Art

posts related to Chinese art

He Huaren (1958-2021)

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Last week, I (belatedly) learned that Taiwan printmaker, illustrator, and bird expert He Huaren (何華仁) passed away in the week prior to Christmas 2021. MCLC Listserve members interested in (woodcut) printmaking and illustration will likely know of his work, and may have purchased books written by He or others, featuring his superb illustrations. He Huaren was also one of Taiwan’s most renowned birders and an activist for the preservation and protection of Taiwan’s bird and wildlife habitat; he was especially fond of raptors. Huaren was extremely generous, ever humble, had an outstanding sense of humor, and loved single malt scotch. Here are some sources on or by He Huaren.

何華仁（1958年－2021年12月18日): https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/何華仁
戰勝腦瘤 何華仁用繪本和版畫記錄台灣野鳥

蘋中人：刻在心上的鷹姿　何華仁
何華仁鳥版畫遺作 預計二月上市       中國時報

Nicholas Kaldis

Animators’ Roundtable Forum

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Source: Association for Chinese Animation Studies (4/21/22)
Animators’ Roundtable Forum: Hong Kong Animation, Zoom Webinar, May 12-14, 2022

The history of Hong Kong animation has always been translocal and transnational. It can be traced back to at least the late 1940s, when some mainland animators and cartoonists in exile like the Wan Brothers, Zhang Guangyu, Liao Bingxiong, and Te Wei made animated shorts and even experimented with the making of an animated feature film in postwar Hong Kong. But the local animated filmmaking did not begin until the 1950s, when advertising companies initiated the practice of using animation in commercials. Live-action filmmakers also began to skillfully incorporate animated special effects into martial arts cinema and experiment with animation techniques in short films. The early 1980s witnessed the rise of animated feature films with the release of Old Master Q series, which were co-productions between Hong Kong and Taiwan. Tsui Hark’s CGI feature A Chinese Ghost Story (1997) involved the professionals and studios in Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China. It was not until 2001 that a locally produced animated feature film, My Life as McDull, made its debut in Hong Kong. With the digital turn in the 1990s, independent animated filmmaking flourished, characterized by a variety of narrative and formal innovations that enriched the international film festivals around the world. Locally produced but marked by a distinct anime style with Hong Kong flavor, Kong Kee’s Dragon Delusions project (2018-present) opened a new path for Hong Kong independent animation. The co-production of Astro Boy (2009) between Hong Kong and the world also blazed a trail for Hong Kong commercial animation. Amidst the global flows of culture, can we still defend the “Hong Kongness” of Hong Kong animation in a floating city that is disappearing? Continue reading →

Manhua Modernity review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Paul Bevan’s review of Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn, by John A. Crespi. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/paul-bevan/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, MCLC book review editor for literary studies, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk A. Denton, MCLC

Manhua Modernity:
Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn

By John A. Crespi

Reviewed by Paul Bevan

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright April, 2022)

John A. Crespi, Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. xiv + 236 pp., incl. 75 ills. ISBN 9780520309104 (paperback).

I have met John Crespi in person only once. I’ve always thought this a pity, because we work in similar areas and explore the same sort of material in our research. Our one and only meeting took place quite by chance in a reading room in the Shanghai Library more than a decade ago, at a time when scholars from outside China took library research and fieldwork for granted. I’d been told in advance by Michel Hockx that John would be in Shanghai at the same time as me, but I had made no plans to meet him. One afternoon in the library, on seeing what appeared to be an American man holding a copy of Zhongguo manhua (中國漫畫), I immediately guessed that this was John and promptly introduced myself. For both of us, the research into manhua and pictorial magazines that we carried out in Shanghai—on this occasion, and on subsequent visits—eventually resulted in our respective monographs.

In the introduction to his book, Crespi tells the captivating story of how he was introduced to manhua in the mid-1990s through piles of dusty volumes in an underground warehouse, a converted bomb shelter belonging to the “China Bookstore’s Old Periodicals Department” (1). Today, at a time when Chinese historical magazines of all types have become highly sought after as collectables in China and abroad, a story of exciting discovery and acquisition such as this seems like a dream of another age. The magazines John purchased at the time became the basis for his hugely valuable project, the digitization of the magazine Modern Sketch, and related websites at Colgate University and MIT’s Visualizing Culture project. Continue reading →

International Exhibition of Chinese Art, 1935 lecture

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Dear all,

We invite you to an online Zoom lecture “Nationalist Internationalism: International Exhibition of Chinese Art, 1935” of Dr. Xing Zhao (Assistant Professor of Art and Design, Nanjing University). The lecture is part of the Lecture Series: Re-examining Modernity and Contemporaneity through Chinese Art (2022/23) at the University of Hong Kong, University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG).

