Shanghai Show for Tu Zhiwei

The new Liu Hai Su Art Museum will be staging a one-man show of Chinese-American oil painter Tu Zhiwei's works January 6-16, 2008. Get the details here as they become available.

OPA Midwest Regional

Zhiwei Tu has an entry in the Midwestern Regional Exhibition of the Oil Painters of America, which runs from September 30 to November 30. A photo of his painting (see above) and a link to the Topeka, Kansas, gallery hosting the event can be found on the Tu Art Gallery web site.

Informal photos of the August opening of his one-man show at the Andreeva Gallery in Santa Fe also can be viewed here. It's fun to see Mr. Tu's talented wife, who made an impromptu appearance with the strong quartet hired for the event.

Santa Fe One-Man Show

We've mentioned before that Santa Fe's Andreeva Portrait Gallery is currently sponsoring a one-man exhibition of works by Zhiwei Tu. The latest issue of Art of the West carries a full page ad promoting the show. Click the image above for a closeup view.

Taos Art Auction

Tonight, collectors of oil paintings by Zhiwei Tu will have an opportunity to buy one of his more recent oil paintings, shown above, at the "3rd Annual Gala Auction" in Taos, N.M. Possibly for a song (pardon the pun). Certainly for a good cause.

Click here for a preview of all the art works and crafts up for auction. Apparently, telephone bids may be accepted:

If you are interested in placing a bid or would like more information on an item, please call 505.758.2690 x 5.

The auction will benefit the Taos Art Museum and Fechin House, located in the former home of Russian emigré artist Nicolai Fechin. (1881-1955). Fechin is said to have designed and hand-carved many of the features of the house, which was finished in 1933.

Zhiwei Tu's China Live Webcast

Look what just popped up on the Internet: a one hour on-line video of a live webcast with Zhiwei Tu, produced by Tom.com this past June.

One hour!!

The event was held in connection with Mr. Tu's one-man show at the National Art Museum of China. Tom.com is a "mobile internet company" specializing in web-casting (as opposed to more traditional "broadcasting") to a wide audience throughout China.

The program, naturally, is in Chinese. Just as happens with regular TV, a studio host interviewed Mr. Tu about the NAMOC show, his early years in a remote farming village when he was discovered to be a prodigy at painting, and his move to the U.S.A. to further his art education. What's so different with this "webcast" is that there was ample time to explore additional subjects and take live questions from viewers, apparently sent in by email or text-messaging.

Among the many subjects covered are the differences between art education in China and the U.S., the practicalities of how newly arrived Chinese artists can get by in the West, the inspiration Mr. Tu drew from his artistic mentor in the U.S., etc. etc. Several viewers apparently wanted to know more about the Oil Painters of America, a relatively new but very effective organization of artists (with affiliates in Canada and Mexico) that has helped to introduce the art work of many domestic and newly-arrived foreign artists to a Western audience.

Shorter excerpts of the interview can be viewed on the Tu Zhiwei Art Gallery web site here. For non-Chinese speakers, English summaries are provided.

Of the excerpts available, our favorite is "The Artistic Passion of Tu Zhiwei: Ten Epic Murals in Ten Years." It runs a little over six minutes. In this segment, Mr. Tu discloses that the five giant murals he's completed are just half of the ten he plans to do before "I rest in peace." One of them, he explains, is about Confucious.

Take a look at the first five murals and you can see why so many people are excited at what is yet to come from this extraordinary artistic genius.

Santa Fe Exhibition Opens

Today is the opening for Zhiwei Tu's exhibition at the Andreeva Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M.

The gallery's on-line display includes thirteen portraits from his Ballerina and Tibet portrait series. One of them is pictured above: "Dancer Reading."

The latest Art of the West issue includes a full page ad for Zhiwei Tu's upcoming one-man show at Andreeva Gallery i n Taos, N.M. The show begins August 16-Sept. 20, 2007.

More info coming soon.

Zhiwei Tu's Native American Portraits

"Ghost Dancer"

There's a new section up on the Tu Zhiwei Art Gallery web site. It's called "Native American Portraits."

These particular paintings, we understand, currently are being shown at the Nichols Gallery in Taos. They're part of a larger, ongoing series Mr. Tu has been doing, inspired by his first encounter with Sioux Indians when he vacationed in South Dakota shortly after emigrating to the United States and his later investigations of other tribes in the Western states.

All of the portraits are stunning, especially when viewed in person. Our personal favorite, though, is shown above -- "Ghost Dancer." It captures perfectly the slightly crazed, obsessed, and yet euphoric sentiment one can easily imagine in the hearts of many desperate Native Americans who joined this religious revival movement in the late 19th century as the white man overwhelmed their way of life.

New Landscape for Baiyun Center

Baiyun International Convention Center

Radio Guangdong, the first English-language radio station in that south China province, reported early last month that a large landscape by Tu Zhiwei is scheduled to be hung in Shaoguan Hall inside the new Guangzhou Baiyun International Convention and Exhibition Center. The center, which for the moment is believed to be the second-largest convention center in the world, consists of five buildings built in phases over several years.

The latest reports are that the entire complex is nearing completion, although the main hall has been in use for several months, now. Dan from the Philippines has posted a few photos of the center on his "Reverse Entropy" blog.

