John Clark
The University of Sydney, Art History, Emeritus
- John Clark is Professor Emeritus in Art History at the University of Sydney where he taught for twenty-one years. He ... moreJohn Clark is Professor Emeritus in Art History at the University of Sydney where he taught for twenty-one years. He researches on modern and contemporary Asian art, with an interest in biennales, Japanese art since Meiji, Chinese academic painting and the avant-garde, the problems of modernity in art beyond Euramerica, and art in China and Thailand of the 1980s. His 'Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai art of the 1980s and 1990s' (Sydney, Power Publications, 2010) won the Best Art Book Prize of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand in 2011. 'Modernities of Chinese Art' and 'Modernities of Japanese Art' were published by Brill in 2010 and 2013 respectively. In October 2021, the National Gallery of Singapore published his 'The Asian Modern, 1850s-1990s', examining twenty-five Asian artists over five generations. Currently in press is his 'Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials: 2001-2005'.edit
1994 ‘The position of the transcultural: an end to hyphenation?’, [essay on the work of John Young] in Lumby, Kathy & Robinson, Julia eds, Antipodean Currents, Ten Contemporary Artists from Australia, Washington, John F. Kennedy Centre... more
1994 ‘The position of the transcultural: an end to hyphenation?’, [essay on the work of John Young] in Lumby, Kathy & Robinson, Julia eds, Antipodean Currents, Ten Contemporary Artists from Australia, Washington, John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, 24 , and also at New York, Guggenheim Museum in Soho during early 1995].
Many cultures have tried to come to terms with the in-between. Usually they have done so by excluding it altogether, by an erasure of the gaps in cultural mapping. Particularly in 19th century Europe and America this led to a notion of pure cultures and authentic cultural forms, of `theirs' and `ours'. It mobilized rhetorics of originality and superiority/inferiority to maintain the boundary, the de-essentializing for what was `ours', of what was `theirs'. Nowadays, and particularly at cultural sites like Australia, these equations don't work. Perhaps such hyphenated bodies are disrupted by the historical conjunction of a population from many different and increasingly non-European cultures living for the moment within the domain of a relatively nonhegemonical code because of a certain undefined non-specificity in Australia's images of its pasts. This situation could be foreclosed by the forthcoming Australian Republic which might have to be more narrowly `Australian'. But recently multi-cultural policies have tried to position `Asian-Australians' as somehow fitted-in to the mainstream culture whilst at the same time keeping a paradoxical, and for other Australians, supposedly enriching but exoticized and culturally `other' authenticity. Some Chinese born in Australia have thought themselves Australian and been surprised when anyone else thought of them otherwise. On discovery of this differentiation by others they have had several adjustment strategies available: they can define themselves as the Chinese other some Australians imagine; they can pretend they are Australians unencumbered by an `other' culture; or they can look at the ping-pong game of intercultural cross-coding and use a type of irony to firmly distance themselves from any of the available, and increasingly problematic, identifications. People who came to sojourn for their education and then became immigrants, like John Young who came to school in Australia when he was eleven, probably became more aware of the complexities of these strategies than others, since they also had a world of knowledge to refer to. This knowledge was not only constituted by mapping their culture of origin over that in which they are now found, a process often associated with adolescent or late adolescent maturation. It was also found from the various kinds of knowledge system or bodies of technical skill which they learnt. This knowledge is a kind of double code of interpretation integrated within the system of mapping. On the one hand knowledge systems can function self-critically; on the other knowledge systems operate cognitively and discursively about the disparate series of cultural cross-projections and self-identifications which constitute maturation at a cultural interface. The being so created is not Chinese-Australian or Australian-Chinese, in fact the very notion of hybridity as a hyphenated body collapses under the very discursiveness in operation. This is controlled by the interpretive codes embodied in the knowledge, itself historical on a personal level, of the new kind of identity which is constituted within the space of one of the cultures in question. John Young very clearly embodies this in his works, My Feelings for you and Our Heads, both of 1994. For the ground of both works, a slide of a baroque painting [Jan van Kessel, Asia, 1664-6, Alte Pinakothek no.1911, M 0 0 8 1 nchen] has been machine-painted on in thin, almost indifferent tonalities and hues by a NECO computer-controlled spray paint gun, of the type frequently used for large advertisment posters. This has then been covered with clear gesso to produce a milky, porcellaneous feel to blank out the narrative in the original painting and produce a bland, barely tangible space. Onto these are hand painted images from flat, almost banal types: the nude, the still-life, the nature painting, the landscape. Young's work is pre-eminently painting about the generic categories of painting, with a bare pictorialsm and use of commonplace imagery which denies educated interpretation. It resists too much serious questioning of the image's genealogy or the effect of collagist transfer across them which one finds in more ostensibly appropriative positions. Young wants us to watch rather than read. He wants us feel rather than interrogate
Many cultures have tried to come to terms with the in-between. Usually they have done so by excluding it altogether, by an erasure of the gaps in cultural mapping. Particularly in 19th century Europe and America this led to a notion of pure cultures and authentic cultural forms, of `theirs' and `ours'. It mobilized rhetorics of originality and superiority/inferiority to maintain the boundary, the de-essentializing for what was `ours', of what was `theirs'. Nowadays, and particularly at cultural sites like Australia, these equations don't work. Perhaps such hyphenated bodies are disrupted by the historical conjunction of a population from many different and increasingly non-European cultures living for the moment within the domain of a relatively nonhegemonical code because of a certain undefined non-specificity in Australia's images of its pasts. This situation could be foreclosed by the forthcoming Australian Republic which might have to be more narrowly `Australian'. But recently multi-cultural policies have tried to position `Asian-Australians' as somehow fitted-in to the mainstream culture whilst at the same time keeping a paradoxical, and for other Australians, supposedly enriching but exoticized and culturally `other' authenticity. Some Chinese born in Australia have thought themselves Australian and been surprised when anyone else thought of them otherwise. On discovery of this differentiation by others they have had several adjustment strategies available: they can define themselves as the Chinese other some Australians imagine; they can pretend they are Australians unencumbered by an `other' culture; or they can look at the ping-pong game of intercultural cross-coding and use a type of irony to firmly distance themselves from any of the available, and increasingly problematic, identifications. People who came to sojourn for their education and then became immigrants, like John Young who came to school in Australia when he was eleven, probably became more aware of the complexities of these strategies than others, since they also had a world of knowledge to refer to. This knowledge was not only constituted by mapping their culture of origin over that in which they are now found, a process often associated with adolescent or late adolescent maturation. It was also found from the various kinds of knowledge system or bodies of technical skill which they learnt. This knowledge is a kind of double code of interpretation integrated within the system of mapping. On the one hand knowledge systems can function self-critically; on the other knowledge systems operate cognitively and discursively about the disparate series of cultural cross-projections and self-identifications which constitute maturation at a cultural interface. The being so created is not Chinese-Australian or Australian-Chinese, in fact the very notion of hybridity as a hyphenated body collapses under the very discursiveness in operation. This is controlled by the interpretive codes embodied in the knowledge, itself historical on a personal level, of the new kind of identity which is constituted within the space of one of the cultures in question. John Young very clearly embodies this in his works, My Feelings for you and Our Heads, both of 1994. For the ground of both works, a slide of a baroque painting [Jan van Kessel, Asia, 1664-6, Alte Pinakothek no.1911, M 0 0 8 1 nchen] has been machine-painted on in thin, almost indifferent tonalities and hues by a NECO computer-controlled spray paint gun, of the type frequently used for large advertisment posters. This has then been covered with clear gesso to produce a milky, porcellaneous feel to blank out the narrative in the original painting and produce a bland, barely tangible space. Onto these are hand painted images from flat, almost banal types: the nude, the still-life, the nature painting, the landscape. Young's work is pre-eminently painting about the generic categories of painting, with a bare pictorialsm and use of commonplace imagery which denies educated interpretation. It resists too much serious questioning of the image's genealogy or the effect of collagist transfer across them which one finds in more ostensibly appropriative positions. Young wants us to watch rather than read. He wants us feel rather than interrogate
Research Interests:
1994 / 1997 ‘Art and its `others' - recent Australian-Asian visual exchanges’, 1997 ‘Art and its ‘others’ - recent Australian-Asian visual exchanges’, Dever, Maryanne, ed., Australia and Asia: cultural transactions, Surrey, Curzon Press,... more
1994 / 1997 ‘Art and its `others' - recent Australian-Asian visual exchanges’,
1997 ‘Art and its ‘others’ - recent Australian-Asian visual exchanges’, Dever, Maryanne, ed., Australia and Asia: cultural transactions, Surrey, Curzon Press, 1997, 196-213.
There has recently been a great deal of activity in the Australian art world related to exhibitions of Australian art in Asia and of Asian art in Australia, and the publication of other literature. Perhaps the most significant of these exhibitions was the Asia-Pacific Triennale at Brisbane in September-December 1993 which brought together artists from the Asia-Pacific region with their Australasian contemporaries.
This paper will analyze some of the explicit objectives of the Triennale activities alongside their implicit assumptions about Australia's place in Asia, and summarize what has structured debates about Australian art and Asia.
1997 ‘Art and its ‘others’ - recent Australian-Asian visual exchanges’, Dever, Maryanne, ed., Australia and Asia: cultural transactions, Surrey, Curzon Press, 1997, 196-213.
There has recently been a great deal of activity in the Australian art world related to exhibitions of Australian art in Asia and of Asian art in Australia, and the publication of other literature. Perhaps the most significant of these exhibitions was the Asia-Pacific Triennale at Brisbane in September-December 1993 which brought together artists from the Asia-Pacific region with their Australasian contemporaries.
This paper will analyze some of the explicit objectives of the Triennale activities alongside their implicit assumptions about Australia's place in Asia, and summarize what has structured debates about Australian art and Asia.
Research Interests:
2014 ‘The worlding of the Asian Modern’, in Michelle Antoinette and Caroline Turner, eds, Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibition: connectivities and world-making, Canberra: ANU Press, 2014, 67-88. This paper reconsiders the historical... more
2014 ‘The worlding of the Asian Modern’, in Michelle Antoinette and Caroline Turner, eds, Contemporary Asian Art and Exhibition: connectivities and world-making, Canberra: ANU Press, 2014, 67-88.
This paper reconsiders the historical depth and global range of art works and practices that we might call the ‘Asian Modern’. It will not rehearse the copious arguments for,2 and some against,3 the notion of a modernity in Asian art emerging parallel to and, at the same time, in concert with, modernity in Euramerica. Suffice it to reiterate that the Asian Modern is an hermeneutic construct for interpreting multiple art discourses; an empirical field for understanding and ordering the minutiae of data about art practice and interpretation; and, a periodisation that can be culturally and historically denoted in a particular set of geographically defined entities, which became the modern state system in Asia from the onset of late Euramerican colonialism in the eighteenth century until the end of colonial rule in the mid-twentieth century. To facilitate discussion, there is no harm in putting indicative dates on this period and location; i.e., from the Battle of Plassey in 1757 in India, up to the end of the Third Vietnam War in 1976. This may be taken notionally to slightly extend up to the fall of Soviet communism in 1989/1990, which was roughly contemporary with the tensions that reached brief but bloody resolution in China in the 1989 massacre in Beijing’s Tian’anmen Square.
This paper reconsiders the historical depth and global range of art works and practices that we might call the ‘Asian Modern’. It will not rehearse the copious arguments for,2 and some against,3 the notion of a modernity in Asian art emerging parallel to and, at the same time, in concert with, modernity in Euramerica. Suffice it to reiterate that the Asian Modern is an hermeneutic construct for interpreting multiple art discourses; an empirical field for understanding and ordering the minutiae of data about art practice and interpretation; and, a periodisation that can be culturally and historically denoted in a particular set of geographically defined entities, which became the modern state system in Asia from the onset of late Euramerican colonialism in the eighteenth century until the end of colonial rule in the mid-twentieth century. To facilitate discussion, there is no harm in putting indicative dates on this period and location; i.e., from the Battle of Plassey in 1757 in India, up to the end of the Third Vietnam War in 1976. This may be taken notionally to slightly extend up to the fall of Soviet communism in 1989/1990, which was roughly contemporary with the tensions that reached brief but bloody resolution in China in the 1989 massacre in Beijing’s Tian’anmen Square.
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What does it mean for modern Asian artists to move, and what do they move be- tween? Before the institution of the modern art school in many parts of Asia in the 1850s–1880s,1 and later in the 1920s–1940s, we may think of artistic... more
What does it mean for modern Asian artists to move, and what do they move be- tween? Before the institution of the modern art school in many parts of Asia in the 1850s–1880s,1 and later in the 1920s–1940s, we may think of artistic residence or placed-ness as definable by the location of a workshop, its head, its singular patrons, and its market. By the mid- to late nineteenth century, the increasing art school cer- tification and middle-class professionalization of artists meant they could, to some extent, move away from particular locations because their work, its reputation, and/ or its selling possibilities were now located in a far more diffuse and regulated dis- course within a whole spectrum of activity and a culture or set of cultures modeled by the modern state. In this chapter, I would like to take up first the implications of movement itself by artists, works, or their viewers for definitions of modernity.
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2006 ‘What Modern and Contemporary Asian Art is [or is not]: the view from MoMA and the view from Asia’, 2006 ‘What Modern and Contemporary Asian Art is [or is not]: the view from MOMA and the view from Asia’, in John Clark, Maurizio... more
2006 ‘What Modern and Contemporary Asian Art is [or is not]: the view from MoMA and the view from Asia’,
2006 ‘What Modern and Contemporary Asian Art is [or is not]: the view from MOMA and the view from Asia’, in John Clark, Maurizio Peleggi and Kanaga Sabapathy, eds., Eye of the beholder, Sydney, Wild Peony, 2006, 297-319.
2006 ‘What Modern and Contemporary Asian Art is [or is not]: the view from MOMA and the view from Asia’, in John Clark, Maurizio Peleggi and Kanaga Sabapathy, eds., Eye of the beholder, Sydney, Wild Peony, 2006, 297-319.
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2006 ‘Asia’s invisible modernism’. Mori Art Museum 2010 ‘Asia’s Invisible [?] Modernism’, Peking University Research Center for Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education et al, What is Chinese Contemporary Art?, Chengdu: Sichuan Meishu... more
2006 ‘Asia’s invisible modernism’. Mori Art Museum
2010 ‘Asia’s Invisible [?] Modernism’, Peking University Research Center for Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education et al, What is Chinese Contemporary Art?, Chengdu: Sichuan Meishu Chubanshe, 2010 [re-publication of 2006 piece], 438-459.
2010 ‘Asia’s Invisible [?] Modernism’, Peking University Research Center for Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education et al, What is Chinese Contemporary Art?, Chengdu: Sichuan Meishu Chubanshe, 2010 [re-publication of 2006 piece], 438-459.
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2003 Some Theoretical issues in comparing Modernities in Art
2008 ‘Modernities in Art: how are they “other”?’ in World Art Studies: exploring Concepts and Approaches, eds. Wilfried van Damme and Kitty Zijlmans, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008.
2008 ‘Modernities in Art: how are they “other”?’ in World Art Studies: exploring Concepts and Approaches, eds. Wilfried van Damme and Kitty Zijlmans, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008.
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Montien Boonma and Modern Thai Sculpture’, Poshyananda, Apinan & Kunavichayanont, Sutee, eds., Before Dying: The Art of Montien Boonma, Bangkok, Office of Contemporary Art & Culture, Ministry of Culture 2005 [published in 2006], 188-198.... more
Montien Boonma and Modern Thai Sculpture’, Poshyananda, Apinan & Kunavichayanont, Sutee, eds., Before Dying: The Art of Montien Boonma, Bangkok, Office of Contemporary Art & Culture, Ministry of Culture 2005 [published in 2006], 188-198.
I am grateful for the opportunity to offer some thoughts on the work of Montien Boonma, the experience of knowing whom, though on a secular plane, always felt akin to the spiritual concerns of his work. Australia and some Australians were especially privileged by his work and his presence.
I am grateful for the opportunity to offer some thoughts on the work of Montien Boonma, the experience of knowing whom, though on a secular plane, always felt akin to the spiritual concerns of his work. Australia and some Australians were especially privileged by his work and his presence.
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2017 ‘Modern art in Southeast Asia’, in Furuichi Yasuko, ed., Shaping the History of Art in Southeast Asia, special issue of Art Studies, 03, Tokyo: The Japan Foundation Asia Centre, 2017, 020-023 Modern art in Southeast Asia exists in a... more
2017 ‘Modern art in Southeast Asia’, in Furuichi Yasuko, ed., Shaping the History of Art in Southeast Asia, special issue of Art Studies, 03, Tokyo: The Japan Foundation Asia Centre, 2017, 020-023
Modern art in Southeast Asia exists in a context of severe historical disjunction between the different linguistic and cultural situations inherited from colonialism or neocolonialism. Let us take art schools as one direct indicator. Some countries had a colonial art academy. In Vietnam this was followed by a variety of overseas "attachments"the North with the former Soviet Union and China, the South with the USA and France, until reunification in 1975. Russian and Chinese replaced French as the language of art discourse for North Vietnamese, and English for some South Vietnamese. Others countries, like Thailand, experienced a kind of self-colonialism. The Thai court and nobility imported Italian art and artists wholesale in the 1890s and 1910s, and in the 1930s the military government's art school took Italy as a model through the work of Corrado Feroci. Malaysia was without its own art schools until the late 1960s; Indonesia only had them from the early 1950s; yet the Philippines had the earliest art schools in the region, dating from the early 19th century. What could possibly link, or what structural parallels could possibly be valid for, such disparate histories? Probably the single most important linking element is the simultaneous absence of articulated indigenous academic painting discourses and the presence of the representational power of European mid-and late-19th-century salon realism. In Southeast Asia, realist European oil painting was not connected with the strong pictorial discourses of China and Japan, each of which had developed parallel art-theoretical or poetic criticism. Furthermore, where there was a highly developed, stylistically syncretic representational mode, as in Thai Buddhist temple murals, stylistic innovation was not questioned as long as the narrative integrity of the morality tale depicted was maintained. An equally striking structural analogy is found in the interest of midand late-19th-century aristocrats in the mastery of European art forms, whether by study at home, as with Prince Naris in Thailand, or through study in Holland, as with Raden Salleh from Java. The long historical lead times for the development of modern art in Europe to some extent finds a minor social equivalent in the learning of oil painting by these colonial or self-colonizing aristocrats and their successors-colonial and postcolonial educated members of the literate middle classes. To some extent, this prehistory positions oil painting among the post-independence, court, or upper-middle-class elites as the formal expression of a received or acquired status. A signal example of this is the Indonesian artist Basuki Abdullah, who was "court" painter to Soekarno in Indonesia in the 1960s, to the King of Thailand and to the Marcoses in the Philippines during the 1970s.
