people's daily, February 22, 2005
Artists demand copyright protection as pirates steal profits

Copyright infringement is threatening the survival of the millennium-old ceramic industry in Jingdezhen of East China's Jiangxi Province - China's traditional "capital of ceramics."

Hong Kemin, president of the copyright court of the Jingdezhen Municipal Intermediate People's Court, cited the trademarks "Jingdezhen" and "Longzhuge" as examples - both of which suffer from illegal copying.

Among the more than 70 trademarks registered in Jingdezhen, the two have been recognized as "well-known trademarks of China" by the State Administration of Industry and Commerce.

"Ceramic designs from Jingdezhen have been constantly copied, and trademarks of local brands can be found on porcelains produced around the country," said Hong.

He added: "The two trademarks have been illegally copied by dozens of producers in the country, who trade at home and abroad.

"Even at markets in Jingdezhen we can often find porcelains with the two trademarks on, which have been actually made in other parts of China."

Besieged by false "Jingdezhen" and "Longzhuge" ceramics, copyright owners have witnessed a shrinking market.

In the past decade, their annual sales volume in total has reduced from 800,000 to about 100,000.

"Since 2002, my copyright court has heard more than 20 appeals concerning the tort of the two trademarks, which account only for a small part of infringements that have happened," said Hong.

Meanwhile, "ceramic designers in Jingdezhen have been frustrated because their designs are pirated sometimes within one week after they appear on the market," said Chen Aihua, a police officer from Jingdezhen.

Liu Yuanchang, who was given the title "Master Designer of China" by the Ministry of Culture, said his favourite design of a porcelain statue, called "Arahat Haha," (Haha Luohan) has been copied so widely since 1990s that the price of each statue fell from about 1,000 yuan (US$120) to 20 yuan (US$2.4).

Zhang Songmao, also a "Master Designer of China," designed a ceramic picture based on the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) poem "Moonlit River in Spring" (Chunjiang Huayue Ye).

The ceramic became a collectors' item and copies were sold for more than 100,000 yuan (US$12,000).

But when Zhang traveled to Beijing in 2001, he found pirated copies at galleries with a price of about 40,000 yuan (US$4,820).

"Producers in Jingdezhen have often been criticized for their lack of creations and for sticking to traditional designs. But how can they invest in new designs with so many pirated items around?" said He Xingwu, secretary general of the Jingdezhen Ceramic Society.

"To prevent rampant copyright infringement, it's not enough that the local designers, producers and police make collaborative actions. We need tougher laws and policing," he added.
Source: China Daily

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200502/22/eng20050222 _174219.html

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Korea Herald, 2005.02.19
Screaming for improvement at national art museum
By Iris Moon

On a gray, cloudy day at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, two children could be heard screaming at the top of their lungs, enthusiastically testing the building's acoustics. While it's hardly the kind of behavior encouraged at art museums, screaming seemed in this case to serve as a fitting reaction to the two current exhibitions on display.

So it's a bit of an overstatement to holler every time a bad show is produced. But art lovers should have every reason to let out a cry of horror over "New Acquisitions 2004" and "Currents in Contemporary Chinese Art 2005," not because of the works but because the shows reveal the national art museum's continuing lack of passion and professionalism about art.

First off, the "Currents in Contemporary Chinese Art 2005" is not necessarily a planned show with a theme, as the exhibition's sweeping title would like to suggest.

Korean modernist painter Lee In-sung`s "Anemone" (left) and Chinese artist Yuan Wu`s Chinese ink painting, "Resistance," are on view at two separate shows at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwacheon.

It is essentially a state-sanctioned national art contest juried by the regional members of the Chinese Artists' Association. The contest-like nature of the show is evident in the 141 displayed works, which have been done in similar, regulated sizes and are divided into 14 strict categories like Chinese ink, oil paint and watercolor.

There are several knockout works in terms of technical skill. Yuan Wu whipped up a snow storm of frostbitten faces with just a brush and Chinese ink in his large work, "Resistance." Wang Zi Jiao's deftly painted, jewel-like "Bound of Thought," wouldn't lift an eyebrow if it was slipped in next to old master paintings. Perhaps the most intriguing piece in the show is Qian Yun Ke's "Witness China (1978-2004), two carved wood sculptures of wallets stuffed with bills.

It would have been better if the museum had been explicit about the competition-like nature of the exhibition, instead of trying to make it seem as if this official version of art paints a complete picture of the artistic currents in China. The academy-style works and arrangement make it debatable exactly which century the "contemporary" in the exhibition's title is referring to. ("Let's Do the Time Warp Again" would make an apt theme song.) Judging from his wishy-washy introduction to the exhibition catalogue, even museum director Kim Yoon-soo doesn't seem convinced that this show is entirely revelatory of the artistic issues affecting Chinese artists.

But the real culprit is the museum's negligent installation job. You are drawn to the ethereal, cloud-like tribal women in headdresses and detailed aprons in Li Nai Zhou's "Miaoling in March," only to be distracted by the way the large canvas hovers almost a foot off the wall (the piece has partially been screwed into the ceiling). Another piece in the prints section hangs crooked within in its frame.

