I spent some time in my undergraduate days studying art in Japan and ukiyo-e prints (and the topic of Japanese art was definitely very popular among Hong Kong students), but never had the chance to see them in person before. So Life in Edo was a real treat for me being able to view so many of them at one go, and by many masters of the genre too!

My favourite artwork is probably this opening print from the first rotation, which seems to encapsulate the best of ukiyo-e prints: a picture of Mount Fuji and beautiful women.

While this exhibition has closed in October, I still wanted to share my highlights from the two rotations! This (very long) post is split into two parts with images from the first and second rotations respectively. For easier reference, the images are also sectioned according to Travel, Beauty, Pets, Food, Gardens, Seasonal Festivals, and Paintings (roughly following the curatorial direction of the exhibition).

My main impression coming out of this exhibition is that I was quite surprised by how modern Edo life was! Although Edo Japan (also known as the Tokugawa period) is thought of as belonging to a traditional, feudal Japan before the modernisation of the succeeding Meiji period, I feel that these images show a developed society steeped in its own culture and customs — which is so fascinating. While Edo period (1603–1868) ran for a pretty long time, all of the prints and paintings shown below come from the 19th century. I’m sure that I’ve mentioned this on the blog before, but the 19th century remains my favourite period to look at in art history, and it’s very interesting to me to see how people from different cultures lived life then!

Part I: Travel

What a way to travel — A daimyo (feudal lord) sits safely inside his palanquin in the distance, though the women also get impeccable service with bearers literally ferrying them across the river.

Part I: Beauty

This part is really interesting, showing women making themselves up. There were also a few surprising standards of beauty, for example, according to the exhibition didactic, women blackened their teeth to indicate she was an adult or married, and women shaved their eyebrows after giving birth to her first child. You can see both examples in the prints above!

Part I: Pets (Lots of cats!)

So the Japanese love for cats goes way back! I love this print by Hiroshige showing a cat in a brothel (belonging to a courtesan) staring out the window at the festivities outside.

I should also mention here that I loved seeing all the intricate designs of the kimonos and clothing in Edo Japan — so gorgeous and creative! Some of the prints belong to a series, and this one comes from a series titled ‘Fabrics to Order in Current Taste’, which clearly shows the importance of being fashionable at the time.

I wasn’t expecting that dogs were popular among the Japanese, but the Japanese Chin was a popular pet! The two prints above Woman holding a Japanese Chin and Hydrangeas show a woman similarly posed with her pet dog in hand.

Goldfish were yet another popular pet to keep and admire in their glass containers, as seen here.

This giant Indian elephant was placed on show for many of the Japanese public to see for the first time, and which must been very fascinating for them at the point of time to see an ‘exotic’ animal. I’m assuming that the printmaker Yoshitoyo must have actually seen this elephant for himself, since the didactic states that he made a few prints of the elephant… See Dürer’s Rhinoceros (1515) for an alternative case in point!

Part I: Food

I love this picture of the first snowfall, where women gather at this soba peddler’s stall for a bowl of cosy hot soba. I also love the detail of the women’s dainty umbrellas / parasols — I’m sure there’s a correct term for this but I’ve no idea…

Part I: Gardens & Seasonal Festivals

The Doll Festival (Hinamatsuri) was celebrated for the young girls in the household when the peach trees were in bloom! As the name suggests, dolls were displayed in the home as part of the festival, which you can also see in this print.

Part I: Paintings

These ink paintings almost seem overlooked compared to the popular woodblock prints, but they are also made so gorgeously! They share similar subject matter with the prints — like images of women with their cats and dogs — but are much larger in scale, and the ink and colour are more finely rendered.

Part II: Travel

I would say that Hiroshige is simply masterful at depicting rain in prints. I don’t think that my camera very clearly captures the rain effect in this print, but even so, you can see those drifts of rain layered over the scenery.

Another famous, classic rainy work by Hiroshige is Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake (1857), also from the series ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’, view it here at the Met Museum. Another favourite artist of mine, Vincent van Gogh, was so inspired by Hiroshige’s print he made his own copy Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige) (1887), on view at the Van Gogh Museum. Actually, I must visit both the Met and the Van Gogh Museum! I just wonder when…

Part II: Beauty

Part II: Women and Pets

I wonder about the choice of depicting these women In front of the bathhouse (the didactic didn’t explain this point), but this is yet another lovely image of women in their patterned kinomos carrying their umbrellas / parasols on a snowy day.

