| Cover picture: Cao Fei, 浮槎 Fú Chá, 2020 |

Singapore Flyer – Whimsical Reality

2020 started with a trip to the Singapore Flyer to see the exhibition ‘Whimsical Reality’ featuring watercolour works by Ah Guo Illustration 阿果绘本. I’ve been following Ah Guo’s work for quite a long time, and I love his childlike, light-hearted illustrations of various Singapore scenes!

National Gallery Singapore – Chua Soo Bin: Truths & Legends

Spent a day out visiting National Gallery Singapore and went to see the understated exhibition of Chua Soo Bin’s portrait photography. I especially liked these photos of Wu Guanzhong sketching in the streets of London, Bangkok’s floating markets and at Singapore’s Bird Park (this should be Jurong Bird Park surely!) Click here to also see my review of the exhibition ‘Wu Guanzhong: Beauty Beyond Form’ at National Gallery Singapore from 2016.

National Gallery Singapore – Light to Night Festival: Invisible Cities

The Light to Night festival was also happening in January, and as always, it delivered a fun lineup of light installations and art skin projections. I also found it hilarious that one of Twardzik-Ching Chor Leng’s Five Stones was propped up above the bus stop outside Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall!

I’m not sure why this was here, but this setup of LINE’s Brown in a Merlion costume at Funan mall was so cute!!

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre – Huat Huat Land

A display of giant pineapples, mahjong tiles and murals on the rooftop of Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre for Chinese New Year! Huat Ah!

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre – SINGAPO人

SINGAPO人 is a permanent exhibition at SCCC that looks to discover Chinese Singapore culture. I really enjoyed visiting this and playing with all the interactive sections. There’s this game of ‘Would You Rather’, for example have Coffee or Tea, Eat Out or Eat at Home (as seen above) and after making your choice, it shows the poll percentage for each option!

Peeking into a small hole in a display to see a camera staring back at me!

Had to capture this drip tile from the old Nanyang University’s Administrative Building — especially as I’m studying at Nanyang Technological University now!

CB Summer

And then we hit pause — circuit breaker began in early April, classes went online, and it took a lot of effort to continue to study / work from home.

Over these few months, I also started to tune into art online (here are some of my recommendations!). Although there were also sadly a slew of exhibition cancellations, like the i Light festival, the Picasso and Matisse exhibition at National Gallery Singapore and the ‘Angelica Kauffman’ exhibition in London’s Royal Academy of Arts…

I’m currently researching Kauffman’s self-portraits and so I’d made travel plans to visit London and to see this exhibition — all cancelled! Ah well, so I made do with buying the exhibition catalogue. Here’s an image of Kauffman’s Self-Portrait with Stylus from the catalogue (excuse the colouring!), which is my favourite of all of her self-portraits! It belongs in a private collection so I really hope to have a chance to see it in an exhibition in future…

Asian Civilisations Museum – Fashion and Textiles Gallery

Ventured back out to see exhibitions again in August, and it felt like a grand affair! Dressed up again to view the new Fashion and Textiles, as well as Jewellery, galleries at Asian Civilisations Museum. The galleries will have a rotating display, and the Fashion and Textiles gallery currently features Chinese dress from the Qing (imperial wear) and modern periods (cheongsams). I thought the Fashion and Textiles gallery was surprisingly small!

National Museum of Singapore – Music For Everyone: Variations on a Theme

This solo exhibition of Song-Ming Ang’s work was first presented in the Singapore Pavilion of 2019’s Venice Biennale and had a re-showing at National Museum of Singapore. The title Music for Everyone ‘references a series of concerts organised by the then Singapore’s Ministry of Culture from 1971 to 1985’, and the exhibition overall also looks at music education in Singapore, like all those recorder music classes (so not for me)…

I especially liked Ang’s Manifesto for Bad Music, as I got quite into twentieth-century art manifestoes in class last semester!

Singapore Art Museum – Time Passes

Since Singapore Art Museum is currently under renovation, their exhibition ‘Time Passes’ is currently held at National Gallery Singapore. I thought the highlight work was Ashley Yeo’s intricate work of paper, which she makes using 3D printing.

In the gallery next door, ‘An Exercise of Meaning in a Glitch Season’ is also showing at National Gallery Singapore. Both exhibitions are part of ‘Proposals for Novel Ways of Being’, a series of exhibitions and programmes made in response to COVID-19. Both exhibitions run until 21 February 2021.

Esplanade Tunnel – Combing for Ice and Jade

This is a solo exhibition of Kurt Tong’s work as part of the 7th Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF). ‘Combing for Ice and Jade’ tells the life story of Tong’s nanny (or majie) who became a ‘Comb Sister’ — ‘a community of women in Southern China who took a vow of chastity’ and left their hometowns to work and be financially independent. I liked the quiet, understated way of showing her life through various photographs, but I especially liked the video at the beginning of exhibition in which Tong discusses this seven-year project.

