Thu, Jul 24, 2014
Alison Carroll is in Brisbane, outside the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art. She is heading towards an exhibition by Cai Guo-qiang. Cai grew up in China, and he is a child of the Cultural Revolution. Carroll talks with Cai about how he artistic ideas came from Maoism, but also from much older, traditional, methods. In Seoul, Korea, Carroll talks with curator Kim Hong-hee about how art from Asia is leading the way in the international scene in the 21st century, and how it absorbs ideas from the East and the West. To understand more about contemporary art scene Carroll says we need to step back into the 20th century, and beyond, and understand that different cultures look at the world differently.
Thu, Jul 31, 2014
Part of Confucian teaching on an ordered world is respect for your elders, both in age and position, respect for the order of the group. At the turn of the 20th century young artists were challenging this way of organising society. To do this they promoted the rights of the lowest member of Confucian society, the girl. Liu Haisu's Girl in a fox fur shocked audiences by depicting a confident modern young woman. Across the sea in Japan, artists were also challenging tradition. Yorozu in his Nude Beauty, embraced individualism. Alison Carroll visits Amanda Heng in her Singaporean studio and talks with her about how she uses 'touch' between women in her family to challenge the patriarchal aspects of Confucian tradition.
Thu, Aug 7, 2014
We all know Gauguin travelled to the South Seas, but what is less well know is that it was seeing images of the temple at Borobudur that inspired him to leave France. The sway of the human form in the Indonesian temple carvings can be clearly seen in his woodcuts. Down the road from Borobudur lives the contemporary artist Lucia Hartini. An artist whose work is inspired partly by European Surrealism. Alison Carroll questions conventional art-history view that a European artist inspired by other cultures is a genius, and an Asian artist who is inspired by other cultures is a copyist. Both artists have incorporated other cultures in their work. Both create unique art.
Thu, Aug 14, 2014
In the 1940s in Manila a debate raged in the daily press about Modern art. Victorio Edades wanted to find a way "to blend and integrate all our impressions with our Oriental heritage and traditional Christian culture". The Spanish had been in The Philippines for so long that Catholicism was a tradition for them. Edades and his fellow artists also turned to pre-Hispanic imagery, inspired by the work of the Mexican muralists, particularly by the works of Diego Rivera. The sea trade routes to Philippines (and on China) went via South America, and ideas flowed with them. Alison Carroll talks with Filipino artist Nune Alvarado about the relationship between politics and the Catholic imagery in his artwork.
Thu, Aug 21, 2014
In 1930s Shanghai the writer Lu Xun asked artists to create woodblock prints that showed the hardship of life. Woodblocks had been developed in China centuries before, but it was the more recent work of Kathe Kollwitz that inspired the return to the form. After the revolution, Mao could see the value of mass-producing prints as propaganda. Alison Carroll explains that the prints even helped to Chinese people to become literate. After the Cultural Revolution the prints become bigger and simplified. The strong graphic political style which developed was influential around the world, particularly in the 1970s, and Carroll visits Australian printmaker Ann Newmarch to discuss how this Chinese art practice spread into Australasia and influenced Newmarch's work. By the end of the twentieth century the graphic style of the prints had evolved into ironic canvas works that critiqued the regime, but were no longer created for mass consumption.