What do roast chickens and love have in common? Absofuckinglutely nothing.

Form and content in art should go hand in hand. However, in Guangzhou-based performance artist Kang Yi’s recent work, nothing seems to fit. He stands on a podium, stripped down to a thong, with three golden-brown, baked birds hanging from his limbs. A girl climbs up and bites his exposed flesh, leaving red, raw teeth marks on his neck, belly…

With this piece, Kang Yi theoretically hopes to inspire people to choose a more traditional Chinese path of love. I think this performance will turn me off physical contact with others altogether — and that takes a lot. Performance art is always best experienced in person, and perhaps I would have hated it a little less had I been present, but to add insult to injury, the video documentation that has been circulating for Kang Yi’s work is insultingly poorly edited.

The watching of it leaves me a little confused at best. There is no feeling between the boy and girl. The chickens are there to make the connection between human flesh and meat? — it’s either too obvious or too obscure, and aesthetically very displeasing.

This search for “true love” can be seen in other contemporary Chinese performance pieces. In Liu Jin’s “How Much Love We Still Have,” the artist rolls his nearly-naked body through a room of rose petals which stick to him, and fall off. This is a beautiful piece that works with the audience to create an almost religious environment.

The shock value itself of Kang’s piece is not enough. Use of public nudity and self-mutilation is not new to the Chinese performance scene. Zhang Huan covering himself in honey, sitting in a public toilet, and waiting for the insects to descend upon him is a prime example of great art. Kang, on the other hand, makes a spectacle of himself without considering the audience as viewers, onlookers, voyeurs at all.

Suggestion: Make Zhang Huan your new role model. Or take a look at Yoko Ono. She may have broken up the Beatles, but she makes a mean performance.

Lola B is BJC’s resident artist. You can read her previous work in the Yishus Archives.

Recently, under attack for questionable levels of decency, the foreigners of Beijing have felt the sting of tiddly bits of media criticism, being called such poignantly awful names as “self-centered yuppies,” “packs of whingers,” and “shrews” following “lifestyle choices inappropriate to Chinese morals.” (By which he means drugs.) And who’s really to blame Yoichi Shimatsu for saying such things? If American expats were to return home to the “crap place it’s become,” they would find breasts… in public. !!!!

The Kickstarter Topless New York has 14 days and $9,550 to go (started at $10,000). The project’s aim is to raise money to display a series of photos taken by Mr. Topless New York of everyday ladies taking their big apples out for a romp in the city. I’m not sure I would call the body of work “art,” and I’m not sure I would call it a “protest,” but it is, from all soft angles, interesting. And thoroughly enjoyable to look at.

If you were not aware, it is legal for women to bare their breasts in public in the state of New York.  There are clubs for reading pulp fiction topless, men painting on topless girls, and now a Kickstarter. (Naturally, it’s been given the NMA [Apple Daily] treatment). If you have never taken advantage of the gender-blind titty laws and would like to know what it feels like, click here for a firsthand account from a bashful blogger who sunbathes, eats a hotdog, and takes a topless tinkle.

It all leads one to wonder… what would happen if this phenomenon were brought to China? One would be tempted to tab Ai Weiwei as Mr. Topless Beijing, though we suspect he’d take things too far. I mean…

We could get in touch with the ringleader of a nude performance in Chengdu, in which 41 students lined together to form the @ symbol before domino-ing down. The People’s Daily’s insightful comment: “Young students, especially those from academies of fine arts, are desirous, emotional, impulsive, outgoing and nomadic.” Hear, hear!

But really, Chen Zui is our man, described by China Daily as a “trailblazer of Chinese nude art.” His academic treatise published in 1988, On Nude Art, sold 200,000 copies. An art book. Surely he could raise the measly $10,000 — 63,575 yuan, as it were — needed to bring his pics of topless ladies to light.

Chen Zui didn't take this photo, which first appeared in the Shanghai Star, but apparently it caused a "social earthquake" in 1937

You might think China is an unlikely place to see boobs in public, but you’d be wrong. You know we devoted a whole post to nude art, right? And from this very site, there’s this, this, and this. So yeah, Topless Beijing is a project that can happen, and I know certain guys at BJC would certainly like it to.

The only concern is that censors would put a kibosh on the whole thing before anyone could even unfasten a bra. Actually… that’s probably the only realistic outcome.

Not in the New York though. The man behind the photos, Mr. Topless New York, has “never been called a pervert,” according to Gothamist, but posts his work on DeviantArt. Snicker. So, for all you Stateside ladies (or any who are willing to meet Mr. Topless halfway), “if you are interested in donating your time and services, and supporting a great cause, by modeling for the Topless New York project, please feel free to contact [him] at toplessnewyork@gmail.com.”

Lola B is an artist in Beijing who writes the Yishus (art) column for BJC. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com.

Chen Guangcheng may be leaving China soon, as passports are expected to be issued to his family “within 15 days,” he said, according to the Telegraph. At least one BJC contributor is sad to see him go.

By Lola B

For the past couple of weeks, scrolling through windows of China news, the only face staring at me that commands my attention has been that of Chen Guangcheng.

And you know what? There are worse things to come home to. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s the sunglasses, but I find him irresistibly attractive. He can hide in my American embassy any day.

I’ve imagined him with whiskers rippling in the wind, slinking past guards, vaulting gracefully over walls, and sick and vulnerable in a Beijing hospital cot surrounded by guards. (And, yes, if it’s mentioned here, there’s probably a porn of it.) Rarely are Chinese dissidents so dashing.

And apparently I am not alone in thinking this. As a close friend confided, “I would imagine most blind guys are sexy. They are kinda mysterious because they wear glasses, and they know how to use their hands.”

As the Chen story winds down, I just want to take a moment to revel in his magnificence, and to imagine Chen Guangcheng melting Hu Jintao’s heart with his sensuous hands. Oh yeah, and he has nice lips. And great teeth.

Chelsea, another BJC reader, said, “The thing is that in every photo of him, he looks like a model.”

So run if you must, CGC. Would that I were your future advisor at NYU, spending long hours discussing gender issues and spending the weekends frolicking through the water spouting around Ai Weiwei’s animal-head fountain.

My art critic friend and I walked through a Miyazaki spring wonderland of floating tree sperm to make a point of arriving early to Caochangdi on Saturday. For you see, it was the opening of the third annual Caochangdi Photospring — Arles — an international photography festival brought to you by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre (a gallery in Caochangdi) and Thinking Hands (a platform for cross-cultural art programming and understanding), not to mention the Rencontres d’Arles (a 40ish-year-old photography festival in Arles, France) and the French embassy. An event with this much official collaboration is enough to get me artistically hot and bothered.

In fact, one of Photospring’s strong points is the organization, which may or may not have something to do with the foreign money involved (in contrast, Arles festival is publicly funded; China’s soft power may need some work). Having been to Caochangdi on numerous occasions and knowing how complicated it can be for outsiders, I can say with some assurance that the provision of a map is no small thing. There are even calendars available. I had barely entered this brave new world of intricately orchestrated Chinese art and I was already giddy. Caochangdi Photospring runs from April 21 to May 31, and encompasses somewhere around 30 exhibitions not just at Caochangdi but also at 798 and other locations. The works of more than 200 artists (Chinese and international) are on display. What more could you ask for?

