An irreverent graphic designer talks about his work

http://www.danwei.org/advertising_and_marketing/
zhang_facai_interview.php

Zhang Facai is a graphic designer working in advertising who keeps a
blog filled with clever and amusing fliers, business cards, and fake
advertisements.

Danwei looked at some of his dirty jokes and anti-establishment
visual puns back in December. In February, he posted an interview
conducted by New Graphic magazine (新平面) in which he talks about
the political and social commentary that often appears in his
designs. Here's a translation:
Interview with Zhang Facai
by New Graphic magazine

1. Briefly introduce yourself
Born in the late 70s. Muddled through school, nearly got expelled in
my third year. Thought about selling paintings when I got out, but
then discovered that art's not going to support you, so I muddled
into advertising. Always muddling through: I've got low blood sugar.

2. Where do the names "Zhang Facai" (张发财) and "Stocked
Hall" (有食堂) [his blog's name] come from?
Zhang Facai was given to me by a friend. The name felt pretty
affluent to me [发财 means "get rich"], so I decided to use it.
"Stocked Hall" is the name of my study. It simply means "a hall with
food," nothing deeper than that.

3. What motivated you to start making fliers with relatively heavy
social and political meaning?
I don't think they have any political ideology. They only express my
own opinions, a very simple form of expression. Some people open
their mouths, I make pictures.

4. Do you consider yourself an intellectual? How do you perceive a
designer's social responsibility?
I'm a pseudo-intellectual. Every individual ought to have social
responsibility. It's not limited by field.

5. In those fliers that concern particular events in society, which
ones are you most satisfied with? Why?
Perhaps the series on homosexuality. There is far too much suffering
in the world, but the greatest is when people cannot freely love each
other, especially when ideas and habits prevent people from being
able to love each other. If a picture can change some people's
attitudes toward homosexuality, it would of course be a good thing,
but I don't expect that to happen. Those pieces only express my own
attitude. I may not be one, I still understand and respect them.

6. Are you satisfied with your current life and work? Have those
fliers had any negative effects on your work situation?
There have been no positive or negative effects. Design is just one
part of my life. I did not come in to this world to design, but to
have fun.

7. What do the fliers mean to you, personally? Are they
contemplative, or cathartic?
They don't mean anything, much less have anything to do with
contemplation or catharsis. They're just the product of the process
of creation and expression. I don't like contemplation. I like being
a good-for-nothing sort of person.

8. Can you describe your political attitudes?
I have attitude, but not a political attitude. If I had to give a
characterization, I'd be a fundamentalist liberal.

9. What books have you read recently?
Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Records of the Three Kingdoms.
Also Metaphysics, but I can't get into it.

10. Which of the comments and messages left by netizens have had the
greatest impression on you?
They haven't made any impression. Really, no impression.

11. Bullog has been blocked yet again. Do you have any opinion about
this?
The world is yours, and it is also ours. But right now it's still yours.
JDM090327shirts.jpg

In late February, Zhang posted without comment a Roman-numeral T-
shirt design that's now making the rounds of other blogs (as well as
the foreign media).

Earlier this week, he reposted the images to his Bullog International
blog under the title "My little brother":

He looks like his father. I look like my father. My father and
his father are twins. Oh, I also have that T-shirt.

See also this Mao-inspired t-shirt Zhang posted in October, 2008. The
shirt reads "Oppressive government is more terrible than tigers," a
quote from the Book of Rites.
Links and Sources

* New Graphic via Zhang Facai's

Rauschenberg, Robischon and Chinese Contemporary Art

Rauschenberg, Robischon and Chinese Contemporary Art
http://adobeairstreamhardhat.com/2009/03/26/rauschenbergandchineseart/
March 26, 2009 · No Comments
The Lotus Bed I by Robert Rauschenberg

The Lotus Bed I by Robert Rauschenberg

The wave of dealer interest in contemporary Chinese art is late
hitting the art centers of the Rocky Mountain West. The Kent & Vicki
Logan collection was featured in 2006-2007 at the Denver Art Museum
and longtime dealer Jim Robischon just ended an exhibition at his
Denver gallery which included Robert Rauschenberg's "Lotus Series"
and "China, A New Year," featuring the work of five Chinese-born
artists.

In 2007, one-third of the world's top 100 contemporary artists were
from China. According to artprice.com, between January 2004 and
January 2009, the price index of contemporary art in China rose 583%.

While the Chinese artists in "China, A New Year," are not members of
this booming club, the desire to cash in on an art market trend is
hard to miss. What was initially perplexing was the link Robischon
was pushing between Rauschenberg and contemporary Chinese art.

Robert Rauschenberg, who died last year, rejected the angst of
abstract expressionism and embraced popular culture. His art is a
bridge between commenting on contemporary society and utilizing its
materials.

"The Lotus Series" is the final print series from Rauschenberg that
he created just prior to his death in collaboration with master
printer Bill Goldston of Universal Limited Art Editions. "The Lotus
Series" includes 12 pigment printed collages and combines based on
photographs that Rauschenberg took during a trip to China in 1982 to
work in the ancient Xuan Paper Mill.

But his images of China are not what create Rauschenberg's link to
contemporary Chinese art, but the timing of another of his cultural
projects. In 1985, Rauschenberg returned to Beijing as part of the
Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange, (ROCI), a six-year
exhibition tour to Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, China, Japan, Cuba, the
former Soviet Union, the former East Germany (East Berlin), and
Malaysia. The goal of the interchange was to create an avenue of
understanding between people of different countries through artistic
and cultural exchange without political intervention. He would gather
regular people and have them help him make art.

The ROCI exhibition at the National Art Museum was one of the first
of what would be a flush of Western-style artistic experimentation to
hit China during the 1980s. A group of artists in China known as the
'85 New Wave was working its way through Western art history, modern
modes and Pop Art. During this time, Chinese artists were critical
of the Chinese Communist Party and its leader Mao, expressing their
criticism through their art.In 1989, an exhibition called "China/
Avant-Garde" went up at the National Art Museum. Four months later,
the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square and many citizens fled. They
only returned to China be a part of cultural extravaganza showcased
during the Beijing Summer Olympics last year.

The art world seems to agree that it was this period that stimulated
Chinese contemporary art. (Other influences came from the
RussianBeaux Arts.) The West seems to want to take credit for shift
while in fact many historians and critics have suggested that
Western art influence actually orrupted Chinese contemporary art.

"Students and ordinary people alike paid attention to contemporary
art throughout the 1980s," Gao Minglu, a Chinese art critic said in a
CNN interview in 1999.

According to James Panero of New Criterion: "By turning Chinese art
into the latest trend, we have extended the global transformation of
serious art into a speculative commodity, supported the soft power
strategy of an oppressive state, and reveled in the negative force of
an avant-garde linked to an authoritarian regime not seen since the
Futurism of Fascist Italy. We have shipped our vanguard dreams
abroad, and we have brought back home an imitation art, cheaper, more
compelling than the real thing."

I find it hard to believe that Rauschenberg is being either credited
or blamed for shipping America's creative dreams abroad and bringing
back an imitation art. That said, it is obvious that the degradation
of art into product churned out for the contemporary marketplace, has
become a target for disgust. Even in China.

"The top-selling Yue Minjun, Fang Lijun, and Zhang Xiaogang have
created an iconography of laughing men, bald thugs, and
expressionless portraits, which they endlessly reproduce. In China,
common artistic practice includes "blatant imitation of other
artists' works, willingness to pay for art criticism and museum
exposure, refusal to adhere to dealer-artist exclusivity, an elastic
notion of 'limited' editions, and mass replication of the artists'
own most successful motifs," writes Panero.

