The Painter of the World

Gregg Chadwick

The Painter of the World ( Seol-min) 

12"x9"oil on panel 2021

At the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco a few years ago, I watched the Korean Buddhist Nun artist Seol-min paint a gorgeous artwork of the Water Moon Avalokiteshvara, also known as Guanyin. Her canvas was laid flat on the floor and she painted on top of it as if she was bodysurfing a gentle wave with brushes in hand. The large hall where Seol-min painted was quiet. The gentle sound of her brushes created a kind of music that echoed off the marble walls. My oil on panel painting "The Painter of the World" is my latest artwork inspired by this experience with the artist Seol-min.

The Asian Art Museum has created a video of Seol-min at the museum. I am in the background, off camera, watching the events.
Video Below. Link at: https://education.asianart.org/resources/korean-buddhist-art/

Featured at Saatchi Art's The Other Art Fair Los Angeles at Barker Hangar from September 23-26, 2021.

Thanks again to everyone who enjoyed my paintings at @theotherartfair Many of the paintings are available for purchase on my @saatchiart page. Link at: https://www.saatchiart.com/greggchadwick

#theotherartfair #theotherartfairla #art #artshow #la #losangeles #laartshow #laart #collectart #artcollector #artfair #santamonica #buddhism #buddha #saffron #light #SanFrancisco #AsianArtMuseum #CityOfLove #Korea #KoreanArt

 

Memory Making: The First Emperor's Legacy at the Asian Art Museum

by Gregg Chadwick

China's Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor's Legacy

at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco 

photo by Gregg Chadwick

 "I, Sovereign, am the First Emperor; my descendants will call themselves the Second Generation, the Third Generation, and will go on forever after." 
- The First Emperor, Qin Shihuang (259-210 BCE) 
   quoted by the historian Sima Qian (145-90 BCE)


China's Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor's Legacy currently on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco until May 27, 2013 provides tantalizing glimpses of an ancient culture and its rulers' attempts to influence cultural and political memory. Over two thousand years ago, Qin Shihuang - the first emperor of China, began constructing a massive mausoleum to ensure, what Li He, the Asian Museum's associate curator of Chinese art, describes as the personal and political "continuation of the family's ruling position and the long-lasting reign of the dynasty" as well as individual hopes for an afterlife. 

The First Emperor began to plan his eternal place of rest from the moment he ascended the throne. The mausoleum took almost 38 years of hard labor and exquisite craftsmanship to construct. Ongoing archaeological excavations continue to reveal new secrets and hidden cultural treasures created to ensure Qin Shihuang's memory and lineage. Eight human-sized terracotta warriors made the journey to San Francisco. Each figure seems imbued with the ability to speak. Buried in a vast tomb with more than 7,000 comrades, some with horses and chariots, surrounded perhaps by flowing liquid mercury rivers graced by bronze waterbirds and bells, these sculpted warriors were meant to ensure Qin Shihuang's trip through the cosmos and eventual crossing to another realm. According to historian Sima Qian (145-90 BCE) the emperor feared that the creators "might disclose all the treasure that was in the tomb...(that) after the burial and sealing up of  the treasures, the middle gate was shut and the outer gate closed to imprison all the artisans and laborers, so that no one came out." The mausoleum was forgotten over the centuries. The tomb was not revealed until the 20th century, when Chinese farmers found fragments of terracotta sculptures as they attempted to assuage the effects of a drought with a new well. 

Armored General

221-206 BCE China

Terracotta

Qin Shihuang Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, Shaanxi, China

 Installation at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco 

photo by Gregg Chadwick

Rulers and politicians of all stripes are often in the business of memory-making. The recent unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Library comes to mind. Since President Calvin Coolidge, all American presidents have a stand-alone presidential library that holds their papers and memorabilia. But the G.W. Bush library is unique in that it is a museum that Rachel Maddow convincingly describes as a ridiculous attempt to make the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq seem like a good idea. Watch the Rachel Maddow video linked here and see if you agree that, as she puts it,"The case to invade Iraq was cooked up, a hoax put upon the nation." With this ridiculous attempt at memory-making by the Bush team in mind, I looked at Qin Shihuang's memory-mausoleum differently than I might have otherwise. What message was the First Emperor attempting to send on to future generations with his vast buried army of exquisitely crafted clay warriors?

Emperor Qin Shihuang used force to break up and subsume noble lands as well as compelling the noble families themselves to move to, his new capital, Xianyang. The emperor freed peasants from their feudal bonds, but then forced them into servitude for the state. Arthur Cotterell in his informative work, The Imperial Capitals of China, describes that the emperor's extensive construction and engineering program imposed a tremendous burden and that "this continued use of conscript labor strained the allegiance of the peasantry, especially when it was maintained by the naked force of cruel punishments." Due to this shift in labor allocations, agriculture suffered and famine ensued. Subsequently in 209 (BCE), starving, impoverished peasants staged the first large-scale rebellion in Chinese history. 

