Obama bows to Japanese emperor and heads to China

November 17: Obama bows to Japanese emperor and heads to China. The way US President Barack Obama bowed before Japanese emperor has won millions of Japanese hearts as his respect for the ailing emperor looked genuine and not just a formality.

Obama who has just completed a year in office knows the art of winning the heart more than any other leader in the world. He is a warm and lively person who enlightens the most boring meetings.

But will he be able to do the same with Chinese leaders and Chinese people?

Despite being outstanding planners Chinese leaders come as mechanical and a bit boring. Though things are changing fast and President Hu Jintao in particular has tried to change it, but there is miles to go on this front right now.

Meanwhile Chinese President Hu Jintao and US President Barack Obama pledged on Tuesday that the two countries will "take concrete steps" to advance "sustained and reliable" military-to-military relations in the future, official news agency Xinhua reported.

"The two sides will actively implement various exchange and cooperation programs agreed between the two militaries, including by increasing the level and frequency of exchanges," according to a joint statement issued after their talks in Beijing.

Hu and Obama also vowed to deepen counter-terrorism consultation and cooperation between the two countries on an equal and mutually beneficial basis, said the statement, carried by Xinhua.

The two sides promised they will boost joint efforts to combat transnational crime and criminal organizations as well as money laundering and the financing of terrorism, including counterfeiting and recovery of illicit funds.

The two countries agreed to exchange evidence and intelligence on law enforcement issues in a timely and reciprocal manner, and undertake joint investigations as well as provide investigative assistance on cases of mutual interest, according to the statement.

Obama arrived in Beijing on Monday after visiting the nation's economic hub Shanghai on the third leg of his four-nation Asian trip starting from Nov.13 that has already taken him to Japan and Singapore.

During his stay in Beijing, he will also meet with Wu Bangguo, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, and Premier Wen Jiabao. He is scheduled to leave China for South Korea on Wednesday.


http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29314&Itemid=57&limit=1&limitstart=1

Japan hopes to host National Palace Museum art

A Japanese delegation of parliamentarians recently told President Ma Ying-jeou that Japan would like to borrow art from the National Palace Museum for exhibit. Taiwan's foreign ministry said that such an exchange would be good for relations with Japan, but Japan must first enact an anti-seizure law to ensure the safe return of the pieces. The ministry cited that France and Germany were also required to amend their laws, which they did, before the National Palace Museum lent them artworks.

Taiwan's National Palace Museum was also praised recently by the International Council of Museums for rejecting the offer of receiving two controversial Qing dynasty bronzes from a French collector this year. They were once the property of the Imperial Summer Palace in Beijing, and China insists they be treated as stolen property.

The director of the National Palace Museum said she did not accept the bronzes because of UNESCO guidelines to not accept works of possible illegal origins. The National Palace Museum is currently hosting its first cooperative exhibit with the Palace Museum in Beijing. The exhibit Harmony and Integrity: The Yongzheng Emperor and His Times will be on display until January 10th.

http://english.rti.org.tw/Content/GetSingleNews.aspx?ContentID=89194

Important and Iconic Works from the Masters of Asian Art at Christie's

Also leading this season’s Evening Sale is Zao Wou-ki’s "19-11-59". Estimate: HK$8,000,000-12,000,000 /US$1,025,600-1,538,500. Photo: Christie's Images Ltd 2009.

HONG KONG.- Collectors from around the world will have the rare chance to acquire exceptional works from the biggest names in Asian contemporary and Chinese 20th-century art in this season’s Asian Contemporary & Chinese 20th-Century Art Evening Sale held on November 29 at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. Valued at over HK$125 million (US$16 million), the sale will present over 40 iconic works by renowned Chinese 20th Century artists such as Sanyu, Zao Wou-ki, Lin Fengmian, Chu Teh-Chun, and Yun Gee, as well as works by premier Asian contemporary artists such as China’s Liu Ye and Zeng Fanzhi and Japan’s Kenji Yanobe.

