Chinese art: Ren Xiong (1820-1857)

What a painting this is! Ren Xiong (任熊) was born in Xiaoshan, Zhejiang Province in the west of China. It is a self-portrait.

He is the son of poor farmers. He began to study painting in the village school but left to travel.

In 1846 he went to Hangzhou where he met Zhou Xian with whom he studied for three years. During the Taiping Rebellion, he and many other painters and scholars made their way to Shanghai, an island of safety protected by the westerners living there. This migration stimulated an already active intellectual society. The paintings became known as the “Shanghai School.” By chance, there were four outstanding painters in Shanghai at the time with the surname Ren, they’re called the “Four Rens.” Ren Xiong was the foremost of the four. He was strongly influenced by Chen Hangshou and painted a wide variety of subjects, including figures, landscapes, flowers, birds, fish and other animals.

The image on the right I photographed from my copy of Zhang Anzhi, A History of Chinese Painting (Beijing, Foreign Languages Press, 1992).

Chinese art; Aussie bottle; dirty Surry Hills window…

Yes, I must do something about that window…

… of course I could have just let you think there was a fog or something…

– Original photo by Neil Whitfield 2008

Chinese art

Back in Surry Hills 12: personal space I introduced you to the screen The Mufti of Watson’s Bay gave me for my 50th — 15 years ago. Here is the central panel. It really is quite wonderful!

Personal Reflections: Saturday Morning Musings – the art of Jiawei Shen

In Personal Reflections: Saturday Morning Musings – the art of Jiawei Shen this morning Jim Belshaw gives his account of an SBS documentary I missed last night, as I watched a DVD and then the Olympic Games.

Jiawei Shen
Eyewitness (George Gittoes) 1997 linked to source

DSL collection – Chinese Contemporary Art

DSL collection – Chinese Contemporary Art is a place to explore. Here are three samples.

Qiu Anxiong (b. 1972)

Chinese art 3 — modern traditional landscapes

These are representative of traditional concerns; I find them beautiful, if lacking the subtlety of some of the works of centuries past. The first is linked to its source.

“Pines, bamboo and plum blossoms are ‘bosom friends in winter.’ The three plants are upright and show rectitude. They become favorite objects for Chinese painters.”

Chinese Art 2 — 21st century

With all the focus on China right now, we should note the voices and visions that have been emerging there since the 1980s. “Yue Minjun (Chinese:岳敏君, born 1962, Heilongjiang Province, China) is a contemporary Chinese artist based in Beijing, China. He is best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in laughter. He has also reproduced this signature image in sculpture, watercolor and prints. While Yue is often classified as part of the Chinese ‘Cynical Realist’ movement in art developed in China since 1989, Yue himself rejects this label, while at the same time “doesn’t concern himself about what people call him.” – Wikipedia. Brave souls, some of them.

Execution (1995) — Yue Minjun.

Click the painting to see a commentary from Loud Solitude.