Kölnische Rundschau, 09.08.2004 19:11 Uhr
Was Chinas Gipfel erzählen
Von HEIDRUN WIRTH

KÖLN. Es ist angenehm kühl, und der Blick schweift über bizarre Berge, die mit schmalen Stegen verbunden sind, über den reißenden Fluss. Auf den Wegen in der Provin Sichuan sind Kaufleute mit Eseln unterwegs, die auf dem Klammweg nach Shu wollen. Zu sehen sind sie im Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst auf einer vier Meter hohen Prachtrolle, in schönster Tuschemalerei von Yuan Yao (1740-1777) während der Qing-Dynastie auf Seide gemalt.
Das Bild steht im Zentrum der Schau „Was Schluchten und Gipfel erzählen“ mit über 30 Exponaten, zum Thema „Mensch und Natur in der chinesischen Malerei“ aus dem eigenen Bestand gewählt. Die Malerei führt bis in die Moderne, wenn der Schwerpunkt auch auf 16. und 17. Jahrhundert liegt. Zu unterscheiden sind Arbeiten auf Papier, die von literarisch gebildeten Beamten (in Mußestunden) angefertigt wurden, und die weit schwierigere Seidenmalerei von professionellen Künstlern.

Doch mit dem tradierten Formen- und Geschichtenkanon wurden auch Fächer und Lackdosen oder das schöne blaue Porzellan der Ming- und der Qing-Dynastie bemalt. Und immer waren es uralte Geschichten, die da dargestellt wurden. Die Gebirgsgegend von Sichuan ist mit einer tragischen Geschichte verbunden, die sich im 4. Jahrhundert ereignete, als der Kaiser die schöne Konkubine Yang Guifei strangulieren ließ, weil sie angeblich an einer Verschwörung beteiligt war. Das grausige Geschehen bleibt allerdings völlig außen vor auf der sanften schönen Papierrolle. Der gebildete Chinese weiß jedoch sofort Bescheid, ihm genügen die Anspielungen.

Der Mensch tritt ohnedies zurück im kosmischen Spiel der Yin- und Yang-Gegensätze von Fels und Wasser. Der Kalligraf Mi Fu grüßt den Fels als „Bruder“ und verneigt sich vor ihm, denn Felsen gelten als Persönlichkeiten. So ist denn auch ein kleiner Miniaturfelsen aus grauem Kalkstein und weißen Quarzitadern mit in der Ausstellung einbezogen. Es geht um einfaches Leben und Naturverbundenheit: Hier führt der Gelehrte das Leben eines einfachen Fischers, und die „drei Lachenden“ (Weisen) schätzen ihre spontane Intelligenz höher ein als rigide Vorsätze.

In der Tuschemalerei sind die Farben verhalten und fein nuanciert in Grau-Abstufungen, doch leuchtet auch smaragdfarbenes Türkis in einer Querrolle auf, die an die alten Paradiesdarstellungen anknüpft. Unter Mao wurde den Künstlern, die ihre idealisierten Welten schufen, mangelnde Lebensnähe vorgeworfen. Ein letztes Blatt („Der Rausschmeißer“) zeigt eine brennende Landschaft und macht damit (1939) den Angriff der Japaner auf chinesische Dörfer zum Thema. Man sollte sich Zeit nehmen in der besinnlichen Ausstellung, um auch die Geschichten zu lesen, die Kuratorin Clarissa von Spee übersetzt und ausgeforscht hat.

Universitätsstr.100. Bis 1. Oktober, Di-So 11-17 Uhr, Do 11-20 Uhr.

http://www.rundschau-online.de/kr/KrCachedContentServer?ksArtikel.id=1091799914798&listID=1038839388522&openMenu =1038839385909&calledPageId=1038839385909

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die welt, Donnerstag, 12. August 2004
[Zeng Mi im Hamburger Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe]

Chinesische Tradition im Licht der Moderne
In China hinter der Mauer zu leben, bedeutete für jene Künstler, die zehn Jahre Kulturrevolution, Malverbot und Bildersturm zu überstehen hatten, eine leidvolle Erfahrung. Darum verwundert es nicht, dass sich die Kunstschaffenden des Landes nach dessen Öffnung im Jahr 1979 begeistert auf eine der beiden Möglichkeiten stürzten, die sich ihnen nun boten: Entweder schlugen sie den von westlichen Einflüssen gesäumten Weg ein, oder sie wanderten auf alten Spuren zurück und bezogen sich auf Chinas Traditionen. Zeng Mi, 1935 in der Provinz Fujian geboren, dessen Bilder jetzt bis zum 16. Januar im Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe zu sehen sind (in einer zweiteiligen Schau: nach der Hälfte der Laufzeit wechselt die Hängung), ist ein wichtiger Vertreter der zeitgenössischen Tuschemalerei im traditionellen Stil. Ein Künstler also, der beide Wege gleichzeitig beschreitet, indem er die überlieferte Bildauffassung der Literatenmalerei weiterführt, diese aber mit Elementen westlicher Kunst verbindet.

