WASHINGTON - Yoga is moving from the studio mat to the museum gallery.
The Smithsonian Institution[1] has organized what curators believe is the first exhibition about the visual history and art of yoga, its origins and evolution over time.
The Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery[2] will showcase the exhibit, "Yoga: The Art of Transformation," through January. Later, it will travel to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco[3] and to the Cleveland Museum of Art[4] .
Curators brought together Indian sculptures, manuscripts and paintings, as well as posters, illustrations, photographs and films to showcase yoga's history.
Museum director Julian Raby[5] said years of research behind the exhibit shed new light on yoga's meanings and histories.
"It examines for the first time a spectacular, but until now largely ignored, archive," he said. "That archive is India's visual culture of extraordinary yoga-related artworks created, as you will see, over some two millennia."
Guest teachers will lead yoga classes in the museum's galleries on Wednesdays and Sundays. The museum also will host a symposium for scholars and enthusiasts on yoga's visual culture.
Curator Debra Diamond[6] said the Smithsonian borrowed some of the greatest masterpieces in Indian art as well as pieces that have never been shown before.
First the exhibit examines the concepts and practices of yoga traditions, including meditation and postures found in Indian art dating back hundreds of years. The first piece is an 11th-century sculpture representing a yoga teacher, seated in the lotus posture with legs crossed to signify enlightenment.
Such sculptures were displayed in Hindu temples so people could see the teacher and "understand yoga's transformative potential," Diamond said.
Three life-size sculptures of yogini goddesses from Hindu temples illustrate the belief that female powers could be used to allow practitioners to achieve divine powers and enlightenment.
Later galleries examine how the idea of yoga was circulated worldwide, Diamond said. Early American posters depict yogis as magicians or "fakirs" performing acts, along with a 1902 film by Thomas Edison[7] .
John Schumacher[8] , a 40-year yoga practitioner and teacher in Washington who advised on the exhibit, said visitors will see there is much more to yoga than postures and breathing.
"It teaches where yoga comes from," he said. "You see there is a deep, philosophical underpinning to all of these practices and a variety of different philosophies."
Associated Press
Doomed Paris apartment lives out last days as graffiti canvas
PARIS - Condemned apartments covered in spray paint have probably never been in such demand.
An entire apartment tower in eastern Paris has been turned over to 105 street artists from around the world, giving them a chance to turn each home into its own art installation during the building's final days.
The artists had seven months to tag "Tour Paris 13" - named for the district where it's located - coating apartments sometimes still filled with debris, trash and furniture. All their work will vanish by the end of the year, as the tower, which has nine stories and a basement, is demolished piece by piece after next week.
"I really wanted the artist to intervene on a whole space," said Mehdi Ben Cheikh[9] , the gallery owner who initiated the project. "I didn't want the spectators to come and look at art. I wanted the spectators to come and enter an artwork ... which means there are things everywhere - we enter a room and have to turn around in every direction to understand the surroundings."
The result is a tower exhibiting a range of artistic styles. There's a skull-inspired mural, Arabic calligraphy, a bloody bathroom and a glow-in-the-dark cow crawling with snakes.
Would-be visitors have lined up for up to eight hours for a one-hour visit, with signs at various points around the block estimating their wait time. Only 49 people are allowed in at one time in the apartment block, which overlooks the Seine.
A handful of people are still living in the building and refusing to leave until the bitter end.
Some of the artists of Tour Paris 13 participated in an international urban contemporary art auction last week, with pieces created spur of the moment standing alongside works from Keith Haring[10] and Basquiat.
"We are the new artists. Graffiti art is the world's biggest art movement," said Mear One, an artist from Los Angeles who was painting live outside the Drouot Auction House[11] . "In the 1970s, art was so elite that only the upper-level people could do art or appreciate. So it got boring ... and now, we are in a situation where this is the art form.
"All that other art is cool, but it has roots in the past, and we are the here and the now."
Associated Press
References
- ^ Smithsonian Institution (www.chron.com)
- ^ Sackler Gallery (www.chron.com)
- ^ Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (www.chron.com)
- ^ Cleveland Museum of Art (www.chron.com)
- ^ Julian Raby (www.chron.com)
- ^ Debra Diamond (www.chron.com)
- ^ Thomas Edison (www.chron.com)
- ^ John Schumacher (www.chron.com)
- ^ Mehdi Ben Cheikh (www.chron.com)
- ^ Keith Haring (www.chron.com)
- ^ Drouot Auction House (www.chron.com)
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