Local Interest: Lecture by Prof. Gao Minglu

Prof. Gao Minglu, a specialist in contemporary Chinese art, will speak at LSU on Wednesday, April 14 at 5pm in 103 Design. Prof. Gao is Head of Fine Arts at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in China and Research Professor at the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. He was the curator of the first national exhibition of contemporary art in China, the China/Avant-Garde exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Beijing in 1989 as well as the editor of China's leading art journal, Meishu (Fine Arts) during the 1980s. Prof. Gao was educated at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2000. Since then, he has curated many exhibitions and written seminal publications on various aspects of contemporary Chinese art.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information about the lecture, please visit http://www.design.lsu.edu/.

Further information about Prof. Gao's work may be found at the following two sites:
http://tinyurl.com/yeodjvh
http://www.artresearchcenter.org/HomepageEnglish.asp

Finally, a brief history of the development and exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art may be found at the following two links:
http://bigthink.com/ideas/4999
http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777122473/

Local Interest: Buddhist Symbols in Tibetan Art

Louisiana ArtWorks in New Orleans will host a presentation by the Tibetan Buddhist monk Venerable Tsering Phunstok on symbols in Tibetan Buddhist art next Monday, March 29 at 7pm. The event is free and open to the public; the suggested donation is $3.

For the announcement regarding the event, see the following link:
http://buddhistartnews.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/buddhist-symbols-in-tibetan-art/

The website for Louisiana ArtWorks, a non-profit organization described as "a nexus for creative work, education, exhibitions and marketing" is located here:
http://www.louisianaartworks.org/

The event does not yet appear on the calendar on their website, so it's probably a good idea to call ahead first. In addition to public events of this type, Louisiana ArtWorks also features exhibitions and a shop selling work by local artists.

Local Interest: Biking and Blogging

Baton Rouge native and Georgetown University graduate Evan Villarrubia has embarked upon a year-long bicycling trip through China. After graduating from Georgetown with a degree in Chinese, he worked in Beijing for an American construction company in order to save money for his trip. There, he met his traveling partners: Andy Keller, a fellow American, and Alexis Lerognon, from France.

Villarrubia's blog chronicles his quest to observe the everyday lives of the "laobaixing" ("LBX"), or common people: children playing in parks, men flying kites, migrant workers, and villagers. Having departed from Beijing, the journey is taking the three along the southeastern coast of China to the southwest, then up through Tibet and Inner Mongolia and back to Beijing.

A recent hometown article about Villarrubia appears here:
http://www.2theadvocate.com/features/80873222.html?showAll=y&c=y

And the link for his blog may be accessed here:
http://www.portraitofanlbx.com/

For anyone wondering exactly how far a degree in Chinese can take you, the answer is more than 7000 miles. True cycling afficionados will also appreciate the discussion of more technical matters!

Local Interest: Japan Fest at NOMA

On Sunday, November 8 from 10am-4pm, the New Orleans Museum of Art will host a Japan Fest featuring Japanese traditional music, folk dancing and martial arts demonstrations, plus food, games, crafts and more at the Museum and the surrounding City Park grounds. The event is billed as "the largest annual celebration of Japanese culture in the Gulf South."

Japan Fest is free for Louisiana residents, and outdoor activities are free for everyone. Museum admission for out-of-state visitors is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors and $4 for children. For more information, please visit: http://www.noma.org/special.html.

Local Interest: Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a Greek-born journalist who lived in Japan from 1890 until his death. His Japanese name was Koizumi Yakumo. While living in Japan, he wrote several books about local customs and ghost stories. His most well-known book was Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1903), several stories from which served as the basis for the 1964 film Kwaidan directed by Japanese director Kobayashi Masaki, which won the special jury prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival.

Before going to Japan, Hearn lived in New Orleans for ten years, moving there in 1877 to report for various newspapers. Interestingly, his writing in New Orleans was similar to the type of writing that he did in Japan in terms of its focus on local customs, in particular, on the Creole dialect, cuisine, and voodoo. He is credited by some modern scholars for shaping the image of New Orleans as possessing a distinct local culture due to its multicultural legacy.

Let's return to the period of time that Hearn spent in Japan. In addition to his career as a newspaper journalist, Hearn also taught English literature at Tokyo University and Waseda University. He married Koizumi Setsu and became a Japanese citizen. Although Hearn is best known for his collections of ghost stories, he also wrote about Japanese art and aesthetics, such as an article entitled "Faces in Japanese Art" in the Atlantic Monthly (August 1896, Vol. 78, Issue 466, pp. 219-227).

Hearn's New Orleans home has been designated a local landmark and is now owned by Richard Scribner, a professor in the LSU School of Public Health. Many of his writings on New Orleans life and customs have been collected in S. Frederick Starr, ed., Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2001). An article about Hearn's cookbook La Cuisine Creole (1885), and several recipes from it can be found here:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/food/side/4544683.html

Lafcadio Hearn is a fascinating link not only between Japan and the state of Louisiana, but also with LSU!

(photo of Lafcadio Hearn from Wikimedia Commons)