The Guardian, September 6, 2005
London and Beijing to exchange archaeological treasures
John Ezard

London and Beijing capped their status as Olympic cities yesterday by announcing an unprecedented exchange by loan of archaeological treasures over the next five years.

This could lead to one or more of China's world-famous terracotta warriors going on show at the British Museum and to Chinese crowds having their first chance to see Egyptian mummies and cuneiform tablets from London.

The directors of the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, who are in China with Tony Blair, unveiled the exchange deals after two years of secret preparations.

Article continues
The first result could be as soon as next year, when the V&A expects to host an exhibition of 17th century Chinese porcelain.

The other most wanted objects on each country's list will be agreed in a memorandum of understanding in the next few months.

Britain is likely to be keenest on recent Chinese archaeological finds and on treasures such as jade burial suits from the Han dynasty, which reigned from 206BC to AD200.

China, it is thought, will be avid to see British-owned treasures such as bas reliefs from the Mesopotamian cities of Nineveh and Nimrod and tablets telling the story of Gilgamesh, one of the world's earliest creation myths.

One Egyptian artefact, known as the Unlucky Mummy, is to be exhibited soon in China.

The country's aspiration is to show its citizens more of the objects which would be found in a "universal", not just a national, museum.

Under the agreement, the National Museum of China has agreed to lend a major exhibition of its antiquities to the British Museum, whose Chinese collection dates back to its foundation in 1753. To coincide with the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the V&A will host an exhibition of the best of Chinese design.

Yesterday Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, said the agreement would allow "many in China to explore other civilisations and ensure that the audience in London can appreciate the cultural achievements of China".

Mark Jones, the V&A's director, said: "There is enormous interest in both our countries in seeing cultural treasures from the past as well as learning about the latest design ideas from across the world."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,,1563341,00.html

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ChinaDaily, 2005-09-02
Artists for art's sake
Lin Shujuan

If 2008 is the Year of Sport for China, this year should be called the Year of Art.

The second Beijing International Biennale is the largest and most influential art exhibition in China, and is due to open in late September. In addition, China will for the first time host the 16th General Assembly of the International Association of Art (IAA) during the same period.

Co-sponsored by the Chinese Artists Association (CAA) and the municipal government of Hefei, capital city of East China's Anhui Province, the event is to convene in two cities, Beijing and Hefei from September 21 to 28.

More than 100 delegates and observers from 53 countries are expected to attend the eight-day assembly. As the world's most prestigious painters, sculptors, and visual artists, the delegates will be able to have artistic exchanges on world art theory and its future development. They will also rekindle the work of the previous conference, and elect the new administration of the IAA.

A special exhibition featuring paintings, sculptures and other visual artworks of IAA artists will also be held in Hefei.

Headquartered in Paris, the IAA is a non-governmental organisation run by and for visual artists working in every medium, style and tradition. It was founded in 1954 under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization(UNESCO).

Artists from over 80 countries worldwide are represented by their national committees, making the assembly the largest international non-governmental association of artists. The primary goals of the IAA are to improve the working conditions and the rights and social circumstances of artists. There are six regional groupings of national committees, set up to foster closer association and better exchange.

Delegates from national committees of the IAA meet every three years at the IAA general assembly and international congress.

The CAA, which represents China, joined the IAA during its 15th general assembly held in Greece in 2002, at the same time winning the bid to host its 16th meeting.

"The IAA has uncommonly let a new member host its general assembly, which made me feel that artists from other countries are keen to know China, while Chinese artists want to know their counterparts as well," said Liu Dawei, vice president of CAA, at a press conference last month. "While China's accession to the IAA has given Chinese artists a voice in the international art world, hosting this upcoming assembly will further uplift China's standing and influence in the international art scene."

He believes the assembly also presents an opportunity for China to showcase its contemporary art development to the world and offers a chance of cooperation with international artists in the area.
(China Daily 09/02/2005 page5)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-09/02/content_474428.htm

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ChinaDaily, 2005-09-02
Blood and tears in ink and brush
Zhu Linyong

"A naked officer with a sword and in military boots
National Guardsmen with broken arms and legs
Sick soldiers rushing out of their beds
Covering themselves in blankets
Dead silence on the earth
Suddenly a crazy soldier shouted
"Listen, the B-29! The airplane!"
And wounded and maddened horses ran amuck
On a bridge near the Dome, also dead were
A black and a white American
In steel handcuffs
They had come to bombard this land
Then were captive in the army barracks
And the atomic bomb killed them as well
A mushroom cloud blown up from hell
Several thousand feet high up into the heavens
The spreading cloud made black rain and swept
In torrents through the clear sky
And darkened was the sky
But lo! A rainbow soon appeared
Brightly shining in the seven colours."

These lines were penned in February 1950, five years after the US air force dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Japanese artists Iri Maruki (1901-95) and Toshi Maruki (1912-2000), who witnessed the bombing, wrote these lines when they created the first of their 15-part paintwork "Hiroshima Panels," which took another 32 years to complete.