Chinese 20th Century Art: Fusion of East and West

The early 20th-century was a time of change and regeneration in China. Against these social conditions, traditional Chinese artistic values faced unprecedented challenges as Western technological advancements began to enter into the country. This fusion of Chinese traditional visual art with Western modern art movements produced the unique East-West aesthetic and technical sophistication found in the works of major Chinese 20th-century artists such as Sanyu, Zao Wou-ki, and Chu Teh-Chun, each of whom are represented with rare and important works in this season’s Evening Sale.

Following the record sale of Sanyu’s "Cat and Birds" at Christie’s Hong Kong in May of this year (HK$ 42,100,000/US$ 5,418,270/£ 3,410,100), comes another major work: "Potted Flowers in a Blue and White Jardinière" (estimate: HK$8,000,000–12,000,000 /US$1,025,600 – 1,538,500), one of the Sanyu’s finest examples of his exploration in uniting Eastern and Western aesthetic ideals. Painted in the 1950’s, "Potted Flowers in a Blue and White Jardinière" uses a striking combination of pink and Prussian blue, with infinite variations of color that create a luminescent glow evoking Mark Rothko and Yves Klein. This skilful technique is also reminiscent of that used to create the rich visual effects produced by variations of black found in Chinese ink-wash painting. The casual simplicity of the lines belies a precise organization in the composition that allows Western spatial abstraction and linear concepts to be expressed through an Eastern still life subject.

Also leading this season’s Evening Sale is Zao Wou-ki’s "19-11-59" (estimate: HK$8,000,000-12,000,000 /US$1,025,600-1,538,500). Embracing the finest elements of Yuan and Sung dynasty landscape painting, Zao’s work strives to finds new meanings in the traditional aesthetic, while also incorporating Western artistic techniques to express color, light, and shadow. The result is an entirely new style of abstract expression through which he captures the subtle changes of space, nature, light and darkness to create a world of vivid and spectacular majesty. In "19-11-59", blue tones shift and swirl in a rising cloud-like mass, creating a fantastic visual experience that seems to expand and evolve in a cool deep calmness. Zao’s technique of using radiant light to create a visual effect of movement within color is exceptional and unique even among Western artists, underscoring his successful incorporation of Western art forms into traditional Chinese art.

"Vertige Neigeux" (estimate on request) is a rare and exceptional work from artist Chu Teh-Chun. Although Chu Teh-Chun's abstract works draw inspiration from Western abstract expressionism, they also exude a poetic sensibility that is deeply rooted in the Chinese view that painting and poetry derive from a single source. Struck by the beauty of a snowstorm scene while traveling in Switzerland in 1985, Chu began painting a select number of snow scenes. A work that was nine years in the making, "Vertige Neigeux" is exceptionally large, a truly rare work not only in size but also as Chu no longer painted snow scenes after 1991. Broad, sweeping strokes suggest rolling mists and flowing waters, while washes of pale green suggest the undefined spaces used throughout traditional Chinese landscapes.

From Wang Huaiqing comes "Six Screens", a large paneled work painted in 2006 (estimate: HK4,000,000-5,000,000/US$512,800-641,000). It is work from a series where the artist reinterprets ancient Chinese culture using Chinese Ming furniture themes. In "Six Screens", Wang employs a highly modernist style of expression in order to deconstruct and reconstruct a screen. He simplifies the original physical divisions into soft, black, geometrical shapes, reminiscent of Chinese paper-cutting, while using the variations of vermilion - a color heavy with symbolic of ‘China red’. By adding texture through the use of oil paint and by exposing different layers of paint with a scraping technique, a thoroughly modern element is injected into the traditional form and color, resulting in a work that is both firmly rooted in China’s traditions while embracing expressive means and methods of Western art.