But singling out Rauschenberg and his ROCI as the moment things
changed in China seems elusive. Tying that back in to the "Lotus
Series" and even further stretch.

Rauschenberg famously expressed that he attempted to operate in the
gap between "art and life." "The Lotus Series" maintains his sense of
wonder, his love of collaboration and his desire to seek out the
unpredictable. The series was created from small photographic prints
because the original negatives from Rauschenberg's trips to China
were destroyed in a hurricane at his home on Captiva Island, Florida.
Goldston was able to scan and enlarge the prints and correct the
color. He then printed out the images in different sizes using an ink
that allowed the image to be transferred to another piece of paper by
use of a solvent. The same technique Rauschenberg used early on in
his career to transfer images from newspapers and magazines to the
canvas. Rauschenberg then arranged the images collage-like for the
final prints.

"The Lotus Series" does not provide the textural feast found in
earlier Rauschenberg combines. The prints are lush explorations of
observed life, trains, waterways, architecture in China, infused with
iconic images from his earlier oeuvre: tires, bicycles and a ram's
head. Each print bears the image of a lotus blossom. Juxtaposing
these images creates an intriguing narrative that simultaneously
revitalizes pedestrian objects while illuminating the demands of
consumer society.

''The market zooming up made a lot of people blind and deaf,'' Jérôme
Sans, director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing
told writer David Barboza in the International Herald Tribune. ''Now,
we can have production of the mind, not just the product. No more of
this making fast money.'

It is claimed that Rauschenberg said of his own financial and market
success: "I was the 'charlatan' of the art world. Then, when I had
enough work amassed, I became a 'satirist'—a tricky word—of the art
world, then 'fine artist,' but who could live with it?

Perhaps, in the end, this what the Robischon exhibit really managed
to capture: the charlatans, the satirists and the fine artists–
whether Western or Chinese.

A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors

The New York Times
March 12, 2009
A Dirty Pun Tweaks China's Online Censors
By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING — Since its first unheralded appearance in January on a
Chinese Web page, the grass-mud horse has become nothing less than a
phenomenon.

A YouTube children's song about the beast has drawn nearly 1.4
million viewers. A grass-mud horse cartoon has logged a quarter
million more views. A nature documentary on its habits attracted
180,000 more. Stores are selling grass-mud horse dolls. Chinese
intellectuals are writing treatises on the grass-mud horse's social
importance. The story of the grass-mud horse's struggle against the
evil river crab has spread far and wide across the Chinese online
community.

Not bad for a mythical creature whose name, in Chinese, sounds very
much like an especially vile obscenity. Which is precisely the point.

The grass-mud horse is an example of something that, in China's
authoritarian system, passes as subversive behavior. Conceived as an
impish protest against censorship, the foul-named little horse has
not merely made government censors look ridiculous, although it has
surely done that.

It has also raised real questions about China's ability to stanch the
flow of information over the Internet — a project on which the
Chinese government already has expended untold riches, and written
countless software algorithms to weed deviant thought from the
world's largest cyber-community.

Government computers scan Chinese cyberspace constantly, hunting for
words and phrases that censors have dubbed inflammatory or seditious.
When they find one, the offending blog or chat can be blocked within
minutes.

Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of
California, Berkeley, who oversees a project that monitors Chinese
Web sites, said in an e-mail message that the grass-mud horse "has
become an icon of resistance to censorship."

"The expression and cartoon videos may seem like a juvenile response
to an unreasonable rule," he wrote. "But the fact that the vast
online population has joined the chorus, from serious scholars to
usually politically apathetic urban white-collar workers, shows how
strongly this expression resonates."

Wang Xiaofeng, a journalist and blogger based in Beijing, said in an
interview that the little animal neatly illustrates the futility of
censorship. "When people have emotions or feelings they want to
express, they need a space or channel," he said. "It is like a water
flow — if you block one direction, it flows to other directions, or
overflows. There's got to be an outlet."

China's online population has always endured censorship, but the
oversight increased markedly in December, after a pro-democracy
movement led by highly regarded intellectuals, Charter 08, released
an online petition calling for an end to the Communist Party's
monopoly on power.

Shortly afterward, government censors began a campaign, ostensibly
against Internet pornography and other forms of deviance. By mid-
February, the government effort had shut down more than 1,900 Web
sites and 250 blogs — not only overtly pornographic sites, but also
online discussion forums, instant-message groups and even cellphone
text messages in which political and other sensitive issues were
broached.

Among the most prominent Web sites that were closed down was
bullog.com, a widely read forum whose liberal-minded bloggers had
written in detail about Charter 08. China Digital Times, Mr. Xiao's
monitoring project at the University of California, called it "the
most vicious crackdown in years."

It was against this background that the grass-mud horse and several
mythical companions appeared in early January on the Chinese Internet
portal Baidu. The creatures' names, as written in Chinese, were
innocent enough. But much as "bear" and "bare" have different
meanings in English, their spoken names were double entendres with
inarguably dirty second meanings.

So while "grass-mud horse" sounds like a nasty curse in Chinese, its
written Chinese characters are completely different, and its meaning —
taken literally — is benign. Thus the beast not only has dodged
censors' computers, but has also eluded the government's own ban on
so-called offensive behavior.

As depicted online, the grass-mud horse seems innocent enough at the
start.

An alpaca-like animal — in fact, the videos show alpacas — it lives
in a desert whose name resembles yet another foul word. The horses
are "courageous, tenacious and overcome the difficult environment," a
YouTube song about them says.

But they face a problem: invading "river crabs" that are devouring
their grassland. In spoken Chinese, "river crab" sounds very much
like "harmony," which in China's cyberspace has become a synonym for
censorship. Censored bloggers often say their posts have been
"harmonized" — a term directly derived from President Hu Jintao's
regular exhortations for Chinese citizens to create a harmonious
society.

In the end, one song says, the horses are victorious: "They defeated
the river crabs in order to protect their grassland; river crabs
forever disappeared from the Ma Le Ge Bi," the desert.

The online videos' scenes of alpacas happily romping to the Disney-
style sounds of a children's chorus quickly turn shocking — then, to
many Chinese, hilarious — as it becomes clear that the songs fairly
burst with disgusting language.

To Chinese intellectuals, the songs' message is clearly subversive, a
lesson that citizens can flout authority even as they appear to
follow the rules. "Its underlying tone is: I know you do not allow me
to say certain things. See, I am completely cooperative, right?" the
Beijing Film Academy professor and social critic Cui Weiping wrote in
her own blog. "I am singing a cute children's song — I am a grass-mud
horse! Even though it is heard by the entire world, you can't say
I've broken the law."

In an essay titled "I am a grass-mud horse," Ms. Cui compared the
anti-smut campaign to China's 1983 "anti-spiritual pollution
campaign," another crusade against pornography whose broader aim was
to crush Western-influenced critics of the ruling party.

Another noted blogger, the Tsinghua University sociologist Guo Yuhua,
called the grass-mud horse allusions "weapons of the weak" — the
title of a book by the Yale political scientist James Scott
describing how powerless peasants resisted dictatorial regimes.

Of course, the government could decide to delete all Internet
references to the phrase "grass-mud horse," an easy task for its
censorship software. But while China's cybercitizens may be weak,
they are also ingenious.

The Shanghai blogger Uln already has an idea. Blogging tongue in
cheek — or perhaps not — he recently suggested that online democracy
advocates stop referring to Charter 08 by its name, and instead
choose a different moniker. "Wang," perhaps. Wang is a ubiquitous
surname, and weeding out the subversive Wangs from the harmless ones
might melt circuits in even the censors' most powerful computer.

Zhang Jing contributed research.