The big opening-day bash was set to kick off at 3 pm, so with time to kill, my art attack dog and I wandered away from our destination and into a small concrete gallery. Canvases covered in little floating schoolgirls and aurora borealis scenes winked at me from the high walls. I took one turn of the room, just to be fair to the artist, and headed straight for the door where my eyes lit upon a glorious sight — snackables. Art openings should not be canapés-optional. I was impressed that this gallery owner knew that a horde of homeless mini-cheesecakes outside Fifth Ring Road will make any painting look better. After squishing the little confection around in my mouth, I warmheartedly chose one painting to hate less than the others, and walked out the front door.

Standing out on the grass, still in the giant Beijing spring snowglobe to watch the opening ceremony, I put up with (Chinese and French people indulging in) back-patting and congratulating. A really cute old Chinese man who was an official speaker said something about a seed that grows into a lovely tree. Cheesy, but you know what? It’s true. This event is truly amazing, and I hope that more events like this spring up. There was no free food, but good art actually does make up for that. (My critic friend hardly complained about having to pay for a coffee, and that’s really saying something.) And even better, there were prizes. This girl to the right won $50,000. Yes, that’s right — United States dollars. And yes, for ART. So if you see Yang Yuanyuan on the street, see if she’s eligible.

Lord knows how long the presentation went on, but eventually, to avoid the movie theater end-credit rush, we just headed back into the galleries.

Some of the artists and their artist statements were downright impressive. Just to pick one at random: Wang Lin used to be a flight attendant, but then she became an artist… then she became a flight attendant again so that she could capture the other beautiful stewardesses of the skies à l’aise. The photographs show female flight attendants in moments when they are not primped to serve you beverages and wipe your lap like Britney Spears in “Toxic.” (Wang Lin won the prize for best female artist with her series “The Tulip in the Clouds.” Congrats, but the prize was in RMB, and for not nearly as much as Yang’s plunder.) Overall, the quality was astronomically higher than what I see on a regular basis in 798 galleries.

As everywhere, there was a small army of cameras snapping and flashing, both at the speakers and at the photos on the walls. Isn’t this just a little too ironic for a photography exhibit? If the schtick of an artist’s work is to take cell phone photos every day for five years, and pick the best ones to display… then what do you call someone who takes cell phone photos of those? Lei Benben’s series “One Day, One Photo” consisted of a five-year cellphone photo-a-day regime, and here you have a girl cellphone photographing the cellphone photos. We’ve reached a new low.

Bad work is bad work. You snack and leave. “Good work” can be a matter of opinion, but I would argue that “good art” lies in the piece’s ability to spark discussion. Caochangdi Photospring does just that.

To see pictures of some of the works, click here, here, or here.

Artist(s) of the Week

Via City Weekend (Laura Fitch’s interview with Rongrong)

As promised last week, Rongrong is this week’s Artist of the Week, joined by his wife, Inri. They’ve been working together since 2000, and Three Shadows is their baby, which makes them co-organizers (or people closely associated with) Photospring.

Rongrong (b. 1968 in Fujian province) went to the Central Industrial Art Institute of Beijing for photography and then moved to the Beijing “East Village.” In 1996 he co-founded New Photo magazine with Zhang Huan (last week’s Artist of the Week). Inri (b. 1973 in the Kanagawa prefecture of Japan) attended Tokyo’s Nippon Photography Institute, became a photojournalist and then a freelance photographer before beginning her long-term collaboration with Rongrong.

Their collaborative photography hardly feels collaborative — it is the pure merging of two artists into one body of work. Their photography is often of the two together running through large spaces, or in front of destroyed buildings, or with their hair tied together. The only thing that remains the same is that they are always together. Rongrong and Inri have created intimate, poetic, and powerful photographs that can compete strongly in today’s complicated international art market. And there they were on Saturday, long-haired and beautiful, standing like bookends on the opening-day stage.

Yeah, you should go check out Photospring.

Lola B is an artist in Beijing. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com. |Yishus Archives|

Lucian Freud's painting of Bella, his daughter

I’m not sure how the topic came up, but over drinks at a newish bar on Beiluoguxiang, a few friends and I started discussing nudity and a certain sans-vêtements Beijing summer gathering last year (if you didn’t hear about it, your loss). “Oh, we were only naked, it was no big deal,” my friend repeated after me, mocking my blasé attitude.

Now, I have to admit, I’ve seen a lot of naked. In American art schools, nude models come in several times a week to drawing, painting, and sculpture classes. You become accustomed to the ugly, not so ugly, and very ugly. We participate in performance pieces involving nudity. We model for friends to save money. But, in the name of art, all bodies are of aesthetic interest.

The nude in art in China, however, seems to have a much hairier past than in the West. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty and in the early stages of the Republic, Chinese artists who had studied abroad came back home painting in oils and — shockingly — painting nudes. In Imperial China, nudity was a function of pornography. Liu Haisu (1896-1994), a Chinese artist who studied in France, was the first to employ nude models in China at his Shanghai Academy of Chinese Painting, and for that he was chased out of the country by imperial prigs, warlords who threatened him with arrest.

In 1964, the Communists banned nudity completely. It wasn’t until 1988, at the Chinese Nude Oils Exhibition in Beijing, that nudity was reintroduced to Chinese art. The show attracted an unprecedented 22 million viewers, many of whom expecting debauchery and lechery — both of which were in short supply.

These days, when I go into a museum or a gallery in Beijing, I can’t avoid seeing skin. Faced with either flawless, ivory, Han beauties basking blandly in ethereal nothingness or rough Lucian Freud-like clumpy working men, nudity prevails. It stands in as a flaccid replacement for content, controversy where there is none — the casual swear word as social icebreaker.

Chinese photography and performance art, however, have really created nudity with Chinese characteristics. Zhang Huan is a prime example (and a previous Artist of the Week). To harp on a favorite, here‘s his 1994 12m² performance: sitting in a Beijing public restroom in the heat of summer covered in honey and subsequently also covered in swarms of bugs. And then we have nude Ai Weiwei… twice… getting in trouble and causing trouble, as followers sent in their support. Considering AWW has been going au naturel since the 80s, I don’t have reason to think he’ll stop anytime soon. (Those last four links are NSFW, especially the “80s” one.)

Some in the Western world seem to have become bored with the simple sterile image of the nude hanging placidly on the wall and moved on — like artist Stuart Ringholt, who’s giving naked art tours at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Nudity required (it’s “shirts, pants, no service” in Syndey from April 27 to 29, in case you don’t already have plans). Also, some people are willing to do anything for art.

Is it possible to go so liberal that the innate Puritanism in us fights back? Who knew that in this day and age in the US a fifth-grade teacher could get sacked for taking her class to an art museum where an unspecified child saw an unspecified depiction of a naked person that might have been from 330 BC? Come on, Frisco, Texas. Perhaps that’s why there are Chinese laws against public performances involving nudity and images of blatant sexual activity (and I’m sure we’ve all heard too much about Titanic 3D in China – I’ll never let go, Kate Winslet) — it’s to save us from ourselves.

