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He Xiangning Art Museum celebrated its 10th anniversary April 18
with a special exhibition demonstrating He Xiangning’s important
status in contemporary Chinese art history and her prominent
contribution to the Chinese revolution.

The exhibition, which will run through July 1, features about
100 works by the renowned artist-turned-social activist and
national leader.

Rather than a conventional art exhibition, the show displays the
works in a multimedia environment, which includes videos,
photographs and historical documents, to enable audiences to learn
more about the background in which these works were created.

“We have chosen seven significant geographical locations, where
He Xiangning once lived and worked, to showcase He’s rough life
experiences and colorful art career,” said Le Zheng-wei, deputy
curator of the art museum.

Born in Hong Kong in 1879, He was married to Liao Zhongkai, a
senior statesman of the Kuomintang, in Guangzhou in 1897.

In 1902, He sold her dowries to support her husband to study in
Japan. In 1903, He followed her husband to Japan, becoming one of
the earliest female Chinese students studying abroad.

During her stay in Japan, He got to know Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and
started to devote herself to the revolutionary movement.

In 1905, she participated in the establishment of the Chinese
Revolutionary League, working as a liaison officer.

In 1909, she was admitted into the Hongo Women’s School of Fine
Arts in Tokyo to study landscape and flower painting, and then
continued to study animal painting under the Japanese royal artist
Raiaki Tanaka.

Throughout her life, He enjoyed using her paintings of plum
blossoms, pine trees, lions, tigers and landscapes to convey her
political views.

When the Revolution of 1911 broke out, He moved back to
Guangzhou with her husband. After returning to China, she came
under the influence of the Lingnan School of Painting, one of the
modern schools of Chinese brush painting, led by renowned artists
Chen Shuren and Gao Jianfu.

In her later works, her earlier Japanese painting influence
began to be replaced by more traditional Chinese forms.

Around 1924, He and Liao assisted Sun Yat-sen in reorganizing
the Kuomintang, and urged the party to cooperate with the Communist
Party of China (CPC).

After her husband was assassinated in 1925, He continued to
fight against the Kuomintang’s right-wing leaders.

During the eight-year War of Resistance Against Japanese
Aggression from 1937 through 1945, He endeavored to fight against
the Kuomintang’s dictatorship and infighting, and actively
participated in anti-Japanese movements.

In 1948, by uniting the Kuomintang’s right-wing leaders, He
organized the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee to answer the
CPC’s call to hold the new political consultative conference.

After the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, He was
appointed vice chairwoman of the National Committee of the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Conference and vice chairperson of
the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

In 1960, He was elected chairperson of the Chinese Artists
Association. She died in Beijing in 1972.

Approved by the Central Government, He Xiangning Art Museum was
established in the city’s Chinese Overseas Town on April 18,
1997.

It is the first national gallery that has been named after an
individual as well as the second national modern art museum in
addition to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

(Shenzhen Daily April 25, 2007)

Yu Feng, famous painter, fine arts critic and prose writer, passed
away at 91. She died on Sunday morning of cancer, her son Huang
Dawei said.

Having suffered from uterine and breast cancer, Yu had a surgery
to remove the tumors three weeks ago and fell into a coma.

To commemorate Yu’s achievements in art, the National Art Museum
of China will hold an exhibition of paintings of Yu and her husband
Huang Miaozi, 94, also a reputed artist. They got married in 1944
and became a “star couple” in China’s art circle. They have three
sons.

Yu, born in Beijing in 1916, developed her love for art under
the influence of her uncle, Yu Dafu (1896-1945), who was a famous
writer and pioneer of Chinese new literature.

First she learned oil painting in Beijing and then became a
student of Xu Beihong and Pan Yuliang, both prominent artists.

In the 1930s, she joined a national salvation movement against
Japan in Shanghai and worked as editor for revolutionary newspapers
and magazines.

In the 1940s, Yu devoted herself to prose writing, painting
exhibitions and editing for magazines in Chongqing and Nanjing.