Was this sculpted army intended as a symbol to the living as well as the dead? With the rebellions that signaled the coming end of Qin Shihuang's short lived dynasty, it is unlikely that the emperor's memory-making had an initial effect on the Chinese populace. Gish Jen in her marvelous new book, Tiger Writing, quotes Chinese author Lin Yutang from his 1935 work My Country and My People, "that the Chinese are given to a farcical view of life, and that 'Chinese humor... consist[s] in compliance with outward form ... and the total disregard of the substance in actuality.'" 

 China's Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor's Legacy is an exhibition that provokes cultural and historical critique as well as artistic engagement. Political art is rarely this exquisite. Don't miss it!

China's Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor's Legacy includes objects from the Museum of Terracotta Warriors and Horses, the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, and the Shaanxi History Museum.

On Site View of Unrestored Warriors
at the Qin Shihuang Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, Shaanxi, China
Courtesy: Qin Shihuang Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, Shaanxi, China

More at:

The Imperial Capitals of China by Arthur Cotterell
Terracotta Warriors at the Asian Art Museum  SF Chronicle

Watching the Beijing Olympics, Thinking of Tibet

As the Beijing Olympics nears its finale, I can't help but think about the conflict between the Olympic ideal and the Chinese state sponsored attempts to make China appear good and powerful at all costs. It seems that at least one of the star Chinese gymnasts has not yet reached the needed Olympic competition age of sixteen and has submitted a state-forged passport with an inaccurate date of birth to the International Olympic Committee. And most of all, the question of Tibet hangs over Beijing like the smog that chokes the athletes lungs. It appears that the Chinese government has blocked the Apple i-tunes site for the past week to keep the Chinese people from hearing and purchasing the benefit album Songs for Tibet. It seems that many of the athletes from around the world had downloaded the album in the Olympic village and were listening to what has become a top rated i-tunes download around the world. The album is a benefit for the Art of Peace Foundation.


Gregg Chadwick
Through Tibetan Eyes
72"x96" oil on linen 2008

Before the current Olympics began there were signs of hope that the question of Tibet would be approached peacefully and intelligently by the senior Chinese leadership. Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in his New York Times opinion piece,
An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama:

"The senior Chinese leadership should respond by expressing serious interest in talks at the presidential or prime ministerial level. In ancient days, the Olympics were a time to suspend conflict. In that spirit, the two sides should get to work to prepare for a visit by the Dalai Lama in November, followed by top-level negotiations aimed at a historic resolution of the Tibet question. The ball is in the Chinese court."


Tibet The Story Of A Tragedy




More at:
Art of Peace Foundation.
An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama
Team Darfur

Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World

Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690-1850 opened Friday at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and runs through April 2008. The exhibition of Japanese paintings from the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has traveled from Kobe, Japan to Nagoya to Tokyo to the Kimbell Museum then back to their usual home in Boston and on to Ontario and now San Francisco. The exhibition is stunning. Hokusai's ukiyo-e woodcuts may be quite familiar but the chance to see his paintings on silk was revelatory. Two paintings in particular stood out:

Hokusai's Woman Looking at Herself in a Mirror (Kyômen bijin zu) is a work of extreme elegance and beauty. A woman stands before a mirror, a cherry seductively lolls in her mouth, and in her right hand she holds a letter. A poem inscribed on the scroll by the poet Shima Tokki reads:

Does that letter from
the man she waits for promise
a summer's night out?


Katsushika Hokusai, Japanese, 1760–1849
Woman Looking at Herself in a Mirror
Kyômen bijin zu
鏡面美人図
91 1/8" x 31 9/16" (Image: 54 5/8" x 22 5/8") ink, color, gold, and mica on silk c.1805
detail - full image below



There is an immediacy and humor in Hokusai's work that seems to beckon us into his view of a vanished world.



Hokusai's festival banner, Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller (Shû Shôki zu nobori), was painted in liquid inks and possibly cinnabar which was thought to provide protection from disease. Zhong Kui's garments seem to rustle in winds brought forth by impending struggles. The Demon Queller is resolute, moving briskly forward, grasping his sword, ready to battle demons, disease or misfortunes that might spring forth on the road ahead.


Katsushika Hokusai 1760–1849
Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller
Shû Shôki zu nobori
朱鍾馗図幟
92 15/16" x 37" painted banner; color with ink on cotton c. 1805
Images of Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller, were hung in Japan on Boy's Day held on May 5th. In China woodcuts of the Demon Queller were also hung on May 5th during the Dragon Boat Festival.



Another important aspect of the exhibition Drama and Desire is the inclusion of erotic paintings known as shunga which are rarely exhibited. Until recently the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston stored and catalogued these paintings away from the main collection. Eishi's handscroll contains twelve erotic scenes under the title - The Elephant's Leash. The title refers to a Buddhist sutra that describes how a woman's hair could capture even a wild elephant.
Eishi's vivid images imagine how this force could entwine an amorous couple.


Chôbunsai Eishi, 1756–1829
The Elephant’s Lure
13 3/8" x 222 15/16" handscroll: ink, color, gold, and mica on silk 1804–1818
detail