chinese art: September 2008 Archives

Greetings from Lhasa (I arrived yesterday on a trip to visit our workshop here).

The atmosphere is very different here compared with my last trip in July. Tourists are returning, both local and from overseas. The restaurants are back open (huzzah! more than one place to eat!) and the traders are looking marginally happier. The weather is still decent, though cooling off a bit, and Lhasa residents are out proving the truth of the saying "whereever you find a patch of green, you fill find a Tibetan sitting on it". This includes traffic islands.

Pictured here is one of the new designs that has just come off the loom, that I am pleased with, photographed after washing but before the final trim. Well done Norbu and team. The design is based on one of the imperial seals used by the Kangxi Emperor (1661-1722), one of the two longest serving and most successful emperors of the Qing dynasty. Hope he won't mind me stealing his seal design.

The rug measures about 6ftx6ft (Imperial measures - what else?).

At our Torana An Fu Lu store in Shanghai we have a show ongoing of Chinese silk textile fragments. These range from small pieces like the red silk brocade fragment shown here at far left, up to a complete silk tapestry robe panel from around 1800.

Most of these pieces I've collected in Tibet over the last decade during my regular trips to our workshop in Lhasa. The association between Tibet and Chinese silk textiles might not seem an obvious one at first sight, but in fact it's one of the best places to find old silk, particularly earlier pieces from the Ming dynasty (1353-1644) that interest me most. Chinese silk was used in Tibetan ceremonial robes, altar cloths and other items, and the state of preservation in Tibetan temples is usually better than that found in other parts of China.

As a rug designer, I'm particularly interested in the Ming fragments since they show some of the best characteristics of Ming design: bold designs, a fondness for flowing curves and generous shapes, a nice balance of "figure" and "ground" and a certain freedom and experimentation that is often lacking in designs from later periods.

Cloud designs from this period are a particular favorite of mine, and something I've used in carpet designs for Torana. As an example, I've included a fragment of a red silk cloud brocade that originally formed part of a Tibetan lama's robe, with a Torana rug design (below) that is based on similar cloud shapes. The colors in the carpet design are not characteristically Chinese though, the blue tones on a red ground were inspired by Indonesian batiks (another story entirely).

Textile designs from the Ming period remained fashionable in the early part of the Qing dynasty (17th century), but were replaced at the Chinese court in Beijing by new decorative styles from the 18th century onwards.

The An Fu Lu store show will run during September and October 2008. A map and contact details for our store are at this link.

"Metersbonwe" is not a name that trips off the tongue for most non-Chinese, but you will know it as a famous clothing brand if you are 20-something and from the PRC. The owner of this Chinese clothing chain, Zhou ChengJian, has recently created what has become China's foremost costume museum, encompassing court robes, Qipao from the 1920s and (above all) the costumes of China's ethnic minority groups.

This is a field that until recently was of interest mainly to foreigners and overseas Chinese. Mr Zhou's revelation came during a visit to the United Kingdom in 2003, when he found that many of the relics exhibited in country houses and museums "were from China, and among them were rare ancient Chinese costumes and ornaments" ... thus inspiring "a sense of duty to protect Chinese costumes of all ethnic groups". He set about building a collection that is now displayed at the Metersbonwe flagship store in Shanghai. I saw the collection a couple of days ago, and it is superb. It's strength lies in some fine and early examples of ethnic costume, particularly in the complete outfits collected by Mr Zhou. the exhibit is also well set out with explanations in both English and Chinese.




Metersbonwe Costume Museum, 387 Nanjing Dong Lu, Shanghai (the museum is housed on the top floor of the 5 storey shop in the pedestrianised part of Nanjing Road)
Open 7 days a week, 10am-8pm
admission free
www.mbmuseum.org

The Beijing Contemporary Art Fair, now on at the Agricultural Exhibition Center in Chaoyang district, is a four day jamboree for the art world, with an emphasis on the buyer. Hence the preponderance of medium sized, hangable works, especially oil painting and photography. This year the show is well presented and is worth going to see, whether you have cash in hand or not.

The Fair is a cross section of contemporary Chinese art with a smattering of overseas (particularly European) dealers. To critique the whole show would be impossible, so instead I offer my brief (and indispensable) guide to trends in the local art scene...

Emerging... soon to be must-haves:
3D
LCD
3D LCD girls
girls with weapons!
3D LCD girls with weapons!! (sorry, that last one is just wishful thinking on my part)

Still Red Hot:
migrant workers (their careworn faces look at you from oil paintings, photos and video installations ... I wonder what the going rate is for hiring a posse?)
girls
animals
girls with animals
girls! girls!
fruit
doodles
Buddha
photography (so much easier than the fiddly business with the paint and the brushes)
Feng Zheng Jie (I counted at least 4 galleries featuring his works)
Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol (the Old Masters of recycling, now recycled themselves)
facial hair (Chinese artists competing with European dealers for the title of  "Most Whimsical Whiskers")

Fading somewhat:
Mao
irony (maybe '08 just wasn't the year for it)
advertising imagery
fat babies (bye bye babies, you won't be missed)

Nearly gone!
oil paintings based on photos modified with Photoshop filters (good riddance)

(illustration: Android - Plus by Hung TungLu: 3D lightbox installation)

First of all, let me say straight away that I am not a sentimentalist when it comes to Beijing's old Hutong (courtyard house) districts. Aside from the wealthiest merchant homes, most of them were not built to a high standard and not the greatest places to live in today, unless you enjoy brushing your teeth by a standpipe in the yard in the middle of winter. That said, a city's past is important, and while not everything can or should be preserved, it's incumbent on the present generation to make sure that there are some reminders of Beijing's past left for those who will come after.

This is where the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center come in. For the past several years they have been quietly promoting conservation-standard techniques and materials to home owners wanting to restore old hutong areas. This is important because the standard method in the past has (all too often) been to pull the old building down entirely and build a vaguely hutong-like structure out of reinforced concrete to replace what was there before. The CHP have been promoting the traditional Beijing style in which the main structure of the building is built around wooden columns, supporting a traditional roof held up by a bracket arrangement, with the brightly painted eaves that are characteristic of Beijing architecture.

Aside from technical competence, the main factor behind the CHP's success with their approach has been a committed (and local) membership, rather than the expat-driven approach which has characterised many conservation efforts over the years.

For more information about the CHP's program, take a look at their website (English and Chinese).