This scene comes from ‘False Murasaki’s Rural Genji’, which was a parody of the Japanese classic ‘Tale of Genji’. To briefly summarise from the didactic, Prince Genji at the centre of the print is seen participating in a cherry blossom viewing festival (I like how there were whole festivals for this), while the Third Princess, later to be given in marriage to Genji, appears on her verandah on the right of the image with her cat on a leash. It’s all a parody — so some details have been altered from the original Tale.

I really like this print of a girl getting up close to her cat, because which pet owner hasn’t been crouched over playing with your pet before?

This print has an interesting perspective of a mother carrying her son on her back (if you zoom in to see it in more detail).

It’s so interesting how sometimes, these ukiyo-e prints don’t have a sense of ‘background’ with figures and objects appearing out of ‘nowhere’ on the print. This is a triptych that shows women in front of glass artworks at a handicraft show in Ryōgoku, Edo City, in 1819. From left, there is a glass model of a large hanging lantern, a display of live exotic birds, and on the most right — the most impressive to me — a glass model of a Dutch trading ship.

These two prints of foreigners in interior spaces were included near the Food/Gastronomy section of the second rotation. Although seemingly a bit random, these images of foreigners — specifically white foreigners — was of interest to the Japanese, especially as the Edo period was marked by 200 years of isolation from the rest of the world and the arrival of such foreigners was to lead to major changes ahead, i.e. the decline of the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

But before all that, artists like Yoshikazu made such “Yokohama prints”, so named as foreigners were restricted to living in the port city of Yokohama at the time. Foreigners’ residence in Yokohama depicts an imaginary scene; I’m not sure if Foreigners enjoying a party was taken from an actual scene. In any case, it’s interesting how the Japanese style of depicting people was applied to these Westerners!

Part II: Gardens

Part II: Seasonal Festivals

I didn’t know that the Japanese also celebrated this, but the Tanabata Festival is the celebration of the reuniting of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl once a year on the Magpie Bridge based on Chinese folklore. It’s also the basis of the Chinese Qixi Festival, colloquially known as the Chinese Valentine’s Day. In Tanabata Festival, the figures write their wishes on paper strips to be hung on bamboo branches, which is still practiced today.

Making rice dumplings here is actually the making of mochi! Mochi is made in preparation for the (Japanese) New Year.

According to the didactic, viewing cherry blossoms and gathering shellfish were two popular activities for the Edo people in spring. I love how Edo people also appreciated their cherry blossoms even then!

Part II: Paintings

I love these two ink paintings in particular! The second painting Parody of Onna San no Miya seems quite sensual, but I love the detail of the clear screen in front of the woman, which the cat at her feet is playing with. The translucency of the screen is so well-painted — I always seem to have a thing for well-painted translucent layers of curtains / clothing / screens, which I have definitely mentioned in other exhibition reviews!

Ending off this exhibition review with these test prints of Hokusai’s all-too-familiar South Wind, Clear Sky, also known as Red Fuji, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, c. 1830–32. See here the ‘completed’ version at the Met Museum.

Overall, I preferred the artworks in the first rotation to those in the second rotation. Either way, it was wonderful to see so many amazing works in one place. I’d recommend opening up these images and zooming in on the many details — especially the spectacular patterns of the clothing!

Life in Edo actually formed one half of the exhibition, the other half being Russel Wong in Kyoto featuring contemporary photographs of geiko in Kyoto — which I will also be sharing about separately!

If you would like to see more of the exhibition, check out ACM’s virtual gallery of the exhibition as well as a super cool digital experience of Utagawa Hiroshige’s Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

Find the links to the virtual gallery and the digital experience below:

Life in Edo | Russel Wong in Kyoto, available until the end of the year, 31 December 2021.

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| Cover picture: Lucy Liu, Velocity (one side), 2001, mixed media on canvas |

National Museum of Singapore – Unhomed Belongings

2019 began with Unhomed Belongings at NMS, which did an interesting pairing of Lucy Liu’s and Shubigi Rao’s artworks. I especially liked Liu’s Lost and Found books, which contains objects that she picks up from the streets in whichever place she travels to. Rao’s highlight work for me was The Wood for the Trees that is part of her wider project on documenting destroyed books and libraries.

I love books and art, so I always like artworks that incorporate books in some way or another…

I next visited the i Light and Light to Night festivals centred around the 2019 Bicentennial and the new S.E.A. Focus art fair, which I had shared about in the two linked posts, click over to read more!

