A journey through Asian art
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What might be the main role of a public art gallery – to preserve and show historical works or to engage with the new and challenging works? Or is it a combination of these? How does the public art gallery in your region present Asian art- as a vibrant contemporary art or as ancient traditional works?
Resources
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The act of making is as important as the outcome.” Cai Guo-qiang talks about the dialectical relationship between destruction and creation. His ideas came from growing up in the Cultural Revolution. But Pablo Picasso also said “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” How might this dialectic play out in contemporary world and be manifest in your own art practice?
Resources
- A brief article on the Cultural Revolution
- An excerpt on China’s Cultural Revolution from Mao’s Great Revolution by Robert Elegant, Columbia School of Journalism
- China’s Cultural Revolution: A Brief Overview, Adapted from William A. Joseph’s Cultural Revolution, Wellesley College (Massachusetts)
- Website profiling and explaining Chinese Communist propaganda posters during Mao’s era and the Cultural Revolution, Content by Stefan R Landsberger (Leiden University, University of Amsterdam)
- Two sources on destruction creation dietetic: link, link
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Cai Guo-qiang accepts that in the act of destruction-creation, especially in his choice of materials, is an energy that is difficult to control. He speaks of materials having their own energy or ‘invisible forces’ that informs his work. He relates this back to the Chinese concepts of Qi Gong and Feng-Shui. Does great art come from control and masterly expertise of techniques and materials or from learning to work with the serendipity that the process of making brings to the work? Or is it a combination of these?
Resources
- Qi Gong and Feng-Shui
- Other ideas and extension
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Countries like South Korea have experience rapid economic growth and with it has come a discussion, in part led by the artists, of how do we explore the complex relationship between global and the local communities, environment and cultures? What is it to be both Asian and a member of a global community? They challenged globalism and explored glocalism.
In a multicultural and our electronically connected world is contemporary art now beyond nationality or is there still some aspect which carries the nationality of the artist? In your own art practice do you see your work as transgressing national boundaries or maintaining them?
Resources
- Nam June Paik
- Glocalism – Globalism