Category Archives: Uncategorized

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“A Beijing Bohemian in the East Village”–Ai Weiwei still in New York, sort of

This week saw the opening of an exhibition of Ai’s photographs. The exhibition is on view at Asia Society called “Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993,” but also through Ai’s Google+ account. The latter would suggest that Ai is not entirely ‘disconnected’ from the world at large.

I happy to find that Holland Cotter’s review in the New York Times is beginning to demonstrate a more subtle understanding of Ai and his work, something I feel has been more or less absent the English-language reporting on him (the same can be said of a great deal of Chinese ‘reporting,’ of course, only subtlety assailed from a completely different direction).  The list of epithets, gadfly, artist-provacteur, adviser, suggests better appreciation of the many roles Ai has played over the years.

What isn’t mentioned is the nude series that I’ve mentioned before on this blog.  This might be because his notable nude photograph emerges later on.  But this work, of Ai and poet artist Yan Li, is from the era covered in the exhibition:

It may well be that that the New York exhibit includes them, but that Cotter does not consider this series of nude photographs worthy of mention. And indeed, they perhaps wouldn’t be were they not the basis for one part of the charge against Ai (pornography) and an ongoing element in his work.

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Zhong Biao, photography, reality, and … the rest.

Working as well, of late, on a documentary film concerning Zhong Biao and the soon-to-be-demolished Blackbridge (Heiqiao) art district in Northeast Beijing.  The documentary project, its own configuration of possibilities and pitfalls, at the very least calls to mind the problem of re-presenting “reality” in some sense. And this “reality” leads me back to Zhong Biao’s method of using photographs as the basis for his creations.

The photographs, many of which he has taken himself, are like a database of raw information–elements or building block that form the basis of his. However, unlike bricks of concrete structures, the images are abstractions (excerpts), snapshots from “reality” on the other side of the lens that float freely in time and space. In years past, the photographic snippets appeared mostly in urban settings, often painstakingly reproduced in minute detail. Now, as Zhong Biao has moved to abstract method, the figures of his paintings appear amidst dynamic swathes of color and texture, as in this unfinished work:

Still the question arises: how do particular images rise to the forefront of the artist’s mind? In just a few short days during his visit to the Seattle area in 2006, Zhong Biao took 100s of pictures, a few of which are of my children:


 

Some of these have ended up in paintings, like “Mirage” 海市蜃楼 from 2009:

 

 

while others have not.  The key to his creative process lies in his selection, at any given point in time, of one image over another.

 

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“People don’t want to buy an object, they want to buy a story”

From commentary on Nicholas Chao in ARTINFO:

1. PEOPLE DON’T JUST WANT TO BUY AN OBJECT, THEY WANT TO BUY A STORY

It’s not just about the object, the vase, or the seal. “Lost Treasures” was a high point for us, the greatest sale we ever put together. Handling a great collection is wonderful, but putting together a sale that tells a story is very exciting. Of all the sales I’ve witnessed I’ve never seen so much electricity in the room. That’s when you can really feel the excitement, when people aren’t just buying commodities.

But what, we may ask, IS the story, particularly for the contemporary Chinese artist? The notion itself is deeply flawed, but is flawed also in a highly poignant fashion.  In the literary world, at least, by and large stories are the province of the authors who create them.  Indeed, the job of the “author” is to invent or re-create, refashion, or at least in some sense “retell” a story.  By contrast, artists must somehow embody this story, one which, regrettably for the artist and so very unlike the writer, ENDS with its telling.  The artists’ story is therefore terminal, disposable, a command performance that no one really wants to read twice.

But here I am perhaps setting the bar too high. Mr. Chao’s opinion that “the story” deepens the experience of those who purchase art work is unassailable to be sure.  I’m just hoping that the openness of the artistic text can be kept in someone’s view, if not necessarily the one who put down the money to buy it. Truth is, of course, there are a multitude of stories at work in/on/around-about virtually every canvas.

My current “story,” Pacific Northwest (Chinese) artist Z. Z. Wei :

                                    

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The Self Portrait

These days I’m back to work on an article concerning the poetry and visual art of Lo Ching (Luo Qing 羅青) with a special focus on self-portraiture in his verbal and visual work.  This has me considering self-portraits of a number of artists I’m often writing about, and self portraiture in general.

