The Chinese Opera - temporary exhibition at Museu do Oriente, Lisboa - The 10th of December 2016

Fascinated as anyone would be for Chinese Opera and everything it entails I didn't hesitate to go to the second floor of Museu do Oriente, where a temporary exhibition on such a theme was being held, in search of those visual images. 

 

 

I was immediately drawn to the beauty of the costumes and the meaning of the designs therewith associated, as I walked into the first exhibit room.

Ceremonial court costume for a male character (sheng) with embroidered dragon and waves - Beijing c. 1970.

Female character costume (dan) with phoenixes, peonies and "sleeve waves" (to add to the movement in dance and thus produce a visual effect as seen in the image underneath) for an empress, imperial concubine, princess, female warrior and general or a bride of a hish society rank family - Beijing - c. 1980.

Bamboo knit apparel (left).





















Budhist Monk costume - Beijing c. 1970 (right)

Costumes for female monk and boatman (main characters of the Autumn River opera) - textile - Beijing c. 1970.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another exhibit room further enhanced the value of the opera characters subdivided in a vast array of typical ones  and the importance of their individuality together with the role played by not only the costumes, but hte accessories and make-up.

 

Caoxie sandals (for low class social status characters) and shoes for officials - Beijing c.1979/80 - vegetable fibers, synthetic materials, wood and textile.

Hairpins with zoomorphic and leaf shaped ornaments to be used by female charaters - Hong Kong - 20th century - metal, pearls, jade, rose quartz and other semi-precious stones. 

Sichuan masks - papier machê and horse-hair - 1992 (right).

On either side of one of the exhibit rooms one could just sit and watch some opera being played, which I did, though I must confess I had no clue as to which type of vast opera repertoire it was from.

 

 

 

 

 

I was equally impressed by the number and wide variety of instruments in display, though the one that mostly caught my attention, not only because of the central position it occupied, was the Yangqin dating from 1925 similar to a psaltery with 28 strings and played with very light sticks.

The embroidered wall hanging on the Three Kings opera (dating to 1993) was very impressive, but what wasn't, to be honest (!) - from the the book of sketches for propitiatory operas, the designs on the variety of well known operas to the rod puppets ...

 

 

 

Character from the Journey to the West opera - Beijing c.1980

Painted rod puppet head

Rod puppets from XuXian, white serpent and blue serpent - Guandong c.1950.

Character (1970) from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, as well as engraving therewith associated (1920).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I may not have been able to fully understand the whole tradition associated with Chinese Opera but Icame out of this exhition with a certainly deeper understanding of what it is about.

 

 

 

 

 

China Today - Defying the limits - temporary exhibition at Museu do Oriente, Lisboa - The 10th of December 2016

I unexpectedly decided to go to Museu do Oriente so as to see two temporary exhibitions, one of which was called China Today - Defying the limits. From freedom of expression to searching for the Chinese Identity and environmental sustainability the works presented couldn't have been more different in their artistic approaches - oil on canvas, digital photography and pencil on paper.

LiFan's paintings had an initial negative impact on me, though taken as a manifesto in defence of the fundamental right to expression does give them a slightly different dimension, I must admit - "Nakedness" as raw as it may look.

Artist Ai Wei Wei flying - 2013 - oil on canvas (two of the tryptic paintings). 

Ai Weiwei and the other fourteen men - 2014 - oil on canvas.

Ai WeiWei, 4 women - 2012 - oil on canvas.

The Du Zhenjun photos presenting a dystopian vision of the undergoing changes in China did impress me. The images were particularly rich visually, irrespective of the chosen thematic and the "Babel Towers" in every image background provided the alegoric sense.

Snow - Digital Photography - 2011 (left). Carnaval - Digital Photography - 2011 (right).

Eating - Digital Photography - 2012 (left). Accident - Digital Photography - 2010 (right).



The ones that mostly impressed me though were the huge pencil drawings with extremely fine details by Qiu Jie on cultural citizenship and the encounter between the Western advertising and "pop culture" and the Chinese iconography.

 

Lady in the street - 2015 (right and left).

The latest book I have read ...

I have just finished reading the 734 pages of one more of Orhan Pamuk's novels - "A strangeness in my mind" and if it has taken me longer to read this book of his, it is simply because I did get carried away by his writing style and did quite often re-read what had touched me in his story-telling approach.



"What matters more in love: What we wish for, or what our fate has in store? Do our choices dictate whether we will be happy or not, or are these things determined by forces beyond our control?

 

 

 

If "this sprawling story of a street vendor's romance is above all a love letter to the Turkish city in all its faded, messy, dusty glory" is true, it is also true that "at the end of A strangeness in my mind you may not remember the manner in which the urban redevelopment initiative progressed, but you'll remember Mevlut. The unschooled, "poor cousin" of this epic struggles everyday with the philosophical dilemma of how one should live. In this way the human drama outshines the portrait of a fascinating city".









 

The latest films I've watched ...

I've been to the cinema twice over the weekend and feel the films I've watched, despite relating to totally different epochs and with significantly different types of approaches have both focused on the importance of values, solidarity and friendship in times of despair. 

Based on a novel by Hans Fallada, "Alone in Berlin" holds onto very strong performances of the main characters - " Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson bring some stoic dignity to a conservatively told true story of Nazi resistance".

"I, Daniel Blake" by Ken Loach is "a polemical indictment of a faceless benefits bureaucracy that strips claimants of their humanity by reducing them to mere numbers (...) it is a celebration of the decency and kinship of (extra)ordinary people who look for each other when the state abandons its duty of care."

Whilst Alone in Berlin is a slow pace type of film allowing you to gradually and almost unoticeably feel the pain of the main characters who choose the potential power of words written on postcards "silent and persistently" distributed in a city surrounded by Nazi informers as a  way of venting their disappointment and despair at a system they believed in and which has claimed their son, I , Daniel Blake has an immediate impact on the viewers because the sequence of the pronounced words and actions being so devastingly strong that the problematic situations which are being unveiled do almost instantaneously become yours ...