So ist es das Licht, das auf Zeng Mis schwarz-weiß getuschten Gemälden für die Moderne leuchtet. Und mit dem Licht kommen Schatten und Tiefe in die oft großformatigen Bilder, deren Horizont den traditionellen um jene Räume erweitert, zu denen der Künstler Schneisen durch Bananenstauden und Gebirgswälder schlägt. Ob er komische Vögel oder unförmige Wasserbüffel, verschneite Wälder oder düstere Sonnenaufgänge, einsame Hütten oder struppiges Dickicht umreißt: Des Künstlers Strich ist stets frei bis zur Abstraktion und gerade dort dramatisch, wo wir fernöstliche Gelassenheit erwarten. So steht Zeng Mi, der nach der Kulturrevolution rehabilitiert wurde und nun als freier Künstler arbeitet, nicht nur für eine neue Form, sondern auch für ein verändertes Lebensgefühl, das Mensch und Tier nicht als harmonisch in die umgebende Welt eingebundene Wesen versteht, sondern als solche, die ihr ausgesetzt sind. jp

http://www.welt.de/data/2004/08/12/317936.html

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Taipei Times, Sunday, Aug 08, 2004,Page 19
Kinmen bunker museum ready for an art blast
In the place of artillery, 18 artists from Taiwan and China will install art in bunkers on the heavily fortified island
By susan kendzulak CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

[image] Some wistful bunker atmosphere is evoked in Tsai Ming-liang's piece.
PHOTO: SUSAN KENDZULAK
Taiwan's Kinmen Island, located within short swimming distance to Fujian Province, China, and under military rule until 1992, will become the site for a provocative contemporary international art exhibition opening in September. Yet, the innovative proposals for this exhibition are currently on view at the National Museum of History until Aug. 22 and as these exhibited works are basically framed drawings and writings, the finished installations and live performances in the Kinmen bunkers will be quite a different experience indeed -- so book your plane ticket now.

Curated by internationally renowned artist Cai Guo-Qiang (???), the Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art opens Sept. 11 to Jan. 10, 2005, in Kinmen. The 18 solo art exhibitions will be installed at the Nanshan Fortification, Tashan Battery, Guningtou Cihu Great Bunker, and the Changliao Rezoning District.

In addition to visual artists from Taiwan and China exhibiting in the bunkers, musicians, composers, architects, filmmakers, theorists and performers, etc. will help transform Kinmen from a relic of war and unresolved ideologies into a utopia of unlimited cultural activities.

Kinmen's most famous battle took place in 1958, but its bunkers and military equipment remained. For this show, planners seek to preserve one third of the military facilities as a historical reminder, and to use one third as concert halls and exhibition space, with the remaining third for invited artists to create site-specific works.

One of the most promising proposals and most hilarious is by the conceptual duo Da Lun Wei Art Squad (????????) composed of He Shi (??) and Yan San (??). These two young Taiwanese artists (using pseudonyms) created a wall graph showing Chinese hijackers to Taiwan on the left side and the right contains documentation of Taiwanese hijackers to China. Both groups of defectors, even though ideologically opposed, were hailed as heroes in their new homelands and given great status and money. Using newspaper documentation to show the complete absurdity of politics and man-made constructs, the artists evoke the spirit of the Kinmen exhibition.

One of Taiwan's top film directors, Tsai Ming-Liang displayed a cinematic tableau that contained a wall text, a glossy erotic photograph and a pink sequined high heel to highlight his drama that will be performed live during the opening weekend.

Since this preview exhibition is only a display of proposals, there are many explanatory wall texts in Chinese making it a bit incomprehensible for the non-Chinese reader. However, the real on-site exhibition in Kinmen will transcend the written word as it encompasses the visual, the aural, the historical and the sensory.

Exhibition note:
What: Preview: Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art -- 18 Solo Exhibitions
When: through Aug. 22, 2004
Where: The National Museum of History, 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei (??????49?)

What: Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art -- 18 Solo Exhibitions
When: Sept. 11, 2004 - Jan. 10, 2005
Where: Nanshan Fortification, Tashan Battery, Guningtou Cihu Great Bunker, Changliao Rezoning District (all located in Kinmen County)

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/08/08/2003197983

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signonsandiego.com, August 8, 2004
Bowers Museum scores rare 'Treasures'
Window on a culture
By Robert L. Pincus UNION-TRIBUNE ART CRITIC

[image] BOWERS MUSEUM OF CULTURAL ART PHOTOS
The deity Avalokiteshvara is represented by several works in a Bowers Museum exhibition of art from Tibet, including an 11-headed version in gilt copper.

SANTA ANA – Tibet's remoteness has long made the mountainous Asian nation a source of fascination in the West. But, beginning in 1950, Tibet attracted a different sort of fame – political notoriety – when the People's Republic of China took the country by force and forced its spiritual and governmental leader, the Dalai Lamai, to flee to India. Even though many Westerners have championed this leader in exile and railed against the plight of the Tibetans, most Americans still know little about the actual past of that nation and its culture.

The troubled history has been a major impediment to any exhibition of objects from Tibet. So it is something of a coup for the small Bowers Museum of Art in Santa Ana to succeed in securing a sampling of works from Tibetan collections and the 117 objects on view in "Tibet: Treasures From the Roof of the World" are the result. Drawn from three sources – the Potala Palace, the recently opened Tibet Museum and the Norbulingka Collection – the show remains through Sept. 12, when it will embark on a tour to Houston, New York and San Francisco.

Not everyone was happy that the Bowers prevailed. The museum has been roundly criticized by Tibetan rights groups for both omitting discussion of this recent history in the exhibition, and for displaying objects that some experts argue the Chinese appropriated illegally when they annexed Tibet. (The Chinese occupation is candidly chronicled in the companion book for the show.)

The Dalai Lama himself didn't oppose the exhibition. The Bowers Museum's director, Peter C. Keller, explains, "He is for anything that promotes Tibetan culture."

Though advocates of a politically repressed Tibet have good reason to protest such a show, the Dalai Lama's view may ultimately be wiser. Greater exposure to Tibet's artistic glories will likely advance its cause as a rich culture and a people that deserves better than forced rule and human-rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese.

One facet of Tibetan culture that surely troubled Mao's China was the inseparability of religion and art, and of religion and the political structure. This is abundantly evident in the exhibition.

Window on a culture
The explanatory text that accompanies the selections offers a virtual primer on the culture's world view. Consider a long, slender horn in silver with gilded trim. It is an arresting sight, and so is its stand, with a pair of full-figure skeletons wearing crowns with skull icons encircling them.

