Asia

Uzbekistan Rediscovers Lost Culture in the Craft of Silk Road Paper Makers

“Uzbekistan Rediscovers Lost Culture in the Craft of Silk Road Paper Makers”

by Komila Nabiyeva via “Guardian Weekly

Zarif Mukhtarov’s dream came true. He is standing in front of his workshop in the village of Koni Ghil, 5km from the Uzbek city ofSamarkand. His eyes shine with pride as he tells his story. Mukhtarov, 58, had tried for years to discover the lost art of Samarkand paper-making. Today, visitors to one of the only workshops for handmade paper in Central Asia can learn the secrets of a 1,000-year-old production process.

Samarkand paper was renowned for its quality. Many Persian and Arabic manuscripts of the ninth and 10th centuries were written on it. “The world’s best paper is produced in Samarkand,” wrote Babur, a descendant of the Central Asian ruler Tamerlane and founder of theMughal dynasty in India in the 16th century.

It was betrayal that brought the paper-making craft to Samarkand. In the year 751 the Chinese invaded Central Asia, but the ruler of Samarkanddefeated their troops and captured many thousands of soldiers. To save their lives, the story goes, craftsmen among the captives revealed their knowledge of paper-making to their captors. From then on, Samarkand became a centre for paper production. But following Russian colonisation of the Silk Road city in the 19th century and the start of industrial production, the ancient recipe got lost.

In 1995 Mukhtarov, a professional ceramist, took part in a UN conference dedicated to lost culture in Uzbekistan. Samarkand paper was one of the topics, and he started to dream of rediscovering how to make it. After five years of experiments with cotton, rag waste and flax, Mukhtarov became convinced that the best paper was made from the bark of the mulberry tree, which grows all over Samarkand.

In 2001 he started to build his own paper workshop. Some funding was provided by US and Japanese foundations, but most of the money was invested by Mukhtarov himself.

“At first my friends thought I was insane,” he recalls. “My wife scolded me regularly. We had to [save enough money to] marry both our children and I kept borrowing money for the workshop. At the end, I had to sell our car and my wife’s gold jewellery to finish the construction.”

Today the paper workshop is a must-see site for tourists coming to Uzbekistan. Mukhtarov has no website and does not advertise. Yet, each year some 5,000 visitors seek out his picturesque mud-brick workshop with a chattering wooden watermill by the Siyob river. The location was no coincidence; once, there were 400 watermills around Samarkand, many of them in Koni Ghil, Mukhtarov says.

Visitors find a variety of products: silk-like or hairy paper in cream, blue, yellow or pink; notepads and wallets; even puppets and masks. All of them are made of paper. Mukhtarov’s workers even produce Uzbek costumes with traditional embroidery. . . . .

A Legacy of War: Fake Art in Vietnam

Old Article but Still Interesting **DB

A Legacy of War: Fake Art in Vietnam

by Seth Mydans via “NY Times“

“HANOI, Vietnam — Even the director of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum here doesn’t know how many of the artworks and artifacts under his care are genuine and how many are extremely skillful copies. But he says he is going to try to find out.

Many works at the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum could be copies that were made to replace the endangered originals during the Vietnam War. Now it is unclear which are real and which are fake.

Bui Thanh Phuong in his home, with works by his father, Bui Xuan Phai. He called the unmonitored art switch “a disaster.”There are nearly 20,000 of these mystery objects, on the walls and in storage, including paintings, sculpture, lacquerware, pottery, ancient statues and traditional crafts.

“We are making efforts to have a comprehensive review of items on display and in our warehouse,” said the director, Truong Quoc Binh. “After we evaluate the whole exhibit, we will try to label them all to show if they are original or not.”

Mr. Binh has been addressing questions about authenticity a lot lately. Curators and artists have been aware of the issue for years, but it became a matter of public discussion only in April, when it was raised at a conference on copyright in Danang.

In large part, the confusion is a legacy of the war with the United States, which ended in 1975, and to a lesser extent of a brief border war fought with China in 1979.

In the late 1960s, fearing that the United States would bomb Hanoi, then the capital of North Vietnam, museum officials removed hundreds of important artworks for safekeeping in the countryside.

To replace them on the museum walls, it commissioned copies: some by the original artists, some by the artists’ apprentices, some by skilled copyists in the museum’s restoration department. They were brilliant reproductions — or variants, as the Vietnamese called those paintings copied by the original artists.”

Coming Exhibition: Chinese Painting~ Legacy of the 20th Century Chinese Masters

“Chinese Painting~ Legacy of the 20th Century Chinese Masters”

“Summer” (1985) by Chu Teh-chun [Zhu Dequn]

Who:

Leisure and Cultural Services Dept.
Hong Kong Museum of Art
Musée Cernuschi
Asian Arts Museum of Paris
Musée National des Arts Asiatiques Guimet

When: June 13, 2014 – Sept. 21, 2014 (Sat.-Sun 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.)

Where:

Hong Kong Museum of Art
10 Salisbury Road
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong

How Much: Standard ($10) Seniors 60+ ($5) Students ($5)

More Information: Here.