Mr. Tu's mural, titled "Light on Dan Xia Mountain," measures nearly 9 x 15 feet. To the left is a button of the mural, but such a small image can't do it justice.

A larger, far more dramatic digital photograph of the painting can be seen on the Tu Art Gallery web site, here. Formal unveiling of the painting is expected some time later this year.

Dan Xia Mountain is located in the world-famous redstone park near Tu Zhiwei's home village in Liu-Li Township. The area also is a popular honeymoon get-away, no doubt inspired by the giggles-inducing nearby site of "Yangyuan Stone" (aka "Father Rock") and "Yinyuan Hole."

Art on Your Cell Phone

Recent news reports claim that more and more Americans are surfing the web with their cell phones and PDA's. It's hard to believe. The screens are so small and the data most cell phones can handle is severely limited. Not for nothing does one popular TV ad show a hapless cell phone user asking, "Can you hear me now?"

We'll believe surfing the 'Net with cell phones is a promising trend when our own phone can handle telephone calls inside a department store.

Added to that, so we've read, the sundry cell phone manufacturers are no closer to agreeing on a uniform method for rendering web sites than they are on a compatible technology for making telephone calls. The result is not every cell phone can show a "mobile" page in the same way. Some can't do it at all.

Still, the New York Times reported earlier this year cell phone web-surfing is all the rage in the Far East. And it looks like it's coming our way:

It sounds like something straight out of a futuristic film: House hunters, driving past a for-sale sign, stop and point their cellphone at the sign. With a click, their cellphone screen displays the asking price, the number of bedrooms and baths and lots of other details about the house.

Media experts say that cellphones, the Swiss Army knives of technology, are quickly heading in this direction. New technology, already in use in parts of Asia but still in development in the United States, allows the phones to connect everyday objects with the Internet.

In their new incarnation, cellphones become a sort of digital remote control, as one CBS executive put it. With a wave, the phone can read encoded information on everyday objects and translate that into videos, pictures or text files on its screen.

“The cellphone is the natural tool to combine the physical world with the digital world,” that executive, Cyriac Roeding, the head of mobile-phone applications for CBS, said the other day.

In Japan, McDonald’s customers can already point their cellphones at the wrapping on their hamburgers and get nutrition information on their screens. Users there can also point their phones at magazine ads to receive insurance quotes, and board airplanes using their phones rather than paper tickets. And film promoters can send their movie trailers from billboards.

Undoubtedly, instant surfing with a cell phone has its conveniences (when it works). But no one knows if artists, galleries, and museums -- or others with interests centered on the visual arts -- are likely to find them compelling.

Nevertheless, friends of Tu Zhiwei have decided to experiment by dipping a little toe into these murky cellular waters. On the News section of the Tu Art Gallery web site, there's a new hyperlink called "Tu Art News for Mobile Devices." It takes readers to a proto-site titled "Tu Zhiwei Art Mobile."

The "mobile" site is slimmed-down -- downright skinny, in fact -- with only three pages (or "cards" as they are known) and just 15 lines of text and four images, in total. They look fine to computer users. It's anyone's guess how they appear on each of the several thousand different cell phones in use around the world.

The idea behind the "mobile" web site experiment is that PDA and cell phone users may find it convenient at times to surf for calendar or contact information about upcoming art gallery shows. In this instance, what's being offered is, first, hard information about Mr. Tu's next one-man show, scheduled to open at the Andreeva Gallery in Santa Fe on August 16.

Second, they can see a few tiny images of recent shows of Mr. Tu's paintings in Guangzhou, Shaoguan, and Beijing.

Third, cell phone users can use a link on the "mobile" web site to navigate to Andreeva Gallery's own web site and even fire off an email message.

Some new ideas are better than others. This one -- using cell phones to view art -- will take time to mature, at the very best. In the meantime, though, we plan to have fun watching how the experiment turns out.

Call for Help

Two new sections have been added to the Tu Art Gallery web site. One of them includes a general call for help.

"Reviews of Art, Shows, and Exhibitions" reprints a number of newspaper reviews, articles, art book introductions, and television reports about Tu Zhiwei's oil paintings. Some go back as far as 1996.

We know there are a lot more out there, in English, Mandarin, French, Dutch, Russian, and Arabic, for starters. So, on the Tu Art Gallery web site, readers are being asked to send along any reviews or commentaries they may know about:

We have begun compiling here newspaper, magazine, television, and book reviews about the art works of Tu Zhiwei, as we learn of them. If you know of any not included here, please let us know.)

The problem is that many older art show newspaper reviews, descriptive brochures, and the like were published before the Internet was invented, never made it to the web, or are buried too deep (for example, in an unfamiliar foreign language) to be easily discovered.

Probably the most difficult material to find will be notices from foreign art shows of Tu's work from the 1980's and early 1990's -- such as the earliest exhibitions in Guangzhou, the Algiers "World Cultural Convention" in 1987 when he was awarded the "gold prize", or his first gallery shows in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, and Michigan.

We know there are a lot of other newspaper and magazine reviews out there -- especially from the artist's earlier days in China (1972-1986) and after he emigrated to the U.S. in 1987. If you happen to have a hard copy, please scan and email it. If you know of something suitable on the web, just send along the url.

