the scotsman, Tuesday, 27th July 2004
[image] Curator Emma Leighton with an exhibit from One Million Days in China Pictures: Donald MacLeod.

Broken China

ONE MILLION DAYS IN CHINA *
BURRELL COLLECTION, GLASGOW

THE SMITHSONS ***
LIGHTHOUSE, GLASGOW

THE COLLECTION put together by Sir William Burrell is astonishing. It is world class and spans the arts, the schools and the styles like a miniature V&A. Along with marvellous tapestries, stained glass, furniture, ancient sculpture, Impressionist paintings and a whole lot more besides, one of its glories is Burrell’s collection of Chinese art. This includes porcelain, sculpture, bronzes, jade, furniture and neolithic pots.

But if this is a great treasure, you would not know it from One Million Days in China, the Burrell’s new exhibition drawn from the collection. To start with - what a meaningless Hollywood-style title. Who knows how many years a million days make? Who is going to bother to do the long division sum? Nobody, I suspect, and that is the painful point. The title is chosen to sound like a lot; a big number to get it across that China is an ancient civilisation while not straining anybody’s brain with real information. And exactly who is it intended to get across to? The inference is that it is those whom the curators deem ignorant who are to be impressed, whoever they may be. What insufferable patronage.

However, when you get inside the exhibition, it is even more patronising. The labels are written in Janet and John English, simple language for beginners. Instead of dates, or anything else informative, the cases have displayed on them, in big writing: "4,000 years ago", or "2,700 years ago", and so on in descending order. Dates are too fusty and academic, obviously. So, it seems, are labels most of the time. They are distributed erratically around the place. Some objects have them, others don’t. It’s quite arbitrary. Some of the cases are arranged in layers decorated vaguely to look like earth with grass on the top. It’s underground, see? That’s archaeology. A difficult word. Let’s get the idea across in simple terms. It makes you cringe.

If this exhibition was specifically intended for children, all that would be fine. Some of the displays are at a level to be seen easily by five year-olds, although these displays are correspondingly invisible to grown ups. The room is also liberally sprinkled with educational games and the children who were there were enjoying them. The whole place is painted a gay, primary-school yellow, too. But this is not a special exhibition for children. On the contrary, it is billed as a major exhibition. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest it is all just easy learning for five to seven-year-olds, but if it is not intended for that age group, then it is treating adults as children. That is unacceptable. It prostitutes the art and insults the audience. Social inclusion is a noble and necessary ideal for the arts, but crassly handled, it is the exact mirror of elitism and every bit as nasty. It is also a waste of effort.

And surely, too, even if it was intended for them, children would deserve to have the objects displayed in a way that allows their astonishing beauty to be seen and would encourage an imaginative response. There is no room for that here, however. It is all busy and ugly. Some of the objects are so badly lit they are virtually invisible. Children, too, even more than adults, will be disconcerted by labels that refer to things that are not there. In one case, there is even a drawing showing the objects in position to identify them - but almost half of them appear to be missing without any explanation. In another display, there is a table and chair which are, in fact, English and from the 17th or 18th century, but there is nothing to explain why they are there. They just appear to be a total aberration. It is unprofessional.

This exhibition has special financial backing from the Scottish Executive, even though all it does is move objects from one room to another. Nothing at all seems to be gained by taking them from their permanent display into this jangling muddle, but somebody high up must have thought it served a purpose. I am afraid the suspicion must be that this is not just a misplaced children’s exhibition, but that the motive is wholly political and has nothing to do with the art at all. It is instead a piece of flat-footed multiculturalism. Giving the Glasgow Chinese community a stake in their city, visible to their fellow citizens, is a proper ambition, but this is no way to do it. Frankly, it is an insult to a marvellous artistic tradition to see it treated like this. The objects here are exploited to political ends in a truly awful display and with total insensitivity to what they are.

MERCIFULLY, THE regular display of Chinese art, which is cool and contemplative and truly one of the delights of the Burrell, is largely undisturbed. You can take refuge there. There is a blue and white Ming bowl with slightly smudged flowers and, nearby, a little Sung bowl in heavenly blue. These are objects I always look for. They would cure any artistic dyspepsia. But even here, you cannot escape.

The gaps made by the objects removed for the exhibition are emphasised by great, clunky labels announcing that the missing object has gone to the "major exhibition One Million Days in China". Haste ye back, I say. Artistically, this is a pointless exercise. Politically, it is tired and time serving. It is a disgrace to see great art used this way. It is either crass or cynical. I don’t know which is worse, but either way Glasgow and Burrell deserve better.

It was refreshing to go from the Burrell to the Lighthouse and see there the display of the work of Alison and Peter Smithson, the legendary husband-and-wife team of architects whose work stretches back to the 1950s, when they were members of the Independent Group along with Eduardo Paolozzi and other radicals of the post-war years. It is ironic that their ambition back then was, through design and architecture, to try to correct the balance in the infant welfare state they claimed "ignored each and every thing that might make a community out of a society". If this was ultimately the same goal as the dreadful Burrell exhibition, the result could not be more different, nor could the approach. For the Smithsons, art and design were not to be the servants of politics, but the corrective to the manifest imaginative deficiency of political thinking. How little has changed!

