{"id":11725,"date":"2012-05-25T09:12:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T09:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/?p=11725"},"modified":"2023-05-02T16:21:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T16:21:58","slug":"does-china-need-book-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/zh-hant\/does-china-need-book-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Does China Need Book Art?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cDo A Book,\u201d group exhibition, curated by Katherine Don and George Chang.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/strong>White Space Beijing<\/a><\/strong> (No.255 Caochangdi, Airport Service Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing). Feb 18\u2013Mar 18, 2012.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe art of the book\u201d \/ books-as-art \/ artists\u2019 books \/ \u201cbookworks\u201d \/ book-objects\u2026. The realm loosely bounded by these terms is characteristically amorphous. Book art\u2019s aura of intrigue and charm hinges on the intimacy associated with reading, combined with the nebulous potential of \u201cart\u201d and all this conjures for the individual mind.  Objects, artworks, books: hybrid vessels of the unexpected that hover between reading, seeing, writing and making. Book art\u2019s Western history can be charted from early beginnings with William Blake\u2019s illuminated books, for example; at the turn of the 20th Century, \u201clivres d\u2019artiste\u201d were endorsed by the inspired dealer Ambroise Vollard, who commissioned limited editions illustrated by artists. What has come to be understood less as a medium than a \u201cgenre\u201d was expanded later by Dieter Roth and Ed Ruscha, whose conceptual approaches in the 1950s and 60s cemented the will to explore, manipulate and deconstruct the book form in an artistic vein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about China? Certainly no such clear history exists here, though an accord between books and art can\u2019t be denied. In 2006-2007, \u201cShu: Reinventing Books in Chinese Contemporary Art,\u201d a two-part show curated by Wu Hung at the China Institute drew attention to works born of artists\u2019 responses to the socio-political relationship with literary culture in China. There were featured such things as Xu Bing\u2019s infamous \u201cBook From the Sky\u201d (1987-1991), as well as Zhang Xiaogang\u2019s 1991 Private Notes<\/em> series \u2014 paintings showing the artist\u2019s body becoming dismembered in the face of difficulties with letters and manuscripts. But although powerful, these pieces don\u2019t relate to some of book art\u2019s usual tenets as shaped by its 20th-century Western history \u2014 intimacy, small scale, and direct attention to the physical notion of a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, why \u201cDo A Book\u201d in Beijing this year? Co-curated by Katherine Don and George Chang, this exhibition at White Space brought us 25 artists\u2019 unique book art pieces. \u201cThat\u2019s actually all we said,\u201d Don remarked, \u201cSome of the artists were very liberal and extracted a part of it, and it\u2019s interesting how the works are born of a notebook, to newspaper, to ceramics, to actual books that have been published before.\u201d True, here was Ma Jun\u2019s impenetrable porcelain version of the Communist Manifesto and a folio of \u201cHair Sketches\u201d by Tom Bell \u2014 the cover a glossy black mass and each page featuring an \u201cabstract portrait\u201d made from a lock of hair; Sarah Sze\u2019s \u201cNotepad\u201d laser-etched a block of pages into sculptural undulations hung on the wall. \u201cIt\u2019s not as if it\u2019s very novel and we had to force artists to do something,\u201d she says, \u201cAll artists are doing artists\u2019 books or something related to book art\u2026. The most prominent response was that they would show us their work and say \u2018this is my art but this is something I do on the side.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The need was therefore not to convince the artists: \u201cWe\u2019ve had so many offers on Weibo like \u2018Hey, I have a book, you wanna see my book?!\u2019\u201d Don says \u2014 but rather to reach an audience. Motivated ostensibly by the curators\u2019 personal interest (\u201cWhat we really wanted to call attention to is that these works are out there\u2026. I\u2019m pretty sure this is the first exhibition of its kind\u201d\u2026 It\u2019s like \u201cwhat about that?!\u201d), \u201cDo a Book\u201d went down very well, we hear. Ironically, the electronic channels that are murdering the printed word were what animated the discussion: \u201cWeibo was going nuts\u201d apparently, with about 100 \u201cre-tweets\u201d every hour on the opening day. Curators take note: \u201cThe gallery, as we were installing, put up all the images-in-process and details of the works.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems the exhibition also threw some light on the relationship with books, on their treatment as representative objects (Ma Jun\u2019s porcelain piece was an unopenable, sealed weight, and the Austrian artist Emma Walner used Mao Zedong\u2019s Selected Works \u2014 which of course she had never read), and their tenacity, as Don claims that at the same time, \u201call these artists do is read.\u201d Xu Lei was one artist to tweet a response to the show wherein he said he really liked small things, and that this was a refreshing show to engage with specific objects. For Don, \u201cThat was our goal and is what I love about paper: it draws you in as opposed to pushing you back and forcing you to look at it in its entirety. The intimacy of the objects is something that I like. It\u2019s a lot harder to create small works than it is to create big works.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the 1000-or-so people who visited \u201cDo A Book\u201d on the opening day, or later on, or cheeped online about it, then, this was an exhibition worth the trip\/click. Don \u201creally wasn\u2019t sure if the audience would get into it \u2014 or even be immediately responsive about it\u2026.It\u2019s not a line-up of who\u2019s who \u2014 it\u2019s a line-up of who\u2019s doing what.\u201d It would seem that China is doing book art, and perhaps \u2014 as of now \u2014 book art exhibitions. Whatever next?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDo A Book,\u201d group exhibition, curated b … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":12101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[7612,7615,172,7614,7613,3013,7616,6447,7617,109,7618,7620,7619,7621,7258,7622,7623,7624,7625,7626,7627,6590,7628,2946,7629,7630,7631,7632,1119,5380],"yoast_head":"\nDoes China Need Book Art? - \u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/does-china-need-book-art\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"zh_TW\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does China Need Book Art? - \u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cDo A Book,\u201d group exhibition, curated b … Continue reading →\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/does-china-need-book-art\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"\u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-25T09:12:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-05-02T16:21:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2023\/05\/do-a-book.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lien\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lien\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"\u9810\u4f30\u95b1\u8b80\u6642\u9593\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 \u5206\u9418\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/does-china-need-book-art\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/does-china-need-book-art\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lien\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/#\/schema\/person\/52a3fdee246825a3356b50e0c44bbeeb\"},\"headline\":\"Does China Need Book Art?\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-05-25T09:12:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-05-02T16:21:58+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/does-china-need-book-art\/\"},\"wordCount\":890,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Ain Cocke\",\"Book Art\",\"Caochangdi\",\"Chen Longbin\",\"George Chang\",\"Guo Hongwei\",\"Heimo Wallner\",\"Hong Hao\",\"Huang Min\",\"Iona Whittaker\",\"Katherine Don\",\"Kiki Smith\",\"Kong Guoqiao\",\"Leung Chiwo\",\"Liu Ren\",\"Lukas Birk\",\"Ma Jun\",\"Out\",\"Qing Qing\",\"Ravikumar Kashi\",\"RedBox Studio\",\"Rirkrit Tiravanija\",\"Rutherford Chang\",\"Sarah Sze\",\"Terry Winters & Ben Marcus\",\"Tom Bell\",\"Tsang Kinwah\",\"Wang Chao\",\"White Space\",\"Xu Bing\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Reviews\"],\"inLanguage\":\"zh-TW\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/does-china-need-book-art\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/does-china-need-book-art\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/does-china-need-book-art\/\",\"name\":\"Does China Need Book Art? 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