Modern art in Southeast Asia exists in a context of severe historical disjunction between the different linguistic and cultural situations inherited from colonialism or neocolonialism. Let us take art schools as one direct indicator. Some countries had a colonial art academy. In Vietnam this was followed by a variety of overseas "attachments"the North with the former Soviet Union and China, the South with the USA and France, until reunification in 1975. Russian and Chinese replaced French as the language of art discourse for North Vietnamese, and English for some South Vietnamese. Others countries, like Thailand, experienced a kind of self-colonialism. The Thai court and nobility imported Italian art and artists wholesale in the 1890s and 1910s, and in the 1930s the military government's art school took Italy as a model through the work of Corrado Feroci. Malaysia was without its own art schools until the late 1960s; Indonesia only had them from the early 1950s; yet the Philippines had the earliest art schools in the region, dating from the early 19th century. What could possibly link, or what structural parallels could possibly be valid for, such disparate histories? Probably the single most important linking element is the simultaneous absence of articulated indigenous academic painting discourses and the presence of the representational power of European mid-and late-19th-century salon realism. In Southeast Asia, realist European oil painting was not connected with the strong pictorial discourses of China and Japan, each of which had developed parallel art-theoretical or poetic criticism. Furthermore, where there was a highly developed, stylistically syncretic representational mode, as in Thai Buddhist temple murals, stylistic innovation was not questioned as long as the narrative integrity of the morality tale depicted was maintained. An equally striking structural analogy is found in the interest of midand late-19th-century aristocrats in the mastery of European art forms, whether by study at home, as with Prince Naris in Thailand, or through study in Holland, as with Raden Salleh from Java. The long historical lead times for the development of modern art in Europe to some extent finds a minor social equivalent in the learning of oil painting by these colonial or self-colonizing aristocrats and their successors-colonial and postcolonial educated members of the literate middle classes. To some extent, this prehistory positions oil painting among the post-independence, court, or upper-middle-class elites as the formal expression of a received or acquired status. A signal example of this is the Indonesian artist Basuki Abdullah, who was "court" painter to Soekarno in Indonesia in the 1960s, to the King of Thailand and to the Marcoses in the Philippines during the 1970s.
Research Interests:
2004 ‘Mooi Indie and Persagi from the perspective of a Modern Asian Art’ in Sidharta, Amir & Purnomo, Ninsih, eds, Dari Mooi Indie Hingga Persagi, Tangerang, Museum Universitas Pelita Harapan.
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2000 The Transfer: Art in Colonial Southeast Asia’, in Mashadi, Ahmad, ed., Visions and Enchantment: Southeast Asian paintings, Singapore, Singapore Art Museum, 12-17.
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Art from India crosses ‘dark waters’, in the words of Mulk Raj Anand, and confidently appears in international contexts around the world.The last 20 years has given rise to a surplus of exhibitions both outside of India, and more... more
Art from India crosses ‘dark waters’, in the words of Mulk Raj Anand, and confidently appears in international contexts around the world.The last 20 years has given rise to a surplus of exhibitions both outside of India, and more recently, within the country. The so-called “national” exhibition and the rise of curators making exhibitions, biennales and art fairs gives us a look into this new world.
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Yao Souchou, Confucian Capitalism: discourse, practice and the myth of Chinese enterprise, London, Routledge/Curzon, 2002 in Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, vol. 15, no.2, 2005, 317-320.
2006 ‘Luis Chan: A Hong Kong Modernist’, in Lee, Jack, Editor, From Reality to Fantasy: the Art of Luis Chan, Hong Kong, Asian Art Archive, 2006, 112-116 Luis Chan (Chen Fushan, 1905-1995, 陈福善) appears in Hong Kong art circles in the... more
2006 ‘Luis Chan: A Hong Kong Modernist’, in Lee, Jack, Editor, From Reality to Fantasy: the Art of Luis Chan, Hong Kong, Asian Art Archive, 2006, 112-116
Luis Chan (Chen Fushan, 1905-1995, 陈福善) appears in Hong Kong art circles in the 1930s and never disappears until his passing away in 1995. Unquestionably he was as major a figure as Lui Shou-kwan (1919-1975, 吕寿琨) in communicating notions of modernist art to Hong Kong and defining how they might be transformed with Hong Kong subjects, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s.
Luis Chan (Chen Fushan, 1905-1995, 陈福善) appears in Hong Kong art circles in the 1930s and never disappears until his passing away in 1995. Unquestionably he was as major a figure as Lui Shou-kwan (1919-1975, 吕寿琨) in communicating notions of modernist art to Hong Kong and defining how they might be transformed with Hong Kong subjects, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s.
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'Zhang Peili: negotiating a space for contemporary art in China with video’, in Olivier Krischer, ed., Zhang Peili: from painting to video, Acton, ACT: ANU Press, 2019, 95-126.
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‘Behind the Painting: Xu Bing’s Hybrid Landscapes’, in Li Yu-chieh, ed, XU BING: Beyond the Book from the Sky, Berlin: Springer, 2019, 109-114.
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‘Su Xinping’, 101-102, in Stephen H. Whiteman, Minerva Inwald and Bingqing Wei, with John Clark, Floating Time: Chinese Prints, 1954-2002, Sydney: Power Publications, 2016.
Research Interests:
Building a collection: Chinese prints at the University of Sydney’, 25-35, in Stephen H. Whiteman, Minerva Inwald and Bingqing Wei, with John Clark, Floating Time: Chinese Prints, 1954-2002, Sydney: Power Publications, 2016. From... more
Building a collection: Chinese prints at the University of Sydney’, 25-35, in Stephen H. Whiteman, Minerva Inwald and Bingqing Wei, with John Clark, Floating Time: Chinese Prints, 1954-2002, Sydney: Power Publications, 2016.
From January to July 1999 I was responsible for purchasing the University of Sydney’s collection of Chinese prints with funds from the Morrissey Bequest while I was in China undertaking other research. This continued on a second visit there in November 2001, this time with Sioux Garside, who was curator of the University’s art collection at the time. The collection strategy was based on complementing the existing collections of the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Works already held by them were avoided, and the University collected examples of print types and techniques those institutions did not possess, such as some etchings and lithographs in addition to woodblocks.
From January to July 1999 I was responsible for purchasing the University of Sydney’s collection of Chinese prints with funds from the Morrissey Bequest while I was in China undertaking other research. This continued on a second visit there in November 2001, this time with Sioux Garside, who was curator of the University’s art collection at the time. The collection strategy was based on complementing the existing collections of the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Works already held by them were avoided, and the University collected examples of print types and techniques those institutions did not possess, such as some etchings and lithographs in addition to woodblocks.
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Trajectories of the national: Xu Beihong and Arthur Kampf in Inter-Asian Comparison’, Chinese translation as ‘Guojia de guiyi”kua yazhou bijiaozhongde Xu Beihong yu Yafei Kangfu’ in Quanqiuhua yu minzuhua, Beijing: Zhonghua Renmin Daxue... more
Trajectories of the national: Xu Beihong and Arthur Kampf in Inter-Asian Comparison’, Chinese translation as ‘Guojia de guiyi”kua yazhou bijiaozhongde Xu Beihong yu Yafei Kangfu’ in Quanqiuhua yu minzuhua, Beijing: Zhonghua Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2014, 405-424.
How could national contents be shown in academy visual art discourses which borrowed from other-national formulations in the 1920s and 1930s? What were the consequences and undiscussed implications of Xu Beihong's work with Arthur Kampf in Berlin, and succeeding works by both artists? Why did the work of Pan Yuliang not follow the same trajectory? What was different about the similarities between the works of Xu and Kampf from those between Amrita Sher-Gil and her mentors in Paris, such as Lucien Simon? What contexts made possible the expression of national content and form in the 1930s, or rendered it problematic?
How could national contents be shown in academy visual art discourses which borrowed from other-national formulations in the 1920s and 1930s? What were the consequences and undiscussed implications of Xu Beihong's work with Arthur Kampf in Berlin, and succeeding works by both artists? Why did the work of Pan Yuliang not follow the same trajectory? What was different about the similarities between the works of Xu and Kampf from those between Amrita Sher-Gil and her mentors in Paris, such as Lucien Simon? What contexts made possible the expression of national content and form in the 1930s, or rendered it problematic?
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The tradition of Chinese Painting reconceived: Liu Guosong and Modernity’, in Xiao Xiangling, ed., Yuzhou Xinyin: Liu Guosong-Yijiazi xueluntan [bilingual, 2007 symposium], Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 2009, 156-174. As is clear from... more
The tradition of Chinese Painting reconceived: Liu Guosong and Modernity’, in Xiao Xiangling, ed., Yuzhou Xinyin: Liu Guosong-Yijiazi xueluntan [bilingual, 2007 symposium], Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 2009, 156-174.
As is clear from the accompanying bibliography, there are many books and catalogues which present or analyse Liu Guosong’s work and its development. It would be easy to move through a series of citations of this earlier material to a rehearsal of the opinions and approaches of others. Instead, I want here to adopt a longer analytical view to consider how his work indicates various and sometimes contradictory ways of re-conceiving the Chinese pictorial tradition and the various notions of modernity which these re-conceptions imply.
As is clear from the accompanying bibliography, there are many books and catalogues which present or analyse Liu Guosong’s work and its development. It would be easy to move through a series of citations of this earlier material to a rehearsal of the opinions and approaches of others. Instead, I want here to adopt a longer analytical view to consider how his work indicates various and sometimes contradictory ways of re-conceiving the Chinese pictorial tradition and the various notions of modernity which these re-conceptions imply.
Research Interests:
This exhibition provides a particularly appropriate opportunity to review where 'Australia' may sit culturally and how the possibilities of its various artistically creative spaces are to be constituted. Thinking about these issues... more
This exhibition provides a particularly appropriate opportunity to review where 'Australia' may sit culturally and how the possibilities of its various artistically creative spaces are to be constituted. Thinking about these issues requires a working out of what kinds of cultural status quo are 'Australian', or more precisely how various kinds of conflicts between statuses quo constitute the 'Australian' cultural space.
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What Modern and Contemporary Asian Art is [or is not]: the view from MOMA and the view from Asia’, in John Clark, Maurizio Pelleggi and Kanaga Sabapathy, eds., Eye of the beholder, Sydney, Wild Peony, 2006, 297-319. I also wrote the... more
What Modern and Contemporary Asian Art is [or is not]: the view from MOMA and the view from Asia’, in John Clark, Maurizio Pelleggi and Kanaga Sabapathy, eds., Eye of the beholder, Sydney, Wild Peony, 2006, 297-319. I also wrote the joint introduction, 1-8, and the whole of the commentary on Part III, 290-293.
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Catalogue essay for exhibition by Ted Snell and Sally Quinn, 'Orienting: Ian Fairweather in Western Australian Collections', With you or without you, Perth: Lawrence Wilson Gallery, University of Western Australia, 2013, 45-48.
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‘The life and the work: Australian art biography’ in Jaynie Anderson, Christopher R. Marshall and Andrew Yip eds., The Legacies of Bernard Smith: essays on Australian Art, History and Cultural Politics, Sydney: Power Publications, 2016
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2016 ‘Parallel Modernities: approaching modernity in art outside Europe and America’, 240-247 [publisher unidentified]. I would particularly like to thank T.K. Sabapathy and Patrick D. Flores for their friendship and inspiration in... more
2016 ‘Parallel Modernities: approaching modernity in art outside Europe and America’, 240-247 [publisher unidentified].
I would particularly like to thank T.K. Sabapathy and Patrick D. Flores for their friendship and inspiration in understanding modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia over a number of years.
I would particularly like to thank T.K. Sabapathy and Patrick D. Flores for their friendship and inspiration in understanding modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia over a number of years.
Research Interests:
In nineteenth-century Asia, photographic portraits did not exist as a separate visual discourse from painted portraiture. They were frequently introduced as a mark of mastery over new types of visual representation and over the kinds of... more
In nineteenth-century Asia, photographic portraits did not exist as a separate visual discourse from painted portraiture. They were frequently introduced as a mark of mastery over new types of visual representation and over the kinds of social exchange in which portraits were circulated, including oil portraits and those in graphic reproductions. This new visual discourse of portraiture pene- trated aristocratic society first, but it soon spread to the recently rich and often to the professional middle classes. Portraits were more than just indexical links to the subject—they were images that presented the sitter in a symbolic space frequently governed by both political intentions and institutional learning about developments in public representation.
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2013 ‘Presenting the Self: Pictorial and Photographic Discourses in Nineteenth-century Dutch Indies and Siam, Ars Orientalis, no.43., 66-82. [Japan section omitted in this publication]. In 19th century Asia photographic portraits did... more
2013 ‘Presenting the Self: Pictorial and Photographic Discourses in Nineteenth-century Dutch Indies and Siam, Ars Orientalis, no.43., 66-82. [Japan section omitted in this publication].
In 19th century Asia photographic portraits did not exist as a separate visual discourse from painted portraiture. Photographic portraits were frequently introduced as a mark of mastery over new kinds of visual representation, including oil portraits and those in graphic reproductions. This new visual discourse of portraiture penetrated aristocratic society first, but soon spread to the newly rich, and often the professional middle classes. Portraits were not just indexical links to the subject but images which presented the sitter in a symbolic space frequently governed by both political intentions and institutional learning about new kinds of public representation.
In 19th century Asia photographic portraits did not exist as a separate visual discourse from painted portraiture. Photographic portraits were frequently introduced as a mark of mastery over new kinds of visual representation, including oil portraits and those in graphic reproductions. This new visual discourse of portraiture penetrated aristocratic society first, but soon spread to the newly rich, and often the professional middle classes. Portraits were not just indexical links to the subject but images which presented the sitter in a symbolic space frequently governed by both political intentions and institutional learning about new kinds of public representation.
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1998 ‘Modern Asian Art: its construction and reception’ in Furuichi Yasuko, ed., Symposium: “Asian Contemporary Art Reconsidered”, Tokyo, The Japan Foundation, 1998. The institutional and intellectual construction of modern Asian art at... more
1998 ‘Modern Asian Art: its construction and reception’ in Furuichi Yasuko, ed., Symposium: “Asian Contemporary Art Reconsidered”, Tokyo, The Japan Foundation, 1998.
The institutional and intellectual construction of modern Asian art at its sites of origin will be summarized and comparison made with recent circuits of reception in other-than-Asian sites. In particular the role of receiving cultural formations-including funding bodies such as government and corporate foundations, museums, gatekeeper figures and gatekeeping functions, as well as the mediating function of artists themselves as major institutions of reception-will be examined in art historical perspective. A. The construction of a modern Asian art 0 The notion that there might be a modern art outside Euramerica is a beguiling but not necessarily a bewitching one. This paper will not discuss the interesting historical analogies between modern art in Asia and that in the Middle East, in Africa, or in Latin America, but will geographically confine itself to that area constructed as 'Asia' which is geographically East of the Indus valley, South of the Siberian tundra, and North of the Arafura Sea. To summarize briefly, Asian modern art can be constructed from various positions which include: 1. It is seen as a reflexive 'other' of Euramerican modernity, in some projection and extension of an'Orientalist' mis-construal of what might be the negative essence of Euramerican modernity. 2. It is seen as a 'local' or 'peripheral' modernity which negotiates a space within an overall modernism with its 'centre' in Euramerica. This is a realistic-if self-limiting-reinsertion of Asian modern art into a genealogy which privileges Euramerican origination and thereby unavoidably accepts its hegemony, if not its neo-colonial domination, as a basic premise. Elements of this modernity have been discussed as 'reverse Orientalism' or 'counterappropriation'. 3. It can be hermeneutically understood as a parallel case to the results of the transfer of Euramerican academy realism, where the 'modern' is an attribute of a stylistic penumbra the acceptance of whose various shadings can be historically traced. This approach treats modernism as a society and culture-neutral style, and tracks its distribution by art historical or quasi-archaeological methods. 4. It can be accepted as a series of discontinuous and heterogenous modernities arising from a specific structure of contact and conflict with Euramerican powers from about 1750 to 1950, where various conditions of contact, from absolute domination to precarious-if succesful-maintenance of state and cultural autonomy, led to mapping by local discourses themselves 5. It can be seen as a modality-among others-by which the world beyond Euramerica has resisted and finally overcome Euramerican impredations since the Renaissance. 6. It can be seen as a relatively isolated and autonomous series of phenomena which appear in the guise of transfers from Euramerican modernity, but are in fact reactions against it from deep strata of culture which always had their own dynamics isolated from Euramerica or indeed any other 'external' source. There is no space here to offer a critique of these six positions. My own lies between four and five. But one should note that these not purely intellectual constructs of discrete art historical data in works and artists' lives resting beyond them, just to be subsequently deployed as 'neutral' mapping constructs. These sorts of position underly the institutional practice of defining 'modern Asian art' by many modern artists and specifically many modern curators and critics since the 1950s. As such they are linked to the functions of those institutions which define them and-if it is not premature to make the Foucauldian extension-to regimes of practice which function in a broader sense as discourses of knowledge above and beyond any particular institution which may support them. Indeed if there were no institutions whose
The institutional and intellectual construction of modern Asian art at its sites of origin will be summarized and comparison made with recent circuits of reception in other-than-Asian sites. In particular the role of receiving cultural formations-including funding bodies such as government and corporate foundations, museums, gatekeeper figures and gatekeeping functions, as well as the mediating function of artists themselves as major institutions of reception-will be examined in art historical perspective. A. The construction of a modern Asian art 0 The notion that there might be a modern art outside Euramerica is a beguiling but not necessarily a bewitching one. This paper will not discuss the interesting historical analogies between modern art in Asia and that in the Middle East, in Africa, or in Latin America, but will geographically confine itself to that area constructed as 'Asia' which is geographically East of the Indus valley, South of the Siberian tundra, and North of the Arafura Sea. To summarize briefly, Asian modern art can be constructed from various positions which include: 1. It is seen as a reflexive 'other' of Euramerican modernity, in some projection and extension of an'Orientalist' mis-construal of what might be the negative essence of Euramerican modernity. 2. It is seen as a 'local' or 'peripheral' modernity which negotiates a space within an overall modernism with its 'centre' in Euramerica. This is a realistic-if self-limiting-reinsertion of Asian modern art into a genealogy which privileges Euramerican origination and thereby unavoidably accepts its hegemony, if not its neo-colonial domination, as a basic premise. Elements of this modernity have been discussed as 'reverse Orientalism' or 'counterappropriation'. 3. It can be hermeneutically understood as a parallel case to the results of the transfer of Euramerican academy realism, where the 'modern' is an attribute of a stylistic penumbra the acceptance of whose various shadings can be historically traced. This approach treats modernism as a society and culture-neutral style, and tracks its distribution by art historical or quasi-archaeological methods. 4. It can be accepted as a series of discontinuous and heterogenous modernities arising from a specific structure of contact and conflict with Euramerican powers from about 1750 to 1950, where various conditions of contact, from absolute domination to precarious-if succesful-maintenance of state and cultural autonomy, led to mapping by local discourses themselves 5. It can be seen as a modality-among others-by which the world beyond Euramerica has resisted and finally overcome Euramerican impredations since the Renaissance. 6. It can be seen as a relatively isolated and autonomous series of phenomena which appear in the guise of transfers from Euramerican modernity, but are in fact reactions against it from deep strata of culture which always had their own dynamics isolated from Euramerica or indeed any other 'external' source. There is no space here to offer a critique of these six positions. My own lies between four and five. But one should note that these not purely intellectual constructs of discrete art historical data in works and artists' lives resting beyond them, just to be subsequently deployed as 'neutral' mapping constructs. These sorts of position underly the institutional practice of defining 'modern Asian art' by many modern artists and specifically many modern curators and critics since the 1950s. As such they are linked to the functions of those institutions which define them and-if it is not premature to make the Foucauldian extension-to regimes of practice which function in a broader sense as discourses of knowledge above and beyond any particular institution which may support them. Indeed if there were no institutions whose
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Modern Thai literature has been given insufficient attention overseas because of a dearth of good, easily available translations and critical texts. This situation has begun to change, with the excellent translation of Veeraporn... more
Modern Thai literature has been given insufficient attention overseas because of a dearth of good, easily available translations and critical texts. This situation has begun to change, with the excellent translation of Veeraporn Nitiprapha's SEA Write Award-winning novel and some other texts. An insight into this burgeoning literature can now be gained outside Thailand and beyond the Thai language. This article intends to introduce the novel, to look at some of its distinctive techniques, to indicate how this novel lives in a Thai cultural world, and to see how it can be used to understand some particular kinds of modern self.