The Smithsons wanted to adapt the new technologies and the new possibilities of the post-war world to humanise it. Back in 1952, they created a house for the future. It was actually built out of plywood in ten days, but it was all curved shapes to simulate plastic, the material of the future. They even had futuristic clothes designed for the people in the show house. These went straight to the Star Trek wardrobe. Since then, not everything they have designed has been an unquestioned success, but at least they never slipped back into the easy comfort of time-serving orthodoxy. Their inventiveness and willingness to throw out the rule book has been a refreshing influence on British architecture.

• One Million Days in China runs until 13 February; The Smithsons until 31 August
http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=856432004

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Yahoo.com
Source: China Guardian International Auction Company Limited
A Hundred Scenes of the Three Gorges to be Auctioned by China Guardian
Tuesday July 27, 9:31 am ET

BEIJING, July 27 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- 101 paintings depicting sights from the Three Gorges, such as the Goddess Peak, smoky clouds over Wu Gorge, and an autumn scene at Xiling, will be auctioned on August 20 at the 82nd weekend auction to be held by the China Guardian Auctions Co., Ltd. This will be the first time the entire collection of 101 paintings will make an appearance at an auction, and the first auction to feature art works of the Three Gorges theme on such a large scale. All the works will be on display at Beijing's Kunlun Hotel on August 18 and 19. It is understood that this theme auction will be previewed and broadcast live through the Chinese collectors' website http://www.51cang.com .
In 1995, more than a hundred artists were taken to the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River to paint the scenes. This was an effort to save the fascinating beauty and long-standing culture of the Three Gorges in the form of art works, sponsored by the China Youth Development Foundation, China Eastern Airlines Group, China Artists Association and the China Calligraphers Association. 101 works were selected from the more than 150 and formed ''A Hundred Scenes of the Three Gorges, China.''

It is understood that the creation process of the ''A Hundred Scenes of the Three Gorges, China'' lasted close to 12 months, starting in 1995 and ending in the summer of 1996. All the artists involved held National Level I accreditation and were leading painters in the regions that they come from. They include Guan Shanyue, Li Xiongcai, He Haixia, Ya Ming, Song Wenzhi, Wei Zixi, Zhou Shaohua, Song Yugui, Liu Guosong and Che Pengfei. The paintings cover styles such as Mei, Lingnan and Northern, and form a complete representation of contemporary Chinese scenery painting. The works include ''Rain Over Yunbao Gorge'' by Ya Ming, ''Skiff Travelling Through Thousands of Mountains'' by Guan Shanyue, ''Blue Mountains and Green Waters'' by Li Xiongcai and ''Grand Views of the Gorges'' by Song Wenzhi.

All the works amongst the ''Hundred Scenes'' are over 4-foot-long, while more than 30 pieces are longer than 2 metres. The 101 paintings have been mounted in scrolls by the Rong Bao Zhai Studio and kept at the Forbidden City Museum. Also, the Hundred Scenes of the Three Gorges, China Album, published internationally by the China Youth Press has won the 11th China Book Awards.

About China Guardian International Auction Company Limited

Established in May 1993, China Guardian International Auction Co., Ltd. is a comprehensive national auction company ratified by the Ministry of Culture and the former State Council Economic and Trade Office, and is also registered at the State Administration of Industry and Commerce.

China Guardian has a standing cultural relics and artwork auction catalogue covering traditional Chinese calligraphy and paintings, oil paintings and sculptures, porcelain and jade works of art, classical furniture, rare ancient Chinese books, pearls and marbles, postal articles and coins. China Guardian also auctions property rights, real estate, intellectual rights, confiscated and mortgaged articles as well as abandoned properties.

The company is fast becoming a large auction enterprise that possesses the most complete assortment and variety of auctioned goods in China.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040727/cntu001_1.html

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Taipei Times
Central government urged to fund museum project
CNA , TAICHUNG
Tuesday, Jul 27, 2004,Page 4

Taichung Major Jason Hu (???) urged the central government yesterday to provide the needed funds for the plan to build a sate-llite Guggenheim Museum in the central city of Taichung before it's too late.

Noting that the funds to subsidize the development of a Guggenheim Museum in Taichung City has not been included in the NT$500 billion (US$14.66 billion) national construction project, Hu said that the designer and builder from the US will not wait forever for an answer from Taichung.

Hu said that the Guggenheim development plan has been stalled since last year and that he is not confident the US builder will not turn its back on Taiwan.

Since relevant subsidy budget remained uncertain, Hu suggested that the central government take over the plan and build all on its own the museum in Taichung.

Members of Taichung's cultural and literary circles had called for help from the Executive Yuan in March in an effort to save the Guggenheim project, but their efforts failed to produce results.

Hu said in February that the deadline for signing an agreement with the Guggenheim had already passed and that if the city could not ink the agreement by obtaining the trust and support of the Guggenheim Museum soon, the plan would probably have to be aborted.