The same might be said about the other new web section. It's called "Lectures, Installations, and Happenings."

Tu Zhiwei is an active volunteer (consistent with his busy international schedule) for community art organizations. He also often participates in painting demonstrations or college lectures for art students, and from time to time engages in other entertaining 'happenings' like group art installations.

A few past events of this order already have been noted on the web site's 'Happenings' page. Again, however, we're sure there are many more that we haven't discovered, yet, either on the Internet or described in dead tree print.

The artist himself is too busy doing all of these things to do any 'scrapbooking' of his own. We can all help him out -- not to mention, assist future biographers -- by playing catch-up now.

Time Traveler

China Daily's review of the recent exhibition of paintings by Zhiwei Tu at the National Museum of Art in Beijing is now on-line. The title of the piece is "Time Traveler."

Here is a snippet:

Looking at any of his colossal, epic oils full of action and drama, the viewer would be deeply affected by the well-calculated composition and infectious ambience Tu has poured out with passion on the canvases," comments Shao Dazhen, a renowned art critic and professor with Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

"Imbued with brilliant expression of emotions, Tu's masterful depiction of the chapters of Chinese history are so arresting to the viewers thanks to the lush colors, dazzling lights, alluring imageries, and astonishing details," Shao says.

You can read the entire review in the original (English) version here, or on the Zhiwei Tu Art Gallery.com site here, along with other recent news about the artist.

Santa Fe One-Man Show

Just back from a hugely successful two month sojourn in China, Zhiwei Tu now has to prepare for a one-man art show at the Andreeva Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Click here for more information.

Video of The Beijing Exhibition Review

Video of the CCTV Channel 9 review of Tu Zhiwei's one-man show at the National Art Museum of China is now available. Watch and enjoy:

China TV Covers Tu Exhibition

China's CCTV, the largest national television network in all of China, on June 27 this past week broadcast a three-minute, fifteen-second review of Tu Zhiwei's exhibition of paintings at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Beijing. It is a superb television report, narrated (in English) by Robert Ireland.

An abbreviated four-page written entry (also in English) is available here.

For Western viewers, the video is best seen using a fast connection and an up-to-date Internet Explorer browser with the latest Java plug-in. (CCTV tends to use the very latest in production and internet technology.) U.S. cable TV and satellite viewers may be able to catch a replay if their home TV provider includes the English-language "Culture Express" channel in the program lineup. (See, for example, Direct TV's channel 455.)

Ireland first takes a look at some of the paintings from Tu's "bones" period. "The divided world of Tu Zhiwei," he perceptively calls it. It is a world, he reports, "that exists on many levels, divided vertically and horizontally, and even touching new dimensions."

Presumably the painter resides here somewhere. But just where, may be hard to cite, as he seems to set his spirit free from the confines of the body, entering a realm a little beyond immediate experience, a little removed from the known time-space continuum.

Tu's "bone" paintings were conceived in his earliest years in the U.S. when he was working alongside the late, revered American painter, Jules Kirschenbaum. It was an exciting but scary time in the life of the artist. He found himself thrust into a completely foreign culture, far removed from family and friends, struggling with an alien language and adjusting to American ways that can seem exceedingly strange to an outsider. Yet, he was also suddenly free to dedicate every waking moment to his art.

"Many dimensions," indeed.

Turning to later works such as a number of nude portraits and Tibetan paintings included in the exhibition, the reviewer acutely observes that "viewers find it hard to connect" these works with the same artist who conceived the "bones" paintings.

Like his paintings, Tu the man, has many facets and styles. Visitors find it hard to connect the nude paintings hung on the opposite wall, to the creator of such startling imagery [as the "bones" paintings]. The thick, short strokes and hazy lines recall Impressionism. More precisely, it's an expression of the American variant, in which the figure retains more of its original form.

As for his latest work, "it's in these -- his history-themed giant canvasses -- that the painter's artistic genius comes into full force."

The compositional rigor, paired with splendid color sense, evoke such Western masters as Titian and Van Eyck.
* * *
These grandiose scenes, depicting events of great moment, probably would find their place as chapel pieces if such religious constructs were found in Chinese history. But the expressions of faces, ranging from panic and horror to outrage and despair, belie the artist's obsession with the darker side of history.

Indeed, if there's any altar for these works to be lain, it may be said they rest on the altar of the human spirit.

After what has to be described as a triumphant artist's tour of major Chinese museums, Tu returns to the United States this coming month. No doubt energized and inspired, he'll be resuming both his remarkable artistic work and his role as 'informal ambassador' building bridges across the Pacific for artists on both sides of the Pacific.

Beijing Exhibition Opens

Tu Zhiwei's exhibition at the National Art Museum of China opened today. It is really quite an honor for the artist. In a nation of 1.4 billion, a one-man show at NAMOC in Beijing is the equivalent of the same at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Hirschhorn, combined.

Shenzhen Art Exhibition

Photos of the one-man exhibition of Tu Zhiwei's works at the Shenzhen (China) Art Museum have arrived. They're now being featured on Zhiwei Tu's web site here.

The museum's description of the show, in Chinese, is mirrored here.