China’s Art Market: Cold or Maybe Hibernating?

March 11, 2009
China's Art Market: Cold or Maybe Hibernating?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/arts/design/11decl.html?
_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print
By DAVID BARBOZA

BEIJING — A new studio designed by Zeng Fanzhi is a vivid testament
to the riches reaped by China's hottest contemporary artists.

The high-ceilinged 2,200-square-foot space is adorned with European
and Chinese antiques, museum-quality floors, a small gym and a
traditional landscape garden that Mr. Zeng said contains authentic
Ming and Qing dynasty relics. Hanging on the walls are his massive
canvases, which not so long ago could easily fetch $1 million apiece.

But just as he and dozens of other artists in Beijing and Shanghai
put the finishing touches on lavish studios that proclaim their
success, the market for Chinese contemporary art has entered a
downward spiral.

A global financial crisis has wiped out vast amounts of personal
wealth, prompting a plunge in art prices. Suddenly bereft of
visitors, galleries are laying off staff members, and the collectors
who patronized them now worry that their art investments may prove a
colossal folly.

"It's been a long, cold winter," said Zoe Butt, director of
international programs at Long March Space, which is closing two of
its three Beijing galleries. "The era of Chinese contemporary art
commanding such high prices is over."

Auctions, perhaps the most popular barometer of the recent craze for
Chinese contemporary art, have also been hard hit. Sotheby's autumn
auction of Chinese contemporary art in October was dismal by
comparison with the October 2007 result, with some works going unsold.

Experts say the contracting market is also putting the squeeze on
major collectors, many of whom had been hoping to unload high-priced
works in 2009.

Globally, the recent rise in Chinese artists' fortunes was
unparalleled. Only one Chinese artist — Zao Wouki, a traditional
painter who lives in France — ranked among the Top 10 best-selling
living artists in 2004, according to Artprice.com, which tracks
auction sales. (He ranked ninth.) But by 2007, 5 of the 10 best-
selling living artists at auction were Chinese-born, led by Zhang
Xiaogang, who trailed only Gerhard Richter and Damien Hirst. That
year, Mr. Zhang's auction sales totaled $56 million, according to
Artprice.com.

Many collectors were seduced by the numbers. "For people who got into
the market three years ago, I feel sorry for them," said Fabien
Fryns, who runs F2 Gallery in Beijing.

Artists who have benefited most from this country's rising profile as
an arts center are still living in luxury residences and driving BMWs
and Mercedes-Benzes. But recently, they've been getting fewer visitors.

"Before, every day visitors would come and knock on the door, and I
had to spend the morning taking them around," Mr. Zeng said, sitting
on a leather sofa in his studio. "Now it's about half as much."

He seems somewhat relieved, however. And experts say the market drop
may be salubrious in some ways for Chinese art. Soaring prices had
created a circuslike atmosphere, with some artists turning their
studios into assembly lines that mass-produced their most popular works.

"The market zooming up made a lot of people blind and deaf," said
Jérôme Sans, director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in
Beijing. "Now, we can have production of the mind, not just the
product. No more of this making fast money."

A crucial test looms for the small number of international galleries
that opened here in recent years in the hope of cashing in on the
excitement while also developing long-term projects with Chinese
artists.

PaceWildenstein of New York, which now represents Zhang Xiaogang and
Zhang Huan, two of the country's most respected artists, signed a 10-
year lease last year and is preparing to open a 20,000-square-foot
gallery in the 798 Arts District in Beijing.

"I don't worry about the downturn too much," said Leng Lin, the
director of the gallery. "This is a long-term project. In the future,
the market will recover."

Acquavella Galleries of New York has also invested in China, agreeing
to represent Mr. Zeng, whose crisp, dark portraits of life and nature
are popular among European collectors.

And then there are Guy and Myriam Ullens, the Belgian
multimillionaires who founded the sprawling Ullens Contemporary Art
Center in 2007 after amassing one of the biggest collections of
Chinese contemporary art more than a decade ago.

Their foundation has recently been shopping that collection, which
includes about 1,500 works and is now in Switzerland, to Chinese
buyers. But selling a collection that large, possibly as part of a
package deal that would include the center they founded in Beijing,
may be a challenge.

Mr. Sans, director of the center, insists that the buyer must be from
China.

"We're trying to find partners," he said. "We want all the works to
stay together and to be controlled by Chinese."

Charles Saatchi, the legendary London-based dealer and collector,
also invested heavily in Chinese contemporary art in recent years,
helping to drive up prices.

With collectors hibernating, traffic has slowed in Beijing's 798 Arts
District and Shanghai's M50 Arts District, though some say winter is
usually a slow time anyway. By April, gallery dealers say, the true
extent of the damage may be known.

"Collectors call me, but they're more careful" about spending, said
Cheng Xingdong, who operates a large Beijing gallery. "And because
people stopped buying, you don't know the value of the works."

The best-known artists may be insulated from the effects of the
downturn. Because of their huge exposure in recent years, including
newspaper and magazine profiles, many of them now have international
reputations and collectors who are still eager to support them.

Mr. Zeng, who favors European fashions and Chinese antiques, is one
of those lucky ones. He's preparing for his first solo exhibition in
New York, at the Acquavella Galleries, and another show this spring
at the Suzhou Museum, designed by I. M. Pei.

He said he was even gratified that he did not sell too many of his
paintings over the last few years. If the market were now flooded
with his works, he reasons, their value would be far lower.

Mr. Zeng opened a door to a storage room in the rear of the studio
filled with dozens of works and smiled. "That would have been a
disaster."

Artist Defies Web Censors in a Rebuke of China

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/world/asia/20quake.html?
ref=world&pagewanted=print

March 20, 2009
Artist Defies Web Censors in a Rebuke of China
By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — One of China's most prominent and provocative artists is
challenging the government to end what he calls its cover-up of
incompetence in managing the response to an earthquake last May in
Sichuan Province that killed more than 80,000 people.

The artist, Ai Weiwei, 51, who helped design the Olympic National
Stadium known as the Bird's Nest, is creating a sensation in China by
posting angry commentaries about the quake rescue efforts on his
popular blog.

In the online postings, Mr. Ai criticizes the government's management
of the disaster response and chides officials for still not having
provided a full accounting of schoolchildren's deaths, which he and
many others attribute to poorly constructed schools.

"I'm really tired of this bull," Mr. Ai said Thursday in a telephone
interview from Beijing, where he has a large studio. "I went there,
and I saw the school building collapsed, and next to it is a building
that is fine."

On his blog, the artist has published his own list of children killed
in the 7.9-magnitude earthquake, gathering more than 1,500 names. He
has also posted transcripts of conversations he and others have had
with government officials who have refused to cooperate with them.
"You have to provide letters and stamps and tell the civil affairs
office what you want and what you need it for," is a typical official
response he has received to his inquiries, he said.

The postings are unusual in that they have not yet been censored or
removed from the Internet. Mr. Ai is being allowed to criticize the
government sharply about a very delicate topic in Beijing.

Harsh critics of the government are often censored, muffled or
arrested, and crackdowns on dissent are common. Last June a human
rights activist named Huang Qi was arrested and charged with
illegally possessing state secrets after he aided parents who
demanded that those responsible for poor school construction be held
accountable. Mr. Qi had posted information about their demands on his
Web site.

But Mr. Ai, the son of one of the greatest Chinese modern poets, Ai
Qing, is being allowed to speak out so candidly on a government-
controlled Web site.

"He's very much an agent provocateur," said Meg Maggio, director of
the Pekin Fine Arts Gallery and a longtime friend of Mr. Ai. "He's a
public figure and he's from a very important intellectual family, so
maybe he's reached a status and can say a lot of things."

