The ancient Chinese “postman” depicted without a mouth
In ancient China, the postal system was established to facilitate the delivery of correspondences and promulgation of state degrees. A pictorial brick, created during the reign of the Wei and Jin dynasties (220-420) and unearthed in 1972 from a tomb in Jiayuguan, Gansu province, China, depicts the prototype of the postman -a Chinese herald-messenger of the time. The intriguing feature of the herald riding a galloping horse and holding a wooden pass is the lack of a mouth, indicating the confidentiality of his mission.The pictorial brick is one of the gems of the Gansu Provincial Museum.It’s worth mentioning that the
Armenian letters in the European distinguished fresco
The former residence of the Würzburg prince-bishops is one of the most important baroque palaces in Europe. It was begun for Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn by the then young and unknown architect Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753); the shell of the palace was built from 1720 to 1744 and the interior was completed in 1780. The interior of the Würzburg Residence was the finest of its age. At the Würzburg court three generations of artists and artisans from all over Europe produced an independent variation of the rococo style. The highlights – and almost the final part – of the interior
The innovative approach of the Chinese artist from Nanjing reshaped the perception of mortise-and-tenon
These two installations as the embodiment of modern rethinking of the past have been recently represented in the 120th-anniversary celebration exhibition of the Nanjing Normal University held at the National Art Museum of China. The installation, made of acrylic and walnut wood, borrows the mortise-and-tenon structural element from Song dynasty architecture. For thousands of years, the Chinese generations of architects and artisans have been creating exquisite mortise-and-tenon structures with wisdom and ingenuity, conveying the local ancient cultural spirit through alternating the combination of concave and convex shapes. "If the mortise is square, the tenon will be square; if the tenon is
Cultural crossroads: the art of Marco Grigorian
Marcos Grigorian, also known as Marco Grigorian (1925 – 2007), is considered one of the pioneering modern artists of Iran and one of the founders of Iranian Land art. During his prolific five-decade career – during which he was also a teacher, gallerist, actor, collector, curator, and champion of emerging art – he cemented himself as a genuinely international creative force that broke ground but never lost sight of his roots. The artist was born in Russia to an Armenian family from Kars who had fled to escape massacres when Turkey captured it in 1920. In 1930, the family moved from
Nanjing hosts the “Moon River”- the solo exhibition of the Italian artist
On one hand, unusual and unconventional juxtapositions of mundane landscape scenes and bright, flat fairy, as if child-drawn bees, butterflies, and fireflies, floating into the viewer's space; on the other- poetic landscapes abundant with hues of green and eye-pleasing greenery hid from the spectator beneath the thick, bold, and daring white dots or swirls, creating the vision of the frontier world- the encounter of illusion and imagination and recognizable and objective visual perception. The exhibition unveils the side of the aesthetic signature style of the artist that might be interpreted as the manifestation of the triumph of modernity, the natural