China Art Shows

Tu Zhiwei will be the featured artist at two upcoming exhibitions in China over the coming two months. The first show will be held at the Shenzhen Art Museum (May 17-27). The second at the prestigious National Art Museum of China in Beijing (June 15-38).

Check in with Tu Art Gallery.com for more details as they become known.

New York's Asian Art Week

New York Times art critic Holland Carter finds the annual Asian Art Fair a disappointment today, but singles out some (mostly ancient) artifacts for praise.

"The sad news is that this year’s fair, which opens today, is a ghost of what it once was. * * * To its credit, the Asian fair struggles impressively. Its signature suaveness is intact, and it still has some memorable art moments."

The difficulty, Cotter rather coyly remarks, is that "problems developed."

"Top-shelf material to sell became harder to find. For various reasons, the fair’s starriest exhibitors dropped out, often to put on Asia-week shows on their own. When the fair added the phrase “also featuring the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas” to its title last year, the distress signal was loud and clear."

In compensation, he says, dozens of private dealers "have set up shop for the week... in quite spectacular fashion" on East 57th Street. But for the long term, Cotter sensibly suggests, it may be time to focus on "contemporary Asian art."

"There’s a ton of it being pumped out, of which New Yorkers see but a fraction, nowhere near enough to give an idea of what’s really going on, which is the only way to separate gold from dreck. As a result, almost everything we see exists without a context, and looks odd and marooned. Maybe the Asian Fair could give it a context. I mean, if the fair really sees contemporary art as its future, why not go for it? A pan-Asian Modern and contemporary fair would be a valuable addition to the city. Done right, with savvy heads in charge ... it could be an event, make news."

Huzzah to that! Somewhere, sometime, a city that aspires to be the cultural center of the world will have to come to grips with contemporary Asian art, if for no other reason than as a consumer protection measure for its citizens. Better New York than Paris, Shanghai or, Minerva forbid, Dubai.

As Cotter quite rightly points out, a great deal of "dreck"is masquerading as contemporary Asian art these days. In China alone, dozens if not hundreds of alleged "art schools" dragoon thousands of aspiring young people every year into becoming mere copyists. Their assembly line 'work' is quickly shipped off to the West where it competes with genuine art instead of hanging above the headboard of some Motel 6 room where it belongs.

Oil Painters of America Annual Juried Show

Artists, collectors, and art students: registration is open for the 16th Annual Juried National Art Exhibition of the Oil Painters of America.

This year, the event takes place in beautiful "hill country" Fredericksburg, Texas, about an hour's drive equidistant from exciting Austin or exotic San Antonio.

The national exhibition runs from May 11 – June 9, 2007. Opening weekend ceremonies and festivities take place May 10 – 13.

A complete schedule of events is here (html) and here (pdf).

Over a hundred oil painting entries already have been accepted. No paintings will be sold before May 12, but offers may be submitted in advance.

Whistle Pik Galleries is the host gallery in Fredericksburg. Other local institutions participating include the Admiral Nimitz History Museum and the internationally-oriented Fredericksburg Artist's School.

The art school is sponsoring a series of artist workshops May 7 through 14.

Guerrilla 'Art' Gone

You may have missed it while you were wandering through that art museum. This week, a 25-feet long spray-painted mural by Robert Banksy -- "one of Banksy's early pieces," we are told -- was apparently destroyed when city workmen in Bristol, England, painted over it with thick paint. According to the BBC, the workmen were dispatched to "tackle graffiti adjacent to the Banksy work, but wrongly targeted the piece itself."

It's not the first time Banksy's so-called "guerrilla" art has been vandalized. Earlier this month, the BBC also reported , "a London council has admitted street cleaners accidentally washed off two Banksy murals, including one of a girl in a frilly dress wearing a gas mask, from the side of a building."

London and Bristol councilmen claim to be scandalized at the losses. In recent years, more portable Banksy works have escalated in price. Last year, Sotheby's sold a Banksy sketch of "the Mona Lisa... spray-painted green and with paint dripping from her eyes," for more than $218,000. And, a Banksy silk screen of Kate Moss in the manner of Andy Warhol sold for nearly $115,000.

Apparently, the Bristol and London pols are worried someone will think they've lost valuable city property when their Banksy murals -- spray-painted on the sides of buildings -- bit the dust. It's difficult to see how the city has lost any value -- unless the politicians really don't mean it when they say city policy is "not to remove murals."

It's so hard to believe politicians. Three years ago Banksy "covertly cemented" a 20-foot high, 3 ton statue of Dame Justice "with US dollar bills stuffed into her garter" into Clerkenwell square in London. Reportedly, the city fathers removed it by crane two days later.

No one seems to know where it is today. Whadda ya bet it shows up at auction -- sooner, rather than later?

Banksy himself presumably might have approved the obliteration of his early work. After the recent Sotheby's auction where price records were set, Banksy's website "featured a sketch of an auction room with a message on a canvas saying: "I can't believe you morons actually buy this shit."

Anyway, why buy a Banksy when he invites you to have one for free from his web site? Be sure to follow the instuctions:

"Prints look best when done on gloss paper using the company printer ink when everyone else is at lunch."