After the earthquake last May, the government essentially barred
Chinese journalists from reporting on the subject of shoddy school
construction and the deaths of children, according to several Chinese
journalists.

Angry parents in Sichuan have demonstrated and pressed the government
to explain why so many schools collapsed while other buildings nearby
remained intact. Many blamed government corruption in the
construction process for the differences in the stability of the
buildings. Public security agents have broken up many of the
demonstrations and have even harassed parents for pressing the case.

Nearly 10 months after the earthquake, the Chinese government still
says it is unclear how many children died in the rubble.

This month, Wei Hong, executive vice governor of Sichuan, told the
news media that there was still no final number for children's deaths
and that experts had concluded that the intensity of the quake, and
not poor construction, was the main reason for the high death toll.

Mr. Ai rejects that explanation and says he is determined to get the
names of the victims himself.

"I want to do it before the one-year anniversary," he said.

He added Thursday, "If you see the photos, it's so unbelievable, so
sad to see what happened to those children."

A man who answered the telephone in the general office of the Sichuan
provincial government in Chengdu declined to give his name but
confirmed that Mr. Ai or one of his researchers had called the office.

"He's totally crazy, he kept asking questions again and again," the
man said. "My colleague was quite cooperative and patient. You know,
some data and reports on the student death toll, it's not our duty to
give him."

Mr. Ai is not new to controversy. He is known for his avant-garde
photographs and sculptures and for his blend of traditional Chinese
elements and modern style — but also for his sharp tongue.

Although he helped design the National Stadium, he vowed to stay away
from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, saying he believed
in freedom, not autocracy.

Now, he says he is determined to produce a documentary on the
earthquake. He said a team of more than 100 people had already
conducted dozens of interviews with grieving parents for the film.

Asked why his blog had not been shut down, he admitted to being
perplexed.

"Every day I'm waiting for that, but it hasn't happened," he said.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting from Beijing.

b&w gallery photos

my visits to galleries in both beijing and shanghai have been filled with works both shitty and fantastic. some galleries, however, take the focus of the art to the viewer in a self-conscious manner. this is always the best kind of gallery- the one in which the viewer is actually a part of the art. this is best highlighted by installations, the epicenter of which is beijing where large warehouse-type galleries allow for maximum range in both space and possibility. 798 had several of these, which forced the viewer to reflect upon his interaction with the art, and how he played into the theme at hand. for instance, how the viewer reacts to a large warehouse filled with rusted tin or, conversely, the reaction of a viewer who is locked in a small dark room with spinning lights. regardless of the installation, the viewer is of utmost importance- without him, the art might as well not exist. the following photos were intentionally shot in black and white, so as to draw more attention to the subjects and action of the photo rather than the art. by desaturating the image, one's eye is drawn away from what would in reality be colorful, instead shifting focus to action within the frame. observe:

shanghai MOCA

a 798 gallery, beijing

thanks boyang for being my subject (he didn't know). in the first, the action of bo walking past the art poses the question- why has this viewer decided to skip the art in front of him, intended to entertain? the transient nature of the viewer adds to the art context, the faceless portraits of inmates. perhaps it's because these people are not worth remembering, or perhaps, it's that man's tendency to ignore aesthetics in city life lends to increasing facelessness in society.

the second shot in 798 has the viewer again ignoring the art, but in a stationary manner. for the passerby, the human has become itself an art piece- his three-dimensional physical presence in the gallery, juxtaposed against two dimensional art leaves us wondering- why has the viewer stopped here- why is he in the gallery at all? what purpose does it serve man in paying money to view art- art that can easily be brought up on google? what is the nature of man's interaction with inorganic aesthetics, and why does he create said art at all? why is one person's creation better than the others, to the point that he needs to view it in a gallery? these questions are interesting to think about, and are definitely part of the wonder of attending art galleries in person. isn't it crazy that people congregate and get drunk together at openings- to look at what amounts to glorified pieces of paper?? fascinating!

Pop-Mao

Yu Youhan and the Mao Series:

I think Yu's series of pop-art styled paintings of Mao Zedong are very interesting. What fascinates me about this series, is the juxtaposition of reverentials. What works about these pieces is their grounding in the hyper-politicized period of China from the late sixties well into the seventies - the cultural revolution. Mao's status became (as it was already becoming), something no longer human. His image instead took on its own life independent of the physical Mao. In the pop-art series (the one with Whitney Huston is a great example) we see this revered image that is so part of the public consciousness next to and within a style (as well as with the images themselves) of the new generations revered culture. With the advent of capitalism, consumerism - as well as Westernism in a more general sense - these have taken on a sort of quasi-divine status that is held, by and large in the public conscious, as the new fixation of the public cult of worship. This fits into the increasingly depoliticized world that China has descended into (as well as the art scene). The use of Mao in the art work serves to remind us of the recent hyper-politicization and where the current political and social world stands and has changed, with a satiric eye towards the similarities.

State of the Art

State of the Art
Lisa.Movius, 2009-09

Viewed as another commodity during the era of hot money and easy credit, Contemporary Art – particularly from the ‘it’ country of China – was greedily acquired by hedge funds and market players to be quickly flipped, with little interest in the actual art or its background.

Since opening ShanghART, one of China’s earliest Contemporary Art galleries, in 1997, Lorenz Helbling has witnessed Chinese art grow from an infancy of obscurity to a much hyped global frenzy in recent boom years.“There was one guy who stood right in front of a work by Ding Yi,” who paints distinctive repetitions of crosses, “and declared ‘I want to buy a Ding Yi painting. Do you have any?’” Helbling recalls.

Chinese contemporary art experienced, independently, a tremendous expansion of talent and institutions over the past decade. That growth coincided, though, with international factors that created two mutually reinforcing bubbles: the global exploitation of contemporary art as a speculative investment scheme, and the international enthusiasm for all things China making Chinese art very ‘hot’ in the art world. Auction prices sizzled into the multi-millions of dollars for some Chinese works. In particular, the cynical realism and political pop Cultural Revolution tropes in paintings and sculpture by a cabal of art superstars like Yue Mingjun, Fang Lijun, and Zhang Xiaogang racked up sales and spawned a generation of imitators.

"Artists need to have time to experiment, to play around, rather than chase whatever is popular."
Stylistic redundancy and topical predictability ensued. Small and new collectors were priced out. Many installation and video artists switched to the more saleable format of painting. Some artists reaped a financial windfall, but paid creatively. “Even painting students were in auctions,” recalls critic and curator Samantha Culp. “Careers were sped up. They were ruined by success. Artists need to have time to experiment, to play around, rather than chase whatever is popular.”

“An artist, right out of the studio, needs to develop,” echoes Helbling. “We set the price at say US$10,000 for a reason – because at the moment it does not merit US$20,000-30,000. It is easy to get the high price, but then how does the artist go on working?” He says that, for artists to play to the hot market, they had to produce some hundred works per year, all of them recognisably, marketably similar. Now, “the speculators are gone, so life is much easier, we don’t have to be so careful” not to sell to them, because, “a bubble is a bubble, and we didn’t want to feed the bubble. We want to work with artists, and help them develop over many years. And I want to sell to someone who likes the work, who will hang it and defend it, not just on the grounds that they bought it for US$10,000 and now it’s US$20,000, but who will still defend it if the price goes down.”

“The special characteristics of the China boom,” Helbling specifies, “were: Speculation. Money. Big productions. And stupidity.” He stresses that these are elements generally not attributable to the artists, and that many artists – particularly outside of Beijing – opted out of the madness.