After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, she was in
charge of exhibitions in China Artists Association and National Art
Museum of China.

Since the 1980s, Yu directed her interest in wash painting and
held exhibitions overseas.

“Her simple and small-sized paintings are done in a free way,
displaying her profound humanistic feelings,” said renowned fine
arts connoisseur Shi Shuqing.

Despite her tremendous achievements in art, she said modestly:
“At most, I am an amateur painter as I spent most of my life in
doing other stuff,” Yu said in an article about her paintings years
ago.

“In painting, I don’t want to repeat others or myself. But I’d
like to learn some techniques from others which fit my style, no
matter they are master artists or little kids and no matter the
techniques are traditional or modern.

“Above all, art works should lead people into deep thoughts and
stimulate the most beautiful feeling from the bottom of their
hearts. Art’s life is completed and prolonged by audience’s strong
echo and reflection.”

According to the museum, more than 80 paintings of Yu and 100 of
Huang will be displayed at the 12-day exhibition starting on April
27. Huang chose the paintings by himself. If health permits, Huang
will attend the show’s opening ceremony.

Yu’s strong mind and optimism impressed her family and friends
very much.

“Every time my mother had serious relapse, she joked that she
got yellow cards again,” her son told a newspaper in Shanghai.

Master cartoonist Ding Cong and his wife Shen Chong were Yu and
Huang’s long-time close friends.

“She was a happy granny and cared little for her illness,” Shen
said in an interview with China Daily. “Unbelievably, she even
travelled to Hunan immediately after an operation.”

“In our friends’ eyes, she was always like a middle school girl,
who was happy, adorable and passionate.”

“Once we joked that she could join Hunan’s Supergirl
competition. Seeing she thought it was really a good idea and might
have a try, we stopped kidding.”

“Although she has gone, yet our memory about her remains very
fresh and pleasant.”

Shen said there was really nothing to regret if a person could
lead such a colorful and meaningful life like Yu.

“She is talented, successful in career, happy with family,
healthy in most of her life, and most importantly very lovable
among friends.”

“It is a pity for me not to visit her in her final days. But
thinking she needed rest and wanted to keep her agreeable image
which might have been affected by painful treatment, I felt
relieved.”

Another of the couple’s friends Shao Yanxiang, a famous
essayist, said: “Yu was a charming person among friends and could
quickly become the center of attention at every parties.”

Also, Yu and Huang’s happy marriage of more than 60 years was
admired by many.

“They were a happy old couple, who were inseparable and often
showed up together.”

In fact, Shen revealed that Yu had the final say in their
family.

“Yu was active and outgoing while Huang preferred to stay at
home doing some reading and painting. But the two got along very
well.”

Li Hui, author of a book about the couple Keep smiling Huang
Miaozi and Yu Feng, said the two did share a lot of
similarities.

“Both of them are optimistic, kind and sincere. Both have
passion for art. Happy smile is their forever expression no matter
what happened to them.”

In addition to Yu’s outstanding painting and charming
personality, many people also love her essays that had been
published as books.

“Written in beautiful words, her essays are very emotional,”
Shen said.

“In her prose, we can feel her special style as an artist, who
was sensitive and pure-minded,” said Zhang Yiwu, a professor in
Peking University and a famous critic in literature

Yu’s son said his mother had wished for no ceremonies after her
death.

“We will present some of my mother’s paintings, photos and
manuscripts of her prose to our friends and relatives,” he
said.

(China Daily April 20, 2007)

Beijing Chateau
Laffitte

More than 20 French castles and castle museum will demonstrate
their world-class artistic treasures in China for the first time.
This European Castle’s Culture and Arts Exhibition will be held in
Beijing Chateau Laffitte from May 26th to July 28th, 2007. More
than 200 articles are all from ancient castles and castle-museums
established during 12th to 19th century.

Classic oil paintings, tapestry, porcelains, jewelry and classic
furniture are available for visitors. During the exhibition, more
than 10 French artists of traditional art-crafts will show their
skills of painting, tapestry netting, bronze casting and
carving.