"From China With Love"

The estimable Chicago Reader notes the opening yesterday of a photography exhibition by the Gao Brothers at Walsh Gallery, in Chicago. According to the gallery:

"On March 16th Walsh Gallery presents photography and sculpture by Beijing-based artist duo the Gao Brothers. "From China with Love" is an investigation into the effects of Chinese urbanization on the spirit.
* * *
"Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang have expressed an alternative voice during the 20 years that they have been making art in China. They experimented in performance art, installation and photography during the mid 1980s when these practices were only in their infancies."

Several photographic series are included, among them "TV," "From China with Love," "Embrace," and "High Places." These series include photographs depicting various "real and imaginary" events. Explains the Walsh gallery:

"China's rapid globalization and the sexual ambiguity that often appears in the Gao Brothers' work refers not to sexual confusion; it's about a confusion of spirit. This sexual androgyny also questions conventional party line logic on what is normal and what is pornographic.

"The Gao Brothers simultaneously invite the viewer to share in these feelings of confusion while hoping all along for a little more love for us all."

Gao Zhen (b. 1952) and his younger brother, Gao Qiang (b. 1962) come from Shandong Province, but now maintain a studio in Beijing's former "No. 798 Electronic Components Factory," the centerpiece of the Da Shanzi art district. Zhen is a graduate of the Shandong Academy of Arts and Crafts. Qiang graduated from Qufu Normal University and is now a painter at the Shandong College of Light Industry.

They work with a variety of media including painting, sculpture, and photography. They're best known, however, for "digital art" performances like World Hug Day. Last year, the UK Guardian mentioned that "1989 until 2003, they were on the government blacklist and forbidden to leave the country. But they are now part of a new wave of Chinese artists wowing galleries abroad."

The Walsh gallery exhibit runs until April 28.

Pipa Revival

As with European music from the Medieval to the Baroque, there is something of a revival of ancient Chinese music going on, played with authentic period instruments. Kathie Price contributes an interesting feature article to The Arizona Republic today, titled "Foothills Woman Masters Pipa."

Phoenix musician La Mai Gates (below, right) is featured. She plays the Pipa, an ancient Chinese lute-like instrument that dates back to well before the Ch'in dynasty (221-206 B.C. E.) .

"The pipa is a familial favorite for Gates, a concert master and soloist with the Phoenix Chinese Art Ensemble. Her father was a pipa professor at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music in the northeast province of Liaoning. Her mother, her uncles, aunts and cousins all played the pipa as she grew up.
* * *
As a tot, Gates listened to a cousin play the pipa.

"I got a lot of influence from my family," she said. "My dad not only taught, he used to fix pipa and make them."

In middle school, we're told, she "majored in pipa with piano as a minor." The pipa "is not an easy instrument to learn," Price warns.

"The 2,000-year-old pear-shaped lute, also known as a Chinese guitar, has four or five strings and as many as 30 bridges to produce 12 tones and a range of more than three and half octaves."

Playing the pipa requires both strumming (pi or 琵) and plucking (pa or 琶) the strings.

Master painter Tu Zhiwei's conception of how the pipa was played while dancing in the grottos of Dunhuang can be seen in the reproduction, above. It is one of his first murals, completed in 1994.

That mural is now in private hands, but the pipa theme is repeated in some of his other Dunhuang paintings and murals, inspired by the thousands of wall drawings and documents uncovered by archaeologists in western China in the 1970's.

Ancient treasure troves are still being discovered, even today, in remote areas of China as well as metropolitan Beijing. Urns, funeral masks, clothes, weapons, even an entire 'pottery army'.

But the pipa remains something very special, indeed: a musical instrument that symbolizes the joy and peaceful yearnings of an entire culture. It's gratifying to know that the instrument lives on so its music can enrich our own age. Give a listen:

Is it Art - Or is it Mo' Money?

The reliable Scotman.com from -- where else? -- Scotland, has the latest update on the red hot market for modern Asian artwork:

"Art collectors, dealers and auction houses are increasingly looking east for inspiration and investment opportunities, eying the rising stars of Asian painting as well as the region's super-rich patrons.
* * *
"Asian art's ascendancy in recent years has been spectacular, with contemporary artists seeing prices for their work soar."

Everyone's favorite example de jour is mentioned -- Zhang Xiaogang's bleak "Tiananmen Square." Originally estimated to sell at Cristy's Hong Kong auction last autumn for $257,069 to $385,604, the winning bidder actually paid $2.3 million plus, one assumes, the usually hefty buyer's premium.

It's no knock against Zhang's painting to say that someone got taken, badly. Conning the rich into over-paying for the latest fashion in the art world is a marketing ploy as old and disreputable as any stock swindle on Wall Street.

Now, we are told, the market already is tiring of Chinese modernists and is moving on to India. Also last fall, a Tyeb Mehta acrylic, "Mahishasura," sold for more than $1.5 million.

A gallery owner is quoted as saying --

"There were some Western collectors who had got into contemporary Chinese art which has seen a gigantic runup in the last year or two.

"Some were saying 'What's next?', and contemporary Indian art seems to represent a certain value opportunity and creatively a certain strength."

