Xu Bing: A Book from the Sky
"A Book from the Sky" (simplified Chinese: 天书; traditional Chinese: 天書; pinyin: Tiānshū) is the title of an installation by Chinese artist Xu Bing that contained books in the style of fine editions from the Song and Ming dynasties but filled with glyphs that do not bear specific meaning and are designed to resemble traditional Chinese characters. The book, consisting of four volumes totaling 604 pages, was printed in a single print run of 126 copies between 1987 and 1991 and was first publicly exhibited in October 1988 in Beijing's China Art Gallery.The book is composed using a set of
Buddhist frescoes as an inspiration for the Armenian artist Sarkis Katchadourian
One of the remarkable Armenian artists of the mid-twentieth century, who was directly inspired by the Oriental cultures and Asian themes, has been Sarkis Katchadourian. From 1937-to 1941, the artist worked in India and made copies from temples' frescos, primarily world-known Ajanta caves. The Ajanta Caves are a sequence of 29 caves dating from the 2nd century BCE to 650 CE and have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.The horseshoe-shaped cave was built with a hammer and chisel and is home to stunning murals, paintings, and sculptures that depict the life of Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, according to
The work of the contemporary Chinese artist in the heart of Yerevan, Armenia
Since the year 2012, the Cafesjian Center for the Arts in Armenia, housed in the distinctive “Cascade Complex” in the capital city of Yerevan, has been exhibiting the sculpture of a laughing man (“Untitled,” 20-century, stainless steel, the artist assumably depicted himself) by Yue Minjun (岳敏君, born in 1962), a well-known Chinese artist who became famous for executing human figures in frozen laughter in sculpture, painting, installation, and print. In 2007, a startling canvas by Minjun was sold at Sotheby’s in London for a record-breaking £2.9 million (US$5.9 million), making it the most expensive Chinese contemporary artwork sold on the secondary
Evangelists holding the prototype of the ballpoint pen in an Armenian Cilician twelfth-century manuscript
One of the Armenian manuscripts of the Matenadaran (the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, Yerevan, Armenia) displays an intriguing nuance that provides evidence to suggest the theory that Armenians were one of the first who invented ball engravings back in 1166 in Hromkla (Cilicia). In the Gospel book created in the scriptorium of Hromkla Monastery (MS 7347), the evangelists are depicted with a prototype of a ballpoint pen or a tool strongly resembling the ball-point pen in their hands. From the mention of the so-called "Stefanos’s pen," it becomes clear that he wrote 700 letters, about one page, by
The cheap urn a British surgeon bought for his kitchen turned out to be a rare Chinese artifact
In the 1980s, a British surgeon purchased a royal blue vase for a few hundred pounds and displayed it in his kitchen. Little did he know that the object was a rare Chinese artifact—and that it could be worth a thousand times what he paid.How much more, exactly, we may find out soon. The vase is set to hit the block at the Newbury, England-based auction house Dreweatts later this month, where it’s estimated to sell for £100,000–150,000 ($125,000–185,000).
