Author Archives: Rausch Jeremy

What is Normal? Chen Danqing’s Application of Native Soil Art in the Tibetan Autonomous Region

Posted on by
Reply

Chen Danqing first left the comfort of the Shanghai metropolis at the ripe age of 17 as a result of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution policy to expose the revolutionary youth to the struggle and toil of the Chinese countryside.  This was a formative and integral part of Chen’s youth as he, along with tens of millions of other metropolitan youth, was forced into an unrecognizable and uncomfortable new environment.  Upon the closure of the Cultural Revolution in the late ‘70s, Chen cultivated a passion for Native Soil Art, influenced by French realist Jean-Francois Millet.  He sought to employ Native Soil styles to depict the harsh realities of the lives of China’s ethnic minorities, particularly those living in the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

Chen has published numerous paintings on the lives and traditions of the nomadic peoples living in the Tibetan region; their ways of living, cultural nuances, traditional beliefs and practices, occupations, and more.  Thus, this exhibition will focus on the meaning behind Chen’s into Tibetan culture and the objective of Chen’s portrayal of Tibetan culture through his unique Native Soil techniques.  Typical in Native Soil Art, realism is stressed in the portrayal of personal expressions, landscapes, and objects portrayed in the image, often an earthy, almost ominous coloring.  Native Soil techniques, fully opposed to the techniques employed during the Cultural Revolution, help popularize a burgeoning realist faction in Chinese art circles in the 1970s and ‘80s.  These groups sought to identify the struggles and successes of the Chinese people through harsh, realist portrayals rather than glorified, optimistic socialist-realist styles.  Not only does Chen seek to demarcate the normalcy and uniqueness of the average Tibetan’s life, but he also aims to depict the tangible nature of Tibet and its peoples, often considered an exotic and faraway region to most living on China’s east coast.

In Chinese mainstream media, those living in Tibet are often subjected to labels such as anti-Beijing, subversive peoples who seek to liberate themselves from the rule of the CCP.  However, employing techniques typical of Native Soil Art, Chen depicts Tibetan people for who they really are; he highlights their longstanding cultural and religious practices, the intimacy of family and interpersonal relationships, and most importantly, the negligible differences between them and the majority Han population.

Harvest Fields Flooded by Tears, 1976

Chen Danqing (b.1953), Harvest Fields Flooded by Tears, 1976. Oil on canvas, 120 x 200 cm. Image source: artnet.com

Depicting the toil and struggle of the Tibetan peoples in their primarily agricultural and nomadic lifestyles, Chen delineates a clear message: Those living in Tibet are remarkably similar to those living in Wuhan, Beijing, and Shanghai.  While their garb, physical appearances, and spiritual beliefs may differ from their Han compatriots, their identity as Chinese and life experiences indeed draws similarities and connections with the rest of the Greater China population.

 

Citations:

Galimberti, Jacopo, Noemi de Haro García, and Victoria H. F. Scott. Art, Global Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Manchester University Press, 2019. muse.jhu.edu/book/71777.

Kao, Arthur Mu-sen. The Dormant Volcano of Art in China: New Art Policy and Art Movement. Journal of Developing Societies, 74-90, 1994. https://search.proquest.com/docview/1307823101?accountid=14637.

Informative Webpage – Chen Danqing

Posted on by
2

Widewalls is an online art gallery that features tens of thousands of works from established artists as well as those emerging onto the contemporary art scene.  Regarding Chen Danqing, Widewalls provides an in-depth biography and sophisticated collection of works, as well as numerous exhibitions and auction results.  Unlike most other sites that I have visited in my investigation of Chen thus far, the biography provided offers knowledge about Chen during his youthful, formative, and early adult years, all in the unique context of art and his most profound influencers.  Not only does the site provide a unique biographic perspective for Chen, but offers the insight and experiences of others, including a former pupil of Chen who admiringly claims that “Chen has never been just a painter.  He was an intellectual with a social conscience” (Cuddy 2014, Widewalls).  The exhibition and auction result sections of the site also give viewers comprehensive analysis into the prices which his pieces have sold for as well as where he has published and displayed his art.

Widewalls as a source will provide me with a unique and holistic lens to continue analyzing Chen Danqing as a person as well as an artist.  With extensive information on where Chen has published his work for exhibitions as well as auction results, the site will allow me to understand who his target audience is, if he indeed has one, and who these auctioneers may be and where their interests lie.  Moreover, the anecdotes and information provided by the biography will provide me with a more sophisticated foundation to understand the roots of Chen’s realist yet alternative technique of painting.

—

Works Cited

Cuddy, Dylan. “Chen Danqing.” Widewalls, 2014. Accessed April 30, 2020.

Chen Danqing

Chen Danqing – Shepherds – Visual Analysis

Posted on by
1

1980, oil painting on wood, 79 x 52 cm

Shepherds, 1980, oil painting on wood, 79 x 52 cm

Source: artnet.com (http://www.artnet.com/artists/chen-danqing/shepherds-_c5BgdZT-kKaTTzQ7Yajhw2)

This painting done by Chen is typical of his depictions of the Tibetan people in the Tibetan Plateau of China’s far west.  The individuals are draped in traditional Tibetan garb, representing their preservation of traditional culture in an increasingly homogeneous China.  This work is typical of Chen’s style, emphasizing the need to depict the truth in life, not to be convoluted by adding superfluous detail to beautify the image.  As put by Lu Peng, “their [Chen Danqing] works often reflect their personalities and their visual experience of growing up during the Cultural Revolution… which propelled these artists to become stronger, more creative, and powerful” (Lum 2010, 91).  The difficulty of living through a period such as the Cultural Revolution inevitably shaped the way the artist perceives his surroundings, particularly the emphasis on life’s harsh reality.

