Cathy's Art Diary

Ambitious and fascinating exhibition at the British Museum looking at China from 1796 to 1912. The premise was that we think of that time as a period of decline but it was also a time of great creativity and social, political and technological change. Again this show had beautiful objects but there was almost too much story to tell in one show, considering the military section listed seven wars and up uprisings in the century there was a lot to understand about a subject I knew very little about at the start. I loved the use of clothing in the show which felt quite unusual for the British Museum and I am increasingly fascinated by Chinese painting. I think my favourite pieces were the volumes of an illustrated journal of stories from around the world. I loved the New York firemen shown here. Closes 8 October 2023 Review Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Useful online lecture from the British Museum introducing their current exhibition on China in the 19th century. Jessica Harrison-Hall from the British Museum and Julia Lovell from King’s College London guided us through the history of the period from 1796 to the Revolution in 1912 focusing on how this era is often left out of histories of China and yet it was a period of turmoil and change. They then led us though the main themes of the exhibitions and how they had picked a person to represent each one shown as a shadow silhouette in the show with a recording of their writings where appropriate. They explained how each one was picked. I have since been to see the exhibition and will blog it soon. I found this introduction really useful as I didn’t know much about the period and knowing the themes was helpful in pacing myself around the show.

Interesting small exhibition at the British Library of photographs of Chinese people who have forged an identity away from metropolitan life by Jamie Lau. This display compliments the current larger exhibition “Chinese and British”. There were beautiful photographs of people in mean something to them with labels written but the subjects. There were seven works with the photographer’s story being the eighth story. A lovely touch was that a vicar who was featured in a graveyard with a cup of tea had lent family items to the larger show. Closes 7 May 2023    

Fascinating  exhibition at the British Library looking at what it means to be Chinese and British and the history of Chinese people here. It started with the first recorded Chinese person to visit Britain, Shen Fuzong in 1687, who met James II. I was delighted to find he worked with a librarian at the Bodleian Library to catalogue Chinese books. I was also intrigued by Tan-Che-Qua, a sculptor, who appears in a group portrait of Royal Academicians. Most touching was the 20th century section which included lots of items lent by families including this dolls house of a Chinese restaurant and a sailor’s duffle bag. As my family came from Liverpool, I was fascinated to find the Chinese population grew in the Second World War and their businesses thrived despite the Blitz. My parents had never mentioned that.   Closes 23 April 2023  

Charming exhibition at the British Museum of a Chinese scroll painting. The work is layed out in two sections. The main one is delicate paintings showing ladies of the court how to behave based on a poem. The painting is dated from somewhere between 400 and 700 AD so is well over a thousand years old. It is quite astonishing. As interesting is the second display case of the exquisite annotations added to it by various owners including emperors. It’s a piece with layers of story. The work can only be shown for 6 weeks a year due to its fragility. I found it interesting that when I was there a large party of young Chinese students were in to see it and seemed entranced by it. Closes 13 November 2022  

Interesting exhibition at White Cube, Mason’s Yard, exploring abstraction in recent Chinese painting. The Chinese approach to abstraction takes a slightly different form taking Taoist philosophy and calligraphy as two starting points. It feels like a more natural form than the Western Modernist backlash. I loved Liu Wentoa’s pictures made up of thin pencil lines which interweave to produce pattern and light and shade. It felt a bit like intellectual Spirograph. Qian Jiahua’s work created an amazing 3D optical illusion where it looks like the canvas has large blocks sticking out from it but it’s actually a flat canvas. Yu Yauhan’s Circle pictures evidently reflected the Yin and Yan in philosophy but oddly I was seeing Renaissance town maps! I think I have now officially brainwashed myself to see everything in a Renaissance context. Most beautiful were Su Xiaobai’s monochrome works using laquerwork to create an opalescent effect with curves edges giving an idea of ...

