, if their college studies related to their fathers’ they would gain entry into the firm — especially if the jobs were governmental (in schools, hospitals, or city government); a couple of my cousins literally vacated their positions to their offsprings by retiring.

From what I could tell none of my students came from artistic backgrounds; they were clearly striking out on their own. A couple of them were or had been primary school art teachers, and the master’s degree will qualify them for high school teaching. In the U.S. the MFA is a terminal degree. It qualifies you to teach at the university level. Currently in China, you need to have a Ph.D. to teach at a university, although it is not uncommon to be hired with a Master’s Degree, and be given a period of time to complete a Ph.D.

Life in China for the Chinese is complicated by the Hukou, a kind of passport system that restricts access to government-funded services (like education and healthcare) to the birthplace of the holder. A Chinese citizen cannot relocate at will. A provincial student gets access to residence in Beijing if they are accepted into a Beijing university, otherwise a person can only legitimately move to another city if they gain employment in that city. Residency in Beijing is highly prized because the city offers more employment opportunities, and because it is urban and culturally sophisticated.

I asked some of the students why they chose to attend Renmin University and was surprised when all but one of them said they had come because of their professor. (They met the professor at the university in their home Province; when the professor joined the Renmin faculty, they followed them to Beijing.) I asked Yaning, the student who entered Renmin without a professorial connection, if knowing a professor increased the likelihood of getting accepted to the college, and she replied with an emphatic “Yes!” Renmin University is prestigious and entry is highly competitive: it took her two tries to get accepted. She also said that in China you cannot enter a Ph.D. program unless a professor agrees beforehand to be your advisor, and professors only take on two advisees a year.

Prof. Guo Chunning, a Renmin Art Department colleague, said that a close connection to a professor benefits a student because university professors can be well connected, and in China many art positions and opportunities are governmentally funded. Lest I sound judgmental or sanctimonious, let me admit that there was a time not so long ago in the U.S. that art department teaching jobs were handed out in similar ways. For decades if you graduated with an MFA from Yale you were almost guaranteed a college teaching job, and the alums laughingly referred to “the Yale Mafia” for the number of prestigious art prizes, like the Tiffany or the Rome Academy fellowship, won by the MFA alums. When I was hired into the SUNY New Paltz Art Department in 1997 one of the older art professors off-handedly asked, “Who does she know?”

II.

The larger cultural gap I encountered in China involved teaching. I developed a deep attachment to my students; but I came away confused by what I considered to be strange gaps in their education — by their inability to do certain basic tasks or perceive and articulate some elemental visual aspects of two-dimensional composition. My class at Renmin University was made up of graduate students majoring in “Western” Painting as well as “Chinese” Painting — in China they are seen as separate disciplines.

For an artist like me, who has spent most of her painting career working with a visual vocabulary inspired by Middle Eastern and Far Eastern art, it was with interest that I came to realize while in China that my students did not know what to make of my layered, highly patterned mandala-like paintings. My most advanced graduate student, Hong Xing, admitted to me that he found my work to be (only) decorative.

One of the lectures I gave when I traveled across China was titled Double Vision: Reconciling my Eastern Visual Sensibility with a Western Art Education. In the lecture I posited that Western art tradition, which descends from Ancient Classical Greek and Roman art privileges man, or at least the human figure, as centrally important. This viewpoint differs distinctly from Middle Eastern and Far Eastern art traditions that do not fetishize the human form — except in the guise of the Buddha or the Gods.

In a Chinese ink painting a figure, a house, or a bridge, is gently inserted into the landscape, occupying no more, and usually less, visual importance than a tree, a hill, or a body of water. The same applies to built pavilions, pagodas, and bridges that are designed to blend in with, not dominate, the landscape. Contrast this with the imposing roads, bridges, aqueducts, temples and amphitheaters the Ancient Romans constructed across Western Europe.

Chinese landscape painting, also known as Scholar Painting, was historically a refined and elitist art form practiced by noblemen and the literati. It was never an art of the people. The popular or commonplace art — porcelain wares, tiles, bronze vessels, cloisonné, or fabric design — in China, Japan, India, and the Middle East tended to be bright, colorful, patterned, and ornamented. What underlies public or popular Middle and Far Eastern art is a more decentralized, dispersed conception of the world that is consistently and insistently conveyed through the use of repetitive patterns. Visually this kind of repetition flattens hierarchy: what you sense is a pervasive, consistent, almost hypnotic evenness. No one component is more important than another, including man. And it is from this more popular and utilitarian art that I draw inspiration for my work.

European art with its dominant Classicism has not marched forward uninterruptedly in the West. There have been, in fact, two distinct periods when it fell out of fashion. The first occurred in the Middle Ages, starting with the Holy Roman Empire when the flatness of Byzantine art overtook the Classical; in fact, for hundreds of years the technique of Classical rendering was forgotten and essentially lost until it was revived in the Italian Renaissance. The second period of time when traditional Classicism was set aside in the West happened in the first half of the twentieth century with the advent of movements such as Cubism, Surrealism, Abstraction, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Land Art, and Color Field Painting.

It is this second period that is relevant to this discussion. I will show how China’s adoption of Western Painting was indelibly affected by a twist of historical fate that prevented the Chinese from undergoing and experiencing Modernism as it unfolded in the twentieth century.

III.

Like Russia, China in the 1910s experienced staggering political change. The Qing Dynasty was overthrown in 1912; revolution was in the air, and “reform-minded Chinese debated how to modernize their nation.”[2] Chinese scholars left to study abroad; in the 1920s and 30s Paris received two waves of Chinese student-artists. (A number of Chinese artists were accepted into the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and a large survey of work by Chinese artists in Paris was commemorated by an exhibition at the Jeu de Paume.)[3] Although some of these artists remained in Paris, the majority returned to China, bringing with them the new medium of oil painting. In 1949, after the Japanese were expulsed, and the Kuomintang government routed to Taiwan, the Communist Party took control of China. For the next thirty years, until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, China would be closed to the West.

By 1949 – 1950 the USSR had become China’s closest ally. In the summer of 1949 a delegation of Chinese Communist Party leaders traveled to Russia to confer with Stalin and the Soviet leadership. The delegation stayed for three months and made a series of requests of the USSR for financial and educational aid. In a July 6, 1949 letter to Stalin, the Chinese asked to be allowed to study Russia’s public administration, requested Russia’s help in developing postal, telegraphic, and air service between the two nations, asked Russia to train the Chinese Navy and Air Force (including the building and repairing of aircrafts), and expressed the desire to establish a closer cultural relationship with the Soviet Union. [4]

Today, just as there are scattered remnants of Soviet-built industrial structures across China — such as the East German factories now occupied by art galleries in Beijing’s 798 Art District — there remains in China, less visible, but possibly more deeply embedded, systems acquired from the Soviets — and the Chinese system of art education is one of them.

IV.

Currently in China children who are interested in art are taught to render realistically from life. The Chinese have adopted wholesale the tradition of Western art as it was inherited from Ancient Classical Greeks and Romans, and their understanding of space is grounded on the Italian Renaissance discoveries of one- and two-point perspective.

Prior to my semester in Beijing, I had encountered only one student from Mainland China. Mei had completed a Master of Art in Painting at another American university prior to entering our MFA Program. Despite that experience, she stubbornly held to certain notions about contemporary painting that conflicted with our understanding on the subject. In the current art world anything goes: work can be figurative, abstract, illustrative, political, material, conceptual, narrative, appropriated. There is no one dominating movement or medium: all approaches and media are seen as equally valid.

It was disconcerting to have Mei insist that she wanted to make “modern art” because that turned out to be a series of acrylic wash paintings on large sheets of paper with a loose, clumsily painted female figure immersed in water. She seemed to believe that rendering the figures badly was precisely what made her work “modern” and expressive, which struck me as a superficial and simplistic, not to say misguided, approach to abstraction.

I had a similar experience at Renmin University, where I met an oil painting graduate student, Yu Chun, who had a gift for figurative work. He wasn’t just good at rendering figures. He had the ability to make his figures unusually expressive, yet he insisted that he did not want to paint representationally. He wanted to make abstract paintings. He showed me painting after abstract painting he had started and abandoned: clearly he was having difficulty moving forward.

Encouraged by Fulbright, I crisscrossed China lecturing at universities and art academies, getting glimpses into a wide variety of art departments, among them three of the six Chinese Art Academies, all impressively large, newly constructed campuses where an entire multi-story building housed a single discipline, like sculpture — quite a contrast to a vocational college in Hangzhou that offered a much shallower art education, where teaching a discipline such as ceramics is crammed into six short weeks of study. One of the more interesting places I visited was Xinjiang University in Urumqi, Capital of the Uyghur Autonomous Region where the Art Department only offered two disciplines, Graphic Design and Fashion Design. My hosts were two professors, Ablat Boshi, an ethnic Uighur, and An Xiaobo, an ethnic Manchurian.

Prof. Ablat and his wife had traveled to the U.S., where they toured art museums. Back home, he wanted to make abstract paintings. (He did his graduate studies in the former Soviet Union; prior to this he had painted portraits and landscapes.) He said, “Representational painting is of the past; abstraction is today.” Looking at his paintings I could see that he, too, was hitting a roadblock with his work.

I am sympathetic to these painters, not because abstraction is more current than representation but because being able to perceive and understand abstract visual language is essential to understanding contemporary visual art. A prime characteristic that runs through most Modern and contemporary art is that the work is undergirded by abstract qualities encapsulated by what we call Formalism. Formalism is based on the relationship between the abstract elements of art, which consist of color, value, line, form, shape, space, texture, and pattern.[5]

The main difficulty for realist artists moving into abstraction lies in the need to negotiate a different sense of space. An artist who has only learned to paint representationally can perceive perspectival space, overlapping space, and stacked Chinese painting space, but she does not know how to see in terms of abstract space.

Of course, every artist works with the elements of art, but when you work abstractly, that is, when you take away the “thingness” of the subject, you automatically change the nature of the space in the painting. Without “things” (like a person, a stand of trees, a bowl of fruit) there is no need for a “realistic” sense of space, the laws of gravity need not apply, nor do we insist on having a unified sense of light. The paradigm shift is so extreme that unless the artist has been taught how to see abstract relationships, she will be lost; the traditional bearings she has always relied on are missing.

This was the condition of my former student Mei and the two painters I met in China. I knew they were failing to understand something, but I did not know what it was. Only after returning home, where I sought out Mei, exchanged texts with Prof. An Xiaobo of Xinjiang University, and queried Maxine Leu, a New Paltz graduate student from Taiwan, did I finally dig down to the root of the problem.

In one form or another college level art education in the industrialized countries teaches the design principles on which Modernism is based. The Bauhaus School in Germany codified these design principles and established a Vorkurs (preliminary course) that taught students how to work with color, value, line, form, shape, space, texture, and pattern isolated from representation.[6] Also known as the International Style, Modernist aesthetics cuts a broad swath across the globe in architecture, graphic design, and much of industrial design and fine art. Because the Bauhaus was a school as well as an art movement, the faculty and students who fled Germany before and during the outbreak of World War II, taught Bauhaus-based education methods wherever they landed — in Europe and the Americas — but China and the Soviet Republics, cocooned in their self-imposed silos, were cut off from this larger artistic conversation taking place in the world.

Today, contemporary Chinese artists and art students are familiar with the history of Western art, including Modernism. Simply teaching Bauhaus design principles as theory in lecture classes, as it is currently done in China, does not work. Most art forms, like athletics, belong to a category of cognition known as embodied knowledge. Embodied learning is acquired only when the body and its senses are engaged, not just the brain. You cannot teach a person to sing by lecturing to them about singing; people learn to sing by singing. Learning to see color relationships, seeing the compositional interaction between positive and negative shapes, or understanding the spatial effects of color — must all be experienced visually, and the knowledge acquired physically, through trial and error.

Chinese artists who have not had the benefit of a Bauhaus-based studio education acquired their knowledge of Bauhaus principles only through book learning, so to speak; because they were not physically trained to work with the visual phenomena, they have not been sensitized and as a consequence they either do not see or do not look for their effects. Basically the art schools in China do not realize the importance of training students to use these principles in studio courses, and the faculty, because they themselves have not been trained, do not know how to teach it.

A consistent and notable thing I found with art students in China is how little they regarded space. Even students who were clearly working with a sense of landscape were at times unable to describe the space in their work. In China, working with the students, I kept coming up against what I can only describe as an astonishing level of space-related visual illiteracy. It was as if, in their art education, space was never discussed.

When I returned home and met up with my former student, Mei, I pointedly asked what she saw when she looked at the work of her MFA classmate, Brooke Long, who made architecturally inflected abstract paintings. Mei said, “I see color, shapes, lines, and rhythm.” I asked, “What about space?” She looked at me, tilted her head, and repeated – “Space?” – and blankly shook her head.

A year later in 2018, I returned to China and met with my former students at Renmin University. By then I had completed a draft of this essay and could tell them of my findings. The penny dropped when Yu Chun, the student who tried, unsuccessfully, to paint abstractly, admitted that he only considers the lateral space in his artwork, not the depth!

The two incidents confirmed what I had experienced in China. The students — whether they painted representationally or abstractly — were literally not looking at, much less giving consideration to, spatial depth in their paintings.

Ironically, it is in painting — a two-dimensional art form — that space is most present, most manipulated, most dramatic. Sculptures have bulk and sit in space, as do installation art, but they do not manipulate the space around themselves. Painting, on the other hand, using the magic of illusion, can flatten space, exaggerate perspective, deepen space, contort space, invent space, and spatially fool the eye. Most people, when asked, would probably say that color is what makes painting and drawing unique mediums, but sculptures, photographs, installations can also employ color; it is the possibilities of creating and inventing space that make painting and drawing singular.

VI.

It should also be noted that the Soviets did not aim to produce fine artists; they were training art workers. Art workers are distinguished not by a personal vision as much as by accomplished skill and craft. To produce an art worker you emphasize skill training, and Chinese art students are generally quite skilled. A sculptural course on the figure at a Chinese art academy might begin with students copying Roman busts and Renaissance sculptures before they go on to copy a wide range of ancient styles of Chinese Buddhist and dynastic sculptures. Chinese professors are conscientious about passing down traditions of fabrication. Skilled graduates from such programs of study are able to restore, repair, and imitate ancient artwork. To acquire this level of skill is arduous and time-consuming; it swallows up the majority of time and energy of a student undergoing four years of college.

In comparison, U.S. art education is usually less insistent on teaching skills. Skills are taught, of course, but at least as much emphasis is placed on helping the art student develop her individual voice, her subject matter and concepts. Without development in these areas it is hard for an artist to become self-actualized, and she is likely to remain a “mere” craftsperson.