Still, the Chinese nude — dating from 1988 — is only 24, a complicated and enticing age to be a woman in our modern times. Let’s give her room to develop.

Artist of the Week

Liu Zheng (刘铮，b. 1969), after studying optical engineering at the Beijing Institute of Technology, became a photojournalist for Worker’s Daily from 1991 to 1997. He was interested in art as a child, copying masterworks, but at the suggestion of his parents, he took a more reasonable career path. Later, along with artist Rong Rong (an upcoming Artist of the Week), he started New Photography, an independent art journal.

Much of his work can fall into the category of documentary photography, though his pieces tend to transcend this genre into a more personal artist’s vision. But in keeping with our topic of nudity: take a look at his sepia toned plays with the past in which he strips Chinese tradition of its modesty.

Ask an Artist
Got a question about art? Send to lola@beijingcream.com. This week:

“Artists: are they all unbalanced, alcoholic, good-for-nothing layabouts, or just most?”

– Xi-fty in Xicheng

Dear Xi-fty,

They aren’t all good-for-nothing layabouts. Those who are just unbalanced or alcoholic work pretty hard. And if anyone is under the misconception that alcoholism makes the artist (Pollock, de Kooning…), Thomas Kinkade’s art is enough to prove otherwise. [Ed's note: Link NSFL due to presence of unbearable Christian rock.]

Recent studies show that staying up all night and getting drunk is good for creativity. Check out that link — I managed to answer one of the questions within half a second. Apparently this same question is normally very hard “at least for people without brain damage.”

I suppose I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a “normal” artist. But if you want downright and deliciously wacky, check out R. Crumb, who went from being an underground cartoonist of frivolititties (self-indulgent, carefree, romping breasts) and grotesque debauchery to being the toast of Paris. An inspiration to us all — mainly because he never gave up on all that dirty stuff.

Lola B is an artist in Beijing. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com. |Yishus Archives|

I leaned over my Japanese eel handroll bought by the 10-year-old Chinese girl’s mother who was decked in glistening gold chains and a sparkling chemise. Looking squarely at the girl on this, our very first appointment, I asked her, “What is bad art?” She matter-of-factly responded, “Art made by grown-ups.” 

As an interim project to help keep a trickle of income, I had agreed to take on an oil painting student. Even at our first meeting, it was clear that my pupil was one of the most visually oriented people I had ever met. If she could think it, she could draw it. If she couldn’t find the words, it would come out in highly precise line drawings. A perfect creative friendship ensued.

I taught her drawing and painting once a week. With the luxury of only having one student, I was able to handcraft lesson plans that I felt would hone her sense of art theory as much as her motor skills. When we first started our classes, she was in the middle of applying to a famous Chinese arts middle school in Beijing. She was excited to have more time for formal art training, and her parents completely supported her future goal of becoming an artist. I was in fact instructed to teach their child a more Western approach to painting.

So we had lessons in composition, color, lighting, texture… She was my canvas, and I could give her everything she needed to get into any of the best American art schools. She was eager to learn, and had a fantastic memory. Layers of art lessons started to pay off as I taught her to frame her subjects from more interesting and surprising angles. She learned to push this foreign concept of oil paint around a primed piece of paper. She began to adopt the idea of paying attention to the entire image plane all through the creative process rather than focusing on one square-centimeter of detail at a time. Cue Eliot’s fanatical scream of, “It’s working, it’s working!” when he successfully calls E.T.’s parents to end their alien playdate.

Then the new school year commenced at her new arts middle school. All the lessons I’d drummed in began to slip away. Before drawing anything, she would sketch out an elaborate system of perspective lines the likes of which I’d never even seen before. I would tell her to draw a cup in one minute — she would need 30 just to get the outline done. Once the outline was set, it would take another 10 minutes of particular erasing to remove the drawn perspective scaffolding. Was the cup realistic? Definitely. Was it interesting? Not in the least. And let me make it clear that a cup can be interesting. So, knowing that the school had them learning to paint simple objects, and wanting to break free of the thickening psychological bondage, I instructed her to paint her aunt, who would sit in the corner of our studio and wait for her. The girl’s response? “I haven’t been taught to paint people.”

Oh, I know, I know, but I had her where I wanted her, and I wasn’t about to back down. I set up the easel, the paints, everything. I knew she was more than capable of drawing things she’d never even seen before. Her hand-eye coordination guaranteed a victorious aesthetic outcome. I was ready for the magic. But then… nothing. A mental block had been erected. She repeated the same phrase. I tried to give pointers, but nothing helped. We ended up with a Motherwellesque blob to beat all blobs.

We all know that children are more creative than adults. Very much in agreement with my charge, Picasso once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, and a lifetime to paint like a child.” So what was happening to my student? Was she just growing up? Or, more likely, was the system starting to strangle her?

I don’t agree with the insinuation that China itself isn’t creative. I think there’s a lot of creativity to be had, but what is the problem in this case? Over-training. My little artist was being taught tools as rules. Realism does not make up for lack of concept.

Art study in the US is rather anemic when it comes to the formal training of draftsmanship. Perspective and figure drawing are taught, but not very well. Students are taught to draw 1-point and 2-point perspective, but they are often by people who don’t understand the concepts themselves. But these visual systems should not be put above imaginative exploration as much as they are in China, either. All one has to do is look at the annual Chinese Realist Painting Exhibitions at The National Art Museum of China in Beijing to see that obsessive-compulsive perfection of craft does not necessarily make art. I don’t care if you can paint the most accurate pile of books. Nor do I care if you paint perfect naked girls. A naked girl does not mean your scribbling is Art with a capital “A.”

Art education is not perfect in China or the US. Let’s work on taking the best of both worlds.

Artist of the Week

Via The Black Unicorns

Born in Quanzhou City, Fujian province, Cai Guo-qiang (蔡国强, b.1957) has pieces on display in collections all around the world. Most recently, his “Mystery Circle” exploded on Saturday, April 7 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles — literally. A Chinese artist with a cultural predilection for pyrotechnics, Cai used gunpowder and stencils to create large “drawings.” Amusingly enough, there were reports of duck-and-coverers at the performance. Obviously these noobs have never lived through Spring Festival in China.

Although slow motion maybe should have been avoided, this video does a good job of laying a foundation of understanding for his current fireworks. Good art can be hard to find, and I’m sorry that this particular piece was not accessible to those of us here in Beijing.

Cai Guo-qiang’s work doesn’t even need to be physically explosive to create a stir. In his “Inopportune: Stage Two, 2004,” shown at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2008, nine lifelike replica tigers, skewered like St. Sebastian and suspended throughout the gallery, protested animal cruelty. Or if you like cars suspended in museums, click here.

Cai employs a small army of assistants to support him in the making of these large-scale works, so if you happen to be in a city near this artist, I suggest you email him and apply to help out.

Ask an Artist
Got a question about art? Send to lola@beijingcream.com. This week:

“What’s with all the damn plastic prefab-looking statues? Doesn’t anyone do stone anymore? Why do all these pieces of ‘art’ look like f’n toys? I can order plastic toys from a factory, too. What happened when the computer wasn’t helping you do this shit? What happened to all the love? This just seems like a cop-out. If I see a 12-meter pile of shit sculpture, I’d like it to actually be sculpted.”