Almost all of the high-priced commercial stars of the past five years were Beijing-based; the exceptions being a few émigrés such as Cai Guoqiang and Xu Bing, who had risen to international prominence a decade earlier. Painting, and the political themes and clichéd Chinoiserie popular with foreign art shoppers in China, predominate more in Beijing. The capital has long attracted artists from around China – and increasingly around Asia and the world – creating a much larger scene, but also greater competition.

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"Beijing is a city a lot of artists move to, and they have pressure: they left their village, or left their home town, and have only a little time in which to succeed. There are thousands of artists, it is very competitive. Who is good is measured by who has the biggest car. Shanghai artists discuss a lot, but are not that into money or who has the biggest house,” Helbling explains. “In Shanghai, the artists and galleries here were not so easily absorbed. The boom was a lot of people accumulating works and pushing up prices, and most Shanghai artists refused to participate. One reason is that Shanghai is a commercial city – if people want to be artists, they’ll be artists. If they want to make money, they’ll make money.”

“Shanghai was not so impacted,” concurs Alexia Dehaene, who directs the Shanghai non-profit BizArt Center, established in 1999. She and Helbling both point out that Shanghai has experienced a strange quiet during the Chinese art boom, its growth steady but low key, and with new institutions in recent years limited to the ShContemporary art fair, launched in 2007, and the August opening of the Minsheng Museum. “Beijing is more active, much bigger, more complex … People say Shanghai is more commercial, but during the boom Beijing was way more commercial than Shanghai.”

Beijing’s comparative commercialisation is only one of the urban stereotypes the double bubble inverted. Starting with the opening of Arario Beijing in 2005, the capital has seen an explosion of branches of big international galleries, and increasingly attracts artists from outside of China. It has assumed Shanghai’s traditional mantle of Sino-Foreign arbiter, while Shanghai art remains comparatively introspectively Chinese.

“Shanghai is painfully local,” critiques Meg Maggio, who co-founded Beijing’s Courtyard Gallery in 1997 and launched Pekin Fine Arts in 2005. “Beijing has become the centre for contemporary art not just for China but for all of Asia,” she enthuses “The city has become a wonderful platform for Asian artists, curators and galleries, as well as artists from around China … I don’t know what the ‘Chinese Art Scene’ means; it is this constant conversation with the world. Chinese art has become less inward looking.”

The inaugural private 798 Beijing Biennale, running until 12 September, is premised upon Beijing’s post-boom repositioning as an international art hub for Asia. Materials for the event stay rigorously on-message, declaring Beijing, “ideal for this unique biennale because it is a megalopolis located between the future and the past – a confluence of the pre-modern, modern, and postmodern that, in turn, reconfigures globalisation in a manner more complicated and multidimensional than in other areas of the world” and making much of the inclusion of Beijing-based foreign artists. The open question is whether that trend will continue even as China’s trendiness subsides, and as international galleries’ expansion budgets contract with the global art market.

If Shanghai, and nearby sister city Hangzhou, were shielded in their own bubble of distance from the Beijing-based boom, the sky was higher and the emperor even further away in Southern China. The Guangzhou Triennial debuted in 2002, and in its three installments to date has consistently been heralded as the best official art event in China. The same year, independent gallery Vitamin Creative Space opened in Guangzhou, and it has become the centre of a flourishing, largely experimental scene. More galleries have opened in nearby Shenzhen.

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Samantha Culp, who has worked for Vitamin Creative Space and for acclaimed Guangzhou artist Cao Fei, surmises that the region enjoys a lot of creative freedom due to being comparatively off the national radar. “The Pearl River Delta is a factory, an experiment. Censorship has never been so harsh, and it early on had access to Western, Taiwanese and Japanese pop culture from across the border. Guangdong has more free reign than Beijing … they know they have the leeway to muck around.”

She says that Vitamin Creative Space founders Zhang Wei and Hu Fang chose Guangzhou because, “The risks are less, so you can experiment more and take risks, even do things that are silly or stupid. Beijing art is more serious: serious about money, serious about politics, serious about symbolism. You almost never see those classical Chinese symbols, or Cultural Revolution imagery, in Guangdong art – unless to make fun of their usage” up north, because Southern Chinese prefer more modern, pop cultural references. The art is also distinct, Culp adds, with apologies for the generalisation, because, “The stereotype is that the Cantonese are a very practical people – focused on things like food, money, humour, and everyday life, in contrast to Beijing's reputation for lofty ideals and intellectualism. Cantonese culture seems less concerned with ideology, or approaches it from a different, perhaps more ironic angle.”

Pockets of independent artistic activity have also emerged in smaller Chinese cities, around art schools in Wuhan and Chongqing, and around bohemian communities in Yunnan, doing their own thing regardless of boom or bust.

Apart from a few auction houses, dealers and investors protesting otherwise, most in China’s art industry believe the boom is now over, or at least fizzling out – and that is a good thing, at least for the art. Internationally, prices have fallen, and the art world debates whether the “new China” will be India, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia. However, facing into the autumn – one of Chinese art’s busiest seasons – and beyond, none can say how Chinese contemporary art will fill into the stretch marks of its phenomenal adolescence in the mid-2000s.

The time frame of China’s double bubble depended on the audience. A few art insiders ‘discovered’ Chinese contemporary art in the late 1990s, and its official debut was when Harold Szeemann brought a group of Chinese artists to the Venice Biennale in 1999, recalls Maggio. Helbling identifies a succession of bubbles: one “in 1995-1996 in Hong Kong, when the dollar was up; Europe had a small [Chinese art] boom in 2000-2003. All small waves, but the last one was more uneven.” However, the biggest hype, and attendant price inflation, had its heyday roughly 2003 or 2004 to 2007, and had begun popping by autumn 2008 due to the coinciding global financial panic and post-Olympic China ennui.

However, the deflation remains sporadic and uncertain, and to some boosters and casual observers, the Chinese contemporary art boom is still going strong. Even now, every week brings several new articles rather belatedly celebrating Chinese contemporary as the “hot new thing”. “A lot of people not in the art world don’t know that things have changed,” muses Culp, recounting hearing ideas for yet more general documentaries on Chinese contemporary art and a flow of books on things like ‘Young Chinese Artists’. “Within the art world, China is no longer this big, hyped thing; it will just be one part of the art world.”

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While the glamour is fading and the boom subsiding, both appear to have helped speed up that global normalisation of Chinese contemporary art. “Now we have seen serious galleries doing Chinese artists. Before they were just exotic, and the serious galleries kept their distance,” says Helbling. “Now there are more names [known]: if you asked someone 10 years ago, the only Chinese artist they knew of was Chen Yifei – just the one. Now there are 10, or even 20, names everyone knows, and they are not just ‘Chinese artists’ in general. There will be more and more, eventually 50 to 100 names. Now the pressure is to do interesting works, because with world attention [on Chinese art] you can’t just copy your neighbour, or repeat what you were doing three years ago.”

“China is more important now; China is a part of the world,” he continues. “If an artist says something about the world today, they will matter. Our world is much bigger now, and what artist figures out what matters today will become bigger than Warhol, since the world is bigger. Some just look at what is fashionable, but China is not a fashion that the West can make for two years. Whether the West talks about China or not, it doesn’t matter. Supposedly if the West is talking about China then it’s ‘big’, if next year it’s talking about India or Africa, China gets ‘smaller’. But China, with its one billion people, does not go away if there is not so much noise.”