From the sloppy installation and half-hearted introductions, it isn't difficult to assume that few people at the museum take the show seriously. The same goes for the "New Acquisitions 2004" exhibition located across the hall.

Over the last year, the museum bought 115 works and received 35 donated pieces by 84 Korean and foreign artists. Many of the works were featured in gallery exhibitions last year. The museum's 5.2 billion won budget was a billion won increase from last year.

According to show organizer Lee Chu-young, the works were arranged according to seven genres. On paper, the genre-based schema works; in the exhibition space, it doesn't (and in any case has not been followed through).

This installation strategy seems to be ill-fitting not only because of the visual chaos it creates in the galleries but because the disproportionate number of works per category makes it impossible to create an evenly-paced show. The pieces grate against one another in a off-putting way and only emphasize the absence of a collecting strategy.

One of the most exemplarily bad arrangements in the show is the jarring triangle of Kwon Ki-soo's bright red smiley face painting, Cha Woo-hui's part cubist and constructivist-ish impasto work and a little winged sculpture from 1955 by former French biggie Cesar.

Additionally, the museum's classification of artworks is questionable. Artist Park Rae-hyun's pieces, including two prints, have been included in the "craft" genre next to the ceramic pieces of Kim Ik-young and Yoon Kwang-jo. Lee said that her work was considered "craft" because of a tapestry that the museum had acquired, a tapestry that looks very much like a collage, framed and encased in glass.

You can, however, pick your way through the mess and find some lovely pieces. "Wolbi Village" (1992-93), Kim Cheon-il's gorgeous screen painting of a mountain landscape, seen at Total Museum's "You are My Sunshine" exhibition last year and Lee In-sung's luscious watercolor "Anemone" (1920) are worth savoring. Inconspicuously sitting at the edge of a wall just across from Lee Bul's sleek karaoke installation "Live Forever" (2001) is a cute little Park soo-keun painting of birds. Kang Yong-woon's "Dream of Rocks" (1957) is an oddly mesmerizing work. However, these pieces are also accompanied by truly puzzling selections like Lee Dong-wook's sculpy figurines, Jung So-young's plastic bead deserts and a random selection of works by European artists that range from fair to middling. These pieces really make you scratch your head and wonder whether Korean taxpayers' money could have been spent on better things.

According to Lee's essay for the exhibition brochure, the "New Acquisitions" exhibit is considered one of museum's chief priorities. Not only does the museum make an effort to collect works of art historical value, but also to "aid the Korean art market and to support the present generation of artists in their efforts to produce work."

This is like trying to kill three huge birds with a pebble and a weak arm. No wonder the new acquisitions show is so hurly-burly.

It's true that the museum lacks funding and attention from the government. But most visibly absent is the evidence of a passionate dedication to art, which in a perfect world (or New York) would be the museum's raison d'etre. Instead, more attention is paid to bitter institutional scuffles than scuffs on the wall, all the while mega-size exhibitions like last year's cluttered "Declaration: 100 Artists for Peace" are quickly cobbled together. One can only shudder to think of how heartless and sloppy the upcoming August show marking the 60th anniversary of Korean liberation and presenting 100 years of Korean modern and contemporary art will look like. Art and its viewers deserve better treatment than this.

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2005 /02/19/200502190016.asp

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people's daily, February 18, 2005
Art that cloaks confusion

It is just a folded piece of ordinary blue waterproof cloth - no pattern, no printing. Nothing really special. Yet, the magic of art appears when 12 people slip underneath the unfolding material... The Blue Cape emerges.

The Cape suddenly looks like a blooming epiphyllum as the people in the blue cloth parading in a phalanx at the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall in northern Beijing, express a desire for peace in this ancient defence fortress that once repelled invasion.

The "flower" is, however, weathered, fading away momentarily when the performers stop moving around.

"It's my ephemeral living monument - a monument of peace and harmony," says Nicola L, a 65-year-old French artist who masterminded the performance art with the voluntary participation of a dozen Chinese. "What I'm trying to say is that people with different cultures and born in different countries could smoke the calumet together. French or Chinese, we all live on the same blue planet."

Inspiring concept

The French conceptual artist's idea of movement art is way beyond Yu Lichun's comprehension, a 29-year-old vendor on the Great Wall, who visualizes monuments only in tall stone columns or statues - concrete, visible and unshakable, erected in memory of a great man or event.

"Art? I don't get it," she says of the Cape, stamping her feet on the snow-covered ground as if to chase the cold away. Yet she enjoys the show. "It must be warm inside that huge raincoat," she remarks.

The Cape, which was unveiled on the Great Wall on January 3 was a high note in the chorus of the Year of French Culture, which started in October 2004 through July 2005, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese-French diplomatic relations.

Amused by Yu's remarks, Ling Fei, chairman of the Paris-based West and Oriental Culture Promotion Association, who co-initiated the event, says the introduction is to give the Chinese audience an idea of French style of conceptual art.