– Severely Concerned in 798

Dear Severely Concerned,

A lot of materials that are highly regulated in the West for being unhealthy are not as regulated here. Making fiberglass in China is quick and cheap. Often, large, cartoony, and brightly-colored fiberglass works come off as kitschy, although once in a while, they are absolutely brilliant.

Whether good or bad, most of the time, if one can use other materials, I strongly suggest it.

If you need sculptures to look at:

1. Look up Ron Mueck, whose terrifyingly lifelike figurative silicone sculptures toy with scale to mimic the psychological state of mind.
2. See Ai Weiwei’s earlier works involving rampant and rule-defying furniture.
3. See British Andy Goldsworthy’s artistic process as he builds entirely natural site-specific works in the 2001 movie Rivers and Tides.
4. Or there is always Jim Reinders’s 1987 “Carhenge” — vintage automobile replica of Stonehenge — in western Nebraska.
5. Or if you want actual shit art, made of more comprehensive materials, here’s a fecal Venus de Milo.

Lola B is an artist in Beijing. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com. |Yishus Archives|

Via art-or-porn.com/post/19953288020, which is, like many links in this post, NSFW

A belated and abbreviated column this week due to a headache. Blame the porn I’ve been browsing.

Regarding the “I Am Beauty” sculptures that appeared recently on this site: I suppose I should just be happy to see a public monument to the fact that everyone likes sex. But you have questions, I just know it: Is it porn? Is it art? Is it actually porn cleverly disguised as art?

No. To all the above.

I can’t accept that these images are intended to arouse a viewer’s attention. At least I personally don’t find them “exciting.” Explicit? Sure. Porn? Undoubtedly no. The Rodin-muscled male hands and the brashly detailed clutch of the woman’s pubic mound are realistic at best, and I mean that as an insult. Somehow, despite all the breathless back-arching, the couple still comes off as ugly and cold.

Erecting a statue like this at a fancy hotel in the US would be difficult (though there may be a few in the honeymoon suites). Although not porn, it is provocative, therefore more likely to cause offense to the patronage than provoke artistic soul-searching. We also tend to be rather jaded about this kind of stuff — see Gustave Courbet’s NSFW painting L’Origine du monde, which scandalized the world back in 1866.

China had a healthy erotic artistic history up until the late-Ming, but thanks to centuries of suppression from Confucianism, foreign missionaries, and most recently the government’s views on pornography, sex and art in China have been damaged, and it’s unclear to what extent they will recover. (If you want a good summary of the history of Chinese pornography, see Danwei’s post from last year [borderline NSFW, depending on where you work].)

Back to the hotel sculpture: it may not be art, it may not be porn, but it certainly isn’t beauty. For such a large statue to masquerade as art… well, I would give it credit as a performance piece. I suppose congratulations are in order for getting away with a public work about the glories of the human body… or whatever it’s supposed to be about.

Three final rapid-fire thoughts (because when it comes to porn, there really isn’t a classy way to finish):

1. If anyone is concerned about the state of erotica in the wider world, I suggest you loudly protest Apple Inc.’s rejection of the Geometric Porn App.

2. Those who want a 4D experience in Asia, vibrating seats are coming soon to theaters near you!

3. And finally, since we’d hate for anyone to leave this post about PORN with blue balls (and whatever the female equivalent might be), feel free to check out these websites (borderlineporn.tumblr.com and www.sexinart.net/category/porn, most certainly NSFW, by a lot). No matter what they say, they are NOT art.

Lola B is an artist in Beijing. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com. |Yishus Archives|

Asked why she painted the mausoleum yellow – “This is wrong,” the Chinese art professor scolded – the foreign student at a top Chinese art school provided a thorough rejoinder defending the logic behind her aesthetic choice. The girl’s translator relayed the information to the professor. The next second, the student found herself kicked out of class for insubordination.

I bet in any Western art school, not having an explanation would be considered the insubordinate act. The value of American arts schools – the reason that their tuition can be so high – lies in the value of the critique. How is it done? In the standard art school, a student puts one or more pieces in front of the class. In proper firing-squad procession, classmates shoot holes in the artist’s crazy (and probably alcohol-induced) rationale.

The point of this exercise is to help the artist-in-training make better work. The need for a thoughtful answer is paramount, and yes, bullshitting is permitted. The point is to understand that you, as an artist, are making a statement with your art, and you need to be responsible for what it says. A critique is the interaction between art, the artist, and the audience. We pull the artwork apart piece by piece to reveal more and more, and it’s exciting. Sometimes the critiques are constructive, and sometimes you’re told that emptiness could better fill nine square feet of wall space. Oh, and I had an art teacher threaten to hang students for making bad art… but at least he allowed us our due rebuttals.

The Western critique system is the foundation of Western art. Without it, there would be no critics. And surprise, surprise, what do we think is lacking in the Chinese art world? Critics.

In China, when a teacher enters a classroom and approaches a work-in-progress, the student will say reverently, “I’ve been looking at the swirls of Van Gogh.” The teacher might say, “You might want to look at Seurat’s spots,” add a little spiel, and then the kid will go, “Okay,” and keep chugging along.

This idea that the professor is always right is a chimera of a concept in the US: mythical and/or unknown and/or to be slain upon sight. Of course, the American system might deny a professor’s ability to pass a judgment a bit too frequently, but the US has art teachers who ask questions, students who give answers and ask new questions, and teachers who then ask even more questions.

Chinese art could do with a little more healthy discussion. You hear that, people out there? This post has a comments section…

Artist of the Week

Zhang Huan (张洹， b.1965) is a Chinese artist primarily based outside China (for reasons related to government officials). Most of us probably know him from photo stills of his performance pieces. It’s not every day you see a man covered in meat (My New York, right)… though apparently it’s not that uncommon either. In one of the works that made Chinese officials a little uncomfortable, he painted himself in honey and fish oil and sat in an outhouse, letting the flies accumulate all over his body. This was seen as a commentary of the state of living in China. Most of the work he makes uses the body as a platform for exploration, and often involves the self-infliction of pain. Other works include larger-than-life statues made of incense stick ash gathered in Shanghai temples, kinetic statues of a well-endowed donkey noisily humping the Jin Mao tower, and a bronze Buddhist-style bell with the names of eight generations of his family carved into it next to a horizontal life-size metal cast of his own body. The bell is rung when the head of his metal self-portrait is rammed into the bell’s solid side.

One of my all-time favorites will always be his Beijing performance from 1995, To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain, which led to an even better piece made a decade later by Zuoxiao Zuozhou, a participant in Zhang’s original performance:

This short video is worth watching, and will give you a good sense of Zhang Huan and his work. One netizen said of him, “Bruce Lee of Performance and Visual_ Arts is ZHANG HUAN~”. Thank you, antbryant1, for your insight.

Ask an Artist
Got a question about art? Send to lola@beijingcream.com. This week:

“If you painted elements of the candle flame in such a way that a photograph couldn’t capture it, would it be worth more?”

