blakegopnik: Daily Pic: A Meissen porcelain teapot made in about 1730, and now on display in the new Portico Gallery that opened this morning at the Frick Collection in New York – its  first new display space in decades. The light-filled gallery, made by glassing in a garden  colonnade, will mostly be dedicated to the Arnhold ceramics collection, as it is during this first show. When this teapot was made, Europeans had been trying to achieve the brilliance and translucency of Asian porcelain for centuries, but had only discovered the secret a few years before, in Germany. And the first thing those German potters did, pretty much, was make faithful copies of Asian wares – the way contemporary China is keener on duplicating iPhones than inventing their own novel versions. What impresses me most about this Meissen piece is that its makers were willing to copy an Asian original that seems so eccentric, and that seems to have so little to do with purely European aesthetics. We tend to think of copying as a conservative move, but here it seems keyed toward new sensations and ideas. Photo by Maggie Nimkin. The Daily Pic, along with more global art news, can also be found on the  Art Beast page at TheDailyBeast.com.

blakegopnik:

Daily Pic: A Meissen porcelain teapot made in about 1730, and now on display in the new Portico Gallery that opened this morning at the Frick Collection in New York – its  first new display space in decades. The light-filled gallery, made by glassing in a garden  colonnade, will mostly be dedicated to the Arnhold ceramics collection, as it is during this first show. When this teapot was made, Europeans had been trying to achieve the brilliance and translucency of Asian porcelain for centuries, but had only discovered the secret a few years before, in Germany. And the first thing those German potters did, pretty much, was make faithful copies of Asian wares – the way contemporary China is keener on duplicating iPhones than inventing their own novel versions. What impresses me most about this Meissen piece is that its makers were willing to copy an Asian original that seems so eccentric, and that seems to have so little to do with purely European aesthetics. We tend to think of copying as a conservative move, but here it seems keyed toward new sensations and ideas. Photo by Maggie Nimkin.

The Daily Pic, along with more global art news, can also be found on the  Art Beast page at TheDailyBeast.com.

(via newsweek)