What is most notable about Chen’s paintings is the light in which he depicts the Tibetan people, one of China’s 56 zus, ethnicities.  Often depicted in public discourse as an unruly and subversive ethnic group due to confrontations with Beijing, Chen portrays Tibetans in a refreshingly normal manner, portraying “ordinary life with utterly non-dramatic and non-literary themes” (Lu 2010, 757).  He paints them in a style as he would paint a member of the Han ethnicity.  Furthermore, he portrays the man in the image attempting to kiss the woman, appearing to smile in what could be identified as pleasure.  To contrast the mainstream narrative regarding the subversiveness of Tibetan people, Chen portrays the humane nature of the two subjects in a style that emphasizes the normality of their lives and culture.

The piece is done as oil on wood, depicting the earthy tones of the sparsely populated endless grasslands and unruly terrain of the Plateau.  The shirt of the woman contrasts with the earthy tone primarily featured, complemented by her colorful necklace, a typical accessory in Tibetan culture.  The wool coat adorned by the man, assembled from the wool of the sheep which he cares for, shows the harmony between his profession and nature, both of which require mutual respect for bounty and health.  The ardent realism portrayed in the Sheepherder serves not only as a medium for Chen to portray the Tibetan people in a realist light, but also a means to explore the way in which they understand the relationship between earth and man.

Peng, Lu. “Scar Art and the Life-Stream.” In A History of Art in 20th Century China, 757-780. Milano: Edizioni Charta Srl, 2010.

Lum, Ken. “Zhang Shengtian and Hank Bull in Conversation.” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 91.  Volume 8, Number 1, January 2009.

Artist Introduction – Chen Danqing

Posted on by
Reply

I decided to focus on the Chinese artist Chen Danqing.  Chen was born in August of 1953 in Shanghai, China, four years after the Communist victory over the Nationalists in October of 1949.  His life story is one of both joy yet sadness, as his family was separated due to his grandfather’s allegiance to the Nationalist cause and his ensuing escape to Taiwan.  Chen grew up in the metropolis of Shanghai, yet at the age of 17, he was sent to the countryside as a result of the Cultural Revolution’s effort to subject privileged city youth to the toil of the rural peasants.  This experience is often noted as a turning point in his life.  Following the closure of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Chen attended the China Central Academy of Fine Arts where he cultivated his passion for the Tibet Autonomous Region and the culture and arts which existed in the faraway western region.

After graduating, he moved to New York City where he helped develop the fledgling Native Soil Painting movement in the United States through his work on the Tibetan people.  He was strongly influenced by the works of Jean Francois Millet, a French realist who motivated Chen’s persistent work on Tibet.  While his time in the United States was quite important to his development as an artist, he describes his time there as depressing and difficult.  Before long, he returned to China and taught what he had learned in the West as a supervisor at Tsinghua University’s Academy of Arts and Design.  Thus began Chen’s robust opposition to the Chinese art education institution, criticizing English proficiency as a prerequisite to graduation.  He then left his position in an act of protest and gained national notoriety for his efforts.  Having lived through the rigidity of late-Mao China, the gradual liberalization of the Deng era, and the seemingly paradoxical era of Jiang and Hu in the late 20th and early 21st century, Chen has experienced the PRC at its moments of unrestrained liberalization and state-sponsored surveillance and suppression.

In the words of one of his students, “Chen has never been just a painter.  He is an intellectual with a social conscience” (Xu 2010).  He remains working in Beijing today as a private artist and an avid writer on society, politics, and of course, art.

This piece of artwork, Mother and Child, depicts a Tibetan family in traditional garb and in a traditional Tibetan home that resembles the climate on the Plateau quite accurately.  While the painting does not reference the turbulent relations between Beijing and Lhasa, there are clear distinctions drawn between the majority Han culture and the unique Tibetan culture which Chen so passionately pursues in his artwork.

Chen Danqing – Mother and Child. Oil on Paper. 1980.

Source: artnet.com (http://www.artnet.com/artists/chen-danqing/mother-and-child-a-ISkzD2GC9-G5FMOnyofIZQ2)

 

Works Cited

“Chen Danqing.” artnet. Accessed April 9, 2020. http://www.artnet.com/artists/chen-danqing/

Kaitlin, Solimine. “Tibet in the Artistic Imagination: An Interview with Chen Danqing.” The World of Chinese 2, no. 6 (2012): 28-33

Jun, X.  “Sit on the Sidelines of” Chen Danqing’s Anger.” Art and Design 2 (2010): 57.

 

 

 

Introduction – Jeremy Rausch

Posted on by
Reply

Hi! My name is Jeremy Rausch and I am a double major in Chinese and Political Science. I have taken Chinese language courses since freshman year of high school and have traveled to China on three separate occasions for varying reasons. I never have taken a course on Chinese art prior to this and I believe art provides unique insight into China’s expansive culture that literature often is unable to delineate. Also, I was originally supposed to be enrolled in a 6-month long study abroad program in Beijing until July of this year, yet due to obvious circumstances I was forced to come home early but am certainly happy to be safe. This picture is one of me and my Chinese host family mother at the Spring festival dinner enjoying a delicious 年夜饭 （I am the one on the right when you are looking at the picture).