Art by Fan Ho, Xiyadie, Cai Dongdong, and Klaus Capra
Poetry from Marianne Boruch, Aiden Heung, Alina Stefanescu, Farnaz Fatemi, Malena Mörling, Timothy Yu, and Paula Bohince
Fiction from Roseanne Pereira
Nonfiction by Jeff Wasserstrom, Mary Cappello, David Chaffetz, and Cris Mazza
Critical essays by Jing Wang, Paul Cuff, Yiren Zheng, Zhang Ling, and Carlos Rojas
Interviews with theater director Wang Chong and filmmaker Paul Rosdy
Reviews by Flair Donglai Shi 施東來, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, and Qingsheng Xiao
Translation featuring works by Lo Yu (Fion Tse), Dai Wangshu (Tin Kei Wong), Yang Biwei (Liang Yujing), Zuo Fei (Ana Padilla Fornieles), Feng Zhi, Bian Zhilin, Wen Yiduo, Luo Qilan, & Li Bai (A.Z. Foreman)
Alice Leone-Moats (1908-1989), an author who was born in Mexico to wealthy and socially prominent American parents. She became the Colliers correspondent in the USSR and China during WW2 who wrote Blind Date with Mars (1943)… In 1944, the State Department cancelled her passport as she had travelled to Vichy-controlled France, and under war-time regulations it was illegal to travel to enemy-controlled territory
Canton Modern presents twentieth-century Cantonese art and visual culture in its full complexity as an important chapter in global modernism. United in a shared linguistic and cultural identity, the southern port cities of Guangzhou (also known as Canton) and Hong Kong were historically marginal in China. The birthplace of revolution, the two cities gave rise to a distinctive visual and artistic modernism, one shaped by cross-cultural interactions and tensions between conservative and progressive artworlds. Cantonese artists broke away from the elegant poetics of classical ink painting to forge a socially oriented realism, depicting subjects ranging from leisure and labour to war and disaster. Working as journalists and publishers, they exploited the immediacy and circulation of print, photography, and cartoons to intervene in and even reform society.
Li Hua and Liang Dong, Transfer Fighting to the New Oilfield, 1975. M K Lau Collection
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Cantonese artists helped to construct its self-image in propaganda and Socialist Realist art even as national agendas increasingly subsumed regional and individual character. Although post-war Guangzhou and Hong Kong embarked on politically divergent paths, their art and visual culture remained traceable to a shared modernist legacy. Hong Kong artists, including those who overtly embraced international trends, often had fraught sympathies with their contemporaries across the border. Bringing together over 200 works from institutional and private collections, many on public display for the first time, Canton Modern recovers a deeply rooted local story with contemporary global resonance.
Felixstowe’s marvellous Harvest House where I’ll be speaking about Wallis’s year in China this coming Saturday, in the spectacular Palm Court as part of the Felixstowe book Festival…. more details and tickets here
2025 is the centenary of art-deco, so I’m rediscovering some overlooked Hong Kong treasures in Kowloon Tong on Prince Edward Road West and Kadoorie Hill for the South China Morning Post weekend magazine – click here to read….
From the good people at Historic Shanghai – ‘Scenes from last weekend’s “City of Devils” tour, as we walked in the footsteps of Paul French’s riveting City of Devils; A Shanghai Noir (available everywhere!) So surprising how many locations are left … here’s a sample:’
Talking all things Macao old & new, as well as of course my new collection Destination Macao (Blacksmith Books), with David Marr on ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live…. click here
My cover story in this weekend’s South China Morning Post magazine – the oft-overlooked art-deco treasures of Kowloon Tong (image by Jocelyn Tan)….link coming soon
