AAM Media Preview: Seduction

Wednesday morning the Asian Art Museum held a media preview for Seduction, a show of Japanese art & objects related to the courtesans of the sybaritic "floating world" of the Edo period. The works come from the collection of John C. Weber, who was present & made opening remarks in which he told us how he began his collecting career by amassing over 500 Japanese textiles.

The 1st gallery features a 58-foot scroll, unrolled in its entirety. It shows, in decorative detail, where & how to party with the courtesans of the Yoshiwara, a walled district containing licensed brothels. It was perhaps a cross between Las Vegas & Amsterdam's red light district. The scroll invites lingering examination, & excellent text labels annotate each of its vignettes.

The exhibit contains prints, painted scrolls, robes & porcelain, designed to create an effect of sumptuousness & sophistication. This is a kimono-shaped bed cover.

This robe with embroidered calligraphy is especially fine.

Curator Laura Allen led the gallery tour & observed that the strongly sensuous appeal of the art was meant to market the women to wealthy clients.

I was delighted to see the 19th century print maker Yoshitoshi represented with one of his characteristically grotesque images of a demon.

Seduction is accompanied by a concurrent show of Japanese woodblock prints from the collection of Edwin Grabhorn. 88 prints are being displayed in 2 phases in a closely packed gallery.

These images promoted trends & fashions to a mass market. Art collector Sebastian Izzard was on hand & gave informative explanations of their social & commercial context.

Every print is in impressively crisp condition. Though the colors of most are faded, this depiction of a Sunrise of New Year's Morning by Eishosai Choki has miraculously preserved, popping colors.

§ Seduction: Japan's Floating World
Feb 20 - May 10, 2015
Asian Art Museum

§ The Printer's Eye: Ukiyo-e from the Grabhorn Collection
Feb 20 - May 10, 2015
Asian Art Museum

Roads of Arabia

Earlier this week the Asian Art Museum held a media event for Roads of Arabia. This is a major show of archaeological finds & historical artifacts from the Arabian Peninsula, telling the story of human civilization in the region, starting with stone tools over 1 million years old & culminating in the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the 20th century.

An informative gallery tour was led by the ebullient Dr. Ali Al Ghabban, Vice President of Antiquities and Museums at the Saudi Commission of Tourism and Antiquities, & Dany Chan, assistant curator at the Asian Art Museum. The bulk of the exhibit covers the pre-Islamic period & features objects from crossroads sites that reflect a range of cultural influences.

The show opens with plaintive 6,000-year-old steles & contains many provocative items, such as a neolithic carving of a horse suggesting a much earlier date for the domestication of horses than previously thought.

This cube-shaped pedestal intricately mixes Egyptian & Mesopotamian imagery & is fun to look at.

I liked seeing examples of several different writing systems. This funerary slab from the 1st millennium BCE bears the oldest known use of Arabic.

A gallery about the pilgrimage roads contains an absurdly huge pair of candlestick holders, a gift to Mecca from a eunuch of the Ottoman court.

I especially enjoyed viewing the collection of tombstones from Mecca, boasting fine, flowery calligraphy.

2 camera crews recorded the event.

Falafel were included in the pre-event buffet.

§ Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Asian Art Museum
Oct 24, 2014 - Jan 18, 2015

Asian Art: Gorgeous

This past Sunday afternoon I took advantage of a free day at the Asian Art Museum to see Gorgeous, an exhibit mixing works from the museum with objects from the SFMOMA.

Rather than presenting things in an historical or cultural context, the show asks viewers to examine the pieces' aesthetic impact on themselves.

The selections are a deliberate hodge-podge, but I had fun looking at the diverse array of objects. Buddhas, painted scrolls & Tibetan furniture share space with art by de Kooning, Jeff Koons & Tom of Finland. The original iPhone is in there as well.

Glamor is clearly an important aspect of gorgeousness for the curators. Even the catalog is in the form of a glossy fashion magazine.

To me, the objects were often simply kitschy or decadently decorative, though Dan Flavin's untitled (1987) fluorescent light sculpture looked gorgeous to me for some reason, ...

... as did Tobias Wong's conceptual Coke Spoon 02 (2005), a McDonald's coffee stirrer made of gold & bronze.

To emphasize that the exhibit is about the viewer, there is a set of tidy videos of man-on-the-street interviews in which people at colorful San Francisco locations are asked what they find gorgeous.

There were a lot of visitors, though not as many as I would have expected for a holiday weekend. Many people posed for pictures in the galleries. After all, what is more indisputably gorgeous than ourselves?

§ Gorgeous
Asian Art Museum
Jun 20 - Sept 14, 2014

Yoga at the Asian Art Museum

Yesterday morning the Asian Art Museum gave a press preview of Yoga: The Art of Transformation, which opens this Friday. Yoga is one of the few mainstream movements I actually follow myself, so I was disappointed that museum director Jay Xu did not lead us in 5 sun salutations before the gallery walkthrough.

Debra Diamond, curator of the original exhibition at the Smithsonian, & Jeff Durham, the Asian Art Museum’s assistant curator of Himalayan Art, led the press tour. The show occupies 3 galleries & comprises sculptures, paintings, illustrations, photos, books & films, spanning 2 millennia. The Osher Gallery contains spectacular sculptures & paintings from India, such as these 3 sensuous female deities from a 10th century temple.

Ms. Diamond pointed out that the shimmering surface of this 19th century painting, depicting the Absolute, is best viewed by looking up from below. She was delighted that visitors would thus fall to their knees in front of it.

The gallery also displays delicately drawn pages from the 1st illustrated manual of yoga poses, made in 1600. Interestingly, it was produced for a Muslim court, & the explanatory texts are in Persian.

A 2nd gallery contains many exquisite drawings depicting the fanciful adventures of magical yogis.

There's also fascinating depictions of yogis by the 1st western observers.

A set of studio photographs from the 19th century is provocative for its mix of cynicism & sensationalism.

A small 3rd gallery shows yoga entering mainstream western culture through the promotion of its medical value. I overheard yoga devotees in the press corp questioning the curator because they felt the show did not reflect their own experiences with yoga.

The exhibition starts Friday, February 21st, with an opening night party, followed by a day of yoga events on Saturday. There is a surcharge above general admission for the exhibit.

§ Yoga: The Art of Transformation
Asian Art Museum
February 21–May 25, 2014