Entre Chien et Loup

On show are four of the total of 120 shadow puppets preserved in the Folkwang Collection. The shadow-puppet plays visualize traditional Javanese art, with its marvellous refinement, aesthetic, and deep symbolism. In a Wayang kulit performance, the shadows (wayang) of the puppets made of leather (kulit), tell ancient stories about life and death. The exact origins of Wayang kulit, which is performed on the islands of Java and Bali in Indonesia as well as on a few other islands in Southeast Asia, are unknown. It is first mentioned in the Old Javanese poem Arjunawiwaha dating from the early 11th century. The poem teaches that everything perceived in life in an illusion – like the shadows in the Wayang kulit. Most of the sets of historical puppets known today date from the 19th or early 20th centuries.

The Japanese culture of tea, with its centuries-old rules and the associated utensils, was first spread in the 12th century by Japanese monks who had returned from staying in Zen monasteries in South China. The sequence of the so-called "Way of Tea", the sadō, can vary depending on the school, but all share certain elements. For example, the guests frequently enter the tearoom (Chashitsu) by bending down low through an entrance barely one metre high (Nijiriguchi). Even if there is no crawl-through entrance, on entering the room one drops to one’s knees, full of humility and respect, and thus all social differences are left behind at the threshold.

In Ancient Greek "askos" means a tube: The stomachs of these moulded animal vessels resemble well-filled leather water skins or tubes; the animal figure often refers to a zebu but cannot always be identified unequivocally. In various ancient cultures, such as those in Egypt, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia, clay vessels shaped like animals were produced from the Neolithic Age (6,000 – 4,000 B.C.E.) onwards. A widespread practice in early cultures was to use animal intestines or tubes made from animal skin as vessels for liquids; for this reason, the combination of the function of a vessel with the appearance of an animal seemed logical.

Nowhere has more evidence of the beliefs and everyday life of Ancient Egypt been preserved than in their tombs. An Ancient Egyptian tomb was the place inhabited by the deceased; it consisted of several rooms intended to constitute the transition from this world into the next. The corpse was located in the lower section of the tomb, while in the upper, cultic section inferiors and relatives placed burial gifts and performed ritual acts to secure the person’s resurrection and wellbeing in the next world.

The Japonisme that was popular in Europe in the second half of the 19th century not only influenced Modernist artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Claude Monet (Karl Ernst Osthaus collected their works) but also directed the museum founder’s attention to Asia and partly informed his collecting activities. Through members of the East Asian trading companies and the colonial powers’ expeditionary forces, objects had found their way onto the European art market that were not originally produced for trade, let alone for export. As a result, Osthaus managed to assemble an extensive group of Buddhist sculptures.