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(b London, June 11, 1914; d Pembury, Kent, July 31, 1983).

English diplomat, collector and art historian. In 1947, as a member of the British Diplomatic Service, he was posted to Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, then the capital of the Nationalist Chinese government. He became interested in Chinese art and history and began a collection of porcelain, furniture and textiles at a time of political and economic uncertainty, when Chinese collectors were forced to sell. When he moved to the British embassy in Beijing in 1954 he continued his research into Chinese ceramic history with the help of specialists from the Palace Museum. In 1963 he became British ambassador to the Philippines and was largely responsible for organizing the Manila Trade Pottery Seminar (1968), to which he also contributed five of the nine discussion monographs. From 1972 to 1974, as British ambassador to China, he played an important part in promoting the Chinese archaeological exhibition The Genius of China, held in London at the Royal Academy in ...

Buddhist monastery of the 7th century ad to first half of the 8th, in the valley of the Vakhsh River, 12 km east of Kurgan-Tyube, southern Tajikistan. During this early medieval period it belonged to Vakhsh (U-sha in Chinese sources), one of the 27 domains of Tokharistan. Excavations between 1960 and 1975 by the Academy of Sciences, Tajikistan, and the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, exposed the entire site; most of the finds are on loan to the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. The buildings, which covered an area of 100×50 m, were constructed of mud-bricks (c. 490×250×110 mm) and rammed earth, with walls surviving to a height of 5.5 to 6.0 m. The site comprised two square complexes linked by an enfilade of three rooms (see fig. (a)). The south-eastern complex or monastery (b) had domed cells (c) for monks, a hall or refectory (d), service quarters, store-rooms and a small sanctuary (e). An open courtyard in the centre had a fired brick path across it, linking the enfilade to the sanctuary. A corridor around the perimeter of the courtyard was divided into four right-angled sections by a deep iwan, or vestibule, in the middle of each side. One of these vestibules led into the sanctuary, the second into the meeting-hall, the third into the enfilade and the fourth to the monastery exit (j) and also on to a vaulted ramp (k) that originally gave access to the roof and the now lost second storey....

Japanese region in Buzen Province (now part of Fukuoka Prefect.), northern Kyushu, where stonewares were manufactured at various sites from c. 1600 (see also Japan, §IX, 3, (i), (d)).

The first potter to make Agano ware was the Korean master Chon’gye (Jap. Sonkai; 1576–1654). Deported to Kyushu during one of the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597, he entered the service of Hosokawa Tadaoki (1563–1645), the newly appointed governor of Buzen. On the completion of Tadaoki’s fortress at Kokura (now Kitakyushu), Chon’gye built the Saienba kiln, probably within the castle precincts. A site thought to be Saienba was found beneath Myōkōji, the temple that replaced the castle in 1679, and excavations took place between 1979 and 1983. Sherds of both tea ceremony and everyday wares have been found there; they have transparent glazes made with a wood-ash flux, opaque glazes made with a straw-ash flux or brown-black glazes pigmented with iron oxide. Inscriptions on surviving pieces and entries in contemporary diaries indicate that these early products were also called Buzen or Kokura ware. After a few years the Saienba kiln closed, and ...

(b Niigata, Oct 4, 1965).

Japanese painter, installation, performance, and conceptual artist. A controversial, eclectic, and inspirational artist in Japan, Makoto Aida was widely feted on the Tokyo contemporary art scene in the 1990s and 2000s, yet had limited success internationally. Aida can be read as a shadow of the internationally more famous Takashi Murakami: both came out of the Tokyo National Art school in the early 1990s, both developed an art blending contemporary pop and street culture—particularly its often weird sexuality—with classical national art references and techniques, and both shared a similarly ambiguous critique of US (and Western) cultural domination. Whereas the underlying edge of Murakami (see also Superflat) was carefully airbrushed for commercial Western tastes, Aida was an unrepentantly anti-global artist, sometimes perversely uncommercial in his approach. His work incorporated themes that are opaquely Japanese, blending acute, often raucous, humor, analysis of the contemporary political psychosis of the Japanese nation, and an unflinching exposure of Japan’s social underbelly through deliberately vulgar references. This encompassed an often sordid sweep in his paintings, videos, and installations through some of the most unpalatable aspects of everyday, middle-aged, urban male culture and its entertainment zones, notably its fetishism of young girls. The work frequently featured himself as a nerdish and self-deprecating comic artist, mouthing a harsh but bitterly funny satire of Japanese political figures and social particulars that carefully kept ambiguous its critical perspective....

(b Tokyo, June 5, 1937).

Japanese architect, teacher and writer. He graduated from Waseda University, Tokyo, in 1960 and obtained his MArch in 1966 and DEng in 1971. He began teaching architecture at Shibaura Institute of Technology in 1962, becoming a lecturer in engineering there in 1966 and subsequently assistant professor (1973) and professor (1976). In 1967 he opened his own office in Tokyo. A founding member of the counter-Metabolist group Architext (1971), Aida was one of the New Wave of avant-garde Japanese architects, expressing his theories in both buildings and writings. His journal articles clearly state his desire to question—if not overthrow—orthodox Modernist ideas of rationality, order and suitability of form to function. He likened architectural design to an intellectual game, and he was one of the first to equate deconstruction with the art of construction, for example in his Artist’s House (1967), Kunitachi, Tokyo, in which all the elements have arbitrary relationships with each other. In other buildings he focused on the creation of architectural experiences that reflect immediate events. In the Nirvana House (...

[Emishi; Ezo; Mishihase]

Peoples who once lived in northern Japan and are now restricted to the islands of Hokkaido (Japan), southern Sakhalin and the Kuril chain. The Ainu live in an area that has been influenced by Chinese, Siberian and especially Japanese culture. Until the 17th century, when the Ainu began to practise small-scale agriculture in south-western Hokkaido, they subsisted by fishing and hunter–gathering. Although the gradual Japanese colonization of Hokkaido had almost eradicated Ainu culture by the early 20th century, the post-war period has witnessed a revival of Ainu culture and language.

Ainu art is characterized by the preponderance of geometric designs. Some have parallels in Japan proper, while others show similarities with motifs found in the art of the Gilyaks, their northern neighbours on Sakhalin, of the Ostyaks and Samoyeds of northern Siberia and even of the peoples of the north-west coast of North America. Human and animal motifs are extremely rare and restricted to the decoration of libation ...

Buddhist monastery in a small valley on the left bank of the River Indus, c. 64 km west of Leh in Ladakh, India. Tradition attributes the monastery’s origin to the Tibetan scholar and temple-builder Rinchen Sangpo (ad 958–1055), the ‘great translator’, and although its buildings mostly date from the 11th century, the site is replete with his memory, from the ancient tree he planted to his portraits and images in the temples. A treasure-house of art, Alchi has been preserved because of its isolation from trade routes and the decline of its community, the monks of the Dromtön sect of the Kadampa order.

Ringed by a wall and votive chortens (stupas), the religious enclave (Tib. chökhor) comprises three entrance chortens, a number of shrines and temples, the Dukhang (assembly hall) with its courtyard and monastic dwellings (see Tibet §II, and Indian subcontinent: Architecture from the 11th–16th centuries...

(b Maidstone, Kent, April 10, 1767; d Maidstone, July 23, 1816).

English painter, engraver, draughtsman and museum official. The son of a coachbuilder, he was apprenticed to Julius Caesar Ibbetson before enrolling in 1784 at the Royal Academy Schools, London. In 1792 he accepted the post (previously declined by Ibbetson) of draughtsman to George, 1st Earl Macartney, on his embassy to China. As the embassy returned by inland waterway from Beijing to Canton, Alexander made detailed sketches of the Chinese hinterland—something achieved by no British artist previously and by very few subsequently. These sketches formed the basis for finished watercolours (e.g. Ping-tze Muen, the Western Gate of Peking, 1799; London, BM) and for numerous engravings by both himself and others. For over fifty years his images of China were widely borrowed by book illustrators and by interior decorators in search of exotic themes.

Alexander was also a keen student of British medieval antiquities, undertaking several tours in order to make drawings of churches and monuments; many of these were reproduced in the antiquarian publications of ...

Alternative spaces have stimulated and disrupted bureaucratic and static environments that stem from situations unique to Asian countries. As opposed to the definition provided in the Euro-American model in which alternative spaces are positioned against the mainstream, alternative spaces in this discussion are a group of contemporary art spaces which can be loosely identified as artist-run and independent curator-run spaces that do not have direct support from the state and government bodies in general. These spaces provide exhibition venues for national and international artists, develop educational programmes, raise the profile of curatorial methods and publish art magazines. In addition, the staff of alternative spaces can provide foreign curators with the latest local information, whereas in the past, certain curators were able to monopolize negotiations between arts professionals and local artists. Some of these alternative spaces have since attained privileged positions that have also exposed them to criticism.