The sound of the horn is associated with legend. It's said to emulate an ancient six-tusked white elephant, an animal that is a symbol of the arrival of Buddha to this world. Sounding this horn is, in a sense, to experience again and again what it was like when Buddha first appeared.

The birth of the Tibetan nation and the rise of Buddhism were concurrent. Songsten Campo, unifier of Tibet in the 7th century and then king, promoted Buddhism widely. A handsome little gilded copper statue of him from the 13th century is on view. He is seated, his posture erect and his costume consisting of a tight robe with loose sleeves and a turban with the head of a Buddha in the middle.

Like so many of the sculptures, paintings and tapestries on view, this painstakingly detailed figure tends to turn the individual into a representative man. This is as it should be according to Tibetan artists – and the culture as a whole. Those they depicted had entered the realm of the ideal, as much as any mortals could.

The oldest object in the exhibition (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a similar one) is a copper figure dating from the 7th to 9th centuries. It is the Buddha Shakyamuni. As a standing figure, it signifies the crossing of the Buddha from India to Tibet during its early centuries. During the same epoch, many Buddhist teachers actually made this same journey.

The figure itself, probably from neighboring Nepal, testifies to just how advanced sculptors already were by that time. The pose is graceful and the relationship of robe to figure is striking in the modestly scaled sculpture.

The sweep of history
The exhibition reaches further back in its history, more specifically, to the beginning. Well, at least to the beginning as imagined in the traditional Tibetan creation myth.

No painter is credited in "The Origin of the Human Race," as is the way with most Tibetan art, but the 18th-century picture is a remarkably intricate landscape, with mountains and architecture that create a rhythmic wave across its surface.

There are figures in the image, too. One is an enlightened being (a Bodhisattva, to use the Buddhist term) named Avalokiteshvara, who is coaxed by the Buddha Shakyamuni to head for Tibet and establish the religion there. He appears as a handsome monkey king and sets up his home in a mountain cave.

Much of the surrounding territory is uninhabited except for a lovely Demoness of the Rocks. She sees him, falls in love, and before long they have six children who walk upright, possess no tails and combine the characteristics of their parents. They become, of course, the first Tibetans.

The iconography of Catholicism may be varied, but seems relatively simple when compared to the intricacies of Tibetan Buddhist imagery. The figure of Avalokiteshvara alone, who has a long history as the Bodhisattva of compassion and wisdom, takes more than a hundred forms in the collection of a single monastery, historian Terese Tse Bartholomew reports in the exhibition catalog.

The many manifestations of this Bodhisattva in the exhibition are one source of interest. His complexity is also fascinating. A relatively recent example (19th or 20th century) depicts him in a fairly frequent guise: "Eleven-Headed Avalokiteshvara." Though enlightened, he is not always benign and temperate. Among his tower of heads is one emanating flames, named Makakala, which embodies his wrathful dimension.

Powerful objects
Along with the rich pictorial tradition of Tibet is another: that of ritual objects, from prayer wheels to vessels to symbols of faith called "stupas." The two traditions are, in fact, intimately related, since a Buddhist altar, in Tibet, would feature an image of Buddha, a stupa and a sacred text.

In the passage from India to Tibet (and to Nepal as well), the stupa changed. It was originally a burial mound containing sacred relics, but became a kind of monument, small or large, to a state of enlightenment.

Perhaps the most striking example in this exhibition is modest in size. Its shape loosely resembles a bell on a pedestal, with ornate bands of bejeweled and gilt copper in the lower half, a crystal above, and on the very top a turret-like structure. It dates from the 18th century.

The stupa has played a pivotal role in Tibetan culture. A person didn't have to own one to benefit from it. Simply viewing it could free someone from mental afflictions that Buddhists held to be poisonous and set him or her on the role to enlightenment.

Paintings, sculpture, stupa and everything else on view display an equal intensity of artistry. And clearly, Tibetans long admired the same in other cultures, such as that of China.

One of the other intriguing facets of the exhibition are the gifts from Chinese emperors to Dalai Lamas. There are several, including a beautifully carved "Ritual Conch Trumpet" from Quing Dynasty Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century and dazzling examples of "Monk's Hat" pitchers from the Ming Dynasty (between 1368 and 1644). The top portion in each really does resemble hats worn by some Chinese monks.

These gifts point to the involved relationship that Tibet and China have created, reaching back to at least 600 A.D. There has been a recurring pattern of war and peace, with Tibet repelling Chinese invasions, including two in the 20th century alone.

After the cultural revolution of the 1960s had ended, the Chinese stopped destroying monasteries, libraries and other cultural artifacts in Tibet, but their purpose remains the same: to dismantle Tibetan society as it existed before 1950. Still, the well-publicized government in exile and followers of the widely admired 14th Dalai Lama survive in India.

"Tibet: Treasures From the Roof of the World" highlights the beauty of its cultural creations and underscores the tragic aspects of its present circumstances. At a moment when the global issues that preoccupy Americans seem to be the specter of terrorism at home and ugly events in Iraq, this display can bring renewed attention to an endangered culture and fresh appreciation of its artistic contributions.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20040808-9999-1a8tibet.html

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Art Museum Network News, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2004
Xu Bing: The Glassy Surface of a Lake
Saturday, September 4, 2004 — Sunday, November 28, 2004
Elvehjem Museum of Art

[image] Xu Bing, Chinese, b. 1955, A student works on "Square Word Calligraphy."
MADISON, WI, (amnnews.com) — The Elvehjem presents an exhibition and installation that showcases the evolution of Xu Bing’s work during the thirteen years that the artist has lived and worked primarily in the United States and Europe, where his encounter with alien linguistic and cultural environments stimulated him to explore further issues of communication and authority in his work. Xu Bing’s installations are based on elements of language, including Chinese characters and legible English letters deployed within Chinese character-like structures. Combining traditional crafts, techniques, and materials with contemporary conceptualism, his works are often interactive, inviting the visitor’s interventions to produce some kind of transformation.