Science Centre Singapore – The Inventions of Ancient Greece

The last time I went to the Science Centre, I was there for a class trip, and I think it has been 11 years?? (Where does the time go?) I have a long-standing thing for ancient Greek stories and things, so I was intrigued when I saw banners advertising this exhibition around the city.

The exhibition featured replicas of Greek inventions that were made for both practical and aesthetic / for fun purposes, and it’s amazing to see how these inventions rely solely on physics, rather than the technology we see today. I really liked the hydraulic automaton of the “chirping birds” and of the “returning owl”. Depending on the water level in the container, the birds will chirp, only stopping when the owl turns towards them; when the water level lowers again, the owl turns away and the birds chirp again (as shown in the picture). The second exhibit above is a “robot” that automatically refills wine cups – how cool is that?

The exhibits came alongside videos showing how the inventions work. A shoutout as well to the friendly staff who kindly gave me and my sister a tour, helpfully explaining all of the exhibits in detail!

National Museum of Singapore – Packaging Matters

A quick visit again to NMS to see this exhibition on food packaging in 20th century Singapore! Some local coffee shops and chains still serve kopi in that flowery cup (second from left), which is nice to see!

ArtScience Museum – Wonderland

The travelling exhibition Wonderland from ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) was so fun! It shows the influence of the famous story of Alice and her image across film, photography, animation and many aspects of popular culture. I loved the sets designed for the exhibition (like the many doors!) and all the interactive elements, which made it feel like you were going down a quirky adventure too.

Wonderland made its first stop at ArtScience Museum on its global tour, so look out for it in your city! Also, I’m so glad that Singapore brings in many international exhibitions and artists’ works these days!

National Gallery Singapore – Lim Cheng Hoe: Painting Singapore

I visited National Gallery Singapore for their Awakenings and Lim Cheng Hoe: Painting Singapore exhibitions. I liked seeing the serene watercolour paintings by Lim of an older Singapore. The long-running Lim Cheng Hoe exhibition closes tomorrow on 5th Jan.

Asian Civilisations Museum – Guo Pei: Chinese Art and Couture

Seeing Guo Pei’s gowns and dresses at ACM was such a dream – every one of her creations is absolutely stunning! My most favourite were 冰雪皇后 (Snow Queen) and 大金 (Magnificent Gold Gown). I was so very excited to see 大金, because it was splashed all over Instagram when it was shown at The Met Museum’s China: Through the Looking Glass exhibition in 2015 (I did a review of the exhibition catalogue, linked here, though the catalogue doesn’t feature this dress). I couldn’t believe I could see the gown for myself!

STPI – Takashi Murakami: From Superflat to Bubblewrap

So, I can somewhat see the appeal of Takashi Murakami’s work and why he’s so popular, but I’m still not personally convinced. I’ve always found his work too “commercial”, if you will, and it’s interesting to note that the artist was commenting on the economic side of things (I can’t remember how it was phrased exactly) through these works. His works are meta – while commenting on commercialisation, his works have also become coveted commodities in the art market.

National Museum of Singapore – An Old New World

I visited NMS the most in 2019! An Old New World talks about the voyages of Dutch and British East India Companies back in their heyday and the trade that they engaged in in Singapore and in the region. I especially liked this exhibit (on loan from the Rijksmuseum, which I really want to visit!!) for its fusion sources of production – the wooden chest from Bavaria (present-day Jakarta), the porcelain from Japan, spices contained within the porcelain bottles traded across Asia, and the whole item commissioned by the Dutch East India Company.

An Old New World is on show till 29 March 2020.

ArtScience Museum – Disney: Magic of Animation

ArtScience Museum is on a great roll with their exhibitions – I absolutely loved Disney: Magic of Animation because it was like revisiting my childhood, and it was also wonderful seeing the art of my more recent Disney favourites like Tangled and Frozen II!

Disney: Magic of Animation is on show till 29 March 2020.

My final exhibition of 2019 was actually #futuretogether by teamLab at Gardens by the Bay, which I went to see on New Years’ Eve. Looking forward to all the art in 2020!

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2018 has been my full year back in Singapore since moving back, and at first, I thought there was less happenings in art here. After a while, things have picked up, but there have been many exhibitions and events that I didn’t choose to post in detail on this blog – lack of time is always a major reason for my lack of updates! So, I thought it would be nice to look back at all of the art exhibitions and events I went to this year!

