A mosaic commissioned by Taiwanese toilet manufacturer Alex Co in 1973 has been appraised at NT$20 million (US$648,992), the company said.
The mural, titled Tropical Fish, is the work of artist Yan Shui-lung (顏水龍).
Experts from the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute who were invited to appraise the piece said that aside from the high price it would fetch if sold, the work should be considered a “national treasure.”
Photo: Chen Feng-li, Taipei Times
Yan, who passed away in 1997 at the age of 94, was one of the founders of the Japanese colonial-era Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, which was held annually from 1927 to 1936. He has been called the “father of Taiwanese craft” for his promotion of mosaics.
In 1952, Yan published Taiwan Arts and Crafts (台灣工藝) — an exposition of the state of the field in Taiwan at the time. Two years later he was appointed director of the Nantou County Craftworks Research Center, which later became the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute.
Yan was commissioned to create 16 murals starting in 1961, but they were never registered as assets by their owners and never appraised.
The 320cm by 233cm Tropical Fish is the first of his pieces to be appraised, Alex Co said.
The company had the mural — his 12th mosaic — installed at its Taipei headquarters in 1973, when Yan was 70 years old, it said.
Institute director Hsu Keng-hsiu (許耿修) said the mural was broken into four pieces and taken down when Alex’s Taipei location underwent renovations, and later it was accidentally split into 10 pieces.
Alex chairman Lee Chao-ting (李昭亭) said he did not want the mural to remain in such a state, so he hired two of Yan’s former students — Lin Chun-cheng (林俊成) and Lee Yi-hsun (李億勳) — to repair it at a cost of NT$500,000.
Lee then donated the piece to the institute.
Hsu said he hopes the public will enjoy the mosaic and that seeing it would give them an appreciation for the art form.
Yan’s earliest and largest mural — Sports — was made for National Taiwan University of Sport’s gymnasium, Hsu said, adding that the artist’s final mural is installed at the Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital, and is a depiction of Buddha.
A mural featuring sunflowers that Yan made for a pastry shop in Taichung had been covered up for 25 years after Martial Law-era police suspected it of being communist propaganda, Hsu said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS