Cont'd
Mystische Körfe (Mystical Head) : head in blue: oil on linen-structured paper on cardboard 1918 by Russian painter Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941) working in Germany. He wrote in 1939: "Every artist works in a tradition...I am a native Russian. My Russian soul was always close to old Russian art, to Russian icons, Byzantine art, the mosaics of Ravenna, Venice, Rome and Roman art. All these arts have always caused a holy vibration as I was sensing a deeply spiritual spiritual language there. This art was my tradition.". He used as his model in his series Mystic Head, the head of the young artist Emmy "Galka" Scheyer, who became his agent and promoter during his exile in Switzerland in 1917, systematically reducing it into a more and more abstract form and colors to convey the sense of "transcendence". He marked it "Heilandgesicht" (savior face).
Composition (nature morte) 1937 by Fernand Léger (1881-1955) a work in such the lyricism of the what he considered the 3 essential elements of a painting: volume, lines and color are given equal emphasis in perfect harmony.
Le Tapis Rouge dans le paysaage 1952 (when Léger was71). As he explained later, the picture is made up of the harmonious relationship between 3 forces: volumes, lines and colors and that although objects and elements of reality may enter into a composition and give it more richness, they must be subordinated to the three essential elements.
Sunflower 1930 a water color by Emil Nolde (1867-1956), a favorite subject through which he could fully indulge his love of the musicality of colors without losing contact with Nature. Nolde is a German-Danish painter and a member of the Expressionist group Die Brücke.
Concetto Spaziale 1960: ceramic by Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968). In his "Manifesto blanco"( White Manifesto) 1946, Fontana declared his theory of "Specialismo" (Specificism): exploring a new experience of space for both painting and sculpture: concerned with opening up spaces by slashing his monochrome canvasses in 1958 with a sharp knife to create the illusion of an infinite space behind them to incorporate "emptiness" as an element of his art.
Le clown au cirque 1969 : oil on canvas by Marc Chagall. After completing a hundred gouaches on the Fables of La Fontaine for his dealer Ambroise Vollard in 1927, he was asked by him to start a similar series on the circus and for this purpose made available to him Vollard's own box at the Cirque d'Hiver from which Chagall could take as much time as he needed to make his sketches. Chagall returns time and again to images he found at the circus for the rest of his life.
Fragments from a Fractured Union 2007 in ink, gouache and acrylic on paper by American abstract painter and sculptor Aaron Curry (b. 1972)
Portrait of Jean Kalina 1984 in gouache, water color, acrylic, oil stick, China marker, Indian ink, wax crayon and paper collage on two joined sheets of paper by Jean Michel-Basquiat (1960-1988) whose art focused on "suggestive dichotomies" like wealth Vs poverty, integration Vs segregation, and inner Vs outer experience and appropriated poetry, drawing and painting, and married text and image,abstraction and figuration and historical information mixed with contemporary critique . Basquiat used his social commentary as a "springboard to deeper truths about the individual" as well as attacks on the power structures of racism and the oppression of the underdogs.
Wood Blocks 2013-14 by Zhao Zhao (趙趙) (b. 1982) in Xinjiang, made of 100 woodblocks which formed the "negatives" of luxury furniture recovered from a defunct Italian furniture manufacturer in Shanghai which he had sanded and polished so that they take on a new and independent life of their own, as part of the artist's attempt to preserve and renew Chinese culture by salvaging what would otherwise be discarded from its past.
Black Screen No. 6 in mixed media by Chinese artist Yan Heng (閠珩) (b. 1982) whose works combine people, used electronic objects and incidents that surround him in his daily life by way of critique of man's excessive reliance on objects grasping the world, learning by rote regardless of individual differences in character and ability, simply for the sake of maintaining authority and social control. .
Maio Xiaochun (繆曉春) (b. 1964) who studied first at Central Academy of
Fine Arts in Beijing and then the Kunsthochschule in Kassel, Germany. His explores human life through the rhythms of music in which human figures dance through space in disintegrating linear elements and spherical forms.
Elephant whose tusks look re-assembled from parts by digital artist Gao Lei (高磊) (b. 1980)
There is no glow of the sunrise by Chinese artist from Honan Sun Yanchu (孫彦初)
(b. 1978)
(b. 1978)
A delightful painting on fabric and threads
Man, animals, birds and reptile
another view of the sculpture
Untitled 2014: pastel on paper by Michael Williams
An elegantly shaped abstract sculpture
Smiling Figure on Purple & Gold 2014 in acrylic, charcoal and pastel on linen by George Condo (b. 1957), an American
who first studied the guitar and musical composition, later worked in
silk screen printing shop and then drew, painted and made prints first
in Boston, then in New York and is involved in punk blues bands.
