Two Views of the New China

Autor: Peter Daszak, Sara E. Howard
Rok vydání: 2012
Předmět:
Zdroj: EcoHealth. 9:367-369
ISSN: 1612-9210
1612-9202
Popis: ‘‘To nationalize oil painting and to modernize Chinese painting: in my view these are two sides of the same face.’’—Wu Guanzhong (as quoted by Merguerian 2012) In this issue of EcoHealth, we celebrate our biennial meeting in Kunming with two works representing one of China’s most enigmatic artists, Wu Guangzhong. These two images represent, to many of us from the West, our dominant view of China—a country that has been catapulted from an essentially medieval society into the twentyfirst century superpower it now is, in the matter of a few decades. These two visions of Chinese society are clearly visible in the contrast between rural China and cities like Shanghai or Beijing. Far from the cities that consume their produce, farmers still work the same rice paddies that were hacked out of the mountainsides over 2,000 years ago, with the same cattle. Their children, perhaps, work in the factories and financial centers that drive China’s industrial and technological power. They wear handmade Italian suits, drink French wine and listen to rap music, as their grandfathers tarry a while and draw on their clay pipes. This is the China that Guanzhong celebrates and the China that remains a fascination to the rest of the world. Of course, this view of China is naive in a number of ways. Firstly, the society that China represented prior to the collapse of the Empire was complex, highly structured, and deep. Layers of hierarchy flowed down from the Emperor’s Forbidden City to envelop peasant life. A complex political structure allowed this large country to function and from a young age, the ambitious would work ceaselessly to take the difficult examinations and raise themselves up to the esteemed position of a Mandarin in this system. Secondly, the changes that seem to us, in the West, to have happened over the past three or four decades really grew during rapid industrialization under Mao. The opening up of the centralized state economy to trade with the West simply allowed us to see these changes, and watch them accelerate. Guanzhong also saw these changes. He watched as a flood of seasonal workers moved to the cities to build highrise homes. And he did more than watch, he painted. He painted in the traditional style, using delicate brushwork to portray the architecture in the rural towns—black and white with the occasional flash of color. He used the same brushwork to depict the new architecture, with the same colors trickling through them. His art is not a political statement, nor a statement on cultural change. It is simply a statement about what is. And as we look closer into Guanzhong’s art, we see his
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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