ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF REVOLUTION
| October 25, 2011 | Post In LEAP 11
LUIS CHAN: A STRANGE LITTLE ISLAND
No matter whether to a Western or a Chinese audience, nearly all of Luis Chan’s paintings have the mystical, illusory quality of a foreign place. But to true Hong Kongers, they possess a familiarity that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is difficult to articulate.
A DISTANT SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE: THE CARTOON ART OF HUANG YAO
It is an incontestable fact that, in contemporary China, the original social and critical nature of cartooning has diminished. An exhibition of work by Huang Yao (1917-1987) at the Shanghai Art Museum earlier this year showed a cartoonist working in Shanghai in the 1930s and 40s who possessed a spirit of independence, at once coolly exposing society’s ills and earnestly advocating societal revival.
REPUBLICAN REVELRY: THE FUNHOUSE-MIRROR WORLD OF “GREAT WORLD”
Looking back, it is hard not to the prescience of Shanghai’s early amusement parks. In the decades that followed, this festive mode of consumption rapidly spread throughout the world, becoming the anthem of entertainment for the urban middle classes.
THE XINHAI REVOLUTION MONUMENT: A LONG TIME COMING
Under the current set of social circumstances, the need for monuments is as pressing as ever. In Wuhan, birthplace the Xinhai Revolution— the uprising, named for its year in the Chinese calendrical system, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911— architects and planners think about how to commemorate and look forward.