Asian Civilisations Museum – Permanent Galleries

I started off 2018 with a visit to ACM to see their permanent galleries. I really loved seeing Tang Shipwreck with all of those painted bowls and those acorn-shaped game pieces (for gambling)!

ACM has just opened their new Christian and Islamic art galleries this month, so that’s something I’m definitely going to check out in 2019.

ArtScience Museum – Treasures of the Natural World

I went to see both ‘Treasures of the Natural World’ and ‘Art from the Streets’ at ArtScience Museum on the same day (double exhibition tickets are so worth it!). ArtScience Museum continues to be my favourite museum in Singapore as they have the best exhibitions.

I was surprised to find out that I really enjoyed seeing exhibits of preserved stuffed animals that look so life-like! All of the exhibits were on loan from Natural History Museum in London, which of course, I’m now planning to visit when I get myself to London!

National Museum of Singapore – The More We Get Together: Singapore’s Playgrounds 1930 – 2030

Peranakan Museum – Amek Gambar: Peranakans and Photography

There was then ‘The More We Get Together: Singapore’s Playgrounds 1930 – 2030’ at National Museum of Singapore, a simple exhibition talking about styles and models of playgrounds in Singapore. Basically, Singapore wins at urban planning, I have to say!

I also revisited Peranakan Museum for the first time in probably 10 years to see ‘Amek Gambar: Peranakans and Photography’. Sticking to the museum’s specialised theme of Peranakan culture, the Amek Gambar – meaning to take pictures – exhibition shows a range of black and white photographs of Peranakans and old cameras. The exhibition is on till February 3rd, 2019.

National Gallery Singapore – Rirkrit Tiravanija

I always visit National Gallery Singapore for exhibitions or events or just to bum at their Gallery & Co cafe. My first visit of the year was to see the new site-specific commissioned work of Rirkrit Tiravanija at NGS’ rooftop. It’s a large-scale bamboo structure with a pathway that you can walk through from one end to the other, and there’s also a Japanese teahouse in the centre, though it was too hot that day for me to join in in the tea ceremony events they were holding at the time.

Singapore Philatelic Museum – The Little Prince: Behind the Story

I like to visit Singapore Philatelic Museum (or the “Stamp Museum”) every once in a while to see their exhibitions that somehow always manage to incorporate stamps! It was nice to re-see Arnaud Nazare-Aga’s Little Prince sculptures at the ‘The Little Prince: Behind the Story’ exhibition. I had first seen them in Hong Kong in 2015 during the Christmas and New Year season – see the post here!

National Gallery Singapore – Children’s Festival

It’s always so fun at Children’s Festival at National Gallery Singapore seeing everyone, kids and adults, having fun playing with the artworks! The first one pictured is all kitchen sponges and for the second artwork, you could throw those triangle-shaped pieces and they would stick on the patterned wall.

I’m also very proud to say that I managed to speed-walk across Justiniani’s bridge in one piece this time round, HAHAHA! For last year’s edition, I was so scared of the never-ending depths of the illusionistic effect of the bridge that I actually paused while walking across it. I’m still kinda terrified of this kind of things, but clearly it’s only me, since all of the other kids were happily examining the details in the bridge.

National Library Singapore (Central) – Selling Dreams: Early Advertising in Singapore

‘Selling Dreams: Early Advertising in Singapore’ is a very well-researched and very big exhibition on advertisements in Singapore from the 1830s to the 1960s. I really recommend reading all of the details in the didactics for the exhibits, as they are all so interesting! This was probably the longest time I spent at an exhibition though, about 2 hours? The exhibition is on till 24th February 2019.

National Gallery Singapore – (Re)collect

I shared a mini review of ‘(Re)collect’ at National Gallery Singapore on my Instastories, now saved in my highlights, to try out a new format of sharing about exhibitions! That was really fun, but I also wanted to share Lee Lim’s composite photographs on a bigger screen, so that it would be clearer to see. His photographs appear like Chinese ink paintings, especially with their Chinese inscriptions and his seal on the sides of the paintings. It’s fascinating to see how photographs can also look like paintings in a way.

The Cathay – Whatshisname x Mighty Jaxx

The first time I saw these dogs, I was walking towards The Cathay from YMCA. From afar, I thought could this possibly be Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog I’m about to see?? Well, turns out these weren’t Koons’ sculptures, but Whatshisname’s pooping dogs are humorous in their own way, yes? A total of 4 dogs were commissioned for The Cathay, and they are still on show!