It won't be long before India's artists are abandoned, too, and auction houses start hyping artists from some other clime like Yemen or maybe Tierra del Fuego. Sounds like typical stock churning, doesn't it? Art collecting as the equivalent of a Kwakiutl potlatch, where the rich throw their money away to prove just how rich they are.

The whole business reminds us of critic Peter Schjeldahl's pointed observation in The New Yorker not long ago. Speaking of a U.S. artist who enjoys a certain momentary popularity in New York, he wrote:

"Great artists work from and for history, where no one lives. Kiki Smith, the subject of a tangy retrospective at the Whitney ... is a major figure ... who makes minor art."

The real trick is to collect "major art" that you like and pay no attention to the reputation-at-the-moment of the artist.

Bad Lawyer Joke

Bad lawyers never really retire. They just lose touch with their art:

"It is alleged that Mardirosian maintained possession of the stolen artwork in Massachusetts until 1988, when he moved the paintings to Monaco and later to a Swiss bank for safekeeping. It is alleged that Mardirosian intended to return the stolen paintings to their owner in exchange for a finder’s fee or 10% of their value. According to the affidavit, Mardirosian was able to keep his possession of the paintings secret by working through lawyers in London, Monaco and Switzerland, as well as a Panamanian shell company he created, Erie International Trading Co. (Erie).

"It is alleged that using the cover of the Panamanian shell company in 1999, Mardirosian attempted to sell the stolen paintings in London. However, an investigation by the Art Loss Register (ALR) determined that the artwork was stolen. ALR is a London-based company that maintains a comprehensive database of stolen artwork.

"The four paintings, “Portrait d’une Jeune Fille” and “Portrait d’un Jeune Homme” by Chaim Soutine, “Maison Rouge” by Maurice Utrillo, and “Flowers” by Maurice de Vlaminck remain in the custody of Sotheby’s Auction house. The remaining two stolen paintings, “Woman Seated” and “Boy” by Jean Jansen are believed to be in the possession of Henri Klein in Switzerland. The indictment seeks the forfeiture of all six pieces of stolen artwork."

Speaking of stolen art, has anyone seen the painting reproduced on the right? Here's another view.

If you've seen it, please let the LAPD know. Or email us and we'll do it for free.

Ephemeral Art

Halliburton isn't the only thing moving to Dubai for the money. Like so much of the art on display at the DIFC Gulf Art Fair, Peter Conrad's review of the exhibits is filled with irony and pokes fun at the Powers That Be.

Moscow Biennale Opens

"Among the pieces on display is a comic photo collage by the Blue Noses group that appears to depict Putin, Osama bin Laden, and President George W. Bush lounging together in boxer shorts like three drunken Russians."

International Herald Tribune, Mar. 9, 2007

The International Tribune today has a review of the "Second Moscow Biennale." [English web site here.]

As Wikipedia accurately describes, the original Biennale art show took place in Venice. Since then, however, a lot of other cities have been getting into the act.

Two years ago, the main venues for the First Moscow Biennale were in the staid and oh-so-official (former) Lenin Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and the State Tretyakov Gallery, among others. This year, one important venue is in a half-finished wing of the giant Tsum department store:

The art of shopping, rather than art, might be foremost on the minds of shoppers at TSUM, the Moscow department store, but they have a surprise awaiting them as they round the corner from racks of Armani Junior and Miss Blumarine childrenswear.

A nondescript white door opens to a huge concrete hall full of dozens of screens showing continuous American video art in a cacophony of images and sounds. The videos, some offering commentary on consumer culture, are part of the main project of the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, which is entitled "Footnotes on Geopolitics, Market, and Amnesia."
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The entire fourth floor of an unfinished new wing of TSUM — with construction workers busily drilling on walls — has been taken over by the biennale, which opened March 1 and runs until April 1.
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The biennale's festive opening on March 1 in the store's cosmetics department featured speeches by Mikhail Shvydkoi, the director of Russia's Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency, a branch of the Culture Ministry, city officials, and a U.S. Embassy representative.

The Russian deputy director of Center for Museums and exhibitions, Joseph Backstein, adds, "The ladies who were shopping probably didn't know what hit them."

Among overtly political videos and other avant-garde works, on display in the satellite venue of the State Trekykov Gallery is a collage by the notorious Blue Noses group. Culture reporter Sophia Kishkovsky writes:

Among the pieces on display is a comic photo collage by the Blue Noses group that appears to depict Putin, Osama bin Laden, and President George W. Bush lounging together in boxer shorts like three drunken Russians. It hangs near a new video installation that includes a recording of Putin's New Year's address to the nation — set to a mocking laugh track.

Russian, American, and Islamic fundamentalist leaders aren't the only targets of the "Sots" art movement, as it is known. South American and Asian politicians, past and present, also come in for their share of send-ups -- including Mao Zedung, Deng Xiaoping, and Zheng Zhimin. Their visages appear in another exhibition titled, somewhat mysteriously, "We Are Your Future."

It might as well have been titled "We Ate Your Future."

Among the Chinese artists participating are Xu Bing, Wang Guangyi, Sui Jianguo, Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Yan Lei, Ai Weiwei, Chen Wenbo, Liu Xiaodong, Yin Xuizhen, Song Dong, Huang Yan, Peng Yu, Sun Yuan, and Qiu Zhijie.

