http://www.spirit-stones.com Scholars' Rocks information, books, articles, essays, and of course galleries for sale Thu, 08 May 2008 02:44:57 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en We have updated our website to better serve your interest in Scholars' Rocks. Our new spirit-stones.com blog will keep you informed on news, events, books and other education content on Scholars' Rocks. Like any other blog, you can subscribe to our content feed and keep up to date automatically. As always, ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/05/07/welcome-to-spirit-stonescoms-new-home/ This year's International Asian Art Fair (March 14 to 20th 2008) was held at 583 Park Avenue in New York City. The fair was born grand 12 years ago, and for a while grew only grander, sailing along as the flagship of Asia Week of sales and auctions in New ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/03/24/2008-international-asian-art-fair-new-york-ny/ The French scholar Rolf Stein stated that early Chinese believed that somewhere in the highest mountains there was a cave that was an exact representation of the world outside. In its center was a stalactite that gave off the milk of contentment. Any rock that suggests a mountain, cave ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/03/07/the-symbolism-of-chinese-rocks-by-richard-rosenblum/ 'Scholar's rock' is the name commonly given to gongshi in the West. I much prefer the use of 'spirit stone' as it is more in keeping with the fundamental Chinese appreciation of their spiritual aspects. The term 'spirit stone' also evokes the deeper Daoist symbolism that was the basis for ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/03/07/spirit-stones-by-ian-wilson/ I began collecting rocks in my twenties, more than sixty years ago. Ever since, my interest has never diminished. Western painters use human bodies as models while we landscape painters prefer rocks. Human beings, despite differences in appearance, height, proportion and weight, are on the whole not much different from ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/03/07/rare-rocks-are-gods-creations-by-c-c-wang/ It is a time honored practice to display rocks in outdoor gardens or indoors on pedestals for appreciation. The great calligrapher and painter Mi Fu loved rocks to distraction. Bowing to them nearly everywhere he encountered them, he became known as 'Mi the Eccentric'. The famous poet Su Shi had ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/03/06/displaying-gongshi-in-a-group-by-hu-zhaokang/ Shou Zhou Lou Tou (SZLT) The great Song literati Mi Fu formed an appreciation of rocks based on his own aesthetics as well as what he knew of past collections. The four categories he considered essential to the appreciation of rocks were shou, zhou, lou, and tou. These four criteria are ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/02/21/shou-zhou-lou-tou-szlt/ Shape, Material, Color, Spirit Although Mi Fu's four categories are well-suited for describing Taihu Rocks, they are not comprehensive enough, and with the appearance of newer gongshi types, modern connoisseurs generally apply another set of criteria for judging rocks. These four are shape (xing), material (zhi), color (se), and spirit (shen). Shape ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/02/20/shape-material-color-spirit/ A Chinese saying has it that, "A garden without scholars' rocks cannot be beautiful, and a room without a scholars' rock lacks elegance." To make the studio, or any creative or meditative space, elegant and "shine," to quote the famous Song calligrapher Mi Fu (1051-1107), a scholars' rock appropriately displayed ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/02/10/displaying-scholars-rocks/ In 1995 Marden traveled to Japan, China, and Hong Kong. He was moved by the asceticism, refined geometries, and meticulously framed vistas of the Japanese rock gardens, and in Kyoto he must have thought of his father, builder of dry stone walls, when he saw the dry cascade in the ... http://www.spirit-stones.com/2008/02/09/suzhou-and-gongshi-from-a-bryce-marden-retrospective/