7Junipers will return soon.

Lately I’ve been thinking a bit about Bali, so let’s remain there for a while. This fellow comes to us from
Beat’s photostream.

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The other day I commented on Deb Clearwaters’s new blog on Bali. Subsequently, I found this collection of paintings by the Russian-born German painter Walter Spies. Spies, who was born in 1895, moved to Bali in 1927. His painting swings between mannerist and expressionist tendencies, but often with overtones of the primitivism of someone like Dounier Rousseau. With decent connections to the international art community, Spies helped to popularize the notion of Bali as an idyllic and exotic Shangri-La. This painting dates from 1929.

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This photo of a rice farmer in Bali comes from wYnand!’s photostream.

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Indian painting is hot these days. Francis Newton Souza’s Birth (oil on board, 48 x 96 in., 1955), shown above, recently sold for $2,487,931 at an auction at Christie’s London, a record price for modern Indian art.

Souza spent much of his life in London and is the only Indian artist to have a room dedicated to his works at Tate Britain. He was born on April 12, 1924, in Saligaon, Goa, India and died on March 28, 2002 , in Bombay, India. His website is maintained by his estate.

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Pico Iyer on Tibet, China and the Dalai Lama
• Revisiting Phnom Penh
• Chinese art on bubble?
• “Life and Marriage in Skya rgya, a Tibetan Village
• Philadelphia Museum of Art: Multiple Modernities: India, 1905-2005
• Astro Boy made from recycled train tickets

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This image of the Taj Mahal, the mausoleum constructed by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in the seventeenth century, is from Stuck in Customs’s photostream.

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Deborah Clearwaters has begun a blog that will present “musings about the Balinese arts of music, dance, sculpture, painting, and the ephemeral arts of offering making.” This is sure to be a good resource for anyone interested in this topic. Visit Bali Art Blog here.

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Christie’s sets record with Asia art sales
• Passion drives rough diamond (Ling Yaqian)
• Meet Tibetan artist Karma Phuntsok
• Sudarshan Pattnaik’s global warming sand sculpture wins prize
• The Contemporary Tea House: Japan’s Top Architects Redefine a Tradition
• Iranian Cinema
• Balinese artist Ketut Budiana’s Dance of the Witches

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The image above is a Daruma doll. The owner of such a doll paints in one eye and makes a wish. When the wish is fulfilled, the other eye is painted in.

An operation took 7 Junipers out of operation. I had a little trouble with one of my eyes.

Happily, I am now back. And blogging!

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7 Junipers is on medical leave and will return next week.

This photo of a bride bedecked and bejeweled for her wedding is from riceFR’s photostream.

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Asian antiquities expert arrested
• and then Indicted museum director found dead at WA federal prison
• China’s eccentric champion
• Xu Bing: creating English words from Chinese pictograms
• Ratana Pestonji: The father of contemporary Thai cinema

This painterly image of a young Bhutanese Buddhist monk comes from Curr_En’s photostream.

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Governor Schwarzenegger, who has repeatedly demonstrated his indifference to education, refuses to budge from a budget that mortgages California’s future for his short-term political gain. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that UC Berkeley will be forced to eliminate East Asian language classes for 1500 students in order to make up a $30-million shortfall.

The East Asian department, which expects to lose $300,000 in support, will cut 40 percent of its courses in Japanese, 54 percent of those in Chinese, and 66 percent of those in Korean. It will also not renew contracts for 13 lecturers. According to a notice on its Web site, the department will restrict enrollment in its courses to students in the College of Letters & Science.

This is a spread from the book I am working on on Persian ceramics from the collection of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco (I’m still waiting for final text). The object is a fritware conical bowl painted with “panel style” decoration in underglaze blue and black manganese (The Avery Brundage Collection, B60P1893).

Firt is a ground glasslike substance (I think potash and quartz were the main ingredients) that, added to clay, reduces its firing temperature, which is helpful for applying overglazes. It was used in West Asian pottery to produce a fine white base that imitated the quality of Chinese porcelain.