Since 2000 these alternative spaces, many of which are artist-run, have founded non-profit organizations and transformed their activities and organizational structures. Because these spaces are financially dependent on grants from foreign cultural institutions or their national governments, they have difficulty securing long-term funds and management. While the flexibility and agility of these organizations risks their survival, the priority is in creating a space for young artists and curators to pursue experimental activities, rather than maintaining the status quo or becoming part of the establishment. The activities particular to alternative spaces are not necessarily a counter movement against mainstream arts activities; they may be more accurately described as a means of survival for new art....

[ho KunhaeKounChojaHaengchon]

(b 1297; d 1364).

Korean calligrapher. He is considered one of the last great calligraphers of the Goryeo period (918–1392). Born into a noble family, at the age of 17 he passed his first examinations and entered the Confucian academy in Gaeseong, where he eventually rose to prominence in the central administration. Information on his life, and in particular on his career as an official, can be found in the Goryeosa, the history of the Goryeo dynasty.

Yi was directly influenced by the calligraphic works of Zhao Mengfu, who at that time was considered among the greatest painters and calligraphers of Yuan-period (1279–1368) China, with which Korea had close political and cultural contacts. However, only one of Yi’s calligraphic works survives, and that only as a rubbing (Seoul, priv. col.) from a stele inscription. This is the celebrated Munsu sa janggyonng bi (“Inscription for the sūtra repository of Munsu Temple”; see Kim, Choi, and Im ...

[cha Chŏngjungho Tusŏngyŏng]

(b 1499).

Korean painter. A descendant of the royal Yi family—founders of the Chosŏn dynasty—in the line of King Sejong and mentioned in the Injong shillok (“Veritable records of King Injong”), he was considered one of the most important Academy painters of his day. He was renowned for his rendering of dogs and cats and of flowers and birds, placed usually in highly formalized garden settings. His paintings exude an innocent and peaceful atmosphere. In his work he combined the “outline” style with the “boneless.” His paintings bear some resemblance to the type of animal paintings produced at Huizong’s Northern Song Academy in the 12th century in China, although his subjects are more dynamic, if less realistic.

Only four works from his hand are thought to have survived. His most celebrated painting is Bitch with Puppies. Another of his paintings, Puppies under a Flowering Tree (P’yŏngyang, Kor. A.G.), shows three puppies, two resting, one sitting up, beside a tree on which two magpies have alighted. ...

Japanese school of ink painting (suibokuga; see Japan: Painting from the 14th century to 1868, §3) active during the Muromachi period (1333–1568). The school is represented by the San’ami (‘three Ami’), Shinnō Nōami, his son Shingei Geiami and grandson Shinsō Sōami. The Ami held the post of karamono bugyō (‘administrator of Chinese things’) to the Ashikaga family shoguns, i.e. curator of their collection of Chinese artworks, and were dōbōshū (‘comrades’; advisers on artistic matters).

Shinnō Nōami

Shingei Geiami

Shinsō Sōami

[Chin. Xin’an pai]

Term used to refer to a group of painters, mostly landscapists, active in Anhui Province chiefly in the second half of the 17th century, early in the Qing period (1644–1911). The Chinese name refers to the region of Xin’an in south-eastern Anhui, where the artists were mostly concentrated. Anhui was prominent in the production of craft and trade goods, including paper, lacquer, brushes and ink-cakes, before it became a centre for painters. From the early 17th century the finest woodblock cutting and printing were done here, rivalled only by nearby Nanjing. Some Anhui artists of the late Ming (1368–1644), notably Ding Yunpeng, contributed designs for pictorial prints, and the spare, precise linear patterns of Anhui printing must have been a factor behind the popularity of related painting styles among local artists (see also China: Prints).

Another important factor in the formation of the school and the stylistic direction it took was the patronage of the wealthy Huizhou merchants, who by the late Ming period controlled most of the commerce in the lower Yangzi River area. Their passion for collecting antiquities, especially works of calligraphy and painting by prestigious masters of the past, is attested in writings of their time; the prices paid for certain kinds of paintings by respected literati masters of the Yuan (...

Term used to describe an art dominated by animal themes, associated with a series of 1st-millennium bce cultures of the Eurasian steppes, extending from Central Europe to the Ordos region of northwest China.

The Animal style is characteristic of a series of cultures, including the Thracians (north Balkans), Savromats (lower reaches of the Don and Volga rivers), a people of the south Ural Mountains who are perhaps identifiable as the Issedones (Herodotus: Histories IV.26), the cultures of Tasmola (central Kazakhstan), Pazyryk (Altai Mountains), and Tagar (south Siberia), and other barrow (kurgan) burials in the Semirechiye (Seven Rivers) region of Kyrgyzstan and east Kazakhstan, the Pamirs, and the Tian Shan Mountains. In Central Asia and the north Black Sea region, the Animal style is usually associated with nomadic tribes known in ancient Persian and Classical sources as the Sakas or Scythians (see Scythian and Sarmatian art), a term which loosely appears to refer to an eastern Iranian linguistic group....