ShContemporary – 10-13 September

After a stunning opening in 2007 but a sophomore installment that many found disappointing, the ShContemporary art fair aims to regain its legs this year with a new director and a new direction. Beijing-based artist and curator Colin Chinnery brings local experience that previous fair directors lacked. Showcasing the best of galleries from China, Asia and the world at the Shanghai Exhibition Center, the fair is divided into the general Best of Galleries section, Discoveries by a few top galleries presenting their best artists and curated by Wang Jianwei and Mami Kataoka, and Platform for individual emerging artists. A lecture series organised by Anton Vidokle runs throughout; check the website http://www.shcontemporary.info/ for the schedule of talks and additional details.

eArts Festival

Also in its third year, and scheduled to coincide with ShContemporary, which is coorganising one event, this installment of eArts marks yet another reconceptualisation in presenting the electronic arts. While 2007 was diverse and disparate, and 2008 segregated into each district having distinct events, this year eArts comes together into three big events coordinated with local and international arts institutions. The opening extravaganza eArts Beyond, subtitled 'Base Target=New' after an HTML tag, runs 11-20 September at the Oriental Pearl Tower. Fanstasic Illusions, showcasing Chinese and Belgian new media artists, will be at MoCA Shanghai from 13 September to 11 October, before traveling to Belgium. The research-driven New Media Archeology at ddm Warehouse includes a presentation on 10 September, a symposium on the 11th, and an exhibition that runs from 12 September through 11 October.

Chinese Calligraphy and Modern Typography

Typography - the study of typefaces (or fonts, if you want to be a rube about it) seems to be a somewhat under appreciated discipline in the world of art. Most people don't think twice about the way a letter looks while they're typing in MS Word and probably don't know what sans-serif even is. However within graphic design having an eye for typography is not only helpful, but almost a necessity. Typography has even been around longer than modern graphic design, from the old hand drawn cursive of the 19th and 20th century to contemporary typefaces created almost completely digitally. Like an old shoemaker or watch maker, typography is all about the craft and precision, as well as an overall balance between design aesthetic and pragmatic use.

This brings me to the topic of Sunday's lecture on Graphic Design and Typography in China at the Literary Festival. On the panel was graphic designer Ou Ning, best known for his book, New Sound of Beijing, which brought and defined modern Chinese youth culture and style to the masses, his experimental magazine, Bie Ce and his numerous curatorial endeavors. While the other panelists, Lynn Pan and Pan Jian Feng, who discussed Futurism's influence on Chinese design and commercial typography in China, respectively, Ou Ning recounted his life growing up and being classically trained as a Chinese calligraphy, his life now as a contemporary designer, and how China as a whole could somehow transition from its centuries old tradition of calligraphy and marry it with modern typography. Since Chinese calligraphy is already a discipline based on practice and precision, as well as a limited yet endless level of micro-innovation, it seems like amalgamating the two would be simple and wildly successful. However despite this, the panelists seemed to be in agreement that a product of this perfect union has yet to be created. With its roots in the Futurist movement of the early 20th century, modern Chinese typography has manifested itself in a number of places including advertisements, books, and even street signs seen on storefronts along the street. And while a slew of different methods and ideas have been employed, Chinese typography still lags behind that of the West.

It is this emulation of the West's typographical tradition that is, in my opinion, stunting the growth of Chinese typography. Like painting and other art disciplines, China is still struggling to come into its own in terms of style and it seems like typography is yet another facet of this untapped potential within China. The panel explored a variety of first and second-hand perspectives and raised some interesting questions concerning whether or not Chinese typography and graphic design will ever come into its own. Perhaps it won't?

Inflated Expectations for the Fulfillment of Typography's Destiny in Contemporary China

We consider the destiny of Chinese typography and design in the sense that Chinese writing hovers between the abstract and the concrete. Unlike Western alphabets the Chinese characters have yet to be totally divorced from their hieroglyphic heritage, and in this way their union in contemporary design with photographic images represents at once this evolutionary ascent and melds them together in the formation of a singular aesthetic object. This destiny, then, is never completely attainable but stands as a goal to be sought after-- it is the ideal fusion of the ancient and modern in pursuit of the universal.

Building the Dragon 龙建筑风格

Shanghai is a city that has been radically transformed in the last 20 year, and the architectural landscape is where this is most evident. The innovative style that can be seen all over the cities newest parts are exactly what people might have imagined a 21st city to look like 30 or 40 years age.

The ultimate Shanghainese landmark is the Pearl Tower. Built in the early 1990's, the tower, although its not the tallest or most expensive building in Pudong, is definitely the most representative of the futurist ideals that have driven the edifices of the super skyscrapers in Shanghai.

Spherical, crystaline structures bend and jut up throught the stiff cement buildings of the city's historical past. At night, the city flashes and all the the neon colors, which are normaly hidden by day light, resinate up throught the narrow throughways.

Shanghai is a city that wears its creative ambitions on its sleave.



Pearl Tower



Zhong Shan Park



Pudong Financial district



Cloud 9



Shanghai Dream Theater



Shanghai World Financial Center



Shanghai Science & Technology Museum



Shanghai Night Landscape



Shanghai at night

A 'Domestic Turn'

Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline: The Big Family No. 3 (1995)

This week's reading, "A 'Domestic Turn:' Chinese Experimental Art in the 1990s" by Wu Hung, offered remarkable insight into the world of 1990s Chinese experimental art.  His ample historical arguments were (thankfully and helpfully) grounded with an extensive, though manageable, list of key figures from this period.  

As the title of the article alludes to, Hung argues that "Chinese experimental art of the 1990s" underwent a "'domestic turn' that transformed experimental art into a powerful vehicle of social critique."  Much of this was related to the rapid political, economic, and social changes that occured after the end of the Cultural Revolution.  Artists were now unchained from making the obligatory propagandistic visuals that were so reminiscent of the Mao era; instead, more leeway (though still under an auspicious government eye) was granted to artists.  And as more rural Chinese found their way to the cities in search of work, artists too were migrating towards urban areas, primarily Beijing, for artistic growth.  This led to the development of "artist villages", residential areas inhabited by many experimental artists, that initially grew out of financial reasons (i.e. living in these communities were cheaper for the artists), but eventually, these "villages" became molded into their artistic identity and community.  However, Hung was quick to point of that these artists "rarely [formed] close groups based on common social or artistic causes", which begs me to ask why these artists failed to "inspire new ways of thinking and expression".  Based on my inferences from the reading, I would think that the commercial competition amongst these artists contributed to this, since the reading mentioned that "freelance artists" working outside the affiliations of government institutions often had to find other (economic) means to support his or her works.

One of the most interesting (and insightful) pieces of information that Hung provided concerning 1990s experimental art was the short discussion on Political Pop:

As an important trend in Chinese experimental art, Political Pop brought post-Cultural Revolutionary art to an end.  its radical fragmentation of Cultural Revolution images exhausted the source of its pictorial vocabulary and reduced it to a number of pre-conceived compositional formulae.  this interpretation corrects a misunderstanding often found in Western introductions to contemporary Chinese art, which tend to identify Political Pop as a "dissident" political art produced under a Communist regime.  In fact, most Political Pop artists were protesting against against any ideological and political commitment; their intention was to de-politicize political symbols--not reinvest them with new political meaning.  Although genuine social and cultural criticism existed in Chinese experimental art in the 1990s, it was related to an observation and representation of reality, not history.

Though what I've quoted is long, I think it's important to understand these works, their artists, and these artistic time periods from their perspectives.  I think one of the primary challenges for us as students is approaching the material in this class from a non-Chinese perspective (one that is rooted in Western ways of thinking and views towards China, American history, etc.).  For example, if we take Hung's above argument to be a good generalization of Chinese Political Pop, then what many in the class (including me) thought of works in this group (including Zhang Xiaogang, whom painting I've included above, and last week's presenter, Yu Youhan) is incorrect in comparison to the artists' own statements concerning these works.