This brings me to the most startling discovery I made while in China. It occurred around midterm when I scheduled a class critique. Arriving at the student’s studio, I was surprised and mildly annoyed to see she had not set up her artwork. I asked her to do so and was irritated by the haphazard way she proceeded. (Artworks are seen in context, and it is important how work is presented.) I moved things around and when the work was passably set up I turned to the class and asked them to start the crit. They looked at me in confusion, then at each other, which caused me to look back at them with equal lack of comprehension. It took a couple of beats before I caught on — the students did not know how to start because they had never held a class critique before!

Coming out of an American system of art education I was unable to conceive of this. In American pedagogy the class critique is how students are trained to “see.” Critiques discipline students to speak analytically about artwork because they are forced to articulate what they see and how they see. When the artwork of a particular student is being discussed, she receives feedback that allows her to hear how her work is being received, read, understood, interpreted or misinterpreted.

In his art blog Kurt Ralske explains the centrality of the group crit in American art schools:

The Crit

The word “crit” is not found in the dictionary, and is not used in normal conversation. But to those in art school, it’s a term that points to the center of the universe. Here, “crit” means the most essential and familiar of events: the critique session, in which a student’s artwork is formally evaluated by a group of faculty and students. A student presents his work, and the group responds with feedback: comments, questions, advice, cheers, jeers, and tears.[7]

The flip side of not integrating class crits into studio art courses is that, the professor, by default, becomes the single “authority” in the classroom since she does all the talking. The students are not given a structured forum that demands their verbal participation, their active engagement. This top-down aspect of art education reflects the top down structure of the Chinese and Soviet governments.

The regrettable result of not being trained to speak in class crits is that students are left unable to verbally analyze what they see. This was demonstrated to me at the end of the semester: I took some students to the Faurschou Foundation to see a small retrospective of paintings by the Scottish painter Peter Doig, which included Doig’s early paintings — the landscapes he made during and immediately after graduate school.

When we walked into the gallery, we immediately felt uplifted by the paintings; the students and I caught each other’s eyes, nodded, and smiled. As I stood in the first room surveying the paintings, my student, Hong Xing asked me:

“Are you able to say why a painting is good?”

I said, “Yes, I can. Why? Can’t you?”

He said, “No, not really.”

So I gathered the students in front of the first painting and “modeled” for them how I looked at the painting. I said, “These are landscape paintings, but they are not like any landscapes you have ever seen before, right? That the artist managed to do this is already remarkable. Landscapes have a very long tradition; it isn’t easy to bring something new to a landscape.” I then did a Formal analysis of the painting, talking about the visual effects Doig achieved and how he achieved them — the range of paint application, the layers of information the painting delivered, the variety and inventiveness of his visual vocabulary, and the spatial complexity of the painting. I then took them around the gallery doing the same with a few of the other paintings in the show.

That this occurred at the end of the semester was unfortunate and frustrating. I had been with these students for three months, but because their art training had been so different from my own, I was slow on the uptake. I had to hear, see, or experience a student’s inability to do something before I could perceive the deficit. This made me feel foolish and negligent as a teacher. But it wasn’t negligence; it was a failure of imagination on my part. Apparently I was so conditioned by the style and sequencing of American art education that I could not imagine a system that left out such important and fundamental art-teaching practices.

[1][1] Lim, Jason. “Why China doesn’t have a student debt problem.” Forbes, August 29, 2016, accessed September 30, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jlim/2016/08/29/why-china-doesnt-have-a-student-debt-problem/#3ce6c3641a58.

[2] “Pioneers of Modern Chinese Painting in Paris: Chu Teh-Chun, Lin Fengmian, SanYu, T’ang Hatwen, Wu Dayu, Wu Guangzhong, Xu Beihong, Siong Bingming, Zao Wou-ki,” deSarthe.com, May 12, 2014, accessed April 18, 2018, https://www.desarthe.com/exhibitions/pioneers-of-modern-chinese-painting-in-paris.html.

[3] McHugh, Fionnuala, “Exhibition illuminates Chinese artists who lived in Paris in the 20^th century.” South China Morning Post, International Edition, November 1, 2017 accessed April 26, 2018, http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1526589/exhibition-illuminates-chinese-artists-who-lived-paris-20th.

[4] Heinzig, Dieter. The Soviet Union and Communist China 1945-1950: The Arduous Road to the Alliance. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2004.

[5] Morley, Simon. “In praise of vagueness: re-visioning the relationship between theory and practice in the teaching of Fine Art from a cross-cultural perspective.” Journal of Visual Practice, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2017) 87-103, February 23, 2017, accessed April 30, 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14702029.2017.1292380.

[6] Morley, Simon. “In praise of vagueness: re-visioning the relationship between theory and practice in the teaching of Fine Art from a cross-cultural perspective.” Journal of Visual Practice, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2017) 87-103, February 23, 2017, accessed April 30, 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14702029.2017.1292380.

[7] Ralske, Kurt, “The Crit,” KURT RALSKE (blog), May 2011, accessed April 26, 2018, www.retnull.com/index.php?/texts/the-crit/.

Asia Travelogue 2017

Asia Travelogue 2017

I was awarded a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship to China in Spring 2017. I used it as an occasion to travel thru Asia. My itinerary was to fly from New York to Taiwan where I would drop off my luggage, stay overnight, then fly to New Delhi where I would meet up with my Jean and Bernie for a two-week guided tour of India. From Delhi I would return to Taiwan for a ten-day stay, before flying to Lijiang, the capital of Yunnan Province in Western China for a week-long Fulbright Orientation. Only mid-way through the Orientation would I get my teaching assignment, which turned out to be at Renmin University of China in Beijing. At the end of the semester I met my friend Janet Zweig and two of her Brooklym friends in Tokyo for a two-week stay in Japan. If you scroll down you will catch the itinerary from back to front. If you care about chronology, it is best to scroll all the way down and read your way up.

 

Tuesday, July 11, 2017, Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan

On our last (partial) day in Kyoto Janet and I visited the Kyoto National Museum before heading to the Kyoto Train Station where we took the three hour ride to meet up with the boys in Tokyo.

The old and new wings of the Kyoto National Museum.

The Kyoto Train Station is a monstrously large complex made up of a shopping center, restaurants, hotel, and transportation hub. This is a Lego model of the station:

Janet and I found dinner in a basement floor dedicated to ready-to-eat food counters. I will end with a riddle, which one of these does not belong with the others?*

*Answer: The fish head what a photograph taken at Tokyo’s Fish Market. The other three are photographs of the amazing food on offer in the basement level of the train station department store. (I wish we had known about it earlier!)

For the sake of convenience Lee found us a hotel within Terminal 2 of the Haneda Airport that obligingly provided us with matching pajamas.

Monday, July 10, 2017, Kyoto, Japan

The Silver Pavilion, or Ginkaku-ji is a Zen Temple that was built in 1482 by a Shogun as a retirement villa for himself. He modeled it after the Kinkaku or Golden Pavilion, his grandfather’s retirement villa built at the base of the Northern Mountain. After the Shogun’s death in 1490 Ginkaku was converted into a Zen temple. Its garden is renowned for its sand cone sculpture, also known at the Moon Viewing Platform. It’s humbling to see how the East was practicing earth art long before Robert Smithson and others came along.

Another aspect of Japanese garden aesthetic seems to be their practice of exposing tree roots.

I can’t leave Japan without making note of their koi ponds.

The Japanese do something I have not seen in China. They cut written characters deeply into rock faces which, from a distance, has the effect of creating light and shadow within the strokes. This may also have been practiced in China, but at least in the 20th and 21st century it seems the Chinese carve into rock and paint the incisions with black paint.

We went in search of the Philosopher’s Walk, which I don’t believe we ever found. (Subsequently I learned from the internet that the Philosopher’s Walk is famous for being lined with cherry blossom trees, which happens of course only in the spring.) Along the way we did encounter some lovely walks and structures.

Sunday, July 9, 2017, Kyoto Japan

Quite coincidentally my cousin Zhengjiang and her daughter, Chenchen from Hangzhou, were also traveling in Kyoto, which made for a special and unlooked for occasion. In 1993 Janet and I traveled to China for the first time. I was on an Art International Travel Grant and we toured the country for five weeks, wherever possible meeting my father’s relatives in China. At that time Chenchen was four years old; now Chenchen is a young professional of twenty-eight. Here are the Then and Now photos:

The reunion takes place in a fancy Japanese tea and sweet shop.

Janet had read about “Owl Cafes” in Kyoto, so we go looking for one. It’s not exactly a cafe, it’s more like a cage-less owl zoo. We enter and are instructed on how to touch the owls (only with the back of our hands, and only on their backs). Our hands are sanitized with alcohol, and we are directed to stay clear of one particular owl who is “in training.” Sadly we note that the owls are all chained to their posts which makes it a mixed experience. (We liked seeing and petting the owls but we felt bad for their enslavement.)

We return to complete the tour of the Tofuku-ji Zen Temple gardens which we had started on our first full day in Kyoto and was was cut short for lack of time.

Saturday, July 8, 2017, Nara and Kyoto, Japan

We train to Nara. We stay half a day, first congregating with their famous tamed deer, then visiting the Todai-ji Temple with the Great Buddha.

The deer are regarded as sacred animals in the Shinto religion and they are everywhere. After the initial surprise of seeing them be unafraid of people the charm quickly wears off: living off tourists the deer have become conditioned beggars. (To prevent tourists from feeding them random food vendors make and sell digestible “deer cookies.” It is rather disconcerting to see the occasional overweight deer.)

The Todai-ji Temple which is dated from 728 is part of what was once one of the powerful Seven Great Temples of ancient Nara. Inside is housed the largest bronze buddha in the world.

This guy, you will note, is holding a brush and scroll. I don’t know who he is (his tag was not translated into English); my best guess is that he is Demon Guardian of Artists.

In the evening we return to our favorite restaurant, the Kamon. This time we arrive earlier and the tiny restaurant is full except for one small table which we squeeze into. We greet the chef and ask him to surprise us.

Small dishes begin to arrive one after another and we enjoy not knowing what is coming. The first night the dishes seemed like home cooking, but this time the cuisine is notched a level higher, and their sequencing is exquisite. It included a dessert like nothing we had encountered before: Janet and I loved it. Lee said he didn’t even understand what it was until the last bite; Sam gulped it down in two bites shocking me with what I considered to be his insensitivity. (I myself took tiny bites to prolong the pleasure.) I think the chef had meant it to be the last dish but Sam asked for one more. The chef didn’t break a sweat: out it comes, one last surprising dish.

This dinner cost three times that of our first visit: rightfully so, still a bargain. We bow and thank our way out. I catch the chef’s eye and mime clapping; such are the things you have to do when you don’t speak the language.

Friday, July 7, 2017, Kyoto, Japan

Kyoto has a famous, carefully maintained and cultivated moss garden boasting 120 varieties of moss. Accompanying the garden is the Nishikyo-Ku Zen Temple, also known as”Koke-dera” meaning “moss temple,” where we participated in a Zen ritual. Our attendance was pre-arranged by Janet who made a reservation; the price of admission consisted of an obligatory “donation” to the temple.

The ceremony was, as the Japanese are wont to be, formal and elaborate. Small stool-sized “desks” were arrayed in grid formation on the tatami floor. Each desk was lined with a piece of white paper; beside it lay a bamboo brush, a block of hardened ink, and a container of water. We were asked to kneel or sit on the flat cushions placed with each desk. We were each handed a small, bookmark-sized piece of smooth, stiffish, off-white paper. The Zen monk started chanting in Japanese accompanied by musicians on percussive instruments. At the end of the ritual we were directed to write down a wish, turn in the paper, and file out. (The Japanese all wrote out their wishes in beautiful calligraphy: we, the four American visual artists turned in our alphabetical scrawls.) I don’t know what they did with the wishes: I sort of assume they were later ritualistically burned.

The moss garden, which was designed in the 1330’s by Musō Soseki, a Zen monk, renowned gardener, and head priest of the temple. He considered gardening a form of meditation and Kokedera is considered his masterpiece. What this garden had in abundance was dappled light: sunlight flickered in the interstices between the overhanging leaves. Over the centuries the caretakers had kept a close eye on each tree branch, rigging up a system of support whenever the weight of gravity threatened to break a branch.

The labor required to maintain these “natural-looking” gardens is mind-boggling. In one instance Janet and I observed a gardener picking tiny seed buds off a bush to prevent them from falling and seeding the ground! I think this type of attention to minutiae pervades Japanese culture not just aesthetically but morally and ethically. For example every cash register in Japan is equipped with a small rectangular plate which is passed to you and where you are expected to place the money you are paying with. Heaven forfend you be so crass as to hand the money directly to the cashier! It is simply not done!

After lunch we went to see the famous Ryoanji Temple rock garden where it is said you can never see all of the rocks at one time. Seeing the variety of gardens it is hard to not appreciate the ingenuity of the Japanese.

Thursday, July 6, 2017, Kyoto, Japan

Fushimi Inari-taisha, the orange gated Shinto Shrine is our first stop. Inari, which means “rice” is worshipped as the patron of busines, merchants and manufacturing. The shrine consists of thousands of orange gates stacked one after another up a mountain. (We are sure Christo must have based his Gates Project on this Shrine.)

Businesses pay to erect gates for themselves; there are set prices depending on the size of the gate. Images of foxes with a key (to the granary) in their mouth abound in the Shrine. In fact. there is a granary at the base of the Shrine that now functions as a gift shop. Sam noticed the thickness of the door (close to two feet); he asked what the building was used for and was told it was used to store the rice. Below, Lee, Sam and Janet. (Note the statue of foxes atop pillars on either side of the staircase.)

Next we visited the garden of one of the Tofuku-ji Zen Temple complex. Tofuku-ji is one of the five Kyoto Gozan temples. It was was built in the mid-13th century and has maintained its Zen architecture since the Middle Ages. This was the first sand garden we encountered. The photographs don’t convey the peaceful, contemplative quality of the open garden courtyard. Below are Lee and Janet camping it up for the camera in front of the temple building.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017, Tokyo to Kyoto, Japan.

We train to Kyoto using our Japan Rail Pass. It is a three-hour trip. Lee is tired and Sam, who is allergic to shell fish is suffering the after effects of the three gigantic raw oysters he ate at the Fish Market yesterday morning. Eventually we arrive in Kyoto and make our way to the Hotel Monterrey in the Nakagyo Ward where we settle in.

In the early evening we set out to explore the neighborhood and we are totally charmed! Our hotel is on a main generic avenue, but an eight minute stroll takes us to a walkable neighborhood full of old wooden houses, restaurants, boutiques, and shopping arcades. From our hotel we can walk to the river and canals, and to the Gion District, historically known for its geisha houses. These photographs were taken late in the evening.

We set out for a recommended eel restaurant only to find it closed on Wednesdays, so we wander up and down the canal getting hungrier and hungrier. It is close to 9:00 pm and we decide to just find a restaurant. For no reason I can think of we focus on the menu of a windowless restaurant only to find the menu written entirely in Japanese. Suddenly the door opens and a man appears in the doorway. We ask if he has an English menu and he says No, regrettably he doesn’t. He assumes we will go elsewhere and backs up to close the door. I think it was the fact that we were not getting a hard sell from him: he didn’t care whether we ate there or not. In an instant we all decide we don’t need to be able to read the menu and we pile in.

We enter a tiny room with three small tables in a row. There is a doorway to a second room out of which drift some voices. I wouldn’t call the place a hole in the wall; I would says it’s closer to a hallway. The proprietor pushes two tables together and the four of us slide in. Soon thereafter a more formally dressed  younger man walks in holding a single handwritten photocopied piece of paper that is the restaurant menu. The man speaks English well; we learn he is a local English teacher. He tells us, “You have discovered my favorite restaurant!” He said, “I always eat here, because there is only him (indicating the chef), he is the only one who cooks.” It is late in the evening, we are obviously the last customers; we ask the chef to feed us whatever he wants. We leave everything up to him.

He proceeds to serve us an incredible meal starting with some slices of sashimi. The dishes we are served are small and simple —  a small mixed salad, a dish of eggplant, some vegetable tempura, some tofu, a dish of chicken necks (de-boned). The dishes have the look and feel of home cooking except that they are cooked to perfection. Nothing, absolutely nothing disappoints. We bemoan that this experience has spoiled us. I said, “Now that I know what tempura is supposed to taste like I don’t think I’ll ever be able to order it again…” (For the record, tempura should be light, fluffy, and so flaky you can see the individual flakes of batter.)

The name of the restaurant is alphabetized as KAMON. My colleague, Maggie Guo, tells me it translates something akin to BBQ…

I think the meal came to about US$50, sake included.

Below I immortalize the restaurant’s business card.

Tuesday, July 4, 2017, Tokyo, Japan

We started the morning by walking to the Tsukiji Fish Market, the biggest wholesale seafood market in the world. The inner wholesale market has restricted entry, but the outer retail market attracts tourists both foreign and domestic. Let us just say we ate our fill.

In the afternoon we tackled the Tokyo National Museum, the largest art museum in Japan and one of the largest in the world. It is located inside Ueno Park and is comprised of three adjacent buildings. I didn’t even manage to make my way through the central building, but it didn’t matter because what I saw was so rewarding. Janet and I both agreed we were finally seeing real Japanese art. Art unique to Japan, not just warmed over versions of art derived from China.

This large scale triptych shows gentlewomen collecting what I assume to be kindling. In ancient Japan the upper class could be distinguished in part by their long kimono robes, whereas the working class (see stooped man on the lower right of the left panel) generally showed bare legs. (Soldiers usually wore leggings.) Besides being beautiful the two left panels set up the joke in the right panel.

A small room displayed the collection of contemporary netsukes owned by one of the Royal Princes. Netsukes are no longer used but apparently the art of carving them persists. Netsukes were invented in the 17th century  — carved wooden or ivory toggles — used to hold closed pouches or small woven baskets that men attached to their obis and functioned as a kind of exterior pocket. (All of these netsukes were carved in the 21st century.)

A man’s kimono is called a yakuta.

Monday, July 3, 2017, Tokyo, Japan

We decided to go see a Kabuki play. To get a ticket on the same day involved a fair amount of waiting in line but we finally got in for an afternoon standing room only show. Below is a street view of the Kabuki Theatre.

The stage before the start of the show with the curtain being drawn across (by a hidden running figure) the biggest indoor stage I have ever seen.

The plays range in subject matter and length; there is a full ensemble of percussive, wind, and stringed instruments but no singing or dancing. A disconcerting feature were troupe members placed at the edges of the audience who occasionally shouted in response to what happened on stage. At first I was impressed by the participatory enthusiasm of the audience, but then I caught on. (Eighty percent of the audience were made up of women, and not a few people drowsed during the performance.)

The play we saw was apparently unusual in featuring common folks and quotidian life. There was pageantry and stylized acting (all done by trained male actors). From what we saw (we were rather bored) Kabuki plays are probably not known for tight plot structures.

This elegant woman sat just in front of us in the last row of the balcony. I couldn’t see her from the front but I admired her from a three-quarters view. Which brings me to the topic of how the Japanese look. On my second day in Japan I turned to Janet and said, “You know, the Japanese are not Chinese!” She knew exactly what I meant. Surrounded by the Japanese it was obvious how distinctly different they are from the Chinese, specially middle-aged and older men who have grown into their features. The Japanese generally have a more rectangular jaw compared to the round or oval jaws of the Chinese; they also have higher cheekbones and/or deeper eye cavities compared to the smoother, flatter Chinese profile. The men are also hairier, more apt to have a five o’clock shadow (something I have never seen on the face of a Chinese man).

While in the Beijing I noticed a woman wearing a pair of comfortable looking wide-legged jeans; in Tokyo I began to see these jeans on women everywhere on the streets which made me feel like I couldn’t live another minute without a owning pair.

We went to Shibuya 109, a high-rise shopping mall that caters to young people. (Since the jeans seemed to be the fashion of the moment it made sense to go where the teenagers shop.) Something we had remarked on were Japanese girls or young women who talked with high-pitched staccato voices. (Janet asked a barista she befriended about the phenomena and was told that the affectation was considered “cute.”) When we entered Shibuya 109 we were assaulted, and I mean assaulted by girls with high-pitched voices screaming into plastic orange megaphones. Apparently some of the shops featured timed sales which the girls were broadcasting. The din was incredible with the music blasting, the high pitched hawking; we were surrounded by teenage girls dressed in the current trends. The pair of jeans with the right fit were not that easy to find so we ended up going through every screaming floor of the mall before we accomplish our goal.

Later the others pronounced the shopping experience one of the a highpoints of the trip because it was a novel experience unique to Tokyo, something none of us had ever gone through before nor expected to ever do again!

That night we walked through the nearby Yogogi Park where the air was fresher and where it felt a good five degrees cooler. (The ten days we spent in Japan were very hot.) We made use of the park facilities and were amused to see this notice taped to the exterior wall of the bathroom.

Sunday, July 2, 2017, Tokyo, Japan

I scheduled a final trip before going home by making arrangements to meet my friend Janet and her friends, Lee and Sam, in Tokyo. They arrived in Japan a couple of days ahead of me. I don’t recall where we were when I photographed this girl standing in a store riveted by a robot. We couldn’t hear the sounds coming from the robot but it gestured with its head, arms, wrists, and hands; the little girl never moved.

Our first stop was Tokyo’s Nezu Museum which houses the pre-Modern Japanese and East Asian collection belonging to Nezu Kaichiro; the museum was established by a foundation after his death in 1940. In 2009 a new museum building by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma was opened. Below is a view of the long entry passage leading to the main door, and a segment of museum signage that caught my eye

We saw an exhibition of unglazed stoneware called Shigaraki ware made between the 14th – 16th centuries. Originally fabricated for use by farmers, Shigaraki clay with its warm orange tones makes a durable pottery with surface irregularities caused by the presence of quartz in the clay. After seeing the refinement and virtuosity of Chinese porcelain it was dumbfounding to be faced with Shigaraki ware, but I came to see that it epitomizes the Japanese Buddhist-inspired aesthetic concept of wabi sabi that emphasizes simplicity, humility, and beauty that is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.

At the museum I spotted some Japanese women dressed in full kimonos. This was a sight I would keep seeing in Japan (although you had to distinguish them from the Chinese tourists entertaining themselves by dressing up as geishas for a day. This was not hard to do since the real Japanese women wore expensive, subdued kimonos, whereas the tourists wore brightly flowered cotton kimonos.) We also saw a few men dressed in traditional costumes. I took the gesture as a sign of cultural pride and a desire to not lose touch with the past.

I encountered my first Japanese garden at the Nezu Museum, an intimate and slightly wild place; although there were tall old trees that loomed in the sky, the majority of the plantings were shorter, more human scale. It is beyond my capacity to convey the feeling from the garden but it had coziness, mystery, cultivation and abandon all in one. I felt it to be the most beautiful garden I had ever been in. In comparison the gardens at Versaille, Tuilleries, and Royal Garden at Kew, seemed expansive, formal, and lacking in intimacy.

June 25, 2017, HONG QIAO PEARL MARKET, BEIJING

S H O P P I N G ! I finally did some souvenir shopping. I went to the famous Hong Qiao Pearl Market, a huge five-story building with more than three floors dedicated to the selling of pearls. I checked it out online first and learned that you have to bargain. I am, if I say so myself, quite a good bargainer. (The trick is you have to be prepared to walk away: you can’t just pretend to walk away.) There were stands selling watches, electronics, clothing, luggage, (well-made copies of) Designer handbags, scarves, cosmetics, even toys. To my surprise I managed to buy some gifts unique to China – and not a minute too soon – I leave for Japan at the end of the week, and will be coming back only to turn in my apartment keys, get my deposit back, and grab my suitcases before heading home.

June 20, ON THE TRAIN FROM QINGDAO TO BEIJING

My last little China adventure occurred on the train from Qingdao to Beijing. I booked myself a First Class ticket and was surprised to see that I had been assigned a double wide seat. I was congratulating myself on my good fortune when a rather large man walked in and plopped himself down next to me. Halfway through the trip he noticed I was reading an English text and asked if I was Chinese. I said I was American and he told me the place he was from. This all took place in Chinese. I had no idea where he was referring to; I assumed it was a city or province I was unfamiliar with. Soon he started showing me photos of monasteries and I began to realize he might be a monk. (He was not wearing a monk’s robes.) Then he showed me a photo of the Dalai Lama who he said was his teacher. The lightbulb finally went off in my head and I said, “Oh, you’re from Tibet!” I said Tibet in English because I didn’t know the word for it in Chinese; it happens to be Xizàng (which sounds nothing like Tibet!) He showed me a photograph of himself in front of a monastery with a passel of children who are in his care. He said he was an Abbot in charge of three temples (or monasteries, I am not sure which). Finally he showed me a photo of his card (see below). I asked him to let me take a selfie because “My friends are not going to believe I met you !”

June 19, 2017, OCEAN UNIVERSITY, QINGDAO, SHANDONG PROVINCE

My last Fulbright lectures were given at Ocean University in Qingdao, a northeastern coastal city on the Yellow Sea. Qingdao was a fishing village until Germany seized and occupied it from 1898 to 1914. Germany had every intention of settling that portion of China as a colony (as the British, Japanese, French, Russian, and to a lesser extent, the Americans had done elsewhere in China), but in 1914 the Japanese drove the Germans out of China. In its brief 16-year occupation Germany managed to bequeath to Qingdao a substantial number of well-built German buildings, a sewage system, safe drinking water, a brewery, and a well-established school system. To this day the Chinese in Qingdao are grateful to the Germans for their patrimony.

The Chinese have managed to preserve most of the German buildings including the Governor’s Mansion. I took a tour of the house and was impressed by how well-designed it was. They spared no expenses in building it, importing from Germany many made-to-order items like furnishings, balustrades, lighting, windows… It is a Jugendstil or Art Nouveau style building, covering 4,000 sq. ft. of space. It cost a staggering 450,000 gold Marks to build (over a million 1890’s dollars).

Qingdao is a Chinese tourist destination; people come for the beaches, the seafood, the European architecture, and the pleasant climate. Two Ocean University graduate students, Sophie and Xiao Cao, toured me around town.

The Fulbright Guest Lecture Program is the reason I have been able to visit all these interesting cities in China. I have not posted any photos of me lecturing, so I append a shot  taken of me preparing for a presentation.

June 11, 2017, SHANGHAI and HANGZHOU

On Thursday, June 8, my brother Bob flew into Hangzhou, the city where my father grew up and where our parents’ ashes are now interred. We took the occasion to travel to Shanghai for the day where our Dad’s youngest sister (front row center, age 92) lives with her husband (front row, second from the left, age 96), their three sons and their families. The Chinese celebrate every occasion with a restaurant feast followed by a group photo, and we are no exception.

In the evening after returning to Hangzhou, we sat down with our uncle (our father’s the youngest brother, age 86) to reminisce and look over the calculus, trigonometry, and other textbooks our grandfather used to teach high school math in the 1930’s – 1950’s; he became the principal of the high school in 1956 and served until 1966 when the Cultural Revolution closed down all schools.

June 10, 2017, CHINA ART ACADEMY, HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG PROVINCE

Wang Shu is the first Chinese architect to win the Pritzker Prize, the highest international architectural award. (I.M. Pei also won, but he is considered an American architect.) Wang Shu, who is 53 years old is one of the youngest Pritzker Prize winners. His award caused controversy because his wife and architectural business partner, Lu Wenyu, was not co-nominated with him. They both teach at the China Art Academy in Hangzhou where he was named Dean of the School of Architecture in 2007. They designed the new CAA campus (2002-2007). They are known for repurposing old materials like bricks and for employing traditional Chinese building materials like bamboo and ceramic roof tiles. These are photographs taken on campus.

My cousin Zheng Jiang and her husband, Xu Hong.

June 9, 2017, HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG PROVINCE

We think of Hangzhou as our family home because that is where our father and his family grew up. (In China when people ask you where you are from you name the Province where your father is from.) Here is the extended Hangzhou Cheng family involved in the serious business of eating.

Last, but not least, my brother Bob and Chairman Mao at the Zhejiang University campus.

May 25, 2017, NATIONAL ART MUSEUM OF CHINA, BEIJING

My artist nephew, Zhi Min (he is technically a second cousin once removed), had an opening at the National Art Museum of China. It’s a five floor building that shows traveling exhibitions, contemporary Chinese artists, and shows curated from its collection. It’s not the powerhouse that the Whitney is in New York City, but I think it’s got a comparable mission. For me the outstanding work in Zhi Min’s solo exhibition titled, The Cosmos, is this marvelous sculpture.

The detail below lets you see the individual glazed ceramic pieces. The core underneath is fabricated out of bent metal. I won’t say what the shape is meant to represent because I think it’s more interesting if you look at it without preconceptions.

