| |

China Art Museum

ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — SHANGHAI, no. 37
China Museum

The China Art Museum in Shanghai was originally built for the China Pavilion of Expo 2010. It is the largest art museum in Asia. The permanent collection is mainly Chinese modern art with substantial special exhibitions. The building design references several traditional forms of joinery, cap style, and bronze pots. It is enormous and visited by millions of people each year.

China Art Museum

detail of two ink murals on left wall are below

China Art Museum

Cheng Yuming, ink on paper, 265 cm x 580 cm, 2011

China Art Museum

China Art Museum

Cheng Yuming

China Art Museum

The Great Wall of Blood and Flesh: Defense of Sihang Warehouse, by Cheng Yuming, 315 cm x 510 cm, 2011

China Art Museum

China Art Museum

Cheng Yuming

China Art Museum

China Art Museum

paintings from the permanent collection, various artists

China Art Museum

China Art Museum

paintings from the permanent collection, various artists

China Art Museum

China Art Museum

China Art Museum

green tea latte break

China Art Museum

traveling exhibition from Tretyakov State Gallery, 1894-1980, Moscow, Russia, various artists

China Art Museum


traveling exhibition from Tretyakov State Gallery, 1894-1980, Moscow, Russia

China Art Museum

China Art Museum
China Art Museum

Portrait of the Artists Kukryniksy, by Pavel Korin, 1957–58, 140 cm x 190 cm. The three caricaturists Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiri Krylov, and Nikolai Sokolov, combined their names into the collective name Kukyniksy, using the joint signature beginning in 1924. They received international recognition for their anti-fascist cartoons. They were also known individually as landscape and portrait artists. Traveling exhibition from Tretyakov State Gallery.

China Art Museum

Portrait of the Artists Kukryniksy, by Pavel Korin, detail

China Art Museum

Portrait of the Artists Kukryniksy, by Pavel Korin, detail

China Art Museum

Portrait of M.S. Sarian by Pavel Korin, 1956

China Art Museum
China Art Museum

The special exhibition of the life of Yu Yunji told a typically tragic story of mid-twentieth century China. Yu was a talented, well trained young artist in the early 1950s. His skills increased in Konstantin Maksimov’s painting class at the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a year of systematic training in the Soviet style of color and shape. The Western painting style transformed his approach to oil painting. However, his life was disastrously interrupted by the political movements of 1957. “Wrongly accused as a Rightest, he went back to Shanghai to ‘reform himself through labor.'” Seriously damaged by ten years of the Cultural Revolution, he continued to paint in secret, eventually emerging to do commissions for the state.

China Art Museum
China Art Museum
China Art Museum

Yu Yunji

China Art Museum

Yu Yunji

China Art Museum

Mao, portrait by Yu Yunji

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

To see all blog posts in this topic, select tab above marked TRAVELS > CHINA.

Save

Similar Posts

  • | |

    Arrival Beijing

    ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 2 Today is my first day at the Inside Out Art Museum in Beijing, China. Travel and settling in was easy and identical to any international city. Everyone is patient with my lack of language skills. Written directions in Chinese, that I prepared in advance, are mandatory for taxis. At the end of a long process of arriving, it was a pleasure to encounter friends in the museum. ABOVE:…

  • | |

    Yiheyuan—New Summer Palace, 1

    ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 6 All that is absent at Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace, is present a little further west at Yiheyuan, the New Summer Palace, in Haidian, Beijing. The inadequacy of photography to convey atmosphere and grandeur is demonstrated in nearly every picture of my visit. Photographic flattening and miniaturization obliterates dizzying heights and magisterial transformations of space. Each set of interior and outdoor rooms spills into the next with unbelievable…

  • | |

    Yonghegong

    ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 10 Yonghegong is an active and well-attended Tibetan Buddhist Temple in Beijing. Built in 1694 as an imperial residence, it was converted to a lamasery in 1744. Worshipers offer gifts of money, food, large paper flowers, and complementary incense provided at the entrance. As with other sites in Beijing, it is meticulously restored and enormous, with five central halls containing countless carved, painted, and bronze aspects of Buddha. The…

  • | |

    Qingming Scroll

    ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — SHANGHAI, no. 38 The China Art Museum, built as Expo 2010 China Pavilion in Shanghai, houses an installation originally created for the fair. Based on a 12th century scroll by Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145 AD), the original Song Dynasty painting is one of China’s greatest cultural treasures. The painting depicts daily life of urban and rural people, animals, vehicles, and landscape at all levels of society engaged in diverse economic activities. Of…

  • | |

    Scary Anatomy Museum

     ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — ZHOUZHUANG, no. 42 Another thing that I did not understand, in addition to the legend of Wansan pork hock and the location of tea plantations, is why on the return trip from Zhouzhuang to Shanghai our next stop was The Museum of Mystery of Life. The bus group disembarked at a warehouse-style building. Tickets were arranged and a guided tour began, this time entirely in Chinese. The first exhibit of a…

  • | |

    Zhouzhuang Lunch & Temple

    ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — ZHOUZHUANG, no. 41 There is a story about why the popular local meal Wansan pork hock is named after Shen Wansan, the richest man in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasty in Zhouzhuang. It was explained to me several times but I could not comprehend the meaning. It had to do with multi-family intrigue, commercial competition, the sound of his name being similar to the word for pig, and his…