About the Roundtable
This round table discussion, which takes place in association with the SOAS Gallery exhibition ‘’, will explore the relationship between Daoism and ink painting in contemporary China. Since the compilation of its founding text, the Daodejing in the 4th century BCE, Daoism has provided an intellectual focus for resistance to state and other forms of social control as well as the calming achievement of neixin (heart - innermost being) in the face of worldly conflicts and suffering. Examples of these include the classic Daoist text the Zhuangzi (c. 3rd century BCE), wherein the principle of wu-wei (effortless action) is upheld as a corrective to overly legalistic imperial authority, and the so-called Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, who in the 3rd century CE resiled from public service at a time of major political upheaval in China to engage in the contemplation of Daoist teachings and related cultural activities, including painting, poetry writing, calligraphy and music-making, sometimes under the boundary blurring influence of alcoholic intoxication.
The roundtable will discuss the continuing relationship between Daoism and Chinese ink painting and its implications for cultural resistances to authority, individualism, transcendent spirituality, care for the self and respect for nature in an authoritarian-materialist post-revolutionary China now officially aligned with Confucian-related aspirations toward social harmony. Also discussed will?be the situating of contemporary Chinese ink art as part of the now conspicuously pluriversal conditions of early 21st–century contemporaneity downstream of post-Cold War globalization. The extent to which the relationship between Daoism and ink painting can indeed be talked or written about will be addressed given Daoism’s ultimate recourse to ineffable feeling rather than cognition as a way of gaining insight into the ontology of the cosmos.
Participants in the roundtable include its moderator Prof. Paul Gladston, the UNSW Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art, Dr. Katie Hill of Sotheby's Institute of Art, London and the curator of ‘Strange Wonders - Dreams, Desire and Daoism - Jizi and Other Pioneers of Contemporary Ink Painting from China’, and Prof. Wang Chunchen of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing who is the son of the artist Jizi, also known as Wang Yunshan [1941 – 2015].
An opening presentation by the moderator and discussion among the participants will be followed by an audience Q&A.
Date:
Saturday, 12th October 2024
Time:
2-4 pm (London time)
Venue:
SOAS Alumni Lecture Theatre (London)
Preamble to the Roundtable Discussion
Read the insightful?essay?by Professor Paul Gladston, the Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art,?and explore?the research and ideas that shape this event.
About the Exhibition
Strange Wonders: Jizi and pioneers of contemporary ink from China
Date:
10th October - 14th December
Time:
10:30 am - 5:00 pm (London time)
Venue:
SOAS Gallery (London)
Find out more information about the exhibition 'Strange Wonders' on the webpage.
Read the insightful essay 'My Father, Jizi' by our roundtable speaker Professor Wang Chunchen.
The exhibition encompasses a broad and impressive range of works from Jizi’s oeuvre from sharply angular, energetic abstract ‘mindscapes’ to vastly extending scrolls asserting a persistent and concerted creative exertion during his lifetime. This presentation brings his work into view for audiences unfamiliar with the artist, allowing us to appreciate his distinctive oeuvre within the historical development of contemporary ink and its hybrid evolution.
Proponents of ink in the mid to late twentieth century, such as the modern master Jizi, were influenced by global and transnational developments in the later twentieth century. His work exemplifies the hybrid modernisation of ink painting, exploring dynamic compositions in huge works of landscape and the cosmos in dialogue with earlier ink painting traditions and influences from Japan and the West.
Alongside Jizi’s work will be work by artists who are key figures of contemporary art recognised in China, yet whose work is rarely exhibited in the UK.?Strange Wonders?includes painters from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as those in the Chinese diaspora to place their works into the story of modern ink contextualised within the broader framework of modern and contemporary art that is often dominated by the Western canon.
Other artists included are Gu Wenda and Xu Bing, pioneers of Chinese conceptualism in the realm of the deconstruction of language and Guo Le and Cai Yuan are included to show forms of abstraction by diaspora artists that can be placed within a broader context of transcultural artistic practice in relation to the philosophical discourses of ink.
The exhibition and roundtable have been made possible by the generous support of the UNSW Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art.
In association with
Roundtable Speakers
Professor Paul Gladston (moderator)?is the inaugural Judith Neilson Chair Professor of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney and a Distinguished Affiliate Fellow of the UK-China Humanities Alliance, Tsinghau University, Beijing. His numerous book-length publications include the monographs?Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History?(2014) - awarded ‘best publication’ at the Awards of Art China (2015) - and?Contemporary Chinese Art, Aesthetic Modernity and Zhang Peili: Towards a Critical Contemporaneity?(2019) as well as the co-edited collections?Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China:?Art, Design, Film, New Media and the Prospects of “Post-West” Contemporaneity?(2021) and?Rethinking Displays of Chinese Contemporary Art: Diversity and Tradition?(2024). He was an academic advisor to the internationally acclaimed exhibition ‘Art of Change: New Directions from China,’ Hayward Gallery-South Bank Centre, London (2012).
Professor Wang Chunchen?is the Deputy Director and Chief Curator at CAFA Art Museum, Beijing. He was the adjunct curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (2012-2016) and appointed as the curator of the Chinese Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013). He is Editor-in-Chief of The Chinese Contemporary Art Series published by Springer-Verlag, Germany. His art essays:?Art Intervenes in Society-A New Artistic Relationship?(a Chinese Contemporary Art Criticism Award book, 2010),?The Democracy of Art?(2013) and?The Politics of Images?(2013). He has also organized numerous exhibitions, most recently?IN THINKING - The Intellectual History and Methodologies of Chinese Contemporary Art, Guangdong (2020).
Dr. Katie Hill?is currently Academic Lead, Asia and Senior Lecturer at Sotheby's Institute of Art, London, where she founded and directed the MA in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art.
Exhibition Preview
Delve Deeper: Relevant Research by the Chair
Monographs
Gladston P,?2019,?Contemporary Chinese Art, Aesthetic Modernity and Zhang Peili Towards a Critical Contemporaneity,?Bloomsbury Academic,?London,?
Chapters
Gladston P,?2024,?'‘Humour/Youmo in Chinese Contemporary Art and Online Visual Culture: Identifying the Intertextual Traces of Confucian-literati Aesthetics’', in?Gieskes M; Williams GH?(ed.),?Humor, Globalization, and Culture-specificity in Contemporary Art,?Bloomsbury,?London
Gladston P,?2023,?'Dis-/Continuing Traditions: Chinese Contemporary Art and the Polylogic Translation of Confucian-literati Culture', in?Gladston P; Jin H; Yan H?(ed.),?Translation Studies and China: Literature, Cinema, and Visual Arts,?Routledge,?
Gladston P; Howarth-Gladston L,?2022,?'‘Chinese Confucian-literati Culture and Post-Enlightenment Philosophical Aesthetics’', in?Coalter C?(ed.),?Bloomsbury Philosophy Library – Bloomsbury History of Modern Aesthetics,?Bloomsbury.,?London and New York,?
In the media
Uncover the insights of the exhibition as captured by Asian Art.