Harvard curator Robert Mowry and two outside curators have assembled 63 ink paintings from the collection of Chu-tsing Li, their former professor of Chinese art at the University of Kansas. The paintings range from uptight realist renderings of a bowl of tofu to fussy, splashy abstractions that feel inspired by abstract expressionism, but also with echoes of traditional Chinese ink washes.
More successful are the calligraphic ink paintings that take off from traditional landscapes. Yu Chengyao builds dense lines and washes to create chiseled canyons and a patchwork of mountains. Xia Yifu’s 1988 Landscape is built from lots of fine lines, which give the high snowy peaks appearing out of clouds a hyper-realist feel.
Others push Chinese painting’s traditional loose brushwork toward the cartoony. The boats, cormorants, windswept trees, and house in Li Huasheng’s 1985 Return from Fishing are rendered in a jaunty, loose, brushy style that recalls a child’s drawing. In Wan Qingli’s 1983 Clearing after Snow, a waterfall cascades from mountains, disappears into mist, and reappears as an icy blue river winding through a bare wood. It’s done in a blocky graphic style that recalls Ben Shahn. Chen Qikuan’s Monkeys (probably 1989) looks at first like calligraphy, but on second glance is a gang of cute, doodly monkeys.
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Squares in Paris, East meets West, David Hilliard at Carroll and Sons, More 
- Squares in Paris
Thomas Eakins was one of thousands of ambitious young American artists who flocked to Paris after the Civil War. Paintings from The Museum of Fine Arts's "Americans in Paris" exhibit
- East meets West
The paintings in "Shôwa Sophistication" at the Museum of Fine Arts are like the dreamiest travel posters you've ever seen.
- David Hilliard at Carroll and Sons
It's not every day that a guy like me gets to enjoy a photographic investigation of daddy-boy relationships. . . . well, outside of a naughty format.
- Touchy feely
Art-world sophisticates are schooled not to hunt for hidden pictures in abstract paintings, but that’s just what Cecily Brown encourages.
- Portrait of the artist
This is a charming, crowd-pleasing blockbuster show. Sourpuss hipsters may enjoy it anyway.
- Make a run for the border
In August 1923, photographer Edward Weston left his wife and three of his four sons in Los Angeles and headed to Mexico City.
- Liquid masterpieces
In honor of the exhibition, a number of bars and restaurants around Boston are offering drinks inspired by the art, the artists, and la Ville Lumière. Sqaures in Paris: What American painters didn't learn on their summer vacation. By Greg Cook.
- Going deep
A gaggle of big solo shows share the art waves with that powerful influx of computer-reliant art known as the Boston Cyberarts Festival this season.
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In Edward Hopper’s world, everyone is lost in an unending rut of office overtime, rattling El trains, cheap fluorescent diners, and bad dates.
- Girls, girls, girls
Around 1600, after a century of civil wars, Japan settled into an era of relative peace under the samurai warriors of Edo (present-day Tokyo).
- Touch the sky
The term “polyptych” usually refers to the multi-panel paintings designed as altarpieces for churches and cathedrals in Gothic and Renaissance Europe.
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Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Harvard University, Painting, Visual Arts, More
, Harvard University, Painting, Visual Arts, Cultural Institutions and Parks, Museums, Museum of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Ben Shahn, Zhang Daqian, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Less
