Out this week – Wang Xiaobo’s (trans: Yan Yan) Golden Age. A bestselling novel from the 90’s in its first full English translation. A satire of the Cultural Revolution –
Twenty-one year old Wang Er, stationed in a remote mountain commune, spends his days herding oxen, napping and dreaming of losing his virginity. His dreams come true in the shape of the beautiful doctor Cheng Qinyang. So begins the riotously funny story of their illicit love affair, the Party officials who enjoy their forced confessions a little too much, and Wang’s life under the Communist regime: his misadventures as a biology lecturer in a Beijing university, and his entanglements with family, friends and lovers. Golden Age is an explosive, subversive, wild and hilarious satire, featuring one of literature’s great protagonists, a sensation when it was published in the 1990s and beloved today.
An interesting bit of trench art (any decorative item made by military personnel, prisoners of war, or civilians where the manufacture is directly linked to armed conflict or its consequences) from the sailors of HMS Durban apparently done while in Hong Kong. HMS Durban was a stalwart of the Royal Navy China Station serving as part of the fleet throughout the 1920s and also into the 1930s until 19389 before being drployed around the Dutch East Indies, Singapore and then Africa. Odd perhaps too that the trench art is bronze horse shoes – not usually an itegral part of a battle ship’s equipment. Anyway here they are listed as being made while Durban was in Hong Kong at some point in the 1920s…
What’s little, red and was waved about a lot once upon a time? “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung” was everywhere during the Cultural Revolution, waved enthusiastically more than it was read closely, perhaps, but still utterly essential. The Little Red Book is the latest, book #16, on The China Project’s Ultimate China Bookshelf…click here
I didn’t know the V&A in London owned one of Madame Chiang’s (Soong Mei-ling) qipaos. Though, it’s not currently on display it was made for and worn by Madame Chiang. More details are on their website here, but it appears to be derived from Taiwan , 1970-1983 (she was pictured wwaring this dress in 1983). The V&A apparenrly got it with the help of Gwendolyn Chien, the wife of the Taiwan Representative to the UK.
During her sojourn in England in the late 1920s – a time when she made five movies of which we still remember Piccadilly and less so The Flame of Love, The Road to Dishonour and Hai-Tang. Far, far less remembered is a strange film called Elstree Calling(1930), basically a bunch of variety skits (a chorus line, some blackface minstrels, a Russian dance troupe, a Highland singer, a bit of light opera, a Fred & Ginger-type ballroom dance duo, a magician, a Shakespeare performer all included). There are some comedic links (apparently directed by Alfred Hitchcock). In amongst all this mess is a bizarre spoof of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew featuring a motorbike and sidecar riding Petruchio who encounters a Barbarella-style Anna May Wong (38 years earlier than Jane Fonda!) throwing custard pies and spoting cod-Chinese. All quite odd and here on Youtube if you want to see it all. But here’s some stills…
26/4/23 6pm at the Daiwa foundation, Regents Park, London – David Martin, Curator for Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, WA on Pictorialist Photography: Soichi Sunami & his Issei Contemporaries –
David F. Martin will discuss the work and international achievements of Issei photographers active in Seattle, Washington, in the early 20th century.
Martha Graham in Lamentation, 1930, Gelatin silver print; Soichi Sunami (1885-1971); Courtesy of the Sunami Family
He will focus primarily on Soichi Sunami (1885-1971) whose artistic career began in Seattle and continued after he relocated to New York where he became the chief photographer for the Museum of Modern Art. Sunami’s main interest was dance photography and his subjects included Martha Graham, Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn and other iconic dancers of the period.
The Seattle Camera Club was founded in 1924 and held their first exhibition the following year. They became internationally recognized for their artistic or “Pictorialist” work as a group as well as individually. The key members of SCC were Hiromu Kira (1898–1991), Dr. Kyo Koike (1878–1947), Frank Asakichi Kunishige (1878–1960), and Yukio Morinaga (1888–1968). They exhibited in most of the prestigious international salons of the period, winning awards and having their work reproduced in important photographic publications and catalogues. The SCC became so well known that individual members ranked among the most exhibited photographers in North America.
With the exception of Sunami who was living on the east coast during WWII, the Seattle Issei photographers were interned at the Minidoka relocation centre (concentration camp) which collectively ended their artistic careers.
