Notes on Exhibitions of the Past Year: Part I

A-Maze-ing Laughter

Yue Minjun (Vancouver Biennale)

There have been some wonderful exhibits over the past year, ones that inspired, provoked, and gave a rich return for the viewing. Particular noteworthy were the William Kentridge Exhibit at MOMA, the Charles Burchfield Exhibit at the Whitney, and the Cy Twombly show at the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. I also found inspiration, however, in re-visiting some excellent permanent collections, e.g., the National Gallery in Washington D.C., as well as the discovery of collections that were new to me, e.g., the Seattle Art Museum, to be discussed below.

But first, a brief digression (and refinement of mission statement) . . .

I have been thinking about renaming this blog "Aesthetic Diary," because much of what I tend to ruminate about (whether in print or internally) relates to aesthetic values. Since I believe aesthetic values -- i.e., the assessment of art experience in terms of formalism, intelligence and meaning (but not, heaven forbid, morality) -- are or should be integral to creating and viewing art, the words "casual" and "random" perhaps don't belong in this blog title.

But let's not get all Hilton Kramer-esque here. To set the record straight, this blog is not a conservative forum about the rise and fall of Western Civilization through the lens of culture. It does, however, emphasize looking at art in terms that place it in a category apart from fashion and the "gee whiz" shock of the new. Classicism co-existing with progressivism, I hope.

Go East, Young Artist

The picture above was taken from Yue Minjun's bronze sculpture installation, "A-maze-ing Laughter," currently set in the plaza on the south side of Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, a venue of great natural beauty. I had seen images of Yue's paintings reprinted in journals and on-line over the past few years, mostly permutations of self-portraits that fit neatly into the new Chinese "cynical art" genre, and was not initially that favorably impressed by his work. But this installation is something else entirely; what appears to be a 3D installation could really could be reclassified as performance art for the way in which individuals typically seem to interact with it. Yue's "laughing yoga" poses are very affecting, and during several visits I noticed viewers in the plaza quickly become similarly mirthful and playful, often striking wacky poses with the figures while someone else would take their photo.

Reading a larger meaning in this series of gestural self-portraits comes a few beats after the initial visceral reaction. Taken together, like an animated sequence, the exaggerated stances of the bronze self-portraits evoke a strong sense of the artist being physically there with you while he whips himself into a frenzy of some kind of self-actualization. It's kind of like Yue's self-mocking version of The Ascendance of Man in terms of his own creative process, and it is so energetic and joyous it makes you want to join in.

The increasing Western visibility of commercially and critically important Asian artists has been a phenomenon for some time now, at least the past ten to fifteen years. This is hardly surprising, given the clear historic pattern of parallel development between financial markets and artistic movements. What Abstract Expressionism was to post WWII America, i.e., the cultural flourishing of a newly invigorated and powerful nation, the emerging art scene in Asia, however you label it, may be to China, India and South Korea's recent ascendancy -- and in the case of China, even domination -- in global financial and political spheres.

On a related note, one of the most impressive artworks I viewed in the Seattle Art Museum this summer was an ingenious installation by Do-Ho Suh, entitled "Some/One," in which the armor of an ancient Korean warrior emerges from the floor, built up from tens of thousands of stamped metallic dog-tags. It is a beautiful piece, and a sobering commentary on how the Korean male identity is "stamped" into each individual by his compulsory military training. To hear the artist discuss this work, go to: http://video.pbs.org/video/1237715781. In the video, Do-Ho Suh speaks about how the piece was made and "what it is to be de-humanized" by a nation's military machine.