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Clay as Soft Power: The Rise of Shigaraki Ware in
Postwar America
at JASA

Clay as Soft Power: The Rise of Shigaraki Ware in Postwar America,
Japanese Art Society of America

Online webinar, December 5, 5pm EST

Join JASA and Natsu Oyobe, Ph.D., curator of Asian Art at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Illustrated through historic jars, works by American artists inspired by Shigaraki ware, and recent works by contemporary Japanese artists, this talk will uncover the stories of Shigaraki ware and its impact in America from the postwar era into the 21st century. Note: Advance registration is required: December 5 event.

To register, click here

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The National Museum of Asian Art Hosts Feathered Ink: Japanese Art

Watanabe Seitei (1851–1918), Pigeons at Sensoji, Meiji era, 1877, ink and color on silk, Purchase—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, Freer Gallery of Art, F2000.1a–

Feathered Ink: Japanese Art, National Museum of Asian Art,
Smithsonian Institution

In person talk, December 3, 2pm

Join assistant curator Kit Brooks for a discussion of the exhibition Feathered Ink, which explores how Japanese artists over centuries have depicted birds in hanging scroll paintings, folding screens, ceramics, and printed books. Plus, learn about a surprising connection between the painting Pigeons at Sensoji by Watanabe Seitei and the exhibition An Italian Impressionist in Paris at the Phillips Collection. No registration required.

Read more, click here.

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Art, Ritual and Religion: The Bridge Between the Living and the Dead at China Institute

Age of Empire and the Afterlife: Qin and Han Dynasty (221 BCE-220CE)
China Institute
Online workshop, November 30, 7-9pm

Amid power consolidation, an empire was emerging, as well as philosophical thoughts and religious belief that built the foundation for the concept of this world and for afterlife in Chinese culture. How profound was this process and its lasting influence in the history of China and the world?

This presentation is one in a series of programs for educators, Art, Ritual and Religion: Art Vessels to Buddha Images: The Bridge Between the Living and the Dead, that is also available to the public. Featured speaker is experienced scholar Professor Annette Juliano.

The final program, Opening of the Lotus: Emergence of Buddhism (25-420 CE) will be held online on December 14 at 7-9pm.

Read more, click here.

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Joan B Mirviss LTD Presents Hayashi Kaku |
ETERNAL CURRENTS

Hayashi Kaku, Zero-Reincarnation , 2020, glazed stoneware, 17 3/4 x 27 1/8 x 9 in.

Hayashi Kaku | ETERNAL CURRENTS, Joan B Mirviss LTD
November 29, 2022–January 13, 2023
Exhibition preview: Tuesday, November 29 from 4:30pm EST

Eternal Currents marks the first solo exhibition outside Japan for highly respected and influential ceramic artist Hayashi Kaku. After decades of exploring clay’s malleability, Hayashi has created confidently formed sculptures covered in strongly contrasting glazes that express the elemental force of Nature. Her latest dynamic series, created exclusively for this exhibition, draw inspiration from the majestic and spiritually significant Kegon waterfall in Nikko that has been celebrated by Japanese artists since antiquity. Located near her home and studio in Tochigi Prefecture, the waterfall and surrounding landscape have long been a source of inspiration for her artistic practice. More recently, she has imbued these works with a renewed vigor despite the isolation and uncertainty of the past few years. Through expressive clay sculptures, Hayashi Kaku explores both the variable and immovable forces ever-present in Nature in her powerful international debut at Joan B Mirviss LTD.

Upcoming Zoom Talk:
Thursday, December 8, 2022 at 5pm ET
Eternal Currents: The Tidal Impact of Japanese Women Clay Artists and Charting a Course for the Future
ZOOM Gallery Talk hosted by Joan B Mirviss LTD
The massive surge in innovation and international stature of Japan’s contemporary ceramic arts can be traced to the rapid incorporation of women into the field in just the past few decades. Once they were finally allowed to get their hands in clay, women artists have provided a burst of creative energy that has pushed the medium into unexpected directions. To discuss the sea change in Japan’s venerated centuries-old, male-dominated ceramic tradition, gallery artist Hayashi Kaku will be joined by Professor Todate Kazuko, a highly respected scholar of Japanese ceramics, and curator Russell Kelty, who recently organized a Japanese sculptural ceramics exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia and authored the accompanying handsome publication. Each panelist will examine, from their unique perspective, the unstoppable tide of creative talent from Japanese women clay artists, and at the same time reflect upon the accompanying challenges for them in charting a course through unknown waters.

Panelists:
HAYASHI KAKU, artist
RUSSELL KELTY, Curator, Asian Art at Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), Adelaide, Australia
TODATE KAZUKO, Professor at Tama Art University, Tokyo and respected scholar of ceramics
MINA LEVIN, Japanese clay art collector and museum patron based in North Carolina
Moderated by JOAN MIRVISS

Read more and register, click here

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Asia Week New York Members Head to Miami

Between November 29 and December 4, three AWNY members will participate in two art fairs in Miami. If you will be in town, be sure to visit their booths and see the great Japanese art they’ll have on view.

DESIGN MIAMI:
This 18th edition of Design Miami is curated by Maria Cristina Didero and explores the theme of The Golden Age: Looking to the Future, celebrating a tomorrow of our own creation.

Ippodo Gallery
Extreme Surfaces: Cutting Age Kogei
Ippodo Gallery presents an extensive exhibition of contemporary Japanese kogei (art and craft) that includes works by twenty-one artists.

Thomsen Gallery
On display will be fine bamboo baskets, complemented by Japanese modern bronze vessels, contemporary porcelain vessels, and gold-lacquer boxes.