Huang Chao-hu (???), a spokesman for the Guggenheim Museum Promotion Group in Taichung said recently that it would be a pity if the project were scrapped as the museum's designer -- Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid -- has been awarded the 2004 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the world's top honor in the field of architecture.

In addition to the planned Guggenheim Museum for Taichung, Hadid also designed such structures as the free-flowing Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati; a tram station in Strasbourg, France; and a contemporary arts center in Rome, Huang said.

In the event that the Guggenheim project is scrapped, some city councilors have suggested the city council should use the funds that were originally allocated for the building of the museum to construct a Taichung City contemporary fine arts museum.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2004/07/27/2003180634

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(China Daily) Updated: 2004-07-22 08:36
Experts muse over museums

"I Have A Dream." Martin Luther King, Jr.
[image] Two visitors to the National Museum of China view a design of the museum's new building to the east of the Tian'anmen Square. [China Daily]

The fact is, in everybody's heart, there is often a dream of some sort big or small, spoken or secret, some to be realized, some others well...

Chen Yu, 35, a local Beijinger and one of the youngest curators at the National Museum of China, has a dream. But his dream is of a different kind than the dreams most of us have.

"I have heard about the wonderful permanent display of artifacts of ancient Greece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in New York), but I have never had a chance to see it. I would really like to know how foreigners organize a large-scale exhibition like the one I am presently working on," Chen said, on the eve of the opening of the exhibition of ancient Greek artifacts he has worked so hard to bring to Beijing.

His exhibition will open today in the national museum on the east side of Tian'anmen Square. One of the most significant cultural events of this summer in the Chinese capital, it also comes at a special moment, with the 2004 Athens Olympics coming up in August having cranked up the Hellenistic appetites of millions of sports and culture lovers in China.

In spite of his relatively young age, this is not the first time Chen has organized a blockbuster show since he joined the museum in 1992. The 1999 exhibition on the Tibetan history and arts, for instance, is one of the earlier successes on his resume as a curator.

Chen's only regret is that, like most working professionals in Chinese museums, he has largely trained himself and has never received any formal professional training, let alone international training, in curating. "Things have changed. I believe it's necessary for us to learn from the practices of museums in developed countries," he told China Daily.

Chen is certainly not the first nor the only person to have realized the importance of international training in the museum field, with China facing a huge "museum boom" as it embraces the rest of the world with open arms.

New era of museums

Statistics indicate that China currently has more than 2,000 museums, with more than 20 million items in their collections and more than 8,000 exhibitions being staged every year.

To add to that number, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, which is in charge of museums nationwide, is planning the construction of 1,000 new museums by the year 2015. By that time, every mid-size or larger city in China is expected to have at least one museum.

This "museum fever" in cosmopolitan cities such as Beijing and Shanghai has recently stimulated lively discussion in China and overseas.

Beijing is reportedly planning to build 20 more museums and have at least 130 museums by the time it hosts the 2008 Olympics. Among the major projects are the 1.8 billion yuan (US$217 million) expansion of the National Museum of China and construction of a new wing for the China National Art Museum. "Not to be outdone, Shanghai says it plans to build 100 new museums for the 2010 World Expo," according to an article published in the latest issue of "Art in America" magazine.

While many people are thrilled by the prospect of burgeoning of museums in the country, some experts have questioned the "imbalance between the hardware and software" - that is, too many museums and not enough trained personnel.

In their view, as the country becomes more financially developed, people are eager to build more museums. But who is going to do the work in all these modern facilities that will be seen as symbols of the national as well as local cultural heritage and an important element in shaping the country's international image?

"The quality of a museum's displays rests largely in the hands of its curatorial staff, regardless of the quality of its collection. Unfortunately, many of the staff members in our museums are not qualified to run a modern public museum," remarked Feng Yuan, the new director of the National Art Museum of China, who previously served as director of the arts department of the Chinese Ministry of Culture.

He said that the staff at the museum lags behind those of leading art museums abroad in terms of professional knowledge, familiarity with the arts and commitment to public service.

Museum training programmes and courses in China are not up to the standards seen in places like Europe or the United States, where training programmes in museum curatorial work and museum administration have been in place for a much longer time.

Only a handful of universities in China Peking, Nankai, and Fudan, to name a few have museum studies programmes. Archaeology or history programmes in most Chinese universities and art schools are research-oriented, with little consideration being given to museum curator training.

Programmes in curatorial studies, arts administration, and museum education are next to non-existent in the country. The internship system, which is widely used in Western museums and of great help in training museum professionals, has yet to be introduced in most Chinese museums.

With an eye focused on improving domestic training programmes, many Chinese museum professionals are turning their eyes to international resources and experience. "We can't expect our senior staff to change much," Feng said. "We do hope to send our young staff members to receive training in foreign museums or institutions, and we are recruiting more graduates with Master's or higher degrees. We want more well-trained young professionals who love their jobs."

International training

The good news is that some exciting foreign museum training programmes are already being planned or under way to help China build up a staff of qualified museum personnel.

Bruce Altshuler, director of the Museum Studies Programme at New York University (NYU), is one of the international experts who are enthusiastically working on such projects.

