This image of two women viewing omikuji, or rolled-up fortunes, comes from kalandrakas’ photostream. Kalandrakas writes:

Omikuji are random fortunes written on strips of paper at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan.

The omikuji predicts the person’s chances of his or her hopes coming true, of finding a good match, or generally matters of health, fortune, life, etc. When the prediction is bad, it is a custom to fold up the strip of paper and attach it to a pine tree in the temple grounds. A purported reason for this custom is a pun on the word for pine tree (? matsu) and the verb ‘to wait’ (?? matsu), the idea being that the bad luck will wait by the tree rather than attach itself to the bearer. In the event of the fortune being good, the bearer should keep it. Though nowadays, this custom seems more of a children’s amusement, omikuji are available at most shrines, and remain one of the traditional activities related to shrine-going . . .

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Asia in Paris : “a continued desire for an exotic and ‘orientalized’ Asia”
• Chinese shadow puppets at Princeton : Part of a 2,000-piece collection acquired in the 1920s but only catalogued over the past three years
• A mandala glossary : An updated version at HimalayanArt.com
• Value and contemporary art in India : “The price … is not only a cash quantum but … a measure for the standing of Indian artists”
• “Steeped in History” at the Fowler : Guess what the show is about
• Bird-men of Siam : Not quite celestials but more than human
• Why dictators love kitsch : Reading (or overreading) a North Korean backdrop
• Made in Iran : A contemporary Iranian art exhibit in London

Stones in Japan are used for bridges, water containers, lanterns, and many other purposes. They are especially used as steps on paths.

In an echo of Japan’s animistic native beliefs, stones are chosen for the spirit they emanate. They form a link between people and the earth. Stones that are scored or pitted or covered with moss evoke the spirit of wabi-sabi — of harmonious simplicity and impermanence (more on this in a subsequent post).

This image of petal-covered stepping stone as Shokokuji, a Rinzai Zen temple in Kyoto, comes from EYLC’s photostream.

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Chinese traditional art loses youth : “The spirit of the art form isn’t in accordance with today’s society.”
• Mongolian treasures uncovered : From the sands of the Gobi desert
• Diamond Ganesha steals the show : Made from 80,000 American diamonds and 800 colored stones
• A little wabi sabi : “An active aesthetical appreciation of poverty” (D. T. Suzuki)
• Finding Sweetness in Life : Looking for readings on Siam and Burma
• The Trend Toward Director-Based Exhibits : Good or bad?

This photo of Hongkong at twilight comes from Stuck in Customs’ photostream

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Chinese red lacquerward on view at Met : An impressive selection
• Pakistani contemporary art : Its value is increasing
• Jain: Images of Perfection : At the Rubin this fall
• Takashi Murakami : A Retrospective in Format Magazine
• Korean pop star Rain to appear in Enter the Dragon Remake : As hero or villain?
• Islam Retakes Spain : At the Aga Khan Museum Collection in Madrid
• Two thousand years of Vietnamese art : Opening in New York and Houston

Indra, a major Hindu deity, also figures in the Thai Buddhist belief system, where he seen as powerful but limited and subservient to the Buddha (and sometimes as one of the four guardian kings of the cardinal directions). He is recognizable by his green skin.

The image shown is a detail from a large painting of the story of the life of the Buddha in the collection of the Asian Art Museum (Scenes from the life of the Buddha, 1800-1850. Thailand; paint and gold on cloth. Gift from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Southeast Asian Art Collection, 2006.27.122.15).  The painting will be displayed during the museum’s upcoming Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam and Burma exhibition

In an essay I wrote on the subject of translation, I talked about the “middle way” of the Chinese translator Xuanzang (who lived in the seventh century but may be most familiar from his role in the Ming dynasty “Monkey” stories). Xuanzang insisted that translation be both “truthful” and “intelligible to the populace.” In the essay I go on to discuss other advocates of the middle way, such as the Mexican poet Octavio Paz.

In this detail Indra makes a case for the middle way in a charming manner. The Buddha-to-be (shortly before his enlightenment) has been troubled about whether to give up the extreme austerities he has been practicing. Here Indra appears to him and plucks three strings of a lute-like instrument. One string is too slack, and it makes only a dull sound. One string is too tight, and it breaks when plucked. Only the properly tightened string makes a beautiful sound.

This image of patterns and reflections at Wat Rajabophit, Bangkok, Thailand, comes from Taiger808’s photostream. The temple was constructed in 1869 under the command of King Rama V.