I went to the opening with some of my students. Afterwards we visited the other floors where we saw an exhibition of massive ink rubbings from the early 1960’s. The calligrapher/writer uses brush and ink to write on a block of stone, then the stone chiseler carves out the characters imitating the brushstrokes exactly, even the dry drag of the brush when some of the brush hairs skip over the paper. The rubbings are made by covering the carved stele with black ink then placing a piece of paper over it. The white you see are the carved indentations.

When I see what Chinese artists and craftsmen were doing just before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution I feel heartbroken and bereft. I think, What a waste! What a waste of human capacity! Because you know the people who did work like this were probably persecuted by the Red Guard, and their talents and abilities were shut down for a long, miserable, painful, lost decade.

May 22-24, FASHION AND DESIGN DEPARTMENT, XINJIANG UNIVERSITY, URUMQI

I was invited to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Province in the northwest part of China by the Fashion and Design Department at Xinjiang University. Xinjiang is the largest of China’s provinces and the most multicultural. It borders Russia, Mongolia, India, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It is a major trade route (in ancient times it was a part of the Silk Road); yet the province seems rather poor in spite of its large reserves of oil, minerals and gas. Officially it is called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and it borders the Tibet Autonomous Region to the east.

I have the distinction of being the first foreign artist to visit the Department and they went all out meeting me at the airport with flowers (!) One of my Fulbright colleagues, James Hueng, who did not get a good reception from the Economics Department at Xinjiang University when he came to lecture said, “Holy Molley!” when I told him about getting flowers. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him they also gifted me a linen jacket made with Uyghur Atlas fabric design. Examples of which you can see below.)

Xinjiang does not look like the rest of China. The Uyghurs, who are a group of ethnic Turks have adopted the Arabic alphabet. (Apparently their language is close enough to Turkish the two can easily communicate.) Uyghur food, which is dominated by the taste of lamb, seems part-Turkish, part-Chinese to me. Regretfully, like much of China, old Urumqi has been torn down and rebuilt, leaving no ancient buildings or monuments.

I gave a new lecture, HOW I RECONCILED MY WESTERN ART EDUCATION WITH AN ASIAN VISUAL SENSIBILITY,  plus my (by now standard) Public Art Lecture. It’s hard to tell how the lectures go over with the students, but the faculty seemed interested. The students, did however, clap after I answered each question. (I don’t know if it was because they liked my answer or if they were just trying to hurry me out of there.)

The Department Heads (Dean and Associate Dean) both took a shine to me and invited me to come back. They seemed quite serious about it, so I am thinking I may come back in a couple of years. My nephew, Zhi Min, and his mother, Hemei, who are both artists want me to come and spend a month or so at Jindezhen, site of the Ancient Chinese porcelain kilns, painting ceramic greenware.

May 18, DISTRICT 798 AND THE MINSHENG ART MUSEUM, BEIJING

My class and I went to 798, the Art District, to do a studio visit with a student who was renting a huge studio space nearby. We took advantage of being there to see the Peter Doig exhibition at Faurschou Foundation, Beijing. I was thrilled to see in person some of the early paintings that I had only ever seen reproduced in books.

I am sorry to say that the best work in the show were these, painted during and right after graduate school. The newer work doesn’t come up to snuff. I don’t know if he’s going to get his mojo back, but I hope so. I LOVED these paintings.

Then we went to the fabulous Minsheng Art Museum across from 798. It’s a private museum funded by the Minsheng Bank (the People’s Bank). XIAO GAO: OUR GENERATION consisted of black and white photographs taken between 1986 and 1996 by Xiao Gao, a young photographer who somehow managed to meet just about every important contemporary artist, poet, writer, rock musician and film director coming up in that period of time (a decade after the Cultural Revolution but before the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square).

Upstairs was a solo exhibition of Bai Ming, a contemporary ceramicist and painter whose work is both elegant and inventive. He manages to combine expressive brushwork (in the Western sense of the word) with a classical Chinese spareness. He’s masterful with mediums, able to make porcelain plates look like ink drawings on paper, and oil paintings look like porcelain surfaces.

May 17, ROOM 530, ART & MUSIC BUILDING, RENMIN UNIVERSITY, BEIJING

I gave my ART IN PUBLIC PLACES: A GROWING FIELD IN THE UNITED STATES lecture at Renda. Most of the students in my class came, plus a handful of others. I still had a scratchy voice from my recent illness caused, I am convinced, by the dry Beijing air. (The humidifier broke and I got dried out overnight which destroyed my sinuses.) Xiao Ma did the talking for me (I skipped the English version altogether). Maggie was in the audience and asked questions throughout. When I spoke about Maya Lin and the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial controversy she asked if she was related to Lin Huiyin, a famous (and first) Chinese female architect. (She turned out to be Maya Lin’s aunt.)

May 13, APARTMENT No. 1705, YIYUAN 3, RENMIN UNIVERSITY, BEiJING

I invited my graduate students to a party in my apartment. I made cold sesame noodles, stir fried eggplant, and bought Chinese baked goods and canned drinks. The students brought a lot of fruits and snacks. Two of the guys brought real food: roast chickens and a homemade slow cooker pork dish. The girl students decided we should play a game – not exactly Simon Says but similar – and people who made mistakes had to choose Truth or Dare. (It seemed all so innocent to me; I guess we are too cynical and cool in the U.S. to do anything so childlike and wholesome.) I ended the evening with a Netflix showing of the Ai Weiwei documentary: Never Sorry.

May 4, GUGONG (THE FORBIDDEN CITY), BEIJING

I am embarrassed by how long it took me to revisit The Forbidden City. The last time I saw it was in 1993 when the buildings were in disrepair and the woodwork had been shellacked a gaudy red and green. In the last two decades, however, the Chinese government, with the aid of Japanese, American and European conservationists have been systematically restoring it.

It was built in the early 1400’s by Emperor Zhu Di of the Ming Dynasty. He moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, closer to the northern border threatened by the Mongols. He was 42 when he finally made his way to the throne, and twenty plus years were spent building the palace. (I am told every new Chinese Dynasty started by razing the prior Dynasty’s palaces and building anew. However, since Chinese palaces were built by felling trees, gigantic as the current Forbidden City is, all prior palaces were probably much, much larger, in part because they had access to older, bigger trees. If you think of the scale of the terra cotta Army, you can begin to imagine the scale of what the living palace must have been since the Army was but part of a mausoleum.)

Apparently the Forbidden City is fortunate in currently having an inspired director who initially took the trouble of visiting every single part of the sprawling complex to rethink how best to use the spaces. They have created museum galleries to separately exhibit its large collection of paintings, ceramics, and sculptures, and they are even hosting special traveling exhibitions unrelated to China or its history. It is said that if they were to undertake showing their collection on a monthly basis it would take 90 years to complete one rotation. The director is having documentaries made of what goes on in the complex, including the restoration work, and the documentaries are quite popular on TV. He has also had the sense to rethink what is sold in the Gift Shops, and they have turned into lively profit centers.

We saw an outstanding exhibition of four Ming Dynasty brush painters. I will forebear making commentary and restrict myself to showing their work.

KUN CANG

BA DA SHANG REN

SHI DAO

HONG REN

April 29, BANQUETING IN BEIJING

Marcelo, the husband of my Brazilian-Chinese cousin Alice urged me, before I came, “to eat a lot of Peking Duck for him.” I have been dutifully chowing down: this particular banquet was the fourth Peking Duck I sampled in my so-far three months in Beijing. It was also the fanciest: the wrap came in the standard white flour and a pleasant light green dough; the sauces came in three different flavors, one of them sweet. The trick, as far as I have figured out, is to slather the wrap with the sauce(s) of your choice, select some meaty duck slides as well as a few meatless crispy duck skin pieces, add the green onion and any other accoutrements you like, roll, and eat.

The Chinese do not believe in splitting the bill. The banquets are always covered by one person or one household. The idea is that you take turns and everything evens out in the long run. If you are hosting the dinner, you get to order the dishes.

I cannot begin to explain what we were served at this banquet; first because my Chinese vocabulary is limited, and when they talk about the ingredients I mostly don’t know what they mean; and second because I am not familiar with fancy Chinese cuisine (what we eat in the U.S. is almost always versions of home cooking – nothing fancy.)

What I have discovered is that you have to pace yourself at these banquets. The dishes are numerous, and they keep coming and coming; you almost have to restrict yourself to a single bite of each dish.

And no banquet ever ends (or sometimes begins) without a group photo being taken.

April 26, BEIJING ENAMEL FACTORY CO., BEIJING

I finally got around to seeing some of my relatives who live in Beijing; in the morning we visited an ailing aunt, and in the afternoon we stopped in at the Beijing Enamel Factory which specializes in making cloisonne, an ancient Byzantine Empire craft which migrated to China at some point.

Cloisonne, which is the French word for compartment, is made with bronze and vitreous enamel. Below you see a worker attaching bronze strips to a giant bronze bowl.

The drawing of the design is traced onto the vessel as below, and you can see in the tray bronze strips that will be attached over the line drawing.

The vitreous material is painted into the different sections before the vessel is heated in an oven that melts the glass and hardens into a tough, glossy enamel which is then polished with stone to sand down the edges of the bronze strips and to brighten the enamel colors.

The technique is beautiful but like the majority of ancient crafts that I have seen on this trip, like Indian miniature painting or Indian marble inlays, these techniques need to be reinvigorated with sophisticated and high-level design. Regrettably these craftsmen are locked into repeating ancient designs by rote or turning out kitschy popular designs. Below is a detail of a large vase that was a beautiful exception to the general rule.

An interesting side note is that the majority of the workers at the factory were deaf-mute. (We saw them hand gesturing to each other in conversation.) It actually makes sense that people who are accustomed to silence would have a higher tolerance for sitting quietly hour after hour doing fine repetitive work.

April 20, HUBEI PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, WUHAN, HUBEI PROVINCE

My ostensible reason for going to Wuhan was to lecture at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music and the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts, but I mainly went to meet a cousin from my mother’s side of the family.

Xiaoyun and her nephew, Liming, took me to the Hubei Provincial Museum where they insisted on hiring an English-speaking guide for me, which turned out to be a good thing: he was a young archeologist who explained that the museum’s main acquisitions came from a Mausoleum uncovered in northeast Hubei Province in 1977.

The Mausoleum of the Marquis of Yi of Zeng (Zeng was a minor state subordinate to Chu, its more powerful neighbor), was accidentally discovered by the Peoples’ Liberation Army when they were blowing up a hill to build a factory. The tomb was water-flooded when opened which, surprisingly, was a good thing: airless water contains no bacteria, and the artifacts were found in almost pristine condition. (It is one of a very small number of archeological sites in China found intact and excavated using modern scientific techniques.)

Below you can see models of the Mausoleum made by the Museum. The oversized box covered by lacquer designs contained the Marquis’ coffin. On both sides are eight coffins containing bodies of women that are assumed to be his wives. When the Marquis died the wives were given the choice to commit suicide (with poison) or be murdered (with poison) (!).

The Marquis, who died in or around 433 BCE (at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period or the beginning of the Warring States Period), must have loved music. He was buried with a very large, very handsome set of bells (weighing five tons it is said to be the heaviest musical instrument in the world) and an assortment of pipes, gourds, drums, stone chimes, and stringed instruments. Below you can see the chamber of musical instruments and ritual bronzes. The Mausoleum had four separate rooms containing an additional thirteen other coffins of female bodies assumed to be his maids. (The youngest seems to have been about thirteen.)

This is the side and back view of the set of bells which numbers 64. Each bell was two toned; the extruding metal knobs controlled the length of the note: they could be tapped to stop the sound. The bells were played by five female musicians about 2,500 years ago. At the time it was said to be the 8th Wonder of the World.

The Marquis was also buried with a cache of ritual bronzes and weapons. This is a distinctive wine cooler; the wine was poured into the tall vessel and the outer bowl was filled with ice. The wine would be sipped through straws.

Where, you might ask, did they get the ice? From this icebox ! In the winter they harvested ice from the rivers and lakes and kept them underground until summer.

This is the massive coffin of the Marquis that was carved out of a single piece of wood. A mighty tree and twenty-one women were felled when the Marquis died.

Although I didn’t photograph them, buried with the Marquis were some glass beads believed to have been either Egyptian or Persian. We know that silk was found in Egypt as early as 1000 BCE; glass beads were some of the items brought back to China on the Silk Road.

The Hubei Provincial Museum, unlike the much richer Shanghai Museum, can’t afford to buy art. What they have in their possession are mostly items excavated from sites within Hubei Province. Luckily for them about 15 years ago they returned to the grave site of Zhu Zhanji (1411-1441), the Prince Liangzhuang, who was the 9th son of Emperor Ren who lived during the Ming Dynasty. Emperor Ren is famous for being the person who sent Zheng He, the Monk Navigator who commanded the fleet of massive ships that landed in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula before any European ever got there. The Prince was buried with this gold bullion known to have been brought back from the Western Seas by Admiral Zheng.

This impressive bronze sword, when first excavated was able to cut through a dozen sheets of paper. The edge is made with a hard bronze and the middle section from thicker but softer bronze because hard bronze is brittle and more likely to break. This was a state of the art piece of military equipment.

As was the dagger-like blade attached to the spoke of this chariot wheel. The horse and man are both clad in ox-leather armor. Chariots were driven by important people, like princes, who were a prize kill for the enemy. Chariots were driven by four horses, and an injured or dead horse could spell death to the princeling driver.

The two people who provided me with this educational experience are shown here. On the left is my cousin Suen Xiaoyun and on the right is her nephew Mei Liming; in the center is Yours Truly.

April 22, 2017, THE WUHAN GREAT YU CULTURE MUSEUM, WUHAN, HUBEI PROVINCE

Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province (where my mother was born) is the most populated city in central China. It surrounds the area where the Yangtze and Han Rivers meet. Because of easy river navigation and because Hubei is bordered by nine provinces, it has always served as a main thoroughfare and travel route. It has a 3,500 year history and a reputation for being a cultural and educational center. It also has the distinction of being the place where the Qing Dynasty was overthrown in 1911 and the Republic of China established.

My nephew Liming and two of his friends toured me around and one of the places I was taken to was the Wuhan Great Yu Culture Museum where this photograph was taken. Liming is on the left, Maggie in the center, Zhang Hong on the right. The pose was instigated by Maggie.

The site consists of the remains of an ancient city wall and gate built at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, about 200 CE. Originally the Imperial Palace and gardens occupied the spot. From the top of the wall you can see the First Bridge (built over the Yangtze River in 1957 with the help of Russian engineers).

You also get a great view of ancient roofs atop the wall.