Since 2002, Altshuler, an authority in museum studies research and training in the United States, has made field trips to China and other countries in Asia and Europe to prepare for a summer institute at NYU. The project will bring together young museum professionals from Asia, Europe and the United States for three weeks of intensive training and exchange.

During his visit to China, Altshuler met many museum administrators, curators, and scholars in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. He investigated three general areas of museum practice that he believes are "the main areas that need more professionalism:" fund-raising and marketing; educational programming; collections and exhibitions.

"I was very impressed by how proud people from Chinese museums are of what they have, how serious they are in studies and research, and how aware they are of international developments," Altshuler said. "They seem to be more confident in research, but not so confident in putting on exhibits for the public and communicating with the public.

"We hope the summer institute will open in 2006. Each summer, we would like to bring together 25 to 30 people," he said. He added that activities designed for the training programmes would include presentations by American museum professionals, working in teams to solve problems, visits to local museums in the New York area, and trips to cities like Washington DC and Philadelphia, which also have great museums.

"I think that with its scope, the programme will bring people together and give them a chance to exchange ideas," remarked Sarah Bradley, associate director of the New York-based Asian Cultural Council (ACC) an affiliate of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which sponsored Altshuler's field trip to China.

"The amount of training people can receive in a summer institute is very small, but these people are to come from different museums which operate in very different ways. It doesn't make any sense to learn only the American model. People should sit together and talk about how they solve similar problems, and they can take the ideas they get back to their different institutions," she added.

Collaborative endeavours

Beyond the Museum Studies Programme at NYU, which also offers a Master's degree, many other universities and institutions in the United States also have plans to work with China in training professionals in almost all museum-related disciplines.

Harvard University, for instance, has established the Courtney Sale Ross Arts in Education Scholarship to support Chinese professionals in graduate studies, aiming at fostering communication among cultural institutions (specifically museums) in the United States and China. Similarly, the Teachers College of Columbia University has increased collaboration with the Beijing-based Central Academy of Fine Arts in the fields of art museum education and arts administration.

Last year, the Central Academy of Fine Arts of China and the National Academy of Cultural Heritage of France opened a joint programme in Beijing to train senior administrators in Chinese museums. Last December, veteran scholars and professionals from both sides presented a series of seminars that were highly welcomed, according to Fan Di'an, professor and vice-president of the Central Academy.

Leading cultural institutions such as the Asia Society Museum in New York, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC and the British Museum in London are also interested in expanding co-operation with China.

"What we are witnessing today in China is the exponential growth of the museum sector, particularly in relation to contemporary art," remarked Melissa Chiu, director of the Asia Society Museum. She cited as examples the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Guangdong Museum of Art, and the Millennium Museum in Beijing.

"The Asia Society Museum has a long history of working with Chinese institutions, especially for our traditional art exhibitions. We look forward to collaborating more with Chinese museums in the future to present the art of China, past and present," Chiu said.

The British Museum and the National Museum of China have reached an agreement to exchange professionals for short-term visits, according to Zhu Fenghan, executive director of the National Museum of China.

Like the ACC, which has been supporting US-China exchanges in the arts and museum sectors for decades, international foundations such as the Henry Luce Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Starr Foundation and the Paul Getty Trust all support exchanges and training in the museum sector.

When dreams come true

Zhu said the professionalism of staff in Chinese museums has improved remarkably in the past five or six years as a result of increased international exchanges and the excellent example set by local institutions such as the Shanghai Museum.

"Professionals at the National Museum of China now have more chances to communicate with their counterparts from the rest of the world. Most of them have travelled abroad. Their vision has been broadened while working with foreign museums."

Zhu added: "We want to offer the best exhibitions we can think of and afford to the public, and we are constantly learning from the world's leading museums. We do welcome the ideas of foreign institutions or foundations in staff training. And we welcome foreign professors and experts to come to train our staff in China."

Chen Yu hasn't yet managed to see the show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But he counts himself lucky anyway. In recent years, international exchange projects of his museum have allowed him to travel Paris once and to Greece twice, where he learned a lot from his European colleagues.

With a little more luck, his next stop might just be New York.

National Museum to be expanded

The central government of China is going to close the country's national museum for two and a half years to implement its plan to double the size of the museum before the 2008 Olympics.

The National Museum of China, which is located on the east side of Tian'anmen Square, was built in 10 months in 1958 and 1959 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

It will be enlarged from about 65,000 square metres to more than 150,000 square metres, with a total of 58,000 square metres of exhibition space.

The work will begin next summer and is expected to be completed at the end of 2007. The museum will be closed while the work is going on, said Zhu Fenghan, executive director of the museum.

The country's central government is footing the bill, which is expected to exceed 1.8 billion yuan (US$217 million). The design for the new museum will be chosen at the end of this month from the three under consideration in the final round of the bidding.

Insiders said all three designs were submissions from famous foreign architects.

The museum's present buildings, designed by renowned Chinese architect Zhang Kaiji, are to be renovated at the same time as the new ones are added to their east.

