Prevalent images included: Mao, Red Guards, Communists soldiers, Karl Marx, young Chinese women in semi-pornographic poses, the Last Supper (in which the three pictures behind the "diners" would for some reason always be Marx, Lenin, and Mao), Andy Warhol-esque faces, Coca Cola, and Marilyn Monroe. Oh, and Hello Kitty. ("Hello, Kitty!!")
Does putting Mao's face and a Coke bottle together in an abstract painting make art?
A lot of the stuff was extremely reactionary and/or simply imitations of other art or cultural themes. A lot of the material was so stale (how many images of Mark, Lenin and Mao do I need to see? I know your country is Communist. I get it.) that it was easy to get fed up quickly. Moreover, so much of the symbolism was so overt it was sickening (ie, a flock of sheep in Tiananmen Square in front of the federal buildings. Chinese people have limited rights and are told how to think and act by the government??? Wait, really? I've honestly NEVER heard of that before. I'm so glad you brought it up subtly so I could really reflect on the situation.)
The photography exhibit was better, much better, than the art section, I thought, although maybe this just reflects my inability to properly appreciate fully the deep meaning of an image of Hello Kitty juxtaposed against AK-47s in a field of young Chinese schoolchildren wearing Red communist hats.
One of my favorite things was a set of pictures that used images of trash heaps to recreate traditional Chinese landscape water color paintings. Click on the pictures to enlarge and look closely.
And then I just really like this one.
1 comment:
you're pretty much writing this blog just for me, aren't you? and stop insulting hello kitty. (ps you know i wrote an art history paper in HK about mao and hello kitty, right? best topic EVER)
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