In Brittingham Gallery VII is the installation "Square Word Calligraphy Classroom" in which visitors are encouraged to experiment with Xu Bing’s unique and whimsical form of writing, his square calligraphy font. The classroom consists of traditional Chinese desks with traditional writing implements— brushes, brush holders, ink, ink holders—calligraphy copy books, and examples. The gallery will also display his series of eight Landscript ink drawings on Nepalese rice paper created for the Elvehjem. In the Landscript series, ancient pictographic forms of Chinese characters come together with words written in "Square Word Calligraphy" in a landscape of buildings and vegetation.

Brittingham Gallery VI premiers Xu Bing’s installation "Touching Without Touching". This series works with new means of communication permitted by current technology, a mutation of Xu Bing’s previous language-based works. The design of the installation is based upon works both artistic in nature and scientific in form. The artistic series "Interactive Adult Toys" provides a method of touching for couples separated by distance. This software offers many choices of settings that can meet the users’ own needs. The creative process behind making art and making scientific objects is actually similar. The "Slowly Varying Computer Desktop" changes position slowly to use all the human operator’s muscles instead of the traditional design that only uses a couple of muscle groups, thus making life better for the person who spends long hours at the computer. This graceful use of muscle movement is closely tied to the traditional Chinese art of Daiqi (Tai Chi).

Xu Bing manipulates language in his art, bringing fresh understandings of the powerful role words play in our lives. Yet many of Xu Bing's innovative works are profoundly tied to traditional Chinese culture.

INSTALLATION IN PAIGE COURT

The installation "Net", which will be on view through June 2005, is a new work that has been specifically conceived and designed for Paige Court. Net consists of a 1000-word text from "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau. The text, which will be legible from the floor below, is written in nine-inch high cast-aluminum letters, in a font designed by the artist, and extends across the expanse of Paige Court. Rendered in a lighter weight, an image of a bird is discernible in the body of the text. In the center, a portion of the text breaks free and cascades to the floor below into a pile of illegible random letters. The 6,400 letters that comprise Net were manufactured in Thailand, then linked into words and sentences by the Elvehjem exhibition crew.

The artwork for Paige Court requires a structural support system designed and installed at the upper mezzanine to allow for viewing from the main floor. The design of the structural support system has been donated by Westbrook Associated Engineers, Inc. (WAE) of Spring Green, WI. WAE specializes in the design of unique support systems for the construction industry and has provided innovative civil engineering solutions since their founding in 1974.

THE ARTIST

Xu Bing is a leading figure in the international art world. His works and installation pieces, including Ghosts Pounding the Wall (an actual rubbing of the Great Wall done at Jinshanling in 1990) and Wu Street (1993), and his ongoing exploration of language have brought worldwide attention to this innovator.

Xu Bing was born in Chongqing, China in 1955 and grew up in Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution, in 1975, he was relocated to the countryside for two years, where he saw how language and the written word could be altered and stripped of meaning by political extremists. His forced participation in the revolution led him to question and reexamine all he had known, from the meaning and appearance of Chinese characters to the purpose of the Great Wall of China and the value of art and culture. In 1977 he began studying printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing and received an MFA 1987.

An accomplished calligrapher, printmaker, and art teacher, Xu Bing turned his simultaneous interest in and suspicion of language into an extended examination of Chinese characters. The result was the Book from the Sky, a powerful installation of books, scrolls, and panels for which Xu Bing invented hundreds of new characters in the late 1980s. This uneasy play between the familiar and the unknown—these words without meaning—caused disturbed the Beijing art community and led the Chinese government to censor Xu Bing and his art.

In 1990 he moved to the United States and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. In 1990–91 he presented his first exhibition in the United States at the Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison, showing Book from the Sky, Ghosts Pounding the Wall—the only time it has been shown in its entirety, and a series of paintings. The works in the 1990–91 exhibition Three Installations were all created exclusively as the result of eastern influences. Book from the Sky surrounded the Western viewer with thousands of Chinese characters printed in black ink on white paper, suggesting the traditional Chinese scroll format of sutras, or religious texts. Those who didn’t read Chinese imaged this must be a profound display of learning, but the text was totally without meaning: all the characters had been transformed slightly from actual Chinese characters.

Over the past dozen years, Xu Bing has emerged as a powerful force in the international art world. His installations have delighted and awed audiences from Beijing to Copenhagen to Sydney. In July 1999 Xu Bing won the MacArthur Award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in recognition of his “originality, creativity, self-direction, and capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly in printmaking and calligraphy.” In spring 2002 he had a successful solo show at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, curated by Britta Erickson, who was also curator of his first exhibition at the Elvehjem.

http://news.amn.org/press.jsp?id=2326

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Updated Aug.9,2004 18:05 KST
Tokyo Museum Classifies Koguryo Artifacts as 'Chinese'

[image] In the midst of deepening diplomatic conflicts between Korea and China owing to China’s distortion of Koguryo’s history, Tokyo National Museum is holding an exhibition of a rubbed copy from the King Gwanggaeto stele, but the museum is claiming that the writing is that of China.

The Japanese Tokyo National Museum is holding a special exhibit on rubbings of the King Gwanggaeto stele, with controversy surrounding how the writing was introduced as the "writing of China." To commemorate the listing of Koguryo artifacts like royal tombs and the King Gwanggaeto stele as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the museum is displaying 31 artifacts related to the king in Room 8 of the second floor of the Asian Gallery for two months starting August 3.
However, the entire second floor of the Asian Gallery is dedicated to Chinese art, and in Room 8 where the stele rubbings are located, there is a sign that says that the writing is that of China.

