Art & Culture

“Wanna Go Exploring? Check Out These Sarcophagi Deep In Peru”

via “Viral Nova“

Ever wish you were an adventurer, or an explorer, discovering environs and relics unseen by human eyes for centuries? It’s certainly a fantasy I had when I was much younger, but it’s one that I can always feel a tinge of in my adult-life. Wanting to escape the everyday and see something new, different, or unfamiliar is a feeling we all can relate to. Sometimes just surfing the web a little bit can give us a taste of what being a real explorer is like, but from the comfort of our homes. Check out the story below about some ancient statues in Peru, and do some exploring of your own.

These “statues” are actually sarcophagi, located 60 kilometers northeast of Chachapoyas, in Luya Province of Peru.

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The site is called “Karajia,” and is the site of the tombs of ancient wise men. The local people call the sarcophagi the “Purunmachos.”

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Each sarcophagus is about 2.5 meters high, with the head of each ornamented with horns, and some with skulls!

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The Purunmachos are around 600 years old and were discovered in 1984 by archaeologist Federico Kauffmann.

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There were 8 sarcophagi originally, but two were destroyed by natural causes. Luckily, because of the remote location of these six sarcophagi have stayed relatively intact.

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(via: amusingplanet.com)

These sarcophagi are ancient and awesome relics and one’s that you know it would be really cool to travel to see.

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Swiss Museum Publishes List of Nazi Loot Art Trove

“Swiss Museum Publishes List of Nazi Loot Art Trove”

via “Reuters“

File picture showing the facade of the Kunsmuseum Bern art museum in Bern

ZURICH (Reuters) – A Swiss museum published a list on Thursday of all the art found in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, a German recluse whose secret collection included masterpieces looted from their Jewish owners by the Nazis.

The Bern Art Museum was named as sole heir to the collection and on Monday reluctantly accepted the bequest, making clear that it would adopt a policy of total transparency to head off any criticism over its decision to take in the artwork.

“We have promised transparency and are now acting accordingly,” Matthias Frehner, director of the Kunstmuseum Bern, said in a statement.

Gurlitt’s collection of over 1,200 artworks had been hidden away for decades until German tax inspectors stumbled upon it during a raid on his Munich apartment in 2012. A government task force identified three pieces that were indisputably looted by the Nazis which would be returned to the heirs.

Bern Art Museum has said it will not accept any piece which experts believed might have been stolen and by publishing the full list it hopes it might still discover the rightful owners.

Switzerland has worked hard in recent years to shake-off its reputation as a haven for ill-gotten gains, and the museum is anxious to avoid the legal risks associated with accepting disputed art works.

Study Abroad Artwork Showcased in Graham Center

“Study Abroad Artwork Showcased in Graham Center”

**by Ray Boyle via “FIU“**

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This summer Eliane Pinillos braved dehydration and sickness to scale the Great Wall of China looking for the perfect scene to paint. Today, her art is on display in the Graham Center.

“This is awesome!” she said of seeing her and her peers’ work in a public space. “I mean, I don’t really consider myself much of an artist, but it’s pretty great to have it showcased.”

This week, the Graham Center Art Gallery houses more than 35 paintings and drawings from study abroad students. They will be on display until Nov. 21.

Pinillos, a speech pathology major, was among two groups of students who participated in David Chang’s summer study abroad programs, one in France, the other in China. Chang is a professor in the College of Education and director of art education.

“I feel very honored and I’m very happy and blessed that I had professor Chang because he’s so knowledgeable,” Pinillos said. “I think that he’s the person that really made this whole experience what it was because without him I would be lost.”

For Chang, the most important aspect of the trip is for his students to learn why artists like Monet and Van Gogh painted, rather than how to paint like them. He brings the students to Monet’s home and the Great Wall of China so they can feel their surroundings instead of “just taking a picture in front of the Eiffel Tower” as he puts it.

“I choose the sites based on the emphasis of the program. If I talk about the development of 19^th century art, then I would choose sites the impressionist painted,” he said. “It’s an immersive program, even though it’s a short period of time. We’re not just going as a tourist.”

Daniella Martinez met Pinillos during the study abroad to France last year. Both came away from the experience knowing they wanted to go to China this year.

