RAS Shanghai – Diana Yeh – The Happy Hsiungs: Performing China and the struggle for Modernity – 20/3/14

RAS LECTURE

 

DIANA YEH
The Happy Hsiungs: Performing China and the struggle for Modernity

Dr Diana Yeh lectures at Birkbeck College, University of London and at the University of East London, UK. She has chapters in A. Robert Lee (ed.), China Fictions/English Language: Essays in Diaspora, Memory, Story (Rodopi, 2008); M. Huang, (ed.) The Reception of Chinese Art across Cultures (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, forthcoming) and articles in journals such as the Critical Quarterly and Senses and Society.

RSVP: to RAS Bookings at: bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

ENTRANCE:  Members 50 RMB – Non Members 70 RMB

Includes a glass of wine or soft drink

Priority for RAS members. Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption.

MEMBERSHIP applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.

RAS MONOGRAPHS – Series 1 – 4 will be available for sale at this event. 100 rmb each (cash sale only)

WEBSITE:  www.royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

The RAS Shanghai Library building

Difficult Times for Shanghai Women in 1934

A cartoon from the North-China Daily News from the famous White Russian cartoonist Sapajou in 1934 showing the “problems” women faced in Shanghai following the February introduction of the New Life Movement. Just how little attention Shanghai women paid to the new edicts is of course debatable!

Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade

Winnie Won Yin Wong’s Van Gogh on Demand looks like an interesting read…..

In the Guangdong province in southeastern China lies Dafen, a village that houses thousands of workers who paint Van Goghs, Da Vincis, Warhols, and other Western masterpieces, producing an astonishing five million paintings a year. To write about life and work in Dafen, Winnie Wong infiltrated this world, investigating the claims of conceptual artists who made projects there; working as a dealer; apprenticing as a painter; surveying merchants in Europe, Asia, and America; establishing relationships with local leaders; and organizing a conceptual art show for the Shanghai World Expo. The result is Van Gogh on Demand, a fascinating book about a little-known aspect of the global art world – one that sheds surprising light on our understandings of art, artists, and individual genius. Confronting difficult questions about the definition of art, the ownership of an image, and the meaning of imitation and appropriation, Wong shows how a plethora of artistic practices joins Chinese migrant workers, propaganda makers, and international artists together in a global supply chain of art and creativity. She examines how Berlin-based conceptual artist Christian Jankowski, who collaborated with Dafen’s painters to reimagine the Dafen Art Museum, unwittingly appropriated a photojournalist’s intellectual property. She explores how Zhang Huan, a radical performance artist from Beijing’s East Village, prompted propaganda makers to heroize the female artists of Dafen village. Through these cases, Wong shows how Dafen’s workers force us to reexamine our expectations about the cultural function of creativity and imitation, and the role of Chinese workers in redefining global art. Providing a valuable account of art practices in a period of profound global cultural shifts and an ascendant China, Van Gogh on Demand is a rich and detailed look at the implications of a world that can offer countless copies of everything that has ever been called “art.”

Manchukuo Pu Yi Postcard From 1934

Emperor Henry Puyi on a Japanese postcard, Manchruia (Manchukuo), 1934…I don’t think ChinaRhymers really need the whole Pu Yi, Manchuria, Japanese stooge thing explained again….

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s London Offices

Sadly I don’t have a date for this photograph from the London Met Archives but it is the London offices of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company on 21-24 Cockspur Street, near Trafalgar Square offering services to California, Japan, China and round the world. Pacific Mail was an American steamship line that started operations in 1848 transporting mail and passengers. Their trans-Pacific services were started in 1867 connecting San Francisco to Yokohama, Hong Kong and Shanghai. It was a popular line, due to lower costs, with Japanese and Chinese immigrants to the USA.

Travels in Kamtchatka and Siberia: Volumes 1 & 2: With a Narrative of a Residence in China

A new kindle edition of Dobell’s Travels in Kamchatka and Siberia (volume 1 and volume 2) from the early 1800s, largely forgotten and little read these days but an early(ish) examination of the region and life on the Chinese borders.

Dobell

Billy Smart’s 1960 1,001 Arabian Nights

There was a time when if you went to the circus in England (and I mean a proper circus with animals and everything) it was probably Billy Smart’s. He ran carnivals, funfairs and circus’s since the 1930s. In 1960 they came to town (London’s Alexandra Palace to be exact) with a new show featuring Orientalism galore and 1,001 Arabian Nights….

Raffles Hotel 1920

Raffles in 1920….