All three designs stress "public space," with easy access from the square so that visitors can take advantage of the museum.

"Visitors will be able to have coffee on the balconies of the museum as they enjoy the view of the Square, Tian'anmen Rostrum and the Forbidden City," said Gao Baodong, vice-general manager of the Beijing Gauging Consultants Co, the firm in charge of the expansion project.

The present system of having the staff place glasses of water in the exhibition cases will be replaced by a new state-of-the-art environmental control system that will maintain temperature and humidity levels in all the exhibition halls.

The new buildings will also include a cinema, rest areas and shops. There are no such facilities in the present museum.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/22/content_350575.htm

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The Japan Times: July 20, 2004
Find rekindles debate over Horyuji Temple

NARA (Kyodo) Recent research has rekindled a century-old dispute among experts of ancient Japanese architecture over the age of one of the country's most famous buildings.

[images] Researchers at the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties display pieces of timber from the ceiling of the main hall of Horyuji Temple, shown below.

Officials at the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties have declared that the main hall of Horyuji Temple in Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture, was built after 668. The famous temple is popularly believed to have been rebuilt between 708 and 714 after being destroyed by a fire.

The growth rings of two pieces of timber used for ceiling boards in the "kondo," or main hall, of the temple show that they were cut between 668 and 669 and between 667 and 668, respectively, according to the institute.

The temple, the oldest wooden structure in the world, has been designated as a national treasure and a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It is said to have been originally built in 607.

Whether the temple, built by Prince Shotoku, remains as originally built or was rebuilt after the fire in 670 has been an issue of academic debate since the Meiji Period (1868-1912).

The institute said that although its researchers were unable to find any timber that dates back to the early seventh century, when the temple is said to have been built, the latest finding may spark fresh controversy as it lends support to the hypothesis that the main hall might date from before the fire.

"We were able to provide (researchers) with high-quality information regarding the age (of the timbers) of each building," said institute researcher Takumi Mitsutani, who headed the study. "I hope that the debate (over Horyuji's age) will be reactivated with these findings."

The institute said construction of the main hall might have been started in the 660s, before the fire, because the ceiling boards are installed immediately before a building's completion.

The smoldering debate over the building's age was reignited in 2001, when it was discovered that the central pillar of the temple's pagoda dated back to 594.

This is too old to consider Horyuji's Western Precinct (Saiin), a major compound in which most of the temple buildings existing today are arranged, as having been rebuilt.

The mystery surrounding the central pillar has yet to be cleared up.

The Saiin had until then been widely considered a reconstruction, as remnants of what is believed to be the original Horyuji Temple were found in 1939.

For its latest study, the institute examined 107 timbers used in the main hall, pagoda and "chumon," or inner gate, and was able to confirm the latest years when the timbers used in the buildings were cut.

They confirmed that the timbers used in the main hall had been cut between 668 and 669 and between 667 and 668, those used in the pagoda in 673 and those in the inner gate in 699.

From the findings, the institute concluded that the buildings of the temple were built in the order of the main hall, the pagoda and the inner gate.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20040720f1.htm

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Independent, 28 July 2004
The new cultural revolution
Artworks from China and its neighbours are among the most sought-after by the world's collectors. Britain has been slow to pick up on the trend, but that's about to change, reports Louise Jury

It has invented gunpowder, paper and credit banking. It is the most populous country in the world and has the fastest-growing economy. And now it is set to take global art by storm. At least that is the prediction of Philip Dodd, the retiring director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, who has named China - and its Asian neighbours - as the future.

"The 19th century belonged to Britain, the 20th century belonged to America. Everybody in the 20th century wanted to be American, they wanted Levi jeans and to be Elvis Presley," Mr Dodd said in an interview yesterday. "And the 21st century will belong to China. I see no evidence but that China is going to get more and more important." By the time China hosts the Olympic games in Beijing in 2008, Mr Dodd said, "almost everything in this room will have 'Made in China' stamped on it."

For those with their fingers on the cultural zeitgeist, the signs are already manifest. Philip Dodd has a reason for promoting Chinese arts. He has handed in his notice at the ICA to launch his own consultancy, Made in China, which will forge cultural projects between China and the UK. But he is not alone in embracing the arts from the East.

The Chinese artist Zhao Bandi is being fêted in Britain this summer with a series of shows in Manchester, Birmingham and Portsmouth. An exhibition of contemporary Chinese photography is being planned for the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester is hosting a show for September featuring the two performance artists who created a scandal when they jumped on Tracey Emin's bed at the Tate. And the Burrell Collection in Glasgow has opened its first major exhibition of ancient Chinese treasures this week.

But compared with countries such as America and France, Britain has been slow to pick up on the new cultural revolution that is exporting a vibrant generation of new artists and designers to the West while absorbing the best the West has to offer into its classical traditions at home.

The acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid is yet to have her first building in the UK, but she is creating an opera house in China. After a successful trip with the British Council last year, the artist Antony Gormley is back in China this week for the opening of an exhibition of his work which has been bought by the Guangdong museum. The magazines Time Out and Vogue are opening offices there. "They are building museums on a daily basis in China," Mr Dodd told Sky News.