About this, a museum official explained, "We had no intention of recognizing Koguryo history as Chinese history... We classified all the artifacts -- not just the King Gwanggaeto stele -- by the country they are located in, just like UNESCO. We classified the King Gwanggaeto stele as 'China's writing' for this exhibition simply because is it currently located in China."
(Lee Seon-min)

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200408/200408090030.html

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Art Museum Network News, TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2004
Asia Society Exhibition Examines the Art and Legacy of Games in Asia
Thursday, October 14, 2004 — Sunday, January 16, 2005
Asia Society and Museum

[image] Inlaid Bronze Die, Han Dynasty, China
NEW YORK CITY, (amnnews.com) — Presenting stunning works spanning 2,000 years, a major exhibition at Asia Society examines the art and legacy of games in Asia. Using paintings, prints, and decorative arts that depict people playing games as well as the paraphernalia of games, Asian Games: The Art of Contest is the first major exhibition to explore Asia as a source of chess, Parcheesi, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, playing cards, polo and other games. Featuring key loans from China, Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany, the exhibition examines the role of games as social activity and as indices of cultural values in the diverse societies of Asia. The exhibition will be on view to the public at Asia Society and Museum from October 14, 2004 through January 16, 2005.

“Many of the games that we take for granted today have their origins in ancient Asian societies,” notes Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu. “What we see in this exhibition is that games have been as significant as trade and religion in transmitting cultural forms and ideas. In tracing their spread across different societies, we also see how certain games retained unique qualities that reflect the cultural aspirations and values of their players.”

“Without games, people would be unendurably bored,” notes exhibition curator Colin Mackenzie, Middlebury College Museum of Art. “Yet the role of games in society has been largely neglected by cultural historians. By exploring the evolution and social functions of games in Asia and their transfer to other regions, Asian Games illuminates important yet unfamiliar aspects of Asian culture and their ongoing legacy.”

The Exhibition
In traditional societies, games were enjoyed by kings and commoners, men and women, young and old. Game sets and paraphernalia were treasured possessions and status symbols, finely crafted and elaborately decorated. Images of games and game-playing pervade literature and the visual arts throughout the ages. Artists have been fascinated by the drama and excitement of games and the range of emotions that are revealed by the players of games.

Asian Games: The Art of Contest has a broad chronological and geographical reach and is comprised of approximately 200 works of art of the highest quality. Included in the exhibition are spectacular examples of game sets dating from the 12th to early 20th century, Persian and Indian court paintings and illuminated manuscripts of the 14th to 18th century and Chinese and Japanese scroll paintings, screens and ceramics that depict game-playing. Select earlier examples of games dating back as early as 200 B.C.E. are included.

Perhaps the most remarkable exhibition loan is the only complete set of the ancient Chinese game of liubo, on loan from China and never before exhibited in the United States. A “craze” for over 500 years, liubo was intimately connected with divination and its board is thought to have represented a schematic diagram of the cosmos. This set, finely crafted in lacquered work, complete with pieces, tallies and an eighteen-sided dice, was found in the tomb of a Han dynasty aristocrat who died around 168 B.C.E. Attempts are currently being made to work out the rules of this game and a prototype playable reconstruction will be included in a special interactive area.

Asian Games is organized so as to suggest the impact of particular games as well as the cultural values of their players. Emphasis is given to games that have cross-cultural relevance and have inspired significant artworks. The exhibition is organized into four broad categories or types of games—chance, strategy, memory and matching, and physical skill. In addition, there will be an area where visitors have the opportunity to play the kinds of games featured in the exhibition. Specially designed tables with changeable tops will enable visitors to play chess, liubo, go/weiqi, shogi, xiangqi, Parcheesi, backgammon, and Snakes and Ladders. On afternoons and weekends, New York City students will engage visitors in game-playing.

The Artworks
The exhibition opens with games of chance, which include dice, pachisi (Parcheesi) and the Indian game that inspired Snakes and Ladders. Many early games of chance were not strictly about a race to the finish but were also about players attaining a spiritual goal or state. The game of Snakes and Ladders played today by children in Britain and the United States had its origins in India as a more complex game in which players attempted to reach a “place” representing a state of nirvana.

While early Indian sculptures depict the Hindu deities Shiva and Parvati competing at dice, in miniature paintings they are generally depicted playing pachisi, as in a beautiful ink and watercolor painting, Shiva and Parvati Playing Chaupar, from the late 17th century. This painting, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum, depicts Shiva and her consort playing what was a sophisticated race game involving skill, strategy and luck. For centuries it was played with elaborate and varying rules throughout India by both the poor and the elite—Emperor Shah Jahan played a life-sized version of the game using court ladies as his “pieces.”

The exhibition’s section on strategy explores games in which positions, territories and battlegrounds are paramount, and focuses on chess and weiqi, a game of intellectual skill. Major loans in this section include a magnificent Rajasthani chess set dating from 19th century India. The complete set—so delicately crafted it was likely ornamental—is comprised of ivory figures, including elephants, camels and horses. Also on loan from the Metropolitan Museum is a spectacular 18th century Burmese chess set, made of ivory with details painted in red and green, that depicts decorated figures astride elephants. In contrast, a 12th century (Seljuk period) Iranian chess set, another loan from the Metropolitan Museum, includes elegantly abstracted figures once thought to reflect Islamic avoidance of figural representation. These and other chess sets show the pervasiveness of chess as both an analogue of war and a royal game. First appearing in India in the sixth century and known in Europe as early as the tenth century, chess is a game that neatly demonstrates how games can reflect the cultural values of their players. Just as early Islamic sets are abstracted, later European sets show kings and highly powerful queen and bishop figures.