- Alicia

First, let’s define the word “worth.” Do you mean monetarily? Or “spiritually”?  Since the WSJ article in which the painting to the left appears describes the artist Gerhard Richter as “the top-selling living artist,” I will assume you mean the former.

But first, let’s talk a little about candles. Candles have been in art ever since there were candles. Check out Robert Campin’s 15th century Merode Altarpiece. A candle with a flame can represent time (especially if the candle is melted down), or Jesus (because the wax that comes from virginal bees has at its core the wick representing his soul). A candle that is blown out often represents mortality, death, or loss of virginity. One might note that in the case of the Merode Altarpiece, the candle has been blown out. There are two suggestions for its meaning (normally in Annunciations the candle is lit). One option is that the light of Jesus’s implantation in Mary’s belly is so bright that all material light is now pitifully small. The other idea is that the figurative light of Jesus has now been made physical in Mary’s womb. If you want to read more about the Merode Altarpiece, go here. What does Richter mean by his candle? Probably a mixture of all of the above, but what is certain is that his candle is more than a nod of the head to the old Dutch Masters.

Anyway, back to the point…

Why photorealism? Well, in this case, it’s Richter’s shtick — the reason the candle is expensive is because it has Mister Richter’s name on the price tag. If he had painted it differently, it would probably cost nearly the same amount. By the way, I do like his paintings, and I would pay money for them.

If it were random candle art, then style would factor into the price. So it comes down to demand. Who’s buying candle art? Some people buy candle art because of its Christian symbolism. Some people buy candle art because of its not-so Christian symbolism. Some buy it because it’s Elton John’s Marilyn Monroe. And some people just put candles in performance art. I don’t think I’d allow open flames in my museum, personally speaking.

I can tell you that in China, as long as the painting – any painting – is done in a photo-realistic style, it will probably fetch a pretty good price. Just because it looks like a photo doesn’t make it good. Just because you are in awe of a painter for being able to essentially “copy and paste” manually and in thin, slippery oils doesn’t mean you should buy it. But, I suppose, if there are willing buyers, there are a lot of people richer and a lot sillier than I am.

Lola B is an artist in Beijing. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com. |Yishus Archives|

By Lola B

I sit in my room only wanting to stalk my friends on Facebook, and Kony is the first to greet me at log-in. I leave my door, and Kony hails me from his plastered paper post on the elementary school chain-link fence. Kony is currently the American equivalent to fireworks at Lantern Festival time, outside and inside your home at all hours.

KONY 2012 is a video from Invisible Children Inc., a San Diego-based NGO fighting to bring the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an army of children led by Joseph Kony, to international attention. Uploaded onto YouTube on March 5, it currently has close to 77 million views (even though Googling “Kony” only returns 36.5 million hits). It made it to China on March 10, where 1.7 million clicks have been logged so far on Tudou.

The LRA in its current incarnation was created in 1987, led by Kony, a man who fancies himself a spokesperson for God. He abducts children, forcing boys to kill and girls into sexual enslavement. Originally in Uganda, the group has been moving through other African countries since 2006.

Among Invisible Children’s biggest celebrity supporters are Bill Gates, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, and Rihanna — but really, the video is so viral that celebrities don’t need to throw their weight behind it anymore. YouTube statistics show people are watching from all over the world, including China. ChinaSMACK has done a lovely compilation of netizen reactions.

Yet when searching for more information on Kony, don’t be embarrassed if you accidently find yourself on Cedar city, Utah’s country music radio station. It’s an easy mistake to make. KONY 2012 is also not to be confused with the Kings of New York, which is still Urban Dictionary’s top hit for Kony. (Seriously? No offense, Jay-Z.) Or memes like this:

What the memes reflect, though subtly, is cynicism. Though there’s no shortage of open criticism, either. The Grumpy Owl has found more than a few well-articulated critiques. (You’re familiar with Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden”?) Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole has also captured a fair bit of attention with his tweet, “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.” There is also our culture of “slacktivism”: clicking one’s mouse is not an act of moral courage. (Slacktivists — yes, this will be the new hot word of 2012 – have been trolled with the likes of Carl Weathers.)

But in the end, KONY 2012 achieved what it set out to do — inform the public. Musa Okwonga of the Independent says it better than I ever could:

Murderers and torturers tend to prefer anonymity, and if not that then respectability: that way, they can go about their work largely unhindered.

I don’t think that Invisible Children are naïve. I don’t think that President Obama was ever blind to this matter either: his own father, a Kenyan, hails from the Luo, the same tribal group that has suffered so much at the hands of Kony. My hunch – and hope – is that they see this campaign as a way to encourage wider and deeper questions about wholly inadequate governance in this area of Africa.

Here are some other articles to check out if you want to learn more. Kony is here, and if you live on planet Earth, you’re gonna have to deal with it. How you deal with it, though…

Intelligent summary and analysis from Ethan Zuckerman.

Actual information about Africa via Siena Anstis.

NY Times:

Others object to the reduction of a complex situation to the story of a single ‘bad guy’ whose capture would magically restore harmony to a conflict-scarred region, and surely some object to the casual invocation of Hitler (is it a coincidence that the day of action promoted in the video is April 20, Hitler’s birthday?).

…

We are entering an age when the shallow political power of the public — including those too young to vote — will increasingly help shape our policy debates. And yes, that is scary to professional foreign policy experts, much in the same way reference book authors with graduate degrees were rattled by the idea of an online encyclopedia created collectively by amateurs.

“I like to help my students as much as I can.”

Sitting at his dining room table at 10 pm while nibbling on expensive imported dried apricots, the Chinese art professor uttered this while texting recommendations on behalf of his graduating students to collectors and other well-moneyed contacts. “I’m sorry I’m not paying more attention to you,” he mumbled to me.

“No, no,” I replied, impressed with his dedication, “it’s no problem.”

It’s just a helluva surprise is all. This level of hands-on professorial generosity is unheard of in the American art school mainstream. Even if guanxi – the complicated and highly visible relationship-based web of favor exchange in China – finds its equivalent in behind-closed-doors American schmoozery, teachers in America simply are not wont to share contacts. It’s almost laughable to imagine a professor saying, “My agent would love your work, let me put you in touch.” Giving away contacts in the US is like losing opportunities.

There’s also a healthy dose of jealousy that goes into teaching art. Surrounded by young, creative, excited teenagers, middle-aged art professors seem to have a high rate of mental instability (even for artists). Within one year, three of my professors had admitted or obvious mental breakdowns. Dear art teachers, even if your students seem better than you are, you are the one who has remained an artist despite all odds. It’s easy to be a student living in a converted warehouse and surrounded by other angsty, angry, dirty, smelly, self-aggrandizing, snot-nosed brats going to art school paid for by their comfortably liberal middle-class parents. It is not easy to be a self-sustaining artist, so don’t feel threatened by this new generation of creative rebels. Help them out. Embrace them. And in turn, maybe they will give you a contact.

Witness: this past summer, Beijing’s Red Gate Gallery curated an amazing display of Chinese art professors helping their younger contemporaries. They organized an exhibition in which older, established artists chose younger, unknown artists whose work they admired and whose careers they looked forward to following in the future. The work of the older mentor was shown next to the work of the prodigy of choice. I applaud the clever way in which both the old and the new were allowed to prosper. With this pairing, the older generation was denied undue reverence while the younger art was forced into a broader context as opposed to being lauded for its hip rejection of the past.