Mr. Zhang Yuchen and his wife Mrs. Zhou Jianmin, the owner of
Beijing Chateau Laffitte and the sponsors of the exhibition, will
host a grand French Royal Banquet in an effort to invite the
celebrities who will taste the genuine French cuisine prepared by
French chefs around the end of July 2007. Prince Louis de Bourbon
and his wife Mary Margarette, successor of the royal family, will
come to preside over the banquet.

ZhangYuchen, followed by foreign media with strong passion,
together with his wife, zhou Jianmin, initiated this exhibition to
show their love for French culture.

Zhang started to learn and became interested in French culture
by reading a lot of French literature by Alexandre Dumas, Victor
Hugo and Gustave Flaubert. He made up his mind to build a French
chateau in Beijing when he set his feet for the first time on the
soil of French capital of arts in 2001.

In 2004, he built his 300-hectare Beijing Chateau Laffitte along
Wenyu River in Beijing’s suburb. The chateau absorbs the
architecture of Chateau Vaux Le Vicomte, Chateau Masion Laffittem
and Chateau de Fontainebleau, sharing the style of Baroque of the
European Renaissance.

(China.org.cn April 20, 2007)

The UN Headquarters in New York for the United States, the London
Bridge for Britain, the Eiffel Tower for France and Orthodox
churches for Russia!

If you think these landmarks or images are obvious symbols of
their countries, then how do you depict Kenya? A colony of
flamingos! And the person who has done that on rice paper is none
other 83-year-old Huang Yongyu, one of China’s most famous
artists. 

Tsinghua University art professor Yuan Yunfu, too, has created a
fine work of art: the Great Wall. Needless to say it symbolizes
China.

These are some of the excellent works that more than 200 artists
from across China have come together to create. They have put their
thoughts and artistic brilliance into 200 traditional Chinese
paintings to represent the 192 member states of the UN.

Their works will go on display at the “One World” exhibition in
Beijing on April 28.

But it’s not only the well-known landmarks and architectures
that feature in these paintings, for landscapes, folk customs,
national flowers and birds, too, find place in many of the
works.

From the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, the exhibition
will travel to the UN office in Geneva in July and then to its
headquarters in New York as a prelude to the 2008 Olympic Games.
The paintings will also be showcased in the capitals of more than
10 countries across the five continents.

The Olympic athletes will be presented with the exhibition
catalogues through which they can learn about Chinese painting and
the characteristic features of the 192 countries, said Feng Yuan,
vice-president of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles
(CFLAC).

The Information Office of the State Council, CFLAC and the
Chinese Artists’ Association are the joint organizers of the
paintings and the exhibitions.

“As part of the great event (2008 Olympics), Chinese artists
have expressed the wishes of their peace-loving people to help
build a world of harmony and peaceful coexistence,” Feng said.

(China Daily April 19, 2007)

The renowned actress-turned-glasswork-artist Loretta Yang Hui-shan
is telling her tale of two cities via her latest glass works.

Yang is holding two exhibitions one in Shanghai where her
workshop lies and one in New York where her career as a glass
artist started.

The New York exhibition entitled Intersection at the gallery Leo
Kaplan Modern include the quality works of Yang, William Carlson
and Steven Weinberg.

The powerful trio drew an esteemed crowd to the opening of the
exhibition in March.

Tina Oldknow, curator of Modern Glass at Corning Museum said,
“Yang’s work sets a new height for the glass art world both in
technique and creativity.”

Included in Intersection are eight pieces from Yang’s signature
Formless series, The Flowers Are Beautiful and the Moon is Full
series and Guan-Yin of Thousand Arms and Eyes.

Four of these eight pieces were sold within the first three days
including one to Victor Barnett, former Chairman of luxury brand
Burberry.

Barnett is an avid collector with over 60 contemporary glass
works in his collection; the addition of Yang’s piece marks his
first Asian glass.

Finding himself drawn to her work during the opening reception,
he remarked, “Yang’s work explores the oriental philosophy with
elegance. It is enticing, creative and classic.”

