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The Revolution of Chinese Art

October 10, 2008 11:45 AM

By CLARISSE FORTUNE, ABC News London

It’s not every day that I get to see a big piece of s...euh... feces and find it quite entertaining. Even looking at men hanging high upside-down is compelling. But it's because it's all in the name of art, Chinese contemporary art.

Taking advantage of China’s continuing rise, Charles Saatchi, a man well-known in the art world, has opened a major exhibition titled "The Revolution Continues: New Art of China".

The location was enough to impress the visitors: in London's chic neighborhood of Chelsea, which is surrounded by elegant boutiques and fancy houses, Saatchi is using a 205-year-old military barracks, originally designed for the Duke of York in the 19th century, to house the exhibition. It’s a 70,000-square-foot eerie wide space. And space is what's indeed needed for the impressive paintings and objects from popular Chinese artists.

Among them, Zhang Xiaogang is showing paintings of family photographs that were banned during Mao's rule. I take a picture of a boy dressed as a general but naked from the waist down. The guide explains that the portrait "exemplifies the anxiety between public veneer and private vulnerability, official doctrine and personal conscience." For that thought, you can have this artist's work for a starting price of $2 million.

So it is not only Chinese art, it is political art. Then back to the big piece of excrement. The monumental sculpture (33-by-84-by-35  inches ) from Liu Wei is rightly called Indigestion. I was able to brave my repulsion to look closer, and I noticed the toy soldiers that have been half digested "spilling forth in an unmistakable sentiment of protest" (again according to my picture guide).

Most of the objects are then as impressive in size as in content. One of the most disturbing exhibits shows an old man lying on the floor with wings. Disturbing because it looks so real. Like the man licking the floor. This work from Cang Xin is called  Communication because the tongue is one of the most sensitive parts of the body and the piece is to represent "an internalizing OK knowledge and a religious communion with place/person/thing."  Thank God for my guide, because I was wondering what this man was doing there lying down and licking the floor as if he had been punished.

As for the men hanging by their feet, they represent migrant construction workers and are said to "denote violence and vulnerability." Why else would there be naked men hanging upside down from high ceiling?

For an even more morbid display, the lower ground has been chosen for old men, dead or deeply asleep circling around in wheelchairs. Because of their vague resemblance to former world leaders like Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro,  it is to be "a parody of the UN dead."

Will this exhibition be a success? It already is, thanks to the media frenzy that has surrounded it. And who knows what the financial outcome will be amid the current global financial turmoil. Just  more than a month ago, the British artist Damien Hirst made a mere $200 million when his last collection went on auction at London's Sotheby.

So the Cultural Revolution continues in China. But for Charles Saatchi, I daresay it's not as much political as it means business.

Photo Credit: ABC & Associated Press

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October 10, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

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Posted by: THE CLINTONITE | Oct 10, 2008 12:55:56 PM

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