Picture of the Day: Kim Chong Hak's Flowers

Beautiful fantasy bouquet of flowers from Korean artist Kim Chong Hak

Next week is art week in Hong Kong with the massive show Art Basel on at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

His paintings are vivid and childlike, inspired by nature

It'll be interesting to see if buyers are still enthusiastic about parking their money in art or are having second thoughts and bursting the bubble.

Aside from the speculation, I like to see what's out there, what artists are doing, what mediums they are using, and yes how some pieces are so absurd that you wonder if they were made to dupe unsuspecting buyers?

Nevertheless, the above painting caught my eye. Korean artist Kim Chong Hak is 82 years old and still painting vigorously.

He has an over 50-year career in painting and it seems like he's not stopping anytime soon, which is why he is nicknamed the "Korean Picasso".

This giant long canvas is covered in brilliantly-coloured flowers -- apparently that's his thing, using quick brushstrokes to capture the essence of the them.

Kim once wrote in 2000:

Kim, now 82,  working in his studio

I look at the flowers over and over again, imprinting them in my mind, and then I draw them looking only at the canvas. I like the ones I draw fast. It doesn't work very well when going too slow, thinking too much... When drawn fast, details are weeded out and only the essence of the object remains.

So fantastic to see an artist boldly making his mark in his 80s and I can only hope that I can be just as active if I ever get there...!

Art Everywhere at Galleria Borghese

Apollo chases Daphne as she turns into a tree

The day after we returned to Rome the weather was terrible -- in the morning there were heavy rains and just as we were about to wait, a guy wandering around selling umbrellas appeared at the hotel door.

There's lots of art to see inside Galleria Borghese

We quickly bought three umbrellas and then headed out to Piazza del Popolo by metro. It started to rain again so we sought refuge in the one on the left, Santa Maria di Montesanto. Inside it's very grand with a dome at the top.

It just so happened that a small choir was warming up and it was so nice to hear their voices fill the large church. The rain wouldn't let up so we decided to wait it out with an early lunch.

After some pizza, pasta and salad, we headed to Villa Borghese, which is above Piazza del Popolo. In 1605, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and patron of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, began to turn the former vineyard into an extensive garden.

The walls and ceilings are also covered in art

It was built in the English style, and was later opened to the public in 1903. Today it is the third-largest public park in Rome. We had a heck of a time trying to find Galleria Borghese or the Borghese Museum -- the signage in the park is terrible and not only we got lost but another American couple too. We had to ask around for directions.

Not only were we lost, but we also had to get there at a certain time -- our tickets were for two hours. We finally found it, and then had to check-in all our bags and umbrellas. It's just as well because as soon as you walk into the museum, there are sculptures everywhere and best not to knock them over!

It features the massive collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and it boggles the mind how much money he had to acquire all these paintings and statues. But not only that, the rooms themselves are covered in murals, many in trompe l'oeil, or paintings that look three dimensional decorations like curtains and extra balconies and interior decoration.

There are many famous pieces in this museum. One of my favourites is Apollo and Daphne by Bernini around 1622. It shows the moment when Apollo is pursuing Daphne, but she begins to turn into a tree -- her legs start to become the trunk, while leaves are sprouting from her fingers.

A gorgeous statue of Pauline Bonaparte in marble

While Bernini was working on this statue, he abandoned it for a while to work on another one called David, based on the story of David and Goliath.

Bernini was only 24 years old at the time, but had the skills and maturity to produce these life-size statues. Here David looks like he is about to use his sling shot, and the viewer can see the determination on David's face as well as him putting all his physical strength into defeating Goliath.

Another gorgeous statue by Antonio Canova is of Pauline Bonaparte, the younger sister of Napoleon. She first married a French general, Charles Leclerc, who died in 1802, and then she married Camillio Borghese, 6th Prince of Sulmona.

Can you see Cardinal Borghese's forehead crack?

Here she is reclining on a chaise lounge and casually draped. The sculpture is so beautiful not only capturing her beauty, but the detail especially in the creases in the fabric of the chaise lounge captured in marble. She looks very delicate, graceful and elegant.

Finally, there are two busts of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, both by Bernini, and they stand almost side by side in one room, which makes you look at both of them carefully to try to figure out what is different.

