798 District Blog

Wu Guanzhong, the father of modern Chinese art, died late on Friday in Beijing Hospital, aged 91.

Born in 1919, Wu was a native of Yixing in east China’s Jiangsu Province.

In 1947, he went to France to study Western painting and returned to China in 1950. He taught at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Tsinghua University.

Wu integrated the Chinese ink and wash technique with Western painting methods. He is now widely regarded at home and abroad as the father of modern Chinese painting.

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LONDON.- A superb collection of Asian art, lovingly assembled over a decade by a single enthusiast while living and working in the Far East and South East Asia, is for sale at Bonhams Edinburgh on 7 July.

Among the most fascinating pieces is a painting by the internationally celebrated chinese artist Jiang Guo Fang who became a personal friend of the collector when he was living in Shanghai in the early 1990s. The painting, ‘Reclining Court Beauty’ shows a beautiful model posing pensively in the costume of the 19th century chinese court. It is from the artist’s well known ‘Forbidden City’ period and is estimated at £20,000-30,000.

Early 9th Century Burmese Pagan bronzes, stucco heads and votive items epitomise the simplicity and serenity so characteristic of South East Asian art and found elsewhere in the collection in sculptures from Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.

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Storm King Art Center has completed installation of Three Legged Buddha (2007), a colossal sculpture by the internationally celebrated chinese artist Zhang Huan. The work, which stands nearly twenty-eight feet high and weighs more than twelve tons, is a generous gift from Zhang Huan and The Pace Gallery. The gift was announced by Storm King in spring 2010, at a gala marking the launch of Storm King’s fiftieth-anniversary season.

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LONDON.- Tate and Unilever announced that the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei will undertake the eleventh commission in The Unilever Series for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern (12 October 2010 – 25 April 2011). He will be the first artist living and working in the Asia-Pacific region to be commissioned for the series.

Born in Beijing in 1957, Ai Weiwei is one of the most prominent and influential figures in Chinese art today. In his many roles as conceptual artist, curator, critic, designer and architect, his work encompasses a wide range of challenging and often provocative activity. Ai has played a key role in the development of contemporary Chinese art over the last two decades, from his role in the radical avant-garde ‘Stars Group’ in 1979, to his collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron in designing the national ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

After living in the United States from 1981 to 1993, Ai returned to his native Beijing and created the seminal work Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn 1995. This photo-triptych depicted the artist dropping an ancient ceramic vase, which smashed on the floor at his feet. This work not only began the artist’s continuing reuse of antique readymade objects, it also demonstrated his questioning attitude towards cultural values and social history. For Fairytale 2007 Ai invited 1001 Chinese citizens to ‘colonise’ Kassel in Germany for the Documenta 12 exhibition and distributed 1001 Qing and Ming Dynasty chairs in venues across the city. For Template 2007 he used more ancient readymades, in the form of 1001 wooden doors and windows from destroyed Chinese buildings. These were installed as a huge sculpture that collapsed in a storm soon after completion, creating a twisted, crumpled structure that the artist chose to preserve.

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