Charlotte Edwards, deputy editor of Art Review magazine, which is dedicating an issue to China in November, stressed that it was not only China that was booming, but artists in countries such as Taiwan and Korea. Until now these countries had not enjoyed the commercial infrastructure of galleries that drove art trends in the West. But that was changing with the emergence of influential venues such as Shang-Art in Shanghai and curators such as Hou Hanru who were proving incredible ambassadors.

She said: "It's not so easy to get out there, so the money isn't there yet but it's where a lot of the big-name collectors are looking. The art world likes nothing better than to have their place of the moment and China is certainly that place."

She hopes Britain will make some effort to understand what is happening. "In Australia, they're really brilliant at looking at art from South-east Asia and Asia in general," she said, explaining that Britain had traditionally proved less receptive because a lot of the art is very political. "It's not necessarily common currency."

Amelie von Wedel, of the Red Mansion Foundation which has been forging cultural exchanges between Britain and China since 2001, said contemporary Chinese art began to flourish in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, but Britain had been slower than some other countries to notice.

It is their sense of history that makes China's contemporary artists particularly strong, she believes. In contrast with the introversion of most Western artists, the best-known Chinese practitioners have survived a series of major events from Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution onwards which gives a social context to their work.

She said: "Now suddenly everyone wants to do business with the Chinese. For me, it's a bit like a gold rush. Chinese art is also very original, incredibly fresh, and they are making use of new technologies. It is the creativity of a country moving forward incredibly fast. It is very interesting and very powerful."

Meredith Etherington-Smith, a cultural commentator who is working on an exhibition on the French influence on Chinese arts and crafts that opens in Shanghai in November, pointed out that the East and West had influenced each other for centuries. "The whole of 18th-century Europe was mad about chinoiserie," she said.

Philip Dodd believes that Britain has much to learn from the East. "The culture there has an optimism and a riskiness. They are ambitious and confident and they are willing to experiment. We need an infusion of that here."

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART

TAKASHI MURAKAMI

Born in Tokyo in 1963, the Japanese artist and designer is famous for his work for the French fashion house Louis Vuitton - the "Murakami bag" launched last spring, featuring the LV logo in colourful cartoon iconography, was an immediate hit.

Rated seventh in Art Review's Art Power 100 in October - one behind Charles Saatchi - he is considered one of the hottest pop artists of the 1990s.

Classically trained at Tokyo's University of Fine Arts, he fuses historic Japanese painting with contemporary cartoons and his work has been exhibited in Asia, America and Europe.

His New York show last October featured two 30ft-wide floating eyeballs, a 30ft-high Buddha and a forest of mushroom-shaped seating for visitors. His recurring character, Mr DOB, appears on factory-produced T-shirts, key-rings and mugs worldwide.

Murakami says his work deals with bravery and power: lurking within the cartoon world of mushrooms and smiling daisies are influences as diverse as Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Hiroshima. Some critics, however, dismiss his work as commercial eye candy and "over-the-top cuteness".

He is also a curator in his own right, following his staging of Super Flat, an exhibition that showcased contemporary Japanese artists.

TOMOKO TAKAHASHI

The Tokyo-born installation artist, 38, made the 2000 Turner Prize shortlist for a room full of junk designed to suggest the aftermath of an earthquake. Learning How To Drive featured twisted steering wheels, bollards, traffic signs, discarded tyres and hubcaps, and was displayed at Tate Britain. It was inspired by the artist learning to drive.

YANG FUDONG

Born in Beijing in 1971, Yang Fudong is among several Chinese film makers recording the whirlwind changes in China. His experimental films often show alienated youth. In Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest, Part I, Yang films his well-dressed friends as they ascend Huangshan Mountain, talking with one another about life.

ZHAO BANDI

Born in Beijing in 1963, Bandi trained as a painter but is famous for his photographs of himself in various situations with his toy panda, reaching mass audiences with giant posters in city centres. The panda symbolises China's "one-child" policy and Bandi's work often parodiesstate propaganda. Currently showing at Manchester Art Gallery, and on poster sites around the city.

CAI GUO-QIANG

Initially trained in stage design, this 46-year-old Chinese artist began working with gunpowder to "confront the suppression from the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China". In a work at the Tate Modern in January 2003, 2km of fuse, 25kg of powder and 200 shells combined to form a dragon of fire shooting across the Thames.

DAYANITA SINGH

After years of documenting poverty, this Delhi-born 43-year-old photographer has challenged the stereotypical image of India as a teeming crowd of humanity. She has become known for her portraits of India's urban middle and upper class family and work life and documentation of the socio-economic changes transforming the Indian family.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=545378

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Sydney Morning Herald, July 29, 2004
A delicate craft, dressing divine beings
Ornate artistry ... the Qing emperor's blue silk robe.

For annual sacrifices, emperors didn't wear just any old robe, writes Steve Meacham.

The white-gloved hands of Judith Rutherford gently caress the vivid blue-silk robe laid out on the conservation table. The gown is sumptuous, exquisite. But then it was specifically made for a Qing dynasty emperor 150 years ago.

