May 27, 2009
Outside In: Chinese x American x Contemporary Art
Jerome Silbergeld
Professor of Art History, Princeton
Minutes of the 33rd Meeting of the 67th Year
President George Hansen called the meeting to order, the final meeting of the 67th year of The Old Guard of Princeton. Don Edwards led the Invocation. Minutes of the May 20th meeting were read by Lynn Livingston. Several guests were introduced.
The speaker was Prof. Jerome Silbergeld who is Professor of Chinese Art in the Dept. of Art and Archaeology at Princeton. In some sort of record for the Old Guard, he was introduced by Lanny Jones, who has known him for 56 years, since they were friends together in fourth grade and Cub Scouts in St. Louis. Dr. Silbergeld earned his M.A. and Ph D. from Stanford in the field of Chinese Art. When he came to Princeton, he noted that while our Art Museum had a world class collection of Chinese objects (especially calligraphy), it had virtually nothing from the years since 1900, and he set out to remedy that defect. The current exhibit at the Museum, “Outside In, Chinese x American x Contemporary Art,” is the culmination of that effort.
Dr. Silbergeld first noted how the value of and prices paid for Chinese art have soared in the past twenty years. He went on to address the question, What do we mean by Chinese art? Must it be art done by a Chinese artist, or of a Chinese subject, or in a Chinese style? His answer was, Any of the above.
He noted that while the Princeton University Art Museum is a great museum, it lacks space. The present exhibit contains about 45 works by six contemporary artists, all done in the United States, and representing the work of six very diverse artists, and displayed in two rather small galleries.
He first showed the work of Zhang Hongtu, a versatile and innovative artist, who was born in China into a Muslim family, and was thereby an outsider both in China and later after he came to the U. S. We saw his artwork, “The Bikers,” two large hanging scrolls, created with modern techniques of photography and digitalization. Bikers coming and bikers going away from the viewer; one with a mountain from a sixteenth century scroll in the background, representing the past; and the other heading for the unknown, what lies ahead, the future, which is the theme of immigration, which is so important for the Chinese-American experience.
The same artist, Zhang Hongtu, created a ping pong table with Chairman Mao cutouts, indicating the pervasive and oppressive influence of the Cultural Revolution; and Pop Art, such the Chairman Mao Quaker Oats box. And he hybridized the work of Chinese masters with paintings in the style of van Gogh or Monet or Cezanne. His self-portrait derives from Picasso as well as the Mona Lisa! Amazing versatility!
Arnold Chang, born in New York City of Chinese parents, painted landscapes as hanging scrolls in the traditional Chinese brush and ink style. But with a distinctly modern touch.
Liu Dan made elaborate paintings of furniture, and he also designed books; he was interested in the life force in such objects. But his greatest work was a sixty foot hand scroll, that is, a horizontal scroll, which the Museum mounted on a specially built spiral “jetty.” This painting begins, on the right end of the scroll, in cinnabar red colors, indicating the fiery origins of the universe, and gradually cooling down to a black and white landscape of clouds and mountains and animal-like configurations, all constructed of hundreds of meticulously worked brush strokes.
Michael Cherney, who was born of Polish-Jewish parents in New York City, essentially became Chinese, adopting the Chinese name Qiu Mai, marrying a Chinese wife, and using photography to look beyond boundaries, portraying Buddhist figures, as well as birds over an environmentally challenged lake in central China,
Zhi Lin, born in China, was studying print making in London when the news came to him of the Tiananmen Square massacre. At that moment Zhi Lin became a social realist. He realized that art had to be more than beautiful objects for entertainment and enjoyment; it needed to have a social purpose to be valid. He painted “Names of the Unremembered,” a dramatic painting of Promontory Point in Utah, where in 1869 the Central Pacific Railroad coming from the West met the Union Pacific railroad coming from the East. The Central Pacific Railroad had been built by the labor of Chinese coolies, who were brought over for the purpose, some 23,000 of them, paid little and treated miserably, and 1500 of them died. The stones at the bottom of this oversized painting bear all the known names of those who died. But all the Chinese were later excluded from American citizenship by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, promoted in the United States Senate by Leland Stanford, one of the four entrepreneurs who owned the railroad.
Zhi Lin also painted five large hanging scrolls of Capital Punishment in China, including two in this exhibit, namely “Starvation” and “Drawing and Quartering.” In both of these works, there are depictions of cruel punish ment as well as the indifference and passivity of many of the bystanders.
Finally, Vanessa Tran, a young woman never previously exhibited, whose pale almost ghostly works, including roses and trees, in a variety of media express her connections with the natural world.
Prof. Silbergeld’s presentation thoroughly engaged the members’ attention. He made it clear that you don’t have to be Chinese to do Chinese art. Globalization has definitely changed things. What is Chinese is not just geography or ethnicity or even subject matter. Rather it’s a conscious artistic engagement, sometimes nuanced, with what is historically and culturally Chinese. That is what was brought home to us in this exhibit and in Dr. Silbergeld’s talk today.
