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Towards a Universal Pictorial Language

Woodcuts have a long history in China dating at least from the Tang Dynasty (618-907 BCE), and for centuries they have contributed greatly to Chinese print and folk cultures. In the 20th century, woodcuts as an artistic medium underwent a dramatic renaissance that introduced expressionistic and realist techniques into traditional Chinese folk traditions in order to communicate stark messages about China’s social and political states of affairs in an attempt to forge a new nationalistic identity throughout China. Modern Chinese woodcuts provide a dramatic record to chart the 20th century revolutionary causes that profoundly changed Chinese society and culture. The modern woodcut movement of the 1930s introduced an avant-garde expressionism of early revolutionary zeal, whereas woodcuts of the mid-20th century would eventually return to more traditional Chinese folk aesthetics in order for the Communist Party to use woodcut prints as an effective propaganda tool to reach masses of illiterate citizens throughout the countryside.

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His Life and Legacy in Art

One would be hard pressed to identify a more readily recognizable figure in Chinese history than Confucius—his ideas, as transmitted in the Analects and some other documents and then later elaborated upon by other philosophers (such as Mencius and Xunzi), have profoundly shaped Chinese civilization and culture. Given his imposing stature in Chinese history, it is somewhat ironic how little verifiable information is actually known to historians and scholars about the historical Confucius; much of what is commonly presumed about Confucius in the public imagination is distorted by centuries of accumulated legend, veneration, and iconography. The spring 2010 China Institute exhibition, Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art, assembles a collection of visual representations of Confucius informed by such veneration as well as presenting objects related to the state cult that grew up around him.

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A Contemporary Record of Photography

For Fall 2009, China Institute Gallery has selected one hundred works from the groundbreaking collection of documentary photography at the Guangdong Museum of Fine Arts in Guangzhou. This exhibition, Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography, features modern masterpieces produced by Chinese photographers between 1951 and 2003. These images express an extraordinary range of human emotions and activities in dramatically different settings – urban and rural, public and private – and are of a high aesthetic order.

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Art and Life in the Changsha Kingdom, Third Century BCE to First Century CE

For the first time ever in the United States, China Institute’s exhibition Noble Tombs at Mawangdui presents over sixty rare artifacts excavated during 1972-74 from one of the most important archaeological sites discovered in the 20th century. Consisting of three tombs in the hill named Mawangdui located near the modern provincial capital of Changsha in the Hunan province, the site has provided a unique window into the beliefs and cultural practices of the early era of the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE-9 CE). The Mawangdui tombs are the resting places of Li Cang, the Marquis of Dai (d. 186 BCE), his wife, Xinzhui, Lady Dai (d. ca. 163), and a third person who is thought to be their son.

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Painting and Calligraphy from the Liaoning Provincial Museum

The Last Emperor’s Collection features more than twenty-four works of painting and calligraphy from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Since all once belonged to the imperial collection, the exhibition is a broad survey of imperial collecting and connoisseurship. It’s also the story of the tragic loss of these treasures under Puyi (1906-1967), the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, and their journey through the turbulent world of early 20th century China.

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A Web-Companion to China Institute Gallery’s Summer 2008 Exhibition

As early as 1906 an article about competitive sports in the magazine Tianjin Youth voiced Chinese aspirations to host the Olympics. The promotion of sports and physical fitness were an important part of China’s efforts to modernize and throw off the yoke of the past—one of Mao Zedong’s first published writings, for instance, was A Study of Physical Education (April 1917).

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A Web-Companion to China Institute Gallery’s Spring 2008 Exhibition

The magic of the movies had a predecessor in the pre-modern world. For centuries, shadow theater — two-dimensional stick-controlled puppets projected onto a translucent, backlit screen — flourished in India, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Egypt, Turkey, China, and Europe. All across Eurasia audiences marveled as flickering oil lamps revealed gods and heroes, lovers embracing, and monsters and demons savaging the innocent.

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A Web-Companion to China Institute Gallery’s Fall 2007 Exhibition
To the northeast of the royal city there is a mountain, on the side of which is placed the stone figure of Buddha standing, in height one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet. Its golden colors sparkle on every side and its precious ornaments dazzle the eyes with their brightness (Beal 1969: 121).

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A Web-Companion to China Institute Gallery’s Spring 2007 Exhibition
Tea, Wine and Poetry—Qing Literati and Their Drinking Vessels documents the production of Yixing tea ware during the late Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasties (1644-1911). The pieces on display reveal the close connections between potters and the men of letters who participated in the making and decoration of these treasured ceramics.

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A Web-Companion to China Institute Gallery’s Fall 2006 Exhibition
Contemporary Chinese artists draw upon (and react against) more than three thousand years of a visual culture in which writing and books played an important role. They also live in a world in which change is occurring at a rapid pace. These are perhaps the two major stimuli for “reinventing the book.”

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