160 pages, jacketed hardback, 293 x 219 mm, 105 illustrations
PRICE: £65.00
ISBN: No isbn
The extensively researched, in-depth, full-colour catalogue features a painstaking selection of 19 paintings and 47 'literati-taste' objects. The emphasis of all of them is on the extraordinary range of Chinese figural representation, with its tendency to humanize divine images and idealize secular figures, so that they meet somewhere in the middle as 'informal icons'.
The earliest work is an important ink handscroll dated 1363, by the Yüan figure painter Chang Wu. A fine and extremely amusing outline handscroll by Leng Mei, painted before 1694, portrays the 18 lohan in a wild and expressive array; quite a rarity. In a completely different vein is the large silk portrait of Yen Hsiang-shih, Commander in Chief of Kansu province in the mid-18th century. Among the objects d'art are a number of rare masterpieces, most notable among them an extremely delicate and rare rhinoceros horn carving of P'u-t'ai with five boys clambering over him.
In the winter of 1586, Hakob Jughayets'i, one of Armenia's most celebrated illuminators, completed work on a Gospel Book with an extensive and extraordinary programme of narrative miniatures and marginal figures. More
Remembering Forward presents works by nine of the most prominent Australian Aboriginal artists: Paddy Bedford, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Queenie McKenzie, Dorothy Napangardi, Rover Thomas, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula. More
Illuminator, painter, scribe, clerk, teacher, doctor of theology, restorer and binder, Mesrop was one of the greatest Armenian artists of his and following generations. He was prolific, working for at least forty-two years in Sos (New Julfa) from 1608 to 1651. This book will be the first serious study of the forty-six of his manuscripts that have survived. The focus of the book, however, is The Four Gospels, one of the few manuscripts painted entirely by Mesrop’s hand and one of the most extensively illuminated in his oeuvre. More
Twenty-five years after Captain Cook, the London Missionary Society sent its first representatives to the South Seas. Their goal was to eradicate heathenism and idolatry, but unwittingly, they became agents for the preservation of Polynesian culture through their diligent recording of language and religious practices. They even preserved a number of religious artifacts, which they sent back to England for exhibition in the Mission Museum in London. This book focuses on these artifacts, the idols that avoided the flames. More
Detailed biographies describe the lives of twelve collectors of tribal art in Britain, active between 1770 and 1990. These men were rarely field collectors and only occasional travellers, but they were vigorous hunters, for whom the pursuit, handling and possession of such objects was what mattered. More