ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 8 The view from the top of Longevity Hill of the roof peak of the Guanyin Buddha Temple would seem to be the natural end of a tour of Yiheyan — New Summer Palace — in Haidian, Beijing. But wait, there’s more. Much more. A series of Indian-style temples stack up and over the ridge descending to the North Gate. At the bottom is Suzhou Market Street, originally built…
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 7 The commanding center piece of the symmetrically designed Yiheyuan — New Summer Palace — in Haidian, Beijing, is the Buddhist Temple on top of the precipitously steep Longevity Hill overlooking Kunming Lake. The hill was augmented with excavation of the entirely man-made lake. Photography only serves to mislead regarding the actual contrast of scale, compression and expansion of space, and extremely large quantities of color and ornamentation. central…
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…