August 07, 2005:

[achtung! kunst] China in Tokyo's Mori Art Museum: "Follow me!" - "Crossroads of Culture"
 
     
 


The Japan Times, July 13, 2005
NEW ART SEEN

FOLLOW ME!
Interesting times in China
By MONTY DiPIETRO

Chinese contemporary art made a splash in the late 1990s with the so-called Mao Goes Pop movement, which broke big among Western gallerygoers and collectors.

News photo
"Light as Easy," a 2002 c-print by Yang Zhenzhong, is one of several upside-done skyline images of his that reverse the urbanpressure paradigm.

The art was fun, cheap, iconoclastic and readable: With China racing to modernize, who couldn't appreciate a painting of Mao Zedong hailing a taxi?

The pioneers of the style are now China's established artists, and, along with them, the market for new Chinese art has also grown. Beijing-based China Guardian, the country's leading auction house, sold some 5 billion yen of Chinese paintings in 2004 -- almost triple the previous year's total.

Meanwhile, gallery districts are blossoming in Shanghai and Beijing; New York's Sotheby's opened a new Chinese contemporary department this spring; and in Tokyo there is now "Follow Me! Chinese Art at the Threshold of the New Millennium," an exhibition featuring 18 artists and artists' groups that is showing at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi.

Conspicuous absence
News photo
Acrylic on canvas of Fang Shu (2003) from Zhou Tiehai's series, "Movie Start of the '80s"

A defining feature of "Follow Me!" is that all the participating artists were born after 1960. Hence, Cai Guo-Qiang and Xu Bing missed the cut by three and five years respectively. However, the popular Zhang Huan, who qualifies by age, is conspicuous by his absence. It is clear that -- in a bid to anticipate the second wave of Chinese contemporary art -- the Mori wanted to present new, lesser-known artists.

One of the first pieces the visitor encounters is a work from 2003 by 27-year-old Cao Fei, whose three-minute video titled "Hip Hop" comprises dozens of randomly chosen passersby executing often hilarious dance stylings on a daytime city street to the sound of a cheesy hip-hop beat. The construction workers, Communist Party members, children and seniors alike seen here communicate the essential appeal of Chinese contemporary art -- which is that, when a society has decades of restrictions lifted in a relatively short period of time, people can become intoxicated in a celebration of freedom, and, whoopee, suddenly everyone is an artist.

The first room of the show is dominated by a sort of boxing ring that's about 5 meters square. Whirling this way and that inside the ring are a half-dozen robot vehicles, souped-up toy construction trucks laden with models of towering skyscrapers. Visitors can use remote controls to move the contraptions about, creating a cityscape in flux (although at the opening the wine-driven objective was less urban planner and more bumper car).

Temporal urban centers
The 2001 piece is titled "Building Dodgem," and the artist, Lu Hao, says it is a commentary on the too-fast changes impacting Chinese cities -- a theme that recurs throughout this show.

News photo
Still from 2003's "Seven Intellectuals in the Bamboo Forest, Part 1," a video by Yang Fudong

"Beijing is active all the time; the city and people's lives are constantly evolving," Lu explained. "It is exciting, of course, but I don't always like it. In some ways I think we are becoming one gigantic factory, one big machine, and so now I prefer the countryside."

Also commenting on the temporal nature of urban centers is Yin Xiuzhen, who has built six "Portable City" models and stuffed them into suitcases. I liked these since they illustrate how easily we identify a particular city and its mood through a small number of signals (landmarks). Here, for example, San Francisco is represented by the Golden Gate bridge stretching over a fog of cotton balls. Very good.

Yang Zhenzhong's upside-down skyline photographs, on the other hand, see the artist "balancing" an entire city on a fingertip in a fanciful reversal of the urban pressure paradigm.

Far less concrete in all respects are Weng Fen's photographs showing here, which take as their subject people gazing out at the ocean from his father's hometown, located on an island on the South China Sea. In the manner of his previous series, "Sitting on the Wall" (reviewed in this column when it showed at the Tang Gallery in Bangkok last year), the new series titled "Staring at the Sea" is a study in uncertainty informed by the inquietude regarding what lies out there, and what awaits us beyond the now.

