Hands-on Art
The other day lemon and I headed to the jade exhibition at the San Antonio Museum of Art. The city is celebrating our sister links with Taiwan, supposedly, which is fine by me, since I actually studied abroad at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
There at Taiwan’s National Palace Museum I saw a genuine buttload of jade carvings. Among my favorites were the famous jade cabbage and stone slab of pork, which are pictured here.
Pretty great. Anyhow, San Antonio had some of Taiwan’s jade treasures on display, though sadly (and unexpectedly) not these famous and beloved pieces.
What they did have, toward the end of the exhibition, was a jade cylinder that we were allowed to touch. The placard noted that Chinese jade carvers understood the contribution of our sense of touch to aesthetic experience. I believe they referred to this concept as “panmou,” although there were no Chinese characters or lexical tones given, and I haven’t been able to hunt down the word. I found the cool surface of the jade soothing and satisfying in my palm.
It’s a sensation I experienced at the bead market in Koforidua, Ghana, with some of the larger stone beads. The artisans at the market probably thought I was some crazy American, since I just stood there and enjoyed the heft of these beads in my hand. They weren’t small. They’d give your punch some weight and all. But I don’t think you have to be handling Chinese artifacts or African beads to appreciate the small elation of handling certain objects. A pearl necklace works. So does groping your way through a yarn store.
Some artists focus on tactile creations, and some are even working with interdisciplinary teams, as shown in this video by Tereza Stehlíková and colleagues, which is part boring but also part enviable. I want to be one of the people in the circle, wearing a blindfold and peeling a lychee…