Hungry Hungry Pillows

Recently, I've been finding myself wandering near our apartment building when I'm not in class. It isn't so much because I want to get to know my area better, it's more because I want to scope out all the good places to eat. I find that I get hungriest when I'm bored or alone, and I tend to be bored and alone many times in a week, or even a day. 

On my conquest for nourishment, I discovered many interesting places that sold all sorts of interesting food. But what really got my attention was all the places I found that didn't sell food, at least not edible food. There were a bunch of interesting little stores near a group of restaurants that sold little objects shaped after foods such as pillows, origami, slippers, erasers, and even towels. 

At first, I was a little disappointed since I wanted to eat something, but I was intrigued after going through a couple of stores. I thought it was really neat that people spent time crafting these things into the shape of food and other objects. I was really tempted to purchase a sushi pillow, but after much debate I realized I really didn't need one at the moment. Nor did I want to bring home a giant stuffed piece of sushi in my luggage. At the same time, however; it made me realize just how different the culture in China is compared to America in terms of art and style. I'm sure to the locals, that these erasers and food-shaped objects came as no surprise. To me, however; it was a very pleasant and enticing surprise.

Filling in the Gaps

Since most of us have a relatively limited knowledge of contemporary Chinese artists and their works (myself included), I thought I’d take it upon myself to do a little research, and share it with the rest of you. It seemed logical to begin with one of the pioneers in what can be considered modern Chinese art: Lin Fengmian.
















Lin Fengmian was born in 1900 in Guangdong, China. The son of a traditional Chinese painter, Lin studied European styles in France and Germany before returning to China in the mid 1920’s. His work primarily attempted to synthesize Eastern and Western artistic styles, blending traditional Chinese methods with European modernism. After gaining much fame for his innovative style, Lin Fengmian helped to found the National Academy of Art in Hanghzou, a school that focused both on developing Chinese culture and on integrating Eastern and Western art.

Lin Fengmian produced a large number of paintings depicting autumnal landscapes, many of which are relatively dark and emotive.



Unfortunately, many of his works have been destroyed, first during the Japanese invasion that began in 1937, and later during the Cultural Revolution, when he destroyed many of his own works due to criticism from the Communist Party and the Gang of Four. Despite this, he was still imprisoned for nearly four years, after which he moved to Hong Kong in 1977, where he lived until his death in 1991.

True Art At Last

Yesterday I went to ZhongShan Park to see if I couldn't kick up a bit of the local color, kick up some ART!!

I knew this type of thing would require special shoes, so I shined my Dock Martins and in ten minutes I was in the park, 3AM with a flashlight and a sketchbook.

It wasn't long before I found what I was looking for, what we're all looking for when you get right down to it. I was on the bridge over where the bumper boats go in the waking hours and across the the rippled reflection of the crescent moon floated a bird carcass. It's eyes were the moist new home of maggots growing fat. It's stomach was bloated, some bacteria waiting to burst out, the feathers were tattered and ruffled and plucked and wet and criss-crossed  and slovenly and here they were gone, and there there were too many, very apropos.

I sketched eight pictures of that bird in various stages of the night, eight sheens of the moon.

And then I took of my glasses and my shirt and yelled, "FOR I AM BOYANG HOU!"

From Italy to Shanghai...

Sunday's presentation did an incredible job at giving me a concise visual history of typography starting half way across the world and ending up in Shanghai. Tracing the journey of typography from Futurism to the creative advertising agencies of today highlighted the importance of the written (or digitally created) word itself. After spending so much time in Chinese class quickly jotting down hundreds of characters, the presentation served as a welcome reminder that each stroke has a certain significance that should not be taken for granted.
Coming from the perspective of a person who knew nothing about typography before Sunday, I thought the presentation did a very good job of steering clear of industry lingo by giving a clear and concise explanation of the history and the direction that each panelist expects contemporary Chinese typography and graphic design to head in.
I also thought that seeing the history of the art form beginning in the early 1900's was a befitting introduction to the story of Pan Jian Feng, whos personal story made graphic design seem much less like an occupation and much more like a way of life. His story did a good job of tying in the importance of the tradition of calligraphy to contemporary Chinese graphic design.

"Restriction" In A New Light

After visiting CAFA two weeks ago, I was taken aback by the number of students studying so many different disciplines on an incredibly vast and well-equipped campus. After last week's class on art in the 1980's, the tour of CAFA was put into perspective. The distance that art in China has come in such little time is amazing, even when only considering that the project to redesign and renovate CAFA took just over five years. Standing on the same campus ground as thousands of other students and looking at all the resources that the school had to offer them, it became hard to imagine what came before it. Any idea of censorship or restriction in contemporary China that I had was suddenly changed. The image of an oppressive and brutally restrictive China that I had imagined existed before and to some extent after 1979 didn't match up with what I was seeing taking place in front of me. After only a brief visit,  it seemed like students at CAFA were being provided with more materials and more opportunities to pursue what they study than NYU was providing to many of its students in New York.

When preparing for this week's presentation, we found an interview with Huang Zhuan, a prominent curator in China. What was interesting was his comments on the censorship and restriction in China. He said that while China was opening up and allowing more artists to show their work in public, a new kind of restrictiveness was developing. As the Chinese art market progresses and grows (as seen in the rapid development of CAFA), the realization that contemporary Chinese art is a hot commodity has taken hold. According to Huang Zhang, this realization has made many Chinese artists think more about the market and the value of their work than the work itself. He calls this a kind of restriction, saying that the transition has been made from restriction from government to restriction from the market. More so, many Chinese artists have grabbed hold of international and western styles of art as a means of creating pieces that have high market value. He also remarks that this has caused Chinese contemporary art to become "bland." 

After touring CAFA I wonder, what will CAFA students do once they graduate? What are they working on and how does this compare to the students that came before them? 

Art of Holding Hands in China

The Standard

As we have all noticed, holding hands among friends is quite natural in China.  This embrace is not controlled by gender lines, so whether it is boy/boy, girl/girl, boy/girl, girl/girl/girl, or boy/boy/boy, it is often no more than a symbol of ones friendship.  I like to relate it to the friendly ass slap that is seen on American baseball fields.  To a foreigner it might seem odd at first but once it is accepted as a natural social custom, one should be able to see the merit of its ability to show companionship and demonstrate the belonging to a community.  The best part about holding hands in China, however, is being able to pick up the different variations that aren't as prevalent in the US.

Here is a variation of one of the more standard hand holds

Ya gotta love it - an intertwining of arms and fingers create a zipper affect where everything seems securely bound and it becomes hard to differentiate one person from the other.

Chinese art market in the global scene and it's meanings

I've been reading up about the contemporary art scene and it's position in the global art and political world and have come across several interesting things. The growth of importance of the Chinese art scene upon the global world has walked hand-in-hand with China's emergence upon the world stage as a major player. I'm curious about the relation of the two. Is sudden interest in Chinese contemporary art linked with a growing inquisitiveness about the people behind this new global player. Does interest into the Chinese art scene correlate to an attempt by the rest of the world to better understand contemporary Chinese culture and society as well as the spirit and feel of the average Chinese citizen. Does insight into the art of a culture provide insight into the people of that culture as well and help us better understand the Chinese as human beings?

Or is the interest just another attempt to jump onto the profitable Chinese-market wagon? Works by big name contemporary Chinese artists were (and still are to a lesser extent) selling in the millions of USD at auction. Is this an appreciation of the art movement here or an attempt at a smart investment? On the Chinese side of it, is the art movement still connected to its roots or has it too been sucked into the world of high monetary returns? With the "good artwork" produced, there has been a horde of "junk being traded as 'meaningful work,'" ("Chinese contemporary art bubble goes flat") producing art as a commodity for the sole means of profit. Now however, there seems to be a burst in the Chinese art bubble pointing to the idea that maybe all this interest was just an overexcited fad. Or maybe not; works by the big names, although not reaching Christie's auction expectations, are still fetching price tags in the millions. 