Personal life changes
Much of the work in "Follow Me!" poses the same question: What is going on? As such, the China it examines can be viewed as a metaphor and the work can also speak to personal life changes. What I think is good about this show is that the "language" has matured from a decade ago, when it was enough to superimpose Mao over a Coca-Cola logo to make an artistic statement. Here and now, what we have are more universal messages.

It is ironic that the splashy and popular Chinese contemporary art of the '90s -- falling as it does between the scopes of "Follow Me!" and its companion show "Crossroads" (see accompanying review) -- is not represented in the Mori's "China Summer." In any case, the show seems light -- I was left wanting more.

If you are heading to Roppongi to see the "Crossroads" show anyway, then "Follow Me!" will provide a nice finish by way of contrast. But if your interest is exclusively in contemporary art, the admission price seems too high for the mere two rooms that the show occupies.

"Follow Me!" runs till Sept. 10 at the Mori Art Museum; open 10 a.m.-10 p.m. daily, except 10 a.m.-5 p.m. on Tuesdays; admission is 1,500 yen. For more information call (03) 6406-6100 or visit www.mori.art.museum
Monty DiPietro welcomes comments at newartseen@assemblylanguage.com

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fa20050713md.htm


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The Japan Times, July 13, 2005

CHINA: CROSSROADS OF CULTURE
You've never seen anything so ancient Chinese like this in Tokyo
By YOKO HARUHARA
Special to The Japan Times

Tokyo's Mori Art Museum is currently hosting one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of Chinese artifacts that has ever been held in Japan. "China: Crossroads of Culture" is an incredible amalgam of treasures and art objects from the entire first millennium of Chinese history, beginning with pieces from the Eastern Han dynasty (25-200 A.D.) and concluding with an amazing array of items from the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.).

News photo
This ceramic watchtower (above) was placed in a tomb to protect its occupant during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 A.D.); a detailed photo of a carved panel on a stone sarcophagus, showing a lion battling a bull. It was built for Songdian provincial governor Yu Yong and dates to 592 A.D.
News photo

Intellectual developments
Half of this impressive exhibition consists of Chinese National Treasures, and its more than 360 pieces include gold and silver objects, terracotta and wooden figurines, jade, glassware, textiles, wall paintings and Buddhist sculptures.

Incorporating a wealth of recent archaeological finds, the exhibition is also a representation of the latest intellectual developments in the analysis of Chinese culture and art history. Its impetus is to delineate the immense and, until recently, underestimated influence of Silk Road trade on Chinese culture, and to trace the mix of cultural influences that resulted from the repeated incursions of invaders since the Eastern Han dynasty.

The subtitle of the exhibition, "Crossroads of Culture," reflects the various sources of influence that culminated with China's so-called "golden age" of art, the Tang dynasty. The first room in the exhibition, devoted to Han culture, displays artifacts of the Eastern Han dynasty, including a remarkable fortified watchtower made of green glazed pottery, impressive for its scale and detailed execution.

Standing 2 meters tall, with five stories, it is a burial object (mingqi) from a tomb excavated in 1990 in Fucheng, Hebei Province. Such funerary objects were meant to ensure prosperity and protection for the tomb's occupant in the afterlife as well as serving asa display of the wealth and status that he held in his lifetime. In this case, the tomb was built for a man who was probably a powerful landlord. Watchtowers, such as this one, were placed along the northern borders of the Han Empire to protect against incursions by the Xianbei nomadic tribes.

The tower itself provides clues to the architectural style of the Han dynasty, since no wood structures survive from this period. Its design and construction reflect its raw strength, with an elaborate structure including a gabled entrance gate, flanked by giant doors with door-knockers, which resembles the faces of monsters. Composed of a series of pavilions stacked in pagoda fashion, each level has a railed porch with impressive tile roofs supported by an elaborate bracketing system.

The imagery incorporated into the architecture tells the story of the watchtower and its owner. While it cannot be assumed that this mingqi is an actual reproduction of the original watchtower, it is likely a fairly accurate facsimile. So, as with an architectural model, we can imagine a building that was imposing in scale and would have towered over the landscape.