It turns out the one on the left was done first, but it was found to have a crack inside the marble right where the cardinal's forehead is. As he was the client, he wasn't happy with it and asked for another bust of him be carved; Bernini obliged.

The Galleria Borghese has exhibitions periodically and when were there, it was a show of sculptures by Pablo Picasso! What a contrast! Some rooms showed off classical statues that were off set by Picasso's minimalist ones, some to comic effect.

Picasso's sculptures next to Greco-Roman ones

Some were of Greco-Roman heads, contrasting with Picasso's cubist ones, or his famous goat alongside some other more lifelike animals. Too funny!

Subdivided Flat = Art

Wander inside and hear an artist talk about what it's like to live in 130sq ft

This week has been quite hectic with the big event, Art Basel on, where the big name galleries presenting big name artists from Picasso and Alexander Calder (very popular this year), to Takashi Murakami (always a favourite) and Cindy Sherman. It's quite pretentious with collectors wearing lots of bling and very deep pockets dropping tens of thousands of US dollars to even millions on art pieces for investment.

Meanwhile an interesting counterpoint is Art Central, a much smaller and accessible show, of which 75 percent are artists from Asia, some very young, others quite established. Many of the works are experimental, and not as polished when it comes to execution.

I literally whipped through Art Central and didn't have much time to slowly walk through it, but managed to see an interesting piece called Pavilion for our living, by Samson Wong and Lam Chi-fai.

It's a socio-political statement about subdivided flats and what it's like to live in 130 square feet. Visitors, one at a time, put on head phones and wander around the rectangular box space as the narrator, an artist, explains where all their furniture is situated and how cramped it is, how difficult it is to fit everything in and how little natural sunlight there is.

However, it's hard to imagine what the room looks like when there are only red laser dots pointing at places like the refrigerator, the bed, bathroom and so on, but little details the artist I listened to, were memorable; she talked about a mouse in her flat and seeing its paw prints, or how her father was dismayed she was living in such a small space and tried to rearrange the furniture when she was at work which irritated her.

My colleague who also listened to the same story felt the installation would have been more powerful, if pictures of the artist's flat were projected on the walls so that we could have a better idea of how it looked inside. The speech the artist made could also have benefited from some editing as some anecdotes were tedious or unnecessary.

Nevertheless, the idea was definitely there and is worth exploring further. In this case, life = art = social statement.

A Big Dose of Art

Tang Jie's Stone Story at Art Central this year

The two biggest art fairs are back in Hong Kong again -- Art Central and Art Basel.

I got a quick peek of both and will give a few highlights here.

Art Central located at Central Harbourfront is a neat venue, featuring over 100 galleries, 75 percent of which are from Asia Pacific, though ironically, not many Hong Kong artists are featured.

Performance Art at Art Central

Nevertheless, it's a good place to check out emerging artists from the region. On the whole on a few things grabbed me. One Indonesian artist partnering with a Hong Kong gallery, produced a large canvas of graffiti-like art, very colourful and cartoonish.

But get this -- the work is carved up literally into squares and for HK$300, a person can buy a piece of the art. You can buy more than one square of course, but there's another interesting part -- you can consign the piece(s) that you have bought back to the gallery to resell to another person. And if it's sold you give a 10 percent commission back to the gallery.

That is the commercialism of art at its purest.

Already there were a few squares cut out of the far left hand side of the piece... what would you do with a square piece of art? Is it still art if it's a section of it?

One piece that is particularly impressive is called Stone Story by Tang Jie. It features rocks that are suspended from wires that lightly "fall" onto a large drum below. They fall rhythmically one after the other and then come back up again. It's a combination of old -- the rocks and the traditional Chinese drum, to the new of technology manipulating the rocks.

Does he look like Mao Zedong? Like the body in Beijing?

We also saw a performance artist, Anida Yoeu Ali with The Red Chador: Ban Me! She wore a red sequinned chador, or fabric that is a full-body robe covering her body, and carried the sign "Ban Me".

Over at Art Basel at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, it's overwhelming to try to take in all the art on two floors, but definitely one of the most provocative is Summit by Shen Shaomin.

There are five "corpses" of Communist leaders in history -- Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro. They are all apparently life size, and quite life like. Oh my mistake -- Castro is not encased in a glass coffin, but on his death bed apparently faintly breathing! I missed that clarification.