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We can put art works into the economic and cultural frames that underpin the patrons who make the historical art work socially possible. Or we can see this social history as unfolding through the specific biographies of artists who made... more
We can put art works into the economic and cultural frames that underpin the patrons who make the historical art work socially possible. Or we can see this social history as unfolding through the specific biographies of artists who made the works. Art history often has a tenuous hold on history itself, because many of its interpretive trajectories insist on art works as its subject, articulated through a history which is often that of their patrons and collections. Such an object-oriented art history is not really about the lived structure of artists' lives in the history of their times. As something of an indicative counter-claim to an emphasis on the art work itself, I begin with three photographs: one from 1970-71 of three artists, Chang Sae-Tang, Pratuang Emjaroen and Paiboon Suwannakudt (ill. 1). The other two from 2013 were taken at the Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre (ill. 2, 3) on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition of Chalood Nimsamer (1929-2015) where the artist is surrounded by his former students at Silpakorn University, all of whom Thai art world insiders could surely name. Among the artists portrayed in the first photograph (Figure 1), only Pratuang Emjaroen, pictured on the right, achieved prominence early on as a 'modernist', system-resisting artist whereas Chang Sae-tang, situated in the centre of the group, virtually retreated from the world as an 'individualist
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John Clark and Phaptawan Suwannakudt, ‘A history of Phaiboon Suwannakudt (1925-1982)’, The Journal of the Siam Society, vol 109 part 1, 2021, 1-36. With Appendices 1-10. The artist, Phaiboon Suwannakudt, was descended from a renegade Lao... more
John Clark and Phaptawan Suwannakudt, ‘A history of Phaiboon Suwannakudt (1925-1982)’, The Journal of the Siam Society, vol 109 part 1, 2021, 1-36. With Appendices 1-10.
The artist, Phaiboon Suwannakudt, was descended from a renegade Lao prince from Chiang Rung (Jinghong), who founded Ubon Ratchathani. Born in 1925, he was schooled in Ubon before moving to Bangkok and studying at Poh-Chang Academy of Arts with Silpa Bhirasri (Corrado Feroci) and then at Silpakorn University. He lodged at a wat with the art historian, Prayoon Uluchata (No Na Paknam), and the poet, Angkarn Kalayanapong, who became close friends. He worked as an artist, art teacher, draftsman, dance teacher and art director on movies, besides writing features, short stories and political commentary for newspapers, and painting watercolours for tourists. He was married in 1955 and helped raise seven children, but lived a nomadic life, paying little heed to money. In the late 1960s, he started painting murals at Wat Theppol in Talingchan, followed by commissions at the Montien Hotel, Dusit Thani Hotel, Phuphing Palace in Chiang Mai, and the Dusit Mahaprasat at Muang Boran (Ancient City). He was criticized for adapting the themes and methods of temple murals for commercial art. In 1975, he was diagnosed with kidney failure and died in 1982. His last commission at the Peninsula Hotel (now Anantara Siam Bangkok Hotel) was completed by his daughter. Phaiboon was an outsider in the contemporary art world, but was greatly admired and loved by a broad swathe of Thai artists and art connoisseurs for his independence and tenacity. He belonged to the first generation of modern-trained Thai artists, and his works, which are a crossover between elite art and popular culture, are a record of their time. Phaiboon means 'Prosperity'; Suwannakudt means 'Mountain of Gold'. Although the name Phaiboon is sometimes romanized as 'Paiboon', we will use 'Phaiboon' throughout. Phaiboon has also been frequently named in art world sources as 'Tan Kudt', the 'Tan' being a form of respectful address which roughly translates as 'Honoured', and in Phaiboon's case was also used as an in-group term of address with other art world people.
The artist, Phaiboon Suwannakudt, was descended from a renegade Lao prince from Chiang Rung (Jinghong), who founded Ubon Ratchathani. Born in 1925, he was schooled in Ubon before moving to Bangkok and studying at Poh-Chang Academy of Arts with Silpa Bhirasri (Corrado Feroci) and then at Silpakorn University. He lodged at a wat with the art historian, Prayoon Uluchata (No Na Paknam), and the poet, Angkarn Kalayanapong, who became close friends. He worked as an artist, art teacher, draftsman, dance teacher and art director on movies, besides writing features, short stories and political commentary for newspapers, and painting watercolours for tourists. He was married in 1955 and helped raise seven children, but lived a nomadic life, paying little heed to money. In the late 1960s, he started painting murals at Wat Theppol in Talingchan, followed by commissions at the Montien Hotel, Dusit Thani Hotel, Phuphing Palace in Chiang Mai, and the Dusit Mahaprasat at Muang Boran (Ancient City). He was criticized for adapting the themes and methods of temple murals for commercial art. In 1975, he was diagnosed with kidney failure and died in 1982. His last commission at the Peninsula Hotel (now Anantara Siam Bangkok Hotel) was completed by his daughter. Phaiboon was an outsider in the contemporary art world, but was greatly admired and loved by a broad swathe of Thai artists and art connoisseurs for his independence and tenacity. He belonged to the first generation of modern-trained Thai artists, and his works, which are a crossover between elite art and popular culture, are a record of their time. Phaiboon means 'Prosperity'; Suwannakudt means 'Mountain of Gold'. Although the name Phaiboon is sometimes romanized as 'Paiboon', we will use 'Phaiboon' throughout. Phaiboon has also been frequently named in art world sources as 'Tan Kudt', the 'Tan' being a form of respectful address which roughly translates as 'Honoured', and in Phaiboon's case was also used as an in-group term of address with other art world people.
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Food Stories’, Gastronomica; The Journal of Food and Culture, vol.4, no.2, Spring 2004, p.43-50. Translated by Yamamoto Naoki as ‘Tai ryôri ni okeru shokubutsu no monogatari’, Gengo Bunka, no.21, no.3, 2004. p.116-126. For me... more
Food Stories’, Gastronomica; The Journal of Food and Culture, vol.4, no.2, Spring 2004, p.43-50. Translated by Yamamoto Naoki as ‘Tai ryôri ni okeru shokubutsu no monogatari’, Gengo Bunka, no.21, no.3, 2004. p.116-126.
For me understanding food has always evolved out of stories people tell when something happens with or because of what they have eaten, and what emotional burden that story carries. When the world is not only integrated electronically but the raw materials of its cooking habits also flow to many parts of the globe, as well as the stories themselves, perhaps one should also try and understand what happens in between the stories, what happens when food marks an experience people cannot relate.
For me understanding food has always evolved out of stories people tell when something happens with or because of what they have eaten, and what emotional burden that story carries. When the world is not only integrated electronically but the raw materials of its cooking habits also flow to many parts of the globe, as well as the stories themselves, perhaps one should also try and understand what happens in between the stories, what happens when food marks an experience people cannot relate.
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'Food Stories’, Gastronomica; The Journal of Food and Culture, vol.4, no.2, Spring 2004, p.43-50. Translated by Yamamoto Naoki as ‘Tai ryôri ni okeru shokubutsu no monogatari’, Gengo Bunka, no.21, no.3, 2004. p.116-126.
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Food Stories’, Gastronomica; The Journal of Food and Culture, vol.4, no.2, Spring 2004, p.43-50. Translated by Yamamoto Naoki as ‘Tai ryôri ni okeru shokubutsu no monogatari’, Gengo Bunka, no.21, no.3, 2004. p.116-126.
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Food Stories’, Gastronomica; The Journal of Food and Culture, vol.4, no.2, Spring 2004, p.43-50. Translated by Yamamoto Naoki as ‘Tai ryôri ni okeru shokubutsu no monogatari’, Gengo Bunka, no.21, no.3, 2004. p.116-126. Not only is the... more
Food Stories’, Gastronomica; The Journal of Food and Culture, vol.4, no.2, Spring 2004, p.43-50. Translated by Yamamoto Naoki as ‘Tai ryôri ni okeru shokubutsu no monogatari’, Gengo Bunka, no.21, no.3, 2004. p.116-126.
Not only is the world integrated electronically, but the raw materials of its cooking, as well as the stories these ingredients tell, flow to many parts of the globe. The way a dish is prepared, the way ingredients are combined to create a certain taste, the manner in which food is offered and received, all bespeak the very substance of a particular culture. But what happens when the gap between cultures is breached, when food and its associated values move between cultures? What pleasures or shocks can occur in the transfer of culinary values?
Not only is the world integrated electronically, but the raw materials of its cooking, as well as the stories these ingredients tell, flow to many parts of the globe. The way a dish is prepared, the way ingredients are combined to create a certain taste, the manner in which food is offered and received, all bespeak the very substance of a particular culture. But what happens when the gap between cultures is breached, when food and its associated values move between cultures? What pleasures or shocks can occur in the transfer of culinary values?
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Icon and Image in Modern Thai Art,’ Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 3, 2011, (Special Issue: Aesthetics in Southeast Asia). A number of transitions seem to mark the change from a court-centred and essentially decorative or religious... more
Icon and Image in Modern Thai Art,’ Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 3, 2011, (Special Issue: Aesthetics in Southeast Asia).
A number of transitions seem to mark the change from a court-centred and essentially decorative or religious mural painting in late 18th century Ayutthaya, to the large historicizing narratives and individualized portrait schemes of the Bangkok court in the 19th century. How may these transitions be problematized ? What art historical evidence is available to describe them, and what art historical tools are available or can be devised to explicate their meaning? This paper is part of a wider series of researches into the art of various Asian art cultures which intends to produce a variety of culturally specific and non-Euramerican models for modernity in art. It will survey Thai material which may point to changes in the status of the art work and of the re-sacralization of images via their increased availability which have important, and hitherto unacknowledged consequences for the development of modernity in later 20th century Thai art.
A number of transitions seem to mark the change from a court-centred and essentially decorative or religious mural painting in late 18th century Ayutthaya, to the large historicizing narratives and individualized portrait schemes of the Bangkok court in the 19th century. How may these transitions be problematized ? What art historical evidence is available to describe them, and what art historical tools are available or can be devised to explicate their meaning? This paper is part of a wider series of researches into the art of various Asian art cultures which intends to produce a variety of culturally specific and non-Euramerican models for modernity in art. It will survey Thai material which may point to changes in the status of the art work and of the re-sacralization of images via their increased availability which have important, and hitherto unacknowledged consequences for the development of modernity in later 20th century Thai art.
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2018 ‘Negotiating Change in recent Southeast Asian Art’, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, vol.2, no.1 March. Preceded by a short disquisition on what is the "Asian" and the "Southeast Asian", I go on... more
2018 ‘Negotiating Change in recent Southeast Asian Art’, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, vol.2, no.1 March.
Preceded by a short disquisition on what is the "Asian" and the "Southeast Asian", I go on to examine the works of artists F.X. Harsono, Dacchi Dang and Dinh Q. Lê, historicising their work in relation to their predecessors including Sudjojono and Nguyen Tu Nghiem, as well as mentioning their peers Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and Roberto Bulatao Feleo. I examine what unites these disparate practices in their nimble negotiation of personal and collective identities and histories, and discuss the insertion of a notion of resistance to political power or ideology into their artistic practice. Southeast Asian Regional Identity This article considers the works of artists F.X. Harsono, Dacchi Dang and Dinh Q Lê, historicising their work in relation to their predecessors, including Sudjojono and Nguyen Tu Nghiem, as well as their peers. What unites these disparate practices, in my analysis, is their nimble negotiation of personal and collective identities and histories, and their insertion of a notion of resistance to political power or ideology, into their artistic practice.
Preceded by a short disquisition on what is the "Asian" and the "Southeast Asian", I go on to examine the works of artists F.X. Harsono, Dacchi Dang and Dinh Q. Lê, historicising their work in relation to their predecessors including Sudjojono and Nguyen Tu Nghiem, as well as mentioning their peers Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and Roberto Bulatao Feleo. I examine what unites these disparate practices in their nimble negotiation of personal and collective identities and histories, and discuss the insertion of a notion of resistance to political power or ideology into their artistic practice. Southeast Asian Regional Identity This article considers the works of artists F.X. Harsono, Dacchi Dang and Dinh Q Lê, historicising their work in relation to their predecessors, including Sudjojono and Nguyen Tu Nghiem, as well as their peers. What unites these disparate practices, in my analysis, is their nimble negotiation of personal and collective identities and histories, and their insertion of a notion of resistance to political power or ideology, into their artistic practice.
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'Two Modern Indian Painters: Arpita Singh and Swaminathan’, Art & Asia Pacific, supplement to Art and Australia, June, 17-24
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This paper is a short, methodologically limited excursion into investigating what is a large question, not without practical importance for Australia and its art world: the structure of Japanese perceptions of and relations with 'modern... more
This paper is a short, methodologically limited excursion into investigating what is a large question, not without practical importance for Australia and its art world: the structure of Japanese perceptions of and relations with 'modern Asian art'.
Published in 2014: ‘Japan and Modern Asian Art’, Journal of Fine Arts [Bangkok: Silpakorn University] vol. 1 no. 2, 49-78.
Published in 2014: ‘Japan and Modern Asian Art’, Journal of Fine Arts [Bangkok: Silpakorn University] vol. 1 no. 2, 49-78.
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It basically takes about a week to see most of the modern art currently on exhibition in Tokyo and some of the surrounding area. This is in addition to about a day and a half needed to see the various museums at Ueno which were discussed... more
It basically takes about a week to see most of the modern art currently on exhibition in Tokyo and some of the surrounding area. This is in addition to about a day and a half needed to see the various museums at Ueno which were discussed in Tokyo Art Sites: I [see TAASA Review, vol.3, no.3, September 1994]. There are basically five kinds of site: 1. National, local government, and private art museums in metropolitan Tokyo itself. 2. Those in distant suburbs or nearby cities in or adjacent to the greater Tokyo conurbation. 3. The commercial and loan galleries in certain defined areas of Tokyo. These are fairly sharply distinguished between very up-market places [kikaku gar"] which sell established modern artists, to rental galleries [kashi gar"] which are hired by artists who try to hold a one-person show every year [for which they have earned what can be one week's A$2,000-$4,000 rental by a full-time job]. 4. Department Stores and other commercial spaces which regularly hold major thematic exhibitions or retrospectives, often with catalogues coproduced with newspapers. 5. Intermittent exhibitions, sometimes held on an annual basis in other public spaces such as sculpture in housing or office projects like recently at Tachikawa or in promotional sites like Wacoal Spiral in Aoyama.
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‘The frame’s the thing: Metaphor and Metonym in two 17th century Japanese Screen Paintings’, Australian Journal of Art, vol.X, 1992, 44-65. Imagine, if you would, Vermeer's Girl with Blue Turban (fig.1) as it sits on a white wall in... more
‘The frame’s the thing: Metaphor and Metonym in two 17th century Japanese Screen Paintings’, Australian Journal of Art, vol.X, 1992, 44-65.
Imagine, if you would, Vermeer's Girl with Blue Turban (fig.1) as it sits on a white wall in the Mauritshuis in the Hague, and the 13-year old boy who comes down the stairs to turn and look down, even as this girl turns to look out of her frame and back up towards him in return. Why, he may wonder in later years, out of all the paintings he had already seen, should it be this work which rises in his memory, as the first one ?
Imagine, if you would, Vermeer's Girl with Blue Turban (fig.1) as it sits on a white wall in the Mauritshuis in the Hague, and the 13-year old boy who comes down the stairs to turn and look down, even as this girl turns to look out of her frame and back up towards him in return. Why, he may wonder in later years, out of all the paintings he had already seen, should it be this work which rises in his memory, as the first one ?
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‘Behind St. Ivo?’, [On Sesshû], Oriental Art, New Series, XXVI, no.4, 1980/81, 457-464.
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Modern Art in Taiwan arose out a post-colonial situation with the release of the island after the Second World War from the Japanese domination it had known since 1895. The colonial authorities had not provided for an art school, but did... more
Modern Art in Taiwan arose out a post-colonial situation with the release of the island after the Second World War from the Japanese domination it had known since 1895. The colonial authorities had not provided for an art school, but did facilitate art teaching in some teachert-raining colleges, and supported an annual art exhibition. Moreover, from the late 1920s to 1940s around twenty Taiwanese artists were educated at art schools in Japan. These had returned to form an art world which was both modelled on, and still linked to, the T"ky" art world.
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Illustrations for ‘Between the worlds: Chinese art at Biennials since 1993’, Yishu, A journal of Chinese Contemporary Art, vol.4, no.2, 2005, 40-55.
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'Is the modernity of Chinese art comparable? An opening of a theoretical space’, Art Historiography, online, Number 10 June, 2014 [Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art: Historiographic Reflections, Guest edited by Wenny Teo Courtauld... more
'Is the modernity of Chinese art comparable? An opening of a theoretical space’, Art Historiography, online, Number 10 June, 2014 [Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art: Historiographic Reflections, Guest edited by Wenny Teo Courtauld Institute].
This essay is basically a shortened version of overall arguments advanced in my 2010 book Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai art of the 1980s and 1990s. These might also benefit from wider critical exposure.
This essay is basically a shortened version of overall arguments advanced in my 2010 book Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai art of the 1980s and 1990s. These might also benefit from wider critical exposure.
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Zhi Jiang Dahai [For Jiang Dahai, Chinese translation], World Art /Shijie Yishu [Beijing, ISSN 1813-9361], 10/11, vol.86, 66-67.
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Illustrations for ‘Asian Art History in Australia: Its Functions And Audience’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 16:2, 202-21.
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4A Papers, October, online at http://www.4a.com.au/4a_papers_article/knowing-modern-contemporary-asian-art-john-clark/
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'Landscape' was not devalued by the socialist realist oil painting of post-1949 China, but moved sideways as a subject and back into the picture plane as the framing site for heroic acts or transformative moments in the development of a... more
'Landscape' was not devalued by the socialist realist oil painting of post-1949 China, but moved sideways as a subject and back into the picture plane as the framing site for heroic acts or transformative moments in the development of a socialist future. With the rise of the New Currents in Art movement of the 1980s, landscape was re-imagined as a site for a surrealist dreaming, whether counter-establishment or nationalist in intent. This 1980s' and 1990s' landscape painting, largely in oils, has survived both academic neglect and the formal bypassing of ostensibly more contemporary discourses, to obtain some recognition as a representation of the Chinese 'folk' or 'national' spirit. Landscape oil painting, despite sometimes being expressionistically naïve or technically less impressive than its painters suppose, does respond to a need in its audience and a discursive demand for a modern cross-over between post-1949 and earlier imaginary landscapes in Chinese painting. The paper will be a tentative towards a survey of the horizon of these issues chiefly by reference to the paintings and writings of Ding Fang (b. 1956), and some notions from Warnke's Political landscape, 1992.
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This is a very heterogenous book with many different kinds of approaches, all of whose writers are found solidly within existing Anglo-American art historical, anthropological and archaeological institutions. There is no writer from a... more
This is a very heterogenous book with many different kinds of approaches, all of whose writers are found solidly within existing Anglo-American art historical, anthropological and archaeological institutions. There is no writer from a non-Euramerican institution, and the two writers of Asian background-Stanley Abe and Wu Hung-are already well-emplaced in the US' academic world. The publishers state on their web-site blurb for this book that, Art history is less a single discipline than a series of divergent scholarly fields but all with a visual emphasis on the close examination of objects.
