Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Wang Qingsong's "Dormitory"



The browser cannot contain its fully glory in this form. See Dormitory here   lso see his triptych  "Past, Present and Future" and  China Mansion - all bizarre and somewhat mesmerizing panoramic, staged tableaus. 

The movement of these from his earlier work is pretty phenomenal. See Adam and Eve (97?) left: 

From a 2004 NYT article, The Venus de China

"Mr. Wang has turned his own case of cultural whiplash into very large-scale photographs of dazzling beauty, present-day equivalents of history paintings packed with whimsical details and dramatic effects. ''Romantique'' (2003), measuring 4 feet by 21 feet, presents a garden of earthly delights -- orange groves, lush green grass, cobalt-blue sky -- filled with more than 50 live models, all Asian, re-enacting poses found in Western art history. On the far left are Michelangelo's Adam and Eve and the quartet from Manet's ''Déjeuner sur l'Herbe.'' In the center, Botticelli's Venus rises from her clamshell, surrounded by voluptuous bathers and lounging maidens reminiscent of paintings by Ingres, Velásquez, Matisse and Gauguin.

But off on her own at the far right, a nude woman sits in a rickshaw. She is a concoction not found in the Western canon, yet she stares directly at the audience with all the forcefulness of a modern-day Olympia. Her presence adds a cautionary note to this otherwise bucolic scene, a warning that the new China might not be simply a picturesque paradise ripe for exploitation by foreign investors or for total immersion in Western influences."

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