Entering Mesoamerica (4): Exploring Oaxaca and Mexico City - La Casa Azul / The Blue House of Frida

By Shenzhan/申展

Cover photo: Viva la Vida (Live Life), Frida Kahlo, Frida Kahlo Museum, 1954.

该文有中文版本 “走进中美洲（四）：Oaxaca与墨西哥之旅——La Casa Azul和Frida的“蓝房子”

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is perhaps the most famous Mexican artist that I know before this Mexico trip. I remember my first Christmas in New York, walking in the cold crisp air passing by a midtown gallery, my attention was caught by a large-sized oil painting of a brown-colored woman, short-haired with a rather serious look on her face, a light mustache above her upper lip, and two strikingly thick eyebrows touching each other. Not too long afterwards I got to know it was a portrait of Frida, THE Mexican artist who is internationally known for her tragic life accident, complicated romantic relationships with, among many others, Diego Rivera (1886 - 1957), and her passion for life and art, which was deeply rooted in the indigenous Mexican tradition. Two weeks before the trip, I tried to get into “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Ben Deceiving”, a special exhibition on Frida’s life and work at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The tickets were sold out until the end of the show. (WELL, I am going to Mexico City anyway !)

La Casa Azul (the Blue House), Frida Kahlo Museum, Coyoacan, Mexico City, May 2019.

At 3 pm on May 29, 2019, I was waiting outside of Frida Kahlo Museum, in Coyoacan, a historical town in southern Mexico City. The museum is where Frida was born, and where she breathed her last. It’s a charming two-story house with a large beautiful garden, surrounded by a wall painted electric cobalt blue. Some of Frida’s art works are displayed here, as well as her kitchen, the art studio Diego built for her with volcanic rocks, her daybed and night bedroom, and Diego’s room (the couple had separate bedrooms later in life). There is always a line getting into the museum. Mexicans adore Frida and affectionately call the museum “La Casa Azul” (the Blue House).

La Casa Azul does not collect Frida’s most famous art works, which would have been in the hands of private collectors and museums. Though standing in front of “Viva la Vida” (Live Life), I was overwhelmed by the strong, genuine longing for life Frida demonstrated in the painting - a still life of watermelons, some cut open with the red juicy meat exposed with black seeds. It is the last painting Frida did. A few days later, just moments before she passed away, Frida added the words “Viva la Vida” in one cut-open watermelon at the very front. Despite all she had to suffer -- her life had been subject to pain, medication, corsets, fragile health, and a constant longing for the freedom her body couldn’t allow ever since the devastating accident that fractured multiple parts of her body when she was 18; her complicated relationship with Diego Rivera, who’s 20 years in her senior and already an internationally famous muralist when they married in 1929. While both had love affairs throughout their marriage, Frida was more expressive in art of her frustrations about Diego’s affairs, one of them involving her own sister -- in the last moments of her life at the age of 47, despite all the pain, frustrations, heartbroken moments, life was still worth living. Viva la Vida!

Viva la Vida (Live Life), 1954, Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City

In spite of her love for Diego, Frida’s affairs with men and women certainly add color to her international fame. Her many lovers include Nickolas Muray (1892-1965), who photographed some of the best pictures of Frida during their 10-year on-and-off affair starting in 1931, shortly after her marriage to Diego. One of the photographs from 1939 is on display at La Casa Azul. In the photo, Frida radiates a beauty with a soft smile that carries a fading tenderness, which I rarely see from her most famous self-portraits or other photographs.

Frida Kahlo, photographed by Nickolas Muray, New York, 1939

Her brief affair with Leon Trotsky (1879 - 1940) has a dedicated section in the gallery of La Casa Azul. Trotsky, in exile from the Soviet Union, stayed with Diego and Frida for two years here from 1937 to 1939. He later moved to a house nearby after a quarrel with Diego ( I wonder why!) and was assassinated there, now the Leon Trotsky Museum (Needless to say, Coyoacan is a storied town because of Frida and Trotsky!). Their tumultuous relationship is demonstrated in a 1937 self-portrait  Frida dedicated to her lover at the time.