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1996 ‘On Two Books by Edward W. Said’, Bicitra Seni, Jilid 2, [from Pusat Seni, Universiti Sains Malaysia,], 20-47. copyright John Clark, 1994 This review was published in a somewhat mangled form as ‘On Two Books by Edward W. Said’,... more
1996 ‘On Two Books by Edward W. Said’, Bicitra Seni, Jilid 2, [from Pusat Seni, Universiti Sains Malaysia,], 20-47.
copyright John Clark, 1994
This review was published in a somewhat mangled form as ‘On Two Books by Edward W. Said’, Bicitra Seni, Jilid 2, 1996 [from Pusat Seni, Universiti Sains Malaysia,], 20-47.
This essay is prompted by a gift and a problem. The gift was a present of Said's Culture and Imperialism [1993, hereafter CI]. The problem is in the relation between this book and his earlier Orientalism [1978, hereafter OR], and in the positions they adumbrate .
a. Preamble
OR has produced a major sub-literature of its own, not to speak of the repeated, and seemingly obligatory genuflections made to it in almost any recent Euramerican text which mentions the `Third' World or cultural relations between the `centre' and the `periphery'. In the particular domains of art history and curatorial practice it is a regular reference in almost any Euramerican text or catalogue which deals with recent art from outside Euramerica. In short, the text of OR has acquired a quasi-religious, or taboo-deflecting status. Its quotation has become a protective amulet of `good faith', a fetish which signs that the wearer has undergone the appropriate regime of mental hygiene before talking about `Western' Art and that of the world beyond the `West'. Religions, let us recall, involve the placating of fears as much as worship of the divine. Citing OR has become a way of acknowledging the problem of speaking `for' when Euramericans wish to speak `about'.
copyright John Clark, 1994
This review was published in a somewhat mangled form as ‘On Two Books by Edward W. Said’, Bicitra Seni, Jilid 2, 1996 [from Pusat Seni, Universiti Sains Malaysia,], 20-47.
This essay is prompted by a gift and a problem. The gift was a present of Said's Culture and Imperialism [1993, hereafter CI]. The problem is in the relation between this book and his earlier Orientalism [1978, hereafter OR], and in the positions they adumbrate .
a. Preamble
OR has produced a major sub-literature of its own, not to speak of the repeated, and seemingly obligatory genuflections made to it in almost any recent Euramerican text which mentions the `Third' World or cultural relations between the `centre' and the `periphery'. In the particular domains of art history and curatorial practice it is a regular reference in almost any Euramerican text or catalogue which deals with recent art from outside Euramerica. In short, the text of OR has acquired a quasi-religious, or taboo-deflecting status. Its quotation has become a protective amulet of `good faith', a fetish which signs that the wearer has undergone the appropriate regime of mental hygiene before talking about `Western' Art and that of the world beyond the `West'. Religions, let us recall, involve the placating of fears as much as worship of the divine. Citing OR has become a way of acknowledging the problem of speaking `for' when Euramericans wish to speak `about'.
Research Interests:
The Journal of the Siam Society is a peer-reviewed and Scopus-listed journal published by The Siam Society Under Royal Patronage, one of Thailand's oldest and most active scholarly organizations. At the Society's foundation in 1904, it... more
The Journal of the Siam Society is a peer-reviewed and Scopus-listed journal published by The Siam Society Under Royal Patronage, one of Thailand's oldest and most active scholarly organizations. At the Society's foundation in 1904, it was resolved that "The objects of the Society shall be the investigation and encouragement of Art, Science and Literature in relation to Siam and neighbouring countries."
Research Interests:
I was initially drawn to this book by the three terms in its title: 'ornament, emotion, zombies', and interested to see how they might be applied in an elucidation of Buddhist art to which the author has devoted three out of ten chapters.... more
I was initially drawn to this book by the three terms in its title: 'ornament, emotion, zombies', and interested to see how they might be applied in an elucidation of Buddhist art to which the author has devoted three out of ten chapters. These cover the use of Buddhist texts to study ornament [Ch.5], amulets [Ch.6], and modern art installations [Ch.7]. Rather than composed from an integrated description and then a working out of the full cultural implications of these three terms, this book is an assemblage of various essays from different projects of interest to the author concerning belief, entertainment, and academic research. The author has a deep Buddhist knowledge of twenty-eight years' duration [p.16] and a close acquaintanceship with the Thai culture that carries these ostensibly 'Buddhist' beliefs about which he is felicitously sceptical. He also reveals a mind-bending knowledge of the languages of his chosen parts of Southeast Asia-Thai, Lao, Khün, Shan etc-not to mention also Pali, Sanskrit, German and French. Let me first outline the content of these essays in the sequence they appear in this first volume; a second volume of textual and historical studies of Thai Buddhism is scheduled for 2022 [p.3]. His introductory chapter deploys his children's visual experience of Whistler's Peacock Room at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, USA, and its capability of generate their wish to see it again, as a motif around which to problematize the viewing experience and the kinds of seeing certain objects or spaces instigate. He wants to understand how such objects came into being and how they are continually reimagined and reinterpreted [p.20].
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2006 ‘A spectacle of questions’, [Review of Guangzhou Triennale 2005], Asian Art News, vol.16, no.1, January/February, 68-72 The 2005 Guangzhou Triennale has for its theme Beyond: an extraordinary space of experimentation for... more
2006 ‘A spectacle of questions’, [Review of Guangzhou Triennale 2005], Asian Art News, vol.16, no.1, January/February, 68-72
The 2005 Guangzhou Triennale has for its theme Beyond: an extraordinary space of experimentation for modernization, and the Chinese term used or invented to correspond to 'Beyond' is bieyang, 'of a different kind or type'. The exhibition is conceived only as one part of a series of activities the most crucial of which is Delta-Lab or D-lab, delta referring to the Pearl River Delta and the triangular regional linkages between Guangzhou, Zhuhai/Macao, and Hong Kong.
The 2005 Guangzhou Triennale has for its theme Beyond: an extraordinary space of experimentation for modernization, and the Chinese term used or invented to correspond to 'Beyond' is bieyang, 'of a different kind or type'. The exhibition is conceived only as one part of a series of activities the most crucial of which is Delta-Lab or D-lab, delta referring to the Pearl River Delta and the triangular regional linkages between Guangzhou, Zhuhai/Macao, and Hong Kong.
Research Interests:
The exhibition Heaven and Earth in Chinese Art, Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2 February to 5 May 2019), is the first major loan to Australia from this repository of what have become... more
The exhibition Heaven and Earth in Chinese Art, Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2 February to 5 May 2019), is the first major loan to Australia from this repository of what have become the canonical art works of Chinese culture. As such it deserves to be seen by all those interested in Chinese art, and hopefully it will be the precursor for many such loans in future. Perhaps it will also prod the National Palace Museum in Beijing, both the precursor and the successor institution, also to do a major loan exhibition, in the same way that Sydney has already been blessed with major loans from other mainland Chinese provincial museums in cities or provinces with which New South Wales is linked. The great ecumene of Chinese culture and its artefacts is too broad and its products too interesting and significant to let them stay entrapped within one exclusive political domain or another.
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For artists of 'Asian' origin due to 'globalization' , hybridity may no longer be a condition which artists choose for their work. It is a much more generalized feature of cultural and hermeneutic identification, and may have even become... more
For artists of 'Asian' origin due to 'globalization' , hybridity may no longer be a condition which artists choose for their work. It is a much more generalized feature of cultural and hermeneutic identification, and may have even become one of the basic conditions of both. Hybridity now appears to be a notion which understands the amalgamation, or mixing, of differently constituted or differently originating cultural elements as a condition for modernity in art. The creative mixing, that is form-enrichment and empowerment, of different cultural heritages may be as important a condition of modernity as resistance to any one essentializing tradition or colonial imposition.
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1999 ‘Light Pictures: the photographs of Nakayama Iwata & Nojima Yasuzo,’ Art Gallery of New South Wales, TAASA Review, vol.8, no.3, 26. This is an excellent exhibition and the quality and careful selection of the works shown merits... more
1999 ‘Light Pictures: the photographs of Nakayama Iwata & Nojima Yasuzo,’ Art Gallery of New South Wales, TAASA Review, vol.8, no.3, 26.
This is an excellent exhibition and the quality and careful selection of the works shown merits much wider circulation internationally. The Art Gallery of New South Wales is once again to be congratulated for its high level of ongoing support for Asian Art, and for an exhibition of such high quality, as is the Japan Foundation for its continuing help. It should be seen by all those interested in the history of modernist photography, as much as those interested in how modernity in Japan can be seen through its photography. The very short catalogue is clear and precise with a useful introductory essay, but unfortunately cannot do full justice to the complexity and richness of this work, like that of the Modern Boy, Modern Girl exhibition in 1998, where Euramerican notional possession of the idea of modernity needs to be re-appraised. It is a pity the opportunity was not taken to produce something more substantial since it would almost certainly have secured international distribution.
This is an excellent exhibition and the quality and careful selection of the works shown merits much wider circulation internationally. The Art Gallery of New South Wales is once again to be congratulated for its high level of ongoing support for Asian Art, and for an exhibition of such high quality, as is the Japan Foundation for its continuing help. It should be seen by all those interested in the history of modernist photography, as much as those interested in how modernity in Japan can be seen through its photography. The very short catalogue is clear and precise with a useful introductory essay, but unfortunately cannot do full justice to the complexity and richness of this work, like that of the Modern Boy, Modern Girl exhibition in 1998, where Euramerican notional possession of the idea of modernity needs to be re-appraised. It is a pity the opportunity was not taken to produce something more substantial since it would almost certainly have secured international distribution.
Research Interests:
2007 ‘Art in the present tense’ [Venice Biennale], Asian Art News, vol.17, no.6, November-December 2007, 110-117 The 2007 Venice Biennale was an assertion of conservative museum selection and exhibition values. The works were easy to... more
2007 ‘Art in the present tense’ [Venice Biennale], Asian Art News, vol.17, no.6, November-December 2007, 110-117
The 2007 Venice Biennale was an assertion of conservative museum selection and exhibition values. The works were easy to navigate, well displayed with clear lighting, and had a kind of logical or aesthetic inter-connection which allowed the viewer a free passage mostly untroubled by jumps in practice or subject matter. No visual chaos, no abrupt jumps in discursive exhibition mode, no dead children, reconstituted uncanny bodies, no violent noise, and plenty of
The 2007 Venice Biennale was an assertion of conservative museum selection and exhibition values. The works were easy to navigate, well displayed with clear lighting, and had a kind of logical or aesthetic inter-connection which allowed the viewer a free passage mostly untroubled by jumps in practice or subject matter. No visual chaos, no abrupt jumps in discursive exhibition mode, no dead children, reconstituted uncanny bodies, no violent noise, and plenty of
Research Interests: Installation Art, Japanese Art, Cross-Cultural Studies, Contemporary Asian art, Biennales, and 10 moreModern and Contemporary Art History and Theory, Contemporary Asian Art, Art and Globalization, Post-Colonialism, Southeast Asian Art, Venice Biennale, Malaysian Art, Chinese art history, History of Exhibitions, Taiwanese Art, Biennale di Venezia, Asian Art, and History of the Venice Biennale
2007 Münster Skulptur Projeckte and Documenta 12 Kassel 2007 ‘Münster Skulptur Projekte’, World Sculpture News, Winter, 2007, This year was the fourth Münster Skulptur Project which has taken place every ten years, the previous... more
2007 Münster Skulptur Projeckte and Documenta 12 Kassel
2007 ‘Münster Skulptur Projekte’, World Sculpture News, Winter, 2007,
This year was the fourth Münster Skulptur Project which has taken place every ten years, the previous editions being in 1977, 1987 and 1997. However, unlike the 1997 project which had 74 artists and groups with works such as those by Paik Nam-jun, Rebecca Horn, and Dan Graham among others receiving high acclaim, the 2007 edition was on half that scale with 34 art works, and with one or two exceptions hardly worth a special visit. Indeed the 1997 catalogue was on sale as a remainder: I preferred to buy a copy of that than the current one.
2007 ‘Münster Skulptur Projekte’, World Sculpture News, Winter, 2007,
This year was the fourth Münster Skulptur Project which has taken place every ten years, the previous editions being in 1977, 1987 and 1997. However, unlike the 1997 project which had 74 artists and groups with works such as those by Paik Nam-jun, Rebecca Horn, and Dan Graham among others receiving high acclaim, the 2007 edition was on half that scale with 34 art works, and with one or two exceptions hardly worth a special visit. Indeed the 1997 catalogue was on sale as a remainder: I preferred to buy a copy of that than the current one.
Research Interests:
This is an important and timely exhibition, because of recent external and internal events: our own government's decision to fight against majority opinion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the outbreak of inter-racial hostility at... more
This is an important and timely exhibition, because of recent external and internal events: our own government's decision to fight against majority opinion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the outbreak of inter-racial hostility at Cronulla.Australians are clearly in need of understanding for and empathy with their own Islamic citizens and the co-religionists in this region, and often if it need be underlined, visa versa. This need can, if only in part, be met by an appreciation in what delights the eye and heart in a way specific to the cultures borne by this particular religious community. But as shown by the paucity of works from Islamic cultures until very recently in our national and state collections, we need to be stimulated to open our aesthetic sensibilities and artistic drives to expressions which however important for humanity as a whole have not hitherto received much attention here.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
2006 ‘The Shanghai and Gwangju Biennales’, Art Monthly Australia, no. 196, December 2006, 50-61
Research Interests:
2003 ‘The charm of Foreign parts’, Asian Art Archive Newsletter, 28 August 2003, I spent a few weeks in Europe this June going to the Venice Biennale the Basel Art Fair, and the opening of the Alors la Chine? exhibition of contemporary... more
2003 ‘The charm of Foreign parts’, Asian Art Archive Newsletter, 28 August 2003,
I spent a few weeks in Europe this June going to the Venice Biennale the Basel Art Fair, and the opening of the Alors la Chine? exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. This caused me to reflect a bit further on the role contemporary Asian art in world art discourses and what this might mean for redefining modernity in art as such. I have written some reviews which will appear elsewhere so this is a kind of overview. By the way, unlike some curators, I think the modern comprises the contemporary which is thus sited in history, and not the other way around. Of course that history can be plural. If modern and contemporary Asian art is a set discourses which goes beyond, travels between, or is found in common between different Asian state-units-in which grouping I for one include Australia-then there does seem to be a range of strategies for circulating art works within and outside this grouping. Type One is the entry into the power centres, chiefly the Euramerican Biennales like Venice, or the art markets like Basel. Another strategy attempts to position parts of this grouping in Euramerica, like Traditions, Tensions, in New York in 1996. Some contemporary Asian art may even be included, under a flag of convenience as it were, in attempted inversions of hierarchy from an internal Euramerican problematic such as The Other Story in London in 1987. In addition, there is always room for the statefocussed retrospective of recent art such as the various Korean shows overseas in the 1980s introducing the Seoul School, or much of the positioning of the so-called 'unofficial' Chinese art in the 1990s, as well as recent Chinese state support for exhibitions like Living in Time in Berlin 2001 or this year's Alors, la Chine? All of this art makes a claim for membership of the great club of modernism, and demands acceptance of its masterworks in side those monuments. Type Two, in parallel, and sometimes counter to this move into Euramerica, is the attempt to make Euramerica come to Asia, by the founding of Biennales and Triennales which position Asian art on a world stage sited in Asia. Kwanju and Yokoahama belong to this type. Type Three, alongside is the attempt to make a Biennale or Triennale which redefines and brings into contact Asian or sometimes Asia-Pacific art as in Brisbane from within, without invitation of the grand names from Soho if their bearers cannot be identified as 'Asian'. Types Two and Three are slightly disingenuous in practice, however grand their principles, because they are at least partly intended to make Euramerica pay attention to Asia, and to 'our' contemporary art being the equal of 'theirs'. Transparently many of the Asian Biennales and Triennales are outwardly directed in this way. Fukuoka, which unfortunately I have been unable to see, has been the bravest in continuing to expand its definition of Asia-although unfortunately not far enough South to include Australia. It is also, like Brisbane, trying to extend the definition of art practice out into the street and include many artefacts which are the subject popular or mass aesthetic appreciation which do not fit into a Euramerican derived 'fine art object' category.
I spent a few weeks in Europe this June going to the Venice Biennale the Basel Art Fair, and the opening of the Alors la Chine? exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. This caused me to reflect a bit further on the role contemporary Asian art in world art discourses and what this might mean for redefining modernity in art as such. I have written some reviews which will appear elsewhere so this is a kind of overview. By the way, unlike some curators, I think the modern comprises the contemporary which is thus sited in history, and not the other way around. Of course that history can be plural. If modern and contemporary Asian art is a set discourses which goes beyond, travels between, or is found in common between different Asian state-units-in which grouping I for one include Australia-then there does seem to be a range of strategies for circulating art works within and outside this grouping. Type One is the entry into the power centres, chiefly the Euramerican Biennales like Venice, or the art markets like Basel. Another strategy attempts to position parts of this grouping in Euramerica, like Traditions, Tensions, in New York in 1996. Some contemporary Asian art may even be included, under a flag of convenience as it were, in attempted inversions of hierarchy from an internal Euramerican problematic such as The Other Story in London in 1987. In addition, there is always room for the statefocussed retrospective of recent art such as the various Korean shows overseas in the 1980s introducing the Seoul School, or much of the positioning of the so-called 'unofficial' Chinese art in the 1990s, as well as recent Chinese state support for exhibitions like Living in Time in Berlin 2001 or this year's Alors, la Chine? All of this art makes a claim for membership of the great club of modernism, and demands acceptance of its masterworks in side those monuments. Type Two, in parallel, and sometimes counter to this move into Euramerica, is the attempt to make Euramerica come to Asia, by the founding of Biennales and Triennales which position Asian art on a world stage sited in Asia. Kwanju and Yokoahama belong to this type. Type Three, alongside is the attempt to make a Biennale or Triennale which redefines and brings into contact Asian or sometimes Asia-Pacific art as in Brisbane from within, without invitation of the grand names from Soho if their bearers cannot be identified as 'Asian'. Types Two and Three are slightly disingenuous in practice, however grand their principles, because they are at least partly intended to make Euramerica pay attention to Asia, and to 'our' contemporary art being the equal of 'theirs'. Transparently many of the Asian Biennales and Triennales are outwardly directed in this way. Fukuoka, which unfortunately I have been unable to see, has been the bravest in continuing to expand its definition of Asia-although unfortunately not far enough South to include Australia. It is also, like Brisbane, trying to extend the definition of art practice out into the street and include many artefacts which are the subject popular or mass aesthetic appreciation which do not fit into a Euramerican derived 'fine art object' category.
Research Interests:
Art 34 Basel
2003 ‘Art Basel 2003’ in Art AsiaPacific, new series, no.1, October.
2003 ‘Art Basel 2003’ in Art AsiaPacific, new series, no.1, October.
Research Interests:
2003 50th Venice Biennale The vernissage days at Venice in 2003 opened in torrid heat, and a very large crowd of art people, about 50% of whom would appear to have been dependencies of curators and art press, and not, mainly, people... more
2003 50th Venice Biennale
The vernissage days at Venice in 2003 opened in torrid heat, and a very large crowd of art people, about 50% of whom would appear to have been dependencies of curators and art press, and not, mainly, people interested in contemporary art save as an obscure spectacular ritual or tourist event. It was all a bit like the Louvre on Saturday afternoon in spring, without the Mona Lisa, without bullet-proof glass. These were less than ideal conditions for viewing art let alone engaging in the 'collaboration' curatorially envisaged in two sub-exhibitions Zones of Urgency and Utopia Station.