"Such art is not fixed as a painting or a sculpture," he explains. "It intends to convey an idea or a concept to the perceiver, which rejects the creation or appreciation of a traditional art object as a precious commodity."

Nicola's "work" is the manifestation of the ideas she claims - peace and harmony. One of the Chinese participants "admires" the Cape for bringing together the colour blue, an association of calm and peace, and the Great Wall, a remnant of warfare, in harmony despite their contrast.

Zhang Dong, a 40-year-old who has been working on performance art in China for decades, sees more than that. "Performance art, which emerged from the West in the 1960's, is a creative expression of an artist's thought but carries different meanings to different viewers," he says.

As it is termed, the form relies on the artist's per-formance, which was first conducted in France in 1961, Nicola's motherland, by a man jumping down from a tall building stretching straight his arms in a symbolic gesture of peace.

Starting her performance art career using giant cloths as early as 1969, Nicola began her "Blue Cape" series in July 2000 and toured around the world, visiting Havana, Venice, Geneva, Los Angles, with local people taking part in the "creation" voluntarily.

Everywhere, Nicola would ask participants the same questions, such as the most impressive persons and the most influential events of the year to them. "By doing this," she says, I'd want to know what people in different nations think and what's going on in the world."

Nicola's performance art indeed "brings her Chinese counterparts some enlightening ideas on what modern art is or about," says Ling Fei, who is a well-established Chinese artist in France.

Chinese creations

As compared with Nicola's expression, Zhang Dong observes that Chinese performance artists, who did not begin to flourish until the 1980s, are sometimes too indulged in releasing the pains they bear in this form. "Artists are sensitive and they are likely to have their personal pains embodied in their works. In other words, they use art as a way to vent their personal anguish," he says.

Owing to the lack of records, it is hard to account the exact number of artists engaged in performance art during the 1980s, but Zhang notes that many of them have already stopped to do that.

Consequently, their works are often too graphic or too obscene for viewers. A man once daubed his body with honey and squatted nude in a public toilet for two hours to have his body covered with flies. Others hired people to slap themselves on face, lacerated their own wrists to let blood drip or planted grass on their shoulders, while others seared their ID numbers on the back.

Chen Lusheng, an artist of traditional Chinese paintings at the Chinese Research Institute of Arts and author of the book "In The Name of Art," calls such behaviour "more extremist than performance art."

"Their performances are inhumane, immoral or unethical to the viewers," he observes.

"Some modern artists intend to demonstrate their rebellion in eccentric expressions," says art critic Ding Mu, adding: "in that sense, their art works are more of something to call attention or sensation to themselves rather than a art."

Chen Lusheng fears that such extreme performances would arouse repulsion of audiences. In 2003, a teacher in South China's Guangdong Province sued the performer of the 12 Square Metres, who covered his body with flies in the toilet, for psychological abuse. While the court ruling has yet to be announced, an ongoing poll on sina.com, China's leading portal website, suggests that 47.4 per cent of the 78,379 voters view the performances as a misconception toward art. And in April 2001, the Ministry of Culture banned public performance of bloody, cruel or erotic scenes.

Zhang Dong hopes that Nicola's Blue Cape could give Chinese performance artists a new revelation.

"Performance art is not sensational, but aesthetic and pleasing," he says, recalling that each participant put on a smile immediately as they slipped into the huge cloth, and even laypeople like Yu, the vendor, are interested while watching the performance attentively.

Nicola says she also learned a lot during her short journey to China. "A clearer view of the world is helpful to my work," she says.

Her next stop is New York City, where people experienced a horrible terrorism attack, and where she would like to invite more people into her huge cloth and "show the world that life is like the epiphyllum flower, and could be splendidly gorgeous, but transitory. If there is any idea behind the Cape, that would be it: appreciate peace, and enjoy life."
Source: China Daily

http://english.people.com.cn/200502/18/eng20050218 _173900.html

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Taipei Times, Sunday, Feb 20, 2005
Best heard or smelled, not seen
An exhibition that challenges the senses other than sight entertains but without fully satisfying
By Diana Freundl

Wang Jun-Jieh's Ultimate Safety Zone.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM
Early last year Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) director Huang Tsai-lang (???) challenged five contemporary Taiwan artists to create works of art that do not have to be seen to be appreciated.

The purpose of the experiment was to produce a contemporary art environment that both the visually impaired and general public could enjoy. In the process, each of the artists created an installation that utilizes smell, sound and touch either alone or in combinations, the results of which are on display in the TFAM Exhibition Hall for the next two months.

Lots o'LOTTO: Seen and Unseen combines the effort of five artists organized and sponsored by both the museum and the Lottery Technology Services Corporation. Before beginning their individual projects, the artists collaborated with representatives from the National Blind Association on an underlying concept for the exhibition.

Although each piece is unique to the artist who constructed it, there is a garden theme underlying the show. Astroturf, pink inflatable palm trees and tunnel walkways are used to bridge each work. The end result is that the exhibition resembles a miniature golf course rather than a garden of art. At the entrance of the Exhibition Hall is a dark tunnel that serves as a reminder to sighted visitors to leave behind their dependency on vision in order to appreciate what lies ahead.