That evening I was invited to dinner at my cousin Xiaoyun’s apartment where I met her mother who at 91 has possession of all her marbles, takes no medication, except for two implants has all her teeth, has better eyesight than me, hears perfectly well, and is kind, cheerful, gracious and good-humored. I ask you: Does this look like the face of a 91-year old woman ?? (She has not had an easy life. Her family suffered before, during, and after the Cultural Revolution. She has worked hard all her life; she and her two daughters suffered through years of hunger, hard labor and deprivation.) But don’t we all want to glide into an old age like hers !

April 12-15, 2017, YUNNAN NORMAL UNIVERSITY and YUNNAN PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, KUNMING, YUNNAN PROVINCE

Kunming is the capital of Yunnan Province which is situated in southeast China. It shares a border with Myanmar (Burma) in the west, Laos and Vietnam in the south, and Sichuan Province in the north. It is the most ethnically diverse Province in China containing 26 different ethnic groups. It is also the most biodiverse Province in China; Yunnan has approximately 17,000 of the total 30,000 varieties of higher plants in China. The Province has less than 4 percent of the total landmass of China yet it contains half of China’s birds and mammals. Yuanmou Man, a skeleton discovered in the 1960’s is said to predate Peking Man, and Lufeng, near Kunming is known as China’s Hidden Dinosaur Valley. A new species of dinosaur, the Lufengosaurus, was discovered there.

Perhaps because of the preponderance of ethnic minorities Yunnan has historically maintained a reputation for being remote, backward, and dangerous, this in spite of the fact that the Province, almost entirely occupied by ethnic minorities in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties produced bronze artifacts just as accomplished as those made by the Han Chinese-occupied areas of China during the same period of time (1800 BCE to 220 BCE).  (The city of Lijiang where the Fulbright Orientation was held in late February is in Yunnan Province.)

I went to Kunming, Yunnan to give two lectures at Yunnan Normal University, a teachers’ college. In 1938 when the Japanese were taking over Eastern China, Nankai and Beijing University (among other institutions of higher learning) dismantled themselves and walked – students, books, furniture, equipment, and all – to Kunming where they formed the National Southwest Associated University. Much like the way European Jews who came from Europe before WWII culturally, intellectually, and artistically enriched the United States, a similar kind of critical mass of intelligentsia accumulated in Kunming after 1938. Intellectual powerhouses including future Nobel Prize-winners and Western-trained scholars taught, researched, studied, and published in Kunming during the War. Yunnan Normal University was founded and left as a legacy by the National Southwest Associated University in gratitude for the refuge Kunming provided them.

Standing with Prof. LiHong from the Faculty of Educational Science and Management and a teacher of Early Childhood Education in front of the old Yunnan Normal University campus gate.

Profs. LiHong, Fulbright Fellow MaryJo Benton Lee, and LiBi, LiHong’s former student and friend, standing in front of the new Yunnan Provincial Museum. The copper colored sheathing on the building is part mesh and part perforated sheeting.

The ground floor lobby area, Museum interior,  enhanced by a different mesh-like material.

A mural depicting a historical survey of Yunnan Province from the Pleistocene to the end of World War II.

A bronze ceremonial table or sacrificial altar in the form of a male bull protecting his calf as a tiger attacks the impassive bull from the rear.

April 5-6, 2017, NEW YORK INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY and NANJING MASSACRE MEMORIAL HALL, NANJING, JIANGSU PROVINCE

I was invited by the New York Institute of Technology, a private American college with campuses worldwide, to give a couple of Fulbright-sponsored lectures at their Nanjing campus. NYIT has two American campuses, one in New York City, the other in Old Westbury, Long Island. They are what is called a 3 + 1 school. Students attend three years in their home country and the last year in one of the New York campuses. Instruction is given by American faculty and students are expected to be fluent in English by the time they graduate.

On my free afternoon I visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. Nanjing which translates as Southern Gold is the southern counterpart to Beijing which translates as Northern Gold. In 1368 C.E. the Ming Dynasty made Nanjing its home, establishing it as a Capital City. The Kuomingtang (KMT – the Nationalist Party led by General Chiang Kai-shek – who fought the Japanese invasion of China 1937 to 1945 and subsequently battled the Communist Party before he and his army retreated to Taiwan in 1947) established Nanjing as its capital in 1927.

THE RAPE OF NANJING: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, a best-selling book by Chinese-American author Iris Chang published in 1997 documents the brutality of the Japanese after they invaded Nanjing in 1937-38. I have not read the book, due in part to cowardice: I wasn’t sure I could handle the bloodiness and brutality. There is no definitive history of the six weeks that comprised the mass torture and murder of Chinese in Nanjing. The number of victims is still disputed, although the 300,000 dead the Nanjing Massacre Memorial has inscribed on its exterior wall seems to fall somewhere in the middle of the estimates.

The displays in the Memorial are distressing: Chinese soldiers were hunted down and executed, killing contests occurred between Japanese soldiers, tens of thousands of women and men were raped, the city was looted and burned, and bodies littered the streets for months afterwards. The attacks lasted a period of six weeks from the end of December 1937 to the first week of February 1938. The Japanese occupied Nanjing until the end of World War II. After the war the Commanding General and his Lieutenant were both executed for war crimes.

As documented in the Memorial, an American ship, the Panay, that patrolled the Yangtze River assigned to evacuate families of Standard Oil employees as Nanjing came under attack, and three Standard Oil tankers were bombed by the Japanese on Dec. 12, 1937 years before Japanese declared war on the United States. Eventually Japan apologized and paid over $2 million in reparations but since painted American flags had been clearly visible on the deck and on the sides of the ship, it seems the ships had been fired on not by mistake but a by type of unauthorized action the Japanese called Gekokujo.

Early April, 2017, THE SHANGHAI MUSEUM and THE LONG MUSEUM, SHANGHAI, ZHEJIANG PROVINCE

After spending some lovely days in Hangzhou my relatives and I drove northeast to Shanghai to visit my aunt (my father’s youngest sister) and her extended family. This is me greeting my aunt as she arrives at the restaurant.

This is everyone who attended the dinner. (It’s not the entire Shanghai contingency since some of my cousin’s wives and kids couldn’t make it.)

My aunt has an electric wheelchair and her husband, who has trouble walking, has his own nifty little electric scooter. They made it home from the neighborhood restaurant entirely on their own!

The following days my generous cousins kindly accommodated me by taking me to two museums. The Shanghai Museum has an incredible collection of Bronzes, of which this is  but one example from the Late Spring & Autumn and Warring State Periods (late half of the 7th century to 221 B.C.E.) I am pretty sure the lost wax technique was used to make the individual parts which then had to be welded together: note the detail of the small piglets walking around the band of the vessel.

The Chinese call their own country Zhongguo, which translates as The Middle Kingdom, but for the rest of the world China is named after its most spectacular artistic craft – china porcelain ware.

I was frankly surprised by quantity and quality of artworks owned by the Shanghai Museum given that it was  built in the 1990’s after a massive amount of Chinese art was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). When I mentioned this to my cousin he looked bemused and said, “They are all purchased!” I was staggered: they basically went out of the country and bought back their heritage. Granted, many of the items had been donated (as noted in the labels), even so it made me realize how rich the City of Shanghai must be to be able to fund the museum to this extent.

And then there are the two private Long Museums in Shanghai founded by Liu Yiqian and his wife Wang Wei. They are both contemporary art museums,; one showcases their private collection, and the other features traveling exhibitions. The show that recently opened was a James Turrell Retrospective. The show was an eye-opener for my cousins, who are not art aficionados. They were surprised and delighted by the experience. Below you can see them immersed in the first room.

Before exiting the museum we came across a couple of Olafur Eliasson sculptures left over from the prior exhibition. Below is my cousin, Xiaoping, and his wife reflected in the Eliasson.

Late March, 2017, WEST LAKE, HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG PROVINCE

The Chinese have a national holiday called Qingming which translates as Tomb Sweeping Day. It is like Memorial Day without the association of war. People return to their ancestral homes to visit the grave sites of relatives, dust off the headstones, leave food offerings, and if moved to do so, speak to the dead. I went to Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province where my father is from.

Hangzhou is a beautiful city with a large natural lake called West Lake. (Hangzhou is the Chinese city that hosted Nixon in 1972.) I have been to Hangzhou twice before (in 1993 and 2003) but I have never seen it as beautiful as it is now. The City has been beautifying itself by planting trees, flowers, ornamental grasses, restoring ancient bridges, pagodas, and by stringing lights on tree-lined streets .

My uncle Naibo, who is my father’s youngest brother still lives in Hangzhou. In 1964 he was part of a team of Chinese hydropower engineers who went to the Republic of Guinea to help them build a bridge. Premier Zhou En-Lai visited Guinea at the completion of the project and made a point of shaking hands with each engineer. In the photo below my uncle is the short young man standing behind and to the right of Premier Zhou En-Lai who stands second from the right in the front row.

Below is a photo of Uncle Naibo with his daughter Zhengjiang at West Lake.

And here are some scenic photos taken at West Lake.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

RENMIN UNIVERSITY OF CHINA, BEIJING

For the first two weeks I was in Beijing the skies were blue and the Air Quality Index (AQI) stayed well below 100 compared to cities like Hangzhou and Shanghai which had AQI’s above 200. (New York City, by the way, has an average AQI of about 4 !!!)

I was pleasantly surprised and encouraged, but I should have known better… It turned out that the 2017 China Communist Party Congress was being held in Beijing, and when anybody important comes to the city the factories shut down to clear the air. If you look back at the photos I shot out of my apartment window a couple of weeks ago you will see a notable difference from this, which is the current state of the air outside. And you can see from this selfie that I have officially become a Beijiner.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

978 DISTRICT, BEIJING, CHINA

978 is the well-known gallery district in Beijing. In 1995 the China Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) which was located near Tiananmen Square was asked to relocate itself. Looking around for cheap real estate CAFA moved itself to Factory 706 on the east side of Beijing, an area full of abandoned factories that had once manufactured military equipment. In 2001 Time Zone 8 Art Books owned by Robert Bernell moved into Factory 978 and in 2002 a Japanese-owned gallery moved into the same factory complex. Artists had been trickling into the area taking advantage of the large industrial spaces and high ceilings.

Below you can see the swooping arcs of the roofs of Factory 978 which was built in the 1950’s by East German architects and engineers, and you can see the building PACE Beijing occupies.

The District is now pretty commercialized and, predictably, artists have been squeezed out due to high rents; artists are now moving to Yanjiao, a suburb of Beijing. But some artists have managed to get a toehold in the area near 978 and one of them is Prof. Hu Quanchun who teaches sculpture at CAFA and runs his own 3D printing business. Below you can see Prof. Hu and a functional sculpture he fabricated in Yunnan Province by hiring local stone cutters. It is a type of well that accesses village water.

A group of graduate and undergraduate students visiting Prof. Hu’s studio.

Prof. Hu’s studio is housed near 978 and CAFA in an amazing area of newly constructed industrial-looking buildings built with art galleries in mind. Someone, I don’t know who, decided to develop the area with the intention of renting the buildings out to galleries and other art businesses. (You can see in the background emptied wooden painting crates.)

One of the galleries located in this area is Chambers Fine Art which also has a branch located on W. 19th Street in Chelsea. We saw some interesting art there.

Song Hongquan, whose father was a stone carver made this sculpture.

I believe, although I may be wrong, Xie Xiaoze, installed this marvelous “bookcase” in a corner of one of the gallery’s offices.

Wu Jian’an, who is representing China in the 2017 Venice Biennale, bases his work on the Chinese tradition of folk papercut art. This is a detail of a larger metal wall hanging that has the virtue of looking simultaneously ancient and contemporary.

Friday, March 10, 2017

RENMIN UNIVERSITY, HAIDIAN DISTRICT, BEIJING, CHINA

I have been here two weeks and I feel well settled-in. I am teaching a graduate class on Tuesday afternoons that includes an hour-long discussion at the beginning of class on book chapters I am assigning, after which I do one-on-one critiques with individual students. (Interestingly the other students like to hang out and listen. I take it my approach to looking at and talking about their work is novel here.)

I had prepared to teach an undergraduate course but unlike in the U.S. college students here are saddled with as many as 10 or 12 “classes” they attend each week. I admit I don’t understand how this works, but it made it impossible for the Department to schedule an additional undergraduate course. Instead I offered to spend three-hours a week doing studio visits with students who want me to look at their work. So far this is working out.

Faces of some of my students.

My modus operandi is to use a mix of Chinese and English when speaking to them. I speak Chinese until I run up against topics that I don’t have the vocabulary for, then I switch to English. I have also gotten into the habit of carrying my laptop with me so I can pull up Google Translate when necessary. Google Translate is particularly helpful translating full sentences ans paragraphs. The majority of students have a little knowledge of English but I have had studio critiques with students who spoke no English. (They usually take the precaution of inviting a friend or two who can translate for them.)

It has been gratifying to know that what I offer – the readings, discussions, viewpoints, and critiques – are new to them. I feel like a fresh wind who’s blown in for a short stay.

So far I have had dinner with two different groups of graduate students. The first time I was invited  by them. The second time I initiated the invitation: I wanted to take these girl students out to dinner because they had done me favors. But I have found that the students will never allow me to pay for dinner. If I can get myself organized I plan to host a party in my apartment later this semester. I may use it as an occasion for a film viewing.

Friday, March 3, 2017

RENMIN UNIVERSITY, HAIDIAN DISTRICT, BEIJING, CHINA

I have been here a week, so there is much to catch up on. I will try to touch on the highlights, first of which is my young colleague, Guo Chunning, whom I met in Lijiang where we had occasion to spend a couple of days together before flying to Beijing. She is an Associate Professor in the Art Department where she has founded an Animation Program.

In China art schools regard animation as a commercial medium used to produce Disney-type films or video games. Chunning is one of a handful of people in China interested in animation as an art medium. Her interests are wide-ranging: after receiving her MFA in Art she earned a PhD in Philosophy. She has traveled quite a bit outside of China and has wide-ranging interests that include writing, research, curating, and film studies. She is at the center of art animation in China and she has the ambition, the ability, and opportunity to realize her aims, which currently include bringing the Society for Animation Studies Annual Conference to Beijing, and co-create a feature-length Chinese art animation film.

Chunning has been my guide, companion, guardian angel and general helpmeet in Beijing. She arranged for a couple of her students to meet me on Saturday, my first full day in Beijing, to tour me around campus. They helped me get my cell phone set up, get drinking water service to my apartment, and buy some immediate household necessities.

I have been assigned a light-filled three bedroom apartment in a girl’s dorm.

The university campus is relatively compact, which is a good thing since I am directionally challenged. I am on the 17th floor and this is the view of the campus out my apartment window.

