The Winking Owl: Visual Effect and Its Art Historical Thick Description

Autor:	Eugene Y. Wang
Rok vydání:	2000
Předmět:	Cultural Studies Painting General Arts and Humanities media_common.quotation_subject Equivocation Art Visual arts Exhibition Thick description Politics State (polity) China Indictment media_common
Zdroj:	Critical Inquiry. 26:435-473
ISSN:	1539-7858 0093-1896
Popis:	Can a painting such as the one shown here (fig. 1) say anything at all? In Western academic settings questions like this either appear to be wornout commonplaces that induce yawns or are suspected to be quibbles, equivocation and play on the different senses of the word say. In a different institutional universe, however, these same questions may carry frightening implications. In March 1974 a group of painters in China, specializing mostly in traditional ink painting, were charged by the Ministry of Culture with blaspheming "the Socialist system"-meaning the state.' Their paintings were put on public display in China's National Art Gallery in Beijing, as the so-called Black Painting Exhibition. The organizers' captions constituted a de facto indictment of the artists' subversive political intent. Among the paintings showcased, the centerpiece was Huang Yongyu's Owl (fig. 1),2 which shows a squat owl perched on a sparsely
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::9b9e9f207df1c0235427de413c92250f https://doi.org/10.1086/448974 Zobrazit plný text záznamu