Asian Art refers to the varied creative traditions, styles, and cultural expressions originating from the vast areas of Asia, including East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. It encompasses a wide range of mediums, such as ceramics, painting, sculpture, textiles, calligraphy and decorative arts. Specialist Alexander Clement gives more insight into the different areas of this fascinating genre.
14/03/2025
The art and craft of the Islamic world encompasses thousands of years of history, spanning the region of South West and central Asia including India and Pakistan, as well as the once mighty empires of Persia (now Iran, Iraq, Syria and beyond) and Ottoman (Turkey, North Africa and Southern Europe). The polytheistic religions of Hinduism and Buddhism alongside Islam are the focus of great devotional art and crafts in all manner of materials including ceramics, metalwares, carved wood, lacquerware and paintings.
With several thousand years of history, Chinese culture is rich with art and design, from every-day objects through to the highest forms of decorative achievement. Revered and collected throughout the world for centuries, the creative output of China is practically unrivalled by any other nation. With pottery and porcelain, bronzes, lacquer, cloisonne and painted enamel, jades and hardstones, coral and silverware, there is almost no art or craft that the peoples of China haven’t mastered and excelled in. This makes for a huge collecting area and a subject of near limitless study.
Although being another country with a long cultural and political history, a great deal of what we find in the West was made during a relatively short period, the Meiji era. Spanning the years between 1868 and 1912, the reign of the emperor Meiji, some of the finest works of art to emerge from Asia were produced, fuelled by a desire to forge strong trading links with the Western world. Like China, the Japanese excelled in the production of pottery and porcelain as well as lacquer, bronzes, cloisonne enamel, silver and gold, all in a distinctive style and drawing inspiration from a rich mythology and devotion to the religions of Shinto and Buddhism.
This encompasses the works of several nations including Tibet, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam. Like the aforementioned regions, South East Asia is steeped in history and mythology, making for a startling array of artworks including paintings, wood carvings, ceramics, lacquerware, stone sculpture, bronzes and other metalwares, spanning hundreds of years. The Buddhist faith was at the heart of many creative endeavours alongside the intricate mythologies of each nation and dynasty as they evolved.
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