Revolutionization

Shanghai's artistic explorations in the 1980s seem boundless and chaotic by today's standards. Professor Chuan's group, M, was formed during an era of predictability if not stagnation in the lives of Shanghainese-- a social order whose rapturous expressions in art are today tempered by the growth and uncertainty that now defines the place. During and before the 1980s the identity of the Shanghainese gave rise to a kind of freewheeling attitude that clashed directly with the city's static state and allowed for the formation of a distinct counterculture in opposition to a mundane reality.

During our current decade the city's identity has been directly called into question-- the landscape has been transmogrified and reconfigured, the culture has inflated and exploded into something unrecognizable and at the same time become insecure upon the realization that change has just begun. The question for Shanghai's future hinges on whether or not its citizenship will take the reins of the revolution or will wither away upon confronting it. The question of how to use the moment's momentous shift as a launching pad for an artistic euphoria rather than a guise for a tepid imitation of a westernized expression. Shanghai's art world must seize the moment in a violent fashion to recognize the opportunity for a profound originality that transcends the violence and yearning of its past.

Xiang Liqing at ShanghArt

Growing up in the same place can produce remarkably different individuals. ShanghArt's "Not Related" exhibits three native Shanghai artists, Huang Kui, Xiang Liqing and Zhou Zixi, all of whom were born in the 1970s that, despite their similar age and place of birth, have matured into very different artists creating a variety of works, each with their own purpose and style. The works of the three artists ranged from small painted portraits, to photography and large-scale, multi-paneled paintings and even some video. Of the three artists' work, I found Xiang Liqing's photographs to be the most stimulating, both visually and artistically. The series of about 9 photos show people, often male, exhibiting physical feats such as pulling rocks, lying under a stack of boxes, or balancing objects of one's head. Unlike Xiang's other pieces on display (3 foot tall striped cones and large collaged images of buildings), his photographs seem to have a sort of story behind them. Upon seeing the photos of physical labor, I immediately thought of Buddhist rituals in which a person will endure extreme physical acts (such as hanging upside down, etc.) in order to cleanse themselves and overcome physical suffering as well as spiritual suffering. The photos themselves are well composed and often just displaying these acts on an empty street or empty room and although the feat should and most certainly did elicit pain for the models, the people in the pictures don't look like they're in pain and instead look almost indifferent and possibly peaceful, once again reflecting Buddhist ideals of serenity and meditation. While I enjoyed these photographs, it was the piece "Offer You," which shows the artist wheeling a truckload of medical boxes (white boxes with a red cross spray painted on them) through a room covered in trash. While it may or may not have been the Xiang's intention, by seeing this photo last, it created a si ple narrative through the photos in which people attempt to heal themselves spiritually through physical pain, with the artist there to offer relief to those who either overcome it, or perhaps to those with pure intentions but little threshold for pain. Like a bodhisattva returning to the physical plane to aid those on the path to enlightenment, Xiang work infers that he has possibly seen the light, and is here to show it to others. Maybe.

Haul these stuff - 4 (2007)

Floor Height 280cm - 1 (2007)

Press - 1 (2007)

Offer you (2007)

Hello from Hangzhou

While I didn’t check out any galleries or studios this weekend, I did get a chance to see something that I think I’d be unlikely to see while exploring Shanghai’s art scene: nature (or something like it). Specifically, I saw big trees, green grass, and blue sky this weekend in Hangzhou – three things I have yet to see in this gray, hazy metropolis. Sure, I’m from Maine, where we have a lot of trees, but I wasn’t expecting every inch of this city to be paved over. I’ve seen a lot of places here where there’s plenty of room for a patch of grass or even a little bush, but instead it’s just a big empty space covered with pavement or dirty tiles.

Yet even in Hangzhou, where trees are more than 30 feet tall, the fields of surprisingly green grass were off-limits, and in a park the size of ECNU on the shore of the West Lake, there were something like 10 benches for 10,000 people. Although beautiful, the throng of people trying to enjoy the weather were forced to keep moving, walking on paving stones through this artificial and untouchable landscape.

In the end we decided to jump the fence and play a game of cards on the grass. Four thousand Chinese followed our example. I wish I had before and after pictures of this phenomenon, but all I have is a “before-the-police-arrived-to-kick-us-out” picture of everyone finally enjoying themselves, sitting on the grass. Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean we don’t need it. Does China hate nature? Probably not – but where has it gone?

Design and architectural finds in Shanghai

Shanghai is recognized for its futuristic, Jetsons-like, Pudong skyline, characterized by the Pearl Tower, and most recently by the Jin Mao Tower and the new Shanghai Financial Center. As Shanghai continues to pop up with new city landscapes (especially with the deadline for the World Expo rolling around in 2010), the city is sure to see new innovative design and materials for skyscraper architecture that makes you just say "wow". I admire Shanghai for its plentiful and diverse architectural aesthetic and design spaces. A few places to check out...

A good friend of mine recommended the Shanghai Urban Planning Centre, which boasts a very cool model of the city as envisioned in 2020. 

Definitely recommend taking a tour of the Shanghai Municipal History Museum in the basement of the Pearl Tower, which gives a nice overview of the city's history and culture (in the cross style of Epcot Center, Disney world and Madame Tussaud's Wax museum), touching upon some significant details of the aftermath of the Opium Wars in the 19th century and the influence of the foreign concessions in shaping Shanghai life.

Shanghai is host to many very beautifully designed hotels that puts visitors in a time warp. To experience Shanghai during the development of the British concession, and get a feel for 1930's Shanghai, I recommend the Astor House Hotel. Enjoy pictures of Albert Einstein and other celebrity guests who passed their time in the hotel. Be sure to check out the ballroom, too-- MAD Titanic. For a more glamourous art-deco feel, check out the Mansion Hotel (word on the street is Diane Von Furstenburg is a frequent guest). And of course, the Jin Mao Tower is spectacular, with the Grand Hyatt Hotel completely hollowed out from the lobby, beginning on floor 53 up to floor 88. If you look down you can enjoy the echoes of the jazz piano bar and experience somewhat terrifying vertigo.

Happy explorations!

Edumacation

Last week's class was pretty interesting. I've never seen a video of one of my professors drunk, let alone drinking anything alcoholic. It was pretty fun to watch Professor Chuan roll around and write in his drunken state. It almost reminded me of that one Jackie Chan movie where he fought with drunken style kung-fu. I guess in a way, they were similar in that they were both fighting for something. Though in Professor Chuan's case, it wasn't as literal.

I was doing some research on art in the 80's in China. Many people say that art really came out in China during the 80's. The government started to support art a little bit more during the 80's. At least, they didn't censor art as much during the 80's. However, there are some people that argue that art in China is more "censored" now than it ever was before. People argue that many artists in China are more concerned with whether or not their art will sell now as opposed to being concerned with the art itself. So even though art may have been much more expressive in the 80's. It has become diluted since many artists have turned to profit rather than expression in their art.

Going back to the video we saw. Many of the pieces in the video were very different from what many people would see from the Western world. I felt that a lot of the pieces were pretty graphic and had a lot of feeling behind them. I looked up some more recent pieces by famous artists in China, and a lot of them had a very Western feel to them. There was a lot of pop art and paintings that reminded me of works I've seen from Andy Warhol and other famous Western artists. It made me feel like Chinese artists were just replicating what they saw from the Western world, and it didn't seem much different. All in all, I think the art in China from the 80's was good, and now art in China s diluted with Western influence.