In any event one must wonder what mainlanders think of their great leader as a piece of art!

Murakami's Tan Tan Bo aka Gerotan... is one of his new works

Another provoking piece is Not a Shield, but a Weapon by Philippine artist Pio Abad. There are 180 handbags that are copies of late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Asprey handbag.

These ones were all made in Marikina in the Philippines, which used to be a thriving area for leather manufacturing. But because of trade liberalization policies introduced by Thatcher, Marikina has been in decline ever since.

There's also a colourful ovid shaped object sitting on a mirrored surface. Entitled Deductive Object by Kimsooja, the piece is inspired by the Indian tradition of Brahmanda stones that are polished into an ovid shape.

Here it's a large one painted in traditional Korean colours called obangsaek.

Deductive Object by Kimsooja

And for those looking for big names, Takashi Murakami is here with a large piece, and we spotted a few Picassos for sale.

So this is a critique of only the fraction of the things that can be seen at Art Central and Art Basel... if I have time I'll go check out Art Basel further...

Rockefeller's Beautiful Mansion

The front facade of Kykuit, with a classic Italian style of architecture

We marked the 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence yesterday by taking the train to Tarrytown to visit the Rockefeller mansion called Kykuit.

You can't go to the home on your own -- you must join and tour and it's quite strict, emphasizing that you can't take children under five years of age; the guides and staff get nervous when they see babies. Oh and don't bring big bags too -- a knapsack could be considered too big to bring on the grounds.

Our guide was mainland Chinese with the name tag DD Huang, a woman in a red sleeveless dress with tightly curled long hair. Unfortunately for us, her English was not fluent and so many of us on our tour had trouble understanding what she said. Her proficiency in the language also made her warnings sound particularly stern and unapologetic which to some seemed rude or condescending at times.

The back of the home with an extensive garden around it

Nevertheless, this is what we understood from the tour:

John D Rockefeller was the eldest son of six children, but his childhood was difficult. His father was a con man and kept a mistress, having two daughters with her.

Rockefeller was taught by his mother to work hard and he was academically good in school. At 16 he went to business school learning bookkeeping and this skill and talent would serve him well later on in life.

He and his brother William made their money in oil refining, co-founding Standard Oil together and buying up the competition to practically become a monopoly.

William had built a house in the Hudson Valley and suggested John D take a look. He was entranced by the view looking over the Hudson River and bought the land in 1893.

In 1906, John D Rockefeller together with his son Junior, planned and oversaw the construction of Kykuit, which in Dutch means "look out" or "overlook". They moved in two years later.

A swan gracing a pond that leads up to the tea room

Today visiting the house it is a mix of East and West, as John D Rockfeller Sr decorated it, followed by his son Junior and grandson Nelson, who became a senator.

There are a lot of Chinese antiques in the home, as Junior made some trips to China and bought many things, from the pair of stone lions that greet visitors at the front door, to Tang and Qing Dynasty ceramics, even carpets and upholstery have Chinese themes.

In the living room there is a headless Bodhisattva statue, a graceful body, that must have been a serene looking person.

We saw many rooms in the house, except the bedrooms, but the drawing room, the office, dining room, and music room -- that used to have a pipe organ installed in there and was subsequently replaced with a large colourful painting by Joan Miro.

There's also a lot of modern art in the home, particularly in the large garden that includes a swimming pool. There are many sculptures placed around the greenery that contrast with the classical Italian style of the home. Unfortunately we didn't take the garden tour that includes seeing all these pieces.

Modern art pieces contrast with the traditional-looking home

However, we did go into the basement where we saw several tapestries designed by Picasso specifically for Nelson Rockefeller, who had bought a number of his paintings. But because Picasso was a Communist, it wasn't politically correct for them to meet directly.

Nevertheless, Picasso agreed to allow his paintings to be modified into tapestries as long as they were not the same size or colours as the originals. Apparently some 18 of them were completed by a French weaver before Picasso passed away.

There's a mini museum in the home, filled with works by not only the Spanish artist, but also Georges Braque, Toulouse-Lautrec, Andy Warhol and Alexander Calder.