Terry Davidson, director of Leo Kaplan Modern, said, “The three
artists in the exhibition reflect the inclusiveness of glass art.
Their pieces play off each other to create a forceful dynamic.”

Yang once enrolled with the New York Experimental Glass Workshop
during her startup years, in order to study the “Pate-de-Verre
(lost wax casting)” technique.

She then found out that the glass-work-making technique actually
originated in her home country, China, where it was called liuli
(the Chinese term for “glass work”).

Yang recalled that for the first time, she found herself exposed
to different styles of contemporary liuli art and the versatility
of the material.

At that time, Carlson and Weinberg were already well established
in the contemporary glass art scene.

For Yang, they served as inspirational figures in her pursuit of
glass creation. Today, to be involved in a joint exhibition with
the very same artist is “more significant than a solo exhibition”,
Yang noted.

In the Shanghai exhibition hall located in Xintiandi, Weinberg’s
glass work are also on display. Both the two exhibitions are
running until the end of June.

(China Daily April 18, 2007)

Diana Lui’s camera is considered by artists today too difficult
to use because of its bulky form, weight and its lack of mechanical
flexibility.

However, the Malaysia-born Chinese photographer has used this
large format camera to produce many female portraits that are
regarded as better than those from digital cameras.

Packing her large 810 view camera, Lui began traveling around
the world some 14 years ago. She then transformed her images into
life-size prints (up to two meters high) for exhibitions in many
art festivals, galleries and museums.

A total of 88 such portraits are on display at the
Guangzhou-based Guangdong Art Museum after their first viewing in
the ancient town of Pingyao of Shanxi Province at an international
photography festival in 2003. The show runs until April 15.

“I tried to capture the inner thoughts of the people I have met
during travels. These works reflect a strong combination of human
beings and the environment,” Lui said.

While many of her works have been snapped up by private
collectors, museums and art institutes worldwide, Lui hopes to
eventually install her works in public places, such as walls along
public streets and historical buildings.

“The idea of this public project is to allow people to become
aware of their primordial existence in this world where their lives
are usually governed daily by racial, social, cultural, political
and economical structures,” she said.

Diana is also passionate about filmmaking, which she defines as
today’s “story-telling”.

In collaboration with the New York Film Academy, her first short
film was made in 2002, revealing how social and sexual hierarchies
are established through the Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art and
dance.

“In both her photography and film, you sense the oriental
philosophy of ‘the unity of heaven and human beings’. For example,
facing the trees in her pictures inspires a magical feeling that
the trees are alive and have strong desires to co-exist with
humans,” said Wang Huangsheng, curator of the Guangdong Museum of
Art.

(China Daily April 7, 2007)

An exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the prestigious
Tate gallery in Britain has drawn wildly enthusiastic reviews.
Right from its glittering opening on March 29, art critics and the
public have lavished it with praise, although some consider it a
little too surreal. It is being hailed as the most comprehensive
and adventurous if at the same time controversial collection of
Chinese modern art ever put on display in the UK, or even
Europe.

Indeed, there is a growing conviction that it might even surpass
the hugely successful exhibition spanning the reigns of the three
Qing Dynasty emperors Kangxi (1662-1722), Yongzheng (1723-35) and
Qianlong (1735-95), which attracted record visitors to London’s
Royal Academy of Arts two years ago. While the previous show was
devoted to the artistic and cultural riches of Imperial China, this
latest offering is a different creature altogether.

Billed as the show of the year if not the century so far at the
Tate’s northern

Chinese artist Zhou Tiehai with Karen Smith, a British art
writer and curator based in Beijing.

Photos courtesy of Lew Baxter

 

headquarters in the UK’s maritime city of Liverpool, it features 18
Chinese artists of varying degrees of fame and talent. The British
arts scene is arguing almost unanimously that it has helped dispel
the foreign notion that Chinese art is mainly about classical
calligraphy and traditional values, usually reflected in scroll
paintings or images of Mao and events since 1949.

