The mysterious Chinese Bronze Age culture of Shijiahe
The Shijiahe and Post-Shijiahe culture is a not very well-known late Bronze Age culture in China, named after the Shijiahe, the archeological site first discovered in Tianmen City, Hubei Province. It was preserved in small-scaled exquisite sculptures that show the marvelous artistic creativity of the ancient craftsmen and reflect the belief system and religious customs. A significant number of ceramic figurines and statuettes of animals that belonged to the Shijiahe culture have been unearthed at the Dengjiawan site. Those artifacts were excavated alongside the accumulations of ceramic fragments in many ash pits. It's noteworthy that hundreds of clay couples are carved in
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