There are of course some notable instances of self portraiture in the Chinese visual art tradition.  Most spectacularly, perhaps, those of Ren Xiong 任熊,

More recently, but still early in the modern period, Li Jinfa 李金发 and Ji Xian 纪弦 both worked in genre.  Here is Li’s “self-sketch on a Rome Night” from 1925:

And one of many self portraits done by Ji Xian (this one 1934), who used the medium as a kind of punctuation for the various pauses and sometimes full-stops of his long career:

More recently, Yan Li 严力 created a few self portraits shortly after taking up painting in the late 1970s. This one is from 1982:

 

Coming to the contemporary era, the “self” shows itself to be a fully flexible concept, bound and also rent from identity in various ways, as suggested in the series by Cang Xin 苍鑫.

So what of Zhong Biao’s self portrait? He does not, as far as I know, much take himself as central focus of any painting.  His abstract work, though, can be seen as a self-portrait of such, a depiction of the mind’s interior, the “psychological fishbowl,” so to speak.  But even in the partially abstract, as in the image “Climax” from 2009, I think an argument can be made for self-same representation, particularly with Zhong’s deft use of the frame:

What, of course, transparent bowl shows us is an open question.

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Meeting Huang Rui

In June also managed to cross paths with Huang Rui, founder of the 798 arts district in Beijing and on-again-off-again agitator for freedom of expression in China. As is no doubt often the case when encountering such luminaries, one is usually impressed by their simplicity, humility, and straightforwardness. Yet, as ArtSpeakChina has it:

Huang Rui (黄锐) is one of China’s most respected and controversial contemporary artists. Since co-founding The Stars Group in 1979, Huang has been involved in numerous debates over the need for free expression. Despite living in self-exile for close to twenty years, Huang Rui is considered one of the founding members of China’s contemporary art movement.

Other issues aside, I still marvel at 798 every time I go there.  Huang’s contribution was early on modest; in effect, he needed a convenient place to work and the district that is now 798 was an empty nest of old factories awaiting demolition.  Of course, in years following (2005-2007) Huang’s organization skills came into full force, with major international arts festivals located at 798, followed by major struggles with authorities unnerved by massive foreign investment into such entrepreneurial activity, arts related or not.  Thus, Huang’s operation was shut down, 798 handed over the Beijing government, and Huang has since moved, for the moment, to a neighboring district named Huangtie (a few miles north).  Meanwhile, 798 continued to boom, if by boom we mean a proliferation of all manner of shop.  On most days, merely walking down the nominally pedestrian streets is a bit of a challenge.  The question of how we read such a success is an open one.  I know Huang Rui for one has rather mixed feelings.

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当下 －－Dinner at Karin’s

For those who wonder how contemporary art in China “works” (as I have on occasion), the answer is, for those familiar with China, not very surprising–eating.  Elaborate dinners are the tool of choice for artists and their enthusiasts, and by enthusiasts I mean principally those who buy and sell art.  The hosts of such soirees are in other words vital components in the mechanics of contemporary Chinese art world, and an excellent example of such a host is Karin Chenlin, curator, collector and self-professor “Life Artist.”

We visited Karin’s home/studio in the Caochangdi district of Beijing the night prior to our return to Seattle.  The meal went on for hours, as is typical (day break on most occasions), and was as voluminous as it was excellent.  Zhong Biao’s paintings (among other works) hung on the walls, some of which had been brought in for the occasion of the dinner itself, and small birds twittered freely about the small bamboo grove situated in the middle of the living room.

Conversation at such events is wine-fueled, philosophical, and almost studiously un-political.  But above all, and what is perhaps most striking about this group of successful Chinese artists and art lovers, is the absence of a plan.  The “organization of distances,” to quote early twentieth-century poet Bian Zhilin, is an appointment (never early morning), perhaps a plane reservation, typically no more than a day or two away. As I inquire of this group about the more distant future, the like of which one might commit to a calendar, I get blank stares in return.  ”We live in the moment” 当下. Apparently, that’s not where my question lies.