An interesting aside: My two student guides and I passed a group of residential buildings they said were university property, but they had no idea who lived in them. Below is a photo of the nine residential buildings. Later I learned that during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) the campus was overrun by the Red Guard some of whose families moved into the buildings: the present tenants are their descendants. (Apparently some time after 1976 some of the university’s professors managed to take back control of the campus.)

On a lighter culinary note, only yards away from my apartment is a stand where they sell Chinese crepes, a Beijing specialty, filled with shredded lettuce, savory bits of pickled vegetable, scallions, a you tiao, two eggs, and (optional) sausage – all for the grand price of approximately one U.S. dollar.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

THE ANCIENT VILLAGE, LIJIANG, YUNNAN, CHINA

Our posh and luxuriant hotel, The Intercontinental, is strategically located adjacent the Ancient Village, the historical part of Lijiang which has been preserved and renovated. The population is Naxi, Yi and Tibetan; the Ancient Village has been commercialized to cater to the tourist industry. Due in large part to the sandy soil, the City of Lijiang, and the Province of Yunnan, has been historically poor. It is easy to see why the populace do everything they can to draw tourists.

At the edges of the Ancient Village you can see the non-touristic, unglamorous storefronts that cater to the residents.

Lijiang was under the rule of the Mu Family from the Ming to the Qing Dynasties. The Mu Village, a vast mansion compound originally built in the 1300’s still stands, although the building is not original but a reconstruction made in the early 20th century.

I had a flash of recognition when I realized the architectural layout to be what, on a more modest scale, must have been the kind of house my mother grew up in. She described a gated, walled compound, an open courtyard, a central house, followed by a succession of houses. She said her family lived in the first house and relatives lived in the other houses. She talked about how every doorway was barred by a wooden plank at floor level that the kids would clear by getting a running start and hurtling over.

These bars rise a good fifteen inches (the top reaches almost to my knees) and are put in place not as a system of rainwater or flood control but rather to prevent demons from entering the house! (I guess demons can’t jump obstacles??!!?)

Apparently Mu Palace had a quantity of high quality paintings and elaborately carved wooden doors which were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

A view overlooking the palace compound to the distant mountains of Lijiang.

A view of Lijiang urban sprawl as seen from a high palace vantage point.

Back at the Ancient Village they’ve done some updating. Notice the LCD advertising screens under a pagoda-style roof. Below are Alyssa of Project PenYou, Lilly Butler and Ava Chin’s daughter, Mei.

Monday, February 20, 2017

LIJIANG, YUNNAN, CHINA

Yunnan is a province in southwest China that shares a border with the more well-known province of Sichuan. The Orientation for the Spring 2017 Fulbright scholars is being held in Lijiang where Fulbright has an office.

The day of the Orientation dinner, those of us who arrived early were taken in a small bus to the Tiger Leaping Gorge about an hour and a half from Lijiang. The story is that a tiger was seen leaping across the gorge while escaping hunters. The city of Lijiang is at 8,000 feet. The Tiger Leaping Gorge, which borders the Yantze River, has a depth of 12,500 feet.

Lijiang is home to three groups of Chinese ethnic minorities: the Naxi people, Tibetans, and the Yi people. Our tour guide was a young Naxi woman who told us the gorge is formed by the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain on the left and Shangri-la on the right.

The gorge has a giant boulder at the narrowest part and apparently the tiger used the boulder to jump across the gorge. This is currently the dry season and the water level is low. Apparently after the Monsoon the water rises about 15 feet higher than this, and the boulder becomes a mere outcropping.

The Naxi people were tea merchants who traveled from Lijiang to Tibet to sell tea or to exchange it for other goods; they also traveled from Lijiang to India and from India to the Middle East. Each leg of the journey took six months. In the photo below you can see the narrow path on the side of the mountain on which the mule caravan traveled.

The presence of Tibetans can be felt at the gorge. Among other things they sell tagged bell amulets on which people write their wishes and leave attached to the railing.

The Naxi people who were originally a northern nomadic tribe travelled south at some point in the distant past to settle in Lijiang. This is one of their villages.

Before taking up my teaching duties I am doing some traveling in the Far East.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

YANGMINGSHAN (Yangming Mountain), TAIPEI, TAIWAN

Taipei, much to my surprise, contains a live volcano in the form of Yangmingshan (Yangming Mountain). On a very foggy Saturday morning Ripley, her boyfriend Larry, Ripley’s Aunt, Jìumā, and I took ourselves on a hike up the mountain. The fog was heavy and persistent, the day was drizzly and cold. Yangmingshan used to be called Grassy Mountain because it is covered in an abundance of ornamental grass.

Along the way you can smell the sulfur caused by the volcano and see traces of volcanic ash.

I don’t know how long it took us to get to the top but Larry told me we were as high up as a four story building. (Really? Was that all?) See the bird on the post below? He looked remarkably well-fed and was completely nonplussed by us.

Larry said Taiwan has a biome that goes from sea level to 13,000 feet which makes for a diverse variety of plant life. (The widest variety of moss in the world can be found in Taiwan and Japan.) The island really is beautiful, green with varied terrain. That’s why the Portuguese named it Formosa, which is the word for Lovely in Portuguese. (Below, Ripley and Larry).

You won’t credit it, but when we came down the mountain the sun was shining and the day was warm. (Surely the mountain has to be taller than a four-story building?!)

Friday, February 17, 2017

AS SEEN ON THE STREETS OF TAIPEI, TAIWAN

This is Taipei’s version of New York City’s CitiBikes, but it’s a larger program and seems to be extensively used.

I walked down a street with a row of storefronts selling different types of birds and birdcages.

LUNGSHAN TEMPLE, TAIPEI, TAIWAN

The brochure reads, “Lungshan Temple of today is no longer in the original buildings constructed in 1738. It was rebuilt in 1919 and completed in 1924.”

And “Lungshan Temple always keeps its nature as a Buddhist Temple, but in the course of its development many deities of Taoism were also included. The varieties of deities in this temple shows the tolerant mentality of the Chinese people in their religious life,” which is apparently historical fact; it used to drive the Christian missionaries crazy that their Chinese converts would “accept Christ” and continue to worship their other deities.

I lit three incense sticks so I could approach and look at Guanyin, the Goddess of Compassion, which reminded me the last time I was in a Buddhist Temple lighting incense was in 1993 when I traveled to China with Janet Zweig. Janet stood in front of the giant smoking incense pot renouncing all desires, then walked over to the Gift Shop and proceeded to bargain with the Monk for a pair of cloth shoes…

The temple was rebuilt by hiring Wang Yi-Shun, a master temple builder based in southern Fujian, China. According to the brochure, the temple is a masterpiece of traditional Chinese architecture and in 1985 the Taiwanese government designated it a “historical site of second grade,” which sounds about right to me…

I saw a lot of the congregants repeatedly throwing two red crescent-shaped pieces of wood and gathered it had something to do with divination. I heard a young woman explain in Mandarin to a young white guy how to do the ritual, and then heard the guy turn to his friend and explain in fluent Japanese what the young woman said. I was so jealous ! His Chinese was much better than mine ! (In fact, I couldn’t follow the young woman’s explanation.)

According to Wikipedia: Jiaobei blocks or moon blocks (Mandarin 筊杯, jiǎo bēi, lit. “bamboo cups”) are wooden divination tools originating from China, which are used in pairs and thrown to answer a yes or no question. They are made out of wood or bamboo and carved into a crescent shape. Each block is round on one side (known as the yin side) and flat on the other (known as the yang side). It is one of the more commonly used items found in Chinese traditional religion and are used in temples and home shrines along with fortune sticks, both of which are often used together when requesting an answer from the gods.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM, TAIPEI, TAIWAN

This is the view from one of the Cafes at the National History Museum which is a nice quiet place to sit. The museum is low key and under-utilized. I think I know why: they’re short on English wall text. They can’t compete with the National Palace Museum which provides excellent English wall text and attracts a slew of tour groups every day of the week.

Pillow in the Shape of a Tiger (1115-1234 CE) Can you believe the Ancient Chinese slept on ceramic pillows like these? The first time I saw ceramic pillows was in a Kurosawa movie; I had no idea it originated in China !

I am sure these pillows were strictly used by the wealthy; no farmer or peasant could afford to sleep so uncomfortably every night; after all they had to get up and work the next day !

As a senior in college I made a series of highly patterned acrylic paintings on paper based on Chinese jar shapes like these from the Neolithic period.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

THE NIGHT MARKETS IN TAIPEI

Night Markets in Taipei (there are many) start at sundown and go until midnight seven-days-a-week. They are hopping, fun and festive. (Picture the San Gennaro Street Festival in New York’s Little Italy, with more variety of street food and fewer games of chance.)

Speaking of Games of Chance, there’s one that’s overwhelmingly popular in Taiwan – the Lottery.

The Taiwanese government did something extremely clever decades ago. (I am surprised more countries that need it, like Brazil and India, haven’t taken up the practice.) To prevent merchants cheating on sales tax the government runs a bi-monthly lottery. The receipt of anything you purchase comes with a lottery number which of course encourages you to demand your receipt from merchants.

It is also popular to buy Scratch Off Lottery Tickets.

This particular lottery seller sold a winning ticket recently.

This is a cotton candy seller’s specialty. I don’t know if this chick relates to the fact that this is the Year of the Rooster in Chinese Astrology.

Lest you forget, there are many reminders of the fact when night falls and the lights come on.

I would be neglectful if I didn’t mention that this particular image seems to have gone viral in China.

The Taiwanese really like their colorful electric lights. This is a temple situated near the Night Market dedicated to the Maritime Goddess. The locale borders a river and at one time was a very busy port.

Monday, February 13, 2017

THE NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM, TAIPEI, TAIWAN

On my way to the National Palace Museum I saw, beside an office building, a surprising and notable public art sculpture by Yang Mao-Lin, a famous Taiwanese artist, depicting the head of a manga cat on the body of Marilyn Monroe standing atop a giant bug. It’s more kitschy than a Jeff Coons !

At the National Palace Museum I focused on three exhibitions: A historical survey of Chinese calligraphy, a notable book of bird illustrations, and Chinese ceramic fabrication techniques.

An example of handwritten print characters:

An example of Chinese cursive writing:

A collection of bird illustrations (mythical as well as real). It seems to me the artist had more fun when he was making things up…

At the ceramic exhibition I fell in love with a Tang Dynasty (618-917) Pottery Figure of a Standing Lady with Painted Colors:

You might not credit it but she was considered a great beauty in her day. A fat woman (look at how full her cheeks are) was proof of wealth.

In the Tang Dynasty fashionable ladies painted their lips to appear smaller. (Painted rosebud lips were also fashionable in France in the 18th century.)

The foreign shoes she is wearing further testifies to her wealth. (I assume they are Middle Eastern.)

What I love about her is that she has so much presence – so much character! She is not a sweet young thing. To me she looks capable of commanding an army; I know she made her maids scurry with her sternness.

And as you can see, she is still much admired today. Here she is with a group of Japanese tourists.

This is a panoramic view of the scene from the front steps of the National Palace Museum.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

ILAN, TAIWAN

On my first full day in Taipei, Tsai Shinqhuey, a former student and her boyfriend, Roy, came by the AirBnB to take me to Ilan, a village about one-and-one-half hours north of Taipei – which felt quite different – agricultural, with no skyscrapers.

They took me to a theme park type place recreated to look like Taiwan in the 1950’s. Below are photos of Shinqhuey and Roy first seen clearly then engulfed by artificially generated steam.

In the evening Shinqhuey wanted to take me to the observation deck of Taipei 101, the tallest building in the city, but there was a long line and the tickets were too expensive so we skedaddled, but not before I took this photo of people waiting online milling in a room full of multicolored lights . (This is a scene you will never see in India !)

Friday, February 10, 2017

TAIPEI, TAIWAN

Arrived in Taiwan Friday afternoon and to my delight found that I had booked myself into a wonderful AirBnB in ZhongZheng (Central) District of Taipei run by a young couple, YaTing, who is Taiwanese, and Olivier, her husband who is French, and their six month old daughter Adelie. Their ground floor apartment is large and interestingly configured with four bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a breakfast room, a kitchen, two bathrooms and a downstairs basement (that serves as a TV room). Olivier used to run a small restaurant serving French homestyle cooking but now that YaTing has returned to work, he stays home with Adelie. They occupy one of the bedrooms, rent out two to AirBnB guests, and house a young woman who does light housekeeping for them in the fourth.

My room is spacious, quiet, and has all the conveniences including a desk and chair, a two-seater sofa, shelving, closet, night tables, good lighting, and crucially, enough electrical and strip sockets to plug in all my chargeable devices.

The area is convenient to public transport (bus and subway), and has many small, good, inexpensive restaurants nearby. (Olivier marked about half a dozen places on my Google Map, but I have been so busy I have not had time to go to any of them.)

FOOD IN TAIWAN

But while I am on the subject of food, I should perhaps mention that I love Indian food, and had expected India to be a gustatory delight. And it might have been had I had a taste for very, very spicy food. Indian idea of lightly spiced is so hot it sets my taste buds on fire, which prevents me from tasting anything ! To our chagrin Jean, Bernie, and I found ourselves seeking out eateries that cater to tourists (who, like us, come in begging for food with NO spiciness).

Taipei, it turns out, is a Snacker’s Delight. By “snacking” I mean light eating or perhaps eating-on-the-run. There are a gazillion tiny storefronts selling good, inexpensive, ready-made food. Like these light fluffy deep fried you tiao (literal translation – oil strips) that in this photo look a little like french baguettes. But trust me, there’s nothing bready about them: they are delicious, light (if greasy), crisp yet soft, and air-filled.

Scallion pancakes – fried on the spot – greasy yes, but delicious.

Squid anyone?

I couldn’t tell what he was cooking, my best guess is some kind of soup.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

THE ELLORA CAVES, AURANGABAD, MAHARASHTRA

The Ellora Caves are a large complex of 34 rock-cut structures that served as monasteries and temples for three different religions: Buddhism (330-650 C.E.), Hinduism (8th to 12th century C.E.), and Jainism (600-1000 C.E.). A rock-cut structure is one that is carved from the top down. They contrast the Ajanta Caves which were chiseled out from rock faces. The Ellora Caves are made of basalt, a rock that is neither too soft nor too hard. Iron chisels and hammers were used to carve the monuments.

I admit that I cannot visualize the process of planning and executing a rock cut structure, and of course, these people did not have paper on which to sketch or make plans. Unlike the Ajanta Caves the Ellora Caves were never covered over. Their existence have always been known and acknowledged. The Ajanta Caves were constructed during the Monsoon Season, but the Ellora caves were constructed only in daylight and in good weather. Apparently they used mirrors or shiny metal surfaces to refract sunlight into the caves.

