Orientations is a bimonthly magazine published in Hong Kong since 1969 and distributed worldwide. It is an authoritative source of information on the many and varied aspects of the arts of East and Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, the Indian subcontinent, and the Middle East, from the latest scholarly research to market analysis and current news.
Originally conceived as a publication devoted to travel and the culture of ‘the Orient’, the magazine evolved into a scholarly journal on art, architecture, and archaeology over the past decades as the rest of the world became better acquainted with the region. Orientations brings readers stories of interesting people, amazing places, and incredible art collections.
Now available in both print and digital, Orientations is an essential addition to any library.
HIGHLIGHTS
The Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) is often regarded as the most wealthy age of ancient Chinese empires, and Tang art elaborately demonstrates the dynasty’s cultural diversity. The evolution of visual symbols in clothing, including armour, is a key part of Tang aesthetics. Before the Tang dynasty, Chinese armour prioritized function and lacked ornamentation, but these values changed, owing to a long period of peacetime accompanying the economic and cultural development of the Tang dynasty (Romane, 2018, pp. 107–9). Representing distinct Tang designs, armour became more decorative, and new shapes of armour progressively emerged and stimulated an armour prototype. The term futun, which refers to an image of a swallowing beast’s face on the abdomen of the armour, became a section of the armour structure that provided protection and adornment; the wearer’s belt passed, almost violently, through the mouth of the beast. Making the armour style more attractive and decorative, the futun image was extensively employed during the mid-Tang dynasty and continued to be used through the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and into the Qing dynasty (1644–1911).
The reign of Qianlong (r. 1735–96) marked the most glorious period in the long history of jade production in China. The stable imperial power and unprecedented prosperity created an environment in which jade carving could flourish. The patronage of the court further contributed to the demand of finely crafted jade objects: Qianlong himself stood as the greatest patron of jade production in China’s history.
Wang Tiande (b. 1960) is among China’s leading contemporary ink artists. Trained in Chinese painting and calligraphy at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art), Wang is well versed in classical aesthetics and literati idealism, but remains conscious not to let tradition limit his creativity. After years of experimentation, one day during an art residency in Paris in 2002 he accidentally burned a mark on some Xuan paper and noticed its beauty. Recognizing the chance to develop a unique style, he devoted the next 15 years to evolving and perfecting it by using incense sticks to create silhouettes of cal-ligraphy and paintings, one stroke at a time.
The significance and relevance of the art of writing compellingly lends this subject to the opening presentation in this gallery. Calligraphy is omnipresent in East Asia, where writing systems are crucial. They influence the arts and everyday cultures as well as the living environment and the thinking of the people. Chinese characters not only are a means of communication but also create identity, and they have become a medium of artistic expression in the long course of their history. Calligraphy, with its unique symbiosis of formal aesthetics and semantic meaning, forms an independent art genre across the region.
Karlin was by no means the first woman to travel around the world alone, but according to Barbara Trnovec, curator of the archive of materials and documents Karlin accumulated during the course of her journey at the Celje Regional Museum in Slovenia, she was one of the first women to travel on her own for such an extended period. Unlike other, more famous travellers, she could not count on personal wealth to finance her journey—in fact, after paying her first sea passage from Genoa to Peru, she was left almost entirely without funds. During her journey, Karlin supported herself through work as an interpreter and journalist, but was often compelled to take other jobs in order to survive.
In 1954, the Japanese oil painter Hagiwara Hideo (1913–2007) turned to woodblock printmaking after falling ill with tuberculosis. Right from the start his prints were abstract in style, which made his reputation abroad as well as in Japan. Throughout his printmaking career he was a constant innovator in his choice of motifs, style and technique, and his works have been collected by many major museums, including The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and The Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in the US.
Contemporary artist Zheng Chongbin (b. 1961, Shanghai) has turned Chinese painting inside out, focusing on its materials and surface, the performance and process of painting. Zheng’s practice encompasses abstract painting using traditional ink and acrylic on paper, as well as large-scale installations with ink, video or other materials. His installations were recently ex-hibited at the 2016 Shanghai Biennale and the 2015 Venice Biennale, at the Palazzo Bembo.
Xie Jinglan (1921–95), nicknamed Lalan, was an artist who paved her search into spirituality through the oeuvre she com-posed, choreographed, performed, and painted. An inspirational figure who left her legacy in the form known as Integrated Art, she is one of the most exceptional female abstract painters in Chinese contemporary art history.
The exhibition ‘Vanishing Beauty: Asian Jewelry and Ritual Objects from the Barbara and David Kipper Collection’, on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from 19 June to 21 August this year, showcased the extensive collection of jewellery as well as ritual objects from the Himalayas and other Asian regions to be gifted to the museum by Barbara Levy Kipper. Together with her late husband David, Barbara travelled widely in these areas and found herself increasingly attracted to the jewellery of the peoples she encoun-tered.
Humanity has long viewed material treasures as evidence of spiritual riches—just as the earthly powers of the political elite have been (and in many regions continue to be) considered divine. Works from the Mengdiexuan and Chengxuntang collections, on view in the upcoming exhibition ‘Jewels of Transcendence: Himalayan and Mongolian Treasures’ at the Art Museum of the Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (30 September 2018–24 February 2019) and illustrated in the related catalogue, embody this statement in a variety of ways.