Monday, April 21, 2014

Yoga: the art of transformation exhibit at SF Asian Art museum

April 2014

I love my yoga classes!  Not much occasion to blog about it until we went to the Asian Art museum to see their exhibit, Yoga: The Art of Transformation.  I went with Kahn and my yoga teacher.

No photography in the yoga exhibit, but I bought the postcard set and here are some favorites.  These are part of a set of paintings that are showing how yoga is passed from teacher to student, who in turn become teachers and so on and so and so on.  

Historically yogis were almost mythical creatures-they could fly and were associated with the gods because yoga is teaching you about your non-earthly body.  The goddess on the right has her fingers in her mouth to do a wolf whistle because she was known for making a loud noise-fun!

Turns out the poses that we are most used to these days are a fairly recent addition.  Although we can't know for sure because most of the tradition was orally passed on, what we have shows early yogis interested in asceticism.   Europeans arrived and the practice (in the Western world) shifted to show an interest in the anatomy and physiology of yoga.  A nicely curated show that at least touches on the whole history of yoga.

We went through most of the museum-my favorite section on netsuke
octopus and fish


monkey and fish in the foreground cracked me up

It was impolite to leave anything on your plate at a dinner party, so you carried your own 'doggie bag' with you.  On the sly you would deposit your bones and shells etc.  This one is maybe best for a seafood boil!

The Japanese section has some modern pieces-I found this one pretty.




Don't think I have seen this before!

A nice visual explanation of how statues that are of the same thing can look so different




A sea serpent centaur

Love the interesting dishes!







3 comments:

  1. Hello Susan,
    My name is Laurence, and I am from Ireland. I saw your blog post on Yoga: The Art of Transformation. I am a collector of all things yoga, and I am wondering if you would be interested in selling the Visitors Guide & Postcards. If not, no worries at all.
    Kind regards, Laurence.

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    1. Hi Laurence, I found those postcards! I'm afraid the guide is gone, but I found extra postcards from the exhibit. Go ahead and email me at susandotlatoatgmaildotcom and we'll figure it out.

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