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Chinese art

Curator's Corner

Realism of Ceramics Artist Ah Leon

Monday, August 31, 2020 | Karl Cole

I was blown away the first time I saw this artist’s work, and I’m certain you will have the same reaction. We all know about the great ceramic tradition of Eastern cultures such as China, ...

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Curator's Corner

Rethinking Classicism: Song Dynasty

Wednesday, August 12, 2020 | Karl Cole

My Rethinking Classicism series continues with landscapes of the Southern Song style. The early Song period (900s CE) witnessed the rise of a great school of landscape painting that endured as the mea ...

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Curator's Corner

Gem of the Month: The Maebyong Form

Monday, December 9, 2019 | Karl Cole

Nothing excites me more than beautiful ceramics. I’ve always had a fascination with all kinds of ceramic art. I always thought I would like to make ceramic art if I did not paint—probably ...

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Curator's Corner

The Iconoclast (?): Zhan Wang

Monday, September 18, 2017 | Karl Cole

It would probably take me forever to be able to say that I had “seen it all” in the world of art. You know the old expression, “just when you thought you’d seen it all,” ...

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Curator's Corner

Smoke

Monday, December 5, 2016 | Karl Cole

I happen to burn a lot of incense, because I think it’s nicer than any of those spray products that immediately fall to the floor and dissipate. And who wants a plug-in air freshener that runs u ...

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Curator's Corner

Music

Monday, January 18, 2016 | Karl Cole

An artist picking up his artwork from the latest exhibit in the Davis Art Gallery, In Vision: 2D and 3D Landscape, proposed an idea for an exhibition of art related to jazz music. I’m sure the a ...

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Curator's Corner

Stories of Ruler Portraits

Monday, October 19, 2015 | Karl Cole

Since (ugh) election time coming around once again, let’s look at some interesting portraits of people who were never elected (except for the last one). There are always interesting tidbits abou ...

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Curator's Corner

Survey No. 10: Ubiquitous Real

Monday, January 19, 2015 | Karl Cole

So far we have taken a look at Classicism and Romanticism around the world in the 1800s. Now let’s look at “realism,” which—like every other style—has been a trend somewh ...

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Curator's Corner

Survey No. 1: Ancient

Monday, November 10, 2014 | Karl Cole

When I was in grad school, I was a teaching assistant in an art history survey course that had the neatest syllabus at which I ever squinted at eight in the morning. It did not go chronologically thro ...

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Curator's Corner

Lacquer: Japanese Negoro Ware

Monday, June 17, 2013 | Karl Cole

The art of lacquer has long fascinated me. When I was in an Asian Art seminar in college (decades ago), I learned that ancient Chinese bodies coated in lacquer still had supple skin. Now that’s ...

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Curator's Corner

A Horse is a Horse, Of Course

Monday, June 25, 2012 | Karl Cole

I’m always interested in artistic motifs that seem particularly important to certain cultures. What motif recurs in our world now? We’re so bombarded with imagery in contemporary society t ...

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Curator's Corner

Art in Everyday Continued

Monday, April 16, 2012 | Karl Cole

My abhorrence of the term “craft” has led me to make April “non-craft month.” I aim to show how there is art in everyday life. I started out two weeks ago with the beautiful wo ...

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Curator's Corner

The Idea of Tomb Figures: Six Dynasties Period

Tuesday, September 6, 2011 | Karl Cole

I recently attended the wake of a friend’s mom and couldn’t help but contemplate how contemporary funerary rituals differ from those in world history (especially an open coffin). If you pu ...

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