Read more, click here

ART MIAMI:
An international art fair, Art Miami, is the city’s longest running contemporary and modern art fair.

TAI Modern
The gallery will offer a wide array of Japanese contemporary bamboo art by many of the best practitioners.

Read more, click here

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Happy Thanksgiving to One and All

Attributed to Sultan Muhammad (active first half 16th century), The Feast of Sada, Folio 22v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp (detail), ca. 1525, opaque watercolor, ink, silver, and gold on paper, Gift of Arthur A. Houghton Jr., 1970, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

As friends and family gather for a holiday feast, we at Asia Week New York pause to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.

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Kapoor Galleries Hosts a Private Tour of Air India’s Maharaja: Advertising Gone Rogue at Poster House

Kapoor Galleries invites you to a private viewing and tour of the show,
Air India's Maharaja: Advertising Gone Rogue

Tuesday, November 29, 2022, 6-8pm EST
Note the location: Poster House
119 West 23rd Street New York, NY 10011

Rogue’s Gallery, published by Air-India in 1977, was a catalog showcasing the airline’s most iconic travel posters produced from 1946 to 1972. The star of these posters was Air-India’s beloved mascot, the Maharaja, alias “the Rogue.” Conceived in 1946 by Bobby Kooka and illustrated by Umesh Rao, the Maharaja was initially designed for an inflight memo pad. Characterized by his oversized mustache, striped turban, corpulent belly, and aquiline nose, the mascot would go on to become the face of the airline and propel the company to the forefront of advertising genius in the mid-20th century.

The exhibition Air India's Maharaja: Advertising Gone Rogue throws light upon how Air-India’s mascot to this day is most fondly remembered throughout the world for his role in India’s golden age of advertising.

To register, click here

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CHINA/5000 Years at Sotheby’s New York

CHINA/5000 Years, Sotheby's
Online auction November 18-December 1, 2022

This diverse sale includes Chinese works of art from diplomat and collector Frederick William Hinke (1900-1960), who served for several years in China; early ceramics of a West Coast collector; Qing porcelain formerly in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and a selection of Scholar's Objects, among other treasures.

Read more, click here

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Akar Prakar Presents The Architectonics of Form: Scrolls by Ganesh Haloi in New Delhi

The Architectonics of Form: Scrolls by Ganesh Haloi,
Akar Prakar New Delhi

November 23, 2022-Janaury 10, 2023

The scrolls by Ganesh Haloi, are cartographic mappings of the layered sensations that have impressed upon him for decades. Beginning with the steady lyricism of Ajanta murals, resonant whispers of the varying landscapes, rhythmicity of the alpana forms, structurality of manmade interventions and the poetics of space. The architectonics of his visual forms are derived from and yet not limited by these layered impressions and the scrolls presented for the first time in this exhibition extends the survey into the dynamics of space as sound.

There are two primary aspects that trigger the perceptive construction of the forms in Haloi’s scrolls. One is the aspect of space as perceived by the Chinese artist, enhancing the void with the minimalistic spontaneous brush strokes that exemplifies the Daoist ideal of being in harmony with nature, devoid of the self. Dhvani, a theory of suggestions and revelations is the other binding element in Haloi’s composite forms and relations to space.

Haloi’s architectonics derives from the process of integrality. To experience and express nature as a whole. Synchronizing its lyricism, rhythm, resonance, structurality and poetics into a coherent formula. This process abstracts the physicality of forms, and its psychological translucency of meanings and sensations into a sonic algorithm—enfolding, unfolding, and refolding the space-time flux into a continuous act of abstraction, until the self-image is integral to a visual formula of sonic symbolism. The void/space impregnated with dhvani, gives birth to this pulsating architectonic of form.

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iGavel’s Asian, Ancient and Ethnographic Works of Art Fetches $932,045

Forty-eight bidders from Hong Kong, China, Canada, and the United States competed for Painting of Antlers, signed Qianlong Emperor, which sold for $118,750, surpassing its estimate ten-fold.

The three-session online sale, entitled Asian, Ancient and Ethnographic Works of Art, Parts I, II, and III of rare works of Asian art presented by Lark Mason Associates, on iGavelAuctions.com, concluded on November 3rd, and rang up $932,045.00 in sales including buyer’s premium.

“The series of sales exceeded expectations and showed the market to be remarkably resilient, boding well for the 2023 spring sales of Asian art in March,” says Lark Mason. “It included nearly 500 lots with a mix of works ranging from ancient works of art to furniture, resulting in a significant number of bidders pursuing works across a variety of categories.” According to Mason the strong response was due to the variety of material and reasonable estimates, and took into consideration the costs incurred by bidders who were incurring packing and shipping costs, in addition to the hammer price at auction.

In addition to the painting of antlers signed by Emperor Qianlong, other lots that surpassed their original estimates were a Chinese Peking Amber Glass Octagonal Bottle Vase, eagerly pursued by 38 bidders and snapped up for $17,500; an ink-on-silk Korean Four Panel Ink Screen by Kim K-Chang (1913-2001) sold for $18,125, exceeding its estimate three-fold, with 26 bids. A pair of Chinese Faux Cloisonne Porcelain Jardinieres, mid-Qing Dynasty sold for $25,000, twice its estimate; a Chinese Brown Jade Huang Form Dragon Pendant sold for $25,000; a pair of Chinese Porcelain Magpie and Prunus Vases, 20th Century far exceeded its $1,200-1500 estimate and garnered $20,625; and a 19th century Carved Beige Stone Gourd Form Snuff bottle rang up $8,125.

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