Our friends at Beijing Today swing by now and then to introduce art and culture in the city.

Carousels, Ferris wheels and bumper cars are the characters of artist Huang Saifeng’s amusement-themed paintings. His style blends fairytale settings with the dreamy feel of fading memory to evoke powerful nostalgia.

For most people, amusement parks are associated with happiness and fun. But the lonely amusement parks Huang creates are hard to connect with such uplifting concepts. Even when a lone figure appears it is just a shot of his back. Carousels dominate his pictures – so much so that many viewers mistake his work for mere paintings of the rides.

Huang’s technique is primarily inspired by childhood regret. “Although most children have some memory of visiting an amusement park, for some reason I was never able to go,” Huang said. “Even though I can go any time I want today, the feeling is totally different from what a child would experience.”

He compares his choice of subjects to Michael Jackson’s decision to build a large, private amusement park when he became rich.

In preparation for the series, Huang listened to the song “Xuan Mu” by Faye Wang. “I was inspired. The lyrics are about a carousel. I think it fits my creation – the topic of fleeting time.”

Huang said the painting “So Close, So Far Away” (below) best captures his personal regret over lost experiences. He painted it after a sad meeting up with two former classmates.

“We hadn’t spoken in a long time – since graduation really – but when we got together we didn’t have much to say,” he said. When the three passed by an inflatable amusement park, Huang felt their awkward atmosphere was in sharp contrast to that of the happy children playing inside.

“The seated man is my portrait,” Huang said, pointing at the picture. “Silent and lonely, I’m waiting for my friends to come. Sadly, they may never arrive.”

This post originally appeared in Beijing Today.

Our friends at Beijing Today swing by now and then to introduce art and culture in the city.

It’s hard to find anyone without an opinion about this city, be it a fear of pollution, heavy traffic or some other widely reported negative attribute.

But Beijing isn’t all bad.

Tasty snacks, magnificent architecture and a comparatively cosmopolitan environment are among the city’s selling points, which is what artist Tian Li attempts to capture in his work.

Tian’s paintings skip over human figures to focus on buildings. Majestic palaces, ancient city walls and narrow alleys dominate his canvas. Tian appears to love Beijing. Or to be more exact, he loves to paint Beijing.

Tian’s life experiences have greatly influenced his creative process. He followed his parents to Beijing from Liaoning province when he was 10 years old. Since then, he has spent most of his life in the city. After 50 years, he knows Beijing better than most natives.

His obsession comes at the cost of total exclusion of all other locations. “Art originates from life and should draw deeply on personal experience,” he said. An artist who plans to paint a city should live there for a long time to avoid missing its soul.

“I have traveled many beautiful places like Huangshan and Guilin. They are certainly amazing, but I’m not going to depict these places with the superficial eyes of a tourist,” he said.

It’s easy to find themes in Tian’s art. Reds and yellows – the colors of ancient palaces – dominate most of the pictures.

China regards red as a festive color and a symbol of dignity and luck. As early as 30,000 ago, ancient people began decorating their caves with red hues. After the Zhou Dynasty, Chinese palaces were mostly decorated with red.

As for the wide use of yellow, the color is tied to China’s search for its origins. Han civilization began in the Yellow River Valley by the loess plateau. Yellow has been the official color of imperial power and authority since the Han Dynasty: in feudal times it was reserved for use by the royal family.

Tian’s work is divided into block prints and oil paintings. Block prints make up most of his earlier work, though he has moved away from the medium due in part to its difficulty. Block printing is a medium of subtraction and requires the artist to start over completely to correct even minor mistakes, he said.

But the simple colors of block prints are perfectly suited to depicting Beijing’s hutongs – the antithesis of palace life. While the palace was a land of riches and luxury, the hutongs were humble dwellings associated with simplicity or poverty.

“Maybe in the future I will use wash painting to depict Beijing,” he said. Regardless of which medium he chooses next, it’s a safe bet that Tian’s sole subject matter will continue to be the city’s spirit.

This post originally appeared in Beijing Today.

Our friends at Beijing Today swing by now and then to introduce art and culture in the city.

Most people might not give Chinese posters a second thought, but Wang Yuqing has dedicated himself to collecting and studying them as historical records.

Often dismissed as propaganda, the posters reveal much about the social culture, economy and politics of modern Chinese history.

Archive of the Ages

Wang Yuqing maintains one of the largest collections of Chinese posters printed between 1912 and 1975, a staggering collection which offers insights into Old Shanghai life and the positive energy that followed the founding of New China.

His posters from Old Shanghai represent one of the first appearances of popular art in China. When the Qing Dynasty was forced to open Shanghai as a treaty port after the first Opium War (1840-1842), the city began modernizing at a breakneck pace.

The calendar pictures were originally created as advertisements for foreign commodities. Most feature beautiful young models with dates marked in both the Chinese and Gregorian calendars. The remainder of the poster area is used to introduce products.

Drawn by attractive young women, Shanghai’s residents embraced the calendars and quickly spread them to Chinese communities abroad.