Wu Ma-li's (???) Ping Ping Pong Pong is a variation of a table tennis game designed for the visually impaired. It requires sighted visitors to wear eye masks and develop their sense of hearing while playing.

Next to Wu's table game is Chen Kai-huang's (???) slightly confusing Intimate Garden. His installation takes the shape of a small hill where spectators can sit, recline or stand among natural and televised images of trees. Chen is credited for his minimalist installations, which stem from his belief that art should reduce its dependency on materials to convey a concept. In this piece however, his attempt to cultivate a personal relationship between nature and the viewer is somewhat unclear.

Sound is explored with a trip down Wang Jun-jieh's (???) narrow tunnel lined with 20 speakers, each broadcasting a pre-recorded message. The wall of noise is overwhelming upon first entering the tunnel, but is muted as the listener's ears adjust and begin to identify the different sounds. The theme of sound is equally vital to the video-installation titled Do Re Mi Fa So by Chen Cheng-tsai (???). Screened in a Japanese-style tatami room, the hour long documentary focuses on a blind piano tuner.

Throughout the exhibition hall is an overpowering scent of roasting coffee beans, emanating from an installation designed by Wang Te-yu (? ??). With absolutely nothing to look at, this is perhaps the most successful at utilizing a sense other than sight and producing a common experience for the audience.

First impressions at the opening were slightly disappointing. Although the theme is well explored, it only satisfies one's aesthetic appetite for a short period of time, leaving viewers hungry for something more substantial.

Perhaps it is vision that impedes appreciation of this exhibit. Apart from conceptual art, most mediums rely, at least to some extent, on a viewer actually looking at the work in order to appreciate the concepts being conveyed.

This doesn't assume that the visually impaired are unable to appreciate contemporary art, but that perhaps sighted individuals are incapable of viewing art any other way.

Exhibition notes:
What: Lots o'LOTTO Seen and Unseen ( ?? ??????)
Where: In the Exhibition Hall of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (????? ??) located at 181 Zhongshan N Rd, Sec 3, Taipei (???????3?181?).
When: 9:30am to 5:30pm, Tuesday to Sunday (closed Mondays). Until May 1.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/02/20/ 2003223903

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Taipei Times, Sunday, Feb 20, 2005
'Glocal' art attests to vibrant art scene
`Pseudo Hackers Art in Parallel Zones,' the first exhibition of the series `Curators in MOCA, 2005,' showcases artists who incorporate the local and global
By Susan Kendzulak

[image] Onion Hsu's illuminated plastic baskets. PHOTO: SUSAN KENDZULAK
Contemporary art institutions in Taiwan are trying to improve the situation for local curators, because it's not only artists who play an integral part in an exhibition, but it is also the curator who, like the orchestra conductor, unites all the creative talents into one powerful dynamic.

The current series Curators in MOCA, 2005 at the Museum of Contemporary Art is showcasing separate exhibitions by four Taiwanese curators.

The first of the series, on view to March 20, is by JJ Shih (???), who curated the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1999. The misleading title Pseudo Hackers Art in Parallel Zones prepares one for an exhibition that is computer or digitally-based, but the exhibition is neither. The title refers to how the artist transcends reality just like the hacker.

Despite the title and vague curatorial statement, the exhibition is a good opportunity to see artists living in Taiwan who incorporate the local environment while also keeping a pulse on global contemporary culture. In art circles this is referred as the "glocal," meaning global plus local.
[image] Zhou Xiaohu's Conspiracy.

A strong tactile sense prevails along with strong artistic individuality. The exhibition includes some knockouts, though there are some misses. Yet it is that unevenness, that anti-slickness, that sets up a lively debate in one's mind. Energetic, fresh ideas emerge from the exhibition as it allows for a mental sparring in which the viewer can take great pleasure in discerning which art installations work and which ones don't -- the process that makes looking at art such great fun.
[image] Su Hui-yu's Endless Recalling shows the artist as an actor.

Some of the works use kitsch and consumerism as part of the vocabulary. Hong Yi's (??) credit card-encrusted facade of the building, using 120,000 cards, shimmers in the light, while indoors he shows his cutesy animal sculptures suspended in bird cages.

Onion Hsu's (???) installation of lit-up, brightly colored plastic baskets and Shy Gong's (????) interactive karaoke room capture the aura of local popular culture.

Su Hui-yu's (???) dramatic Endless Recalling shows various videos of the artist taking on stereotypical media roles, an area dominated by female artists, most notably Cindy Sherman. It is not common to see a male artist don a new persona as in this work, in which each character -- whether it is Rambo, a police officer, a librarian or a macabre figure -- is dramatically lit-up and eventually cries out the same lament: bu yao (??).

The work parodies conventional media imagery and angst-ridden messages in art. It's a great example of work that embraces the local cultural context but can be read in the global context too, while also being simultaneously deep and light-hearted.