Perhaps the most startling of the exhibits is by Shanghai artist
Xu Zhen, who a decade ago was struggling to scratch a living. As
part of an artistic “stunt” that outraged many environmentalists,
Xu had hacked off the tip of Mount Qomolangma and shipped it back
to Beijing where he displayed the frozen lump of rock and ice in a
refrigerated box.

This audacious act recorded on video sent shock waves around the
globe, yet it persuaded Tate Liverpool’s head of exhibitions Simon
Groom that he had to involve Xu in the planned exhibition The Real
Thing Contemporary Art from China that has taken three years to
bring together.

Groom’s other great coup was commissioning Ai Weiwei one of
China’s best-known artistic figures, particularly for his
involvement with the “Bird’s Nest”, the fabulous latticework of
girders at the Olympic Stadium in Beijing being built by Herzog and
de Meuron.

Ai’s contribution to the exhibition which has cost a total of
more than 5 million yuan ($645,000) is an 8-meter high floating
crystal chandelier of light, weighing 3 tonnes. This astonishing
creation called The Fountain of Light is valued at over 1 million
yuan ($130,000) yet Simon Groom reveals that sponsorship flowed
once the word was out about his ambitious hopes for such an
eclectic Chinese focused exhibition.

At the turn of the millennium, China was the star of the Venice
Biennale and ever since there has been a surge of exhibitions from
New York and Berlin to London and Sydney.

Groom insists that the Chinese art scene is quite amazing at
present. “It is just simply NOW!” he exclaims.

“The price of contemporary Chinese art has made it probably the
most sought after and costly in the world. There is so much
interest in China at present that people are falling over
themselves to get a share of it.”

Indeed he has the backing of the Henry Moore Foundation and the
UK Red Mansion Foundation amongst a string of well-heeled patrons
that are clearly aware of the exhibition’s importance. China’s
cultural counsellor from the embassy in London, Ke Yasha, attended
the launch party.

Apart from Xu Zhen, who as well as participating was an adviser
to the project, Groom also worked closely with the British art
writer and curator Karen Smith based in Beijing. She writes for
Time Out as an art critic and last year published her first book on
Chinese art Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China
that explored the emerging art scene.

A fluent Mandarin speaker, Smith has lived in China since the
early 1990s and introduced Groom to many of the new wave of Chinese
artists in Beijing, particularly those based in the Dashanzi arts
community located in a former machine tool plant known as Factory
798, and the even more dynamic Alcohol Factory.

“There is a different official attitude to art these days and we
were able to talk to a lot of artists and curators in China,” she
says. “We wanted this exhibition to reflect what is really
happening today and so we came up with the title The Real
Thing.”

Groom continued: “It is a true indicator of contemporary art in
China at present, characterized by humor and irony.”

Other artists chosen for the British show include Wang Peng
whose humorous videos reflect on travel; Gu Dexin who deals in
mixed media; Yang Fudong whose 840,000 yuan ($108,000) video
installation is called Dog 2007; as well as Qui Xiaofei, Gu Dexin
and Yang Shaobin whose oil paintings of miners at work are courtesy
of the Long March Foundation.

While reaction to the exhibits has been mostly positive, some
more conservative minded visitors were cautious.

The UK based writer and exhibition organizer Xia Lu originally
from Beijing remarked: “Maybe this doesn’t reflect the real
traditional quality of Chinese art. I think maybe it is not as
clever as some suggest.”

Yet her British colleague Dave Ward who has recently completed a
short literary lecture tour of China thought it a fantastic example
of how China is developing.

Other Chinese visitors to the Tate exhibition a little more
mature in years also expressed a view that it was perhaps more
Western influenced than they might prefer. And veteran China hand
Kerry Brown who heads up the British based Strategic China
consultancy and a committee member of the distinguished 48 Group
Club involved with China since the early 1950s commented: “It is
certainly different and while maybe not my cup of tea, I admire the
energy that has gone into it.

