Figure 1: Huang Yong Ping. “A History of a Chinese Painting” and “A Concise History of Modern Painting” Washed in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes. Sculpture. 1987. 

Huang Yong Ping founded something called the Xiamen Dada group (Vine 2011: 53), which was focused on criticism of many works and controversies. This led him to become an advocate for the destruction of specific doctrines and texts. His hopes to create art in post modern form was greatly influenced by the ideas of destruction and recreation. This led him to criticize specific art history which then resulted in his idea to create this work of art(Minglu 1998: 160). This work was a sculpture called, “A History of a Chinese Painting” and “A Concise History of Modern Painting” Washed in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes. This sculpture expressed the denial of knowledge before the political turmoil that took place during the cultural revolution. The two books differed in that one was about traditional art, and one was about modern art. He wanted to combine two different histories together that were controversial to each other(Cheng 2018).  He took the two books and washed them in a washing machine, then formed the pieces together into what was considered pulp, and then  placed them on a piece of broken glass that was held up by a wooden trunk. The work is 31x20x20 which means it is not taking up a serious amount of space. The art can be depicted just as well even though it is not necessarily very large because of the interesting composition of it making it stand out. The overall meaning of this sculpture is exaggerated, in the way that was created, but its meaning is realistic to the ideas of the controversies between modern and traditional Chinese art. One interesting thing about this sculpture is that it looks like a destruction of something but its meaning is changed to a “still life in ruins”(Minglu 1998: 62). While viewing this work of art, one cannot see the washing machine that was the basis behind creating this piece, but instead we are left interpreting exactly what Huang Yong Ping went through to create this.

Bibliography

Cheng, Vincent. Conversation with Huang Yongping Asia Art Archive in America. www.aaaa.org/programs/conversation-with-huang-yongping/.

Kao, Ming-Lu, and Norman Bryson. Inside out: New Chinese Art. Univ. of California Press,1998.

Image Source: Spalding, Jill. “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World.” Studio International – Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, www.studiointernational.com/index.php/art-and-china-after-1989-theater-of-the-world-review-guggenheim.

Vine, Richard. New China, New Art = Zhongguo Dang Dai Yi Shu. Prestel, 2011.