An artist from China, Zhou Xiaohu (???), has a large double-screen projection of his hand-drawn animation titled Conspiracy that combines urgently drawn black images with real footage.

Some works seemed to be indirectly influenced by the popular bestseller The Da Vinci Code, as several of the installations incorporated spiritual symbols begging to be decoded. Maybe it is unintentional, but it is difficult to look at such mysterious symbols without thinking of the influential book.

Chen Hui-chiao's (???) lenticular lightboxes inset in a dark floor shows a bird in flight embedded with various symbols such as the Star of David.

Sakuliu's (???) bamboo shrine alludes to his Paiwan upbringing. Lee Juin-yang (???) combines small African heads with chintzy Chinese ones to show the shamanic parallels between the disparate cultures.

Some of the interactive works fall flat rather than engage. Liang Jen-hong's (???) projection of dripping water on an actual rock seems like a technical exercise rather than a metaphorical one. The same with Chen Chu-ying's (???) digitally activated floor mat. Lin Huang-ti's (???) installation of paintings and photos doesn't make clear what he is trying to convey.

And the inclusion and large amount of exhibition space devoted to the Taishan Doll Museum (?????) and their display mainly of Barbie Dolls does not make sense. The dolls are presented as regular Barbie Dolls modeling clothes on moving platforms. This is a big yawn. Nothing is being said here and it is an unfortunate waste of space and time, as it doesn't promote any type of thought.

With these exceptions however, the exhibition successfully shows the vitality of Taiwan's young art scene.

Event Information:
What: Pseudo Hackers Art in Parallel Zones, the first exhibition in the series Curators in MOCA, 2005
Where: Museum of Contemporary Art (??????? ), 39 Changan W Rd (? ??????39?)
When: Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm, until March 20.
Details: Admission NT$50, www.mocataipei.org.tw

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/02/20/2003223901

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Reuters, Sun February 20, 2005
China's imperial treasures live on in Taiwan
By Tiffany Wu

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Fifty-six years ago this month, Suo Yu-ming huddled
aboard a navy ship heading for Taiwan, fleeing from Mao Zedong's
Communists with the retreating Nationalist army and 1,200 crates of
Chinese imperial treasures.

His mission was to protect and preserve a 7,000-year cultural legacy by
ensuring that about 400,000 priceless objects, the cream of China's
imperial collections, stayed out of enemy hands.

"Those were tense and turbulent times when we fled from Nanjing," said
Suo, 85, recalling the sound of distant artillery outside the
Nationalist capital as he crammed precious artefacts into wooden crates
and scrambled all over town to find a boat.

"Everything was in turmoil and everyone was on the run."

Within weeks of Suo's ship docking on the northern tip of Taiwan,
Nanjing (then called Nanking) fell to the Communists.

But 650,000 bronzes, ceramics, jades, curios, paintings, calligraphy,
books and tapestry -- collected by the Qing emperors in Beijing's
Forbidden City, other palaces and national museums -- had already been
secretly ferried on three ships to Taiwan.

The Nationalists led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek intended to rest
and regroup on the small leaf-shaped island off China's southeast coast,
then launch an attack to take back the mainland.

"We thought we would be in Taiwan for up to six months and then the war
would be over. So that was what we were prepared for," said retired
antiquities expert Kao Jen-chun. He boarded a ship with one suitcase and
ended up spending his life in Taiwan.

As the collection languished in boxes in central Taiwan, it became clear
that Chiang could never retake China.

Finally, 16 years later in 1965, the government built the National
Palace Museum in Taipei to house the treasure trove. Thus, the
self-ruled island China claims as a rebel province came to boast the
world's finest collection of Chinese antiquities.

PEERLESS

The museum's name honours its first address, Beijing's Forbidden City,
from which the deposed last Qing emperor, Pu Yi, was evicted and his
home opened to the public in 1925.

The collection criss-crossed China's vast hinterland in the 1930s,
travelling 10,000 km as its guardians sought to keep it out of the hands
first of invading Japanese troops and then of the Communists.

While Beijing's Palace Museum in the Forbidden City still has a bigger
hoard of treasures, experts say the finest artefacts are in Taipei -- a
galling twist of fate for China's communist rulers who have threatened
war if Taiwan pushes for statehood.

The most prized items range from 2,800-year-old ritual bronze vessels
from the late Western Chou dynasty to 11th century paintings from the
Song dynasty, when the art of lyrical Chinese watercolour landscapes
reached its zenith.

Once upon a time, people who supported Taiwan independence from China
suggested returning the collection to Beijing, seeking to sever the
island's historical ties to the mainland.

There's little talk of that nowadays and the treasures seem to have
found a permanent home in Taipei.

Shih Shou-chien, director of the National Palace Museum, sees no need to
be nationalistic about art nowadays.

"Taiwan has always been the meeting point of many cultures," he said.
"The Chinese cultural tradition that the Palace Museum embodies is an
important part of Taiwan's cultural tradition."

Shih's challenge lies in making the relics relevant in modern Taiwan,
whose tech-savvy people tend to prefer to shop for the latest electronic
gadgets than tour a museum of antiquities.