Asian Contemporary Art: A Window to the Future

Among the contemporary works to be presented at this season’s Evening Sale is a seminal work by acclaimed Chinese contemporary artist Zeng Fanzhi. His emotionally raw paintings anticipated the emotional and psychological strain that would haunt the new China as it struggled with modernization and rapid social changes in post-1980’s. Zeng’s concern over the alienation and loneliness inherent in modern life can be found at the very heart of his works. Created in 1994, "Untitled" (Hospital Series) (estimate: HK$8,000,000-12,000,000 /US$1,025,600-1,538,500) is a crucial work of Zeng Fanzhi’s career. This piece from the Hospital series can be considered a milestone in Zeng artistic career which paved the way for the creation of his later and much renowned Mask series of the mid to late 1990s. Untitled (Hospital Series), a monumental and ambitious canvas, features patients with crude and lugubrious bodies and exaggerated and impenetrable gazes being treated by numb indifferent doctors. Zeng’s use of colour and a distorted three-dimensional view heighten the sense of emotional and physical chaos.

From Kenji Yanobe, one of Japan’s most creative contemporary artists, comes the whimsical sculptural work "Soul of Bubble King" (estimate: HK$700,000–1,000,000/US$89,700-128,200). Inspired by the Japanese subculture of Anime and Manga, Yanobe’s works are intellectually inquisitive and convey a stoic persistence in facing adversity in everyday life. Created in 1992, "Soul of Bubble King" is a monumental sculpture that can inflate and deflate, reflecting the artist’s interest in fortification, selfdefence and scientific advancement, executed with playfulness and precise engineering.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=34064

Asia Society

725 Park Ave (at 70th St) Upper East Side Map
212-517-2742
Subway: 6 to 68th St–Hunter College Directions
http://www.asiasociety.org

Description

The Asia Society sponsors study missions and conferences while promoting public programs in the US and abroad. The headquarters’ striking galleries host major exhibitions of art culled from dozens of countries and time periods—from ancient India and medieval Persia to contemporary Japan—and assembled from public and private collections, including the permanent Mr and Mrs John D Rockefeller III collection of Asian art. A spacious, atrium-like café, with a pan-Asian menu, and a beautifully stocked gift shop make the society a one-stop destination for anyone who has an interest in Asian art and culture. Read more: http://newyork.timeout.com/venues/upper-east-side/6763/asia-society

For Taiwan craftsman, sword-making is in the bones

By PETER ENAV (AP)

CHE DING, Taiwan — The sword-maker inserts an 18-inch shaft of metal into his red-hot kiln. Then he adds his special ingredient: a human thighbone.

The bone, says Kuo Chang-hsi, is supposed to purify the metal and give it a special aura.
For the past 30 years, the craggy-faced blacksmith has been replicating ancient Chinese and Japanese swords. At 65, he is Taiwan's last known practitioner of the art. His workshop is a dimly lit set of rooms crowded with sword-making equipment. Framed photographs of him with local politicians and foreign visitors attest to his celebrity.

Kuo's technique features yew- and coal-fed fires, lethal-looking slabs of steel and iron, and perfect timing with those bones, which he keeps in a ceramic urn.

"When I first tried to make a Kanjiang sword I failed," he says, referring to a famous weapon first made in China some 2,400 years ago. "Then I remembered — there's a saying that if one wants to make a good sword, one needs human bones."

Some of them come from disused cemeteries, left over when the bodies were reburied elsewhere. Or from relatives who believe a sword containing their loved one's bone will make a fitting memorial. These bones are retrieved years after the death. A whole side industry of bone-washing exists in Taiwan.

Among Kuo's countless replicas is the "Green Destiny Sword." It featured in the internationally acclaimed martial arts epic "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," directed by Kuo's fellow Taiwanese, Ang Lee.

In Asia, the best craftsmen are the Japanese, who can spend years working on a single sword, Kuo says.

"Makers in the Chinese tradition usually take only a few days," he says. "That has an obvious effect on quality."

Kuo says he spends several weeks making a sword.

He comes from a family of blacksmiths that started in the trade in 1888, specializing in farm tools. He joined the business at the age of 13.

