Ars Asiatica. La peinture chinoise au Musee Cernouchi. Vsevolod Dmitriev/ Apollon

"La peinture chinoise au Musee Gernuschi".  Avril – Juin 1912 par Edouard Chavannes et Raphael Petrucci  van Oest et Cie. Ed. Bruxelles, Paris. 1914  48 fr.

Chinese Art is the First Volume  «Ars Asiatica» -  non-periodic journal of materials and works on the study of Oriental arts. This case, led by Golubev, will play an undoubted role in our knowledge of Asia, in particular – it can serve a great service for Russian artistic self-determination.In 1912, in the summer, the Chernusky Museum in Paris organized an exhibition of the most characteristic works of Chinese creativity (144 rooms), taken from the collections of Paris, Brussels and London (mainly from private collections).The above edition is partly its catalogue. The book is accompanied by a general list of scrolls (as is known, the artists of the Heavenly Empire wrote on silk), important for checking some dates and attributions, but, of course, the main value of the publication lies in the most beautiful reproductions of a number of samples of Chinese creativity (51 reproductions on individual sheets, 4 of them in paints) and in the accompanying article. Its authors -Ed. Chavanne  and  R.  PetrucciFamous connoisseurs of Chinese art, having singled out from the works that were at the exhibition, those that could serve as faces for a comprehensive clarification of the eras of Chinese creativity, analyze them with exhaustive detail, armed with an excellent knowledge of Chinese writing and aesthetics.

This work is intended mainly for sinologists and collectors, and if it does not give us an explanation of why and what attracts us Chinese painting, but it is an excellent guide to an accurate and clear understanding of the historical evolutions of the artistic creativity of the Celestial Empire, from the U.S. to the H.S. century, from the time of the H.C.Kou K”ai-tche  up to the age of eclectic and decadent emperorK’ien-long.

Last summer (1913), in the same museum under the same direction, an exhibition of Buddhist art was held - a variety of types of sculpture and painting in India, China, Japan and Tibet. The results of this exhibition will be the second editionArs Asiatica –L’Exposition d’Art Bouddique au  Musee Cernuschi en1913. We are looking forward to it, for it will probably be a new and major step, leading us into that dark area, the need to know which is now felt more and more insistently.

                                               Vs.Dm.