A growing debate over how Taiwan's identity differs from China also
resonates.

As Taiwan gradually sees itself as part of a wider East Asian community,
with ties to Japan and South Korea as well as China, the museum's
researchers are exploring how to place the collection in the context of
Asian, and not just Chinese, art.

THE FUTURE

A new branch of the Palace Museum to be opened in southern Taiwan in
2008 will centre on Asian art and emphasise the foreign traditions that
have influenced the Chinese heritage.

"Traditional history has always focused mainly on China and has been
somewhat derogatory towards other Asian countries," said Lin Po-ting,
deputy director of the museum.

"But now, we should return to a fair and objective attitude towards
interaction with all countries in Asia."

The Palace Museum, a top tourist destination that sees one to two
million visitors every year, is also undergoing extensive renovation to
address complaints about overcrowding, navigation difficulties,
earthquake-proofing and other problems.

The yellow building with a Chinese-style blue tile roof had been too
small to exhibit the vast collection of 654,500 artefacts. At any one
time, only about 6 percent of antiquities and 15 percent of calligraphy
and paintings could be displayed.

After the renovation, due for completion by end-June 2006, the
exhibition space will grow 7.4 percent to 9,763 sq m.

"The most important thing is to protect it, to pass it on from one
generation to another. I hope these treasures will still be around in
2,000 or 3,000 years," said Suo.

To safeguard the treasures, Suo and his compatriots left behind family
and friends on the mainland where the Communists sent them to labour
camps during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

"My conscience reproaches me to this day," Suo said, eyes misting. "But
I can't say it was wrong to come to Taiwan ... We say Chinese history
spans millennia. Well, these objects are our proof. We should take pride
in that."

"I think we have done our part for history," said Kao.

The National Palace Museum Web site is www.npm.gov.tw.

http://www.reuters.co.in/locales/c_newsArticle.jsp;:42182123:e9a54fb7 f16d15a2?type=worldNews&localeKey=en_IN&storyID=7680729

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Kunsthalle Mannheim - Pressemitteilung
Sonderausstellung im Heinrich Vetter Forum
06. November 2004 – 01. Mai 2005

Geboren 1960 in Shanghai zeigt uns Yan Pei-Ming eine Direktheit in der
Malerei, die in unserer heutigen Zeit merkwürdig außergewöhnlich, ja
erschreckend ehrlich ist. Seine Bilder pendeln inhaltlich zwischen den
Polaritäten Leben und Tod hin und her, sind Ausdruck einer verdichteten
Lebenserfahrung und existenziellen Weltsicht, in der sich verschiedene
Kulturen, Lebenssituationen, politische Realitäten, Erfahrungen,
Vorstellungen und Wünsche manifestieren.
Mings Figuren und Porträts sind Bilder vom Menschen und nicht Abbilder
von Personen oder sichtbaren Wirklichkeiten. Es sind autonome,
authentische Werke einer ‘golemhaft’ zum Leben erweckten Malmaterie, die
einerseits Gleichnisse der Schöpfung vor Augen führen, andererseits das
Menschsein in seiner ursprünglichen Wesenhaftigkeit umschreiben. Die
bildgewordenen Porträts und Selbstporträts, Körper und Figuren sind
magmaartig beseelte Menschenbilder, aus denen sich Politiker oder
berühmte Persönlichkeiten, der Papst, Bruce Lee oder Mao wie eine zweite
Wirklichkeit herauszuschälen scheinen.
Daneben sehen wir uns mit historischen Motivschätzen oder extrapolierten
Landschafts- und Alltagsbildern konfrontiert, denen teils eine
romantische Stimmung, teils eine von Naturgewalten unterhöhlende Aura
eigen ist. Es tauchen immer wieder Symbole der Vergänglichkeit des
Lebens, wie etwa Totenschädel, Leichen oder fratzenhaft verschwommene
Bildnisse von bekannten oder unbekannten Menschen auf, Versatzstücke
gelebten Seins, temporärer Existenz.
Fast alle Motive Mings überwinden den Rahmen der traditionellen Malerei
durch das oft überdimensionierte Format, den pastosen und meist
gespachtelten Farbauftrag, der die Leinwandfläche nach allen Dimensionen
zu sprengen scheint oder durch die Reduktion des Kolorits auf komplexe
Grau- oder Rottöne, die eine ungewöhnliche Plastizität erreichen. Wir
sehen Bilder, die mehr das Wesen und die Seele eines Menschen und
weniger sein Aussehen oder seine äußere Erscheinung offenbaren.
Mings Malerei ist eine eminent räumliche Malerei, die durch ihre
materielle Substanz und plastische Präsenz zu einer Eigenrealität, einem
"realen Bild" wird. Jede Figur, jedes Porträt, jede Wolke, jeder
Lichtstreifen ist bei Ming eine raum-zeitliche Erfahrung, eine
erzählerische Ganzheit, ohne additiv und konstruiert zu wirken. Raum,
Zeit und Materie sind in seinen Bildern in transformatorische,
prozessuale Gestaltungen übertragen, denen ein Hauch von Realzeit und
gegenwärtiger Daseinserfahrung eigen ist.

http://www.kunsthalle-mannheim.de/banner/details_002.html

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San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday, January 29, 2005
China's artists make their presene felt despite entrenched Western biases
- Kennneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic

"On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West" at
Stanford's Cantor Center introduces an emotional flavor - resentment -
new in exhibitions of recent Asian art in American venues.

