ASIA SOCIETY PRESENTS MAJOR EXHIBITION OF MODERN CHINESE LANDSCAPES AND PRISON NOTES

LANDSCAPE OF MEMORY: THE ART OF MU XIN

JUNE 10 THROUGH SEPTEMBER 7, 2003

Spring Brilliance at Kuaiji, 1977-78, Gouache and Chinese ink on paper, 7” x 13” Image Courtesy of The Rosenkranz Foundation.

Asia Society presents a major exhibition exploring the work of one of China’s most significant yet little-known contemporary writer-artists—Mu Xin (pronounced Moo Shin). Landscape of Memory, on view from June 10 through September 7, features writings and landscape paintings produced by the artist during two periods of imprisonment at the time of the Cultural Revolution. Unique in modern Chinese art, his works are a synthesis of Chinese and Western artistic idioms and offer a commentary on China’s cultural past and present. The Prison Notes are drawn from the artist’s own collection and the paintings are from the collection of The Rosenkranz Foundation. Together they offer the first comprehensive evaluation of Mu Xin’s art and confirm his importance as a leading experimental artist and thinker in the history of twentieth-century Chinese painting and literature.

According to Vishakha N. Desai, Senior Vice President of the Asia Society and Director of the Museum and Cultural Programs, “Mu Xin’s work demonstrates the power of Chinese painting to assimilate Western styles and yet produce original works that are unmistakably Chinese. His art is also reflective of the turbulent times in which it was created. Most important, his life and work are a moving testament to the power of art to sustain an individual in the most trying circumstances and serve as an example of the triumph of the creative spirit against all odds.”

Landscape of Memory is curated by Alexandra Munroe, Director, Japan Society Gallery, and Wu Hung, Consulting Curator at the Smart Museum of Art and Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Chinese Art History, University of Chicago.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major catalogue, The Art of Mu Xin: Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes, distributed by Yale University Press. It features an introduction by Alexandra Munroe and essays by Wu Hung; Richard M. Barnhardt; John M. Shiff, Proferssor Emeritus of the History of Art, Yale University; and Jonathan Hay, Associate Professor of art History, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

The Exhibition

The works in the exhibition were created while Mu Xin was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution (1965–76) and its immediate aftermath. All his works prior to this period were either confiscated or destroyed. Miraculously, the two series – sixty-six sheets of Prison Notes inscribed recto and verso and thirty-three ink-and-gouache landscape paintings – survived.

Mu Xin produced the Prison Notes during a period of incarceration from 1971–72. They are composed in miniscule characters on sheets of paper purloined from the supply given to him for his forced confessionals. Mu Xin hid these notes in his padded prison clothes and miraculously left with them intact when he was freed. The writings include meditations, musings on art and the nature of human existence and memories of his childhood, interspersed with references to Greek and Egyptian history, Christian saints and Western intellectuals and artists. The condensed, sometimes obscure and aphoristic prose has a remarkably fantastic and inventive quality. As co-curator Wu Hung remarks, “Mu Xin’s familiarity with both Chinese and Western literature and philosophy lend a unique stylistic subtlety and thematic richness to his writing. When his works were finally published in the late 1980s, readers felt that they had encountered a literary genius out of nowhere.” When one considers that Mu Xin was risking his life by writing such subversive material during his imprisonment, his determination and dedication to his art is overwhelming. The Prison Notes are powerful documentation of the invincible spirit of self-expression in the face of repression.

The landscape paintings were created during a later period of house arrest from 1977–78. These landscapes are an extraordinary synthesis of classical Chinese and Western traditions and are drawn from the artist’s memory and imagination. The works are small, measuring about thirteen by seven inches – making them easy to hide – and are executed in gouache and Chinese ink on Western-style paper. With simple means at his disposal, Mu Xin pushed the limits of his media to new levels of expression. The layers of gouache and ink are rubbed or burnished on the surface of the paper in a technique reminiscent of Surrealist decalcomania. The resulting forms, which are almost accidental in nature, are imbued with a strange quality of light, making them dreamlike, even unearthly. Mu Xin then articulates his landscape vision from these amorphous forms using brush strokes. Drawing from the Chinese monochrome tradition, he inverts it using black for form and color for void, resulting in colored contours that emerge from beneath and beyond the dark foreground forms. In this way Mu Xin grafts the stable composition of Western art onto the shifting, transparent layers of Chinese painting to create distinctive and extremely personalized works of art. According to co-curator Alexandra Munroe, “Mu Xin’s art is genuinely original in that it goes beyond a mere integration of artistic forms and styles to define a separate realm that is at the conjuncture of traditional Asia, the classical West and modernity.” The overall visual effect of Mu Xin’s paintings is that of something that is worn and antiquated, embodying a yearning for the past that is gone.

