What are your perceptions of non-Western art? Any favorite pieces?

Persian miniature:

I do love a lot of Asian art. Japanese, Mughal and Persian, Indian arts/crafts/textile design. I also do love "Islamic" art: some of the artwork on buildings is beautiful. Nice that you are broadening your horizons aesthetically.

Here are the basic non western art traditions.

East Asian, southeast Asian, south Asian including Indian-Persian, and Sub Saharan. There's also tribal art traditions predating all these but now a minor but very wide spread stream.

There are variations of these.

Did I leave anything out?

Gold work of ancient American empires is amazing.

None of it compares to the greatness Europe produced.

^ Nothing compared to your ignorance.

I used to think Chinese watercolors like this one were so highly stylized and clichéd that I dismissed them. Then I visited southern China and discovered that they are realistic to the point of being photographic. The strange stone landscapes. The mist rendering everything monochromatic. Clearly you see things differently when you have different things to see.

r7 I lived in (northern) China for a while and I think it helped me develop an appreciation for the Chinese aesthetic.

I never made it to the south, sadly. A Chinese friend told me Guilin is considered the most beautiful place in China. I would also love to visit Anhui

R6 Please list the great masters of non western art that you feel compare to the Europeans.

R6 it is also a different way of seeing. Not just what you are seeing.

Here's a one minute clip from a film called A Day in the Canal with the Emperor of China, where David Hockney opens ones eyes to the Chinese way of seeing in their art.

R10 Oh please. What Hockney is describing there is pretty elementary. Nothing the Romans weren't doing BC. For sophisticated use of perspective study Vermeer.

"Bharat Mata" by Abanindranath Tagore

"Manasa" by Jamini Roy

I really enjoy Japanese art. They understand economy of color and form, and like Chinese art, there is a large emphasis on the emotion imbued in a brush stroke. I just love this paining of a raccoon wrapped around a tea kettle.

R11 there's no competition in art. Art is art. Each makes us see. Each is a world view. There's no need to put down one to like another, except to Philistines.

You should watch the while film, it's only an hour.

I like Persian manuscript painting as much for the storytelling aspect as for the aesthetics. I like the marginal notes and people or animals used as decoration in western illuminated manuscripts for similar reasons.

Among the 'tribal' art traditions so offhandedly dismissed above, I would single out Australian aboriginal art, a product of the world's oldest continuous cultures.

Oh I didn't mean to dismiss tribal art. What would Picasso be without it? And yes I like aboriginal Australian art, the little that I've interacted with ur.

[quote]there's no competition in art.

Of course there is.

Otherwise everything is art and everyone is an artist.

If that's your view, fine.

Forget that eastern spawn of the pagans, nothing says art like a Hummel of two wee children giving the nazi salute.

R20 Hummel figurines?. Nothing says art like this!

[Quote] Otherwise everything is art and everyone is an artist.

Sure, put that way. You think art is what you or I or a critic says it is?

R22 Like it or not, there has always been someone in a position to decide what goes and what doesn't. Even in the world that R17 linked too.

"to"

I like this Hokusai (Japanese) wave. I think it's woodblock.

Of course. That's why we say the cave paintings at Lascaux are art. That painter was an artist and none was "better", whether Roman or Chinese.

If you don't see that it's because you don't know art. You only want it to be a handmaiden to jingoism that reinforces ignorance. Art is debased when it's used to make people feel not transcendence but better about their ignorance.

R17, love that piece. Never knew about that kind of art. Thank you!

R26 Can the doodles on my notebook that I claim are art be compared to Michelangelo's David?

Cool! How do you compare to hiroshige?

R4, One can only imagine the artistic treasures melted down by the ignorant Spaniards.

Ancient Egyptian art, especially in the Middle and New Kingdoms, was wonderfully vibrant, with remarkably sensitive portrayals of everyday life.

There's Richard Spencer at R5.

I really love Japanese ink and watercolor paintings. I have a lot of Japanese influences in my apartment but it's small so I am careful not to overdo it so it doesn't move into cliche (or in modern parlance, problematic)

For DLers who are interested in Chinese art, here's a great gallery by courtesy of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan.

that's wonderful r34, thank you!

R32 It is just the truth. The depth, the scope of European art is unparalleled.

R34 that's another bone of contention between Taiwan and Beijing, the foundation of the Taiwan Museum was the result of evacuation of objects in the Imperial Museum in Beijing before WWII and their eventual relocation to Taiwan during the civil war.

How on earth Muslims gone from having fabulous bareback orgies centuries ago to throwing gays from tall buildings in 21st century?

Of course on DL a thread asking for perceptions on non-Western art will immediately attract an invidious neo-Nazi troll who wants everything to ratify the greatness of the "West." Let's play his game and rule out every tradition in the "West" except for Italian and French. "You like Constable? Pfft, nothing in British art compares to the richness and complexity of the [fill in the blank]."

R36 is the definition of white supremacy.

[quote]Of course on DL a thread asking for perceptions on non-Western art will immediately attract an invidious neo-Nazi troll

Oh please.

R40 You are absurd. The thread title asks "What are your perceptions of non-Western art? ". If I said "Western art cannot compare" of course, you would be fine with that.

We all have our opinions. Mine? The depth, the scope of European art is unparalleled.

It doesn't interest me at all.

About that "depth and scope" of European art: would this be the same artistic tradition that has been pretty much exclusively devoted to renderings of scenes from absurd Abrahamic fairy tales for most of its existence?

Khuni panja - "The Bloody Claw". A masterpiece of Indian art.

R43 Wow, you are rather ignorant.