Several works in this stirring show protest the difficulties
contemporary Chinese artists have had in trying to make themselves known
and understood in an international art world dominated by professionals
in America and Europe.

Conceptual artists Hong Hao and Yan Lei contrived a revealing hoax in
1997. It expressed bitterness toward the international curatorial class,
mocked the promotional yearnings of Chinese artists (themselves
included) and illuminated their position in a transnational art context.

Hong and Yan sent fake letters to various artists in China announcing a
special supplement to Documenta X, Europe's 1997 quinquennial global
survey of contemporary art. They arranged to have the letters written in
German and sent from Germany to heighten their credibility.

The letters falsely promised a curator and a pavilion devoted to Chinese
artists, whom the main event had completely overlooked.

A prestigious invitation from abroad might loosen the Chinese
government's customary constraints on international travel and draw the
attention of a cosmopolitan audience. But the letters' recipients found
their hopes mocked as they gradually discovered the hoax. Hong and Yan's
project understandably made them many enemies at first, but it made them
famous in Chinese art circles as well, for everyone understood its aptness.

Conceptual artists around the world have used mail as a medium, so Hong
and Yan's smart, merciless use of it also sealed their membership in
that echelon.

We have seen surveys and solo shows of work by Asian artists with
increasing frequency in the past 15 years, but many of the logistical
and critical problems persist.

Much of the international cultural elite conducts business in English,
if only as a second language, not Chinese.

Most Westerners who have never lived in Asia have difficulty
distinguishing and remembering Chinese names - a sign of
ourprovincialism - and the art world trades in names. And comparatively
few Westerners can read Chinese, which undoubtedly narrows the
possibilities of expression and interpretation in contemporary Chinese
art that makes its way before the Western public. Too few Westerners
have any sense even of China's modern history, let alone its millennia
of complex civilization.

To all this, add the fact that the concept of an avant-garde still has
some traction under China's authoritarian rule, which, under the Western
regime of anything-goes-for-profit's-sake, it lost long ago.

Qiu Zhijie dealt unsparingly and brilliantly with some of these
difficulties in a 2001 performance, seen here on video, called "Grinding
the Stele." Qiu somehow got hold of two tombstones, one belonging to an
American child who died in 1915 and one marking the death of a Qing
Dynasty (1644-1911) Chinese. He spent three weeks grinding one stone
against the other, as the video documents, until their respective carved
inscriptions disappeared. He periodically took rubbings of each slab to
chart their gradual effacement.

Here also, an artist in China adapted the international language of
process art - a systematic activity that generates its own eaning - to
express ambiguous thoughts pertinent to China's cultural and political
friction with America.

As the two stones lose their inscriptions, their similarity grows and
the work's possible meanings multiply: destruction turned into
production; a meditation on death as leveler of individuals and
nationalities; a warning about cultural interaction as a threat to
national identity; a celebration of art as the only lasting marker of
the artist's existence.

Qiu's interactive CD-ROM piece "The West" (2000) gives vivid, sometimes
hilarious form to the grating of cultural misperceptions. It lets
viewers rummage at will in a database of words and images evoking
China's views of the West.

The political undercurrent in Qiu's work comes to the surface elsewhere
in "On the Edge," in works by Wang Du, Huang Yong Ping and Zhou Tiehai.

They make overt reference to two international incidents, already little
remembered here, that roused nationalistic fervor in China: the
accidental 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade,
Yugoslavia, and the 2001 unplanned landing in China of a U.S. spy plane.

But political content has more power when more obliquely expressed, as
in Zhang Huan'sperformance "My New York" (2002).

This video and stills from it show Zhang outside New York's Whitney
Museum of American Art, clad in a raw-meat bodysuit that makes him look
like a flayed superhero.

Zhang evokes admiringly New York's steadfastness despite the
vulnerability that Sept. 11 revealed. And he also appears to warn
America against imagining itself invincible as a solo superpower. He
ends his brief performance by handing out doves to bystanders.

Sophistication in Chinese, as in other contemporary art, shows itself in
an informed and open-ended sense of how context can affect - even make
or unmake - a work.

Sui Jianguohas a small part in Stanford's "On the Edge," but he has a
concurrent solo show at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Sui's
caged red tyrannosaurus sits outside the Asian, giving passers-by a poor
idea of his artistic intelligence.

Five smaller versions of the extinct reptile populate "On the Edge."
Their suggestiveness comes clearer at the smaller scale, about midway
between toy size and fossil skeleton size.