2003 ‘Alors, la Chine?’, Artlink, vol 23, no 4
This was a major exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris from 25th June to 13th October 2003.
The vernissage days at Venice in 2003 opened in torrid heat, and a very large crowd of art people, about 50% of whom would appear to have been dependencies of curators and art press, and not, mainly, people interested in contemporary art save as an obscure spectacular ritual or tourist event. It was all a bit like the Louvre on Saturday afternoon in spring, without the Mona Lisa, without bullet-proof glass. These were less than ideal conditions for viewing art let alone engaging in the 'collaboration' curatorially envisaged in two sub-exhibitions Zones of Urgency and Utopia Station.
2003 ‘Alors, la Chine?’, Artlink, vol 23, no 4
This was a major exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris from 25th June to 13th October 2003.
Research Interests:
The vernissage days at Venice in 2003 opened in torrid heat, and a very large crowd of art people, about 50% of whom would appear to have been dependencies of curators and art press, and not, mainly, people interested in contemporary art... more
The vernissage days at Venice in 2003 opened in torrid heat, and a very large crowd of art people, about 50% of whom would appear to have been dependencies of curators and art press, and not, mainly, people interested in contemporary art save as an obscure spectacular ritual or tourist event. It was all a bit like the Louvre on summer Saturday afternoon, without the Mona Lisa, without bullet-proof glass. These were less than ideal conditions for viewing art let alone engaging in the 'collaboration' curatorially envisaged in two sub-exhibitions Zones of Urgency and Utopia Station. One could barely do even mild art historical anthropology on some of the plethora of visiting international curators, to meet and to observe which was my main purpose in going this year.
Research Interests:
I went to the Venice Biennale for the first time this year expecting to see some kind of acceptance of the huge range of modernist art now produced and exhibited in many Asian countries. Instead I found myself in a peculiar set of time... more
I went to the Venice Biennale for the first time this year expecting to see some kind of acceptance of the huge range of modernist art now produced and exhibited in many Asian countries. Instead I found myself in a peculiar set of time warps, ones constructed by, for example, the peculiar historical architecture of Venice and the history of its Biennale, and also by the vagaries of the European art curatorial practice which in part had chosen the works.
Research Interests:
1999 ‘Beyond Exile’ for the catalogue Modern Chinese Art Foundation, Provincie Bestuur van Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium, ISBN 90-76686-02- This essay will make some general comments on the art situation in China before observations about... more
1999 ‘Beyond Exile’ for the catalogue Modern Chinese Art Foundation, Provincie Bestuur van Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium, ISBN 90-76686-02-
This essay will make some general comments on the art situation in China before observations about works in the exhibition. Chinese art at the end of the century stands at something of a turning point. After the hysteria with which so much interesting experimental art was received at the Venice Biennale in 1999 it would appear the Euramerican art world is still reluctant to accept it no longer has-if it ever had-any exclusive rights over modernity. But if this external reception still retains an unshakably atavistic core, what can be said of the situation in China itself?
This essay will make some general comments on the art situation in China before observations about works in the exhibition. Chinese art at the end of the century stands at something of a turning point. After the hysteria with which so much interesting experimental art was received at the Venice Biennale in 1999 it would appear the Euramerican art world is still reluctant to accept it no longer has-if it ever had-any exclusive rights over modernity. But if this external reception still retains an unshakably atavistic core, what can be said of the situation in China itself?
Research Interests:
1998 ‘Panya Vijinthanasarn at Tadu Contemporary Art’ Asian Art News, vol.8, no.2, March/April, 91-92.
Research Interests:
1998 Fifty Years of Thai National Art Exhibitions Asian Art News. In June 1999 the Art Gallery of Silpakorn University Bangkok held a retrospective exhibition of Five Decades of the National Exhibition of Art, 1949-1998. Almost at the... more
1998 Fifty Years of Thai National Art Exhibitions Asian Art News.
In June 1999 the Art Gallery of Silpakorn University Bangkok held a retrospective exhibition of Five Decades of the National Exhibition of Art, 1949-1998. Almost at the same time current teachers of the Thai Art Department showed a small survey of work in the Gallery of the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture, and Graphic Arts.
In June 1999 the Art Gallery of Silpakorn University Bangkok held a retrospective exhibition of Five Decades of the National Exhibition of Art, 1949-1998. Almost at the same time current teachers of the Thai Art Department showed a small survey of work in the Gallery of the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture, and Graphic Arts.
Research Interests:
1994 ‘William Robinson’, Asian Art News, vol.4 no.6, December, 104.
Research Interests:
Moet et Chandon Prize 1994 ‘Fragments of origin: Asian Women Artists’ Group at Blaxland Gallery; Fresh Art: 20 Young Artists at the S.H. Ervin Gallery: Moet & Chandon Touring Exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’, [Three... more
Moet et Chandon Prize
1994 ‘Fragments of origin: Asian Women Artists’ Group at Blaxland Gallery; Fresh Art: 20 Young Artists at the S.H. Ervin Gallery: Moet & Chandon Touring Exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’, [Three Reviews of Sydney Exhibitions], Asian Art News, vol. 4, no.4, July/August 1994, 82-84.
1994 ‘Fragments of origin: Asian Women Artists’ Group at Blaxland Gallery; Fresh Art: 20 Young Artists at the S.H. Ervin Gallery: Moet & Chandon Touring Exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’, [Three Reviews of Sydney Exhibitions], Asian Art News, vol. 4, no.4, July/August 1994, 82-84.
Research Interests:
This is a curated show by Anne Loxley and the art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, Felicity Fenner, held in an early 19th century school and which is now run by the National Trust as one of the most attractive non-commercial gallery... more
This is a curated show by Anne Loxley and the art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, Felicity Fenner, held in an early 19th century school and which is now run by the National Trust as one of the most attractive non-commercial gallery spaces in Sydney.
Research Interests:
The Asia-Pacific Triennale was held at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia from 15th September to 17th December 1993. Exhibition publications included the catalogue, edited by Janet Hogan, The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of... more
The Asia-Pacific Triennale was held at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia from 15th September to 17th December 1993. Exhibition publications included the catalogue, edited by Janet Hogan, The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Queensland Art Gallery, 1993, and a book, edited by Caroline Turner, Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific, Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, 1993. The period leading up to the exhibition saw several related publications appear. A new journal called Art & Asia Pacific was brought out as the supplement to Art & Australia, published by The Fine Arts Press, PO Box 480, Roseville, Sydney, NSW 2069, and became a regular independent quarterly from December 1991. There was a special issue of the quarterly journal Artlink, vol.13, nos 3 & 4, November - March 1993/94, on `Contemporary Arts of the Region: South East Asia and Australia', published from 363 Esplanade, Henley Beach, South Australia 5022. The edited version of papers presented at a conference in Canberra in 1991 has appeared, edited by John Clark: Modernity in Asian Art, Sydney, Wild Peony Press [PO Box 636, Broadway, NSW 2007], 1993, with international distribution by the University of Hawaii Press.
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Amrita Sher-Gil, Indian and Pakistani Art: Two Short Reviews By John Clark Yashodhara DALMIA, Amrita Sher-Gil: A life, New Delhi, Penguin/Viking, 2006, ISBN-13 9780670058730, 18 colour, 44 black and white illustrations, 230 pages,... more
Amrita Sher-Gil, Indian and Pakistani Art: Two Short Reviews
By John Clark
Yashodhara DALMIA, Amrita Sher-Gil: A life, New Delhi, Penguin/Viking, 2006, ISBN-13 9780670058730, 18 colour, 44 black and white illustrations, 230 pages, RS695
Yashodhara DALMIA & Salima HASHMI, Memory, Metaphor, Mutations: Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN-13 9780195673470, 61 illustrations(Pakistan), 79 illustrations (India), 227 pages, RS 2950
By John Clark
Yashodhara DALMIA, Amrita Sher-Gil: A life, New Delhi, Penguin/Viking, 2006, ISBN-13 9780670058730, 18 colour, 44 black and white illustrations, 230 pages, RS695
Yashodhara DALMIA & Salima HASHMI, Memory, Metaphor, Mutations: Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN-13 9780195673470, 61 illustrations(Pakistan), 79 illustrations (India), 227 pages, RS 2950
Research Interests:
Paul Gladston, ‘Avant-Garde’ Art Groups in China, 1979-1989, The Stars-The Northern Art Group-The Pond Association-Xiamen Dada: A Critical Polylogue, Bristol & Chicago: Intellect, 2013, The China Journal, July 2014, Volume 72, 223 – 225.
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'A world to be at home in’, review of Sambrani, Chaitanya, ed. At Home in the World: The Art and Life of Gulammohammed Sheikh, with texts by Chaitanya Sambrani, Coilin Parsons, Marcia Kupfer, and Karin Zitzewitz, New Delhi: Tulika Books... more
'A world to be at home in’, review of Sambrani, Chaitanya, ed. At Home in the World: The Art and Life of Gulammohammed Sheikh, with texts by Chaitanya Sambrani, Coilin Parsons, Marcia Kupfer, and Karin Zitzewitz, New Delhi: Tulika Books in association with Vadehra Art Gallery, 2019. In Art History, 2020, vol.43, no.3, 652-654.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Ayutthaya: Siam in the Early Modern World, in Southeast of Now, vol.2 no.1, March 2018, 229-236.
Research Interests:
This book is an in-depth art historical study, founded in anthropological participant observation and Sinological analysis, of the mass-production of copied oil paintings in Dafen, Shenzhen, during the 1990s. It is also, and in parallel,... more
This book is an in-depth art historical study, founded in anthropological participant observation and Sinological analysis, of the mass-production of copied oil paintings in Dafen, Shenzhen, during the 1990s. It is also, and in parallel, a penetrating analysis of how the artistic theories of the Duchampian ready-made and their successors in conceptual art practice outside China can be applied to illuminate the history of these Chinese production processes which reciprocally bring the notion of ready-made into focus.
Research Interests:
Art in Japan is an impeccably researched and well-written contribution to the modernist art history of Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. It also presents a challenge to an art history of modernisms beyond Euramerica. The research deals via... more
Art in Japan is an impeccably researched and well-written contribution to the modernist art history of Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. It also presents a challenge to an art history of modernisms beyond Euramerica. The research deals via case studies with a particular Japanese conceptual artist, Matsuzawa Yutaka (1922-2006); a performance and happenings group called The Play centred in the Kansai; and a regional collective called GUN (Group Ultra Niigata) that staged art events and other vanguard practices from Niigata on the north coast of Japan. Tomii's challenge to art history is in understanding the way in which modernisms from the periphery within a cultural continuum coordinate with international and transnational tendencies to constitute contemporaneity. To this end she mobilizes two approaches devised by Ming Tiampo in a book on Gutai (Ming Tiampo, Gutai: Decentering Modernism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011; chapter 2, "The Interpoetics of Distance," 45-73) (click here for review). Tomii calls these "connection," a type of weak but present formal aetiology between art centers, and "resonance," a resemblance which is not happenstance but more of an atmosphere of common development than a causal interconnection between styles and practices across different and distant centers.
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Jonathan Reynolds, Allegories of Time and Space, Japanese Identity in Photography and Architecture, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015 in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 2017.
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Luke Gartlan, A Career in Japan: Baron Raimund von Stillfried and Early Yokohama Photography, Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2016.
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Jaś Elsner (ed), Comparativism in Art History, London & New York: An Ashgate Book, Routledge, 2017 in Journal of Art Historiography, online, June 2017. This is a very heterogenous book with many different kinds of approaches, all of... more
Jaś Elsner (ed), Comparativism in Art History, London & New York: An Ashgate Book, Routledge, 2017 in Journal of Art Historiography, online, June 2017.
This is a very heterogenous book with many different kinds of approaches, all of whose writers are found solidly within existing Anglo-American art historical, anthropological and archaeological institutions. There is no writer from a non-Euramerican institution, and the two writers of Asian background-Stanley Abe and Wu Hung-are already well-emplaced in the US' academic world. The publishers state on their web-site blurb for this book that, Art history is less a single discipline than a series of divergent scholarly fields but all with a visual emphasis on the close examination of objects.
This is a very heterogenous book with many different kinds of approaches, all of whose writers are found solidly within existing Anglo-American art historical, anthropological and archaeological institutions. There is no writer from a non-Euramerican institution, and the two writers of Asian background-Stanley Abe and Wu Hung-are already well-emplaced in the US' academic world. The publishers state on their web-site blurb for this book that, Art history is less a single discipline than a series of divergent scholarly fields but all with a visual emphasis on the close examination of objects.
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Lily Chumley, Creativity Class, Art school and culture work in Postsocialist China, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, The China Quarterly, 229, March 2017, 260-262.
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Wu Hong, Contemporary Chinese Art, A History 1970s-2000s, London: Thames & Hudson, 2014, ISBN 978-0-500-23920-9, 456 pages, 425 illustrations, 323 in colour. £60.00 (A$ 120.60, some overseas booksellers offer at A$97.00).
Research Interests:
After a concise survey of recent writing on Western Collections and Museums, Chang divides her inquiry into four main parts: The Historical Terms of Euro-Asian Object Acquisition; Gold, Silver, and Bronze: Cernuschi's Collection and... more
After a concise survey of recent writing on Western Collections and Museums, Chang divides her inquiry into four main parts: The Historical Terms of Euro-Asian Object Acquisition; Gold, Silver, and Bronze: Cernuschi's Collection and Reappraisals of Europe and Asia; The Labour of Travel: Guimet and Régamey in Asia; and Equivalence and Inversions: France, Japan, and China in Goncourt's Cabinet. Chang basically wishes to update and re-position art historical understanding of the collections of Cernuschi and Guimet by initially bracketing them with comparative understanding of the reports by Westerners in China and Japan, and by Japanese and Chinese in Europe and America. She ultimately concludes with a view of one collection and its displacement of Japanese and Chinese materials into a literary domain, that of Édmond de Goncourt's writing about his collection from which wider deductions can be made about the meanings of its decorative display. If 'Historical terms..' is about the perceptions of material flows within a network of inter-cultural experiences, 'Equivalence and Inversions..' is about reception without cultural experience and the use of one set of cultural objects to subvert the authority patters of another in favour of its pre-French Revolutionary past. 'Gold, Silver, and Bronze..' makes an important contribution because it situates Cernuschi's collecting in his role as a financier and financial theorist. The attempt to make China pay in received European manufactures for the silver it demanded for its tea and silks, a trade set up over centuries by the export of Mexican silver via Manila, exploded with nineteenth-century British demand for tea and the detachment of the Philippines from the control of the Province of Mexico in 1821. The provision of opium from India as the manufacture the Chinese would illegally demand is a very long story and the interaction of payment in silver, export of opium, and shift to metallic gold as the benchmark for international trade, is complex and wellilluminated by Chang. 'The Labour of Travel…' returns understanding of the Musée Guimet collections to their origins in Guimet's intention to document world religions, and by knowing them better to dominate cultural others, and to the modality of his physical access to chiefly Japan by his travel, itself recorded by the illustrator Felix Régamey. His illustrations document a mode of encounter via the jinrikisha which was even then being overthrown by the diffusion of steam trains and steamboats. It occurred at that time when Japanese ukiyo-e had their greatest impact on European art discourses themselves. At this time, Chang believes, European visitors to Japan 'gave up narrative authority', a claim which might be true about nineteenth-century Japan.
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Hans Belting, Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance art and Arab Science, Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2011, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 13, 185-189
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Kobena Mercer, editor, Cosmopolitan Modernisms, London, Iniva and Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2005, ISBN 1-899846-47-1, Price 15.95 pds stg [Iniva], 0-262-63321-3 [MIT Press], Paper, 208 pages, 28 illustrations mostly colour. Essays by... more
Kobena Mercer, editor, Cosmopolitan Modernisms, London, Iniva and Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2005, ISBN 1-899846-47-1, Price 15.95 pds stg [Iniva], 0-262-63321-3 [MIT Press], Paper, 208 pages, 28 illustrations mostly colour. Essays by Michael Asbury, David Craven, Ann Eden Gibson, Kobena Mercer, Partha Mitter, Paul Overy,Michael Richardson, Lowery Stokes Sims
Kobena Mercer, editor, Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures, London, Iniva and Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1-899846-44-3, Price 15.95 pds stg [Iniva], 978-0-262-63350-5 [MIT Press], Paper, 232 pages, 34 illustrations mostly colour. Essays by Holly Barnet-Sanchez, Gavin Butt, Geeta Kapur, Martina Koppel-Yang, Kobena Mercer, Colin Richards, Sonia Salzstein, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto
Reviewed by John Clark, ARC Professorial Fellow, University of Sydney
Kobena Mercer, editor, Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures, London, Iniva and Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1-899846-44-3, Price 15.95 pds stg [Iniva], 978-0-262-63350-5 [MIT Press], Paper, 232 pages, 34 illustrations mostly colour. Essays by Holly Barnet-Sanchez, Gavin Butt, Geeta Kapur, Martina Koppel-Yang, Kobena Mercer, Colin Richards, Sonia Salzstein, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto
Reviewed by John Clark, ARC Professorial Fellow, University of Sydney
Research Interests:
Tschudin, Jean-Jacques; Hamon, Claude, eds. La Modernité à l’horizon: La culture populaire dans le Japon des années vingt, Éditions Philippe Picquier, Arles, 2005, The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol.32, no.1, 2006, 165-169. This is a... more
Tschudin, Jean-Jacques; Hamon, Claude, eds. La Modernité à l’horizon: La culture populaire dans le Japon des années vingt, Éditions Philippe Picquier, Arles, 2005, The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol.32, no.1, 2006, 165-169.
This is a collection of papers in French edited from a mid-2002 conference and consists of an introduction and eleven texts on popular culture in 1920s' Japan, three of which are translations from English. The areas covered are the political context of Japanese popular culture [Stephen Large], the role of the artist conceived as worker, monk or soldier [Michael Lucken], the relation in Kansai between urban modernity and massification [Claude Hamon], the manufacture of popular hit songs [Sepp Linhart], the relation between Taishô Cinema and the censorship [Pascale Simon], the revolution of women actors in 1920s’ cinema [Josiane Pinon], popular theatre [Brian Powell], Asakusa opera [Jean-Jacques Tschudin], all-women revues [Claire Dodane], the rise of crime fiction [Philippe Jordy], and the paradoxes of the sentimental novel as typified in Kikuchi Kan’s Shinju Fujin of 1920 [Cécile Sakai]. Tschudin’s introduction and the first essay by Large constitute useful general overviews.
This is a collection of papers in French edited from a mid-2002 conference and consists of an introduction and eleven texts on popular culture in 1920s' Japan, three of which are translations from English. The areas covered are the political context of Japanese popular culture [Stephen Large], the role of the artist conceived as worker, monk or soldier [Michael Lucken], the relation in Kansai between urban modernity and massification [Claude Hamon], the manufacture of popular hit songs [Sepp Linhart], the relation between Taishô Cinema and the censorship [Pascale Simon], the revolution of women actors in 1920s’ cinema [Josiane Pinon], popular theatre [Brian Powell], Asakusa opera [Jean-Jacques Tschudin], all-women revues [Claire Dodane], the rise of crime fiction [Philippe Jordy], and the paradoxes of the sentimental novel as typified in Kikuchi Kan’s Shinju Fujin of 1920 [Cécile Sakai]. Tschudin’s introduction and the first essay by Large constitute useful general overviews.