Political art -- a term some critics deride as meaningless but which nevertheless is a useful way of describing hyper-contemporary works like the Blue Nose painting shown above -- often is fun to see and satisfying on a purely emotional level, particularly for those disaffected with the politics and politicians of their time. Whether it has staying power as fine art is another matter, one that cannot easily be assessed by contemporaries.

Some art movements considered avant-garde in their time retain an appeal and emotional impact far beyond the moment of their creation. One thinks of Picasso's Guernica or Leon Golub's Interrogation III, for example, works of art executed more than a generation ago yet which speak to us in our own time, too.

But art history also is littered with the abandoned carcasses of other political art movements. As Gregory Sholette, who was himself "associated with Political Art Documentation and Distribution, or PAD/D" in the mid-1980's -- puts it in a short essay titled "Snip, Snip, Bang, Bang: Political Art Reloaded", one can name any number of failed art movements in the U.S., alone, that have become "unceremoniously submerged, partially or wholly, beneath the waves of normative art history":

PAD/D, Group Material, the Art Workers Coalition, Artists Meeting for Cultural Change, The Guerilla Art Action Group, Paper Tiger, SPARC, Carnival Knowledge*** The record of their activities now exists within a shadow archive brimming with other examples of anonymous histories, collectivist production, and unrecognized modes of creativity.

Still, even such 'disappeared' movements, as Shollette says, constitute a "phantom archive" with an "off-stage presence" that influences both the culture and artistic expression of future generations and the culture in which they work.

As Oscar Wilde argued a century ago in his famous "Lecture to Art Students," the object of art is "to stir the most divine and remote chords which make music in our souls." Ultimately, art must be judged on its universality of appeal to the basic human condition:

"All good work looks perfectly modern: a piece of Greek sculpture, a portrait of Velasquez -- they are always modern, always of our time."

In one sense, it is appalling to think that the image of Bush, Putin, and Ossama bin Laden cavorting in their underwear might have universal appeal for future generations. But if it releases the chains of artistic expression for artists around the globe, so much the better.

At least it could then be said that George W. Bush did something to make the world a better place.

Discovered Art

Painters on the Brooklyn Bridge

[T]he painters climbed freehand, with no safety equipment in sight, spreading out on the wires as though they were circus performers, or the notes of a jazz riff playing above the skyline.

-- Michelle Preston, New Yorker, Feb 26, 2007

Sometimes real art isn't recognized for what it is until a new generation experiences it with new eyes. Last week's issue of The New Yorker magazine carried a remarkable photo by an unknown photographer of the first third of the Twentieth Century -- Eugene de Salignac.

You haven't heard of him. Hardly anyone has. He may not have heard of himself -- at least not as an artist.

But surely he applied to his work a lively artistic imagination, took as much care, and put into the visual outcome as much effort as any artist. The photo we speak of, reproduced above, was accompanied by a short sidebar written by his great granddaughter, Michelle Preston:

"No one in my family remembered much about my great-grandfather de Salignac. He was divorced from my great-grandmother soon after 1900, and lived the rest of his life alone, in New York City. My mother had a vague idea that he was a stockbroker; as a child, I never even saw a picture of him."

It turns out de Salignac wasn't a stockbroker; he had a job working for the City of New York photographing new construction sites from 1903 to 1934. It was a period, as Ms. Preston says, when "vast reaches of infrastructure were laid down" in the bustling, reborn metropolis.

All of this, his decendants learned when --

"[A] few years ago we received a call from... Michael Lorenzini, of the Municipal Archives of the City of New York. He had been examining a large collection of images—nearly twenty thousand glass negatives and a hundred and thirteen scrapbooks of prints — when he realized that they had all been shot by a single unknown photographer, Eugene de Salignac."

De Salignac's photographs are fascinating, even masterful. And surely they qualify as art, whatever he or his contemporaries may have asssumed.

Now, the best of his photos have been assembled in a new book, “New York Rises” (Aperture Press), and rhe Museum of the City of New York opens an exhibit of de Salignac photographs on May 4.

Yunnan's 'Kodak Moments'

The Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle today has a review of the new exhibit of 51 photographs now on display at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester.

All of the photos were taken by villagers, themselves, in rural Yunnan Province -- although none had ever seen a camera before.

"About 250 farmers, herders, fishermen and others learned how to use Kodak point-and-shoot cameras in a unique project aimed at protecting their region — the most biologically diverse on the planet.

Each month, they received a fresh roll of film and set about capturing the most important events in their everyday lives. Women and men had an equal place behind the viewfinders, unusual in these patriarchal communities.

From the 50,000 images they produced in 2002, 51 were selected for the exhibit. The Photovoice project was supported by the Chinese government, Eastman Kodak Co. and The Nature Conservancy, an international group that protects ecologically important lands."

The show is titled "Voices From South of the Clouds." It will be open to the public in upstate New York through May 28. Then it will become one of Kodak's "traveling exhibitions" available for booking in communities anywhere.

Of the exhibit, staff writer Stuart Low says:

"This touring exhibit is particularly strong in showing centuries-old agricultural and cultural activities in the remote province, which borders Burma, Laos and Vietnam. We see villagers preparing Tibetan butter tea, playing music on a gourd-bamboo pipe and praying to a mountain god.