A group of school children visiting the Ellora Caves.

Elephants symbolize, among other things, great intellect and wisdom. They are sacred animals and are thought to be the living reincarnation of the God Ganesha, the remover of obstacles who represents good beginnings, luck, and possibly wealth.

A ribbed ceiling cave that looks both like a set of animal ribs and the structure of a reinforced wood ceiling.

A Hindu Dancing Deity.

A man with a pot belly is a Jain symbol of wealth.

A Shiva Lingam, found in the sanctum sanctorum of all Shiva Temples, is sometimes described as a merging of the male and female sex organs. It is also known as the Brahmanda, or Cosmic Egg.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

THE AJANTA CAVES, OUTSIDE OF AURANGABAD, MAHARASHTRA

There are two separate sets of caves near Aurangabad designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. We first visited the Ajanta Caves carved into 250 feet of rock in two separate phases, from the 2^nd century B.C.E. to about 480 or 650 C.E. The area was overgrown with jungle in 1819 when they were re-discovered by John Smith, a colonial British officer, who was tiger hunting. From a high escarpment looking, I assume, through binoculars, he espied carved architectural arches.

The earliest caves were carved and painted by Buddhists monks who four months of the year took refuge in the caves during the Monsoons. (The remaining eight months they wandered the world, apparently quite far, if evidence is to be believed.)

We didn’t make the climb entirely on our own steam. Bernie hired a palanquin and to her annoyance insisted that Jean do the same.

Although we call them caves I believe the spaces are more correctly designated as monasteries and temples.

The Ajanta caves are said to contain some of the finest extant examples of ancient Indian art, which influenced all subsequent art styles in India.

Portion of a ceiling.

Portion of a ceiling.

Top portion of a stupa.

This depicts a teaching Buddha.The Buddha has five symbolic hand gestures. This one shows one hand held above the other with thumb and index fingers of both hands touching as a gesture of preaching.

A reclining Buddha that I couldn’t capture in a single frame.

I call this the Monk Dormitory.

I actually went in and lay on the bed to see what it felt like. Unsurprisingly it was hard.

Monday, February 6, 2017

WE BID A FOND AND REGRETFUL ADIEU TO RAM, OUR DRIVER, GUIDE, FATHER, MOTHER, AND GENERAL SAVIOR

I have forborne speaking about Ram Kewal Maurya, our driver and guide, but as you might perceive from this photo by the way Bernie and Jean both lean towards him that we rely on him, adore him, and are very grateful to him. Ram was recommended by my friend Ralph Helmick who more than a decade ago traveled in India with his wife Fran. At that time Ram was working for a tour agency. Ralph indicated that they were very happy with Ram so when time came for me to plan a trip to India I asked Ralph for his contact information. Ram, in the past three years, has been independently leading tours mostly getting clients through referrals by former customers.

Because Jean asked him we learned of Ram’s life story. Ram was born and grew up in a small village in Rajasthan not far from Varanasi. His father died when Ram was a child and his mother worked hard but struggled to feed the family which consisted of two older brothers, an older sister and him. Ram said that it was not unusual for them to get by on a single meal a day; to this day he remembers the feeling of hunger.

At the age of 17, without telling their mother, Ram and a brother left their village and traveled to Delhi. They knew no one in Delhi, had no money, and slept on the streets. One day a driver started a conversation with them, and asked Ram if he was hungry, saying, “You look like you’re hungry.” Ram admitted to being hungry and the driver was kind enough to feed them. He asked if they were willing to work, and Ram said he was willing to work at pretty much anything. The driver, who owned a fleet of cars, hired the brothers to help him wash cars, run errands, do laundry. etc. For their labor the boys were fed.

At some point, I don’t know how many years after leaving their village, the brothers were able to return to see their mother and assure her they were okay. At a further point in time their mother told them it was time they married.

At work their boss perceived them to be good workers and began to give them more responsibilities eventually teaching Ram to drive and get a driver’s license. Ram worked a number of years as a driver until his boss decided to switch careers into what Ram called “music recording.” (At first I pictured a sound studio but quickly perceived that Ram was probably referring to music pirating.)

Ram decided the business was not form him so he resigned his position and got himself hired as a driver for a tour company. He worked what I estimate to be 15 to 20 years for two different tour companies until three years ago when he was able, by saving his tip money, to purchase his own car. In the meantime he and his wife had borne a son and a daughter. His son, who is now a teenager, one day asked Ram to buy a computer, which he was learning to use at school. Ram said he would do so if his son would teach him to use the computer.

(A brief but interesting digression: Ram told us his son, who is sixteen years old says he wants to be a pilot and aspires to join the Indian Air Force. Ram said he agreed to support his son’s ambition and promised to buy him a position in the Air Force. Yes ! Apparently to join the Air Force you not only have to qualify, you have to pay to get in ! I assume this is payment under the table and not an official Air Force policy. Humorously one day when we were having breakfast at our hotel, Jean and I noticed a large group of Air Force officers at another table. I raised my eyebrow and said to Jean, “Well, we know they bought their way in…)

We said goodbye to Ram at the Delhi Airport because we were boarding a flight to Arangabad to visit the caves at Ajanta and Ellora. Ram arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport and drive us to our various destinations. Sadly for us we spent the last leg of our journey without Ram.

Sunday, February 5, 2017

CHAND BAORI (Step Well) IN THE VILLAGE OF ABHANERI IN RAJASTHAN

Outside of Jaipur we visit Chand Baori, a step well built in the 8th and 9th century. It is sited within Abhaneri, a small, poor village off the main highway. The step well contains three thousand steps and was built on an aquifer. The aquifer has long gone dry; nowadays the well only fills during the Monsoon Season, but in its day women descended the steps with their pails which they filled with water and carried up balanced on their heads. (We saw many examples of contemporary Indian women still practicing this style of carting.) The Step Well was built simply by stacking stone upon stone; it contains no mortar.

In the 18th century a Summer Palace was built on the unoccupied side of the Step Well that used a systems of constructed wheels to bring water up to the Palace. (We were told that once a year at a dance festival in honor of Hashat Mata, Goddess of Joy and Happiness, for whom the step well was dedicated, oil lamps were placed and lit on each of the three thousand steps.)

At Chand Baori there are remains of 8th century sculptures, such as this, which depicts what a contemporary Indian temple looked like.

Other sculptures, such as this one, were broken or defaced in the 11th century by conquering Moslems.

I will take this occasion to note that India seems to have been continuously occupied for much of its history. Most recently by the British who occupied it for two hundred years from 1757 to 1947. The first hundred years India was ruled by the East India Company, and the second hundred years by the British Raj. Prior to that India was variously overrun by the Portuguese (1434-1633), the French (1769-1954), the Danes (1620-1869), the Dutch (1605-1825) and the Mughals who were a mix of Persians and Mongolians (12th-16th centuries).

The partition of India and Pakistan occurred under the British in 1947. To this day there is tension between the two countries since Kashmir, a predominantly Moslem area of India, is contested by Pakistan.

But here’s the real kicker: The country’s name, India, is not really Indian. It came from the British by way of the Greeks (in Greek and Latin India stood for the area beyond the Indus River, which is now present day Pakistan). Prior to the British India called itself Bharat !

THE TAJ MAHAL IN AGRA, UTTAR PRADESH

The Taj Mahal, it turns out, is a site specific building. All the photographs I have seen do not do justice to the place: you really have to see it in person. Agra, when we saw it, was a little foggy which may have contributed to the Taj Mahal’s mirage-like quality.

I won’t go into the story of the Taj Mahal, which is well known. I will simply say that, except for the Egyptian Pyramids, the Taj must be the largest mausoleum in the world. The whole building is nothing but a tomb. (I had assumed it was a building that the bereaved widower lived in, but no; the interior is almost completely dark due to a scarcity of windows.)

The minarets flanking the mausoleum are built angled away from the main building; a precaution taken by the architect. In an earthquake the minarets will fall away from the building. Wells were dug and filled with stone and rubble to form the footings of the tomb to stabilize the building in an earthquake. Earthquakes are a hazard in Agra, and although the building has been shaken, it has not been toppled.

The building is surrounded on three sides by crenellated walls, each with its own stately gate. The Main gate faces west. The unwalled side is lined by the Yamuna River. Across the River you can see the footprint of what had been intended as a black mausoleum that the Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan intended to build as his tomb. (The sad story is that his son imprisoned him to prevent him from constructing it. The son probably decided enough money had already been spent on the Taj Mahal. This same son also managed to kill two brothers in order to be the sole inheritor. Shah Jahal is interred in the Taj Mahal, next to his favorite wife, Muntaz Mahal.)

The Yamuna River and the foundation for the black mausoleum.

Here is the building at my fingertips.

Next to the Taj Mahal is a mosque that is still used by Moslems on Fridays.

The building is surrounded by a lawned garden.

A BRIEF DIGRESSION

On the road to Jaipur we get intrigued by the Indian method of transporting hay. On the theory that a picture is worth a thousand words I won’t attempt to describe it: I’ll just show the photos.

I should add that we saw one of these trucks with its contents spilled on the highway. Fortunately it happened on a rare four-lane stretch of highway, which allowed the traffic to continue to flow as it was going to take a very long time to return the hay to the truck, which they were shoveling with a pitchfork !

COWS, SACRED AND PROFANE

There really are cows wandering the streets and highways of India. Here’s one moseying down a street inside the Jaisalmer Fort. The man on the right was just passing by; he and the cow are ships passing in the night.

And here’s a cow in his proper village yard and home, which modestly enough, is a hut with dried cow chips stacked on its roof.

Dried cow chips I have learned is a wonderful home renovation material. Mixed with mud it can be applied to the floor or walls and smoothed down to make a durable and beautiful reddish brown floor or wall. It lasts three months or until the Monsoon rain arrives.

DON’T STOP THAT HONKING !!

This is an addendum to the post I made from Delhi where we first encountered the phenomenon of using the car horn as a defensive driving move. It is, apparently, a very welcome method of alerting other drivers. Almost all trucks we saw on the highway encouraged the practice by painting HORN PLEASE or BLOW HORN on its rear end.

THE BASICS OF INDIAN MINIATURE PAINTING

This is what I have learned: In order to make authentic Indian Miniature Paintings you must grind and mix your own paints. The pigments come from minerals, organic inks and dyes, and carbon soot. In ancient times ateliers ground their own pigments with mortar and pestle and filtered the medium for purity. What was demonstrated to me were pieces of soft minerals rubbed against a hard surface like marble or glass and mixed with water and gum arabic or rabbit skin glue.

. Black can be obtained from pure carbon by burning bones or wood then collecting the soot.

. White can be obtained from lead white, zinc white, and chalk.

. Red ochre can be obtained from iron oxide. More brilliant reds can be made from vermillion or mercury sulfide.

. Green can be obtained by mixing copper filings with vinegar, but verdigris is highly caustic to paper and can burn through it, or flake off leaving a brownish stain. Some stable greens can be created by mixing yellow and blue pigment.

. Blue can be obtained from lapis lazuli which is an expensive source. More commonly blue is obtained from indigo blue dye.

. Orange can be obtained by mixing yellow and red, orpiment being the most common source of a bright yellow.

. Yellow. Orpiment an arsenic derivative produces a bright yellow. But yellow ochre can be produced by filtering specific types of soil.

. Purples are usually mixes of red and blue and white.

. Browns can be obtained from brown ochre earth.

. Gold and silver leaf. (Ancient silver leaf tended to rust, leaving a dark color, but contemporary silver leaf will maintain its color.)

There are two types of binders – a glue made from animal hide and gum arabic. Rabbit skin glue which can be mixed with boiling water is a good option, as is gum arabic, both items being easily found in art stores.

Brushes are made from the fur taken from the tail of chipmunks. Many brushes have a single long hair in the center surrounded by shorter hairs. The single hair is useful for making lines to simulate texture.

Saturday, February 4, 2017

AMBER FORT IN JAIPUR, RAJASTHAN

In Jaipur, the largest city in Rajasthan, we drive through the historic walled, seven-gated Old City, also known as the Pink City, where all buildings are mandated to be a terracotta pink, then head to Amber Fort which can be seen here in the background.

Entry to the fort is reached via a slightly steep circular ascent. I don’t know how the Maharajas did it in their day, but currently a fleet of elephants are available for hire. Jean and Bernie rode the elephant up, and did so in Raj style wearing turbans gifted by our driver, Ram.

This is one of the courtyards within the fort. It’s a little hard to see but I took this photograph because the trees in the courtyard are very typical of the types of trees seen in Indian miniature paintings.

Jaipur is actually surrounded by three forts, but the Amber Fort, built from the 1500’s to the 1700’s, is the largest and most beautiful. It was built after the Rajasthan Maharajas befriended the conquering Moghul Empire,  and is designed based on a combination of Indo-Moghul and European styles.

This is the Summer Palace within the fort. Apparently in the hot summer months the royal family moved into this compound. The back wall of the central area is lined with a perforated marble wall on which ran cascading water. The breeze passing through the water created a form of air conditioning. The palace was kept cool in the summer by covering its arched openings with screens woven with the roots of the aromatic grass called Khas, which were occasionally moistened with water. Air passing through the screens was cooled and carried their fragrance into the palace chambers.

And this is how “the other half” lived. These were apparently the servant’s quarters, and the niches were used for storage.

JANTRA MANTRA (Ancient Astronomy Observatory) IN JAIPUR, RAJASTHAN

In the afternoon we visit Jantra Mantra, an astronomy observatory built by Maharaja Raja Man Singh II in the 17th century. (He built a total of five observatories in India, of which this is the last and largest.)

These are two halves of a sundial. The upper-facing disk marks the time in the morning, and the downward-facing disk marks the time in the afternoon.

This sundial points to the North Star. If you place your eye at the bottom of the stairway and follow the slant up to the sky you encounter the North Star.

This is a small model of the above sundial.

And this, the largest sundial in the world is the same model but ten times larger, and measures time to an accuracy of within two seconds (versus twenty seconds for the first version).

We learned from our guide that the Zodiac Signs were created by the Babylonians to represent the constellations. The Indians carefully studied the Zodiac since it was, and still is, very important in Indian culture. Ever child born in India has his/her astrological chart drawn. Within the grounds of Jantra Mantra are constructions designed  to track each of the twelve constellations. Results were recorded for use in astrological charting.

Unlike the ancient Romans who used a sun-based calendar, and the Ancient Chinese who used a moon-based calendar, India used a complicated system that merged both calendars. (There were occasions when a day might occur twice, lasting 48 hours.)

This instrument, which comes in two parts, measures latitude and longitude. The spaces in between allow astronomers to enter for close, accurate readings. The second part is identical but complimentary; the empty spaces in this one are filled in and vice-versa.

Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II, was a brilliant man, not just as an astronomer, but practically. India at that time was an agricultural economy. Rajasthan relied on the Monsoon for its water; a dry season could spell disaster. Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II changed Jaipur’s economic base by creating six new markets, each dedicated to a single product – textile, spices, jewels, opium, etc. He even had the foresight to construct the markets with built-in housing for the merchants. Jaipur, to this day, benefits from his far-sightedness.

Friday, February 3, 2017

KARNI MATA TEMPLE (The Rat Temple) IN THE VILLAGE DESHNOKE, RAJASTHAN

WARNING: THIS POST MAY BE DISTURBING FOR THE SQUEAMISH

We left the City of Bikaner to visit the village of Deshnoke’s famous Karni Mata Temple, also known as the Temple of Rats. The legend tells of a young man named Laxman, who, while attempting to drink from a pond, fell in and drowned. Karni Mata implored Yama, the God of Death, to revive him. Yama first refused, then relented, permitting Laxman and all his children to be reincarnated as rats.

The temple is said to contain 25,000 rats and Indians who come to worship make a point of feeding the rats. It is said that if you go to the temple and make a sincere wish your wish will be granted. I want it on the record that Bernie, Jean, and I, while inside the temple, wished for world peace.

The Three Mouseketeers in front of the Temple of Rats.

HAVELI LE PRINCE IN THE SHEKHWATI REGION OF RAJASTHAN

En route to Jaipur we intersect with the ancient Silk Road’s Shekhwati Region where we stop at Fatepur,a village called filled with hand-painted Havelis (highly decorated private residences.) We enter a house called Haveli Le Prince built in 1841 for the Devi family, prosperous tradesmen who specialized in Burmese teak. The house was occupied until India’s Independence in 1948 after which it was abandoned for about 50 years.

In 1998 Nadine Le Prince, a French artist, came to the village and fell in the love with the building. She bought it and began the restoration process.

The front door opens onto a courtyard where apparently the goods were viewed. To the right was a sitting room where business was conducted. Once an agreement was reached the men would enter another room where the contracts were signed.

We were guided through the house by a Jake, a 16-year old American high schooler who grew up in Paris. His parents moved from San Francisco to Paris after George W. Bush was elected practically, Jake said,  on impulse.

The house is a combination of Indo-Mogul architectural influence. Behind the first courtyard is a second courtyard reserved for the women. (India, in spite of the erotically charged Hindu religion were influenced by Muslim mores when they conquered the Indian subcontinent in the 1200 to 1600’s. Purdah, the social and religious separation and sequestering of women became commonplace  in that period.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

JAISALMER FORT IN RAJASTHAN

In Jaisalmer, known as the Golden City for the color of the local stone out of which the entire city is built, is the city fort, which still has 5,000 inhabitants living within it. They are working hard to conserve the fort which is threatened by water damage. When the fort was originally built water was very scarce. It is said that a child could grow to the age of seven without seeing a single drop of rain. Today water is plentiful and endangers the fort.

The fort is famous for its havelis, which are highly ornamented private residences, in this instance, made of stone carved to resemble wood.

Within the Jaisalmer Fort we encountered a hybrid temple that merged the Jain and Hindu religions.

Due to its elaborate layers of constructed walls the Jaisalmer Fort was never overtaken by the enemy.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

THAR DESERT IN RAJASTHAN

In the morning we drive out of Jodhpur to the city of Jaisalmer. After we install ourselves in our hotel we drive west to the sand dunes of the Thar Desert, to an area about 45 kilometers east of the Pakistan-India border where there is a large military presence: the  area is heavily guarded by Indian soldiers. They built a wind farm nearby to provide electrical power for the army, and to power the bright lights at the border.

I rode on a pregnant camel trailed by her 4-year old calf (who was being trained to carry a saddle), and Jean rode an old(er) camel. My camel was led by a seven year old boy, son of a camel driver, who was himself being trained in the business. He was quite small (from his size I would have guessed him to be four-years old).

Jean and I rode camels to the dunes where we got a good view of the sunset.

This area of India, which is subject to drought, relies heavily on tourism for its livelihood. India is busy building roads that enable people, including tourists, to reach this area. Jean’s niece, Emily, went on a camel safari for her honeymoon. Participants of camel safaris, which may last up to seven days spend nights in mud huts like this, unless they sleep in tents.

Later in the evening we were entertained by local musicians, a singer, a drummer, a couple of percussionists who clapped two rectangular pieces of wood together in elaborate, coordinated rhythms, a female dancer/contortionist who then invited the guests to join the dance. We ate a vegetarian meal that included a dish of beans (stringy string beans) that grows only in the dessert and is considered an expensive delicacy.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

THE MEHRANGARH FORT IN JODHPUR, RAJASTHAN

In the morning we are taken to see the Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur.

This is when we learn that for centuries Indian kingdoms existed within gigantic walled and fortified forts. The fort is one of the largest in India. Built around 1460, a winding road leads up to it. Jodhpur is also known as the Blue City. In these photos you can see why.

To enter the fort you have to pass through seven gates. On one of the gates we could see indentations on the walls caused by cannon shots.

According to Wikipedia, “To build the fort Rao Jodha had to displace the hill’s sole human occupant, a hermit called Cheeria Nathji, the lord of birds. Upset at being forced to move Cheeria Nathji cursed Rao Jodha with “Jodha! May your citadel ever suffer a scarcity of water!” Rao Jodha managed to appease the hermit by building a house and a temple in the fort very near the cave the hermit had used for meditation, though only to the extent that even today the area is plagued by a drought every 3 to 4 years. Jodha then took an extreme measure to ensure that the new site proved propitious; he buried a man called “Raja Ram Meghwal” alive in the foundations. “Raja Ram Meghwal” was promised that in return his family would be looked after by the Rathores. To this day his descendants still live in Raj Bagh, “Raja Ram Meghwal’s” Garden, an estate bequeathed them by Jodha.”

On our way in we passed the place where Raja Ram Weghwal is entombed. Bernie, fortunately, is not entombed, but he does disappear into the walls a bit…

The fort is built with low doorways and narrow hallways to make it hard for invaders to overrun the residences, but other than that the fort interior is quite plush, housing several brilliantly decorated and crafted palaces.

Inside the fort, which is now a museum, is housed a large collection of furniture, costumes, musical instruments, painted miniatures, weapons, and palanquins, of which this is one example.

Monday, January 30, 2017

THE RANAKPUR JAIN TEMPLE IN RAJASTHAN

Leaving Udaipur we stop at the 14th century Ranakpur Jain Temple. Jainism is one of the major religions in India. It was started by Vardhamana Jnatiputra or Nataputta Mahavira (599-527 BC), called Jina (Spiritual Conqueror), who was a contemporary of Buddha. Similar to Buddhism Jainism believes in non-violence, truth, non-stealing, celibacy/chastity, and non-attachment/non-possession. Like Buddhists the Jains do not worship a God.

The Ranakpur Temple, which is covered by obsessive, all over carved patterning contains within it 1,444 similar yet unique pillars. The temple is architecturally built to avoid hierarchy and imbue a sense of non-direction. Walking (or circling around) in it was like no other experience I have ever had; except for the fact that there is an entry portal, the building felt like it had no beginning and no end.

ON THE ROAD FROM UDAIPUR TO JODHPUR

India is a strange amalgam of ancient an modern; the two seem to live side-by-side. As we sped down the highway to Jodhpur we passed a man driving two bulls powering a water mill.

And a couple of monkeys, which we make the mistake of stopping to photograph. I gave the monkey outside my window a banana which caused a slew of other monkeys to appear out of nowhere and swarm our car: one powerful monkey managed to pull the left side mirror off the car with his hind legs. (We assured Ram, our driver, that we would pay for the repair.)

In the village of Kukani, known for its handicrafts, we meet Usman, the weaver and proprietor of Salawas Durry Udhyog (durry is the Hindu word for rug), who demonstrated his deftness at working a handloom.

On the highway we pass a Motorcycle Temple. Ram, our driver tells us that after a man was killed riding a motorcycle on the highway his motorcycle was moved to the Police Station. The next day the motorcycle is gone, and is found back at the scene of the accident. The police move the motorcycle again but the same thing occurs. The third time the police take the precaution of chaining and locking the motorcycle. Again in the morning the motorcycle seems to have returned itself to the scene of the accident.

People in India are notoriously superstitious. As the tale spreads people begin to visit the motorcycle at the site. Soon a temple begins to be built, and stores and hotels begin to pop up around it. The temple is still under construction (even as we pass it.) I tell Ram my guess is that whoever owns that stretch of land is at the root of the mystery !

We finally arrive in Jodhpur and discover to our delight that we have been booked into the Ranbanka Palace Hotel (a Heritage Hotel) which was once one-half of a wealthy man’s residence. The property was split in two by inheriting brothers. We were told the property next door is still a private residence.

Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017

UDAIPUR, RAJASTHAN

We come to Udaipur (also known as the City of Romance, the City of Lakes) in Rajasthan, the most touristed city in India. We stay at the Hotel Hilltop Palace, built atop of one of three hilltops in the city.

A wall design in our hotel lobby copied from the City Palace of Udaipur.

Udaipur, has an interconnected lake system that supports the ground water recharge that sustains the city. The lake system has three large man-made lakes and many smaller lakes that are fed by rainwater in the Monsoon Season as well as water from the Ganges River and its tributaries.

A view from our hotel’s dining room.

Udaipur, like the majority of India, has no organized sewage system or water treatment center which is causing solid waste to pollute the lakes, causing an ecological degradation. (Swimming is no longer allowed in the lakes.)

The City Palace of Udaipur is a palace complex founded in 1597 by Maharana Udai Singh II, an inheritor of the Mewar Kingdom who founded the City of Udaipur. The Palace Complex which sits atop a hill is a combination of Rajasthani and Mughal architectural styles and was expanded successively for 400 years by descendants of Maharana Udai Singh II.

Some facts I learned about Indian history and culture:

. Unlike the majority of India which was colonized by the British for two hundred years, Rajasthan, part of the Mewar Kingdom established in the 10th century, considered a British Raj, was an uncolonized Muslim princely state within British India.

. Rajasthan, was at one time predominantly Muslim, and a part of the Mughal (or Mogol) Empire. The Mughals were Persian-Mongolians who claimed direct descent from Genghis Kahn.

. A Maharaja is a king, but a Marahana is a war lord king.

. I thought all Indians named Singh (from the Sanskrit word for Lion) were Sihks, but Maharana Udai Singh II founder of Udaipur, was not a Sihk.

. Sihkism, which rejects the Caste system is a monotheistic religion. It was founded in the Punjab region of India in the 15th Century by Guru Nanak Dev, and is the 5th largest religion in the world.  Sihks do not cut their hair, and all Sihk men wear turbans, although their style of wear is different from those worn by Hindu men.

SAHASTRA BAHU TEMPLE IN NAGDA, RAJASTHAN

In the afternoon we visited Sahastra Bahu, a historic Hindu temple complex at Nagda, outside of Udaipur. This was my first time seeing a Hindu temple and it resembled nothing I have ever seen before. It sits atop a stupa and consists of a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law temple surrounded by smaller temple structures.

Friday, Jan. 27, 2017

DELHI, INDIA

My friends, Jean Greenberg and Bernie Rogoff, and I are traveling in the Rajasthan region of India for two weeks.

We started in Delhi, the Capital of India. The Jama Mosque, the largest in India with a capacity for 25,000 was the first site we visited in Old Delhi.

We then got lost wandering on foot around the area surrounding the mosque where wholesalers have tiny storefronts selling things like gift wrapping paper, wallpaper, stationery, and textbooks. Here a building advertising its business occupants:

Full disclosure: Being pampered and spoiled Americans we opted for hiring a guide and driver recommended by Ralph Helmick who, with his wife Fran, traveled in Rajasthan about ten years ago.

Our intrepid guide and protector, Ram, owner and operator of Kewal Tours:

In the streets where people, cars, motorbikes, and bicycle-powered rickshaws compete for passage the roads are pocked by the sound of car horns. This is a phenomena I experienced when traveling in Egypt, and only now understand, with Ram’s explanation, that most vehicles do not have side mirrors (many cars that do, travel with them folded in) and honking is considered good defensive driving. Apparently if you get into a wreck and are found to not have honked to alert the other driver of your presence, you will be found to be at fault !

Last but not least, remember the old Glenn Campbell song, I Am a Lineman for the County? I wonder what he’d make of this…

On the way to China I stopped off in TAIPEI, TAIWAN.

Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017

This is Ripley Lin, our MFA alum, sitting in her kitchen spearing a slice of wax apple, a fruit native to Taiwan which has the crunchiness of an apple, but is less dense and surprisingly moist. What makes it special is not the taste, which is unexceptional, but how refreshing it is. This is what a wax apple looks like

Ripley took me to an outdoor New Year’s Market in an old part of Downtown Taipei. The market happens once a year before the Chinese New Year (which this year falls on Jan. 28 and heralds the Year of the Rooster). Unfortunately I wasn’t thinking straight and didn’t take good photos of the street fair. Let us just say that we bought a lot of Chinese snacks – sweet beef jerky, sweet and spicy beef jerky, toasted seaweed chips, fried and baked dough balls made with seaweed, sesame seeds, sweet potatoes, among other ingredients, and a dark brown baked concoction made with fresh ginger, ripe lychees, brown sugar and spices that can be hydrated into a hot toddy-like drink that I would describe as a spicy Chinese version of apple cider.

Ripley getting ready to dive into a bowl of Taiwanese fish soup made with vermicelli, bok choy, fried and breaded fish in a slightly gelatinous broth.

A couple enjoying their bowls of fish soup.

August 2015

Beyond the Biosphere, consisting of two printed vinyl canopies measuring 17.5 x 105 feet, was recently installed at the Slauson Station in Los Angeles, CA.

Arabesque, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2015

I am participating in the 4th Annual Juried International Exhibition of Contemporary Islamic Art at LuminArte Fine Art Gallery, Dallas, TX. The exhibition was curated by Salma Tuqan, Curator, Contemporary Arab Art and Design, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. The show runs from September 26 – October 31, 2015.

 

I am pleased to announce that I have joined the Mary Tomás Gallery in Dallas, TX where I have been included in two group exhibitions this year, COLOR and GEOMETRIC REPETITION.

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News and Links

 

This is an interview with some of the artists affiliated with Across the Divide which gathers together artists born in China who received their MFAs in the United States and currently teach at American universities.

Online galleries

Some of my work can be purchased through these online sites:

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ArtSpace (New York Foundation for the Arts online gallery)