Paging Asia

The big stars of the contemporary Chinese-art market are nearly household names now, but frankly, even experienced collectors
sometimes get their Wangs and Huangs mixed up. Luckily the latest batch of Asian-art publications includes two helpful companions to an exploding and occasionally bewildering field. China Onward: The Estella Collection, Chinese Contemporary Art, 1966–2006 (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, $86), by independent curator Britta Erickson and her strong team of scholars from China, Europe and the U.S., is written in refreshingly intelligible English: succinct, penetrable and accessible to collectors as well as academics. The collection casts a wide net in the best sense of the phrase, going back to the 1960s and including the work of important ink painters. Beautifully illustrated, with a bibliography of well-selected readings on individual artists and a comprehensive index (so incomprehensibly lacking in many contemporary titles), this book is a useful winner.

Putting contemporary Chinese art in a lifestyle context is Philip Tinari’s Artists in China (Verba Volant, $95), which documents artists at home, in their studios and in art galleries. Handsome and appealing, it is like a spread in a shelter magazine taken to the coffee-table extreme. It’s amusing to see that, yes, Yue Minjun does look just like his bald, smiling figures and that Zhang Xiaogang’s studio is light, airy and as disturbingly quiet as his portraits. Tinari, a journalist and adviser to Art Basel and Sotheby’s Hong Kong, offers short sketches of the artists in a fresh, revealing style. Cultural enclaves such as the 789 District in Beijing are new to China and have a distinct local flavor, although the reader may smile to see that artists’ spaces all over the world contain similar piles of paint tubes, tangles of computer wires, packs of cigarettes and bottles of water.

Despite what you might read in other media, contemporary Chinese art is still collected primarily by Westerners. A Passion for Asia: The Rockefeller Legacy (Asia Society, $60), published in conjunction with a 2006 exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Asia Society in New York, provides insight into one American family’s history of collecting Asian art (the Rockefellers understood the importance of Asia long before the rest of the public). John D. Rockefeller Jr. had an international outlook during a period when most Americans were isolationist, and he passed that attitude on to his family, many of whom became collectors themselves. The book is filled with historical photographs of Asian artworks in the famous Rockefeller homes in New York City; at Kykuit, in Pocantico Hills; and at the Eyrie, on Mount Desert, Maine. Complementing the pictures are essays by five family members. These provide a few personal anecdotes that belie the public image of some figures, such as one amusing recollection of John D. Jr. sitting on the floor, rolling his Qing Dynasty porcelain vases around on the carpet to check for flaws.

The Rockefeller lifestyle seems almost working-class compared with the dreamy, sophisticated lives depicted in Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690–1850 (MFA Publications, $55), edited by Boston MFA curator Anne Nishimura Morse. This steamy yet scholarly catalogue offers a detailed study of the amusements and economy of the Edo (modern-day Tokyo) pleasure quarters that these pictures portray. The description of the “take no prisoners, fight to the death” world of the ukiyo-e artists, struggling against a volatile market and fickle consumers to produce cheap prints or more upscale paintings, will certainly resonate with modern readers, whether they are makers or patrons of art. Particularly unusual among the pieces illustrated are a pair of Hokusai (1760–1849) paper lanterns—imagine Picasso painting umbrellas—that were flattened and mounted as hand scrolls in the 19th century and then brilliantly restored to their original, three-dimensional form.

Another rich source for images of this decadent world is found in Arts of Japan: The John C. Weber Collection (Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin, $59), edited by Melanie Trede with Julia Meech. Containing well-written essays by respected academics in the field, this catalogue for a traveling exhibition shows what can be accomplished in just 10 years by a motivated and cultured connoisseur. Ranging from Negoro lacquer vessels to a child’s padded winter kimono woven in a Mickey Mouse design, the collection is particularly strong in ukiyo-e painting.