Two Chinese figures at the National Gallery of VictoriaIt was not until the present century that Buddhist sculpture, in common with most other forms of Chinese art, was recognised by…

One commonly held prerequisite for a successful portrait is that it will convey something of the psychological life of the sitter.

Pierre Soulages is internationally famous as the most important living French painter of the postwar École de Paris. And yet, Soulages emphatically rejects this associati

Introduction Wang Yuanqi was the most innovative master of the Orthodox school of scholar-amateur painters in China during the early Qing dynasty (1644–19

During the second half of the nineteenth century the British ceramics factory Minton enlisted the talents of many gifted designers and artisans to produce works in a range of ceramic bodies of…

Zen, usually translated as ‘meditation’, is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character chan, which had in turn entered the Chinese vocabulary as an abbreviated form of the Indian Sanskrit word dhyan

Beauty or the life of things, is always deeper as hidden within than as outwardly expressed, even as life of the universe beats always underneath incidental appearance

Like the ancient Greeks or the ancient Moche of Peru, the ancient Maya of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras developed a rich tradition of painting ceramic vessels with clay slips

Like a sacred mantra the words ‘haute couture’ command a hushed silence of awe or generate a cynical sneer of irrelevance

Alfred Felton has long been recognised as the benefactor who transformed the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria

At the age of seventy-five the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) defiantly referred to himself as ‘the old man mad about painting’ (gakyō-rōjin) as he railed against his mortality by declaring that…

Nakahara Nantenbo (Toju Zenchu) (1839–1925), a Japanese monk of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, was born into the Shioda samurai clan of Saga Prefecture in 183

The National Gallery of Victoria will present the large-scale, immersive video works of Wang Gongxin, one of China’s most respected video artists, in a solo exhibition to open on 11…

Introduction Porcelain plates, silver cutlery, sparkling glassware – a well-laid dining table is a work of ar

John Galliano’s Elvira evening dress was one of the final garments to appear on the catwalk of the 2003 autumn-winter ready-to-wear collection that was described by fashion critic Sarah Mower…