News photo
A painted terracotta tomb guardian from the Tang dynasty

Immense gongs
The immense gongs on the top level, when struck, could likely be heard from miles away. Each window is flanked by shields and crossbows, symbols of military might. Guards stand ready at the windows at each level, with their hands resting on the window sills. The overall impression is one of impenetrability, making it appropriate as a symbol of power.

Many of the items on display reveal the mixing of various cultures in ancient China and the contributions that accompanied cross-cultural contact. One item that bares witness to this is a splendid Sui dynasty (581-618 A.D.) stone sarcophagus.

Discovered in 1999 in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province (a region in northwestern China), it was built for an official named Yu Hong, who served the Chinese government as a provincial governor. The luxurious coffin is noted for its decorative reliefs carved in marble and painted in gold, red and brown pigments. The reliefs include an extravagant banquet scene in which the deceased and his wife celebrate with a procession, hunt animals and dance.

The pictorial style used in the panels is typically Chinese, the themes and settings -- hunters and fighters on camelback and on elephants, animals fighting, and practices such as wine-making -- indicate a combination of features that suggest Arabian, Persian, Indian, Turkish, Iranian and Roman origins.

Yu Hong's was a Sogdian, which was an ancient tribe of people who spoke an eastern Iranian language and inhabited Central Asia, and this reinforces our understanding of the mixed cultural milieu within which he operated. Chinese silk had gained popularity in Rome by the first century B.C., and the route of the silk trade from China passed through important outposts and commercial centers including Sogdiana.

Importing many works of art in trade for its silk, China drew on the artistic traditions of surrounding Silk Road cultures. Following the introduction of these Western motifs to China, local artisans were inspired to innovate. As a result, the artwork of Yu Hong's sarcophagus reveals a dynamic quality.

Guardian beasts
In the final section of the exhibition, which displays Tang dynasty art, there are various tomb figures, including guardian beasts, warriors, civil officials and court ladies. These figures represent the skilled craftsmanship of Tang dynasty sculptors. Tomb art reached its zenith in this period, and the mortuary sculptures reveal both the lavish living conditions of aristocracy of the time, as well as the influence of international styles on their lives.

One of the most exquisite pieces in the exhibit is a figurine of a lovely court lady, excavated from the tomb of Gen. Zhang Xiong and his wife, Lady Qu, in Xinjiang Province. The figure is made of wood and clay, and is wearing an elegant woven silk costume. Her silk blouse is decorated with a pearl roundel motif (a pearl-shaped circle enclosing a pattern), the origins of which can be traced to Sassanian Persia.

The woman's features speak of her breeding and sophistication. Her forehead has been decorated with makeup in a beautiful fuadian, or flower motif. She has fake dimples painted on both sides of her mouth to add charm, and her temples are painted with red rouge, a style in vogue with wealthy Tang women.

The placement of this figurine in the tomb of Lady Qu is an example of the continuation of the mingqi tradition in symbolically providing material goods to accompany the deceased in the afterlife.

The enormous time span that this exhibition encompasses could be overwhelming given its scope, yet the "China: Crossroads of Culture" exhibition succeeds in condensing the complex historical and geopolitical makeup of China in the first millennium, and conveys the breadth of innovation which took place in China as its leaders, aristocrats and artisans incorporated elements of the diverse cultural traditions of the kingdoms and empires that lined the Silk Road. It is well worth a visit to experience firsthand the richness of the milieu from which Tang culture sprang.

China: Crossroads of Culture is showing at the Mori Art Museum from July 2nd (Sat) to Sept. 4th (Sun) from 10:00 a.m.-10:00p.m. (Tuesdays 10 a.m.-5 p.m.)

Tickets are 1,500 yen for adults, 1,000 yen for high school, college and university students and 500 yen for children. Tickets are also valid for "Follow Me! Chinese Art at the Threshold of the New Millennium."

Ticket giveaway
The Mori Art Museum has provided five pairs of free admission tickets for readers of The Japan Times. Interested parties should send an e-mail with "China Exhibitions" as the subject to kimura@japantimes.co.jp making sure to include their name, address and telephone number.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fa20050713a1.htm

 

 

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with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)


http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de


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