Put on Your Painter's Smock

The other day I went down to Beijing's 798 Art District. This area is a very famous art district which has photography, sculptures, paintings, modern art, Maoist art, Cultural R-volution art, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Devon, Ryan, Jeff, some other friends and I went and I have to go back sometime soon. It was so cool. We only walked through a small part but the sun began to set as we wandered around through the various galleries. There were too many pieces I really liked but here are some of my favorites.

«Catcher»

This gallery has a distinct art symbolizing the last few pages of Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. One of my favorite classics, the artist has taken a photograph of a cornfield and transposed it to symbolize the ending scene of Catcher in the Rye. In his first picture, I think it's extraordinary how he placed innocent children - all laughing, smiling and quintessentially Chinese - in a cornfield. Looking at the expression on their faces, the ones near the front are peering over the edge of the cliff and the other children are playing blissfully unaware. To complete the set, in the second picture, the artist has placed another picture of a cornfield opposite to this one, but instead of children, there are scarecrows in the field. Catcher in the Rye has a dominate theme dealing with the loss of childhood innocence, so looking at the first photograph made me feel a bit of sadness knowing what it represented. The second photo seeded many thoughts. I am still wondering why he chose to put scarecrows in the field instead of children. Maybe the scarecrows are supposed to frighten the children away from the edge of the cliff?

Anyway, besides the numerous Mao paraphernalia at 798, I often see Mao art on the streets or in markets. I have picked up a few pr-paganda posters in my travels throughout China. Prop-ganda posters, real or knocked-off, are typical in Chinese art. They were used during the period of Mao's rule to promote the ideology of Com-unism and propagate social-sm to the people. I have five of them, and all five are hanging on my wall. Each are different and have different sayings. My favorite is shown below:

In this poster, you can see the people holding their red books, Mao's book of sayings, all with smiles and happiness in their eyes. The phrase above them says something along the lines of: With book in hand we will defeat...something...and resist...something else... to go out and ... something. It's pretty interesting to analyze the posters from both an art perspective and from a social perspective. First and foremost, the people in the pictures are most likely laborers, commoners, or poorer peasants. The fact that they are holding their books in hand is ironic considering the fact that they possibly do not know how to read. The posters are fun to look at and provide good material to ponder how the Chinese read them and took them to heart. In the end, all I know is that these posters are deeply rooted in Chinese culture and are small memoirs of a critical time in Chinese history.

Back at 798, there were some interesting sculptures of animal-human things. My art history teacher calls them zoomorphic figures, but I don't really like using the technical terms. The sculptures were pretty cool and Devon got a picture of me with one. In other galleries, there were oil paintings with so much paint smeared on the canvas that it literally added another dimension to the painting. When 798 became too dark and cold, Devon and I headed over to Sanlitun bar district (bar district by night, awesome ex-pat district by day) to meet Brittany's father for dinner. Dinner was amazing. I really liked talking with Brittany's dad too. This guy is amazing. Working for a Korean technology company, he has spent most of his life working in Seoul, Korea and other Asian cities. Typically, he visits Asia for 6-8 months out of the year and has done so for the past 20 years. I'm not sure I love the idea of travelling that much, but it was a great conversation to have over some delicious (and much needed) Italian food.

Hope everyone is doing great. Word on the street says that it is getting pretty cold in Denver and I'm sure everyone is getting bombarded with Halloween candy at every store and in every office. I miss having a super-sized bowl of candy to snack on while I watch TV, do homework, or bum around the house. Someone needs to carve a pumpkin for me and let me know what costumes everyone is wearing this year.

One last thing. Here is some more food for thought as well. We discussed this picture in art class and it was confiscated by authorities for three reasons:

1. The colors are too dull.
2. The Bird's Nest is not represented appropriately.
3. The language is sensitive.

Currently, this picture, titled "Bird's Nest in the style of cubism," is being detained by the customs and security authorities of China and will be sent back to New York City soon. The artist, Zhang Hongtu, is furious that his art was not allowed to be entered into the Beijing exhibit and as you can imagine he has spoken out against this injustice. You should read the Wall Street Journal article online here. In class we discussed why the government listed only these three reasons and why the third reason is last (wouldn't you think that would be the first reason). Also, the 8s on top represent the 8/8/08 opening ceremony and the number is auspicious anyway. The characters on the bottom are the Olympic slogan "One World, One Dream" and the characters on top just say "Olympic Torch." I'm looking for pictures of the Catcher exhibit and I'll put them online when I can find them.