Date/Time (Hong Kong Time): 18/05/2022 13:00-14:00
Venue: Online on Zoom
Language: English
Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=80864
Website: https://www.umag.hku.hk/event/nationalist-internationalism-international-exhibition-of-chinese-art-1935/

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the “International Exhibition of Chinese Art” (1935) in London, which deployed art for public diplomacy and spoke a modern international language that embodied the rising awareness of national culture as promoted by the League of Nations. While the Republican government lacked the fundamental economic and military infrastructure critical for navigating the modern world, the alternative system of soft power and brand nationalism rooted in culture, tradition, and morality assumed the responsibility of communicating a unified image of China as a modern nation-state to the domestic and global audiences. Continue reading →

Yesterday Today Tomorrow review

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Source: Paratext (4/15/22)
Censorhip and Creativity: The Offense of Hong Kong Cinema
By Kuan Chee Wah
Review of Yesterday Today Tomorrow: Hong Kong Cinema with Sino-links in Politics, Art, and Tradition, by Kenny Kwok-kwan Ng (Hong Kong: Chung Hwa Book Co., 2021) (吳國坤，《昨天今天明天：內地與香港電影的政治、藝術與傳統》)

On October 27, 2021, Hong Kong legislators passed an amendment bill on the censorship law, which would allow the government to halt film productions deemed threatening to national security. The amendment was an extension of the national security law which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in July 2020 in the aftermath of the 2019 social protests against the enactment of the criminal extraction bill. Aligned with the national security law, the newly amended censorship regulation bans films that may “endorse, support, glorify, encourage, and incite activities that might endanger national security,” and citizens who hold illegal screenings of these films will face heavy penalties and jail sentence (Yau, Leung, and Ng). Continue reading →

The Father on the Moon

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Source: Association for Chinese Animation Studies (3/24/22)
The Father on the Moon (Yueqiu shang de fuqin), by Hu Xiaojiang. Guangzhou: Huacheng, 2021.
By Sean Macdonald

“Humanity is far from understanding itself. The turning point of civilization’s recklessly unrestrained exploration of the abyss of consciousness has been slow to arrive. Actually, we already know that Hell is our ideal way home (31).”[i] —Hu Xiaojiang, The Father on the Moon

Before I read this book, I was not aware of Hu Xiaojiang 胡晓江 as an independent comic book artist. Therefore, I am approaching this artist from the rather unique perspective of a book of short stories and illustrations. Comics, animation, and gaming have been growing as important cultural industries in China for the past two decades at least. From the limited amount of independent comics I have seen from China, including Hong Kong, such work shares a tendency to be idiosyncratic and personal (for want of better term), and often but not exclusively employs techniques that draw attention to the hand-made aspects of the art, features they share with independent comics outside of China. Although comic book artists often cringe at facile separations between mainstream and non-mainstream work, independent comics are first of all defined by numbers. The readership is lower. Distribution has a lot to do with this. But if a particular form or genre is permitted to thrive economically, niche markets can resolve this problem. Chinese studies has been slow to pick up on the importance of mass visual culture media like comic books and animation. Sometimes this is just a case of a lack of critical tools to discuss different forms of narrative and art. Sometimes it’s just a case of knee-jerk academic ideologies. Shocking as it sounds, some researchers have trouble with the idea of discussing predominant mass media forms. As if the novel isn’t a type of mass print media, for example. Or as if the only valid types of films for classroom discussion and research were independent documentaries and so-called auteur cinema, important in their own right but not the only point of entry for understanding media. Some academics might even question the existence of solid academic readings of certain forms of cultural production because they consider it beneath the cultural institution they represent. It’s a case of “Open up the floodgates, the cartoonists are coming to destroy real literature and film” or something like that. Thankfully there is academic freedom. Continue reading →

“Into the Tiger’s Den”

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Julia Keblinska’s translation of “Into the Tiger’s Den,” volume 3 of a lianhuanhua (serial comic) adapted from Qu Bo’s novel Tracks in the Snowy Forest. Find a teaser below. For the full translation, with images of each panel, see: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/into-the-tigers-den/. My gratitude to Julia Keblinska for sharing her work with the MCLC community.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Into the Tiger’s Den 深入虎穴

