Tibetan tiger

Tibetan door

Tibetans and Tigers. A long, shared history. Would you like to sin With Elinor Glyn On a tiger skin? Or would you prefer To err With her On some other fur? When this poem was penned some hundred years ago, nothing was thought more natural, or desireable, than to frolic about on a tiger skin with a bottle of champagne. The social mores of our own time, however, shun such behavior. And rightly so, for the tiger is a noble beast, and to shoot one seems akin to commiting a sacred crime, made all…

Works from the exhibition: Kawanabe Kyosai, the “demon of painting,” was an artistic genius active in a great variety of fields. For many years, assessments of his oeuvre focused on his caricatures and his paintings of ghosts, demons, and other fey creatures. Recent research, however, has been revealing how, based on the brushwork techniques he carried on from the Surugadai branch of the Kano school and his highly individual sensibility, Kyosai expanded his range of activities. This…