On Monday, 15 November at 9:30 AM, we hosted Pucker Gallery Artist Hongwei Li, Professor Andrew Maske, and Gallery Director Bernie Pucker for an artist conversation and exchange.
Andrew Maske specializes in the arts of Asia, focusing on ceramic art in Japan from the sixteenth century to the present. He is also interested in artistic connections between East Asian nations, both historical and contemporary. An added focus is the cultural context of artworks in Asia, including connoisseurship, collecting, display, performance, and use.
Dr. Maske received his doctorate in Japanese Art History from Oxford University. He teaches courses concentrating on the art of East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan). As a curator of Japanese art between 1999 and 2005, he developed the exhibition Geisha: Beyond the Painted Smile, and served as editor and primary author of the critically-acclaimed volume by the same name. This exhibition explored Japanese geisha both as the subject of artwork and as performing artists themselves from the eighteenth century to the present day. Dr. Maske also played a major role in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2003 catalogue, Turning Point: Oribe and the Arts of Sixteenth Century Japan, which examined the revolution in Japanese aesthetics that began in the late sixteenth century. He has published articles and reviews in Archaeometry, Journal of Japanese Studies, Orientations, and Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.
During the seven years he lived in Japan, Dr. Maske studied numerous aspects of Japanese art and culture, practicing chanoyu (tea ceremony), Japanese dance, and music by way of the shamisen. In 2006-2007 he was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship to study the development of contemporary ceramics in China.
Since Pucker Gallery’s establishment in 1967, Gallery Owner and Director Bernie Pucker and his wife, Sue, have expanded the collection to include artists from New England and around the globe, exhibiting a breadth of both 2D and 3D fine art. The gallery has exhibited Li Hongwei's work since 2016.
Li Hongwei is a contemporary artist who works and lives in Beijing and New York. His works have been acquired by the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Israel Museum, the Harvard Art Museums, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others. His works have been exhibited in numerous international art institutions, including the National Art Museum of China, the Louvre, the U.S. Embassy, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Fox Art Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania, the Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, the Everson Museum of Art, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, and the Dublin Castle in Ireland. In 2013, he was awarded the Taylor Prize by the 2013 France International Salon.
Hongwei holds a bachelor’s degree in sculpture from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and a master’s in ceramic art from the New York State College of Ceramics at the Alfred University at Alfred, NY. As a visiting artist, he has been invited to give lectures in different institutions, including Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.