Sui took as his model a toy massproduced in China for export. (Hundreds
of similar toys populate his big 2002 installation piece, "Sleeping Mao.")

American viewers of a certain age may think of the "Red Menace," as
communism was formerly known, when they see Sui's red dinosaurs. Does he
know this?

Does he know that in Western bookkeeping red is the color of debt and
that economists fret about how much of America's foreign debt China holds?

Visitors acquainted with Chinese culture may think of the tyrannosaur as
the nearest Western pop equivalent to a dragon, an auspicious symbol in
Chinese tradition, associated with heaven and the emperor.

Does Sui know that Westerners more probably associate a "red dragon"
with the biblical Book of Revelations?

Seeing how cleverly Sui toys with cultural cross references - to
Michelangelo, Goya, Buddha, Mao - in his other pieces encourages a
viewer to give him the benefit of every doubt.
On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West: Works in
many media by 12 artists. Through May 1. Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center
for Visual Arts, Stanford University, Stanford. (650) 723-4177,
www.stanford.edu/dept/ccva.

Sui Jianguo: The Sleep of Reason: Sculpture. Through April 24. Asian Art
Museum of San Francisco, 200 Larkin St., San Francisco. (415) 581-3500,
www.asianart.org. Courtesy of the artist and Cantor Arts Center For "My
New York: #4,"

Page E - 1
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/01/29/DD123567.DTL

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Taipei Times, Sunday, Jan 30, 2005,Page 19
Micro art sometimes has great significance
JH Jin's art is detailed, innovative and always under 13mm
By Emily Drew

I've never looked at JH Jin's micro-paintings or micro-carvings in
person, and even if I had, I wouldn't have been able to see them -- not
without a microscope. Even his biggest micro-painting, a group of
portraits of the 42 US presidents on a single human hair, is less than
6mm long.

The Portraits of 42 American Presidents was completed last year in New
York and holds the world record for most portraits in the smallest area.
Somehow, Jin managed to give each president a vivid expression in a face
with a diameter less than 0.4mm. Each face is distinct and recognizable.

Jin has created over 100 micro-paintings and carvings on
different-colored hair, ivory and diamonds, and his works extend the
traditional Chinese art of engraving and miniscule calligraphy.

In an e-mail interview, Jin explained that micro-painting has a long
history in China and was done in pictographs on animal bones and
tortoise shells. Jin called these Shang Dynasty inscriptions "the
earliest mature writing" in China.
[image] Li Bai

This writing, Jin said, was meant to evoke or explain the divine. As
most people were illiterate, writing was of little help to the majority.
In fact, it was the mystery of the inaccessible language that evoked the
divine.

Today, micro-art creates hidden worlds similar to how carved pictographs
created hidden worlds to populations of illiterates.

Jin has carved Tang Dynasty poems onto human hair, and his 1986 work Li
Bai includes a Li Bai poem, beside a portrait of the poet in a white
cloak under the moon -- all in a 3mm by 5.5mm area. Pine Trees in a
Cloudy Valley (1985, 2x7.5mm), The Great Wall (1988, 3.5x6mm) and Flying
Cloud (1986, 3x5.5mm) extend the Chinese landscape tradition, while Red
Plum (1986, 3x6mm) is comparatively sparse and manages to contrast
bright red petals on an ivory background through carving and painting.
[image] Ballet by JH Jin. PHOTOS COURTESY OF ARTIST:

Jin has extended traditional techniques of micro-carving and painting,
too. He perfected a method called pomo in which minute amounts of ink
are splashed onto the surface of ivory, usually about the size of a rice
grain. Jin also uses more traditional tools, such as little brushes,
inks and oils to paint.

Micro-painting is usually the medium he uses for his pop culture and
Western-themed works, and he has also created micro-paintings of Asian
and Middle Eastern heads of state. Elegant is a portrait on the width of
a black hair and resembles Marilyn Monroe. Charlie Chaplain is about the
same size and is painted on a white hair.

In the US and Europe, it's micro-painting, not micro-carving, that has
found interest and applicability beyond pop culture icon renditions and
pictures of president.

Micro-painting caught some attention during the West's modernist period,
when American and European artists began to think of Asian art as
something that could be applied to Western practice, not simply as
something to gaze at with Orientalist thinking. Max Ernst's
Micro-painting, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is an example.

Micro-painting has also been practically applied in the area of making
toys, trinkets, jewelry, models and game-pieces in the West, but China
has been the hub of producing the items that are micro-painted and sent
to the shelves of Western stores.

At the European company that produces Kinder Surprises -- tiny figures
inside Easter eggs -- robots have taken over the painting of 23 million
tiny figures, whose faces and details used to be painted by Chinese
laborers. The robots are faster and paint with an accuracy within .01mm.

Micro-painting and micro-carving are still alive, well and centered in
China, despite robotic competition. Jin separates his time between China
and New York.

The world record for most characters in a micro-carving is held by
Chinese artist?Xu Tonghai for, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, which
includes 10,720,000 characters.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2005/01/30/2003221615

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Digital Resources
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University of Heidelberg
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