Singapore Night Festival 2018

For this year’s Singapore Night Festival, I was excited to see FierS à Cheval by Compagnie des Quidams after seeing photos of their performance at the opening of Tai Kwun in Hong Kong (which I must visit!). Horses are my favourite animals, and the performers really captured the elegant movements of horses. Funnily enough, this performance was made for the Year of the Horse in 2014, but it’s been so popular that the company has continued to perform this show until now!

I also went to see the dress exhibits from World of WearableArt (WOW), which holds an annual award competition for fashion designers from all over the world to present their avant-garde designs. These two dresses were my favourite!

STPI – Handmade Readymades

These two prints by Lichtenstein were shown at STPI’s exhibition ‘Handmade Readymades’. The exhibition featured the prints of four 20th century American artists, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and Roy Lichtenstein, but I only took a liking to Lichtenstein’s prints. The first time I visited STPI in 2015, I think, I also remember seeing and liking Lichtenstein’s prints. That aside, STPI always has top-notch exhibitions so I always like to visit. I’m looking forward to their Cheong Soo Pieng exhibition opening in January 2019!

Gardens by the Bay – Mid-autumn Celebrations

Gardens by the Bay had such a lovely display for the Mid-Autumn celebrations! The giant lanterns also gave me Story of Yanxi Palace vibes, which was everyone’s favourite drama of the year, right?? YASSS.

National Museum of Singapore – In an Instant: Polaroid at the Intersection of Art and Technology

‘In an Instant: Polaroid at the Intersection of Art and Technology’, a travelling exhibition that has made its stop at the National Museum of Singapore, was not what I was expecting at all!

The beginning of the exhibition charts out the history of the Polaroid, starting from its invention by Edwin Land, who was inspired by his daughter when she questioned on a holiday trip, why can’t we have our photographs printed out instantaneously, instead of going through the long process of developing film.

Most of the exhibition features artistic Polaroids following a few themes, but my favourites are these more contemporary shots captured on Polaroids. I didn’t realise that so many prominent artists and photographers had worked with Polaroid! The exhibition is on till 31st March 2019.

Affordable Art Fair Singapore 2018

I went for a quick walk through Affordable Art Fair in November, and all of my photos can be seen in my Instastories highlights! It was my first time attending it in Singapore and I found it much livelier that my experience at AAF in Hong Kong in 2015.

I found the paintings of those curly haired little, hmm, midgets by a Japanese artist (in the first two photos) really cute! There were also many South Korean galleries at the fair, and I really liked the style of these works by Korean artists (latter two photos).

ArtScience Museum – Future World (Revamped!)

This year was really the year of teamLab for me, seeing their works across ArtScience Museum, National Gallery Singapore and Marina Bay Sands. See my posts on teamLab – Part I and Part II!

I’d shared about ‘Future World’ at ArtScience Museum before it closed for revamp, and I was debating if I should visit the revamped exhibition… Guess what, I did! I bought a bundle ticket to see the new Future World and the Minimalism exhibition across ArtScience Museum and National Gallery Singapore, and I’m glad I did because I like the revamped exhibition even more! Also, I’m definitely going to do up posts on the ‘Minimalism: Space. Light. Object.’ exhibition(s) because I have so much opinions on it, so I would leave my comments for those upcoming posts.

Christmas!

We have reached Christmastime, the best time of the year!! This year’s theme of Disney Magical Moments for the Orchard Road Christmas decorations were so fun! I grew up on Disney, so this is definitely a special year!

Ion Art Gallery – Virtually Versailles

My last exhibition of the year was ‘Virtually Versailles’ at the Ion Art Gallery and Ion Sky, all the way up on the 55th floor of Ion Orchard. I already know that Versailles is on my travel wishlist, and this exhibition gave a taste of the Palace of Versailles’s architecture, decor and extensive art collection.

It’s mostly made up of a lot of videos, so I didn’t really capture many good photos of it. There are many interactive elements though, like biking around different parts of the palace (actual biking, virtual tour of palace), and having your face superimposed on royal portraits, which was really fun!! This free exhibition is on till 6th January 2019.

The last photo was a candid shot of me taken by my sister looking at the collection in the Palace, and it just seems like such a nice reminder to keep looking at all the art around us! Here’s to 2019!