But we should also keep in mind that China has a booming economy, a growing interest in expensive luxury goods such as art, and an abundance of available jobs. This allows Chinese art professors to hand out opportunities like pats on the back. The students are not directly competing with their professors as they would be in the US, and that’s probably the more likely reason for the teachers’ “generosity.”

Or is it in fact just a difference in style? Is it that American artists are mean-spirited jealous hoarders? One of the biggest differences between American and Chinese art guanxi is the status held by art professors in the greater cultural context. In China, being a professor is still viewed as the highest standard of respectability. Art schools in China can and do draw their faculty from the highest echelons of artistic achievement. In the US, however, art professors are most often supporting their unsustainable art dreams. The top dogs in the American art world lecture, but they don’t teach; they make enough money in galleries to be full-time studio-dwellers.

Is there a way to bridge the gap between the Chinese “Let me make a phone call” and the American “Don’t quit your day job”? That latter phrase came from one of my professors to a student as his closing statement at the end of a semester-long course. Needless to say, crying ensued. (Whether or not the student’s work deserved the brutally harsh criticism is beside the point.) Art-making is nerve-wracking. Artists put themselves out there for public judgment. Perhaps the Chinese attitude that all artists are in this together might foster a more innovative or at least a more productive art community. On the other hand, my imaginary American art critic friend would argue that the cutthroat nature of American Art is what makes it competitive and great. But I say the Chinese art world mentality makes for fewer crazy artists. Or maybe I just wish my road to the top had been a little smoother.

Artist of the Week

This week we have another contemporary Beijing-based artist: Wang Qingsong (王庆松, b.1966). His large-scale, humorous, theatrical color photos of staged parades, dormitories, and pool parties evoke an uneasy vision of the new commercial China.  They question not only China itself but also, more importantly, China’s superficial and incompatible acceptance of Western values and traditions.

I personally believe in art for art’s sake, but Wang’s argument for the artist’s necessary social responsibility is concise and well played in this interview with Christine Kuan.

Thank god that, despite originally studying painting, Wang Qingsong did not decide that these images would have been better in slick, oily photorealism with Chinese characteristics.

Enveloping the viewer in museums and galleries, Wang’s Courbet-scale narratives are bright, eye-catching, intelligent, and worth tracking down (or at least Googling). Luckily, his work, unlike some, does translate well to a computer screen.

Ask an Artist

From Rossina Bossio’s Flickr, via Miss Aniela

Got a question about art? Send to lola@beijingcream.com. This week’s question: 

“What about censorship?”

– Chafing in Chaoyang

Dear Chafing,

This week, there were cases of paintings disappearing from the walls of a Chinese gallery and an American gallery. I’ll let you guess which one involved theft.

Lola B is an artist in Beijing. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com. |Yishus Archives|

My retinal neuroprocessors shifted into slo-mo as his hand, fingers twitching, extended to caress the oil painting at the National Art Museum of China.

As a painter myself, I completely understand the urge to cop a feel of a comely piece of work. However, three points for consideration regarding this particular case of public non-consensual groping:

1. The offending appendages belonged to a man in his fifties. Had he been a toddler, we could have told him a few things. For example: oils from your skin can harm artwork. Look at the sculptures of Buddha and lions and dragons that get fondled religiously – even stone, metal, and wood get worn down to a sickly sheen under the relentless barrage of touchy-feely tourists. Now think about paint on canvas. If everyone touched it, there’d be nothing left.

But what can we say to a middle-aged, full-grown adult?

Dude. Not cool.

2. Where were the sirens that should have sounded the alarm calling over tens (of thousands) of unoccupied museum guards?

3. It wasn’t even a good painting. It was some sort of new-agey foreigner’s circular, pointless abstraction with thin and skeletal paint on an over-gessoed slick canvas… who would even want to touch that?

“Tactile appreciation,” as we’ll call it for now, is not the only problem at Chinese art museums. I have witnessed people leaning on glass cases, eating hot dogs (with mayo packets blazing), and, oh yeah, paddle-balling. But one cannot entirely blame these “viewers.” Guards meander happily through the crowds saying nothing. In heaven’s name, what are you being paid for if not to tell these paddle-ballers to cease and desist? If the system isn’t built with rules, how can there be punishment, the threat of which is an effective (albeit flawed) deterrent to objectionable behavior?

The US is littered with elementary schools that mandate field trips to the museum, unleashing hordes of sticky fingers of destruction on priceless artifacts. But most children, I’m happy to say, come away with a solemn respect for art. I have to believe there is a correlation between this and the first categorical rule of thumb: keep your hands to yourself. By dictating a strict “no touching” policy, teachers are instilling in their munchkins the idea that art deserves to be held in lofty esteem.

It’s not like that in China (and perhaps rightly so, considering the stuff passing for art). I’ve come to realize a few things:

1. The hands-off custom of viewing art in a sterile, high-ceilinged, white-walled environment is a primarily Western construct. China is in the middle of the adoption process, but has perhaps only embraced the aesthetics of the system thus far.

2. Here, many believe art should be accessible to the masses. Tickets to the National Museum of China and the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) are therefore free if you are willing to line up outside under your parasol, soup-kitchen-style.

3. The Mao Era successfully subverted the idea of “individual genius.” Since art should theoretically be for everyone and not just the intellectual elite, museums often seem to be overly interactive to keep the interest of the “general public.” For example, the National Museum of China’s “Road of Rejuvenation” permanent exhibit includes flashing statuesdepicting moments of extreme political upheaval in life-size, full-fledged diorama action. Last summer’s “Translife” exhibit at NAMOC wins the award for best interactive sculpture, featuring Lawrence Malstaf’s “Nemo Observatorium”: one by one, visitors enter a ceiling-high snow globe; once the individual is seated in a central throne, a guard throws a switch, starting up a tornado-like wind that blows little bits of white “snow” cyclonically around without ever touching anyone’s body. The audience member is successfully brought to question the meaning of stillness in a world of ever-moving, ever-changing social and technological advancement.

In closing: If you have friends who touch things inappropriately, pass along Cookie Monster‘s sage advice: “But no no no, me know the rules: picture exciting, but not for biting.”

Artist of the Week

Huang Yan, "Chinese Landscape - Tattoo 4 (Tattoo Series)," 1999

Huang Yan (黄岩, b. 1966) is a painter/sculptor/performance artist/photographer in Beijing who, unlike most, has managed to coerce the traditional landscape into the modern world in a strong and beautiful way. Using the human body as a canvas, Huang’s photos document traditional mountainous ink landscapes rippling across bodies, faces, and furniture.

Huang Yan, "Sofa: Painting Face Landscape," 2006, via Priska C. Juschka Fine Art

In terms of the traditional marriage of ink and paper, there are many artists who question their artistic predecessors, but the most common artistic response has been to change the content of the work, straying from the landscape in favor of the puppy (see: Guy on Art). Huang, on the other hand, questions the format of the medium itself. So even though China invented paper, Huang reinvents the meaning of “surface” and takes it to the next level. (I can’t help being reminded of Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book.) 