"We were poor. My granddad was a blacksmith, and I followed my dad's path to become a blacksmith too," he said. "I didn't want to be a blacksmith, but my dad told me that if I refused, he would tie me up to stop me from running away."

He branched into sword-making around 1980, and it is now the signature element of his trade. His workshop in Che Ding, a small fishing port in the south of the island, stands among market stalls in a town square smelling faintly of fish.

A sword begins with a slab of iron and steel softened in 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,400 degrees Fahrenheit) of heat. Next comes the bone, its phosphorus content turning the light from the kiln to turquoise. Then the metal goes into an electricity-powered press to be shaped and flattened in dozens of rapid-fire thrusts, and finally is hammered into completion.

"When people worship using these swords, they will feel a strong sense of security," Kuo said. "There are some venerable monks who tell their followers to take their bones and use them in swords that can be used later in religious rites."

Kuo says his most valuable sword was an elaborate Japanese-style weapon he made for a collector 16 years ago in exchange for a new Mercedes-Benz. Five years later, he said, it changed hands for about $200,000 — at least five times what the Mercedes cost. "I wish I hadn't sold it," he said.

Kuo's own collection is in his Museum of Weapon Art, a short drive from his workshop. Meticulously laid out in display cases are 4,800 swords, knives, axes and pieces of armor.
Most are from China, including a few reputed to be more than 2,000 years old. There are also pieces from Mongolia, Turkey and Egypt.

Kuo's grown son has not followed him into blacksmithing so he has hired a 24-year-old apprentice, but insists he has no intention of retiring.

"I'll work here until I drop," he says. "It's impossible to reject orders from my customers. For better or worse, sword-making is the calling God gave me."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hX3fHI4yVxFXHBSwA6UTwBZtY40gD9AITDOG2

After 5: Taste of Japan

This year's Japanese Fall Festival will offer a little taste of Disney.

Two regular performers at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., will headline the Springfield Sister Cities Association's 14th annual Japanese Fall Festival on Sept. 11-13.

Japanese storyteller and illusionist Kuniko Yamamoto and professional candy artist Miyuki Sugimori will perform in the Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden at Nathanael Greene/Close Memorial Park, 2400 S. Scenic Ave.

The nonprofit Sister Cities Association - which connects Springfield citizens with Isesaki, Japan, and Tlaquepaque, Mexico, through cultural exchanges - is partnering with the Springfield-Greene County Park Board for the weekend event.

Kuniko is known for her Japanese pantomime, dance and music sprinkled with magic. She's spent the last decade traveling the U.S., performing at such venues as The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Disney's Epcot Japanese Pavilion, according to http://www.kunikotheater.com/.

Miyuki sculpts taffy-like candy into animals, flowers and other shapes and decorates with paint and accessories before sticking the finished product onto a chopstick. She has demonstrated her candy art designs, called amezaiku, on "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" and The Food Network, and she is scheduled to perform at the Greater Kansas City Japan Festival the weekend after visiting Springfield.

A sneak peek of their works is available at www.springfieldmo.gov/sistercities, where YouTube links under the News tab show performances by the artists.

Other festival performers are coming in from St. Louis: Taiko drumming group Osuwa Taiko and traditional Japanese top spinner Hiroshi Tada. Osuwa Taiko is a nonprofit group dedicated to the historic Japanese art of drumming; literally translated, taiko is "big fat drum," according to www.stltaiko.com. The group will be playing at the Missouri Botanical Garden before coming to Springfield, where performances are scheduled for 1 and 7 p.m. Sept. 12 and 1 p.m. Sept. 13.

Local martial artists and Japanese traditions, including sword demonstrations, and a tea ceremony also are highlighted in Springfield's Japanese Fall Festival. Ceremonies kick off 5:30 p.m. Sept. 11 with a children's parade.

http://sbj.net/main.asp?SectionID=18&SubSectionID=23&ArticleID=85275&TM=54198.61