Another painting by George Condo
his Gelitin
What looks like an intricate embroidery but is not
A Buddha overcome by fire?
A work by American artist Nate Lowman (b. 1979) according to whom: “It’s a shame when other people’s gambling habits change the meaning of paintings or when fluctuations of value start to dictate how people perceive art because it’s too expensive to be interesting or moving. That’s when I get bummed out.” His material and themes are unified by his part-trash, part-classical aesthetic. “I make images from things I find serendipitously. I don’t know what it is, but I know it when I see it. It could be from a newspaper, on the street. It could be something I fell over.”
By whichever artist this work is, it looks full of fun!
Another work on ink or charcoal by Robert Motherwell?
Schlesiches Himmelreich, Elfenreich, 2014 by Jörg Herold (b. 1965). According to flier about him at the exhibition, this digital photograph, with a dye bath, stain, acrylic watercolor on paper by Herold, who calls himself a "documentary archaeologist", he creates actions, films, installations and drawings that focus on cultural memory and historical cross-references as he follows the mechanism of thinking, securing, storing and researching. He says about his research on Silesian's Kingdom of Heaven in his "In Fall 2013. In pictures, texts, and talks, I collected everything graspable and imaginary from a country that today exists without borders. Silesia, at the same time Prussian, Polish, German and Czech, is many hundreds of years old. Everyone called it his homesleand. Silesia as part of German history is the past. But as a beacon in teh spirit in its former inhabitants, it is still alive. Fed by everyday remembrances and deeds of superhuman heroes and intellectual elites....Nature, greener than anywhere else, its grass more radiant, its water clearer, and tis mountains are radiant backdrops for spectacular sunrises and sunsets. Those are the tales of the past. Newer stories speak of flight and expulsion, destruction and decay. New people take half-hearted care of what was left behind. For centuries, patina grew on buildings and pictures--ideologically masked and subjected to high pressure cleansing. They lie cold and without time's traces in the midst of newly built tracts, bleak landscapes, bleak legacy...More than a hundred motifs, cut out of scrapbooks, reprocessed and pinned on the walls like post-its, provide an inkling of the vanished richness of sensual worlds: one senses the presence of an eternal, magical power, Small bolts of lightning and shadows wipe color across the picture. Vagueness develops into a trace, a form, figures that wait for the viewer to charge them with new energy and history. In this way, Silesia reinvents itself again and again--eternally existing as the memory of memory."
A work based on light projection
Fallen Love 2014 : oil on canvas by Chinese artist Tao Fa
Translucent Green 2015: oil con canvas by Chinese landscape painter Hong Ling (洪凌) (b. 1955).
Another of his paintings
Silence 2014 collage on canvas by Tan Jun (譚軍) (b. 1973) This is how he explains his works: "a kind random lonely purposeless drifting apart in the space between life and imagination: the loneliness , fragility, powerlessness and the love and compassion this gives rise to...a kind of fragile, subtle, soft, uneventful, humble drifting... a kind of loss which leaves behind emptiness and sorrow which some of have to carry on our backs, something which defines us as 'human'...painting is my way of expressing that space for which words are inadequate....I try my best to to feel, to discover, create and express all kinds of organic or inorganic fragility and solitudes, hoping thereby to reach and touch the hearts of those who feel the same way through their eyes."
Silence 9 2015: collage on canvas by Tan Jun
Wish from Xishan Dianchi to Varanassi 2013-14: acrylic on canvas 2013-14 by Mao Xu Hui (矛須澮)(b 1956), leader in the South West Art Group in the mid-1980s. This is what he told Andrew Cohen of Art Asia: "I paint primarily from my daily life—my feelings are my source of
creativity. Painting from emotions and sentiment as opposed to concepts
is something that is particularly applicable to painters and artists
from the southwestern region, including Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.I think of myself as a fragmented person with many styles. As a
younger man I was more extroverted, but recently I’ve became more
introverted. Also, from 1982 to 1993 I drank a lot. I had health
problems, so I stopped. As my lifestyle changed, my painting style
changed as well. This is the price we all paid for the dynamic and
passionate 1980s when I had long hair, wore jeans, drank a lot and was a rebellious youth
who debated philosophical issues. I read a lot of Western philosophy and
literature because it was a period when China was opening up, making a
lot of translations available. I read various Hermann Hesse novels,
Proust, Kafka and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926)—books
about existentialism, the search for the self. I was listening to a lot
of Stravinsky. We couldn’t access most rock. We got a lot of folk music,
like the Carpenters. And for some reason we got to listen to Pink
Floyd—my favorite album of theirs was The Wall (1979). Zhang Xiaogang and I often hung out listening to the same music. We
first met in 1976 [at the end of the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76],
when I was “sent down” to do labor in the countryside. Zhang had also
been sent down to the same village. We clicked intellectually.In 1982 a German Expressionist exhibit was held at the Cultural
Palace of Nationalities in Beijing. My classmates and I took a train to
Beijing for three days and three nights. We were such eager students
that we noted down the colors of each painting in the margins of the
black-and-white catalog. I consider myself a student of German Expressionism. That exhibition
liberated me. In the academy we were always taught to paint technically,
and in particular styles. When I saw the garish use of thick paint and
heavy shapes in that work, I realized that I could paint how I felt. In
1983 there was also an Edvard Munch exhibition that came to Kunming—this
also had a big effect on me.Did your exposure to these movements and artists influence your “Private Space” series (1986–89), which is notable for its depictions of male and female nudes?