The show continues until June 10 and is running in tandem with
the UK focused Aftershock exhibition in Beijing’s Capital Museum.
Sponsored by the British Council, it features the “brat-pack” of
British artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

The author is editor-in-chief of Cities500 International
Publishers

(China Daily April 17, 2007)

Myanmar’s contemporary painting is not well known, but a
weeklong exhibition featuring three of the country’s most renowned
artists will awaken a sense of familiarity and recognition.

“Opus One Shanghai,” an exhibition of 35 paintings at Wan Fung
Art Gallery, captures the spirit and color of the country and its
people. The Asia Fine Arts exhibition presents some of the
country’s most successful artists, including Chan Aye, Tin Win, and
Myanmar’s most recognized painter, Min Wae Aung.

Min, principal artist of the show, offers simplicity and peace,
an insight into the Buddhist way of life, with his strong
uncomplicated images. For his first show in Shanghai, the artist
developed fifteen acrylic on canvas paintings that depict journeys
made by Buddhist monks and nuns.

“Min has captured the very essence of Myanmar — its spiritual
and magical dimension, iconic characters perpetuating age-old
traditions, and also the beauty and joy of daily life in Myanmar,
the morning rounds to collect alms, the hot sun, the energy of
youth,” says Sidney Cowell, Asia Fine Arts managing director.

The artist at first painted landscapes, portraits, and images of
daily life in his home country. “It was not until 1998 that I
started to make more religious scenes. I felt I had to develop one
unique style,” he says.

Now his vivid images are known worldwide, with many artists
trying to copy his individual style.

With a solid block of color as background, his subjects walk
away from the viewer, often with their faces hidden. They convey a
feeling of harmony and leaving troubles behind.

“When you go to a monk’s life you go towards peace and leave all
daily pressure behind,” Min says.

Since 1994 Min has participated in over 40 exhibitions around
the world, and his work is sought out by collectors, galleries and
museums. Before coming to Shanghai the exhibit was shown in Paris
where five works were sold.

The traditional way of life is captured by all three artists,
each in a very different style.

Although Min’s pictures are the best known, the other artists
also give fresh perspectives on the people and sense of the
country.

“Myanmar is the rising star of the art world and it is exciting
to see these extraordinary artists at this point in their careers,”
says Cowell.

(Shanghai Daily March 27, 2007)

A visitor to the National Art Museum of China
passes by American painter Duke Beardsley’s oil piece Heading
West. 

 

American painter Chuck Forsman’s Lines of Site has a bleak
landscape bisected by a winding highway.

“I love it (the West),” said Forsman who was born in western
Idaho in the great outback called “the West”.

“I love the whole dry, forbidding, bewildering, and hauntingly
beautiful place. But I have a lover’s quarrel with the way we have
made of it. It is so void of trees and dry here that little is
hidden. When we err, it glares, and what we see, looking honestly,
sobers us. Beauty and honesty are uneasy bedfellows.

“Still, I try to make honest pictures that are also beautiful
because it is still the landscape of hope.”

Such is the kind of honesty on display at the National Art Museum of China where Out West:
The Great American Landscapes, a major contemporary art show from
and about the American West is being held.

Presented in mild light on the third floor of the museum, the
more than 100 paintings, prints, photographs and vintage Western
posters recreate the American West about which Chinese viewers know
mostly through novels and Western movies.

The exhibition coincides with the mammoth Art in America: 300
Years of Innovation exhibition which ended on Thursday in
Beijing.

While Art in America chronicled how American art evolved into
what it is today, Out West “allows viewers to further explore the
wealth of American art, especially human history and the unique
landscape of the cowboy states,” said Fan Di’an, director of the
National Art Museum of China which is co-organizing the show with
the Meridian International Center and the National Geographic
Museum.

Out West is part of a cultural exchange begun in 2004 by Ancient
Threads, Newly Woven, an exhibition designed for American audiences
and organized by Meridian and the China International Exhibition
Agency on contemporary art from the Silk Road of Western China.

Out West presents 68 paintings by 54 artists from seven states:
Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Texas and
Arizona.

