Chinese Painting

The Wall Street Journal has been running some interesting articles under the heading of "The Staying Inside Guide," offering suggestions for artistic or cultural resources to view online during the pandemic. Yesterday I came across an interesting one entitled "Immersive Painted Worlds," on Chinese painting, about which I know virtually nothing. (The article may be behind a subscription firewall.)

The article has an impressive number of links to various things online, and I watched the first couple, a pair of 15-minute videos from a former BBC program called "The Culture Show," which together form an episode on "The Art of Chinese Painting." I thought they were quite interesting. The first episode introduced me to the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, which I had never heard of before. Located in the Gobi Desert, they contain a wealth of wall paintings and statues that are well over 1000 years old and were unknown to the outside world for centuries. They also contained a sealed-off "library" room that was discovered around 1900 and that was filled with millennium-old scrolls and silk paintings, incredibly well-preserved because of the climatic conditions.

The second episode tells of Emperor Huizong of Song (pictured above), who reigned in the early 12th century. An expert painter as well as emperor, he raised painting to a respected art form and changed its style.

Good examples of the remarkable things one knows nothing about! Both episodes together are only half an hour, and they're worth a watch.

Comments

New History Professor!

I am very excited to announce that the college has hired a new history professor! Dr. Francesca Silano will be joining our department next fall. Dr. Silano , who has her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, specializes in Imperial and Soviet Russia. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Miami of Ohio. She will strengthen our ability to offer coursework in European and non-Western history. Next fall, in addition to teaching in the general education Humanities sequence, she will offer courses on Russian history and on modern Europe. We are looking forward to welcoming her to the department.

Rabbits and Wrens

I didn't have 15 of them, to be sure. But when I looked out the front window after getting dressed this morning, I saw not one, but two rabbits out on the front lawn. They weren't very large, so I assume they were still young. But I saw them do something I don't think I've ever seen before: play with each other. They would run toward each other, and then one would hop over the other, bouncing off its back as it sailed over and while they made a kind of squeaking noise. It was really quite funny. After a minute of that, they stopped and went back to eating dandelions, not fresh yellow ones, but old ones that had gone to seed, the kind you used to blow the heads off when you were a kid. They bit them off at the base, so that the stems were sticking straight out of their mouths like a straw, with the heads at the end. And then, phwoosh, in they went, nibbled right up--like a person sucking in a spaghetti noodle. (Not that any of us would...

Summer Vacation

Let the summer begin! I finally finished off my grading yesterday. Now the summer opens up before me. Well, not exactly. I do have a few random independent study papers hiding in my inbox, which has been overflowing for the past week. But I can get them taken care of. And a handful of students still owe me late work, which will come in over the next few days. I'm also teaching a couple of online courses; the first exams from one of those come in next Monday. At noon today I have a committee meeting, a group pulled together to work on curricular planning for next fall in the face of continuing uncertainty. And this afternoon all faculty have to attend the first of several Zoom sessions devoted to online teaching, to help us prepare for all eventualities moving forward. Hmmm.... And oh, yes, I just remembered -- rats! -- that today is the deadline for reviewing the department's catalog copy for next year. There is also that long o...

Plague Time

Search This Blog