When Wang Hanzheng, a Chinese student at the Royal College of Art, attended a graduate show in a warehouse on Brick Lane in east London in July, he found the space crowded, unimaginative and unfit for presenting art. It was with this in mind that at 11pm one night earlier this month Wang and a team of 22 others painted a Chinese political slogan in bold red characters along a nearby wall stretching nearly 100 metres. The artwork – which spelled out the Chinese government’s “socialist core values”, including the…
Tag: Art
Where’s the Controversy in ‘Philip Guston Now’?
When “Philip Guston Now” opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington this spring, I could practically hear the collective sigh of relief on my Instagram feed. In 2020, shortly after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the nationwide protests that followed, the four museums organizing a retrospective of his work announced a four-year delay of the exhibition, citing the need to make sure they were contextualizing Guston’s paintings — which include a series of cartoonish images of Klansmen as bumbling Keystone Kops — with proper sensitivity.…
China tries to shut down Australian artist’s show promoted by image of cannibalistic Xi
A Chinese-Australian artist has called for more support from the Australian government after Chinese officials tried to shut down his latest show in Poland. The artist, who goes by the name Badiucao, is due to launch his latest exhibition at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw on Friday. <gu-island name="TweetBlockComponent" deferuntil="visible" props="{"element":{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TweetBlockElement","html":" #Breaking 🇵🇱 @u_jazdowski art center ‘s website is briefly down for unknown reason.The art center is hosting my new exhibition #TellChinasStoryWell on June 16.Yesterday Chinese embassy visited venue again to express complain against the show.…
The Mystery of the Disappearing van Gogh
The bidding for Lot 17 started at $23 million. In the packed room at Sotheby’s in Manhattan, the price quickly climbed: $32 million, $42 million, $48 million. Then a new prospective buyer, calling from China, made it a contest between just two people. On the block that evening in November 2014 were works by Impressionist painters and Modernist sculptors that would make the auction the most successful yet in the firm’s history. But one painting drew particular attention: “Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies,” completed by Vincent van Gogh weeks…
China’s Hidden Century review – a revelation from first to last
She wears jade earrings and a midnight blue jacket, embroidered in gold to its mandarin collar. She sits very still, staring straight back at you from her watchful closeup. You could pick her out of a crowd, this shrewd woman with the incisive look and stringently combed hair – except that she no longer exists. For this is not now. Nor is this a photograph, as it might at first seem, skimming a face from life in some Chinese city. In fact this is an ancestral portrait from Guanghzu province,…
China’s Hidden Century review – how opium and Christianity demolished a civilisation
In 1860 British and French troops pillaged and destroyed the Summer Palace of China’s Qing emperors, carrying off pieces of art and chunks of architecture – and a tiny, hairy dog who belonged to the emperor. Looty, as the dog was renamed with impeccable bad taste, was given to Queen Victoria and was the first “Pekinese” in Britain. A portrait of Looty is one of the many arresting images and facts in what must be the strangest blockbuster the British Museum has ever staged. In 2007, this museum put on…
This Young Artist’s Works Capture the Agony and Ecstasy of Being Alive
Late one April night, the artist Liao Wen was in her studio in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, listing off the many instruments that she uses to make her astonishing art. “These are my chisels,” she said in a video interview, panning the camera about. “Chisels, chisels, chisels. The wood saw. So many tools, accessories, so many machines, sandpapers.” It was a veritable hardware store of supplies, and she was in the midst of packing them all up (not an easy task) to move with her husband across the…
Chinese glories, last rites revised and hypermodern tapestry – the week in art
Exhibition of the week China’s Hidden CenturyBlockbuster survey of China in the 19th century, when the imperial era was coming to an end. British Museum, London, 18 May to 8 October Also showing Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris Introspective portraits by the Welsh Vermeer. Pallant House, Chichester, 13 May to 8 October Patrick CaulfieldEarly work by one of the most ironic and haunting British modern painters and printmakers. Josh Lilley, London, 18 May to 20 June Melati Suryodarmo This acclaimed performance artist brings her vision to…
An Uptown Cat Became a Chinese Artist. Then He Returned Home.
People weren’t quite sure what to make of Miguel Ángel Payano Jr. when, like some kind of prodigal son, he came back to New York in 2016, after making a life in Beijing. His family had long known he was a wanderer, ever since he went to boarding school at his own insistence at age 11. But in the graduate art program at Hunter College, where Payano showed up on his return from China — older than most classmates, with a prior M.F.A., exhibition history and collectors — he stood…
Could a Ming dynasty Buddha found near an Australian beach rewrite history?
In 2018, a pair of Australian film-makers were doing runs with metal detectors in remote Western Australia as they prepared to shoot a documentary about the French exploration of Australia. The film was supposed to feature a hunt for scientific equipment believed to have been left in the area by the Baudin expedition of 1800-1803. There was no trace of Napoleonic-era exploration, but what they did find was something perhaps even more unusual. It was 15cm-tall bronze Buddha figure, weighing just over 1kg and – according to experts – likely…