Censorship in China

On Tuesday, October 21, I will host a discussion about censorship in China at China Institute. My good friend Colin Chinnery, former chief curator at the Ullens Center, is flying in for the event, joined by Zhang Hongtu, an artist based in NY, who encountered problems with his painting of the Bird's Nest this year in Beijing. (It was stopped in customs and not allowed into China.)

It's funny. With all the hype around the Chinese art scene, little attention is given to this issue, which still hovers over everything that takes place. As Exhibit A, I am passing along this email I just received from Defne Ayas in Shanghai who has run into problems curating the E-arts festival, a city run event.

hi dear barbara,
how are you?
shanghai is busy and continues to be sceptic and more inward-looking than ever.
i am now up to my nose in e-arts, a first attempt to work with a gov't foundation.
dealing with not so much political censorship (so far it has all been smooth), but more so an aesthetic one. after submitting proposal 6 month ago, giving materials for cship review 3 months ago, the young staff tells me that they do not like the way shih chieh huang's work look, how it is ugly and should be replaced, can we remove it?!
they ask me to screen an artist video twice on different screens, when the artist has given me the mandate to screen the work only in one screen.
when i say, i cannot, they say well the artist wouldn't know, it looks so nice on two screens. !!
it is a learning curve for all of us.
hope to see you here again.
love,
defne

here is the link to the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBRXn4ahblw

I dont get it

Elizabeth Peyton's show opened at the New Museum this week. Roberta Smith says in today's New York Times, "The best collapse the distances between realist painting, modernist abstraction, personal snapshot and magazine, and are accessible, devotional and visually alive. Their gem-rich colors are applied with brazen abandon, like miniature action paintings."

I've obviously been looking at Chinese art too long, since these small scale, awkward paintings barely register with me and I find the references to rock stars and art stars far too insular. Not that anyone cares what I think, but the world feels like a far bigger place than conveyed by these works. Still, I know they sell for millions and Peter Schjeldahl once described Peyton as the "moral center" of the Whitney Biennial. I don't get it. Do you?

G&G and Meckseper

Gilbert & George at the Brooklyn Museum press preview

Josephine Meckseper at MoMA

More Art, Some Politics

Sarah Palin makes me crazy. I hate that anyone finds her appealing since she so embodies a goyishe version of what my mother wanted me to be--success as a Donna Reed looking mom in a man's world. Last night watching the debate, I kept thinking of works by Marilyn Minter and Lutz Bacher, the way they were once accused of adopting the male gaze and dressing it up as a feminist statement. Sarah Palin is exactly that, the centerfold posited as feminist in the midst of a male arena. It never becomes feminist, but it's powerfully alluring, at least to those who never revised their gaze to begin with. In other words, it works - if you are unself-conscious in your sexist outlook on the world.

In any case, the debate made everything posited as political outside the political sphere look out of date and old-fashioned. At least, that's what I thought at the preview for Gilbert & George, a retrospective resolutely stuck in the 1990s. G&G make these mural-sized collaged statements that look a lot like stained-glass windows, but in spirit are the Disneyed rendition of queer theory. Lots of AIDS, sperm, cocks and youths turned into punchy logos for the G&G brand. The duo have always posed as prim, grey suited, dandies, a bit nerdy, that sets them apart from the all-black art world. And their billboards are populist though I'm not sure if they are popular.

Over at MOMA, there was a different style of political art, but one equally rooted in past tactics. Rmember deconstruction? That's Josephine Meckseper's installation using fashion shoots plus ads from the 1970s that could have been made by Victor Burgin circa 1977. This work really cried out for a picture of Palin--let's deconstruct that--instead of women in lingerie, an easy target. There's one small corner piece where Meckseper mentions the war, but the rest of her attack on consumerism and power was already being taken care of by Wall Street which has unilaterally rid of us of our spending power this week. Oh, well, since this hasn't yet effected the art world--Christie's is putting up a Matisse for $160,000,000 in November--we can think about that tomorrow.