My Favoritate Bronze Artifacts at Shaanxi History Museum, Xi'an, China

Shaanxi History Museum in Xi'an, China had many ancient artifacts due to the fact that it lies in the cradle of Chinese Yellow River civilization.

My favorites there were not very flashy. I liked a shallow basin very much, for the unusual shape, the beautiful interplay of the green bronze and the red rust, and above all, the fine inscription in the middle of the basin - eight characters in the ancient style and hardly legible for a person like me without special training.



My second favorite was one bronze flask (right), for its peculiar shape, the intricate bands of decorations on the belly, the ornate handle, and the top in the shape of a bird's head. 




My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 136: My Favorite Calligraphy and Monument at Great Mosque of Xi'an, China
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 134: My Favorite Sculptures at Terracotta Army Site, Xi'an

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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Featured Painting “Mirage” – A World of Ambiguity

My Mirage, a fantastic painting, was based on a vision visited me when I was falling asleep but with enough mental presence to get up to make quick notes – a distant town, whose outlines barely discernible, in the manner of those commonly seen in old Dutch or Flemish landscape paintings, overwhelmed by several enormous and boldly sketched black feathers floating above the sky. Behind those dark and somewhat ominous feathers, a delicately pretty pale blue sky flashed through persistently. Yet, despite the seemingly menace, those dark feathers also looked rather protective and comforting. A world of ambiguity.


Mirage
Oil on Canvas
22" x 28"
Completed in 2016

© Matthew Felix Sun
www.matthewfelixsun.com


Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com

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My Favorite Sculptures at Terracotta Army Site, Xi'an

The famed Terracotta Army of the First Emperor of Qin Dynasty in China impressed not only with the sheer numbers of those soldiers, generals and horses, but upon close inspection, the endless variations of those individuals, each one of them seemed to have a distinct look and personalities, a far cry from cookie cutter mass production one might have suspected.





The most impressive was a Standing Archer - whose stylized yet naturalistic posture and his impassive face emitted an aura of zen, strange for a soldier. Also noteworthy was the plain but delicate face of this calm soldier.



I also love the horses "enlisted" in the army.  They were absolutely sleek and beautiful.  These beasts couldn't be nobler.





My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 135: My Favoritate Bronze Artifacts at Shaanxi History Museum, Xi'an, China
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 133: My Favorite Earthenware Artifacts in Banpo Archaeological Site Museum, Xi'an, China

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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My Favorite Earthenware Artifacts in Banpo Archaeological Site Museum, Xi'an, China

Banpo Archaeological Site Museum, Xi'an, China featured one of the earliest civilizations originated in China, in the Yellow River Valley, and it showcased many ancient artifacts remarkable not only for historical values, but the refined beauty belying their primitive and humble origins.

One such wonder was "A basin with abstracted fish design", whose rich earthy red tone was a thing of great beauty, and the black line drawing geometrical design of fish in multiple variations and arrangements was amazingly accomplished and startlingly modern.

A basin with abstracted fish design

Contrasting to the serious tone of the abstract fish pattern above, "A basin bearing the pattern of human face and fish" had a humorous conflation image of a human face and a pair of triangular fish, sticking out like exaggerated beards. A clown? A dragoon? Fascinating.

A basin bearing the pattern of human face and fish


My Favorite Museum Collection Series

>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 134: My Favorite Sculptures at Terracotta Army Site, Xi'an
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 132: My Favorite Sculptural Artifacts in Sanxingdui, Guanghan, Deyang, Sichuan, China

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My Favorite Sculptural Artifacts in Sanxingdui, Guanghan, Deyang, Sichuan, China

The breathtaking artifacts in the archaeology site Sanxingdui (Three-Star Mound) in Sichuan Province, China, astonished people with their exotic to the point of bizarre beauty.

For example, this pair of gold-masked busts though had all the prerequisite facial features, but the shape and proportions of those were so strange, that these busts were hardly human, at least not earthly human.  However bizarre they looked, they were absolutely to behold. The green patina of the bronze harmonized magically with the pale gold, which shone without being unnecessarily brilliant.





Another strange statue was a giant with the similar otherworldly facial feature.  The torso and arms were highly abstracted, resembled that of an advertising AirDancer in front of a shop, though it was obvious that this giant was an inflexible one.  His embracing arms and his screw nut hands, must have held a something long and thick, perhaps a holy staff or a scepter. 







The origin and the meaning of these mindbogglingly strange artifacts are a great riddle still to be solved.


My Favorite Museum Collection Series

>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 133: My Favorite Earthenware Artifacts in Banpo Archaeological Site Museum, Xi'an, China
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 131: My Favorite Sculptures at Dazu Rock Carvings Grottoes, Chongqing, China

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My Favorite Sculptures at Dazu Rock Carvings Grottoes, Chongqing, China

Dazu Rock Carvings Grottoes near Chongqing, China have wonderful Buddhist and Taoist sculptures and carvings dating back as far as the 7th century AD.

There were many fantastic sculptures and my favorite one was a Buddha with a fanciful flying wings atop his crown, which instantly softened and humanized the rather austere and upright Buddha.