Strange exhibition at the Photographers Gallery looking at the history of photobook publishing in China. The leaflet described it as the ‘largely unexplored’ history of Chinese photobook publishing and I must admit I can see why! It’s one of those shows where you are glad someone has collected these things but you hope not to sit next to them at a dinner party! The commentaries were amazingly detailed but just too much to read in this environment. They did form an interesting history of China on the 20th century. The early pre-revolutionary section was interesting as it showed how European photographers had gone to China to record it. I was particularly struck by a book by Henri Cartier-Bressen. I was amused by the Cultural Revolution books which blanked out people in later editions who had fallen from favour. There were some nice examples of this. It was also interesting to see how modern China was still using the medium. Review Times    

Late night opening for members at the British Museum with a focus on the current Ming exhibition. I had not been to one of these before but found that a friend was a member so we decided to go together. We were shocked at first by the huge queue to get in but the people soon diluted as they spread into the vast space of the museum. Many headed to the next queue to get exhibition tickets but we decided we could do that any time so headed to the members room and a glass of wine to make a plan of action. We went to an excellent lecture by Yu-Pong Luk, the projector curator of Ming, who talked us through the history of the period the exhibition focuses on using the objects from the show. She also outlined the three main points they had hoped to make, the importance of the Ming princes in running regional courts, the Mongol legacy in the styles and China’s engagement with the outside world in this period.   I had already seen the exhibition but felt this added to what I had...

Sumptuous exhibition at the British Museum of objects from the golden 50 years of the Ming emperors reigns in China. The exhibition set the context well and I loved the series of portraits of the emperors in question with identikit clothing but beautifully painted individual faces. It described the tradition of settling up courts around the empire and the importance these courts took on. However the history seemed to cease to matter as the objects themselves were just so glorious. There was an amazing set of women’s jewellery from a tomb including a flower shaped hair ornament of the most delicate gold. Of course the ceramics were beautiful but I also loved the paintings and the lacquer work. I liked the array of strange government department names such as the Department of Sweat Meats! Despite everything being very regal these names seemed to add a human everyday layer to the world being shown. My favourite piece was a scroll showing different games to help train...

Exhibition at the British Museum focusing on art from the area of the Yanzi River in China. I know very little about Chinese art but the more I see of it the more intriguing and beautiful I find it. I come at it with a fresh and open eye as the work has no strict time table in my head. I am often struck at how early an amazingly fresh and new looking piece of work is. The earliest I spotted was by an artist active between 1131 and 1162 and we know their name, Ma Hezhi. How many names of Western artists of that date do we know? I loved a picture of a pig and piglets by Wang Su and also a bustling picture of an Imperial Inspection of the region which was full of life and crowds. I loved the humanity of the work in this display and I want to see more and learn more.

Stunning exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Chinese painting. I must admit I went along thinking it would be leave mw cold but I was entranced by the wonderful images and by the early dates when some of them were made with the earliest I spotted being 780-840! I loved a picture from 800-900 of an itinerant monk travelling with a tiger and a brazier on his back. The quality of the face was portrait like. I particularly liked the scrolls and how many of them told a story. There was fun one of dragons in swirling black brush stokes which were almost surreal.   My favourite was a long townscape called “Prosperous Suzhau” by Xu Jong which showed a city in amazing details. You just wanted to walk down the streets and look in the little shops. It is well worth getting the tape tour, if like me you know nothing about the subject, but many thanks to the guide who warned me that if you listen to all of it it takes two hours! I dipped in an out! Reviews ...

Luscious exhibition at the V&A of royal robes worn by the emperors and empresses of the Qing Dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of China (1644-1911). The clothes were displayed as beautiful objects and grouped by use and purpose rather than date. This was partly because the style of the outfits did not change over the three centuries. There was lots of detail on what clothes were worn when and what different motifs meant. I found had questions in my mind as I went round such I wonder how often they were worn and if they were handed on to the next emperor? However just when I wanted some info on how they were made I got it in a nice display on the material and tailoring. I loved a piece of material with a gown embroidery on ready to cut out like a paper pattern. My favourite items which I wanted to wear were a red and purple empress’s skirt with a fur hem and a rather plain but classy brown and gold empress’s regular dress.

M ajor exhibition at the British Museum of the life and death of China’s first emperor Qin Shihuangdi. The first half of the exhibition focused on the emperor’s life looking at how he unified the country both militarily, administratively and emotionally. I must admit I found this section a little bit superfluous. Although I am sure if was good to give a context to the terracotta warriors, which I am sure is what most people had come to see, the sparse nature of the artefacts made this a rather reading based section and a bit stodgy. It felt a little like a way of controlling the flow of people to the meat of the exhibition. Talking of the meat the figures themselves were not disappointing. They were put into the context of the death of the emperor although I found myself viewing them as art artefacts in their own right. I was most struck by how different they all were. The image you get from photo’s of the tomb is of an amorphous group of figures more astonishing for their numbers that...