Roy Lichtenstein’s Chinese landscapes at the Tate

Talking art the other day (The School of Shanghai 1840-1920 in Paris) reminded me that the Tate in London has a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective running till the end of May. I’ve never personally been a fan of pop art and all that American cultural referencing but, apparently, included in the exhibition are several of Lichtenstein’s Chinese landscapes as well as the more familiar pop art stuff. So, if like me you’d normally avoid the fighter planes and Disney kitsch, the landscapes may be worth the entry price…

That Lichtenstein would be interested in Chinese landscapes is not that odd if you think of him as an artist always interested primarily in form and style. By the sixties, when Lichtenstein painted his Chinese landscapes, he’d already been interested in Chinese art for two decades having bought a book on Chinese landscapes in Paris while stationed there as a GI. He was later further exposed to Chinese art as a student at Ohio State University in the late 1940s. Lichtenstein was particularly captivated by the traditional Chinese painting he encountered, in particular from the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD). But then aren’t we all! But moving from that to painting landscapes yourself is quite a major step….

…of course Lichtenstein’s Chinese landscapes are reinterpretations rather than copies or attempts to paint in exactly the same style. Lichtenstein himself stated:

“I think (the Chinese landscapes) impress people with having somewhat the same kind of mystery (historical) Chinese paintings have, but in my mind it’s a sort of pseudo-contemplative or mechanical subtlety…I’m not seriously doing a kind of Zen-like salute to the beauty of nature. It’s really supposed to look like a printed version.”

Nowadays of course Liechtenstein’s Chinese landscapes are perhaps better known that any individual Song Dynasty painters (at least in the west). The Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong ran an exhibition of the landscapes recently and some feature in the Tate retrospective in London. I noticed, wandering through one of those “instant fakes”art shops in Hong Kong the other day, among the morass of dreadful big headed laughing peasants and Cultural Revolution posters spiked to show everyone heading to KFC (really, is anyone still buying that stuff??!!) some fake Lichtenstein Chinese landscapes with the tell tale dot printing effect. Some sort of flattery and recognition I suppose.

Marmots, Manchuria and Murder…

I can only apologise to you dear readers – quite how a book featuring Manchuria and a plague of marmots managed to slip by me I cannot imagine. Yet it did – but not forever – and so, below, the details of the fascinating Great Manchurian Plague of 1910-1911 by William Summers. There’s a longer review at the Asian Review of Books here by the way.

William C. Summers is professor of the history of science and medicine, molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and therapeutic radiology at Yale University.

You’re all going to die!!!

“The School of Shanghai 1840-1920″ at the Musée Cernuschi, Paris

Should you happen to be visiting Paris in the next few months….

L’ÉCOLE DE SHANGHAI (1840-1920)

Peintures et calligraphies du musée de Shanghai

8 mars – 30 juin

The Premier of Ding by Lao She – Beijing International Literary Festival 2013

Regular readers of this blog will know that we just had the premier of an adaptation of Lao She’s 1936 short story Ding. Here’s how it happened….

Back last summer when I published Anne Witchard’s Lao She in London as the first book in the Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai-Hong Kong University Press China Monographs series, Anne introduced me to Lao She’s Ding and we thought it might make a good one-man monologue. And so it was adapted and then, with Anne due to speak on her book at the Beijing International Literary Festival, we thought it might work well as a support to her presentation. At this point Kadi Hughes, the programmer for BILF, got involved and decided it was indeed a good idea. Kadi found Fabrizio Massini an Italian in Beijing developing theatre projects (through his company Elephant in the Room) and he kindly agreed to find an actor and direct it. He did, and found the excellent Wang Xuankun, a Beijing-based theatre, film and TV actor. Fabrizio also found George Holloway, an English composer currently studying in Beijing, who provided a soundtrack.