Adapted from the novel by Qu Bo 曲波 Tracks in the Snowy Forest 林海雪原
Wang Xingbei 王星北 (adaptation); Luo Xing 罗兴 and Wang Yiqiu 王亦秋 (illustrations)[1]

Translated by Julia Keblinska

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright March 2022)

Content Summary:

The second volume, “Troops Divide onto Three Roads,” tells the story of a small detachment of soldiers who capture the bandit Luan Ping and search out the “Vanguard Map” of Nipple Mountain’s Horse Cudgel Xu. They then divide into three groups and set out to trace the enemy’s tracks.

This volume follows Yang Zirong as he disguises himself as a bandit and, with only a horse for company, enters the bandit nest on Tiger Mountain to become a deputy colonel under Mountain Vulture. Meanwhile, we also learn how the small detachment mobilizes the masses at Jiapi Valley Village. They organize a civilian-army team, practice skiing, and enthusiastically prepare to annihilate the cruel bandits.

The next volume, “Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy,” recounts how Yang Zirong rejoins the small detachment and destroys Mountain Vulture’s bandit gang together with them.

(1) After Yang Zirong left the small detachment, he rode the speedy steed captured at Nipple Mountain. Following in the footsteps Big Chump had left in the snow, he traveled alone through the forest with only his horse for company. He now sported a full-faced beard and long hair; he looked just like a real bandit. [click here to read the entire text]

Chinese Lianhuanhua in Translation

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The ReadChina project is pleased to announce the launching of a webpage containing a few Chinese lianhuanhua in translation, including images, Chinese original, English translation, and brief introduction to the respective comics. We hope that colleagues may find this a useful resource for research and teaching this medium.

https://readchina.github.io/comics/

Best,

Lena Henningsen
Freiburg University

Trans Asia Photography (Fall 2021)

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We are thrilled to announce that the Fall 2021 issue of Trans Asia Photography is now available online at transasiaphotography.org. 

NOW AVAILABLE: “Asia,” VOL. 11, NO. 2 (FALL 2021)

“Asia”: An Introduction by Yi Gu

Two Leaves and a Bud: Tea and The Body Through a Colonial Lens by Leila Anne Harris

Disobedient Photobook: Photobooks and the Protest Image in Contemporary Hong Kong by Wing Ki Lee

Photojournalism and Social Movement as “Theatre”: A Critical Reading of “The Sunflower Movement” Photographs by Li-Hsin Kuo, translated by Zinan Jiang

Why Trans People Stand: The Performance of Postcoloniality and Power in Portraiture by Jun Zubillaga-Pow

The Making of Henri Cartier-Bresson: China 1948-1949, 1958, by Ying-lung Su, translated by Jinsheng Zhao

Cartier-Bresson is Here by Yongquan Jin, translated by Jinsheng Zhao

Kaneko Ryūichi and the History of Japanese Photography by Yoshiaki Kai Continue reading →

BFA performance art protest

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Source: China Digital Times (12/1/21)
Translation: Blanket Censorship of Performance Art Piece Protesting Beijing Film Academy Campus Lockdown
Posted by Anne Henochowicz

A male student, wearing a face mask as a blindfold, lounges in a small cage as part of a performance art piece.

A performance art piece by a student who sat in a cage to protest a draconian lockdown of the Beijing Film Academy (BFA) recently went viral, and was censored just as quickly. Like many other Chinese citizens, university students have been living under strict lockdowns, and are beginning to chafe at the restrictions—and at administrators’ lack of responsiveness to students’ concerns. With the appearance of the omicron variant and fears of new COVID-19 outbreaks if protocols are relaxed, even more Chinese schools and universities are instituting lockdowns.

The following is a full translation of the CDT Chinese article “Blanket Censorship of Performance Art Piece Protesting Beijing Film Academy Campus Lockdown”:

On November 22, a performance art piece by a Beijing Film Academy student began making the rounds on Weibo: the student sits in a cage, wearing a face mask over his eyes like a blindfold. A sign atop the cage reads, “Don’t leave the cage unless strictly necessary” (非必要不出笼); an online commentary on the performance notes that the sign is a riff on the school’s unwritten COVID-19 policy, “Don’t leave campus unless strictly necessary” (非必要不出校), interpreting the performance as a critique of Beijing Film Academy’s brute, indefinite lockdown of its campus. Continue reading →

Indigenous artist to represent Taiwan at Venice Biennale

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Source: Focus Taiwan (11/19/21)
Indigenous artist to represent Taiwan at 2022 Venice Biennale
By Ken Wang

Artist Sakuliu (right) and the exhibition

Artist Sakuliu (right) and the exhibition’s curator Patrick Flores. Photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Taipei, Nov. 19 (CNA) A veteran Indigenous artist will represent Taiwan at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, which is organizing the Taiwan Pavilion at the event, said on Friday.

