ARTES MAGAZINE

       A brisk mid-winter walk through the streets of lower Manhattan eventually led me under the iconic Romanesque arch that stands at the center of Washington Square. To my left, a uniformly-pristine row of Federalist-era, brick-and-columned town houses, standing like monuments to another, more gentile time. Over the years, NYU’s bustling urban academic community has [...]

Editor’s Note: The western-most district of Kutch, in the state of Gujarat is one of the most ecologically and ethnically diverse districts in India.  Close to the Pakistan border and subject to a massive earthquake in 2001, the people have a reputation for strength and resilience. Kutch is a celebrated for its art, crafts, music, dance, people [...]

When a Pittsburgh gallery representative asked Ed Bing Lee if he could create a teapot for an upcoming exhibition he thought, “of course, that’s child’s play.” Then his imagination went to work. “I like the idea of taking an art form that already exists and then reinterpreting it,” Lee says. “I knew I could do [...]

Is art a part of life, or does it, in certain ways, stand apart from other forms of expression? Though sometimes challenging to categorize, broadly and philosophically- speaking, artistic expression deals with constantly evolving notions of aesthetics and rasa (taste), that is, varied ways of seeing and perceiving life and the surrounding world, but always [...]

Ancient pictographs depict China as the Land of the Middle Kingdom, suspended half way between heaven and earth and blessed by splendid isolation from the rest of the world. In this century, this sprawling nation of 1.3 billion sits squarely in the real world, striving to find a place and a voice in a vast [...]

With the explosion of the green movement affecting everything from automobiles to furniture, rug importers and manufacturers are taking a fresh look at their production methods only to discover that their industry has essentially been green all along. Others are developing ways to enhance the green credentials of their handmade rugs in terms of dyeing, [...]

Tang Dynasty Camel and Rider is a thousand-year-old treasure within reach of many collectors This extraordinary early Tang Dynasty (618-907 c.e.) camel and rider (20” tall x 14” wide) is representative of a golden period in Chinese cultural history. After hundreds of years of regional conflict and division, central China was unified under as series [...]