Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection

[randomness]

Yesterday, bedfull_o_books and I went to see an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art, on display through May 17th at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Her favorite piece, which I also quite liked, was Liu Ye's Gun:



(I think achinhibitor was right. That's a scope.)

There were also a number of posters from the Cultural Revolution on display, partly for context, as many of the contemporary pieces made reference to that period.

Whenever I think of that period I think on the one hand how much I'm glad I didn't have to live through it, and on the other how very un-Chinese my personal background is as a result. Dodged a bullet or dozen, there.

Comments

[flit.livejournal.com]

My grandmother loved China, and as a result I have a translated book of children's stories from before the Cultural Revolution, and another from after. The one from after is... very very strange. There's a retelling of the Emperor's New Clothes where at the end the people rise up and fall upon the emperor and tear him apart, yelling, "We're just taking off your clothes!" I *think* this was my first really clear example of how politics can influence art. (There are of course plenty of examples all around me, but it's harder to see it in your own culture when you're a kid.)