The style, which depicts women with egg-white skin, was the invention of Chinese painter Zheng Mantuo. In 1914, Zheng applied watercolor painting techniques to create Wan Zhuang Tu, the first calendar picture. From then on, the brushwork was copied to develop more posters.

As the market evolved, the advertisements changed. Images of happy families replaced charming ladies in the Republican era. Eventually, the style faded from popularity and the painting techniques were lost, Wang said.

In the new era, the Old Shanghai calendars gave way to political posters with exaggerated features. In Huasheng Chuang, a fat boy is seen swinging on a massive peanut as a sign of agricultural abundance.

During the Great Leap Forward, the posters shifted from showing blissful liberated families to dependable workers and farmers.

Fading History

For various reasons, well preserved original posters are hard to come by. Most sold in the markets are modern fakes or copies that lose the stories that gave the propaganda context, Wang said.

To share his collection and the history behind the art, Wang held an exhibition at Beijing Dezi Art Center in June and July.

“At present, the price of these posters is not even close to their real value. I think one day the world will recognize their real value,” he said. As an accurate record of historical attitudes rather than circumstances, the posters represent an element that is often lost in historical studies.

Compiled over the last 24 years, Wang’s collection of nearly 4,000 posters offers a rare bridge to China’s recent past.

This post originally appeared in Beijing Today.

Update, 7:26 pm: we got ahold of more posters:

Our friends at Beijing Today swing by now and then to introduce art and culture in the city.

Artists and writers seeking the pinnacle of Chinese civilization often turn to the Tang Dynasty, an era of openness and innovation credited with fostering some of the finest art and poetry in the history of Han civilization.

It’s no surprise that such an amazing era would provide similar inspiration to Xu Songbo, a professor at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, who attempts to capture the Tang spirit in his breathtaking oil compositions. They are collected in Tang Feng, his exhibition open until this Thursday at New Millennium Gallery in 798 Art District.

Xu focuses on the Tang Dynasty’s obsession with horsemanship and the hunt. Lin Yuan Ta Ge Tu depicts a well-dressed rider taking in the northern scenery. In Xia Ke Xing, a mounted archer searches for prey as his horse charges ahead.

Few creatures other than horses and humans make an appearance in Xu’s works. “I grew up in the 70s, and our generation had comic books instead of cartoons. Most of the comics told the stories of ancient dynasties, and the horse was the finest vehicle of the era,” he said. “Horses have been burned into my mind since childhood.”

But Xu’s works show as much of his own affinity for equines as the noble animal’s status in Chinese culture.

The horse arrived in China with the charioteers of the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BC). By 400 BC, they had become a symbol of prestige in addition to a tool of warfare.

Judging by idiomatic expressions, the horse is second only to the dragon among China’s beloved animals. A willful person is often compared to “having the vigor of a dragon or a horse,” and horses are said to pave the way to success. Some scholars even judge the success of ancient dynasties by the development of their horse culture.

“If we evaluate Tang by such criteria, it would be the heyday of the nation,” Xu said.

Tang rulers embraced the horse like no other Han-founded dynasty. The majority of cultural relics like the Six Steeds of the Zhao Mausoleum and Tri-color Horse prove that argument. Tang’s equine obsession has its roots in the Xianbei, an ancient group of Mongolic nomads who once dominated today’s eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and Northeast China. Historical records show that the founders of Tang were Han Chinese generals who had been in the employ of the Xianbei state. As military men experienced in nomadic warfare, they brought the love of the horse to the imperial court.

Tang was one of the greatest powers in the world during its era, annexing many of its neighboring states and maintaining diplomatic relations with South and West Asian powers, the Abbasid Caliphate and a handful of European nations. For tributary states in the Tarim Basin or Transoxiana, fine steeds were a customary gift for the court.

The Tang Dynasty may have been the most cosmopolitan era in China history. Long noted for its religious tolerance and comparatively free exchange of cultures, Tang’s pluralism is something Xu attempts to reflect in his paintings. In Qiu Feng Jin, several of the men are depicted in the costume of other ethnic groups and wielding distinct weapons.

“As an artist, Xu uses positive energy to recast the zeitgeist of bygone eras in the perspective of modern people,” said Zhang Siyong, the curator. Xu previously explored traditional culture in his Chang Feng and Dao Wen series.

“When I was a little boy, the poems my teacher taught gave me an obscure impression about Tang,” Xu said. “I started to understand it better when painting comic books in university.” He continued his studies in the Mural Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Art.

But Xu’s attempt to recapture the spirit of Tang Dynasty is the result of an uncomfortable fact: Chinese culture is wandering further and further from its roots. Although many now recognize the importance of preserving China’s cultural roots, few take any meaningful action to preserve them.

Xu says Han costume fans and students of literature only preserve the shell of Chinese tradition while losing sight of its spirit. From his point of view, the spirit of traditional culture can be summed up as one of confidence, freedom, tolerance, wisdom, romance and initiative.

“It will take the effort of several generations to find our roots – the spirit of traditional culture,” Xu said.

New Millennium Gallery

Through October 16
Room 3818, 798 Art District, Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang
(010) 6432 4122
Free

This post originally appeared in Beijing Today.