Respectfully submitted,
Harvey Rothberg
The speaker was Prof. Jerome Silbergeld who is Professor of Chinese Art in the Dept. of Art and Archaeology at Princeton. In some sort of record for the Old Guard, he was introduced by Lanny Jones, who has known him for 56 years, since they were friends together in fourth grade and Cub Scouts in St. Louis. Dr. Silbergeld earned his M.A. and Ph D. from Stanford in the field of Chinese Art. When he came to Princeton, he noted that while our Art Museum had a world class collection of Chinese objects (especially calligraphy), it had virtually nothing from the years since 1900, and he set out to remedy that defect. The current exhibit at the Museum, “Outside In, Chinese x American x Contemporary Art,” is the culmination of that effort.
Dr. Silbergeld first noted how the value of and prices paid for Chinese art have soared in the past twenty years. He went on to address the question, What do we mean by Chinese art? Must it be art done by a Chinese artist, or of a Chinese subject, or in a Chinese style? His answer was, Any of the above.
He noted that while the Princeton University Art Museum is a great museum, it lacks space. The present exhibit contains about 45 works by six contemporary artists, all done in the United States, and representing the work of six very diverse artists, and displayed in two rather small galleries.
He first showed the work of Zhang Hongtu, a versatile and innovative artist, who was born in China into a Muslim family, and was thereby an outsider both in China and later after he came to the U. S. We saw his artwork, “The Bikers,” two large hanging scrolls, created with modern techniques of photography and digitalization. Bikers coming and bikers going away from the viewer; one with a mountain from a sixteenth century scroll in the background, representing the past; and the other heading for the unknown, what lies ahead, the future, which is the theme of immigration, which is so important for the Chinese-American experience.
The same artist, Zhang Hongtu, created a ping pong table with Chairman Mao cutouts, indicating the pervasive and oppressive influence of the Cultural Revolution; and Pop Art, such the Chairman Mao Quaker Oats box. And he hybridized the work of Chinese masters with paintings in the style of van Gogh or Monet or Cezanne. His self-portrait derives from Picasso as well as the Mona Lisa! Amazing versatility!
Arnold Chang, born in New York City of Chinese parents, painted landscapes as hanging scrolls in the traditional Chinese brush and ink style. But with a distinctly modern touch.
Liu Dan made elaborate paintings of furniture, and he also designed books; he was interested in the life force in such objects. But his greatest work was a sixty foot hand scroll, that is, a horizontal scroll, which the Museum mounted on a specially built spiral “jetty.” This painting begins, on the right end of the scroll, in cinnabar red colors, indicating the fiery origins of the universe, and gradually cooling down to a black and white landscape of clouds and mountains and animal-like configurations, all constructed of hundreds of meticulously worked brush strokes.
Michael Cherney, who was born of Polish-Jewish parents in New York City, essentially became Chinese, adopting the Chinese name Qiu Mai, marrying a Chinese wife, and using photography to look beyond boundaries, portraying Buddhist figures, as well as birds over an environmentally challenged lake in central China,
Zhi Lin, born in China, was studying print making in London when the news came to him of the Tiananmen Square massacre. At that moment Zhi Lin became a social realist. He realized that art had to be more than beautiful objects for entertainment and enjoyment; it needed to have a social purpose to be valid. He painted “Names of the Unremembered,” a dramatic painting of Promontory Point in Utah, where in 1869 the Central Pacific Railroad coming from the West met the Union Pacific railroad coming from the East. The Central Pacific Railroad had been built by the labor of Chinese coolies, who were brought over for the purpose, some 23,000 of them, paid little and treated miserably, and 1500 of them died. The stones at the bottom of this oversized painting bear all the known names of those who died. But all the Chinese were later excluded from American citizenship by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, promoted in the United States Senate by Leland Stanford, one of the four entrepreneurs who owned the railroad.
Zhi Lin also painted five large hanging scrolls of Capital Punishment in China, including two in this exhibit, namely “Starvation” and “Drawing and Quartering.” In both of these works, there are depictions of cruel punish ment as well as the indifference and passivity of many of the bystanders.
Finally, Vanessa Tran, a young woman never previously exhibited, whose pale almost ghostly works, including roses and trees, in a variety of media express her connections with the natural world.
Prof. Silbergeld’s presentation thoroughly engaged the members’ attention. He made it clear that you don’t have to be Chinese to do Chinese art. Globalization has definitely changed things. What is Chinese is not just geography or ethnicity or even subject matter. Rather it’s a conscious artistic engagement, sometimes nuanced, with what is historically and culturally Chinese. That is what was brought home to us in this exhibit and in Dr. Silbergeld’s talk today.
Respectfully submitted,
Harvey Rothberg