Back then the Chinese believed their emperor was a divine being, and this robe was worn at the annual sacrifice held at the Temple of Heaven, regarded as the holiest place in Beijing. The fasting emperor would don this robe and stand at a sacred spot to connect himself with the mystic powers of the universe while animals were sacrificed.

"The Chinese believed the robe symbolised the universe, but it only became alive when the emperor put his head through it and made a connection with the real universe," says Rutherford.

The robe is owned by an Australian, James Fairfax, the newspaper publisher. So how much would it be worth? Rutherford looks surprised anyone could ask such a crass question. "They rarely come on the market," she says eventually. "There are so few of them. But the starting price would be about $250,000."

Contemporary Chinese have recently tried to copy them but "modern standards of workmanship are just not up to it". Rutherford points to the gold-coloured thread on the robe's embroidery. It's not just gold-coloured, it's gold. The ancients would wrap beaten gold leaf around a silk thread core. They couldn't sew such intricate thread through the robe; they had to lay it out on the robe, then fix it with "tiny, invisible catch stitches". Rutherford tried it once in an international masterclass: she couldn't do it.

The Qing robe is one of more than 70 silk artefacts that will go on display at the Art Gallery of NSW from this week in an exhibition called Celestial Silks: Chinese religious and court textiles. Rutherford and her co-curator, Jackie Menzies, have called in lots of favours from friends and collectors. But it is the blue robe which best illustrates the craftsmanship and historical symbolism of Celestial Silks.

The laws of the Qing dynasty required the emperor and the empress to wear yellow for all public occasions, except the annual sacrifices. In addition, by 1759 the emperor's robe had to include 12 ancient "symbols of authority", handed down from previous dynasties and arranged in specific order on the robe.

For our inspection, the robe is lying face down. Rutherford begins by explaining the more obvious features. Earlier robes from earlier dynasties were plain and impractical, with long, trailing sleeves. "This one has horseshoe cuffs," says Rutherford. "The people who controlled China in the Qing dynasty were Manchus, horsemen who had originally lived the northern side of the Great Wall.

"They came south in 1644 to help the Ming dynasty restore order, then stayed and took over themselves. The horseshoe cuffs represent the nomadic origins of their dynasty."

At the bottom of the robe there's a pattern representing the deep ocean, then a foaming froth of waves. Above this is a central mountain, representing the earth. The most obvious decoration is the nine large dragons symbolising the heavens.

Whenever a new imperial robe was needed it would be commissioned by the mandarins at the board of rites in Beijing. If it was to be woven, the design was sent to the experts at Nanjing. If it was to be embroidered - the intricate drawings would be sent to Soochow, many days' walk away but the centre of embroidery excellence.

It's still not known whether one artisan, or a team, would work on an emperor's robe. But it was painstaking: a tiny flaw and the mandarins would reject it as being unfit for an emperor, in which case the robe was usually presented to a foreign ambassador. When the robe was ready to be sent back to Beijing it would be accompanied by a passport, listing the number of man hours involved, the amount of gold thread used and other details of its manufacture.

Next we inspect the 12 symbols of authority, each the size of a 50 cent coin. "This one is called Millet," Rutherford says, pointing to an embroidered plate of grain near the shoulder, representing the emperor's responsibility to feed his people. "And look, this one is very cute. It shows the hare of the moon, which the Chinese believed lived on the moon like we used to talk about the man in the moon. The little hare is holding a mortar and pestle and is pounding the elixir of immortality."

A third, called the sun, shows a three-legged rooster which symbolised intellectual enlightenment. Similarly, a pheasant stands for "literary refinement and education", while a pair of tiny dragons indicate "the emperor's adaptability through transformation or renewal". Together the 12 symbols were meant to show that only the emperor had control over creation.

Several works have been lent by an anonymous Melbourne collector. "Even I don't know his name," says Rutherford. The most generous benefactor is a Hong Kong-based English tax accountant, Chris Hall, who has the world's best-known private collection of symbolic Chinese textiles.

Apparently, says Rutherford, Hall is so attached to his collection that he stores many of his finest robes under his specially designed bed fitted with conservation drawers. He is a noted bargain-spotter. At the beginning of the 1990s a curious patchwork quilt appeared for sale at London's Portobello Road flea market. Someone realised "the quilt" might be something valuable and bought it. A few months later it was listed for sale in a New York auction house for $US60,000-80,000. Hall recognised the quilt for what it was. Twelve imperial festival badges dating from the Ming dynasty had been stitched together with a modern border placed round the side.

Hall bought the quilt before it came up for auction, separated each of the badges and had them professionally remounted. And the value of each panel? "About $US30,000 [$43,000]," says Rutherford.

Celestial Silks, Chinese religious & court textiles opens at the Art Gallery of NSW on Saturday. It ends on October 24.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/28/1090694020391.html?oneclick=true

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Taipei Journal
Publish Date:07/30/2004
Penghu Island: oceanic site for land art
Story Type:Arts & Culture;
Byline:Rita Fang

Organizers had a hard time preparing for the 2004 Penghu International Land Art Festival, but it finally kicked off July 1 and will run until Oct. 31. The event was first held in 2001, and then again in 2002, making this year's celebration of installation art the archipelago's third.