Research Interests:
Leo Rubinfien, Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation, introduction by Moriyama Daidô, with other essays by, Sandra S. Phillips & John W. Dower, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and... more
Leo Rubinfien, Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation, introduction by Moriyama Daidô, with other essays by, Sandra S. Phillips & John W. Dower, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004,
ISBN 0-300-10604-1, 77 text pages, 45 text figures, 112 plates, some in colour, US$29.70, hardcover.
ISBN 0-300-10604-1, 77 text pages, 45 text figures, 112 plates, some in colour, US$29.70, hardcover.
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Review of Japanese Masterworks: Paintings from Indianapolis Museum of Art, edited by HARADA Heisaku and John Tadao TERAMOTO, Washington, University of Washington Press, 2005, 228 pp, 163 colour illustrations, map, text in English and... more
Review of Japanese Masterworks: Paintings from Indianapolis Museum of Art, edited by HARADA Heisaku and John Tadao TERAMOTO, Washington, University of Washington Press, 2005, 228 pp, 163 colour illustrations, map, text in English and Japanese, notes, 9 x 12 inches, US$40.00, paper, ISBN 0-936260-81-5
Research Interests:
Hal Foster, Rosalind Kraus, Yves-Alain Bois, Benjamin H.D.Buchloh, Art Since 1900, Modernism , Anti-Modernism, Postmodernism, London, Thames & Hudson, 2004, in ‘A short review of a very, very long book’, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary... more
Hal Foster, Rosalind Kraus, Yves-Alain Bois, Benjamin H.D.Buchloh, Art Since 1900, Modernism , Anti-Modernism, Postmodernism, London, Thames & Hudson, 2004, in ‘A short review of a very, very long book’, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art , vol.4, no.4, Winter 2005, 107.
This is the kind of book on modern and contemporary art which has been generated by the highest level of art historical analysis of modern and contemporary art by Euramericans-in this case from a site which is specifically in the USA. It significantly renders accessible in a compact and cross-referenced way much of the most recent thought on what Euramerican modernism might have been and may still mean. Unfortunately for readers interested in modern and contemporary Chinese-and more broadly Asian-art, whatever the self-reflections in the roundtable discussion between the authors at the end (p.671-679), there is virtually no attempt to include artists, art works, or critical positions 'from outside' this discourse. Despite occasional genuflections to a limited range of Latin American and Soviet/Russian artists and writers, there is an almost complete absence of Asians, Australasians, and only a very few Africans. The Asian
This is the kind of book on modern and contemporary art which has been generated by the highest level of art historical analysis of modern and contemporary art by Euramericans-in this case from a site which is specifically in the USA. It significantly renders accessible in a compact and cross-referenced way much of the most recent thought on what Euramerican modernism might have been and may still mean. Unfortunately for readers interested in modern and contemporary Chinese-and more broadly Asian-art, whatever the self-reflections in the roundtable discussion between the authors at the end (p.671-679), there is virtually no attempt to include artists, art works, or critical positions 'from outside' this discourse. Despite occasional genuflections to a limited range of Latin American and Soviet/Russian artists and writers, there is an almost complete absence of Asians, Australasians, and only a very few Africans. The Asian
Research Interests:
Zhang Yingjin, The city in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations of Space, Time and Gender, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1996. The Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia, nos 32-33. Zhang's book is another in a... more
Zhang Yingjin, The city in Modern Chinese Literature and Film: Configurations of Space, Time and Gender, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1996. The Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia, nos 32-33.
Zhang's book is another in a growing list of post-modern/post-critical studies applied to Chinese cultural phenomena, and generated in part by the school of literature and critical studies of Frederick Jameson at Duke University , who went to China in 1996, with Western avatars in California and Washington (State). The reader is made aware early on that he/she is in a very specific methodological domain when the city/country dichotomy is positioned as 'a highly contested site of cultural production'. But Zhang, if often uncontestingly accepting of the ideological premises on which his method rests 3 , wears his theory carefully. His task is to understand the role of the 'city' and its antithesized 'countryside' in generating Chinese modernity, through the discourse of its representations in a restricted range of literary and film 'texts'. Despite his deliberate exclusion of some this broader discourse's other literary manifestations 4 , he carries out his exploration in a thorough and penetrating manner. It will be of wide reference and available to many types of reader, including those who do not accept with such alacrity all the premises of his adopted method. But the method of reading 'social formations' out from literary texts is a very appealing and widespread one. It usually depends on a specified set of psychological, sociological, or in Zhang's case literary-theoretical interpretive reading strategies to generate meanings on another level than the text for a new kind of knowledge about the society from which the texts came.
Zhang's book is another in a growing list of post-modern/post-critical studies applied to Chinese cultural phenomena, and generated in part by the school of literature and critical studies of Frederick Jameson at Duke University , who went to China in 1996, with Western avatars in California and Washington (State). The reader is made aware early on that he/she is in a very specific methodological domain when the city/country dichotomy is positioned as 'a highly contested site of cultural production'. But Zhang, if often uncontestingly accepting of the ideological premises on which his method rests 3 , wears his theory carefully. His task is to understand the role of the 'city' and its antithesized 'countryside' in generating Chinese modernity, through the discourse of its representations in a restricted range of literary and film 'texts'. Despite his deliberate exclusion of some this broader discourse's other literary manifestations 4 , he carries out his exploration in a thorough and penetrating manner. It will be of wide reference and available to many types of reader, including those who do not accept with such alacrity all the premises of his adopted method. But the method of reading 'social formations' out from literary texts is a very appealing and widespread one. It usually depends on a specified set of psychological, sociological, or in Zhang's case literary-theoretical interpretive reading strategies to generate meanings on another level than the text for a new kind of knowledge about the society from which the texts came.
Research Interests:
John T. Young, Contemporary Public Art in China: A photographic tour, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1999, in College Art Association Art Reviews Online of 16-9-1999 [at http://www.caareviews.org], 3 pages. This book is a... more
John T. Young, Contemporary Public Art in China: A photographic tour, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1999, in College Art Association Art Reviews Online of 16-9-1999 [at http://www.caareviews.org], 3 pages.
This book is a collection of photographs of public art with associated notes from comments by the sculptors and others, together with the author's observations on a journey made in 1995. The photographs whilst usually good are by no means as complete records as the text intends, there for example being major details missing from the <I> Monument to the Heroes of the People, 1959, and major works omitted such as <I> The Rent Collection Courtyard, 1965, [Laing,1998, fig.60]. Nor does the author notice that some artists are from Taiwan, such as Yang Yingfeng [p.34]. Public art is taken rather unproblematically to mean sculpture commissioned by public bodies and located in public places. There is no definition of whether what 'public' might specifically mean in the Chinese context is different from elsewhere, either as a definition of an institutional function or as the qualitative attribute of a site.
This book is a collection of photographs of public art with associated notes from comments by the sculptors and others, together with the author's observations on a journey made in 1995. The photographs whilst usually good are by no means as complete records as the text intends, there for example being major details missing from the <I> Monument to the Heroes of the People, 1959, and major works omitted such as <I> The Rent Collection Courtyard, 1965, [Laing,1998, fig.60]. Nor does the author notice that some artists are from Taiwan, such as Yang Yingfeng [p.34]. Public art is taken rather unproblematically to mean sculpture commissioned by public bodies and located in public places. There is no definition of whether what 'public' might specifically mean in the Chinese context is different from elsewhere, either as a definition of an institutional function or as the qualitative attribute of a site.
Research Interests:
Gennifer Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art vol. 4, no. 1, 237-242.
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In 1998 Screech, Timon, The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan: The Lens within the Heart, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Published in The Australian Journal of Art, vol.14, no.1. 151-161.
Published in The Australian Journal of Art, vol.14, no.1. 151-161.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
1994 ‘Bernard Smith: Postmodernism and the Formalesque, a response’ [unpublished] `Modernism, postmodernism and the formalesque' was an essay first presented at the Department of Fine Arts, Monash University, and which Smith published... more
1994 ‘Bernard Smith: Postmodernism and the Formalesque, a response’ [unpublished]
`Modernism, postmodernism and the formalesque' was an essay first presented at the Department of Fine Arts, Monash University, and which Smith published in the Winter 1994 issue of Editions. I summarize it briefly below.
Smith marks modernism as a style which gradually became dominant from the 1890s to the late 1960s, when it was followed by new kinds of art and the critical attitudes to it which are termed `postmodern'. For him modern is the present, with a variable slice of the past attached. He thinks Habermas' notion of modernism as the aesthetic aspect of modernity and not a dominant style with a visible beginning and end, is one which confuses valuation denoted by the`classical' with the historic style. For Smith modernism as style is distinct from modernity as a conceptual project, but he still thinks, like Habermas, `modernist' can be applied to styles under modernity other than those of modernism.
`Modernism, postmodernism and the formalesque' was an essay first presented at the Department of Fine Arts, Monash University, and which Smith published in the Winter 1994 issue of Editions. I summarize it briefly below.
Smith marks modernism as a style which gradually became dominant from the 1890s to the late 1960s, when it was followed by new kinds of art and the critical attitudes to it which are termed `postmodern'. For him modern is the present, with a variable slice of the past attached. He thinks Habermas' notion of modernism as the aesthetic aspect of modernity and not a dominant style with a visible beginning and end, is one which confuses valuation denoted by the`classical' with the historic style. For Smith modernism as style is distinct from modernity as a conceptual project, but he still thinks, like Habermas, `modernist' can be applied to styles under modernity other than those of modernism.
Research Interests:
This paper seeks to review various positions on the exchange of artists and art objects with Asia relevant to the production of future art in Australia. It will refer to my personal experience; this has certain limitations and possible... more
This paper seeks to review various positions on the exchange of artists and art objects with Asia relevant to the production of future art in Australia. It will refer to my personal experience; this has certain limitations and possible insights.
Research Interests:
2018 ‘Time Processes in the art history of the Asian Modern’. 2018 ‘Time Processes in the History of the Asian Modern’ in Dan Karlhom and Keith Moxey, eds., Time in the History of Art: Temporality Chronology and Anachrony New York:... more
2018 ‘Time Processes in the art history of the Asian Modern’.
2018 ‘Time Processes in the History of the Asian Modern’ in Dan Karlhom and Keith Moxey, eds., Time in the History of Art: Temporality Chronology and Anachrony New York: Routledge, 2018.
2019, Also published with different China-centred illustrations, and with Chinese Translation in Chiang.
Po-Shin, ed., Archival Turn (Collected papers from the International Symposium), East Asian Contemporary Art and Taiwan (1960-1989), Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Spring Foundation.
Time processes in the history of the Asian Modern1 By John Clark 'The Asian Modern' conceives of modern art in various Asian countries and cultural continuities as articulating similar sets of developments which have analogies, common procedures, and sometimes inter-linked causalities which are not always those found in Europe and North America, but which are still identifiably 'modern'.
2018 ‘Time Processes in the History of the Asian Modern’ in Dan Karlhom and Keith Moxey, eds., Time in the History of Art: Temporality Chronology and Anachrony New York: Routledge, 2018.
2019, Also published with different China-centred illustrations, and with Chinese Translation in Chiang.
Po-Shin, ed., Archival Turn (Collected papers from the International Symposium), East Asian Contemporary Art and Taiwan (1960-1989), Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Spring Foundation.
Time processes in the history of the Asian Modern1 By John Clark 'The Asian Modern' conceives of modern art in various Asian countries and cultural continuities as articulating similar sets of developments which have analogies, common procedures, and sometimes inter-linked causalities which are not always those found in Europe and North America, but which are still identifiably 'modern'.
Research Interests:
2006 ‘Circulation: An introduction’, [unpublished] In various catalogues or spoken curatorial statements from time to time one can come across indications like: 'Artists are the currency of curators', or 'Curators are the medium of art... more
2006 ‘Circulation: An introduction’, [unpublished]
In various catalogues or spoken curatorial statements from time to time one can come across indications like: 'Artists are the currency of curators', or 'Curators are the medium of art circulation, they valorize what are the objects to be exchanged as art'.Circulation may be viewed, or marked, in at least two ways: as the objects in a transacted exchange, and as the process of that transaction itself. The direct circulation is abstract and circular between positions in a transaction process, and indirect circulation may be seen as a movement due to a shift in the position of the observer. This predicts what [object?] is coming back, or indicates what values are being created in the process of transaction. For transactions involving art, artists function as producers and primary valorizers, and curators may act as aristocratic aesthetes, merchants, design stylists or the blind operators of the hidden hand of cultural market valorization.
In various catalogues or spoken curatorial statements from time to time one can come across indications like: 'Artists are the currency of curators', or 'Curators are the medium of art circulation, they valorize what are the objects to be exchanged as art'.Circulation may be viewed, or marked, in at least two ways: as the objects in a transacted exchange, and as the process of that transaction itself. The direct circulation is abstract and circular between positions in a transaction process, and indirect circulation may be seen as a movement due to a shift in the position of the observer. This predicts what [object?] is coming back, or indicates what values are being created in the process of transaction. For transactions involving art, artists function as producers and primary valorizers, and curators may act as aristocratic aesthetes, merchants, design stylists or the blind operators of the hidden hand of cultural market valorization.
Research Interests:
DRAFT: not for citation or reproduction until editing process completed. The preliminary title of the book is ‘World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches’ Whether modernity in art belongs to Euramerica, what are the... more
DRAFT: not for citation or reproduction until editing process completed.
The preliminary title of the book is ‘World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches’
Whether modernity in art belongs to Euramerica, what are the implications of giving prior origin of modernity to Euramerica, and what is the art which could define 'other modernities' are discussed, after which 'Otherness' and possible typological genealogies of modernities are defined. The second part describes and analyses some structural contents of 'other modernities'.
The preliminary title of the book is ‘World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches’
Whether modernity in art belongs to Euramerica, what are the implications of giving prior origin of modernity to Euramerica, and what is the art which could define 'other modernities' are discussed, after which 'Otherness' and possible typological genealogies of modernities are defined. The second part describes and analyses some structural contents of 'other modernities'.
Research Interests:
The author is a specialist in the history of Modern Asian Art and will analyze the ways in which children and the childlike have appeared in this area across a number of cultures and periods. Children only rarely appear singly and are... more
The author is a specialist in the history of Modern Asian Art and will analyze the ways in which children and the childlike have appeared in this area across a number of cultures and periods. Children only rarely appear singly and are usually shown in contrasting situations as the subject of a mother's love or as victims of war or deprivation. They are broadly included in pictorial representation as participants in group life, sometimes as symbols of social witness, sometimes as family tokens. It is also important to note how or where children are absent, for example in representations of landscape as a domain of social domination, and particularly when woman is used as a sign of physical or sexual being, or as a symbol for female empowerment or dis-empowerment. One may more specifically identify presences of the child and the childlike in indexes of life and social policy, of death, and of whatever a society at that time considers lived reality to be. More abstractly, children can appear as a bearer of historical value or as sign of a yet-to-be realized future. Among modernist artists the childlike may be realized as a domain of psychological exploration. But in contrast under various types of ideological motivation the child may be pictured as the admonitory witness of the present, or as an exemplary model and filler of morally preordained roles. Sometimes modernist artists also use the childlike as a visual medium for the aesthetic subversion of socially pre-ordained orders.
Research Interests:
The problem of migratory artists' situation lies in their placement 'between'. This interstitiality-rather like the force field internal to a molecular structure between different atoms from which the modern usage derives-is constituted... more
The problem of migratory artists' situation lies in their placement 'between'. This interstitiality-rather like the force field internal to a molecular structure between different atoms from which the modern usage derives-is constituted by the local agendas and dominant côteries of the art world to which they migrate or in which they are emplaced, and by the world which their country of migration nearly always supposes they have 'come from', and to which their origin may be attributed by third parties. Thus it may be habitual for an English observer to construct, say, a Nigerian artist in London as 'Nigerian' or 'Áfrican', even though he/she may have spent his whole life in England. Such artists may even have been entirely educated within the British art system where 'their ineluctable existence in the post modern arena embodies the discontinuity of normative assumptions about originary "authenticity" in their work' 1. The same might apply to an artist of Turkish background born in Germany. But cultural bracketing falls down or is wilfully misapplied in cases where artists have moved either after, or in John Young's case before, his/her formation as an artist. Their existence itself is motile, the artist's work is enriched not contaminated by the instrinsic capability of both work and artist to move through reference to a multiplicity of origins and positioning procedures.
Research Interests:
According to the French catalogue of the exhibition in Paris of Magiciens de la terre [Magicians of the Earth, 18 May to 14 August 1989, French curator Jean-Hubert Martin] Yang Jiechang was born in 1957 in Canton, China, is Chinese and... more
According to the French catalogue of the exhibition in Paris of Magiciens de la terre [Magicians of the Earth, 18 May to 14 August 1989, French curator Jean-Hubert Martin] Yang Jiechang was born in 1957 in Canton, China, is Chinese and lives in Canton [Guangzhou]. According to the French catalogue of the exhibition Paris pour Escale [Paris as Port of Call, 7 December 2000 to 18th February 2001, Chinese curator, domiciled in France, Hou Hanru] he was born in 1956 at Foshan, China and lives and works in Paris and Heidelberg. The place of birth is more precise, the curator has become a diasporic Chinese, his nationality is no longer mentioned and his place of abode has doubled, as also having become the place where he works. Quite a transition. What happened along the way?
Research Interests:
2002 ‘Art History and Alterity, Othering as Process’.
1996 ‘Art and Alterity’, International Workshop on Art History and Alterity, Tezukayama Gakuin University, Ôsaka
1996 ‘Art and Alterity’, International Workshop on Art History and Alterity, Tezukayama Gakuin University, Ôsaka
Research Interests:
1996 Art History and Alterity ‘Othering’ as Process in Modern Asian Art Discourses 1996 ‘Art and Alterity’, International Workshop on Art History and Alterity, Tezukayama Gakuin University, Ôsaka. This paper attempts to clarify and... more
1996 Art History and Alterity ‘Othering’ as Process in Modern Asian Art Discourses
1996 ‘Art and Alterity’, International Workshop on Art History and Alterity, Tezukayama Gakuin University, Ôsaka.
This paper attempts to clarify and where possible extend the notion of ‘other’ arrived at in work on modern art in various Asian contexts. It begins with preliminary remarks about the problematic indicated by the notion that art history has an ‘other’, or that it might be reconfigured by a notion of ‘otherness / alterity’. The definition of ‘other’ will be re-examined in the second section through new suggestions about the historical typification of hybrid art.
1996 ‘Art and Alterity’, International Workshop on Art History and Alterity, Tezukayama Gakuin University, Ôsaka.
This paper attempts to clarify and where possible extend the notion of ‘other’ arrived at in work on modern art in various Asian contexts. It begins with preliminary remarks about the problematic indicated by the notion that art history has an ‘other’, or that it might be reconfigured by a notion of ‘otherness / alterity’. The definition of ‘other’ will be re-examined in the second section through new suggestions about the historical typification of hybrid art.