Sakuliu, an artist from Taiwan’s Paiwan people, will create a spiritual site at the Taiwan Pavilion and fill it with new works including sculptures, installation, and animation inspired by the Paiwan mythology and culture, the museum said.

The exhibition, titled “Kinerapan: Right of Crawling,” will tell a contemporary story through the traditional Paiwan narrative.

“Kinerapan” is a Paiwan word, which carries a wide range of meanings from the “crawling” of a plant to “scope, distance and depth,” such as the area covered by a vast forest, the distance traveled by a river, or the space inhabited by a species. The word also implies the farthest distance one’s imagination can reach, according to the museum. Continue reading →

Badiucao show goes on

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Source: NYT (11/12/21)
The Show Goes On, Even After China Tried to Shut It Down
An Italian city rejected a request from the Chinese Embassy in Rome to cancel an exhibition by Badiucao, an artist who has been described as the Chinese Banksy.
By Elisabetta Povoledo

Badiucao in front of one of his works, “Carrie Lam,” a portrait of Hong Kong’s chief executive, at Santa Giulia Museum in Brescia, Italy. Credit…Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

BRESCIA, Italy — With a week to go before his first solo exhibition, the Chinese-Australian artist Badiucao was in head-down work mode: installing the show during the day, and sharpening hundreds of pencils with a knife at night.

Set closely together, the pencils — 3,724 in all — were part of an installation in the show “China Is (Not) Near,” which opens Saturday in the municipal museum of Brescia, an industrial city in the northern Italian region of Lombardy.

After a decade building an online following as a political cartoonist by lambasting China, whether for its censorship (and Western complicity in it), its treatment of the Uyghur minority, or the crackdown in Hong Kong, Badiucao said he was keen to show work in a traditional institutional setting.

He wasn’t always so forthcoming. Until not so long ago, Badiucao had been so concerned about reprisals from the Chinese government that he had kept his identity a secret, eliciting comparisons to the British street artist Banksy. He revealed his face in a 2019 documentary, and now says that he’s found safety in exposure, though he still prefers to use his artist name. Continue reading →

M+ Museum opens and is already in danger

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Source: NYT (11/12/21)
Hong Kong’s M+ Museum Is Finally Open. It’s Already in Danger
The museum, billed as Asia’s premier art institution, faced construction delays and personnel problems. Now it faces its greatest challenge: the threat of censorship.
By Vivian Wang

As the M+ Museum in Hong Kong opened on Friday, its greatest challenge was just materializing: the threat of censorship from the Chinese Communist Party. Credit…Tyrone Siu/Reuters

HONG KONG — M+, Hong Kong’s sprawling new contemporary art museum, ran into problems from the start. Billed as Asia’s premier visual institution, it was four years behind schedule and an undisclosed amount over budget. Several top executives departed during the decade-long development period. At one point, an 80-foot-wide sinkhole formed on the construction site.

As the museum opened on Friday, its greatest challenge was just materializing: the threat of censorship from the Chinese Communist Party.

M+ envisioned itself as a world-class institution that could make its home city a cultural heavyweight, but those ambitions are now directly clashing with a new national security law imposed by Beijing to crush dissent.

Even before the opening, pro-Beijing figures criticized pieces in the M+ collection as an insult to China and called for them to be banned. Officials have promised to scrutinize every exhibition for illegal content. Continue reading →

A Conversation with Cui Weiping and Wen Pulin

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Dear all,

A reminder that our online event to celebrate the second issue of the Chinese Independent Cinema Observer,  “Chinese Avant-Garde Art of the 1980s: A Conversation with Cui Weiping and Wen Pulin”, is taking place this Saturday, 6 November, 13:30 UK time. 

If you wish to attend, remember to register in advance in order to receive the Zoom link via email:

Luke Robinson luke.robinson@sussex.ac.uk