My second favorite sculpture was a "Circle of Life", which featured many animals and phases of life, a wonderful illustration of the concept of reincarnation.




My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 132: My Favorite Sculptural Artifacts in Sanxingdui, Guanghan, Deyang, Sichuan, China

<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 130: My Favorite Sculptural Artifacts in Jinsha (Archaeological) Site Museum, Chengdu, China

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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My Favorite Sculptural Artifacts in Jinsha (Archaeological) Site Museum, Chengdu, China

The ancient culture in nowadays Sichuan Province, China was vastly different from those originated in the Yellow River region, the mainstream Chinese culture as we know it. Jinsha (Archaeology) Site Museum in Chengdu, China, featured many mysterious artifacts resembled those we would see in Sci-Fi movies.



The most treasurable item was a gold foil wheel of Sun Birds - four cutout mythical birds flying around a cutout swirling wheel, spilling flares just like the sun.  Perhaps, it was the red background generated the semblance to the fiery sun; but the effectiveness was uncanny.  The design of the birds and the flaring wheel were so modern that it was hard to believe that it was 5-6 thousand year old. One would incline to doubt if this had anything to do with extraterrestrials.  This gold wheel was so beautiful and touching that it could bring tears to many.









Another intriguing artifact was a quite small gold mask, whose otherworldliness recalled that of the so-called Mask of Agamemnon. The face looked strange and a smile was as indecipherable as that of Mona Lisa.




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>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 131: My Favorite Sculptures at Dazu Rock Carvings Grottoes, Chongqing, China
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 129: My Favorite Sculptures in Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

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Swedish Artist Cecilia Edefalk at Berkeley Art Museum

For the past thirty plus years, Berkeley Art Museum has curated more than 220 MATRIX exhibitions to actively engage with living artists since the program's inception in 1978. In the Museum's new location, Matrix 261 (June 20 - October 16, 2016) showcases an amazing Swedish artist Cecilia Edefalk, whose personal and moving employment, reinterpretation, and reinventing of daily objects of growth and decay, manifested in her sculptures, paintings, drawings and photographs, were touchingly melancholic, achingly beautiful, and strangely comforting.

The most eye-catching objects were a 2008 group titled "Minne", birch branches in various shapes and shades, made of silver nitrate on bronze, whose sheen and rust emitted an otherworldly beauty.













A group of classical mask replicas, based on Roman marble mask of Marcus Aurelius, infused with twigs and leaves in various shapes and formations, formed the second large group of the exhibition.  Those unusual "crowns" made these masks stranger looking, and we suddenly sensed something hidden beneath those perfect and immobile faces.













The balance of the exhibition included a single birch branch in a corner of the large hall - "Weeping Birch Stem", which invoked a palpable sense of loneliness.





She also gave us something whimsical such as a "Birch Shoe" and a three-dimensional frame made of birch "branches" below, though the "Birch Show" was also echoed in a poignant painting, titled "Weeping Birch Mother". Even laughter mixed with tears.


Birch Shoe, Bronze, gold leaf, 2010, & Weeping Birch Mother, Oil on linen, 2010



Some pieces on canvas generated perhaps less buzz, but they were just as valuable and more instructive as they demonstrated the breadth of her works and her methods behind those fascinating sculptures, with the insights "behind the scene" offered in this 2010 piece of tempera and charcoal of birch wood on linen, "Weeping Birch Shadow".



A 2002 series of 12 oil and acrylic on linen paintings, "To view the painting from within", illustrated how she approached those fantastic masks.







A series of a 2016 tempera on linen painting, " The Meadow," were also quite interesting.



Cecilia Edefalk didn't strive for faddish, self-conscious avant-garde status or shock value so often plagued contemporary art; she dived deep into her private world full of feelings and background stories, which she generously shared with us, and we responded in kind.


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My Favorite Sculptures in Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Art College Of Sichuan University in Chengdu had several quite avant-garde sculptures in its wooded campus.
 
My favorite one was a whimsical head of an insolent youth, who was blowing a bubble gum, whose bubble resembled the egg shape of the head itself.  The youth had an earphone plugged into his right ear, while on the left side, his temple was punched in, like a bullet mark.  One side of the gum bubble had a little protrusion in the shape of an ear.  Perhaps, he was giving birth to a miniature self through his mouth. 





If the piece above was a counter culture rebellious youth, the sculpture below was an almost satirical piece with obvious political innuendo or historical commentary.  Four almost identical looking men in different type of garbs - from old traditional robe, through Mao Jacket to Tuxedo Suit - joined hands stiffly to hold up a naked baby, a sight perhaps one would never see in live, even metaphorically.  Yet, one could appreciate the sculptor's observations. Perhaps, the artist was commenting on the male dominance of Chinese culture, despite of the change to time and style; perhaps, he or she was commenting on the ridiculous of the notion of social progress, or a mocking of authorities. A angular piece invited discussion and debate. 




My Favorite Museum Collection Series

>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 130: My Favorite Sculptural Artifacts in Jinsha (Archaeological) Site Museum, Chengdu, China

<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 128: My Favorite Paintings at Xu Beihong Museum in Beijing

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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