Hong Kong Art Week has begun and Hong Kong is at its best in its art with multiple art fairs and art exhibitions that I really want to see! In the midst of all that, I wanted to share photos from last month’s Light Rose Garden. Spring has come but Hong Kong’s version of spring is rainy, dreary weather everyday and fluctuating temperatures. It felt more like spring when 25,000 white roses sprung up here in Hong Kong on Valentine’s Day!
Playing catchup now as the last 2 months have been a blur of classes and assignments I’d just haven’t had the time to blog! Sometimes, I seriously despair of my schedule but I like to say that being busy is a good thing! I just need to craft some time somewhere to blog.
I was curious to hear about the 2015 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture with the theme of Visions 2050 – Lifestyle and the City that sounded fresh and innovative. It was held from 11 December 2015 – 28 February 2016 at Kowloon Park. I went to see it in January this year, and I have to say I felt underwhelmed by the exhibits.
On a better note, there was an exhibition (part of the event) at the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre that was pretty interesting. It was mostly photographs of Hong Kong’s architecture with a few model exhibits and a video screening area. There were some photographs I really liked so I wanted to share them here!
(On another note, it was my first time in Kowloon Park and… I didn’t like it. If you’re looking to go to parks in Hong Kong, I would much highly recommend Hong Kong Park in Admiralty instead.)
| Cover picture: Sarah Choi, Hong Kong Legacy, 2014 |
Caught the fun, silly, and absolutely hilarious This Means War last night on TV. It’s about two CIA agents (Chris Pine and Tom Hardy) who meet and fall for the same woman (Reese Witherspoon). Of course, hijinks ensue.
FDR (played by Pine) goes to woo Lauren (Witherspoon) by showing her “real” artworks by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt since she likes to collect Klimt’s artwork posters. This is definitely one of my favorite scenes from the movie in which FDR talks art nonsense. Enjoy!
(Read more to find the actual titles…)
The Little Prince Art Collection and The Little Prince In the Dark Exhibition were part of the Christmas festivities over at Pacific Place, but concluded earlier than I’d realized on New Year’s Day. I’m just glad I had the chance to see them (twice) because I’d miss it earlier in the summer when they were shown in Singapore!
I know The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) is a children’s story and all, but I’d only read it a while back when I visited The Little Prince Creamery in Toa Payoh, Singapore. How fitting, right? (And their waffles with gelato are absolutely divine.) I didn’t love the book, it feels like another of those children’s stories that has a lot of undertones that children wouldn’t understand, but the characters and illustrations were very interesting to me. And what better way to have a Little Prince art exhibition than to have them based exactly off of the original illustrations? With quotes on the side, oh yes!
Spent a really eventful Christmas Eve and Christmas in Hong Kong this year! It’s really funny to see the residential areas being so strangely quiet, and then you go out to Tsim Sha Tsui and it’s like, everyone decided to hang out here so come join the party! Beyond all the sparkling lights, decorations, sweet carols, and general merriness, it’s as good a time as any other to look at Christmas in art. I find it fascinating how there are so many paintings about the angel Gabriel going to Mary to tell her about the good news of the birth of Jesus Christ, and others showing the newborn baby Jesus. There are also a lot of other paintings depicting other Christian stories, but that would have to be for another time. :)
Painting about Christian stories was big among Western painters, especially during the Renaissance period from the 15th – 16th centuries with a strong Christian/Catholic core that was very much infused into the art of the time. So there are actually many paintings with the same names, like The Annunciation, The Nativity, The Adoration of the Magi, The Last Judgment, etc. It’s really a little difficult to pin down the paintings I want to look for since so many of them were painted around the same years, but there’s really an entire trove of related paintings out there!
As a Christian myself, I found it really interesting when I first started learning Western art history to find that there were so, so many paintings depicting biblical events. It should be noted though that many of them contain imagery and iconography closer to Catholicism, like the haloes and clasped hands. There are many variations to these depictions, and I realized a little while later that they were not necessarily trying to be “truthful”.
There’s always been debate in the realm of art history about art being truth, or art depicting the truth, but really, I think art is all about depicting a personal kind of truth to an artist, and the fun comes in deciding as a viewer whether you agree with their truth.
| Cover picture: Fra Angelico, The Annunciation, 1442-1443, fresco, Convento di San Marco, Florence |