Huang’s photographs are most breathtaking when seen in person, so if you get the chance, go check them out for yourself. In the words of LeVar Burton, “But you don’t have to take my word for it.”

Ask an Artist
Got a question about art? Send to lola@beijingcream.com. This week’s question: 

“Do you feel that the development of Chinese art has been somehow stymied by its history, society, and education techniques, or has it become its own glorious institution as a result of these?”

– Dubious in Dongcheng

Dear Dubious,

Although we can trace art history from pre- to post-Mao, that doesn’t mean we can necessarily judge what good or bad effects this period will have on the broad span of Chinese art. It’s just too soon.

Contemporary Chinese artists have claimed, not rejected, the Mao years as an integral part of owning the past and of shaping the future of art. Of course, the way the art references the Mao era greatly depends on the age of the artist. Those who were young enough tend to depict a magical world of idealism. The older the artist, the more weary the work.

No matter which side of this divide the artist falls on, the reaction is inescapable. Art is always a response to the past and to artistic parentage. Turning a blind eye is a reaction in and of itself. And what we tend to forget is that all art in every country brings with it a shitload of baggage.

The wheel of art cannot be reinvented, and as an artist, no matter how often you wish to be an art orphan, you can never run far enough or fast enough to get away from the Greats (thanks for being there for me, Goya).

To question your heritage and build on it like Huang Yan is laudable. I’m afraid not as much can be said for misappropriated baggage; it’s what happens when China misuses Western art history.

And this is what happens when Westerners misuse Mandarin and Chinese calligraphy without understanding it (and in a far more public way than getting embarrassingly mistranslated tattoos). Know thy source materials. Come on, Vivienne Westwood, you’re better than that.

Finally, this is what happens when you start worrying about what your art will mean in the greater context of art history. I’ll leave it without comment.

Lola B is an artist in Beijing. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com. |Yishus Archives|

A Photo Booth creation: instead of art school, just pull out your Mac to save yourself time and money.

While huffing bubbles into my coconut’s milky core, I told my Beijing-born friend nonchalantly and without embarrassment that I had graduated from art school with a major in painting. Her response? “Great! Well, at least you can sell your paintings!” My nasal passages flooded with fruit juice. This was a far cry from the more common American response, “So you get to eat, like, what, once a week?”

Chinese students go to art school to make money. Seriously. And art school is rapidly becoming a sexy alternative for those whose math and other academic skills don’t live up to the country’s stringent testing standards. But as you’ll see, art schools here have their own rigid assessment system that’s hardly better than requiring students to memorize a database of testable facts.

The main path, if not the only path, into a top art school is through the art gaokao (college entrance exam) that judges technical skill alone. For high school students who don’t have the background, there are cram schools where students can spend nine or more consecutive hours a day drawing in a photo-realistic style not far off from the crosshatch effect in Photo Booth. (Note to cram school principals: the reason Photo Booth exists is so humans don’t have to waste their time.) There are advantages to this kind of process – good hand-eye training will never lead one astray, and there’s no question drawing helps one learn to see the world – but it’s dubious that it will foster creative thinking, which is what Chinese art generally lacks.

By contrast, sometimes all it takes to get into an American art school is the ability to support your aesthetic decisions with plausible arguments.

Question: Why did you put a puppy in your painting?

Answer: Because I like puppies.

REJECTED

Question: Why did you put a puppy in your painting?

Answer: Because it symbolizes contemporary art critics’ unwillingness to take responsibility for their positions and call out bad art when they see it.

ACCEPTED

One of the Rhode Island School of Design’s infamous application questions is simply, “Draw a bicycle.” Cleverness is rewarded. A perfectly rendered pink fixed-gear in the middle of a white page may not cut it. But a bikeless hutong as commentary on the endemic of bike thievery? It’d muscle out the competition. I probably shouldn’t need to say this, but in China’s art system, it’s the fixed-gear bike that’s encouraged, with a craftsman’s exactitude in spacing between the spokes. Technically skilled? Yes. Creative? Not really. (There are art students at the Central Fine Arts Academy [CAFA] in Beijing who also keep a studio off-campus for their more outrageous art-making, but that doesn’t seem to be the norm.)

Once you get into a top Chinese art school, whether or not you become an artist in your own right is neither here nor there. There are jobs to be had in design, fashion, etc. And there’s always a contingent of students plucked straight out of art school by collectors hoping to make a killing by discovering the next Yue Minjun. The same thing also happens in the US, though I hope most art students there are realistic enough to realize that expendable income is scarce at the moment. Here in China, with the market still booming and students able to put up a “show of their very own” in any old abandoned space, the dream is still alive. I just don’t want to be the one to tell them that in a few short years, art schools will become oversaturated, collectors will be wiser, and the competition will be cutthroat. And then it’ll be those creative wunderkinds who can create dreamscapes for the real world who will be rewarded.

Artist of the Week

Which brings us to our CAFA representative of the week: Xu Bing (b. 1955, contemporary artist and professor at CAFA).

Fake character from real radicals.

Out of a long career of nonpareil brilliance came Book of Heaven, consisting of hundreds of books laid out in a rectangle underneath a draped 50-foot scroll. All of these surfaces are covered in “characters” – thousands of characters, in fact, none of which can be found in a Chinese dictionary. They are all made up of existing radicals and character pieces that when fitted together mean absolutely nothing. The common foreigner and the Chinese intellectual alike are faced with a gibberish-encrusted celestial scroll. (Though you’re supposed to be able to read the word to the right regardless of Mandarin ability.) Along with several other artists self-defined as making “anti-writing” art, Xu forces us to admire his work from a purely aesthetic level.

As a bonus, as a life preserver to my fellow struggling artists (or struggling anythings), read this letter from a young American artist fighting to survive in the New York art jungle (cue mall scene from Mean Girls) addressed to Xu Bing. The situation is comical: a student soliciting the most famous contemporary Chinese artists for help. Then read the Master’s response. This exchange perfectly embodies all of the insecurities that artists always had and always will have.

Ask an Artist
Got a question about art? Send to lola@beijingcream.com. This week’s question:

“Why is it that artists all have a shtick? Does it occur organically, or is there cynical manipulation involved on the artist’s part?”

-Perplexed in Peking

Dear Perplexed,

All artists have a shtick because we have to sell work somehow, and more often than not it’s the same way that Victoria’s Secret sells “work.” (Breasts. And since men don’t have them, they paint them.) Rarely is image creation organic, especially in the age of Facebook. For the same reasons that social media can break a politician, it can make an artist. Everyone loves a scandal.

For no particular reason, we’ll start with Millie Brown literally puking up rainbow goo, following in a disgusting tradition of artists exhibiting bodily secretions.

Andy Warhol pissed on a bunch of canvasses – as did lots of others.

Chris Ofili made a Madonna out of elephant dung, and the shtick made him.

Vito Acconci, in Seedbed, skulked under a ramp and jerked off for eight hours a day for two weeks while gallery patrons walked above him listening to his obscene sexual imaginings being broadcast over loudspeakers.