The bowl dates from the first half of the thirteenth century, and, according to the curators, may be from Kashan in Iran. Poetic verses in white on the black areas express longing for the absence of a beloved.

Photos by Kaz Tsuruta.

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Beijing sculptor Zhan Wang steels the scene
• ‘Free Tibet’ flags made in China
• AsianWeek on the AAM’s Ming show
• Walking cabbages around Manchester
• Rin Nadeshico’s girls cozy up with giant beasts

The image below, from BBC News, was taken in Allahabad, India, where temperatures have been around 44 degrees Celsius.

I showed yesterday the interior view of this mosque’s dome. So maybe it’s worth having a look from the outside. The outside, like the inside of the dome, is original, dating from 1602-1619 (the entrance tiles are a modern addition). Like yesterday’s photo, this one is from seier+seier+seier’ s photostream.

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This spectacular photo from seier+seier+seier’ s photostream shows the dome of the Lotfollah mosque in Isfahan. I have been working on a book on Persian ceramics lately; just today I was placing Isfahan on a map that will appear in the book. Isfahan, now in Iran (about 340 km south of Tehran), was a major city during the Seljuk period and for a time the capital of Seljuk Persia.

This will be a cool book — I’ll post some images from it soon — featuring tiles, vessels, bowls, and small statuary. But nothing in it is as grand as this majestic dome, which dates from the early seventeenth century.

Compare this dome’s burst of color and pattern with a sunflower image I posted recently on another of my blogs (buriedmirror.com, devoted to Mesoamerica).

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Can’t get enough of the First Emperor’s terra-cotta warriors? Well, you’re in luck: The Bowers Museum is presenting the largest loan of the terra-cotta figures ever, called Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China’s First Emperor. The exhibition opens May 18 and runs through October 12. What a cash cow this discovery has turn out to be!

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This painting by Kang Can (Fast Food III, 2007, oil on canvas, 35.5 x 31.5 inches) is a good example of Chinese Neo-Pop art (it was shown at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, Florida earlier this year). In the contemporary Chinese context pop often has a satiric element, aimed at materialism and self-indulgence. At times, as here, the satire can get a little heavy-handed.

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Recently I’ve been reading Perpetual Happiness by Shihi-Shan Henry Tsai, a biography of Zhu Di, who ruled the Ming dynasty as the Yongle emperor from 1403–1424 (more on this later). Formerly the Prince of Yan, the Yongle emperor usurped the throne from his nephew and moved the Ming capital from Nanjing to his personal power base at Beijing; in 1406 he began construction of what would become the Forbidden City.

This gold medallion, now in the Nanjing Municipal Museum, was buried in the tomb of Ma rui in 1627, during the reign of the Tianqi emperor (1621–1627).; it was discovered during a 1974 excavation near Nanjing. Mu Rui served as the Yongle emperor’s Vice Commissioner-in-Chief, but he was implicated in an attempted revolt. He died in prison in 1609. How did he obtain this plaque? In the forthcoming catalogue of the Asian Art Museum’s exhibition of Ming court arts, He Li offers an explanation:

A court record may provide a clue. In 1408, the Yongle emperor held a banquet to celebrate a successful battle against Annam, in which Mu Sheng was the chief commander (see cat. no. 103). The emperor is said to have awarded to the guest of honor, Mu Sheng, items including the emperor’s own handwritten poem, a jade belt, and a golden plaque (Mingshi, chap. 126, p. 7397); the latter was most likely the surviving medallion here. With the commands possibly engraved by Sheng, it must have been passed down as a family heirloom to later generations. Unfortunately, two hundred years later, its orders were sullied by Mu Rui. Eighteen years after his death, the family was able to conduct Mu Rui’s funeral. By burying the prestigious medallion with him, they announced the end of the legendary name of Mu, which had once been glorified for its support of the Ming court.