The subject matter ranges from traditional mountain and desert
landscapes, iconic scenes of costumed American Indians and cowboys
on horseback, to portraits of wildlife and abstract images that
have a more contemporary feel.

“Some of the works on display are created by the artists
particularly for the China tour,” Meridian’s Nancy Matthews told
China Daily.

Accompanying the Out West exhibition are some 40 contemporary
images of the American West by 25 renowned photographers such as
William Albert Allard and Sam Abell, grouped under the title Under
the Big Sky: Images of the American West. 

Spanning the past 30 years, the photos include native Americans,
cowboys and cactuses, buffalo, cattle and elk, farming activities,
rodeo riders, Havasu Falls and Canyon de Chelly, among many other
American West scenes, said Susan E. Norton with the National
Geographic Museum and curator for the photo display.

The American nation began to expand westward during the
mid-1800s. Owing to differences in culture and history, the White
settlers and the native American Indians perceived the West in
different ways, said Amy Scott, a curator with Autry National
Centre, Los Angeles.

The White settlers saw the vast spaces in proprietary terms. But
for many natives, the land was “not something to control and carve
up, but a storied place in which the experience of generations was
inscribed. In this sense, land could be inviting and dangerous,
generous in abundance or spiteful in its scarcity,” writes Scott in
a catalogue for the exhibition.

“Native people knew both aspects of the land well, as part of a
cyclical and regenerative world. American Indians to this day have
a great reverence for nature, the land, and the animals whose
habitat it is.”

The idea of the West “as a vibrant artistic place inscribed with
multiple meanings is at the heart of the exhibition”, she
added.

The first American eastern artists had attached both religious
and political meaning to the spectacular western lands, portraying
them as natural riches available for those citizens spiritually and
morally worthy of America’s destiny.

However, “an over-simplified, icon-driven approach adopted by an
earlier generation of American painters to their subjects has
obscured the reality. The truth contains more confrontations and
contradictions than some people would like to admit,” said Duke
Beardsley, author of the eye-catching oil piece Heading West.

Contemporary works by such native American artists as John I.
King, Rhett Lynch, Dan Namingha, and Jaune Quick-to-see Smith, show
deep respect for their tribal ties and ancestral heritage, which is
at the heart of their creativity.

For Stuart Holliday, president of Meridian International Center,
“the American West is not only a place of spectacular beauty, it is
also associated with the pioneering spirit linked to the expansion
of America.”

As the western regions of China continue to grow, there will be
parallels with the expansion in the last century of America’s vast
western spaces and their resources, both physical and human, said
Holliday at the opening ceremony.

After its Beijing premiere, which runs through April 22, the
exhibition will tour Urumqi, a stronghold on the ancient Silk Road
in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Xi’an where the Silk Road
began in Shaanxi Province, and the coastal cities of Shanghai,
Qingdao and Guangzhou where the Maritime Silk Road began, before
ending in Hong Kong late this year.

“Not so many people in China, especially those in western
regions, have seen original Western American art,” pointed out
Geoffrey Sutton, a curatorial advisor with University of
Montana.

“I hope this exhibition will offer a richer and more nuanced
portrait of an American West that some Chinese people may know of
from Western movies,” he explained.

Detailed Chinese language captions, including information about
the artists and their art statements, are attached to the exhibits;
at least 10,000 color-printed, free hand-outs have been prepared
for the visitors, said Xu Hong with the National Art Museum of
China and chief curator on the Chinese side.

(China Daily April 7, 2007)

Famous wheelchair-bound British physicist and mathematician Stephen
Hawking is balanced dangerously on a cliff-edge. Despite his
“super-human” intellect, this precarious positioning underpins his
physical frailty.

Made in fibreglass, resin and paint, the sculpture titled
Ubermench is one of 25 pieces on show at the ongoing exhibition
After the Shock, now on in Capital Museum. It features paintings,
photography, video and installation works by “Young British
Artists” (YBA), who came into prominence in the 1990s for their
introspective examination of life, death, morbidity, sex and
delinquency.