And so from Lao She’s wonderful short story (the importance of which is stressed in the short essay below) through Anne’s studies, to me, and then to Kadi, and on to Fabrizio, Xuankun and George. And eventually to the premier on Saturday 9th March at the BILF. Hopefully the (sell out!) audience enjoyed the event (I missed it, being in Australia at Adelaide Writers’ Week) and most were warmed up for it by attending Anne’s talk earlier on Lao She and London with Alan Babbington-Smith, a good friend who’s now establishing a Beijing branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

So here’s some photos of Wang Xuankun in action as Ding

And Fabrizio, in the wings, gets to take a bow…

RAS Shanghai – Shelly Bryant Walk & Talk on Chinese Classical Gardens – 19/3/13 & 23/3/13

TALK: Tuesday 19th March 2013

7 pm for 7.30pm start

RAS Library at the Sino-British College

1195 Fuxing Zhong Lu

THE TALK:Classical Chinese garden design operates on a system of tension and balance.  Designers traditionally utilized contrasts in size, spatial orientation, and conceptual significance of the various elements within a garden to achieve a harmonious overall effect.  A visitor to a garden who is well-versed in the techniques of garden building will know how to appreciate not only the beauty of the scenes presented, but also the emotional and aesthetic importance of those scenes.

The lecture will focus on how to view a garden in a way that will maximize the effects of the grounds for visitors.  Special attention will be given to two pairs of gardens in Suzhou, illustrating how finding the appropriate viewing technique can enhance the experience of journeying through a traditional Chinese garden.

THE WALK:will take place on Saturday 23rd March. Day trip to Suzhou by bus, visits to two gardens and lunch. Full details, cost, RSVP and booking requirements will be given in a separate event notice.

Shelly Bryant divides her year between Shanghai and Singapore, working as a teacher, writer, researcher, and translator. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, Cyborg Chimera, Under the Ash, and Voices of the Elders, a pair of travel guides, and a translation of ShengKeyi’s novel《北妹》 (Northern Girls) for Penguin Books. Shelly’s poetry has appeared in journals, magazines, and websites around the world, as well as in several art exhibitions, including dark ’til dawn, Things Disappear, and Studio White * Exhibition 2011.  You can visit her website at shellybryant.com.

RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

PRIORITY BOOKING for Members until Saturday 16th March 2013.

ENTRANCE: 30 rmb (RAS members) and 80 rmb (non-members).

Includes one drink. Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for an exemption.

MEMBERSHIP applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.

RAS MONOGRAPHS – Series 1 & 2 will be available for sale at this event. 100 rmb each (cash sale only)

WEBSITE: www.royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

The RAS Library at Sino-British College in Shanghai

Tin Tin, the Secret of Literature, The Blue Lotus and Hergé’s Shanghai Contradictions

I don’t really remember it – I must have been about six or seven – but probably one of my earliest exposures to Shanghai, the International Settlement and China was the Hergé Tin Tin adventure The Blue Lotus. I vaguely remember it being my favourite of all of them (and all of them were devoured both in book form and Saturday morning TV “Hergé’s Adventures of Tin Tin” blaring out at about 9am

I’ve just read Tom McCarthy’s Tin Tin and the Secret of Literature. There’s an awful lot in this book – a large amount of it totally over my head – you need a pretty in-depth knowledge of the Tin Tin books (which I once did, but it’s slipped in the 30 years since I read them all attentively) and a fondness for French critical theory (which I have never managed to develop, fortunately). Still there is a lot of interesting stuff and, given the focus of this blog, a small discussion of Le Lotus Bleu (1936) seems called for. I’ve made some comments on Hergé, his relationship with his Chinese friend in the 1930s Tchang Tchong Jen and The Blue Lotus before when discussing the work of Shanghailander artists and cartoonists such as Sapajou and Schiff. But perhaps another mention….