“Paris has long been a European art and cultural hub where the liberal atmosphere enabled different streams of thought to burgeon and thrive, and since the 20th century this city has seen generations of Chinese artists hone their painting skills. Following the trend to learn from the West new ways of transforming traditional conventions, these artists left their motherland in search of inspiration. Visiting museums and learning under the guidance of masters, they acquired Western painting skills and perceptions, pioneering a revolution in Chinese painting art circles.

Artists like Liu Haisu, Xu Beihong, Lin Fengmian and Pan Yuliang left early for France. These young Chinese artists had a mission. After returning to China, they contributed immensely to the introduction of artistic trends from overseas, the development of oil painting and bouleversement of Chinese painting. They also founded fine arts schools in the country, cultivating in a new generation of painters the aspiration to further their studies in France. Among these students, Zao Wou-ki, Chu Teh-chun and Wu Guanzhong became well-known figures in the international art scene, anchoring the notion of ‘creating the art of an era’.

This exhibition showcases almost a hundred works, including oil paintings, Chinese ink paintings, sketches, lithographs, sculptures and more, demonstrating the impact and revelation of European art on 20th century Chinese painting. Exhibits have been composed from the collections of the Musée Cernuschi, Asian Arts Museum of Paris, the Hong Kong Museum of Art and several major institutions in France.

The Musée Cernuschi holds one of the finest Chinese art collections in France, and its Chinese painting collection comprises the works of various Chinese painters who travelled to France during the 20th century, illustrating their different practices and inclinations on the blending of Chinese and Western painting skills.”

Chinese Artist: Wang Bu

“Vases with Bird-and-Flower Painting” by Wang Bu (1898–1968)

Artist

Wang Bu was a 20th Century Chinese artist that specialized in working with Ceramics. He was officially trained in the blue and white art, working under an expert tutor for several years. Wang Bu’s first significant work came when popular ceramic artist, Wu Aisheng, hired him to design porcelain items in the style so popular during the Ming and Qing periods. He would continue working with porcelain and ceramics for the rest of his life, preferring to decorate them in the blue and white coloring his father and mentor had loved.

Wang Bu made two great contributions to the art field. First, He created the innovative method of using Chinese brush drawing to add the blue and white colors onto his ceramics and porcelain works ~ a technique that many other artists would soon pick up. Second, he invented a “coloring pigment” by using the Chinese ink painting technique. This pigment helped the colors used on ceramics to stay bright and colorful, as opposed to dulling and spotting as it dried.

He briefly abandoned the blue and white style during the tumultuous period of WWII an the Anti-Japanese War. However, he would later return to his roots, and eventually earned the title “King of Blue and White. In the sixty years that he worked, he designed millions of works, many of which are still famous today.

Influences

His father, Xiuquing, who was an expert in blue and white painting.
Xu Yousheng, his teacheer and another expert artist that worked with blue and white painting.
Ming and Qing Dynasty ceramic artists.

Stylistic Characteristics

Blue and White Coloring ~ particularly over-glazed with colors underneath or paste on paste.
Ceramics and Porcelain canvases.
Use of Chinese brush drawing or ink painting.
Bright, smooth coloring.
He seems to have like flowers, animals, and natural subjects.
His signature in his later years was often “the old man Taoqing.”

Coming Exhibition: A Parallel Tale ~ Taipei in 80s X Hong Kong in 90s

“A Parallel Tale ~ Taipei in 80s X Hong Kong in 90s”

Who:

Comic Home Base
Hong Kong Arts Centre
Dala Publishing Company

When: June 25, 2014 – Aug. 31, 2014 (Sat.-Sun 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.)

Where:

Comic Home Base
North Campus Drive
Provo, Utah 84602

How Much: Free!

More Information: Here and Here.

Participating Hong Kong Comics Artist: Fung Chi-ming, Ho Ka-fai, Seeman Ho, Li Chi-tak, Justin Wong
Participating Taipei Comics Artist: 61Chi, Sean Chuang, Amin Lee, Push Comic (Ah Tui), Ahn Zhe (Tu Tse-Wei)

Comics artists from Hong Kong and Taipei set out on a fascinating time-travel trip with their drawing pens, taking a stroll down the memory lane to trace the footprints they left in the two cities in the 80s and 90s. Stories and scenes that pop up in the artists’ minds as they revisit the old times are transformed into pages of original comics – some light-hearted and some thought-provoking – to illuminate their memories of the people and things from a few decades ago, and even the social and cultural phenomena at that time.

Featuring 10 comics artists and 10 comics works loaded with nostalgia, the exhibition takes everyone to travel backward in time, returning to the Hong Kong and Taiwan in the sweet, old past. The exhibition was held in Taiwan as one of the programmes of the “Hong Kong Week 2013@Taipei” and received overwhelming response. The exhibition will be shown in Hong Kong in this summer. In addition to the exhibition, there are also a series of side events aiming to offer the general public valuable insight into the comics and publishing industry both in the past and at present, as well as the startling artistic ability and creative talent of the artists from Hong Kong and Taiwan.