‘Combing for Ice and Jade’ is ongoing till 10 Jan 2021.

National Gallery Singapore – Georgette Chen: At Home in the World

The long awaited Georgette Chen retrospective is here! I enjoyed visiting this exhibition, and I will post about it in more detail in a separate post. In the meantime, I wanted to highlight this photograph of Chen painting Lotus Symphony en plein air (outdoors) in her friend’s garden full of lotuses. It’s nice to see a glimpse of the process and the final result situated next to the other.

‘Georgette Chen: At Home in the World’ is running for a long time until 26 September 2021.

ArtScience Museum – Margins: drawing pictures of home 

‘Margins: drawing pictures of home’ is also included in SIPF this year, and it’s a small exhibition featuring works by 15 contemporary photographers centred around Singapore as home.

My sister reminded me that we first saw this work in Hong Kong’s PMQ as part of detour 2015! While there were 1600 photographs there, the 12 photographs included here depicting the daily food choices for those living at the poverty line in different Asian countries still remains as poignant.

I liked the light humour of Hu’s People Mountain People Sea, a literal translation of 人山人海, which means a huge crowd in Chinese. Hu juxtaposes scenes of Singapore with ‘cutouts’ of the Old Master Q comic character, and I thought it was pretty fun!

My favourite from ‘Margins’ is Soh’s photographs of the last SS24 train to depart from Tanjong Pagar Railway Station (see my photos of the station at this link) before the railway line was officially removed.

‘Margins: drawing pictures of home’ is showing until 28 February 2021.

Gardens by the Bay: Christmas Wonderland’s Walk of Lights

Ending off 2020 with some festive cheer! I wanted to do another re-visit of Christmas Wonderland since this year’s Walk of Lights featured some new light attractions that have not been shown before! Loved all the lights and as always, the luminarie light installations (made all the way from Italy) are so gorgeous and impressive! Here’s to a brilliant 2021!

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| Cover picture: M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948, lithograph |

Escher worked with prints throughout his career – the early form of prints before printers came along, with the two most common types of prints being lithograph and woodcuts. I actually took a class on printmaking last year, and while I don’t think I knew what I was doing at the time (haha!), I’m happy to have had taken it now ‘cos these prints are absolutely lovely. The exhibition starts off with Escher’s early works and his inspirations taken from Art Nouveau and nature.

All M. C. Escher, The Second Day of Creation (The Division of the Waters), 1925, woodcut

Self-portrait in Reflecting Sphere (Flor de Pascua), 1921, woodcut

Cloister of Monreale, Sicily, 1933, wood engraving

I love how the rays of sunlight were engraved line by line; the amount of detail is stunning.

Escher spent a lot of time in Italy from 1927 to 1935, traveling every spring from Rome to southern Italy. The prints below were produced from his sketches at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and from scenes of the landscapes of southern Italy.

Inside St. Peter’s, 1935, woodcut

Nocturnal Rome: Colonnade of St. Peter’s, 1934, woodcut

The Bridge (also known as Town in Southern Italy), 1930, lithograph

Castrovalva (Abruzzi), 1930, lithograph

Pentedattilo, Calabria, 1930, lithograph

Tropea, 1931, lithograph

Santa Severina, Calabria, 1931, lithograph

The next section of the exhibition is Tessellation, which displays Escher’s beginnings in tessellated works that would later develop into his well-known graphic works.

Regular Division of the Plane I, 1957, woodcut

Regular Division of the Plane IV, 1957, woodcut

Intarsia Door Cabinet, wooden handcraft

Smaller and smaller, 1956, wood engraving

Next up is the section Metamorphosis, which I simply thought was very cool! It continues from Escher’s work with tessellations. Shapes now metamorphose into different forms, hence the title.

Sky and Water I, 1938, woodcut

Day and Night, 1938, woodcut

Love this one – the two halves on the left and right are the exact opposites of each other.

Predestination, 1951, lithograph

Swans, 1956, wood engraving

Liberation, 1955, lithograph

Circle Limit IV, 1960, woodcut

I found this angel/devil pattern quite creepy in a cool way, LOL.

Rippled Surface, 1950, woodcut and linoleum

Puddle, 1952, woodcut

Three Worlds, 1955, lithograph

Still Life with Mirror, 1934, lithograph

Hand with Reflecting Sphere, 1935, lithograph

The exhibition guide mentions that Escher was fascinated by reflecting spheres wherein the viewer would always be positioned centre no matter how you held the sphere. A very interesting point which I had never considered!