This man painted his naked daughter over and over and over. (One wonders: is the mother’s admitted jealousy just a carefully calculated market scheme to add to the image of a fucked-up family? It got publicity, so I guess it worked.)

Hitler painted? There’s a shtick if I ever heard one.

And winning the award for longest-running shtick of all: “Spiritual Child Prodigy” Akiane. Of her patron she says, “I just like him… he’s taking care of me like I was a little butterfly.”

All of the above goes to show that if you sell it right, they will buy.

But I’m sure if I ever came face to face with Millie Brown’s goo, I would do the same thing I (and a whole bunch of others) did to Warhol’s whiz cadre: sniff it. And that would be the full extent of my interest. Even if we allow for the illimitable and generous definition of art being “anything,” as a society it’s important to acknowledge that goo art isn’t good art. It’s not good anything.

Lola B is an artist in Beijing. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com. |Yishus Archives|

Qi BaiShi vs. Marilyn Monroe, by Zhang Wei (via The Grand Narrative)

Two weekends ago, our mouths overflowing with Lantern Festival sesame-injected sweet rice balls, a Chinese art historian asked me why Americans don’t buy Guohua (国画).Guohua is the National Chinese painting style that Westerners all know from the animated opening credits of Mulan. It also encompasses the significant majority of art purchased by Chinese people. “So, do you think Americans don’t buy Guohua works because they don’t understand them?” I may have dribbled a little as I tried (but perhaps failed) to configure a concise response. No, actually Americans are known for buying only art they don’t understand. 

I was confronted with a pair of raised bushy eyebrows and a brow as furrowed as a newly ploughed rice paddy. “Why would you buy art you don’t understand?” Because it proves intelligence and culture, of course. Americans buy things they’ve heard about and don’t understand – but don’t want to admit they don’t understand. Art is the totem of the highfalutin for cultural superiority. Thus we have richey-rich people who reside in humorless empty-walled mansions (the 1%) who run around to buy a Neo-Pop Jeff Koons they can’t tell from a Rodin. That Koons’s balloon dogs and balloon monkey head prints still provoke buying sprees is the artist’s great long-running practical joke, a subtle and brilliant way to mock the well-heeled, well-disguised philistine. With all due respect, this sort of art production and promotion is the lifeblood of the Western art world. Take Damien Hirst as the current example. Polka dots should get you only so far. Please, let’s go back to the menagerie in tanks era.

Artist Takashi Murakami poses in front of a diamond-encrusted skull by Hirst (via Arrested Motion)

Hirst does, however, get points for successfully snubbing the system. Well, more accurately, he is the system. I raise my glass to the man who makes mountains of money by selling work that I doubt even he considers to be art.

To bring this back to China: the Asian art auction system is filled with Chinese buying paintings that represent their – stop me if you’ve heard this phrase before – 5,000 years of culture. This is partly a nationalistic approach, but also an interesting return to Guohua from the strictly Social-Realism oil painting of the Mao era. It also seems incongruous with the neo-kitsch found in 798 that is being eaten up by foreign collectors. In recent years, and with the surge of money in China, the auctions also show a lot of brand-name tailgating. This was evident this past summer at Louis Vuitton’s “Voyages” show featured by the National Museum in Beijing. For those of you who didn’t see it, there were two highlights: the travel trunk designed by Japanese Superflat painter Murakami for holding your 50 rainbow-colored Louis Vuitton handbags, and, well, yeah, pretty much just that.

In case you ever doubted Koons's brand status, here he is on the cover of "the first international art magazine in China," prominently displayed in Beijing's 798 Art Zone.

Chinese people buy what they know. Brand names like LV are known entities. Guohua is too. Chinese art collectors don’t know what to do with a canvas entirely painted black. But who’s to blame them?

Bringing it back to America, now…

How much time does the average Metropolitan Museum visitor spend examining a Pollock (i.e. squiggly lines)? And then how much time does he or she spend looking at a Chinese painting of mountains and rivers? (In this hypothetical we are excluding “experts” and “sinophiles,” and assuming that people spend more than a few seconds looking at any work of art, and that this theoretical art-goer wanders into the Asian Wing in the first place.)

China buys the understandable, and America buys the incomprehensible. But at the root of it, China and the US aren’t so different. After all, Pollock is just another brand name.

We’ll come back to that another time.

Artist of the Week

One of those Chinese artists that Americans don’t buy is Qi Baishi (齐白石, 1864-1957).  Some foreigners may have actually heard of him when his Eagle Standing on Pine Tree; Four-Character Couplet was sold at auction last year for $65 million. Qi Baishi is arguably one of the most accessible Chinese Guohua painters for the Western palate. His paintings of googly-eyed ducks, bugs, and drunken monks are more true to life than a hundred flowery contemporary social-realist paintings of pretty, naked, possibly underage girls (or Marilyn Monroe, top) surrounded by birds (which can be seen from time to time at the National Art Museum of China). His paintings are simple, concise, and free of frivolous ink washes and itty-bitty temples on the mount. Instead, his focus is the simplicity and truth of life. We are all the same, from humans to shrimp. His piece Studying at Night shows a young boy slumped over his notebook, asleep at his desk. Tongue in cheek was never this good.

He was among a set of Guohua painters including Huang Binhong and Pan Tianshou who were around both before and during Communism in China. At the onset of Mao’s reign, traditional painters were lectured to at Yan’an and given the option of either following the rules or being consigned to hard labor. Qi chose the former, becoming one of the most prominent painters of the traditional style adopted by the Communist Party as artistic harbingers of New China.

But I don’t want to imply that politics has got anything to do with anything. Qi Baishi’s paintings are timeless. Go look at them.

Ask an Artist
Got a question about art? Send to lola@beijingcream.com. This week’s question:

Can one throw shit against a wall and call it art? 

Yes. One can, and one does. That’s actually how most artists get away with illegal acts in a public and foolproof manner. (Can’t touch this.) Most often it’s paint (especially if you consider the floor to be a horizontal wall, making Pollock a perfect example). In 1995, Ai Weiwei, the big guy, photographed himself dropping Han Dynasty vases on the ground (these photos are perfectly stunning). David Hammon in 1981 threw 25 laced-together pairs of shoes on top of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc. Oh yeah, then he urinated on it. So, yes, I would say one can throw things and call it art.

Speaking of urination: A few years ago, students at the Maryland Institute College of Art, one of the foremost art schools in the US, were banned from using bodily fluids in art projects. The ban was imposed after a student threw a jar of his own piss at the wall behind his classmates as a performance piece during a class critique. A golden shower is normally not a good way to treat your critics.

In terms of artists throwing things: As has been said about artist Luk-Khang, “She is likely to pick up and throw things at people she doesn’t like.” This is an apt description, and actually more critical than anything I’ve ever seen written about a contemporary Chinese artist (which says a lot about the state of art criticism in China).

And of course, bringing ourselves to the flabby underbelly of Pop, we had Sarah’s Smash Shack of San Diego, a place where people could pay and suit up to hurl beautiful breakables at metal walls to unwind. Sadly, it is no longer in existence.

Lola B is an artist in Beijing. She can be reached at lola@beijingcream.com. Yishu (pronounced eeshoo) means “art.” There, now you know. |Yishus Archives|

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