The group caught the public eye at the 1997 exhibition
Sensation, held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Among the
exhibits were animals sliced up and placed in beautiful
formaldehyde-filled boxes, a cow’s rotting head being fed to flies
and maggots, and a female artist’s embroidered names of all the
people she had slept with on the inside of a tent, an
autobiographical metaphor of her body.

The artists rapidly became famous in arguments engaging both
ordinary viewers and critics on “what is art?” And the YBA
phenomenon promoted the renaissance of British art in the 1990s,
exerting an influence on artists worldwide, including China.

“China’s artists learnt about YBAs’ works by word of mouth,
public praise and a few catalogues older artists occasionally
brought back from their travels,” said Pi Li, one of the show’s
three curators. “Sometimes they had to guess at the meanings from a
few square-centimeter images, but it was in this guessing that
China’s modern art found its path.”

The showpieces include 12 of the works by YBAs, among them now
very famous names in the West, such as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin
and Douglas Gordon.

In an installation titled Croque Mort, which refers to the
person who as a legend has it would bite the feet of the recently
deceased to check if they were really dead.

In a series of seven pictures, the artist Douglas Gordon
photographed his own new born baby biting her feet, and put the
photos in a red room covered in a red carpet. With a sinister title
and the close-up of a baby biting her own feet to check her
physical existence in a womb-like room, Gordon was reminding
viewers of their physical mortality.

In 1994, controversial artist Tracey Emin undertook a journey
across the United States, recording and reading for her
autobiography. It was also a trip of self-discovery and analysis,
in which Emin undertook a healing ritual by recounting painful
personal memories including being raped, abortion, drunkenness,
sexual intimidation and violence. Then, on a chair, the artist
embroidered significant personal anecdotes and sewed on the names
of all the places she had visited. The chair is exhibited as an
artwork named There Is a Lot of Money in Chair.

Other highlights include Turner Prize laureate Damien Hirst’s
Girls, who like boys, who like boys, who like girls, who like
girls, like girls, like boys. The title is an adaptation of lyrics
from a pop British band Blur’s Boys and Girls.

The exhibit comprises two round big plates, one pink and the
other blue, on which the paint surface is encrusted with colored
butterflies, and disquieting devices such as razors. From a
distance, viewers will see only stunning butterflies in lovely
colored plates, but a careful observation will lead them to
discover the razors, reminding people of the danger lurking behind
seduction and the impermanence of material beauty.

Some of Hirst’s best known works, like Away from the Flock which
features a lamb preserved in formaldehyde and Tracey Emin’s highly
controversial My Bed, an installation famous for the bizarre
combination of dotted bed sheets, the artist’s underwear and
condoms, are not included in the show, said Pi Li, citing problems
with transportation.

Although many of the most-shocking pieces of the artists are not
being shown this time, many see it as a refreshing start by the
Capital Museum, set up in 1981, to have a show themed on modern
art. In past decades, the museum has been best known for its
exhibitions featuring classic Chinese and international artworks
and relics.

“Our slogan is ‘The Capital Museum, My Own Museum.’ So we
welcome all kinds of excellent shows from various time periods and
styles,” said Yao An, the museum’s vice-director.

Modern art is usually considered hard to understand, but the
show’s initiators do not see the making of a connection with
viewers as a problem, placing their faith in the audience’s growing
taste and the exhibits’ charm.

Guo Xiaoyan, organizer of the Guangzhou Triennial, was also
involved in selecting the showpieces and held an exhibition of them
in Guangzhou last year. According to her, it was the most popular
exhibition at the Guangzhou Museum of Art in 2006. “I think the
pieces relate to the lives of the viewers, on the basic aspects of
life, death and sex,” she said.

Guo recalled that even some elderly viewers appreciated the
works and had their own interpretations, some of which were really
stunning and fresh. “They are much more sharp in appreciating
modern art than we imagine.”

The exhibition will end on May 11. The museum will provide both
Chinese and and English-speaking guides.

(China Daily March 22, 2007)