Monthly Archives: May 2012

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New Abstract exhibition

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Zhang Jianjun 张健君

from Mindmap Exhibition, curated by Gao Minglu

Another exhibition of contemporary Chinese abstract art, this one at Pearl Lam in Hong Kong. The historical time frame provided in title (80s to the present) seems a more standard fixture of literature about Chinese abstract art, but Gao Minglu’s brief description on the website intriguingly suggests that the last 10 years have seen the substantive development (thus change) in abstract art in China. I’ll be following this exhibition to see what Gao suggests accounts for these changes.

Also, and not to pick on what looks an exciting exhibition, but what’s up with the name? The Pearl Lam website has Mindmap, but I find Mindspace elsewhere, as in Depauw advert below. *Anything goes* with “mind” ?

MIND SPACE: MAXIMALISM IN CONTRASTS
SEPTEMBER 7 – DECEMBER 7, 2012
This exhibition of mixed media installations portrays a new realm of artistic expression.  Mind Space introduces 4 Chinese abstract artists who convey the concept of “Maximalism” to a global audience.  Maximalism is a term coined by curator Dr. Gao Minglu, one of the world’s leading scholars of Chinese contemporary art.  Maximalism expresses the meditative mind of the abstract artist during the creation process, emphasizing the spiritual experience of art-making.  The creations of Zhu Jinshi, Zhang Yu, Lei Hong, and He Xiangyu are a dialogue between artist and nature, an inventive response to a rapidly changed material world.
 
 

Zhang Yu
Scroll Fingerprint, 2008
Ink on Xuan paper
Courtesy of Pearl Lam Galleries, Shanghai, China

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Rittenberg back on PLU campus

So what happens when we introduce Sidney Rittenberg, his book (The Man Who Stayed Behind), his the film about him (The Revolutionary) and the man himself to a group of 1st-year college students in the Pacific Northwest?  We’ll, let’s see:

Probably most noteworthy is Sidney’s view of the Bo Xilai affair, which is where he is mentioned Beijing’s concern with instability. Rittenberg was the first Western critic (not that that phrase much aptly describes him) to observe that Bo was not going to go far in the Chinese communist party leadership. The reason, according to Sidney, is Bo’s serious challenge to stability, evident during his meteoric rise in Chongqing, and even before in his position of mayor in northeastern Dalian.

Hopefully, a sense of Sidney’s frame of reference, to use the simple, elegant and apt Chinese 看法 (“seeing method”), was picked up by students in our one-day interaction with “the man who stayed behind.” Not unlike a pair of ill-fitting glasses, taking up Sidney-vision for a moment is no doubt distorting their present “reality,” but also do doubt an important corrective as they grow into their new world views which include greater concern with social (and economic) justice, and greater attention to US-China relationship, which remains, despite considerable efforts of those of us who teach about China, murky at best.

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The Revolutionary (Sidney Rittenberg)

Remarks about a documentary film

Much of the conversation about Sidney Rittenberg, as suggested, among other places, by the title of his memoir composed with Amanda Bennett (The Man Who Stayed Behind), concerns “what it was like to have been there.” After looking at documentary “The Revolutionary” (Stourwater Pictures, 2011) I think it becomes more clear that the question is really “what was it like to have been then?”

The problem with the “there” question is that it suggests the view of China as a far away, strange land. In fact, Chinese experience is growing ever closer to our experience.  As increasingly the infinitely stretchy parameters of “our” bend themselves quite completely out of shape, hard geographical “origin points” will make less and less sense. Where Sidney was will matter less and less. What Sidney was then is the question to be addressed.

And what, after watching this film, we find was a profound commitment to social justice coupled with the wherewithal to put that commitment to work in ways that he, as a young, affluent, Jewish communist in Charleston, South Carolina circa 1940, could hardly have known.  As a major player in the firestrom that was the Cultural Revolution in China, Sidney found himself in de facto control of the Broadcasting Agency, one of the Chinese government’s major mouthpieces for issuing the directives that propelled a population (of some 700,0000,000) into mass revolutionary fervor in a way more substantial than facile calls for “change” could suggest, a fervor that was severely idealistic, pure, democratic, and destructive to the death.

Here is a man who is fiercely moral, engaged in social justice. And here were good people, his friends, people who struggled and sacrificed for the good of China, physically abused right in front of him, and he did not oppose, did not largely object. His fervor for the social cause blinded him to what was happening right before his eyes.

The film does an excellent job of showing us this, mostly by allowing Sidney to speak (at length). There is a bit of monotony to the format, virtually one talking head interspersed with images and music from (mostly) China’s long twentieth century. But the head in question is so incredibly–in the real sense of the word–full of information that it hardly matters that his voice is all we hear.

http://revolutionarymovie.com/