Three Spheres II, 1946, lithograph

Reptiles, 1943, lithograph

Bond of Union, 1956, lithograph

Metamorphosis II, 1939-40, woodcut

A little video, taken by me, of this really long piece that could barely be captured in a photo – watch it to see the details!

Skipping ahead to the section Exploring the Infinity, there’s an installation of cranes overhead and a related Relativity Room with an infinite number of cranes.

This section is hands down my favourite as it features a considerable amount of Escher’s masterpieces that play tricks on your mind in the best way!

Other World (also known as Another World), 1947, woodcut

Convex and Concave, 1955, lithograph

Up and Down (as known as High and Low), 1947, lithograph

Relativity, 1953, lithograph

Belvedere, 1958, lithograph

Ascending and Descending, 1960, lithograph

Waterfall, 1961, lithograph

Print Gallery, 1956, lithograph

Print Gallery is a really interesting piece as Escher tried to repeat the entire image infinitely in the centre. He was unsuccessful, however, and so left the centre empty and placed his signature there instead. A team of mathematicians then came along fifty years later and resolved the image’s perspectival issue, as seen in Print Gallery Resolved.

I also found the difference between lithograph and digital print really interesting to see (the two prints are exhibited next to each other), one produced by handwork and the other with a computer.

H.W. Lenstra, Print Gallery Resolved, 2003, digital print

As for most things in Singapore, the exhibition price is quite hefty at S$14 for Singaporean adults and S$17 for foreigners. That’s the price if you only view this single exhibition, there are other prices if you decide to check out other exhibitions ongoing at ArtScience Museum as well.

Despite the price, I was very happy to have seen the exhibition. The sheer amount of artworks shown made it worth it for me! The exhibition is showing until 26th February 2017, you can check out more details at their website here.

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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!

The Little Prince Art Collection contains 13 sculptures of the various characters from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book, created by Arnaud Nazare-Aga and associated Artheline PAJ’Art Studio. I love how Nazare-Aga stayed true to the original illustrations with practically the same pencil markings on the sculptures and all.

If you please, draw me a sheep!

Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.

All grown-ups were children first. But few of them remember it.

To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other.

And the stars obey you?

One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform. Accepted authority rests first of all on reason.

For, to conceited men, all other men are admirers. Conceited people never hear anything but praise.

The conceited man / vain man is definitely not going to be a favorite character, but it’s my favorite sculpture! This one really looks as if it were pencil-drawn and the yellow comes out very nicely.

For at least his work has some meaning… And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful.

The lamplighter sculpture even came with alternating lit up stars at the side!

Next up was The Little Prince In The Dark exhibition stretching across two tunnel which featured both the same sculptures and a few other ones but as glow-in-the-dark versions instead! Cue blue, glow-y photos.

This glow-in-the-dark exhibition was an initiative to help make these well-loved characters come alive for the visually impaired, to be able to touch and feel how these characters were illustrated in the book, while narration of certain sections of the book concerning each character was played around each glow-y sculpture. You could also turn these seemingly floating sculptures round for fun!

And since The Little Prince was also a part of the Christmas festivities, here’s a few belated Christmas shots! ;)

Winter Wonderland by London design duo miriamandtom, LED lighting feature installation

Find out more about the artists featured:

Arnaud Nazare-Aga and Artheline PAJ’Art Studio’s blog | Facebook

miriamandtom’s website

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This illustration was the first image I saw in my first Fine Arts class. Western art history – made simple! Back then, my professor said we would know all about the various artists and their smiley face representations by the end of the class. I hadn’t even heard of almost all of the artists stated here, but I’m happy to say that I’m familiar with most of the artists now, except Rembrandt. My bad.

A lot of my friends, when they find out what I’m studying, like to ask, “So what do you do exactly?” or they exclaim, “Really?! I did art in high school, and I did so badly!” I never have a good response to the first question, I just don’t know what to say, and when I hear the second statement, I always think I wished I had the option to take art in high school, since I wasn’t enjoying math and science much anyway…

So it got me thinking about why I like what I do, or why should people study art history? Everyone has their own reasons, and I wanted to share about mine.

| Cover picture: Donald Seitz, History of Art, 1991, illustration |

I’ve always loved stories. And they come in all shapes and forms, in books, TV, and a good history story. History is interesting that way, when my dad tells me stories of his dad going through the war. It’s just not that fun when you’re reading about the same war in a history textbook. And having to memorize dates and names and titles and places and go to exams to spill it all out. Not for me.

The great thing about art is how history is incorporated into it. Art can be identified by the century, the region, the movement, the style. For example, I could be looking at a painting of a couple in a vast field, but I could tell you that it was painted by the French artist Millet in 1859 during the nineteenth century, in the style of Realism when the reflection of nature in art continued, but new ideas of what constituted beauty emerged. That’s history right there.

