Li Keran, Jinggang Mountain, ink on paper, http://www.artnet.com/artists/li-keran/jinggang-mountain-0l7D2a_EBsUSKqVle7wywQ2
Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise, oil on canvas, 1872, Musee Marmottan Monet, https://www.claude-monet.com/impression-sunrise.jsp
Zhang Zeduan, Along the River During the QingMing Festival, The Palace Museum,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Along_the_River_During_the_Qingming_Festival
My exhibition will showcase Li Keran’s unique style of painting. Li mixed traditional Chinese art with Western schools such as impressionism, expressionism, and realism. Li mixes the two in multiple ways, painting traditional Chinese landscapes with oil and canvas or painting western influenced pieces with ink and paper. An example of the latter is Dresden at Dusk, which was the subject of my visual analysis. Li started painting in the 1920s and was introduced to Western painting styles in art school. He was not a communist and worked briefly for the Nationalist government as an artist during the war. He was heavily criticized during the Cultral Revolution, both because of his association with the Nationalists and his painting style. He was not as active as he was previously during the revolution, although he did continue to paint despite the criticism. His unique style later had a resurgence of popularity, unfortunately he could not see this come to pass as he died in 1989.
The exhibition will contain both works by Li Keran and works by other artists. Li’s paintings will be the main focus, with western paintings on one side and traditional Chinese paintings on the other. The paintings selected will be a spectrum of Li’s work, ranging from traditional styles, to a combination of the two, and finally paintings more Western in style. By putting the two styles that are combined in Li’s work side by side, the exhibition will hopefully extenuate the use of both in the paintings. I hope that viewers will be able to see the subtle influences that each style had on Li’s paintings and how he brings them together. The paintings will be hung plainly, allowing the viewers to focus solely on the paintings and pay attention to the style of each. The exhibition will showcase how Li pushed the bounds of traditional Chinese art while still remaining loyal to its core idea.
Bibliography:
Hawks, Shelley Drake. The Art of Resistance: Painting by Candlelight in Mao’s China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017.
Sullivan, Michael. Art and Artists of Twentieth Century China. Berkley: University of California Press, 1996.
February 13, 2019 at 1:26 am
I enjoyed reading your exhibition idea since it seems similar to what I had in mind for my exhibition. Specifically, I like your idea of comparing Li Keran’s art to both Western style art and traditional Chinese art. Placing his work in between two different styles of art will help the viewer understand how he was taking traditional techniques and combining them with modern, western tendencies to produce his own style. This personally helped me with my own exhibition idea since my artist also has a very painterly, unique style. I had previously mentioned that I was going to include how her unique style evokes emotion amongst the viewer, but now I will try to mention the development of her style. This post allowed me to understand how detrimental breaking away from traditional Chinese painting techniques could be to an artist’s career. I now am considering how my own artist pushed boundaries of traditional Chinese painting and how the outside world influenced her.