Two related art media, usually commercially distributed, featuring narratives presented in serial text-and-image format, in a Japanese context regarding language, aesthetic, storyline, and/or production. Manga, the print form, is published in weekly and monthly anthology books, with popular individual series sometimes published separately as their success waxes. Anime, the moving form, is found in television, film, and home video formats as well as online and is more globally known; one feature-length example, Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi; Studio Ghibli 2001, dir. Hayao Miyazaki), earned billions of dollars and major critical awards worldwide (e.g. Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear for Best Film in 2002, British Academy Awards Best Animated Feature in 2003, and Academy Film Awards Best Film Not in the English Language in 2004).

With an enormous variety of visual and narrative styles, neither anime nor manga can be identified by a consistent theme or aesthetic, although certain genres and iconography predominate. Generally, a story is initially hand- or computer-drawn, then photographed for printing in book, film, or digital form. Most are serialized narratives having continued for decades, often across platforms; however, some ...

[An-yang]

Chinese city in Henan Province, near the site of the last capital of the Shang dynasty or Yin dynasty, occupied c. 1300– c. 1050 bce. The site is sometimes called Yinxu, “Waste of Yin,” an ancient name for the abandoned city.

At least as early as the Northern Song period (960–1127) Anyang was known to antiquarians as a source of ancient bronze ritual vessels. At the beginning of the 20th century archaeologists were led there by the realization that animal bones and turtle shells found by local farmers were carved with inscriptions in a form of Chinese script more archaic than any previously known (for a discussion of the oracle-bone texts see China: Calligraphy). The bones had been used in divination rituals; their inscriptions, which showed the divinations to have been performed on behalf of the last nine Shang kings, secured the identification of the Anyang site. According to historical texts of the last few centuries ...

(b Kurume, Kyushu, 1882; d Fukuoka, Kyushu, 1911) Japanese painter. Although his family disapproved of his early interest in Western-style art (Yōga; see Japan, §VI, 5, (iv)), he left home at 17 to pursue his studies in Tokyo, first with Koyama Shōtarō (1857–1916), a pupil of Antonio Fontanesi, an Italian painter who taught at the Kōbu Bijutsu Gakkō (Technical Art School) from 1877 to 1879, and then with Seiki Kuroda at the Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō (Tokyo Art School; now Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music). Aoki finished his studies in 1904. A brilliant, rather eccentric young man, he showed precocious talent and while still a student exhibited his work with Kuroda’s prestigious association of Western-style painters, the Hakubakai (White Horse Society), established in 1896.

Aoki showed a strong literary bent, and his interest in Japanese, Christian and Indian mythology led him to develop a romantic style, often recalling the British Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. A number of his most important paintings dealing with mythological and related subjects, among them the ...

(b Mexico City, Mar 29, 1915; d Mexico City, May 25, 1959).

Mexican architect and theorist. He received a degree in architecture at the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura (ENA) at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM) in 1940, and studied urbanism at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in 1941–1942. In 1954 he received a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters at UNAM. Arai built relatively few buildings, but he was one of Mexico’s foremost theorists of architectural modernism. Early in his career he embraced the principles associated with the formally austere, politically engaged architecture that dominated Mexico City in the 1930s; later he became fascinated by the architecture of indigenous Mexico and its lessons for modern architects. Arai’s intellectualism distinguished him from many of his colleagues and his study of history and philosophy shaped his sophisticated writings on architecture, urbanism, and indigenous art.

Arai had a distinguished teaching career with appointments in multiple fields and at several institutions. He was professor of architectural theory at ENA from ...

(b New York, Aug 16, 1949).

American printmaker and installation artist. Born and raised in New York City, Arai, a third-generation Japanese American printmaker, mixed-media artist, public artist and cultural activist, studied art at the Philadelphia College of Art and The Printmaking Workshop in New York. Since the 1970s, her diverse projects have ranged from individual works to large-scale public commissions (see Public art in the 21st century). She has designed permanent public works, including an interior mural commemorating the African burial ground in lower Manhattan and an outdoor mural for Philadelphia’s Chinatown. Other works include Wall of Respect for Women (1974), a mural on New York’s Lower East Side, which was a collaboration between Arai and women from the local community. Her art has been exhibited in such venues as the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, International Center for Photography, P.S.1 Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, all New York and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Joan Mitchell Foundation....