Research Interests:
How is ‘tradition’ mapped when art historically deployed in Thailand? Does it correspond to an antithesis with ‘the modern’, or is it an historically dependent pair which proceeds to develop or regress in tandem? The slipperiness of... more
How is ‘tradition’ mapped when art historically deployed in Thailand? Does it correspond to an antithesis with ‘the modern’, or is it an historically dependent pair which proceeds to develop or regress in tandem? The slipperiness of ‘tradition’ is due to its appropriation by the official Royal / state / Silpakorn discourse of art with its supporting educational and exhibition structures, rather than ‘tradition’ also claiming legitimacy from outside the official discourses. The ‘ethnic’, ‘folk’ or ‘anti-establishment’ positions are found in artists and work which see themselves as ‘genuine’ and working against the ‘false’.
‘Tradition’ is defined by political and art historical contexts which have been highly selective in their choice of past examples worth nominating, as in their acceptance of motivated exclusions. Much art work did not make it to exhibition let alone into art history because it did not suit official notions of ‘tradition’ and its antitheses conceived of as ‘modern’. Since ‘contemporary’ art has frequently been the field for competing norms about the ‘real’, or about what is ‘ours’, re-excavation of occluded artists and works becomes one way of rethinking the ‘contemporary’, and changing the datum set of works and artists by which the ‘contemporary’ is to be established.
‘Tradition’ is defined by political and art historical contexts which have been highly selective in their choice of past examples worth nominating, as in their acceptance of motivated exclusions. Much art work did not make it to exhibition let alone into art history because it did not suit official notions of ‘tradition’ and its antitheses conceived of as ‘modern’. Since ‘contemporary’ art has frequently been the field for competing norms about the ‘real’, or about what is ‘ours’, re-excavation of occluded artists and works becomes one way of rethinking the ‘contemporary’, and changing the datum set of works and artists by which the ‘contemporary’ is to be established.
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How is ‘tradition’ mapped when art historically deployed in Thailand? Does it correspond to an antithesis with ‘the modern’, or are an historically dependent pair which proceeds to develop or regress in tandem? The slipperiness of... more
How is ‘tradition’ mapped when art historically deployed in Thailand? Does it correspond to an antithesis with ‘the modern’, or are an historically dependent pair which proceeds to develop or regress in tandem? The slipperiness of ‘tradition’ is due to its appropriation by the official Royal / state / Silpakorn discourse of art with its supporting educational and exhibition structures, rather than ‘tradition’ also claiming legitimacy from outside the official discourses. The ‘ethnic’, ‘folk’ or ‘anti-establishment’ positions are found in artists and work which see themselves as ‘genuine’ and working against the ‘false’.
‘Tradition’ is defined by political and art historical contexts which have been highly selective in their choice of past examples worth nominating, as in their acceptance of motivated exclusions. Much art work did not make it to exhibition let alone into art history because it did not suit official notions of ‘tradition’ and its antitheses conceived of as ‘modern’. Since ‘contemporary’ art has frequently been the field for competing norms about the ‘real’, or about what is ‘ours’, re-excavation of occluded artists and works becomes one way of rethinking the ‘contemporary’, and changing the datum set of works and artists by which the ‘contemporary’ is to be established. These issues will then be re-examined via the life and work of Paiboon Suwannakudt (1925-1982) with some reference to other artist from the 1950s to the 1970s.
This text is accompanied by some chronologies, a bibliography, and materials towards a history of Paiboon Suwannakudt, much of which material is relevant to but not directly mentioned in text discussion.
‘Tradition’ is defined by political and art historical contexts which have been highly selective in their choice of past examples worth nominating, as in their acceptance of motivated exclusions. Much art work did not make it to exhibition let alone into art history because it did not suit official notions of ‘tradition’ and its antitheses conceived of as ‘modern’. Since ‘contemporary’ art has frequently been the field for competing norms about the ‘real’, or about what is ‘ours’, re-excavation of occluded artists and works becomes one way of rethinking the ‘contemporary’, and changing the datum set of works and artists by which the ‘contemporary’ is to be established. These issues will then be re-examined via the life and work of Paiboon Suwannakudt (1925-1982) with some reference to other artist from the 1950s to the 1970s.
This text is accompanied by some chronologies, a bibliography, and materials towards a history of Paiboon Suwannakudt, much of which material is relevant to but not directly mentioned in text discussion.
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A series of brown lands subdivide a small line of watercolours with variegated skies: some red, some yellow, some green-blue. Large iconic words appear as if in a biblical intonation on a painting by Colin McCahon; T.S. Eliot’s The Waste... more
A series of brown lands subdivide a small line of watercolours with variegated skies: some red, some yellow, some green-blue. Large iconic words appear as if in a biblical intonation on a painting by Colin McCahon; T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, 1922 is cited as text over some of the panels. Another works cites Javanese, or parts of The Koran. Juma Adi’s work declares unmistakably it is sympathetically literate between many visual and verbal cultures.
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Modern Indian Art: Some Literature and Problematics, Occasional Paper, no.21, Sydney: Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific, April, 51 pages, ISBN 0 86758 916 7.
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The comments below are a response to hearing the papers presented in the symposium and to reading papers from team research members together with the previously published references as provided by the organizers. It was a privilege and a... more
The comments below are a response to hearing the papers presented in the symposium and to reading papers from team research members together with the previously published references as provided by the organizers. It was a privilege and a pleasure to be invited to respond to these: elements of intellectual disquiet which appear in the comments which follow should not be construed as a comment on the quality of the papers which overall was very high.
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[Note Japanese names are given surname first] It might seem appropriate here just to look at the reception of Monet's oeuvre in Japanese art, but as Japanese authorities such as Takumi and Miyasaki indicate, this reception has to be... more
[Note Japanese names are given surname first] It might seem appropriate here just to look at the reception of Monet's oeuvre in Japanese art, but as Japanese authorities such as Takumi and Miyasaki indicate, this reception has to be placed in the context of the Japanese reception of European oil painting in the late 19th century. Indeed, for reasons which will become clear, the general impact of Monet on works of art produced by Japanese, or on Japanese artviewing audiences, was very limited and indirect until the Japanese mass exhibitions for Impressionist painting of the 1970s and 1980s.
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The Archive in Time, Temporal Processes in the History of the Asian Modern
時間中的檔案，「亞洲現代」歷史
中的時間程序
時間中的檔案，「亞洲現代」歷史
中的時間程序
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The background There is no doubt that the work of Lai Chunchun as it emerged in the 1980s and developed in the 1990s,1 together with that of generational peers Zhuang Pu [ill.1], Wu Mali, Chen Xingwan [ill.2], Chen Shiming [ill.3], Hu... more
The background There is no doubt that the work of Lai Chunchun as it emerged in the 1980s and developed in the 1990s,1 together with that of generational peers Zhuang Pu [ill.1], Wu Mali, Chen Xingwan [ill.2], Chen Shiming [ill.3], Hu Kunrong [ill.4], marked a clear stylistic break with other positions in the Taibei art world at first based on a broadly conceived conceptual minimalism.2 I conducted interviews with many of
Research Interests: Chinese Art and Taiwan
Essay for Woollongong/MCA Art from Taiwan Exhibition, March 1995 The presence of a specific culture and way of life in Taiwan is both ever-concrete and barely eluctable. An outline of this problem will contextualize the three modern... more
Essay for Woollongong/MCA Art from Taiwan Exhibition, March 1995
The presence of a specific culture and way of life in Taiwan is both ever-concrete and barely eluctable. An outline of this problem will contextualize the three modern women artists to be discussed here: Chen Xingwan, Lai Chunchun, and Wu Mali.
The presence of a specific culture and way of life in Taiwan is both ever-concrete and barely eluctable. An outline of this problem will contextualize the three modern women artists to be discussed here: Chen Xingwan, Lai Chunchun, and Wu Mali.
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This essay arises from an interest in Chinese contemporary art works, how and by whom they are produced, and the spaces which receive them. Its interest in Shanghai is largely because my previous work was centred on Beijing, Hangzhou,... more
This essay arises from an interest in Chinese contemporary art works, how and by whom they are produced, and the spaces which receive them. Its interest in Shanghai is largely because my previous work was centred on Beijing, Hangzhou, Hong Kong and Taipei, so I have not given as much attention to Shanghai as one crucible for the rise of a Chinese contemporary art, although I did visit Shanghai Biennales in 2004 and 2006. Shanghai has also since the mid-1980s witnessed the formation of many small art exhibitions and artist groupings, followed from the mid-1990s by the opening of commercial art galleries, not-for-profit artist spaces, and contemporary art museums, together with its own Biennale from 1995. With the West Bund Cultural District project launched in 2008 which reached fruition in 2014-16, contemporary art was allied with a political purpose as a planned city development zone featuring many cultural projects including art galleries. Indeed the scale and movement of personae around the contemporary art museums and the new West Bund district leads one to imagine that the Biennale functions of introducing the foreign new, anticipating the future, and canonising the near-present are now diffused through a much broader range of institutions, as we may see.
Due to the limitations of my in-depth practical research in Shanghai, this essay is perforce limited to a description of these new sites and some speculative analyses about how they may or may not be inter-related particularly via the Biennale to the ‘transnational’ level. ‘International’ we may use for relations between states at the state level, although the fusion of the ‘international’ with the ‘transnational’, that is with tendencies distributed across but not wholly independent of the dynamics of ‘national’ art worlds, or its absorption for ‘national’ ends can be seen. The more important research task of exactly how Chinese artists are reacting to these new sites, how they affect the methods by which they make works and the kind of works they make, and the role of commercial galleries or other sales agents – where institutional curators and critics can play a crucial role -as intervening in promoting or consecrating these tendencies for the advantage of themselves and collectors, will have to await more profound and lengthy local research.
Due to the limitations of my in-depth practical research in Shanghai, this essay is perforce limited to a description of these new sites and some speculative analyses about how they may or may not be inter-related particularly via the Biennale to the ‘transnational’ level. ‘International’ we may use for relations between states at the state level, although the fusion of the ‘international’ with the ‘transnational’, that is with tendencies distributed across but not wholly independent of the dynamics of ‘national’ art worlds, or its absorption for ‘national’ ends can be seen. The more important research task of exactly how Chinese artists are reacting to these new sites, how they affect the methods by which they make works and the kind of works they make, and the role of commercial galleries or other sales agents – where institutional curators and critics can play a crucial role -as intervening in promoting or consecrating these tendencies for the advantage of themselves and collectors, will have to await more profound and lengthy local research.
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These broader changes evolved against more finely tuned situations in the art world. The Stars group forced the beginning of changes in 1979, and there was tentative official support for the second Stars exhibition in 1980 through the... more
These broader changes evolved against more finely tuned situations in the art world. The Stars group forced the beginning of changes in 1979, and there was tentative official support for the second Stars exhibition in 1980 through the then chair of the Artist's Association, the recently rehabilitated Jiang Feng.
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Jiang Jie has become well known since 1994 for the presentation of several works which take as their ostensible subject the disposal/disposition of human infants through their reproduced models. These occur in multiples or in single... more
Jiang Jie has become well known since 1994 for the presentation of several works which take as their ostensible subject the disposal/disposition of human infants through their reproduced models. These occur in multiples or in single entities, as painted or waxed-over stigmatized, corpse-like dolls with staring and open eyes, in installations or in isolated massive presentations close to commemorative sculpture. Some of the multiples, despite their formal resemblances, are actually of quite separate sculptures of different ‘infants’ usually moulded in glass fibre. She has also worked with repeated simulacra of children’s toy houses or folded paper planes. Her works have recently included constructed architectural residues as a kind of cultural archaeology of the hidden or disappearing. Finally, her work would also appear to comprise portrait sculptures made for commission of famous persons in China, usually officials: although averred to in conversation, I have no direct knowledge or images of these.
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2007 ‘Liu Guosong: The tradition of Chinese painting reconceived’ (Beijing) 2009 ‘The tradition of Chinese Painting reconceived: Liu Guosong and Modernity’, in Xiao Xiangling, ed., Yuzhou Xinyin: Liu Guosong-Yijiazi xueluntan [bilingual,... more
2007 ‘Liu Guosong: The tradition of Chinese painting reconceived’ (Beijing)
2009 ‘The tradition of Chinese Painting reconceived: Liu Guosong and Modernity’, in Xiao Xiangling, ed., Yuzhou Xinyin: Liu Guosong-Yijiazi xueluntan [bilingual, 2007 symposium], Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 2009, 156-174.
2009 ‘The tradition of Chinese Painting reconceived: Liu Guosong and Modernity’, in Xiao Xiangling, ed., Yuzhou Xinyin: Liu Guosong-Yijiazi xueluntan [bilingual, 2007 symposium], Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 2009, 156-174.
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2019 ‘Rethinking Multiple Modernisms’, for symposium at Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing [undelivered for health reasons]. Since my arguments from the 2016 CIHA conference have in 2019 not yet been published and may thus be... more
2019 ‘Rethinking Multiple Modernisms’, for symposium at Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing [undelivered for health reasons].
Since my arguments from the 2016 CIHA conference have in 2019 not yet been published and may thus be unfamiliar, it is sensible here to first re-articulate a few of these, and then see what further may be said about multiple modernisms from perspectives found both outside Euramerica and within Asia.
Since my arguments from the 2016 CIHA conference have in 2019 not yet been published and may thus be unfamiliar, it is sensible here to first re-articulate a few of these, and then see what further may be said about multiple modernisms from perspectives found both outside Euramerica and within Asia.
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2019 ‘Rethinking Multiple Modernisms’, for symposium at Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing [undelivered for health reasons]. Since my arguments from the 2016 CIHA conference have in 2019 not yet been published and may thus be... more
2019 ‘Rethinking Multiple Modernisms’, for symposium at Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing [undelivered for health reasons].
Since my arguments from the 2016 CIHA conference have in 2019 not yet been published and may thus be unfamiliar, it is sensible here to first re-articulate a few of these, and then see what further may be said about multiple modernisms from perspectives found both outside Euramerica and within Asia.
Since my arguments from the 2016 CIHA conference have in 2019 not yet been published and may thus be unfamiliar, it is sensible here to first re-articulate a few of these, and then see what further may be said about multiple modernisms from perspectives found both outside Euramerica and within Asia.
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Prehistories of realisms: endogenous and in interaction with exogenous types Nochlin's definitions of realism Fan and Kim's notions of realism in different Asian contexts Institutional definition: establishment of fine arts academy and... more
Prehistories of realisms: endogenous and in interaction with exogenous types Nochlin's definitions of realism Fan and Kim's notions of realism in different Asian contexts Institutional definition: establishment of fine arts academy and the limitations of limited 'salon realism' Realism as a type of modernity in art Paradoxical relation to the customary; realisms and the bracketing of 'tradition'. Realism as reportage. Realism as serving socialist ideals; limitations; political ideologization; actual party control Establishment, counter-establishment, avant-garde as institutional formations of art in the light of a single national realisms Or a plural and distributed Asia-wide set of realisms.
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Let us both reader and author in the beginning recall the difficulty with The Asian Modern is that, at first glance and for conventional Euramerican art history, it is an unnatural and unfamiliar concept: it appears to be too broad to... more
Let us both reader and author in the beginning recall the difficulty with The Asian Modern is that, at first glance and for conventional Euramerican art history, it is an unnatural and unfamiliar concept: it appears to be too broad to obtain either clear definition or precise application. It appears to repeat in a problematically indicated geographical zone a critical theory of art which is now thought outmoded or superseded in its lands of origin.
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For ‘Curating in Asia‘ at Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, December 2011. Art curating, in the particular geographical and cultural spaces which may be called ‘Asia’, is a deeply internal activity within various... more
For ‘Curating in Asia‘ at Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, December 2011.
Art curating, in the particular geographical and cultural spaces which may be called ‘Asia’, is a deeply internal activity within various specialist societies called art worlds and within the persons, personalities even, of given individuals. [ill.1 Szeeman, ill.2 Enwezor] These smaller societies are inter-linked or networked with an inter-located domain called ‘international’, and insofar as curators’ articulations may transcend or be relatively autonomous of the national, they are ‘transnational’. Curators, those allocators of selection whose operations are determinative for other art worlds and their audiences inevitably have culturally and historically specific base conditions and operating habits. These are the education and kind of training they may undergo, or the space into which they operate, the kind of art works with which they are historically positioned to deal, and the structures of patronage reception and audience perception into or between which art works move by the curator’s selection. In understanding ‘Curating Asia’ we could go further along this track, one almost entirely motivated by a curator’s eye view, and examine a curator’s work and functions entirely within the frame of the curator herself.
Art curating, in the particular geographical and cultural spaces which may be called ‘Asia’, is a deeply internal activity within various specialist societies called art worlds and within the persons, personalities even, of given individuals. [ill.1 Szeeman, ill.2 Enwezor] These smaller societies are inter-linked or networked with an inter-located domain called ‘international’, and insofar as curators’ articulations may transcend or be relatively autonomous of the national, they are ‘transnational’. Curators, those allocators of selection whose operations are determinative for other art worlds and their audiences inevitably have culturally and historically specific base conditions and operating habits. These are the education and kind of training they may undergo, or the space into which they operate, the kind of art works with which they are historically positioned to deal, and the structures of patronage reception and audience perception into or between which art works move by the curator’s selection. In understanding ‘Curating Asia’ we could go further along this track, one almost entirely motivated by a curator’s eye view, and examine a curator’s work and functions entirely within the frame of the curator herself.
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2012 Re-articulation, the Asia Modern CIHA paper in Beijing
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2012 ‘Presenting the self: pictorial and photographic discourses in 19th century Dutch Indies, Siam, and Japan’, for National Gallery of Art, Washington, partially published as 2013, ‘Presenting the Self: Pictorial and Photographic... more
2012 ‘Presenting the self: pictorial and photographic discourses in 19th century Dutch Indies, Siam, and Japan’, for National Gallery of Art, Washington, partially published as 2013, ‘Presenting the Self: Pictorial and Photographic Discourses in Nineteenth-century Dutch Indies and Siam’, Ars Orientalis, no.43.
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2012 ‘Art History and its Futures: the Asian Case of Non-Euramerica’, conference presentation at CIHA, Nuremburg, 2012 published in The challenge of the object / Die Herausforderung des Objekts, [International Congress of the History of... more
2012 ‘Art History and its Futures: the Asian Case of Non-Euramerica’, conference presentation at CIHA, Nuremburg, 2012 published in The challenge of the object / Die Herausforderung des Objekts, [International Congress of the History of Art, no.33: 2012, Nuremberg, Germany] Nürnberg: Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 2012.
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2005 September, invited speaker Symposium on Asian Cubism, exhibition, National Gallery of Modern Art, Tokyo. This paper will examine Cubism in Asia via reference to 'Asia' as a discursive modality which relativizes or resists... more
2005 September, invited speaker Symposium on Asian Cubism, exhibition, National Gallery of Modern Art, Tokyo.
This paper will examine Cubism in Asia via reference to 'Asia' as a discursive modality which relativizes or resists 'Euramerica', but not just as a physical place confined to one state, nor as a single cultural or visual discourse. It will recognize the secondariness of art discourses to other social institutions and processes, but the primary role of styles in defining art within such discourses, and the particular transformations seen in different Asian contexts of reception. It will establish some analytical criteria for assessing what 'European Cubism' might be to facilitate examination of the regularities to be understood in cross-national transmission routes, their modalities of reception, and the endogenous patterns of transformation.
This paper will examine Cubism in Asia via reference to 'Asia' as a discursive modality which relativizes or resists 'Euramerica', but not just as a physical place confined to one state, nor as a single cultural or visual discourse. It will recognize the secondariness of art discourses to other social institutions and processes, but the primary role of styles in defining art within such discourses, and the particular transformations seen in different Asian contexts of reception. It will establish some analytical criteria for assessing what 'European Cubism' might be to facilitate examination of the regularities to be understood in cross-national transmission routes, their modalities of reception, and the endogenous patterns of transformation.