For each panel of the paintings, the anti-war couple posted paragraphs like the one above called "Rainbow."

From today, visitors to the National Art Museum of China in downtown Beijing can see six of the "Hiroshima Panels" on display. They are included in an on-going international art exhibition organized by the museum to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the victory over fascism in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and the end of World War Two (1939-1945).

"For the past 12 months, we have been preparing for the grand exhibition which occupies all nine exhibition halls on the ground floor of the museum," said Feng Yuan, director of the museum.

"Why are we opening the exhibition on September 2? Because it is a date of historic significance, a date we Chinese shall never forget, a date peace-loving people from all over the world shall never forget."

On September 2, 1945, General Hsu Yung-chang, on behalf of China, signed Japan's two Instruments of Surrender on board USS Missouri in the Tokyo Bay.

The same day, the Japanese troops were also forced to surrender to the Eighth Route Army at Zaozhuang, East China's Shandong Province.

The hard-earned victory over fascism and Japanese aggression in 1945 was the first victory ever, in a real sense, for the Chinese people since the Opium War, Feng said. "By exhibiting their works, the participating Chinese and foreign artists will give viewers a chance to ponder a tragic period in Chinese history and in human history."

Six sections

Running until September 18, the exhibition is divided into six sections.

The first section, entitled "Sound of the Century," displays about 100 selected works by contemporary Chinese artists and by a group of foreign artists from Japan, Russia, the Republic of Korea, Germany, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and the United States, in various genres. Some of these works will be collected by the museum, Feng said.

"Although I was born after the war against fascism ended, I learned a lot about the sufferings during wartime from older generations. I understand from the depth of my heart that it is a great happiness for one to be able to live in peaceful times," said Xie Zhigao, a veteran artist of Chinese ink figure paintings. His imposing mixed media work entitled "Chinese People are Unconquerable" is included in the first section of the exhibition.

The second section, entitled "Blade of the Time," features 155 selected woodblock prints created by senior Chinese artists in the liberated areas, in the areas ruled by the Kuomintang, and in the areas occupied by Japanese invaders, during the anti-Japan war.

"The black-and-white woodblock prints embody the adversity and cruelty of that war. They are also a testament to the role art serves during times of national misfortune and grieving," said Feng Yuan.

"The woodblock print is a simple but powerful art form. It is a direct media, a democratic media that is easy to use and easy to comprehend," said Edward Bernstein, a professor with Indiana University, United States, who has been invited to participate in the exhibition.

The third section, entitled "Heroic Eulogy," offers viewers some of the best-known and most powerful artistic works from the collection of the museum.

These works were created by senior Chinese artists 60 years ago to express their yearning for peace.

Most eye-catching among the exhibits are "Refugees (1943)" by master painter Jiang Zhaohe, or Chiang Chao-Ho (1904-86), and "Bombing of Chongking (1940)" by another great artist Wu Zuoren (1909-89).

Invading Japanese airplanes bombed Southwest China's Chongking (Chongqing) repeatedly between February 1938 and August 1943.

At the end of 1939, Wu's first wife Li Na died while giving birth amid the Japanese air raids. Days later, the baby also died.

In June 1940, Wu's apartment in Chongqing was destroyed by Japanese air bombs and many of his paintings were burnt in the ensuing fire.

Wu made sketches of what he saw in bombed Chongqing and in the late 1940 created his anti-Japanese aggression trilogy "Mother under the Air Raid," "Life cannot be destroyed," and "Bombing of Chongking."

The fourth section features six episodes from the "Hiroshima Panels."

The two Japanese artists of the panels went to Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, immediately after the atomic bomb exploded. They witnessed the devastation with their own eyes.

Their art works have previously been shown to Chinese viewers in 1956 and 1981.

"Some Japanese people are trying to erase their memories of history 60 years ago. We hope the exhibition of 'Hiroshima Panels' worldwide will remind people of a tragic page in human history and make them embrace peace and harmony," said Okamura Yukinori, a curator with the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels in Saitama, Japan.

For quite some time there have been few Japanese artists like the Maruki couple who have dared to recognize their social responsibility in calling for peace and remind people of a shameful history, he said.

After the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, however, more and more Japanese artists have come forward with anti-war, anti-terror works. Exhibitions of this kind are not rare in today's Japan, he said.

The fifth section of the exhibition, entitled "Blood and Tears of a Nation," offers viewers a rare chance to see a series called "The Miners" by the well-known Chinese woman artist Zhou Sicong (1939-96).

Done using innovative ink skills, the paintings depict the horrifying life of Chinese miners in Northeast China which was occupied by Japanese invaders between 1931 and 1945. Zhou's paintings were partly inspired by the "Hiroshima Panels," said Feng Yuan.

The last section of the exhibition, entitled "Calling for Peace," displays the draft models for 60 prize-winning sculptures by contemporary Chinese artists in recent years. The sculptures have been touring Chinese cities since June 18, when an exhibition of anti-war sculptures was held in Changchun, Jilin Province.
(China Daily 09/02/2005 page13)

 

 

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Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

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

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