Jean-François Millet, The Angelus, 1859, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

For contemporary art too, one day someone is going to look at an artwork and go, that was painted in 2015 in that style back then. With time, the numerous artworks in the various mediums and styles we see today are going to be neatly categorized by century and movement and a new art term that people come up with to explain the period.

Art is informative and it’s so much easier to absorb history stories when looking at works of art, rather than going through long, dry passages of history text. (Though books of any topic are winners in their own right.) But that’s only the background information. What you see in an artwork itself contains other stories, unique to our own interpretations.

You could argue that fine arts is in the same way made up of the boring bits like memorising titles of artworks, artists’ names, years, centuries and mediums. All that is true but having a picture to go along with it makes all the difference. I really like how we get to somewhat see how things were like back then. The way people looked, dressed, their jobs, their social activities, their interiors, and so on.

One thing that I was curious about was art in wartime. When you learn about wars in the typical history fashion, it’s always about aggressors and victims, people fighting, people suffering and all that. But what about the people left at home? It’s like an entire period of the war solely belongs to the battlefield. And it turns out, art still goes on, though not far from the topic of war.

Unknown artist, Entry of Marshal Oyama, Commander-in-Chief, into Mukden; Mukden Railway Station after the Battle, 1905, color lithograph, collotype and letterpress; ink on card stock (postcard), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

I think that studying Fine Arts has made me look at things differently, too. There is always a conception that art is supposed to be beautiful, show delightful things to viewers. And that was probably the norm in a time long past, but it certainly isn’t now. Art can reveal the bad, ugly stuff, too. And it makes for an interesting way of looking at things, that I can somehow see things in an alternative way, even in real life.

Like when I was in Shanghai at the Free Trade Zone, and large blouts of dark gray fumes were coming out of giant factory buildings, released into the clear blue sky. Yes, pollution and industralization and I’m not discounting any of that, but I was weirdly encaptured by it. Maybe because it was the first time seeing it so close and so clearly, and maybe it was the color contrast, the tubular gray slowly moving into the clear blue and dissipating into thin air. I couldn’t take my eyes off it for a while. It sounds weird, I know. But it was just interesting.

Art is, in a sense, interdisciplinary to me. There are so many topics in art expressed in different ways and approached from different angles. A large part of studying art involves considering the socio-historical context, meaning social issues present in a historical period that influences the art made then. There could be politics involved as well. Paintings of war or battles are definitely political, but artworks could be interpreted as political even if the artist did not have the intention to do so. Not all artworks necessarily contain all of these factors, but there is always more than one thing going on in an artwork.

Technology also brings about new styles and mediums, such as photography. The combination of mediums also creates a new kind of visual. Entry of Marshal Oyama, Commander-in-Chief, into Mukden; Mukden Railway Station after the Battle is a mix of a painting and a photograph of the same Mukden location printed on a postcard, like a before and after of the Russo-Japanese War, but the after is painted instead of photographed to make it seem less real, maybe? And it certainly looks and feels very different from an oil painting made from a different culture though made in the same year.

WIth (oil) paintings, I find it interesting to think how the layers of paint applied can determine the style of the work and how it would look like. When I first learned about Monet’s paintings, I was wondering how the different colors used could manage to make the reflection of sunlight in the water look so natural in a digital image. Seeing his works in real life though, the reflections still look very naturalistic when the artwork is viewed at a distance, but when you go up close, you can see the many almost random dabs of paint in different colors that somehow cohesively form the effect of reflection. Monet totally won me over with that. My favourite Western artist ever!

Claude Monet, Parliament, Reflections on the Thames, 1905, oil on canvas, Musée Marmottan, Paris, France.

Monet’s work comes along only a few decades after Millet, and the style has moved on from Realism to Impressionism. What I find so fascinating is that an artwork can be analyzed on its own, or within the historical period it belongs to, or within the entire history of that particular art type (Western art, for example).

I could keep going on, but I guess the idea is that art can be viewed and thought about in so many different directions, and there are many other parts to it that I’m still discovering. Fine Arts, Art History, or anything to do with the word Art, is always discounted as “impractical,” and “not useful for a job” in a school context. It’s sadly underrated, but I strongly believe that art is of value and learning about it is of value, too.

My sister always reminds me that university is the best time to learn whatever you want. The things I learnt in school before university were out of necessity, though still important, but I didn’t have the liberty to choose what I wanted to do. University is great for that reason, and I think that every subject taught matters.

I just hope to let others see why I like Fine Arts so much. Outside of school too, I think everyone can learn about and appreciate art and I’m hoping to do that for a long, long time.

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