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Zhong Biao’s “Complex”

Here is the one completely abstract image from Zhong’s recent exhibition.  The element of abstract expression in Zhong’s work is particularly interesting given the acute realism of the better part of his art.  The realism, a result of his use of digital photographs which he projects on to canvas, and then paints in acrylic with or on top of charcoal rendering, is the mainstay of his imagery.  In recent years, though, these realist slices of life are increasingly accompanied by non-representational imagery, masses of colors, swaths of texture.  This is a bold maneuver for an artist who was already completely successful with his method.  In other words, continuing indefinitely on the path he’d pioneered was not only a viable option, it was the obvious choice.  Nonetheless, he undertook a new direction, albeit on which is entirely integrated into his juxtapositionary method.

The San Francisco exhibition (mentioned below) contained one purely abstract image.  Even with the departure, entirely abstract pictures are still very rare in Zhong’s work.  They are a rarity, indeed, at all in artistic practice, and China is no exception.  Indeed, given the fact that the value of Chinese art on the market of late–and by that I mean now already a few decades, though the recent surge is worthy of note–has mostly to do with the fact that these are Chinese art works.  Once an artist begins to work in the solidly abstract mode, though, such “Chineseness” falls out of view.  Below is “Complex”

I find his abstract work successful, and this painting especially. (Its worth noting that the lighting at the top of the image and blurriness center left is due to my bad photography and not the canvas itself).  This is because I still se a good deal of Zhong’s stock imagery, the flowers blooming, the explosions, human flesh both adorned and not, and so many material objects of the “solid poetry” of China’s built environment. Yet, of course, there is nothing here to actually suggest this much less represent this.  It is, instead, a representation of “complex,” in the psychological condition sense, and as such remains subterranean.  Such representation properly defies symbolic treatment, something which we do not expect to emerge until figures provide avenues of legibility.  The gesture is thus a purifying one, opening a clearing in preparation for the next time meaning comes around.

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so nice to be ‘noted’ (Alumni notes from Indiana University East Asian Studies Center newsletter)

(so much appreciate that IU would think to feature yours truly that I’m cutting and pasting here).  
Alumnus Profile: Paul Manfredi
EALC Ph.D., 2001

Headshot of Paul Manfried

Considering that Paul Manfredi has been “inclined to ponder various subjects at great length” for as long as he can remember, a career in academia seemed like a good fit. An early interest in the arts led him to pursue an undergraduate degree in theatre at the California Institute of the Arts, where he ended up in a Tai Chi class to fulfill a curricular requirement. Tai Chi immediately sparked Paul’s curiosity about Chinese culture, which led him to an overseas study experience in China and a growing desire to master Mandarin Chinese. He came to the decision to focus on modern Chinese culture, specifically poetry, by reasoning that “China is the type of civilization that bears a great deal of its tradition in all its cultural products, no matter how modern or avant-garde (an observation which can’t easily be turned around). Thus, learning about modern Chinese poetry would perforce entail recourse to literary tradition which always remained an area of interest.” As Paul delved more deeply into the subject, he became intrigued with the notion of the modernity of the poetic lyrical subject in the Chinese language. This interest, which developed during his first year as a graduate student at IU, has been with him ever since.

According to Paul, one of his most memorable experiences at IU was attending classes “where I felt a very high degree of camaraderie with my classmates, a kind of pure intellectual enterprise that perhaps much of graduate study aspires to, but rarely achieves.” Additionally, the pedagogy training Paul received from EALC Professor Jennifer Liu while he was an associate instructor in the Chinese language program proved to be invaluable preparation for his career in teaching.

Since receiving his Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures in 2001, Paul’s academic career has flourished. Now an associate professor and chair of the Chinese Studies Program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA, he is currently working on a project that connects word and image in modern and contemporary Chinese poetry, having increasingly turned his attention to contemporary painting. He recently published two articles in Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art concerning the Sichuan painter Zhong Biao 钟飙 and will begin working on a documentary film on Zhong Biao and other contemporary artists this summer. Additionally, an article titled “Between Word and Image: Luo Qing and the Visual-Verbal Self Portrait” is forthcoming in Chinese Literature Today.

Paul’s advice for current students and recent graduates? He recommends devoting as much time as possible to learning the language because once one accepts an academic position, time for language study becomes scarce. He tells recent graduates not to look askance upon spending a few years in visiting positions at different universities. While sometimes perceived negatively, Paul believes visiting positions offer a prospective faculty member the opportunity to not only experience other institutions, but also develop oneself as a scholar, teacher, and colleague.