The festival features seven works of art that were selected from more than 30 submissions. The large installations are on display on the rolling grassland near Makung, the capital of Penghu County. The original idea, said organizers, was to decorate the grassland with Penghu stone to show off local attributes and add a cultural and artistic element to island tours.

Some festival activities include photography contests, poetry writing competitions and land-art workshops held in small studios. The artists arrived a few months ago to begin working on their masterpieces. The previous two festivals were held in autumn and winter, and so a common theme for much of the art was the wind. The winter winds in Penghu leave a strong impression on visitors. This year, because the festival is being held in summer, participating artists seem to have chosen a cooler theme.

For example, a team of eight university students built a piece they call "cooling cube" made of several dozen large, fake ice cubes. The artists explain that it forms a strong visual contrast with Penghu's hot summer landscape. Being fake, however, the ice cubes never melt. Penghu's hot weather is a result of its geography. It has higher temperatures than other places at the same latitude. Locals joke that there are three suns on the islands. They endeavor to cool their bodies and their hearts during the hot summers. This idea is intertwined with the fishing that goes on on the islets. Penghu islanders live largely on fish, and before leaving port, fishermen make sure their ships are well stocked with ice to keep their catch fresh.

At the center of the fake ice cubes of various sizes is a small garden of gaillardia flowers, which Chinese people call tienjen, or "people of heaven," daisies. They happen to be the official flower of Penghu County because they have come to represent the tenacity, resilience and work ethic of Penghu natives. Penghu is sometimes called gaillardia island because of all the gaillardias that grow there. The artists responsible for "cooling cubes" said it symbolizes the spirit of the local people, who are unafraid of strong winds and the scorching sun. The gaillardia daisies that bloom on Penghu in spring and summer have different colors, but the most common are the light-yellow and orange-red ones.

Two artists that have been collaborating since their student days created an iron sculpture called "Wave" for the festival. Their intention was to incorporate the rising and falling of ocean waves to express a rhythmic beauty. In order to properly apprehend the effect, the viewer must sit down or lie on the grassland and imagine waves in motion. "Wave" is painted blue on the outside and has grass planted inside. Surf foam fashioned out of plaster decorates the exterior. The artists regard waves as friends to all Penghu people, which is why they have tried to combine this imagery into their work.

"Labyrinth" is a work featuring oyster shells from around the island. The copious shells symbolize the local image of Penghu and its life force. It is no exaggeration to say seafood is important on the archipelago. It has always been a tourist destination for seafood lovers from around Taiwan. This time, the artist strung discarded shells together to form the walls of a maze in which children can play. The unique odor of oceanic Penghu is immediately apparent upon entering the labyrinth. The walls swing with the breeze and brush against the steel support pillars. Like gaillardia flowers, oyster shells are emblematic of the Penghu Archipelago and its people.

The piece called "Doors" consists of nine doors arranged in a circle. The artist's intention was to show the theme of the life force and present a symbol of the kaleidoscope-like worlds that exist through doors. According to the artist, when a person walks through a door, he enters into an inevitable challenge and creates limits in life. The circular arrangement is meant to reveal that life repeats the same essence despite people's differences. Nine, a number that often represents the concept of many in Taiwanese culture, was chosen to mean that life has many inner and outer worlds that need to be explored. The circular arrangement represents the Earth on which we live.

Artist Lin Wan-shih used coral limestone to make his installation. The stone has long been a building material to make Penghu's coral houses the sturdy, long-lasting structures they are. People who live on the windswept island use coral rocks, basalt and other local building materials to enclose practically every patch of dry, cultivated land and thus block the invasion of the seasonal northeastern wind. The walls are largely interconnected and so from a distance have the appearance of a beehive.

Lin's installation art is called "time nostalgia." According to the artist, it expresses the idea that the concept of home has not changed for the thousands of years that he said Penghu has been inhabited. Lin intended for his coral limestone object to reflect residents' feelings and identification with the land. In it, some coral limestone rocks are scattered around house-shaped metal frameworks. Some of the rocks that appear to be strewn haphazardly around the site are actually meant to represent the decline of a sense of history.

The installation by Chen Yu-sheng was inspired by a well-known local tourist attraction: a 70-year-old fishpond in Chimei Township built in the shape of two intersecting hearts. The artist's intention was to explore the relationship between nature and the culture of Penghu. The work of art consists of aquarium-like glass boxes filled with water and plastic toy boats arranged around a replica of the famous landmark. Photographs taken around Penghu and Taiwan proper have been placed inside the plastic boats. At night, the affair is lit from below and a tape plays the sounds of insects and birds.

According to organizers of the festival, the installation art on the grassland expresses the artists' understanding, imagination and expectations of Penghu's environment. They give locals and tourists alike the opportunity to examine their own relationship with nature and culture.

http://publish.gio.gov.tw/FCJ/current/04073051.html

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