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The showing of ‘Artist and Empire’ at the Tate – not exactly the same as this one in NGS – was apparently the first of its kind in tackling issues of British colonialism on its own shores. I was quite surprised to learn that, but it also tells of the sensitivity of colonialism and its effect even today.

| Cover picture: Thomas Jones Barker, ‘The Secret of United Kingdom’s Greatness’ (Queen Victoria Presenting A Bible in the Audience Chamber at Windsor), c. 1863, oil on canvas |

George Francis Joseph, Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, 1817, oil on canvas

Of course, the exhibition opens with a portrait of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern Singapore. Anyone who has studied in Singapore would be familiar with this image since it’s always shown in Social Studies textbooks! Who would have thought I would grow up to see the real thing for myself! A copy of this portrait is also currently exhibited at the National Museum of Singapore in their Singapore History Gallery.

Lee Wen, Untitled (Raffles), 2000, video and photographic documentation of site-specific installation

Lee, a local Singaporean artist, had an installation in 2000 that invited people to view the statue of Raffles face-to-face by going up on that pictured platform, instead of always viewing it from below. It sounds like a fun activity to try, yet I think it seems quite political in a way.

John Everett Millais, The North-West Passage, 1847, oil on canvas

Henry Nelson O’Neil, Home Again, 1858, 1859, oil on canvas

The exhibition contained a mix of works that were done in the primetime of British colonial ambitions and contemporary responses that address this topic in their works. Millais’s The North-West Passage depicts an old seaman determined to set sail on the North-West Passage which went between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and is illustrated on the map on the table in front of him. In reality, unsuccessful attempts had been made to traverse this passage but this painting helped garner support for England’s then upcoming attempt in 1857, a decade after the painting’s completion.

O’Neil’s Home Again is a somewhat fictionalized scene of British soldiers returning home from India after suppressing a rebellion there in May 1857. Contrary to Millais’s work, viewers were not as agreeable with O’Neil’s piece as many British soldiers returned ill and not in such a good state as the painting suggests.

Andrew Gilbert, British Infantry Advance on Jerusalem, 4th of July, 1879, 2015, installation

Tang Da Wu, You see No Sunset on your soil, I saw your Son Sat on my paddy field, 1986, acrylic on canvas

Elizabeth Butler, The Remnants of an Army, 1879, oil on canvas

Butler’s The Remnants of an Army was also exhibited at the Tate’s side of this exhibition and it was pretty momentous as it hasn’t been shown for a long time. The lone survivor represented the repercussions of Britain’s colonial wars and Butler herself was not supportive of Britain’s imperialist acts. In fact, this painting was well-loved in its time for its image of endurance and remained so up until WWII when battle paintings became less popular.

Arthur Pan, Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, 1953, oil on canvas

And of course, a portrait of the iconic Queen Elizabeth II!

Johan Zoffany, Colonel Mordaunt’s Cock Match, c. 1784-1786, oil on canvas

Leslie MacDonald Gill, A Great Industry, Where Our Tea Comes From, c. 1948-1953, color lithograph

I love drinking tea, which I probably picked up when living in Hong Kong, and it amuses me to see that Gill did a very nice record of where these great tea leaves come from all these years ago!

Chuah Thean Teng, [Not titled] (Two Women and a Child), c. 1955, batik

I’d only known batik as used in clothing and I found it so cool that it’s used in art as well! Chuah was one of the earliest artists in Malaya to employ batik as an artistic medium. This was part of an effort to promote local identity through art, which the latter section of the exhibition explores in the artworks of modern artists from colonized regions, including Australia, India, Burma, Malaya and Brunei.

George Washington Lambert, Weighing the Fleece, 1921, oil on canvas

Tom Roberts, An Australian Native (Portrait of a Lady), 1888, oil on canvas

Samsui Woman, 1963; Chinese Woman, 1963; Sarawak Malay, 1962, all pastel on paper

These three artworks were part of the book Malaysians to commemorate the formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 and Singapore was included in the Federation before gaining independence in 1965. Samsui Woman refers to the community of female Chinese construction workers in postwar Singapore! It’s really interesting to see how these portraits captured a bit of life back in the old days.

The topic of British colonialism and the effects on its colonies is a very wide one which adds to the difficulty in discussing it, but I found the exhibition very well-thought-out with clear sections that displayed various aspects of how colonialism permeated society. The contemporary artworks left a little to be desired in my opinion, but I did like how the artworks that showed the British perspective, which was in itself also quite variable, was balanced with an entire gallery that focused on how local artists responded in the face of colonialism and showcased their forms of identity in their art.

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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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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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