We also saw the changing room complete with a shower that was a precursor to today's modern jets, with a series of pipes that would have spewed water at the body in the middle, as well as the stables complete with a number of carriages and garage with a fleet of antique cars, as well as the home's own gas pump.

It's a pity we weren't allowed to photograph anything inside the house, but outside... another of these strict rules we had to follow.

A view of the Hudson River that Rockefeller fell in love with

But we preferred the view outside as well as the lush greenery. There was also a nine-hole golf course there too -- we spied some Rockefeller descendants whizzing around in golf carts -- their own private space. It turns out several of the Rockefeller families live on some parts of the estate today.

Rockefeller is also well known for his philanthropy, donating to medical research, higher education and the church.

It's hard to imagine someone today could amass as much wealth as the Rockefellers, though people like Li Ka-shing, Cheng Yu-tung, and Stanley Ho Hung-sun come close.

However the trio don't even come close when it comes to being a visionary in philanthropy and creating foundations, and donating land to benefit Hong Kong much, save for universities giving them naming rights to new buildings. Yawn.

We may never see anyone with the same moral stature as John D Rockefeller Senior. While he may be accused of conniving business practices, he did a lot of good not only for New York but for the various communities in the city and around the world in acts of charity that continue today.

Singapore's Newest Landmark

The two buildings are joined together with a canopy

I spent about three days in Singapore this past week having been there about five years ago and the Lion City is quite impressive in its infrastructure and soft skills, though it is h not even close to the edginess of Hong Kong.

Nevertheless there were some new landmarks we checked out and old favourites.

Wu's dynamic painting of the Great Wall

First up was the National Gallery of Singapore, which opened a few months ago. Located walking distance from the Fullerton Hotel, the gallery is housed in two national monuments, the former Supreme Court and City Hall.

We went during a weekday and it was quite quiet, so staff were very helpful and friendly with any inquiries we had. We went through practically the entire thing, which is quite a lot to cover, but when it's hot outside, it's a nice respite.

One of the special exhibitions is the late artist Wu Guanzhong, who donated a number of works to the National Collection, similar to him gifting several pieces to Hong Kong. Here, the show, entitled "Wu Guanzhong: Beauty Beyond Form", shows his early works, small realism paintings in oil, then his move to ink painting that soon became more abstract in nature.

Another show is "Chua Ek Kay: After the Rain", where the Singaporean artist was born in Guangdong but settled in Singapore. He did some fantastic large ink paintings that are so evocative and contemporary. As he traveled extensively, he realized he needed to create new art forms to express what he saw in places like Australia.

Beautiful wood ceiling detail in the former Supreme Court

His work evolved from big brush ink works to intricate paintings that focused more on texture of dry versus wet to create effects that he wanted to convey.

I don't know many Singaporean artists, and so it was interesting to see a few, such as Georgette Chen who migrated there, capturing everyday life in the city. An interesting piece of trivia is that on the back of the 50 dollar bill is the work of artist Cheong Soo Pieng called Drying Salted Fish, and the original work can be seen in the gallery.

A special exhibition on until July 17 is "Reframing Modernism: Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond". Co-organized by the National Gallery and the Centre Pompidou, it's an interesting exploration of 20th century art, seeing the similarities of what was going on with Pablo Picasso, Vassily Kandinsky as well as Vietnamese and Brazilian artists at the same time.

Our attempt to sketch works in the Modernism exhibition

One gallery staff member was very keen to get us to participate and gave us a work sheet and pencil to copy some of the works on the walls... Admittedly none of them were really inspiring, but we copied one or two (very badly) for fun.

The space in the Supreme Court was a bit odd to house works of art, and seemed more like it should be a museum dedicated to the judiciary than a gallery. That's because the chairs for judges and the dock for the accused were still in their original places, while art was added on the walls. Some of the rooms were quite small too, making it hard to put the works together in a logical fashion.

Xu Beihong's Put Down Your Whip

But one of the highlights of this landmark is the rooftop (of the City Hall), where you can get a panoramic view of the downtown area, Marina Bay Sands and the five-star hotels in the vicinity.

The gallery is smart to have a bar up there called Aura Sky Lounge, where visitors can take in the view and enjoy a drink and snack.

National Gallery of Singapore

1 St. Andrew's Road

Singapore 178957

Tel: +65 6690 9400