Illustrating the importance of games in early societies, mastery of weiqi was considered by Chinese people to be one of four essential cultural accomplishments along with music, calligraphy and painting. Another unique loan is an eighth century Chinese manuscript on weiqi from Dunhuang, now in the British Library, that includes a text written on the subject by the Emperor Wu (502-550) of the Liang Dynasty. The Japanese version of weiqi, known as go, is also featured in the exhibition. A highlight example is an exquisite early 18th century set with a highly decorated, lacquer board and agate pieces, from the Kozu Kobunka Kaikan Museum in Japan. The set is decorated with the crest of the Tokugawa family, the military rulers of the Edo period, and is thought to be part of the bridal trousseau of a member of the Tokugawa family.

The exhibition examines the development of backgammon, a game of both strategy and luck, which is claimed by the Persians as their invention and remains a popular game in Iran today. Included in Asian Games is a finely decorated board from 19th century Iran, on loan from the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. The central motif dividing the two halves of the board echoes patterns found in Roman game boards. Figural depictions on the board include lovers in European clothes, a couple in Iranian dress and a woman nursing a child. An earlier, Safavid era illustration from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) depicts Buzurjmihr Inventing Nard (backgammon) in Answer to the Kain of Hind’s Chess Challenge is a striking image, not only for its depiction of the invention of backgammon, but for the use of games as an identifying cultural idiom.

The exhibition section on memory and matching looks at playing cards, dominoes and mahjong (all Chinese in origin) along with esoteric but spectacularly beautiful Japanese games of matching such as shell and incense identification competitions.

Finally, a section on games of power and dexterity looks at physical games like kickball and polo. The quintessential pastime of emperors and kings, polo is thought to have originated among horseback chase games, like buzkashi, still played in Central Asia today. In China, references to polo date from the late 7th century, but by then it was already played in Persia, from where it was transmitted to India. It was played with enthusiasm by the great Mughal emperors Akbar (r. 1556–1605) and Jahangir (r. 1605-1627). In India, it was adopted by British colonials who brought it to the West. A highlight of this section is the depiction of Dasaratha’s Four Sons Practicing Royal Pursuits from the Ramayana. This miniature painting (India, 1712), on loan from the British Library, shows Lord Rama engaged in the Indian royal pursuits of elephant riding, archery and polo. Other highlights include Tang dynasty ceramic figurines of ladies and foreigners playing polo, a 17th century Japanese screen showing Tartars playing the game, and ceremonial Japanese kickballs. Important Indian and Persian polo paintings on loan from the British Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are also included.

Asian Games: The Art of Contest is curated by Colin Mackenzie, Middlebury College Museum of Art and Irving Finkel, British Museum. It is accompanied by a vibrantly illustrated 280-page catalogue. The exhibition will be presented at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. from February 26 through May 15, 2005 and at Middlebury College Museum of Art in fall 2005.

Major funding for Asian Games: The Art of Contest is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Related programs
In conjunction with Asian Games: The Art of Contest, the Asia Society will present a number of public programs. A daylong symposium held on October 16, From Dice to Go: Asian Games Through the Ages will examine new research on the importance of games in historical and contemporary Asian societies and their global impact. Speakers include exhibition curators Colin Mackenzie and Irving Finkel, and David Parlett, inventor/author, among others. The world of games and their importance in human life is interpreted through dance, music and text, in two special performances on October 29–30 of Game/Play, conceived and directed by choreographer Yoshiko Chuma. The piece will explore over 50 games in 50 minutes, from children’s clapping games to sophisticated tea drinking competitions. Participating artists include dancer/choreographer Yin Mei and musician Robert Black. For a complete schedule of programs, call (212) 517-ASIA.

About Asia Society
Asia Society is America’s leading institution dedicated to fostering understanding of Asia and communication between Americans and the peoples of Asia and the Pacific. A nonprofit, nonpartisan educational institution, the Asia Society presents a wide range of programs including major art exhibitions, performances, media programs, international conferences and lectures, and initiatives to improve elementary and secondary education about Asia. The Asia Society is headquartered in New York City, with regional centers in Washington, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Manila, Melbourne, and Shanghai.

Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York City.
(212) 517-ASIA, www.asiasociety.org

http://news.amn.org/press.jsp?id=2327

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EastDay.com - Shanghai Daily
A French oasis
[image] The Science Hall on Nanchang Road (top) was built in 1914 as the French Club. The magnificient architecture-dazzling stained glass windows, dramatic ceiling and the sweeping wooden staircase-offers modern-day visitors a glimpse of the old grandeur.

Shanghai Daily news
The grandeur of the original French Club on Nanchang Road is still intact, writes Michelle Qiao, who discovers other treasures in this little corner of the former French Concession.

Today, the Science Hall at No. 47 Nanchang Road is a salon for Chinese scientists. But more than 80 years ago, this two-story garden house was a salon of a very different kind -- it was the French Club.

The red-tiled house with creamy walls is a grand myth of dozens of rooms. The large house is perfectly complemented with a 6,000-square-meter garden.

``The house is decorated in a simple, elegant style,'' says architect Cai Zhenjue, who renovated the hall 17 years ago. ``The use of the appropriate trees and lawn space softens the grandeur of the building, making it look almost cozy. It surprised me that early 20th-century architects had mastered botanical design to this extent.''

It's easy to get lost in this mansion, and difficult to find a specific room. But it makes for an interesting journey, as the visitor may encounter scientific seminars or lectures in the spacious halls, the walls of which are lavishly embellished with fine teakwood.

A chestnut-hued wooden staircase leads to a dazzling stained-glass window between the first and second floors, which is marked with the year 1918. The brilliant window is patterned with a vivid tree blossoming with scarlet flowers.

The present name of the building, Kexue Huitang (the Science Hall), was named and written on the gate by Shanghai's first mayor, Chen Yi.

