SH Shanghai
2010/9/9
When the East meets the West and add a little bit of more East. That's
the feeling I got when I visited the Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair.
Starting with the contemporary art from East Asia such as the ones
from Korea, Japan and China that were displayed at the first floor,
and then proceed up to the second floor where I saw arts from all over
Asia and the world. I underestimated the development of contemporary
art in China and the rest of East Asia. However, I was impressed by
both the quality and the sheer volume of the art works that were
presented at the fair. I could clearly see that art in East Asia not
only accepted western influence but also developed Oriental elements
and characteristics to its art works. For example, the art pieces
with landscape and buildings called "Phantom and the landscape" by
Yang Yongliang incorporated styles of Chinese traditional landscape
art with the modern westernized urban landscape in today's China. This
led me to reflect on recent o
riental influences not just on the eastern art but also to the west as
general. We are witnessing more and more mixtures of the East and the
West. I found their harmonious co-existence in contemporary art more
fascinating than the actual art works which emphasize only the eastern
or the western features. In an increasingly globalized world, we
should really start to think how we could preserve and carry forward
essence of artistic charms in eastern and western civilization.