... but I stopped. Now I'm a dad, and may blog again...

Saturday, March 05, 2011

224: three Asian art books

art_booksDipping once more into the bookshelves which surround me and coming up with more arty-farty gold from around the world.  Three books of art and design from three Asian countries.  Made In China: Contemporary Chinese Design published by Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester; Beyond The Page: Contemporary Art from Pakistan by Anita Dawood (Green Cardamon), Hammad Nasar, Asia House and Manchester Art Gallery, and; Drop Dead Cute: the New Generation of Women Artists in Japan by Ivan Vartanian.


All three are great books, and if I could open a tiny library and show them all to you on a one to one basis I would.  Big Society aside (or ignored) it doesn’t seem likely so forget I mentioned it.  The poorly-lit photos and these few jumbled words will have to suffice for now.  The paintings in Drop Dead Cute are mostly good, but nothing surprising; modern work with Japanese influences in Hokusai, manga, and Takashi Murakami’s superflat.  Great stuff but pretty predictable.

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Made in China has the appeal of being tiny (I love tiny little books; might make a good theme for a blog post soon), and showing the emerging commercial, consumer side of China.  It’s an elite side of a country with billions of poor, focusing on the intellectual and the shallow, the aesthetic and the cerebral; yet ignoring the reality of overcrowding and poverty.  But as I said the book is tiny so what can you expect.  Today I seem to be keeping my comments brief and stupid, so before I disappear completely up my own hole, I’ll take a moment to mention Manchester’s Chinese Arts Centre.  Manchester’s Chinese Arts Centre; it’s good.  Ok, done.

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Last but not least is Beyond the Page: Contemporary Art from Pakistan which I found in the sale at the Manchester Art Gallery Museum, left over from an exhibition I didn’t know I had missed.  It’s a shame because whenever I catch an exhibition there it always seems to be shit.  Judging by the quality of the art in this book, I missed a treat.  I had no previous knowledge of Pakistani art, but the book displays many great paintings, miniatures, illustrations, sculptures and installations, and the accompanying essays are very interesting.

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And so ends a quick blog post with no in-depth thought or analysis; just me saying “I like this”.  At some point I’ll be returning to the subject of Pakistani art.  The book has piqued my interest in something I know next to nothing about, so maybe we could all learn together.  In the meantime: (poorly lit) pictures! (see above).  The End. 

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