I felt I was taking a risk with this expression of emotion (depiction of male and female nudes in the series "Private Space" ). Very few people painted such intimate portraits because it went against the grain of Chinese culture and society at the time. These paintings came shortly after the Cultural Revolution, when art was still viewed from a highly politicized, nonartistic perspective. It was very stressful to paint these during that era. Most people would have found these works ugly—anything sexual was taboo. Painting these works felt like committing a crime. There was always the fear that someone would come knocking on the door.... In the “Gui Mountain” series I used a primitive style, like Henri Rousseau’s, because I thought it had a naïveté and a purity that suited a utopian ideal such as a return to nature. At that time I was looking at the work of Latin American painters, such as Diego Rivera, and reading Latin American literature, such as Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). I liked the magical realist elements.
I often go to Gui Mountain with Zhang Xiaogang, and I always take my students there for painting retreats. Many more kids today grow up in cities and it’s hard for them to focus. Some students can’t complete classroom assignments. I find they improve quickly when they get out into the countryside. They are freer when surrounded by nature. [Referring to “Parent” series (1988–93) about his daughter He Jing about parenthood]. There probably is a relationship, but it’s a combination of things. As well as showing my daughter, I think I was originally trying to depict myself, because some of the portraits have high cheekbones like me. Or, perhaps I was painting the Chinese family from my memories—a traditional Chinese-style portrait. In fact, I used the term “family portrait” to describe these works even before Zhang Xiaogang. In February 1989 I exhibited these first pieces from the series in the 1989 “China Avant-Garde” exhibition at the China Art Gallery [now the National Art Gallery] in Beijing.
How did the subsequent June crackdown in Tiananmen Square influence your work?
I was working at a film company in Kunming as a movie-poster designer when the [June Tiannmen Square] crackdown happened local youth protests that had been staged every night suddenly stopped. Everyone was very anxious and thought that this would be the start of another Cultural Revolution. This anxiety lasted for over a month. For the next two months, I was unable to paint. I was just too nervous. Once I started again, I painted a lot—over 40 works that August. Within a few months I used up every paint surface, every canvas, in my home. These works came from a profound sense of failure. It was a tragic, pessimistic and hopeless time. Through painting works such as Imitation of the Death of Marat (1989), which is based on David’s 18th-century painting of the French revolutionary dying in a bathtub after being stabbed, I was able to express my fear and anxiety.In a sense, yes, [the state is the parent figure] but more specifically it represented this idea of central authority. After Tiananmen I thought more about the issue of centralized authority in Chinese culture, which has a history that spans thousands of years. We were continuously hearing about detentions and interrogations, so I decided to paint people in an interrogation chair, in a very tormented state of mind. Then I felt there was a shift in the nature of the person in the seat. Instead of being the person under interrogation, he became the interrogator—someone with power. If you compare A Man Sitting in the Black Chair (1989) with Parent in the Black Chair (1989), one man is in a passive position, looked down on from above—he is being tortured or interrogated. Then in the later work the man is now in a position of power, being looked up at. I never went back to painting the frightened, passive figures. They became progressively more intimidating and powerful.Yes, that’s a very important link. Years later I read a line from one of Kafka’s letters to his father about the father sitting up high in a chair. I was amazed to have had such a similar thought. That period was about two main issues: one was death and the other was power." When asked "Later, the series takes us through a stretched and abstracted tunnel. Is this a variation of the man in the chair?" he said:
"This is a projection of how I feel whenever I have to deal with the authorities, whether I’m applying for a permit or going to a government office. It’s such a long process and feels like going through a tunnel. You feel uncertain—like in Kafka’s world. Also, I was incorporating ancient underground burial sites into these works. This is when I started to portray my thoughts and views on Chinese culture and history, to analyze and reflect on what had happened in ’89....Yes, first it was a chair and a person where you can still discern one from the other. Then in later works they are fused into one powerful monster that you can no longer separate. It goes up and never ends—the power and the person. When asked: Why the sudden change from abstraction to figuration—images of keys, bicycles and hands held up in victory/peace signs—in your “Glossary of Power” series (1993)?, he says: "This period marked a very important turning point in Chinese art. I was still working on “Parent” when Political Pop and Cynical Realism started to emerge. “Glossary of Power” was a response to the popularization of those movements. Zhang Xiaogang, Zhou Chunya and I had many discussions about how best to make art more accessible. The catchphrase back then was “How can we relate to the greater world under the banner of internationalization?” Pop was more direct than abstract art. Figuration was more accessible. The key can either give access to things or prohibit it; keys can open or lock doors. This image is also related to “Parent.” Parents often have a lot of keys. As do prison wardens. The image of the hand holding up two fingers is both a sign of support and victory for the students at the time. The victory sign was the most prevalent symbol used in Tiananmen Square. It was also a symbol of power. To me, in my paintings, it represents failure and tragedy. I wanted to document this because everyone was holding up the victory sign. Looking back, it was very naïve. Kunming is changing. There are more scooters and fewer bikes now. I like bikes better; scooters scare me. The authorities are moving trees to widen the boulevard and accommodate more traffic. There is a lot of forced demolition—the current mayor is very insistent about implementing these changes. There have been protests against the destruction of Qing-dynasty homes. People here are conscious, but helpless. To the question, We first see the defined scissors among other figurative objects in your “Daily Epic” series (1994). Why, out of all the other objects—the pills, the bottles, the pens, the paint brushes—did you fixate on scissors, he replies: "I’m not sure why I chose scissors over all the others. I know that when I painted them, it just felt right. Over time, the scissors grew in size until they took over the entire canvas.Most of these paintings were made after the mid-1990s. I think the flatness of the aesthetic is directly related to the opening up and commercialization of China. We were exposed to more advertisements. It was a time of rapid development and urbanization. For people like me, the sense of social isolation and distance that grew in developing cities was very hard to accept.
During that time I realized society didn’t need passion. People
didn’t want to talk about ideals, poetry or music—they seemed like
laughable topics. It was all about efficiency, production and
effectiveness. None of the advertising slogans had anything to do with
passion; they were about mass production. Ads for major luxury brands
were beautiful but alienating. At the time, it seemed like the market
was just vaguely linked to us as artists—nothing like the art bubble of
2007. I found it scary but seductive....I saw all these other artists making headlines and I wanted to find
out why. I took my earliest scissor works to Beijing, but no one was
interested.I felt destitute for several years. I decided to come back to Kunming
because I had no inspiration from the city. I was there for half a year
and didn’t paint a single thing. The 1980s and early 1990s were more drastic and violent. I spent much
of the 1990s coping with changes. Now I’m calmer, resigned to the fact
that this is how society is—increasingly commercial, dominated by a few
major brands. More and more, I see the importance of branding in
artwork—symbols. Even so, it bothers me on a conceptual and intellectual
level. But as it comes from outside influences, it can’t really be
helped. When asked about repeating himself, he replies:I’m fully aware of this criticism....my repetition is different. For me it’s more about the importance of having
a trademark, something you know is yours. In reality my scissor
paintings are not as successful as my other series and don’t sell for
more. I make them to have an identity. Certainly, in
contemporary China there is a fear of one’s works being
indistinguishable from others’. I felt that way from 1999 to 2008, but
no longer. Giorgio Morandi’s paintings mattered so much to me because in
spite of all this criticism I can still persist on this track. By
painting bottles he found God. Similarly, I hope to attain spiritual
understanding through painting scissors. But it’s very hard.I feel that artworks don’t really have a spiritual
life until they interact with people, and not just when presented in
museums; it’s through the dialogue established when people look at them
that they come to life. For example, my works are alive to you. Even
though I’m from Kunming and you’re from New York, this spiritual
exchange is alive and I feel good about it."
Purple Garden 2014 oil on canvas by the same artist
A Room left Empty 2011-14, same artist
Beautiful New World by Zhao Bao
Beautiful New World No. 7 2014
Untitled 1996 acrylic and black gesso on wood in 3 work panels by German painter, graphic designer, sculptor and photographer Günther Förg (1952-2013)
To be cont'd
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