``The Chamber of Industry in the then French Concession built the house in 1914 as the venue for French Club,'' says Liu Gang, an expert on historical conservation of architecture from Tongji University. ``Many formal social activities were held here, such as dancing balls, cocktails, exhibitions, rituals and sports including billiards and tennis. When the French Club moved to what is today the Okura Garden Hotel on Maoming Road in 1926, the house turned into a school for French children. To my view, the house was the most important piece of public architecture in the former French Concession because of its scale and function.''

Hong Yaoming, the hall's director, says that he has received countless old French visitors, who used to study here.

``The French Club used to have two other buildings,'' says Si Shenming, an official of the Shanghai Association for Science and Technology. ``One is rented out to the Xian Qiang Fang Restaurant, which used to have four bowling lanes as part of the club. The other is now the gymnastics house for Shanghai Juvenile School of Physical Training, which was formerly a grand dancing hall. We had originally planned to demolish the two houses, but have reconsidered, in order to preserve history.''

The association now plans to renovate the two buildings to their original look based on the original blueprints and photos, and the buildings will function as exhibition rooms for Shanghai's history of science and technology.

Between the grand hall at No. 47 and the two subsidiary buildings at No. 57 stands a line of small, red-brick houses, one of which housed an illustrious painter. Renowned Chinese painter and art educator Lin Fengmian, whose works were exhibited in the Science Hall in 1929, 1934 and 1948, lived at No. 53.

Born in 1900 in Guangdong Province, Lin received his art education in France, returning to China in 1926, when he took up the post of president of Public Beijing Art School. Famous for painting beauties, flowers and wild geese, Lin's work was noted for its blend of the best of both Eastern and Western art.

He moved to the house on No. 53 Nanchang Road in 1952, living in semi-seclusion as he painted traditional Chinese opera paintings.

His French wife and daughter left him to settle down in Brazil in 1955. Lin lived alone since then.

Imprisoned during the ``cultural revolution'' (1966-76) and released in 1972, he left Shanghai for Hong Kong, where he died in 1999. Regarded as a pioneer of Chinese modern art, Lin influenced a group of younger artists and his famous students include painters Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-ki.

``His house with 11 rooms used to be an independent villa in a strong colonial style,'' says Liu. ``There used to be a large garden facing the south. But buildings began crowding into these spaces, and now the house is shared by several families.''

The days of Frenchmen gathering for a game of petanque on the lawn and a painter creating a new kind of art are long gone. Only the red-tiled architecture remains, telling the tale in a worn, wordless way

http://english.eastday.com/epublish/gb/paper1/1358/class000100006/hwz206631.htm

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www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-09 09:47:50
Ancient rock paintings found along river in SW China

KUNMING, Aug. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Archeologists, who have been working in the area since March, said they spotted ten rock paintings dating back at least 2,000 years ago at Jinsha River in southwest China's Yunnan province.

Near Baoshan township in Naxi Autonomous County of Yulong in Yunnan province, the paintings are believed to have been completedby Diqiang tribe people, who lived in the northwest and migrated to the south about 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, said He Jinlong, headof the field work team and associate researcher with Yunnan Provincial Institute of Archeology.

Materials used in the paintings were a mixture of animal blood and mineral paints such as hematite and ferric oxide.

There were no human figures in the paintings, just wildlife such as deer, roe, wild ox, monkey and sheep. The animals were outlined in red, as well as black, yellow and blue.

Experts say the ancient people may have painted what they prayed to catch before hunting or what they caught after hunting.

Most rock paintings were located at cliffs within close reach of the water and have not been worn out by human activities.

"Though the paintings have been weathered, they could still be called intact and most figures are still identifiable. However, the paintings show no lofty painting art, just some simple outlining," He said.

In China, the ancient works have been mostly found in the InnerMongolia, Ningxia Hui and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions, and Gansu province in northern China as well as in the southwestern Yunnan province.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-08/09/content_1741559.htm

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NY Arts Magazine, Thursday, August 12, 2004
The Political and the Aesthetic: South Korea in Review
By Thalia Vrachopoulos

[image] Debbie Han, "Sweet World I," 1998. Feces of dog, nuts, food gel, flour, box. 6" X 7" X 1"
Is there much significant art being produced in Korea? In past years Korean artists were groping with issues of national versus global identity in their work, but my recent view of their production proved that they have overcome their national boundaries and are for the most part dealing with international issues.

Four years ago, a conceptual video artist, Yook Teijoon, produced an a work entitles Lotte World, where he created an environment of projections about the consumerist culture in which he was living by using images of beautiful women in clothing and accessories from the Lotte department store. Although this was a meaningful piece for his context, it would have been incomprehensible to a global milieu that would have found his references obscure and unfamiliar.

Presently, Korean artists are engaging with the international community to produce pieces that can easily be compared to projects shown in New York, Berlin, Basel or Venice. Some of the best can be seen in the studios of Ssamzie Space in Seoul, where every year young artists are chosen from around the world to become its residents. One example is Youngin Hong who uses fabrics and hand labor to subvert both the dualism of public and private space in an effort to harmonize the two. Her drawn curtains, whether pleated, flounced, or just simply draped, serve to suggest and redefine private and public space. Hong’s wrapped and transformed spaces could easily be compared to Christo’s endeavors in that he covers public spaces to play with scale and its spatial dichotomies. Hong began with performance but now creates installations that, while referencing theater, and keeping the body absent, still allude to the relationship between viewer and audience.

