The old man holding a staff and herding the goats shown here can be identified as Su Wu (142–60 BCE), the Chinese envoy who tried to negotiate peace with the Xiongnu, the ancestors of the Mongols. The king of the Xiongnu wanted Su Wu to defect, but he refused. As a result of Su Wu’s loyalty to China, the Xiongnu ordered him to herd goats by the shores of Lake Baikal, saying he could return to China “when the male goats give birth.” During the next nineteen years, Su Wu used his official staff to herd goats in the freezing climate and was sometimes reduced to eating snow and wool.

Finally Su Wu was released. He had left China in his prime but returned an old man. He became a national hero, and his loyalty provided a model for later generations.

During the 1950s, as art in Taiwan underwent a series of unique developments, several young artists looked westward in their search for new ideas. One such artist is Liu Guosong. Perhaps best known for applying ink in innovative ways that created unconventional abstractions, Liu also manipulated paper by various means—tearing, collaging, brushing ink onto both sides, and pulling fibers off the surface. In 1969 Liu embarked on a new artistic phase. Influenced by photographs of the Earth and the moon sent back from the Apollo 7 mission, he began to incorporate circles and spheres into his already abstract compositions. The Which is Earth? series was created in the first year of Liu’s “space painting” period (1969–1972). During this period he created some three hundred works in virtually the same style, the only variations being the choice of colors and the quantity and size of the circles.

Liu Guosong was born in Shandong, a northeastern province in China, in 1932. Arriving in Taipei in 1949, he took up formal art study at Normal University and became interested in Western art. After graduatiing he founded the modern art association the Fifth Moon Group (1956) and began exhibiting his work around the world.

This painting celebrated the Asian Art Museum’s relocation to the current Civic Center site in 2003. The Buddhist nun and artist Jae-u recreated the Guardian King of the West of the Buddhist tradition to honor the occasion.

Comparison to a traditional painting of the same subject shows an aspect of Jae-u’s reinterpretation of the past. The fierce guardian clad in armor and surrounded by flames follows the tradition, but the objects in his hands are altered. He holds a flying dragon in his right hand instead of a treasure box or pagoda, and a jeweled orb chased by dragons in his left, instead of a spear.

The artist started the project in Korea in 2002 and finished the work during her fall 2003 residency at the museum, painting the deity’s eyes last, as is customary. A symbolic “eye-opening” ceremony was performed on December 20, 2003. The participants’ names in this project and a dedication prayer are inscribed on the bottom.

Maitreya, whose name translates as “the Friendly One,” is the Buddha of the future. In Buddhist thought, Maitreya will be born on Earth during a period when Buddhism has largely been forgotten; his presence will inaugurate a new era for the Buddhist path (dharma). Accordingly, Maitreya holds in his raised right hand a wheel that symbolizes the Buddhist Eightfold Path. On top of a lotus held in his left hand appears his characteristic emblem, the water pot that symbolizes purification and renewal. Just as Maitreya renews Buddhist history, he also appears at the New Year festival in Mongolia, where this sculpture was created. Maitreya’s standing posture reveals that he presently resides in the heaven called Tushita, “the Joyous Place,” in preparation for his future descent to Earth.

The Shahnama—an ancient epic that weaves together the mythical and actual history of Persia—contains tales of the hero Rustam, who met many challenges and fought a variety of demons and monsters. Rustam’s fourth labor, or trial, entailed a confrontation with a sorceress who had lured him with a wondrous banquet spread out in an idyllic setting. There he dismounted his horse, and ate and drank; finding a lute, he improvised a song. Upon hearing his music the old sorceress changed herself into a beautiful young woman, “her form a paradise of tints and scents.” When Rustam greeted her in this lovely aspect he praised God, but this invocation made the sorceress turn back into her ugly self. As she tried to flee, Rustam caught her with his lariat and killed her.