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• An interview with Zhao Renhui : Wildlife photographer
• Is the Chinese art market ready to recover : Mixed signals
• The eight fears : Of Himalayan art
• Stealing Ganesha : That can’t be auspicious
• Beyond Golden Clouds : Exceptional Japanese screens
• 3rd Gwangju Design Biennale : design in clothing, eating, living, enlightening, and enjoying
• Met plans new Persian gallery as part of a suite of Islamic art galleries : To open in 2011
• Cataloguing art from Burma and Siam : Via the Asian Art Museum blog

This photo of Indonesian officials at an election polling stations is by Andry Prasetyo of Reuters; it appeared in the New York Times. The officials are dressed as puppet theater characters.

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Take advantage of what exists. — Laozi

• Japanese mandalas at the Met : Depicting the Buddhist universe
• The art of tea : From Asia to the West
• Streams and Mountains without End : At the Cleveland Museum of Art
• Bali Arts Festival : A month of performances
• Who owns art? : “A now-divided architectural wonder made whole”
• Light of the sufis : The mystical arts of Islam

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Take advantage of what exists. — Laozi

• Protecting an ancient city by razing it? : I don’t think so
• Heroism and Treachery: Paintings from the Safavid and Mughal Empires : At the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Tibeto-logic: The Rubin’s Situ Panchen Lectures :  On “luminous visionary perfection”
• Maharaja art : At the British Museum
• Japanese manhole covers : An extensive gallery
• Rising Korean Artists : An exhibition in Seoul
  
• Ancient Persian Archive Digitized : At the University of Chicago
• The City Of Batik : Pekalongan, Indonesia
• 5 things you might not have known about the samurai : From the Asian Art Museum’s new blog

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Check out this entrancingly nutty samurai samba. Via Kenneth Ikemoto at the Asian Art Museum blog.

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Anyone with an interest in Asian art and culture would be well advised to bookmark or subscribe to the Asian Art Museum’s new blog. The museum team has put a lot of interesting content up already — and the curators haven’t even joined in yet (but will soon).

LINK: Asian Art Museum blog

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Kew Gardens and the British Museum have teamed up on a project called Indian Summer that sounds very cool.

J. S. Marcus writes in the WSJ:

Kew has … installed a special Indian garden in the museum’s forecourt. Designed by Kew horticulturalists Steve Ruddy and Richard Wilford, “India Landscape” transforms 440 square meters of lawn into a concise overview of the Indian subcontinent’s three main habitats: the Himalayan Mountains, the temperate woodlands of the Himalayan foothills and the humid subtropical lowlands.

The Himalayas are conjured up with a vertical rock garden, surrounded by pine trees and cranesbill. The temperate zone includes a Himalayan walnut tree and a blue poppy, one of the world’s truly blue flowers. The subtropical regions come to life thanks to a lotus filled pond, and a mature banyan tree. The winding path, in the shadow of the British Museum’s neoclassical façade, has a dense but spacious quality, and the gardeners have somehow managed to create a sense of north-south travel as we make our way from barren rocks to the spidery lushness of the banyan.

The British Museum will collaborate with Kew on:

• Garden and Cosmos: the Royal Paintings of Jodhpur, May 28 to August 23.
• India Landscape, May 2 to September 28, British Museum forecourt, free.
  Culture of import
• A Bollywood film festival
• Evenings of Indian performance, dance, music, and food
• Lunchtime lectures in the new garden, by museum curators and Kew gardeners, on Indian medicinal plants, horticulture, landscapes and ecology
• Painting and printing workshops, recreating traditional Indian craft techniques

A nice program!

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In conjunction with its exhibition The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan, the Asian Art Museum is hosting two Bhutanese monks, Lopen Neten, who is from eastern Bhutan, and Lopen Gyem, who is from western Bhutan. The monks created a beautiful sand mandala that can be glimpsed in this video and are now working on a second one.

Usually work on the mandala occurs around 1:00. At about 11:00 and 3:00 the monks perform their prayer, or pujas, as viewed here from the second floor walkway.

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The recording of Ani Choying Drolma, a nun from Nepal, was made at a concert in Munich in 2007. The YouTube posting entitles the performance “Ganesha Mantra.”

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Yesterday the Portland Art Museum unveiled a recent purchase: an eleventh-century stone Ganesha from northeastern India.

The Portland Ganesha is shown seated in the posture of “royal ease,” with one knee raised. His rat mount looks up from below, a wisdom bearer (vidyadhara) reaches down from above with a garland of flowers. One of Ganesha’s hands is held in the gesture of reassurance, while the others hold various objects.

How was this object removed from India? No one seems sure.