These days (I think it’s still true) Hergé is still viewed largely as a man of the right and an acceptor, if not an outright collaborator, with the Nazi occupation regime in his native Belgium. Certainly he was no resistant. However, The Blue Lotus, I think, shows that (like all of us) Hergé was multi-sided and a bit more complicated that the Manichean way he is usually portrayed now. In The Blue Lotus Hergé (through Tin Tin) does take some interesting positions – the book is generally anti-Japanese militarism and interference in China; it is disapproving of the Japanese annexation and occupation of Manchuria (which occurred a year or two before Hergé began work on the story) ; it’s also critical of the condescending and imperialist positions of some foreigners in Shanghai – for instance, the Chief of Police is corrupt, while Tin Tin intervenes to stop a European from mistreating a Chinese rickshaw puller. Overall somewhat contradictory to many of Hergé’s earlier works and later life.

In 1933 Hergé announced that his next Tin Tin adventure would be set in the Far East. Abbe Gossett of the Catholic University of Louvain, a man who looked after several Chinese students studying at the college, wrote to Hergé urging him not to get China wrong or be too stereotyping (bear in mind when you read and look at The Blue Lotus that this was in the early 1930s in Belgium!). Gossett also introduced Hergé to one of the students, Tchang Tchong Jen, from Shanghai. Tchang and Hergé hit it off immediately and became firm friends – art historians can identify the strong influence of Tchang’s Chinese brush and calligraphy styles on Hergé’s work from The Blue Lotus onwards; the book is clearly Hergé’s most richly visual Tin Tin adventure (I’d argue).

There is also a sympathy for Shanghai in the book – Hergé’s vision of Shanghai (a city he never visited) was largely filtered through his friend Tchang and Hergé stated that he was keen not to get Shanghai wrong, while still telling a good story. Of course there is a lot of fun to be had – lots of moon doors on courtyards that are a bit more Peking than Shanghai, Chinoiserie all over the place etc. Still, the book was successful, it did raise awareness of Shanghai and the Japanese threat to the city – a year after its publication of course the Japanese would attack Shanghai and, in December 1941, occupy the International Settlement too. Hergé scholars maintain that, after The Blue Lotus, his work was more detailed and better researched.

During the chaos of the Second World War, and the occupation of Belgium, Hergé and Tchang lost touch. Eventually, much later, when Hergé was a massive cultural star and Tin Tin a worldwide phenomenon, he did find his old Chinese friend. Tchang has returned to Shanghai and later had suffered badly in the Cultural Revolution. Tchang was allowed out to visit Brussels. It was a tricky meeting – the press swarmed the men, Hergé was sick with cancer and Tchang seemed disoriented after decades in Maoist China. Better to remember the men in happier times, before the war, in Brussels, working on The Blue Lotus…

Sydney’s Orient Hotel

Of course on a blog such as this anywhere called the Orient Hotel is going to attract my interest…and so here we are in The Rocks in Sydney at The Orient….

This site was in the original grounds of Sydney’s first hospital complex and later was enclosed by fencing to become a part of the Surgeon General’s residence. In June 1828, the allotment was part of a land grant made. By 1853, the house had become a hotel called the ‘Marine Hotel’, which became the ‘Orient Hotel’ in 1884. The residence erected by Chapman was described in 1845 as being constructed of brick with shingle roof, three storeys high with basement, possessing ‘every convenience’. The original single storey shop at 87 George Street seems to have been a single storey structure, operated as a butchers shop by Chapman until his death in 1858. The shop remained until 1930-31 when Tooth & Co. replaced it with the present Art Nouveau additions to the Orient Hotel. In 1876 the Hotel was sold to Gustave Buckham and renamed ‘Buckham’s Hotel’; then in 1878-82 the ‘May’s Family Hotel’; and in 1882-84 the ‘Pries Family Hotel’ before, in 1884, becoming once again the ‘Orient Hotel’.

Tan Twan Eng gets Man Asian Literary prize for The Garden of Evening Mists

Just noting the Man Asian Literary Prize was won by Malaysia’s Tan Twan Eng for The Garden of Evening Mists…I’d have gone for Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis, but there you go…