5,000 Years of Asian Art in 1 Single, Thrilling Conversation

From “Arts in China,” a bronze wine vessel in the form of a goose, Han dynasty (206 B.C.- A.D. 220). Credit...Brooklyn Museum - The New York Times
From “Arts in China,” a bronze wine vessel in the form of a goose, Han dynasty (206 B.C.- A.D. 220). Credit...Brooklyn Museum - The New York Times
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5,000 Years of Asian Art in 1 Single, Thrilling Conversation

From “Arts in China,” a bronze wine vessel in the form of a goose, Han dynasty (206 B.C.- A.D. 220). Credit...Brooklyn Museum - The New York Times
From “Arts in China,” a bronze wine vessel in the form of a goose, Han dynasty (206 B.C.- A.D. 220). Credit...Brooklyn Museum - The New York Times

Redesigning an American museum’s Asian wing is no mean feat. How to convey the very real throughlines that make terms as broad as “Chinese art” and “Japanese art” meaningful, while also doing justice to the staggering variety of these ancient, and hugely populous, cultures? And what if you are also, like every other museum, under pressure to demonstrate the relevance of your antique artifacts to the present moment?

The Brooklyn Museum, a leading collector of Asian art for more than a century, satisfies these thorny curatorial problems about as well as anyone could in the virtuosic new reinstall of its Japanese and Chinese exhibits. (“Arts of Korea,” with a fascinating array of stark, monochrome ceramics including an 800-year-old sea-green cup with a scalloped rim, opened in 2017; sections on South Asian, Southeast Asian, Buddhist, and Himalayan art are still to come.)

Contemporary pieces, including some of the 50 paintings and sculptures by Chinese or Chinese-descended artists the museum has acquired in the last five years, are now integrated into brisk historical surveys, while a specially commissioned work by the Chinese artist Xu Bing, a curious mash-up of Chinese calligraphy and the Roman alphabet, occupies its own room. Not all this contemporary work is equally strong. But altogether the curators have succeeded in pulling five millenniums of art into a single, thrilling conversation.

One of the enduring preoccupations of Chinese visual culture is a fascination with the inherent formal qualities of ink and paper. Yang Jiechang’s black-on-black “100 Layers of Ink” (1994), a glossy drawing of a crinkled monolith made by saturating rice paper with ink until it buckled, could hold its own in a gallery of postwar American or European abstraction. But Wang Tiande’s 2017 ink painting, “Map of Distant Snowy Mountain Peaks,” a precise vertical landscape marked with delicate incense burns, reminds you that the contemporary Western division between abstract and figurative doesn’t reach around the globe.

Near the new acquisitions, a rapid parade of antique pots and bowls conjures a civilization that has passed through unparalleled heights of luxury without ever shedding the earthier tastes of its prehistory. Black and white stoneware from the Song dynasty (960 to 1279) is as about as elegant as a man-made object can get, while a bronze wine vessel in the shape of a goose, dating back two millenniums to the Han dynasty, has an irresistible burlesque charm. These strands of elegance and baroque whimsy converge in a 14th-century, blue-and-white wine jar discovered in a collector’s Long Island garage in 1952. Around its immaculately detailed, exuberantly bulbous surface swim a whitefish, a mackerel, a freshwater perch and a carp — four fish whose Chinese names are homophones for a phrase meaning “honest and incorruptible.”

The New York Times



Brazil Court Majority Favors Tougher Social Media Rules

Brazil's Supreme Court has already taken a strong stance on social media regulation. Evaristo Sa / AFP/File
Brazil's Supreme Court has already taken a strong stance on social media regulation. Evaristo Sa / AFP/File
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Brazil Court Majority Favors Tougher Social Media Rules

Brazil's Supreme Court has already taken a strong stance on social media regulation. Evaristo Sa / AFP/File
Brazil's Supreme Court has already taken a strong stance on social media regulation. Evaristo Sa / AFP/File

Brazil's Supreme Court reached a majority Wednesday in favor of toughening social media regulation, in a groundbreaking case for Latin America on the spread of fake news and hate speech.

The South American country's highest court is seeking to determine to what extent companies like X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook are responsible for removing illegal content, and how they can be sanctioned if they do not, reported AFP.

The judges' final ruling will create a precedent that will affect tens of millions of social media users in Brazil.

At issue is a clause in the country's so-called Civil Framework for the Internet -- a law in effect since 2014 that says platforms are only responsible for harm caused by a post if they ignore a judge's order to remove it.

By Wednesday, six of the court's 11 judges had ruled in favor of higher accountability, meaning sites should monitor content and remove problematic posts on their own initiative, without judicial intervention.

One judge has voted against tougher regulation, and four have yet to express an opinion.

"We must, as a court, move in the direction of freedom with responsibility and regulated freedom, which is the only true freedom," Judge Flavio Dino said during Wednesday's session, broadcast online.

Not doing so would be like "trying to open an airline without regulation in the name of the right of free movement," he added.

Google, for its part, said in a statement that changing the rules "will not contribute to ending the circulation of unwanted content on the internet."

Coup plot

Alexandre de Moraes, one of the court's judges, has repeatedly clashed with X owner Elon Musk and various right-wing personalities over social media posts.

The review is taking place in parallel with the Supreme Court trial of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is alleged to have collaborated on a coup plot to remain in power after his 2022 election defeat.

Prosecutors say Bolsonaro's followers used social media to lie about the reliability of the electoral system and plot the downfall of successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Last year, Moraes blocked X for 40 days for failing to comply with a series of court orders against online disinformation.

He had previously ordered X to suspend the accounts of several Bolsonaro supporters.

Musk and other critics say Moraes is stifling free speech, and US President Donald Trump's administration is weighing sanctions against the judge, whom Bolsonaro accuses of judicial "persecution."

Lula, who emerged the victor in the tightly-fought 2022 election against Bolsonaro, is advocating for "accelerating regulation" of online platforms.