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2005 September, invited speaker Symposium on Asian Cubism, exhibition, National Gallery of Modern Art, Tokyo.
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Seminar for Art History, University of Sydney,
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I am grateful for the opportunity to offer some thoughts on the work of Montien Boonma, the experience of knowing whom, though on a secular plane, always felt akin to the spiritual concerns of his work. Australia and some Australians were... more
I am grateful for the opportunity to offer some thoughts on the work of Montien Boonma, the experience of knowing whom, though on a secular plane, always felt akin to the spiritual concerns of his work. Australia and some Australians were especially privileged by his work and his presence.
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For the ‘Unbuilt/Rare Works exhibition, Jim Thomson Foundation, Bangkok, May 2013.
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Public lecture given on ‘Montien Boonma and Modern Thai Sculpture’ at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra on July 24th, 2004, on the occasion of the exhibition of the work of Montien Boonma.
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The canonising role of the private collection: Dr Oei Hong Djien for ARC Project Workshop, Public Presentations, July 2017.
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Negotiating Change in recent Southeast Asian Art at Asia Society, New York, 20 October 2017
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Negotiating Change in recent Southeast Asian Art at Asia Society, New York, 20 October 2017 To begin with, the question of what is ‘Asian’ and how it may be approached seems to have preoccupied earlier geo-biologists, and also those... more
Negotiating Change in recent Southeast Asian Art at Asia Society, New York, 20 October 2017
To begin with, the question of what is ‘Asian’ and how it may be approached seems to have preoccupied earlier geo-biologists, and also those seeking to disabuse Europeans of their projection that ‘Asia’ had anything like the cultural and historical integration supposed of Europe itself. The former may now defer to scientific conceptual and technological changes which have allowed genome sequencing to show the interlinkage of population genealogies and the specious validity of the concept of ‘race’. There have been several genome sequencing studies which undermine the notion of singular ‘races’ in any of the SE Asian cultures, since their populations historically speaking have been so inter-mixed. Even in advanced supposedly monolingual states like modern Thailand there is no such thing as a pure language and the resulting modern amalgam is inalienably hybridized.
To begin with, the question of what is ‘Asian’ and how it may be approached seems to have preoccupied earlier geo-biologists, and also those seeking to disabuse Europeans of their projection that ‘Asia’ had anything like the cultural and historical integration supposed of Europe itself. The former may now defer to scientific conceptual and technological changes which have allowed genome sequencing to show the interlinkage of population genealogies and the specious validity of the concept of ‘race’. There have been several genome sequencing studies which undermine the notion of singular ‘races’ in any of the SE Asian cultures, since their populations historically speaking have been so inter-mixed. Even in advanced supposedly monolingual states like modern Thailand there is no such thing as a pure language and the resulting modern amalgam is inalienably hybridized.
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For the exhibition from the Galeri Nasional, Jakarta,
at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. September, 2014.
at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. September, 2014.
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2012 for Jakarta Raden Saleh Symposium [unpublished, parts in The Asian Modern, 2020].
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2001 March, paper on ‘Monet and Impressionism in Japan’ at the symposium for the exhibition Monet and Japan held by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
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Multiple or Singular Modernisms seen through the Taipei Biennial PPT
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‘Multiple or Singular Modernisms seen through the Taipei Biennial’, for UCLA 2020 conference postponed to 2021 Modernism as a reflective and usually self-conscious modernity – an attitude to life, a set of expressions and stylistics, a... more
‘Multiple or Singular Modernisms seen through the Taipei Biennial’, for UCLA 2020 conference postponed to 2021
Modernism as a reflective and usually self-conscious modernity – an attitude to life, a set of expressions and stylistics, a broad and necessarily abstract moment in thought – can be seen as arising in one cultural continuum, and by transference, translation and learning, developed and extended in others. It can be seen, with variations, as a singular continuity.
Modernism as a reflective and usually self-conscious modernity – an attitude to life, a set of expressions and stylistics, a broad and necessarily abstract moment in thought – can be seen as arising in one cultural continuum, and by transference, translation and learning, developed and extended in others. It can be seen, with variations, as a singular continuity.
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For CIW at ANU 19 March 2015
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Liu Guosong Retrospective Exhibition Symposium, Beijing, 2007
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For Xiao Lu Exhibition Symposium at Gallery 4A, Sydney
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Seven issues concern the construction of the avant-garde in Chinese art: the foreclosure of the academy to its reception; formal opposition to the academy via artistic rivalry not accepting of ideological conformity; how much an... more
Seven issues concern the construction of the avant-garde in Chinese art: the foreclosure of the academy to its reception; formal opposition to the academy via artistic rivalry not accepting of ideological conformity; how much an indigenous avant-garde could absorb from outside; the imbrication of the avant-garde within the official art system; avant-garde does not spring from a historical vacuum but is deeply seated in earlier positions within the art world; modernity for the avant-garde lies in relativization of previous positions not misleading application of external genealogies; even with an avant-garde national exclusivity can easily obstruct its own development.
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CCC 2017
Research Interests: Video Art and Chinese Art
CCC Conference April 2017
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Research Interests: Video Art and Chinese Art
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June/July, spoke at conference for Permanence and Impermanence in Contemporary Art on exhibition of works by Zhang Dali at Minsheng Museum.
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2016 June/July, spoke at conference for Permanence and Impermanence in Contemporary Art on exhibition of works by Zhang Dali at Minsheng Museum.
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Invited speaker on ‘Japanese Contemporary Art and Globalization - largely seen from participation in the Venice Biennale’, presented at conference ‘Globalization, Localization, and Japanese Culture in the Asia Pacific Region’ organized by... more
Invited speaker on ‘Japanese Contemporary Art and Globalization - largely seen from participation in the Venice Biennale’, presented at conference ‘Globalization, Localization, and Japanese Culture in the Asia Pacific Region’ organized by the International Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, and the Department of Japanese Studies of the National University of Singapore from October 28th to 30th, 2004.
This paper falls into four parts. It first outlines some issues of globalization which might contextualize the international circulation of Japanese and other contemporary Asian art. It analyses the participation of Japanese art as a national exercise in the Venice Biennale and related exhibitions, and then moves to re-capitulating some observations on how Japanese art was shown internationally in other thematic exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s. It finally examines, in the context of globalism and globalization, the international positioning of Japanese contemporary art in recent exhibitions such as the first Yokohama Triennale in 2002 and the Kwangju, Busan, and Shanghai Biennales in 2004.
This paper falls into four parts. It first outlines some issues of globalization which might contextualize the international circulation of Japanese and other contemporary Asian art. It analyses the participation of Japanese art as a national exercise in the Venice Biennale and related exhibitions, and then moves to re-capitulating some observations on how Japanese art was shown internationally in other thematic exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s. It finally examines, in the context of globalism and globalization, the international positioning of Japanese contemporary art in recent exhibitions such as the first Yokohama Triennale in 2002 and the Kwangju, Busan, and Shanghai Biennales in 2004.
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‘Between the worlds: Chinese art at Biennials since 1993’, Yishu, A journal of Chinese Contemporary Art, vol.4, no.2, 2005, 40-55. This paper investigates where and how Chinese contemporary art circulates at an international level in the... more
‘Between the worlds: Chinese art at Biennials since 1993’, Yishu, A journal of Chinese Contemporary Art, vol.4, no.2, 2005, 40-55.
This paper investigates where and how Chinese contemporary art circulates at an international level in the context of the rise in Biennales and Triennales in Asia. It will examine the types of exhibition and the role of curators. It will briefly conclude with an examination of unresolved issues between older and newer curatorial cohorts.
This paper investigates where and how Chinese contemporary art circulates at an international level in the context of the rise in Biennales and Triennales in Asia. It will examine the types of exhibition and the role of curators. It will briefly conclude with an examination of unresolved issues between older and newer curatorial cohorts.
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2006 June 9, invited speaker on Contemporary Asian art at Biennales at 1st Symposium of the Biennale of Sydney.
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Comments on art discourses in different Asian art cultures.
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The main issues in the understanding of modern and contemporary Chinese art include: 1. the autonomy of ‘Chinese-style’ and ‘Western-style’ art practices and of their interpretive structures in the twentieth century; 2. the kinds of... more
The main issues in the understanding of modern and contemporary Chinese art include: 1. the autonomy of ‘Chinese-style’ and ‘Western-style’ art practices and of their interpretive structures in the twentieth century; 2. the kinds of historical time implicit in the development of modern Chinese art if we avoid or defer the bifurcation ‘Chinese’ / ‘Western’; 3. the kinds of sense we can make of Chinese modern and contemporary art if we deploy certain international comparisons from other Asian contexts; 4. the way Chinese national participation at international Biennales together with the exhibition of Chinese artists alongside international ones at local Biennales may be altering or reinforcing patterns of Chinese art discourse, even as the very conditions for calling it ‘Chinese’ are melting away. In this essay I will confine myself to the first two.
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This long review paper was delivered at various art schools in Indonesia and India, 1991-92.
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2009 September, ‘Biennales: Types and Circulation’ at Bergen Kunsthal conference on Biennales.
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PPT Presentation
2009 September, ‘Biennales: Types and Circulation’ at Bergen Kunsthal Conference on Biennales.
2009 September, ‘Biennales: Types and Circulation’ at Bergen Kunsthal Conference on Biennales.
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A keynote lecture for the symposium Sites of Construction: Exhibitions and the making of recent art history in Asia at the Asian Art Archive, Hong Kong October 2013. Is there an art historical approach to Asian Biennials, or is art... more
A keynote lecture for the symposium Sites of Construction: Exhibitions and the making of recent art history in Asia at the Asian Art Archive, Hong Kong October 2013.
Is there an art historical approach to Asian Biennials, or is art historical analysis evacuated by the position statements and practices of curators whose methodologies and underlying suppositions now claim interpretive authority? Does the claim that ‘contemporary’ art is the new ‘modern’ art eviscerate and de-historicize previous discourses? What is the structure of the transnational art selection and appraisal structures which authorizes curatorial practice, and is there a specifically ‘Asian’ set of such structures, or do these mark the advent of a new Euramerican wolf in Asian sheep’s clothing? Does the accelerating separation from art as a medium of inter-national exchange into a top-down allocation of a restricted canon constitute the imposition of a new form of hegemony which now operates on all three levels together: trans-national [beyond states, global], inter-national [between states, eg China-Japan] and local [inside one state, eg. Korea alone] ?
Is there an art historical approach to Asian Biennials, or is art historical analysis evacuated by the position statements and practices of curators whose methodologies and underlying suppositions now claim interpretive authority? Does the claim that ‘contemporary’ art is the new ‘modern’ art eviscerate and de-historicize previous discourses? What is the structure of the transnational art selection and appraisal structures which authorizes curatorial practice, and is there a specifically ‘Asian’ set of such structures, or do these mark the advent of a new Euramerican wolf in Asian sheep’s clothing? Does the accelerating separation from art as a medium of inter-national exchange into a top-down allocation of a restricted canon constitute the imposition of a new form of hegemony which now operates on all three levels together: trans-national [beyond states, global], inter-national [between states, eg China-Japan] and local [inside one state, eg. Korea alone] ?
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2006 November 18, Taiwan, Furen University at 5th Conference for Young Scholars in Sinology, this year specialising on the Visual and Performing Arts, gave Conference Keynote Paper on Opening a Biennale: Singapore 2006. This paper is... more
2006 November 18, Taiwan, Furen University at 5th Conference for Young Scholars in Sinology, this year specialising on the Visual and Performing Arts, gave Conference Keynote Paper on Opening a Biennale: Singapore 2006.
This paper is case-study in the structures and intentions which underlay the founding of one Asian art biennale, that of Singapore in 2006. It also looks at the way the resulting Biennale actually brought these intentions into practice, and whether or not they were fulfilled.
This paper is case-study in the structures and intentions which underlay the founding of one Asian art biennale, that of Singapore in 2006. It also looks at the way the resulting Biennale actually brought these intentions into practice, and whether or not they were fulfilled.
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PPT Presentation
2006 November 18, Taiwan, Furen University at 5th Conference for Young Scholars in Sinology, this year specialising on the Visual and Performing Arts, gave Conference Keynote Paper on Opening a Biennale: Singapore 2006
2006 November 18, Taiwan, Furen University at 5th Conference for Young Scholars in Sinology, this year specialising on the Visual and Performing Arts, gave Conference Keynote Paper on Opening a Biennale: Singapore 2006
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'4Meanwhile, snapshots across the river’
2018 Essay for the Catalogue, Bangkok Art Biennale: Beyond Bliss
2018 Essay for the Catalogue, Bangkok Art Biennale: Beyond Bliss
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It's not easy these days - if it ever was-to say where art fits, and for whom. It's also too easy to presume some overall concept has captured the totality of a particular field, rather than remaining like 'perspective' just another tool... more
It's not easy these days - if it ever was-to say where art fits, and for whom. It's also too easy to presume some overall concept has captured the totality of a particular field, rather than remaining like 'perspective' just another tool for seeing with. I suspect we are in a time when multiculturalism at the local level and globalism at the transnational level elide the purposes for which art is seen. Maybe some curators also don't let on they are aware of this.
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This essay will make some general comments on the art situation in China before observations about works in the exhibition. Chinese art at the end of the century stands at something of a turning point. After the hysteria with which so... more
This essay will make some general comments on the art situation in China before observations about works in the exhibition. Chinese art at the end of the century stands at something of a turning point. After the hysteria with which so much interesting experimental art was received at the Venice Biennale in 1999 1 it would appear the Euramerican art world is still reluctant to accept it no longer has-if it ever had-any exclusive rights over modernity. But if this external reception still retains an unshakeably atavistic core, what can be said of the situation in China itself?
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2014 email exchange with Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
Published and edited email exchange with Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, ‘Alms to stray dogs and other stories’, Art Monthly Australia, no. 268, April 2014, 34-41.
Published and edited email exchange with Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, ‘Alms to stray dogs and other stories’, Art Monthly Australia, no. 268, April 2014, 34-41.
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This candid interview between Ismail Hashim and the art historian, Professor John Clark, University of Sydney, Australia took place in Penang on November 6, 1994, during the early stages of Malaysia’s economic boom years. Clark thinks... more
This candid interview between Ismail Hashim and the art historian, Professor John Clark, University of Sydney, Australia took place in Penang on November 6, 1994, during the early stages of Malaysia’s economic boom years. Clark thinks they first met in 1993 at the First Asia-Pacific Triennale in Brisbane where Ismail Hashim exhibited. He also knew about his work through Redza Piyadasa who had an exhibition at Australia National University, Canberra, in 1991, and also came to a conference he organized in that year. Clark had also spent a month in Malaysia in 1976, staying for a week with a fishing family in Dungun, Kuala Trengganu, and visiting Pinang.
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1993 Yeoh Jinleng interview 1994 ‘Into the Forest: Interview with Yeoh Jin-leng’, Art and Australia supplement Art & Asia Pacific, vol. 1, no.2, April, 61-66. Interview between Yeoh Jin-leng and John Clark recorded in Kuala Lumpur on... more
1993 Yeoh Jinleng interview
1994 ‘Into the Forest: Interview with Yeoh Jin-leng’, Art and Australia supplement Art & Asia Pacific, vol. 1, no.2, April, 61-66.
Interview between Yeoh Jin-leng and John Clark
recorded in Kuala Lumpur on 31.11.1991
copyright John Clark 1991, 1993.
transcribed by Art & Australia 11.1993
This is the EDITED VERSION revised by John Clark
The COMPLETE TRANSCRIPTION is separate.
JC: There seems to be a large group of the Malaysian painters who were trained abroad, particularly in Britain the 1950s and1960s, why did you yourself go to Britain, or where did you go? YJL: Simply because of language reasons. I couldn't go to France, I couldn't go anywhere else, or Japan, and America was another different world at that time. I went to Chelsea. I first was trained as a teacher in ZACLI when the country didn't have any teacher training colleges. Then I was one of 150 teachers recruited to go to the Malay Teachers Training College in Liverpool and trained as a teacher. When I came back, and after five years, there was the first federal scholarship for art, because then the country needed personnel in art for art education. I got the first one and went to Chelsea.
1994 ‘Into the Forest: Interview with Yeoh Jin-leng’, Art and Australia supplement Art & Asia Pacific, vol. 1, no.2, April, 61-66.
Interview between Yeoh Jin-leng and John Clark
recorded in Kuala Lumpur on 31.11.1991
copyright John Clark 1991, 1993.
transcribed by Art & Australia 11.1993
This is the EDITED VERSION revised by John Clark
The COMPLETE TRANSCRIPTION is separate.
JC: There seems to be a large group of the Malaysian painters who were trained abroad, particularly in Britain the 1950s and1960s, why did you yourself go to Britain, or where did you go? YJL: Simply because of language reasons. I couldn't go to France, I couldn't go anywhere else, or Japan, and America was another different world at that time. I went to Chelsea. I first was trained as a teacher in ZACLI when the country didn't have any teacher training colleges. Then I was one of 150 teachers recruited to go to the Malay Teachers Training College in Liverpool and trained as a teacher. When I came back, and after five years, there was the first federal scholarship for art, because then the country needed personnel in art for art education. I got the first one and went to Chelsea.
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2007 ‘Liu Guosong: The tradition of Chinese painting reconceived’ (Beijing) 2009 ‘The tradition of Chinese Painting reconceived: Liu Guosong and Modernity’, in Xiao Xiangling, ed., Yuzhou Xinyin: Liu Guosong-Yijiazi xueluntan [bilingual,... more
2007 ‘Liu Guosong: The tradition of Chinese painting reconceived’ (Beijing)
2009 ‘The tradition of Chinese Painting reconceived: Liu Guosong and Modernity’, in Xiao Xiangling, ed., Yuzhou Xinyin: Liu Guosong-Yijiazi xueluntan [bilingual, 2007 symposium], Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 2009, 156-174.
2009 ‘The tradition of Chinese Painting reconceived: Liu Guosong and Modernity’, in Xiao Xiangling, ed., Yuzhou Xinyin: Liu Guosong-Yijiazi xueluntan [bilingual, 2007 symposium], Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 2009, 156-174.
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2019 ‘Rethinking Multiple Modernisms’, for symposium at Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing [undelivered for health reasons].
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2012 ‘Presenting the self: pictorial and photographic discourses in 19th century Dutch Indies, Siam, and Japan’, for National Gallery of Art, Washington, partially published as 2013, ‘Presenting the Self: Pictorial and Photographic... more
2012 ‘Presenting the self: pictorial and photographic discourses in 19th century Dutch Indies, Siam, and Japan’, for National Gallery of Art, Washington,
partially published as 2013, ‘Presenting the Self: Pictorial and Photographic Discourses in Nineteenth-century Dutch Indies and Siam’, Ars Orientalis, no.43.
partially published as 2013, ‘Presenting the Self: Pictorial and Photographic Discourses in Nineteenth-century Dutch Indies and Siam’, Ars Orientalis, no.43.
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Research Interests:
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These are essays which may have appeared in essay collections or journals but have not subsequently been published or re-published in my previous books. The Arafura Sea lies between Northern Australia and New Guinea, being a bounding... more
These are essays which may have appeared in essay collections or journals but have not subsequently been published or re-published in my previous books. The Arafura Sea lies between Northern Australia and New Guinea, being a bounding ocean for Australia and a much-traversed linking sea with Asia.