“An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.” Confucius
“All religions must be tolerated… for every man must get to heaven in his own way.” Epictetus
“There are as many paths to God as there are souls on Earth.” Hadith
“No one loves the man whom he fears.” Aristotle
“Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one in adversity.” Plutarch

The symbolic relation home-body, organism-building is one of the recurring themes in architecture and even modern buildings and structures, even if broken, divided, non-coherent can not escape the idea of “body”, an anthropomorphization of the structure, and it is in this metaphor that moves and lives the work of Sakate.

I am watching the statue of the great man, and I take some photographs. Just outside the mausoleum the government authorized a bazaar of stalls selling food, drinks and souvenirs. I buy a souvenir, a key holder with the portrait of one of China’s big dreamers of Democracy, Dr Sun Zhong Shan.

More than fourteen hundred caves, big and small caves containing approximately 100,000 statues ranging from 2 cm to over 17 meters of the biggest statue. There are about 2500 steles and inscriptions, and dozens of pagodas. I’m walking beside a Mountain of Devotion. We are not the only ones caught by the show, the faces of all visitors are amazed, smiling, excited. Someone prays before the statues of the Buddha or Guanyin.

With its link with KungFu, the Shao Lin Temple is probably the most famous Mahayana Buddhist monastery in the world,and since 2010 is part of the list of UNESCO sites, included in the list of “Historical Monuments of Dengfeng”, and I know why it is so, the temple in itself could not be part of the list, because there is hardly anything historical about it, a part the fame and the name. Here is the home of one of a world famous KungFu school,with students coming from all over China and also from other parts of the world.

The exhibition continues until November 27, 2011, and I recommend a visit to anyone who is in Shanghai in the coming weeks.
There are more than 60 videos of various size and duration of over fifty artists and so far this is the most comprehensive and systematic exhibition of videos ever in China. What is missing, but it is not a novelty, in the critical appraisal of the artworks is their relationship to society and the historical moment that has given birth to them, and the fact that works have been chosen from 1988 (before then, nothingness?) skipping of all the 80ies, the years leading up to the well known facts of 1989 are giving indications on the choice made.

Then he explained that Fish oil is made by taking all of the tissue that is rich in Omega-Three Fatty Acids, skin and belly cavity particularly, and steaming it in a pressure cooker. The oil is squeezed out and the remaining pulp is used to create fish meal powder that is then used in animal foods. Oh men! Really? Yes, really. Than, once the oil has been extracted, it can be bottled and put into gel caps.

Italian speakers are heavily adopting new words directly from English without translating it or using Italian equivalents. This is very obvious for many industrial sectors and specialized jargon, for example the information and technology sectors, in economy and marketing, in many fields of science, in sport and entertainment.

I have observed elsewhere (and wrote, see my previous blog about the artist Liu QingHe http://themaking.blog.com/page/5/ ) nowadays in China there is a bipolar tension, a desire to give way to the outside world, of wanting to be validated by the others, to compete with the others, and at the same time a fear of seeing their own cultural roots disappear, buried by an impersonal and homogenizing modernity.
This tension is often resolved by proposing a return (one of those constant “returns” that run thru the cultural history of China) to the cultural aesthetic ideals that from now on I will call The Chinese Triad: Buddhism Confucianism Taoism.

Pierre De Celles: “Dear Marco, I did read all the text for drawing and animation, lots of research my friend. I feel that you did a great job in the two domains… About drawing, I would add something, I feel that historically the coming of printing was the greatest event ever, because it gave a chance to develop Illustration and Illustrators in Europe and in America… the greatest Art could be seen everywhere on magazines or books, and there is an old saying that goes like this, ”Everyone can claim to be an Artist, but if you want to become an Illustrator, you better be a damn good Artist!”