Some of their trades seem exotic — for example, fishing with leashed cormorants. The fishermen tie a thin rope around the diving bird's neck, allowing it to swallow small fish but not the larger ones, which the fishermen take for themselves.

A more panoramic image depicts 25-year-old Kang Wenming herding sheep on a mountain, high above a bank of luminous purple clouds.

Other activities strike an unexpected modern note. Villagers strum ancient instruments while watching color television or grow native winter vegetables in a state-of-the-art greenhouse.

The spectacular backdrop to these scenes is the region's mountains, forests and headwaters of four major rivers. This is home to rare species such as snow leopards, golden monkeys and black-necked cranes. About 3 million villagers live here, including 15 different ethnic groups.

All of the photos selected are beautifully composed, often with crisp detail and lively color. They are accompanied by the villagers' comments on the scenes."

The unusual project was organized by The Nature Conservancy as part of its Yunnan Great River Project, designed to protect the unique environment of "one of Earth's richest biodiversity hotspots."

For more information or to reserve an exhibition for your community, simply email the Eastman Museum.

Magazine Features USA Artist Delegation to China

South Temple by Zhiwei Tu

The March-April issue of Art of the West, which is just now hitting the news stands, has a 3-page photo feature of the American oil painters delegation that Zhiwei Tu led to China late last year. The feature isn't yet viewable on the Art of the West website. But you can see a preview and read an excerpt on the new Tu Art Gallery web site.

Art History Scholar Dies

Henricus “Harrie” Vanderstappen, long time art history professor at the prestigious University of Chicago, died a month ago at the age of 86.

He was a war refugee, Catholic priest, China missionary, art scholar, a popular teacher, and world class authority on Asian art. The university newspaper, Chicago Chronicle, has the details of his eventful life.

Born in The Netherlands, Vanderstappen barely escaped imprisonment by the Nazis while a seminary student. "At one point during the war, he narrowly escaped capture by the Nazis, hiding with his seminary classmates in a windowless basement for more than 100 days," the Chronicle reports.

After the war he became a Catholic priest and in 1947 was assigned to do missionary work in Beijing.

[T]he art department of Fu Jen Catholic University needed someone to teach art. Vanderstappen obliged. “What I had in mind was missionary work,” he said, years later of this experience. “Instead I was converted —to art.”

Expelled with other foreigners after the Communist Revolution, he enrolled as an art history student at the U of Chicago and earned a Ph.D in 1955, writing his dissertation on art of the Ming period (1368-1644)

Vanderstappen then taught at universities in Germany and Japan before being invited to join the Chicago faculty in 1959. There, he is credited with reviving and completing --

Chinese scholar T.L. Yuan’s effort to catalogue every single piece of Western writing on the art of China. The culmination of this exhaustive project, T.L. Yuan Bibliography of Chinese Art and Architecture," was published in 1975.

After his retirement, the University of Chicago established the Harrie H. Vandertappen Distinguished Professorship in art history, a post currently held by Prof. Wu Hung.

The Chinese Art Market

"Books and Scholars" ( detail) by Zhiwei Tu
www.tuartgallery.com

Everyone knows the Chinese art market is hot in the West. But is it real or is it "irrational exhuberance?"

Contemporary art critic Ana Finel Honigman, writing for the Guardian Unlimited, says both. Although there are many excellent painters, sculptors, print-makers, and other artists in China, the market also is flooding with a lot of junk, she warns. Especially the mod art she describes as "predominantly 'cynical realist' paintings satirically juxtaposing capitalism and communism." (Much of that is being turned out in Chinese "art schools" that more closely resemble sweat shop factories.)

Honigman has good advice when she warns collectors against flashy-looking works that display --

unskilled self-consciousness, lack of subtlety and reliance on adolescent irony, particularly when confronting the ideological, historical, spiritual and aesthetic conflicts that roil contemporary Chinese culture, is especially disappointing.

Moreover, she says, "the market is already beginning to be flooded with fakes."

Sadly, it seems, one target for unscrupulous purveyors pushing junk art are innocent but well-meaning western businessmen who themselves are engaged in foreign markets. "Having witnessed and aided China's transition to capitalism," she writes --

they are buying a piece of their personal history as well as preserving a part of China's culture for posterity. But these sincere collectors' motives need to be recognized as too limited and subjective to translate into long-term international aesthetic interest and ratification.

Businessmen make it a practice to look at the bottom line. When it comes to today's sizzling Chinese art market, that bottom line is this: resist the temptation of "irrational exuberance." Buy Chinese art from reputable galleries, dealers, or direct from well-researched artists.

If you're lucky enough to find a painting by Zhiwei Tu, you can be sure it is an authentic oil painting by a leading artist in China and, indeed, the world. Tu maintains a studio in Guangdong Province as well as in Chicago. He's one of the only living artists in China to have a major city dedicate an entire art museum to his works. And, Guangzhou TV did a 20-minute documentary about his life and art a few years ago.

Photos, books, essays, and both foreign and domestic news about the Tu Zhiwei Art museum and his life and work can be seen on this non-commercial web site: Tu Art Gallery.com