Seulgi Lee from Paris is another resident who creates installations concerning the social conditions of the disenfranchised by protesting the conditions that engendered them. Her Strike Banner, 5/26/04 is a large fabric piece embroidered by the elderly women of an adjacent village and was carried by young people during a Korean labor protest rally. She brings art to life through this interactive project by bridging generations, as well as hand labor and technology. Debbie Han, after graduating from the University of California, received her MFA from Pratt Institute and is now a Ssamzie space artist. In her work Han is concerned with the contradictions, paradoxes and complexities of contemporary life. Han’s installation, The Almighty Faces of Reality, consists of 18 glazed, terra-cotta Venus de Milo heads wearing various grimaces. In altering their classical expressions Han not only destroys the classical canon but she also maintains a sense of punning irony and fun. Her Sweet World, which depicts a box of chocolates as a universal sign of seduction, shocks the viewer out of his complacency towards consumerism upon the realization that these objects are made of dog feces. She uses witticism again in her Sweet World III, which features a series of multi-colored lollipops made of hair that, while appealing to the palette due to their attractive colors, thwart desire because of their hairy texture.

These are only three artists of the many examples at Ssamzie space under the directorship of Honghee Kim, curator of last year’s Venice Bienial exhibition, who recently opened the Ssamzie Collection Museum in Heyri. This venue, which opened on June 12th, 2004, was previously the collection’s warehouse and has now become an alternative space with unique exhibition features. Artworks are shown in various stages of preparation, from the packing crate to the gallery wall, crossing the boundaries of storage space and gallery.

Working in independent studios around the art hub of Ilsan near the DMZ are the artists Intae Kim, Bumsu Kim and Insoon Choi. Having received his MFA at Pratt Institute in 1996, Intae Kim creates site-specific installations and is now engaged with several public projects. His last series, The Excess of Life, consists of organic elements involving bodily functions such as blood, organs, veins, and intestines, combined with TV monitors, motor pumps, rubber hoses and Ringer’s bottles. While manufactured to imitate real live organs and systems, these grotesque features combined with grasses and electrical circuits produce shocking effects. By showing the combined workings of the human, vegetal and cultural Intae Kim expresses his concerns with life itself and its various hybrids. His latest series involves giant produce such as garlic or cabbage that seem more appealing in their finishes but that are outside the normal order of nature due to their size. These are genetically manipulated and altered super fruits and vegetables that allude to the existence of the excesses of desire in contemporary culture.

Bumsu Kim received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and has been working in Seoul since 1999. His site specific work is composed of strips of discarded film deconstructed and reconstituted to create a bridge between the media of analogue, digital and fine art that results in a distinctive idiom departing from traditional forms of art. His Hidden Emotions at the Seoul Museum of Art, employs used film documentary or feature, color or black and white, combined with the flow of light to reconfirm the dynamism of the moving image and to transform the film into a plastic language that is akin to fine art. Bumsu Kim deals with condensed memories contained in 35 mm, 16 mm, and 8 mm films re-edited in communication with the artist to inhabit a realm in which he discovers his own hidden emotions.

Insun Choi’s engagement with language and text has been continuous at least since his graduation with an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1997. His mixed media installation, Glass Ceiling, evinces both his tendency to use language or sign and his interest in facture. This installation work is composed primarily of thick white layers of paint and mixed media with many smaller pieces abutting the main work that incorporates tiny human figures alluding to letters within small grids. Recently at the Pace Wildenstein Gallery in New York Michael Rovner also made an installation about communication using text in the form of tiny human figures projected digitally on rocks. While both artists are working with language and communication, and may hold some similarities within the details of their work, their concepts differ morphologically. Choi’s recent Linguistic Sculpture has been compared by critics to Kosuth’s work and his philosophy to that of Beuys due to Choi’s exploration into the sign and the way in which it can act as or approach essence. Choi has stated that although sign may get close to fulfilling its function it will nevertheless retain some obstacle to 100% communication. Like Beuys, who attempts to heal this communication impediment by the spiritual act of incantation in his performance "What Can You Communicat to the Dead Rabbit?", Choi through his signs, "has devised the substantiality of language to manifest bodily motion through language and the incarnation of the mind."

Some of the most significant artists in Korea are not only familiar with the developments at large due to their travels but are also committed to living among the global art community. For example, Hyesook Kim maintains studios both in New York and Seoul. Kim’s work reflects her lifelong personal concerns with the after-life and its resultant effects of transformation, conversion or metamorphosis. While her colossal flowers maintain an appealing quality from afar, a detailed look reveals the pores of the pigskin from which they were constructed. The ensuing numbing response is akin to that felt when viewing Nicola Constrantino’s human-skinned shoes or soccer-balls shown at the Deitch Projects and the Tatintsian Gallery last year in New York. Something so beautiful yet simultaneously so horrifying fulfills its role as an artwork capable of maintaining viewer interest while arousing a strong, visceral response.

Kyungho Lee, represented by the Gallery Sejul in Seoul, is preparing a project for the Gwangju Biennial. This site-specific installation consists of a smoke-puffing machine that manufactures tacos by the millions, spewing them onto the gallery floor. While dealing with temporal and spatial chaos and referring to consumerism and mechanization, this video artist combines the work itself with a wall projection that enlarges its size turning the relatively small contraption into a huge, scary monster.

Another Biennial participant is Soojung Hyun a feminist artist who is creating a satellite show wherein a whole room will be filled with lit optical fibers on the floor covered by thick glass for walking, while on the facing wall she will place a huge heart also made of these fibers. This appealing installation, however, is not concerned with the notion of beauty; rather, through her materials and symbolism, Hyun explores the male/female relationship and its place vis-à-vis the modern scientific context. The wall piece is a heart with its accompanying references to romance while the pieces that flow from its body appear to have phallic connotations in their aggressive projection into viewer’s space. This environment made of lit fiber optic strands references the latest technologies within a context that examines the world of romance.

As we have seen by the examples offered here, as well as the numerous exhibitions in New York and around the world, Korean artists have entered the global arena and are producing work that is not only critically viable but whose production methods are qualitatively unsurpassed.

http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/articles.php?aid=364

 

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