China presented a completely different culture from France, from the United States and from Martinez’s native Colombia. It was modern, fast-paced and, she found, impersonal.

“Everyone just kind of wants to go where they want to go and that’s it,” Martinez said of the constant movement and quick interactions, which contrasts with the generally slower-paced lifestyle she knows in Colombia. . .

Coming Exhibition: Future Returns

“Future Returns: Contemporary Art from China”

08 Jin Yangping, “The Mirror of City No.1”, oil on canvas, 200 x 265 cm, 2011

Who:

Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum

Michigan State University

When: Oct. 28, 2014 – March 8, 2015 (Hours Vary)

Where:

Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum
547 East Circle Drive
East Lansing, Michigan 48824

More Information: Here and Here.

Over the past three decades China has experienced profound socioeconomic changes that have prompted calls to revisit, reconsider, and redefine the nation’s identity. Although there remains a strong local understanding of Chinese history and heritage, the homogenization of the country’s urban geography and the rapid dissipation of rural life have dramatically altered the cultural landscape. Future Returns: Contemporary Art from China explores the impact of these transformations by bringing together works by contemporary Chinese artists that address China’s metamorphosis from a traditional society into an ultra-modern nation-state.

The pertinent question in today’s China is whether the country’s distinct traditions and values can continue to play a role in its development. The future of China cannot be predicted, yet the psychology of “change, change, change” that pervades the everyday lives of the Chinese allows for a multitude of possibilities. Only in the pursuit of these new potentialities will China be able to build on its distinctive culture. The focused selection of paintings, photographs, installations, and digital art in this exhibition showcases the vision of both emergent and established practitioners who have contributed to China’s celebrated artistic community. Through their works, Future Returns highlights the emergence of a new China, one that is not constrained by closed readings of the past.

Artists and filmmakers featured in the exhibition include: Chen Weiqun, Dong Jun, Geng Yi, He Yunchang, Jiang Ji An, Jin Yangping, Jizi, Li Junhu, Lin Xin, Liu Lining, Meng Baishen, Miao Xiaochun, Pei Li, Qu Yan, Sui Jianguo, Su Xinping, Tian Bo, Wang Chuan, Wang Huangsheng, Wang Yang, Xia Xiaowan, Xu Bing, Zhang Yanfeng, Zhou Gang, and Zhou Qinshan.

New Broad Exhibit Showcases Range, Diversity of Art in China

“New Broad Exhibit Showcases Range, Diversity of Art in China”

by Matthew Miller via “Lansing Journal”

Broad Art Museum 4.jpg

“What’s wrong, I think, is the position of the dragon.”

Wang Chuan was gesturing at one of his own photographs, an image of a bright golden statuette of a dragon — a potent image in Chinese culture, a symbol of the nation itself — presiding over a collection of grimy soup pots.

“This is a stew,” he said, meaning the contents of those pots. “This is in a popular restaurant in a suburb of Beijing. It’s run by the farmers who don’t do farm work anymore. This is the wrong place.”

Wang’s dragon photos, part of “Future Returns,” an exhibition of Chinese contemporary art that opened last month at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, are on their face an exploration of the hapless fate of a cultural icon.

In one image, a long costume used in the traditional dragon dance sits crumpled on the back of a three wheeler. Another shows coins tossed for luck onto the image of a dragon at a temple, all of the smallest denominations.

But, in a broader sense, they are a mediation on the erasure of tradition in a fast-changing country.

“Gradually, people begin to care if the tradition is too quick to be erased by the modernization and the development of the economy and the incoming of the culture from the Western world,” Wang said. “The pace of vanishing of all the old things is shocking.”

The exhibition, which includes the work of more than two dozen artists, is the first brought to the museum by Wang Chunchen, a respected art critic and head of the Department of Curatorial Research at the CAFA Art Museum at the Central Academy of Fine Arts China in Beijing who is also an adjunct curator for the Broad.

“China is changed greatly in the past three decades,” Wang said, as he took a group of journalists, artists and translators through the exhibition last month. “So the art I selected her represents, stands for that kind of change, culturally, socially, psychologically.” . . . .