Thank you r34!

There is so much more to art than paintings, drawings, and illustrations. The visual arts also includes sculpture the decorative arts, and architecture.

I posit that the Terracotta Warriors (2nd century BCE), the classical gardens of Suzhou (11th - 18th centuries), the Temple of Karnak at Luxor, and the Taj Mahal are artistic marvels.

Celestial Dance (Devata) - 11th century India

Isis and Wepwawet, ca. 1279–1213 B.C. Egypt

Plaque with dragon, pheasant, quail, and other birds amidst bamboo and plum blossom - late 19th century China

God of Wealth, late 17th–early 18th century China

Maharana Ari Singh with His Courtiers - Indian, 1767

I love the Assyrian and Sumerian reliefs and also the Lamassu!!

Me too, R53. I haven't seen them in person but have seen pics of them from the Met, Louvre, British Museum.

Standing Vishnu as Keshava - Dasoja of Balligrama, 12th century India

R38, I would venture to say that, though the manuscript page may be centuries old, the actual painted scene is 20th C.

I've bought a few such hybrid works of Arabic art myself, albeit of much tamer hunting and palace scenes.

Maybe 21st C.

R43, Man, you are ignorant! Have you HEARD of the post-Renaissance centuries?!

Sculpture in Zimbabwe. Not traditional folk art as it dates to the late colonial era.

Frog Dreaming by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri

Altar tusk - Edo peoples, 18th century

"Smiling" Figure - Remojadas, Mexico, 7th–8th century

Gold Figure Pendant - Tairona (north Colombia), 10th-16th century

Ready to rip out a human heart, r64. Intricate, but not pleasing.

Ok, it’s Japanese 15th century Kintsugi and when I first saw it in person, I thought it was a shit repair. Then, I held and felt it and understood why porcelain bullshit could run $750+ The philosophy behind it is too exquisite for these fingers.

[quote]Ready to rip out a human heart, R64. Intricate, but not pleasing.

I don't know, R65. The wikipedia article about the Tairona doesn't mention human sacrifice, nor does the description of the pendant on the Met's website, though they probably killed prisoners of war. I heard a radio documentary in which the host said that the widespread, brutal ritual sacrifice of humans by the Aztecs and similar peoples are greatly exaggerated.

I agree it's interesting but not pretty. Love the fabulous headdress.

This thread makes me miss the old link previews

Radio program about the Aztecs.

Buddha of Medicine, China, ca. 1319

Too bad it's faded so much.

Bronze wine container (Pou), China, 13th century BC

"Non-Western" art is something only a hegemonist would conceptualize, much less "perceive."

Moche vase (Peru).

Statuette of Amun, Egypt, ca. 945–712 B.C.

Nikare with his Wife and Daughter, Egypt, ca. 2400 BC

Ok, this one has been popping up at me for years. It’s Victor Delfin and there doesn’t seem to be a title to the piece, but the article is “Visiting A Master” and that’s what I associate with the sculpture.

Some kind of elegant display at the Met.

I like that one thing by that one guy

If anyone is in San Francisco, I highly recommend a visit to the Museum of Asian Art. Fantastic, art of many kinds from many cultures.

Classical Chinese painting can be utterly fabulous, as are the decorative arts - the ceramics, jade carvings, and metal artifacts on display. Some of my favorite paintings are of natural scenes, both landscapes and small things like sprigs of bamboo or birds and insects. Here's a bamboo painting, it's a subject where the spontaneous yet controlled brushwork really shines.

I can never get into chinese art it just looks ugly to me. Egyptian art is fascinating as is south and central american art.

I like the art of Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian missionary who ended up as a painter in the Qing court in the eighteenth century. His work synthesizes European and Chinese art to great effect.

So ... quasi-Western, I suppose.

More Castiglione

More Castiglione

Castiglione's portrait of the Qianlong Emperor

And finally, Castiglione's famous painting of horses (click the link, as it's panoramic).

I don't know for certain as I'm not an art historian, but I think Castiglione introduced linear perspective to Qing painting.

Adjacent to this thread, but if you like the Chinese aesthetic, check out these amazing performances I recently discovered on YouTube. They're like paintings come to life:

Fairy and immortal boy, China, 19th century. Made of coral.

Personally, I think the West could learn a lesson or two about patterns and design from Islamic architecture.

There's something so mesmerizing about a pleasing symmetrical pattern / patterns that work well together.

I'd like to see more of that than the typical pediments, columns, and overdused ornamentation / construction. We need more original looking buildings.

Thanks for the beautiful art, R81. I especially like the Portrait of Lady Hoja and the vibrant colors of the Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Armor.

I agree with much of what you're saying, R89, but I'm not really a fan of the contemporary Turkish, Persian, etc take on architecture. Too many windows, too many curved lines. I guess it depends what you're used to.

Pierced window screen, India, 16th century. Made of red sandstone.

R91 - that's a joke response, right?

Because obviously, some residential mid-level McMansion of new immigrants to Canada was not what I was referring to.

How did you know that was in Canada, R93 / Sanjay?

Then what are you referring to in terms of contemporary architecture, R93 / Sanjay?

R89 / Sanjay, everybody knows that the only acceptable style for a house is "Stockbroker Georgian". You know, like that jailbird Conrad Black's old digs in Rosedale.

Capital of a column from the palace of Darius I, 510 BC.

Folding screen with birthday celebration for General Guo Ziyi, China, 19th century.

Carved red and black lacquer

Chun Liao - Installation IV

Ceremonial House ceiling, Kwoma people, Papua New Guinea - at the Met

Night Revels by Gu Hongzhong