This painting—ascribed at the bottom margins to the artist Bishandas—shows the sorceress as a lovely creature made up of a variety of animal forms. Composite figures of this type were quite popular throughout the history of Indian painting, but this format was an innovation in portrayals of the sorceress. It allowed Bishandas to capture the essence of her magical powers, among them her ability to reconfigure herself as a thing of beauty. Although the sorceress is made up of animal forms she appears quite naturalistic. Bishandas, noted for his sensitive and subtle detailing, probably executed the core elements of this painting. Because such paintings were often collaborative efforts, however, it is likely that another artist added the Chinese-style sky, the foreground, and the group of delightful colorful demons who peek out from the landscape and witness Bishandas’s central scene.

This page comes from a series illustrating a well-known sixteenth-century poetic treatise on love, a popular theme of Indian paintings. The Hindu deity Krishna and his consort Radha appear in the Rasikapriya text as ideal lovers. Radha holds up a mirror for Krishna, whose face is reflected in it. In Indian art, the mirror has two meanings: associations with beauty and vanity, and reflections of the relationship between god and the human soul. Here the mirror plays on both references, reflecting the Absolute Reality underlying the universe (in the person of Krishna). An inscription on the reverse of the painting identifies the artist as Qayam, son of the painter Murad.

This textile, produced in Gujarat, India, was collected in the Toraja region of Sulawesi, one of the Sunda islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Along the centuries-old trade routes of Southeast Asia, precious textiles from South Asia were exchanged for rare spices as well as forest and sea products.

The cloth was block printed, resist dyed, and mordant dyed on hand-spun cotton. The design, repeated over two registers, depicts an elaborately dressed woman with a parrot; she is accompanied by attendants. Above the figures are parasols and geese. The subject and the drawing style both relate to the painting tradition of the Jain religion in western India. Remarkably, this piece has been carbon dated to the 1300s, establishing that it is older than textiles of a similar type found in India.

The origins and symbolism of this painting have baffled a number of scholars. It appears to diagram the heavenly and earthly realms inhabited by gods, celestial beings, demons, animals, and humans. At the upper center, a scene of the Hindu god Vishnu asleep on a serpent in the cosmic sea signals the creation of the universe. Black lines connect twin human bodies to the celestial and earthly spaces surrounding them. Beneath these figures, wild beasts and angry demons appear toward the lower edges of the painting, perhaps representing the underworld. What sacred symbols catch your eye? Lotuses? Serpents?

With its nearly perfect color preservation, this print is arguably the best surviving impression of one of Eishosai Choki’s masterpieces.It comes from a rare, luxurious series featuring beauties in the four seasons of the year and incorporating blown mica. Scholars have identified two states of this print, of which this is believed to be the second due to the lack of outline around the ocean sandbanks. Comb and hairpins precariously askew, a lean beauty pauses next to a washbasin to glance back across the sea to a brilliant red sunrise. With her right hand tucked warmly inside her robes, she reaches the other out from within her inner robe in order to pull her collar against the cold air. The mica-sheen emitting from the black sky and brightness of the water at the top of the print evoke the iridescence of the early morning light. The blossoming pheasant’s eye (fukujuso) plant next to the dipper on the basin signals that this is the auspicious first sunrise of the new year.

Such an elaborate throne and Buddha image would have been an important fixture of a nineteenth-century Burmese Buddhist temple, and similar ones can still be seen in temples today. The significance of the crowned and bejeweled Buddha image (2006.27.17) varied in different places and periods. According to a tradition known in Thailand and Burma for the past several centuries (and perhaps considerably longer), an arrogant king named Jambupati once attempted to awe the Buddha with his grandeur. In response, the Buddha manifested himself in the most magnificent crown and royal finery to teach that the grandeur of buddhahood vastly outshines that of earthly kingship.

The original crown of this Buddha image disappeared long ago. The one the image now wears was made using traditional techniques and in the traditional style in 2002 by U Win Maung, an expert artisan in Mandalay, Burma. It is a gift in memory of M. R. Vadhanathorn Chirapravati. The rest of the Buddha image’s royal decorations appear to be original.