The complex and ambivalent sensibility of Mu Xin’s work is dramatically different from anything produced in China during that period, and it underlines his unique position in the history of Chinese art. The sophistication and novelty of his work is especially remarkable when one considers the conditions of duress under which they were produced.

Richard Barnhart, professor emeritus at Yale University, will deliver a lecture in conjunction with the exhibition. “Mu Xin and the Art of Landscape Painting,” on Wednesday, June 11, at 7:00 p.m., will include an overview of the artist’s work and a discussion about the function of landscape painting in various cultures and societies.

Landscape of Memory is co-organized and circulated by the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, and the Yale University Art Gallery. It is made possible by Delphi Financial Group and The Rosenkranz Foundation. Additional support for the exhibition and related programs is provided by Mr. and Mrs.Van D. Greenfield, Mr. and Mrs. James J. Lally, Mr. Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Zucker, Mr. and Mrs. Keith Gollust and Mr. and Mrs. Melville Straus.

About the Asia Society

The Asia Society is America’s leading institution dedicated to fostering understanding of Asia and communication between Americans and the peoples of Asia and the Pacific. A nonprofit, nonpartisan educational institution, the Asia Society presents a wide range of programs including major art exhibitions, performances, media programs, international conferences and lectures, and initiatives to improve elementary and secondary education about Asia. The Asia Society is headquartered in New York City, with regional centers in Washington, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Melbourne, Australia, and representative offices in San Francisco, Manila and Shanghai.

Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York City.
(212) 517-ASIA, www.asiasociety.org
Hours: Tuesday - Sunday, 11:00 A.M. - 6:00 P.M.; Fridays extended evening hours until 9:00 P.M.; Closed on Mondays and major holidays.
Admission: $7; $5 for seniors and students with ID; Free for members and persons under 16; Free to all on Friday evenings, 6:00 - 9:00 P.M.

MU XIN – A BIOGRAPHY

Portrait of Mu Xin, 2001, by Liu Dan Image Courtesy of The Rosenkranz Foundation

When catastrophe comes one must find ways to resist it. You are obliged to hold your own life in your mouth – like a tigress holding her young in her mouth – and be the first to advance, not retreat. To sacrifice by staying alive is a struggle with wisdom so that one can escape all death traps. It is not unlike the dandelions scattered in smoking debris after a war, which proves that, like plants, culture and the arts will strategically prevail.

Mu Xin, Prison Notes

This moving excerpt from Mu Xin’s Prison Notes is an eloquent testimony of the remarkable life and experiences of this artist. Born Sun Pu in the village of Wuzhen in Zhejiang province, located north of Shanghai, in 1927, Mu Xin was the only child of a prominent family. He received a classical Chinese education and was simultaneously exposed to the vibrant intellectual and cosmopolitan culture of Shanghai. Mu Xin’s training in Confucian tradition, coupled with his exposure to Western art, literature and philosophy intensified his desire to transcend the traditional confines of Chinese culture and explore a new world of foreign ideas. He was especially influenced by Renaissance masters such as Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, whom he considered to be his “early teacher.” The quest to find a middle ground between Chinese and Western artistic norms constituted the framework for his later literary and artistic accomplishments.

In 1946, he enrolled in the prestigious Shanghai Fine Arts Institute where he studied Western art under the influential painter Liu Haisu. Following this, he pursued informal studies in Hangzhou where he became close to the revered teacher Lin Fengmian whose ideas on the integration of Chinese and Western art had a profound effect on Mu Xin.

During the violence of the Cultural Revolution (1965–76) Mu Xin’s family estate was demolished and all of his family members dispersed, killed or imprisoned. Like millions of other Chinese artists and intellectuals, Mu Xin was repeatedly imprisoned under the Communist regime. Secretly, art became his mode of survival. He privately produced over five hundred paintings and twenty-one book-length manuscripts, including novels and short fiction, criticism and philosophy, anthologies of contemporary and classical-style poetry and a play. Of this corpus, only a handful of works survived destruction at the hands of government authorities, who deemed his work ‘counterrevolutionary.’

In 1982, Mu Xin left his native Shanghai and moved to New York City where he still lives. Today, he is celebrated as a prominent literary figure in Taiwan and among the Chinese diaspora.

# # #