C.W. Eckersberg /A nude woman doing her hair before a mirror 1841 – In the cool light and with classical serenity Eckersberg underplays an erotic message. The picture with the mirror crosses what is seen with what one is not allowed to see, exposure with concealment, repetition of forms with shifts in balance. With simple effects he has used the …

LIU YUANSHOU 1/3 – He was born in Beijing in 1967. Liu Yuanshou, Chinese Realist painter, has become fascinated by the seductively temperate cultural and physical climate of the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu. A dark sultriness permeates the scene, as if each young women has been engaged inside a little transcendental shell. LIU YUANSHOU 2/3 – He earned a …

Tan Dun (born 1957, Changsha, Hunan), is a Chinese contemporary classical composer and conductor, most widely known for his music for the medal ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. http://tandun.com/ His works often incorporate audiovisual elements, but also use instruments constructed from organic materials, such as paper, water, and stone. During his time at Columbia University, he created his first opera …

Hong Ying is easily one of China’s best-known authors internationally. She was born in Chongqing on September day of 1962, towards the end of the Great Leap Forward. She began to write at eighteen, leaving home shortly afterwards to spend the next ten years moving around China, exploring her voice as a writer via poems and short stories. After brief …

PARTING BEFORE DAYBREAK – First the day, then daybreak, and finally the time for parting. Local time in Beijing is 7 o’clock according to the TV. As a child, I liked to lie in bed and wait for daybreak, my silver broach stayed in its soft dormant curve. I counted my fingers, exactly ten. Almost daybreak, but no light in …

PRIYANKA WAGHELA 1/3 – Priyanka Waghela is a writer and visual artist. She has exhibited her paintings in many prestigious art galleries, and written script for films which are selected in may Art events. “We live in such a world which seems to be in an order, but under it fluxes the rage of human emotions, chaos.” PRIYANKA WAGHELA 2/3 …

Exhibitions of her paintings have been many, but as a poet, she is new to the Indian literary scene. Originally from Kolkata, she to Paris at the age of 21, to paint, major in French literature at the Sorbonne. After nineteen years, she returned to India, to live in the river-laced village of Moira in Goa, where she painted and …