My favorite discovery though was her yet another passionate affair with Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), a critically acclaimed Japanese-American sculptor. Every morning on weekends, I pass by the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York on a bike but have never thought there was a connection between these two artists. Their affair was brief, yet they remain friends until Frida’s death in 1954. Noguchi sent to Frida a collection of butterflies, still in a case hanging on the ceiling of her nightbed. On the blue wall around a corner in the garden printed the lyrics of a song left by Patti Smith in 2012, titled “Noguchi’s Butterflies”:

by Shenzhan, May 29, 2019

Noguchi’s butterflies above Frida’s nightbed, by Shenzhan/申展, May 29, 2019

A sculpture at Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, New York.

In the end, it’s her deepest love of native Mexican folk art that completes Frida Kahlo 's international fame. Through her art, she finally broke free from the corset that restrained her body, the relationships she had herself entangled, and made the native folk art from her beloved land stand out in the post-colonial Mexico and the world. In Paris, London, New York, she was celebrating her native culture, brilliantly, unapologetically, and rebelliously. Like her famed husband Diego, who’s known for making communist murals, Frida was deeply committed to the cause of communism (at the foot of her night-bed, there are portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao!). And yet, her self-portraits and other paintings, tell a much more personal story of her as an individual - perhaps, the struggle she endured between a fragile body and a mind longing for freedom, can be viewed as a symbolic one between a Mexico with thousands of years of pre-colonial tradition in heart and soul and a colonial history that still dominates every part of Mexican life today. That said, as the physical struggle is so essential as a human experience, it could be viewed as a symbol for almost any type of struggle. For better or worse, Frida made native Mexican folk art cool in the world -- if you happened to try to get a ticket to the Frida show at the Brooklyn Museum this May, you would know exactly what I mean.

After dawn that evening, I found myself walking with a group of 20 or so people in the garden following a middle-aged woman, who dressed up in traditional Tehuana fashion that Frida is known for, and a plump round-faced man in western suits playing violin. It was a dramatization of Frida’s life played in the garden every last Wednesday of the month. The show was entirely in Spanish, yet the actress deftly acted out scenes while taking the group through the garden, sometimes with a monologue when she stood on the steps of a pyramid Diego built for Frida; sometimes a dialogue she suddenly turned to the audience; and, sometimes a song as the violin played a melody in the background. I could only guess that the performance was quite engaging from the response of the audience, but nevertheless enjoyed the music, singing, and the fact that I was walking in Frida’s garden after sunset, when this unusual yet enchanting experience was unfolding. The green lush plants and the cobalt blue wall grew darker and softer in the twilight.

A dramatization of Frida, Frida Kahlo Museum, May 29, 2019

A garden in the twilight, Frida Kahlo Museum, May 29, 2019

Walking out of La Casa Azul, I can now claim myself a true fan of Frida Kahlo.

Astoria, New York

6/30/2019

Related essay：

Entering Mesoamerica (3): Exploring Oaxaca and Mexico City - A VERY Brief Glance of the Ancient Civilizations

Entering Mesoamerica (2): Exploring Oaxaca and Mexico City - from the Street to the Church

Entering Mesoamerica (1): Exploring Oaxaca and Mexico City - Preface

Read more of Shenzhan Liao’s blog Making Sense. 意

Entering Mesoamerica (2): Exploring Oaxaca and Mexico City - from the Street to the Church

by Shenzhan/申展

Cover photo: Carlos from Oaxaca, May 2019

该文有中文版本“走进中美洲（二）：Oaxaca与墨西哥之旅——从街头到教堂”

At 9 am on May 23, 2019, Carlos, a slender and handsome young man managing a touring business called COYOTE Aventuras in Oaxaca, started a day of 4-hour bike tour of street art in Oaxaca around the corner of a quiet street behind Templo de Santo Domingo. A small group of visitors, including M and me from New York, the rest from San Diego, have gathered around him, listening attentively.

Pointing at a black and white image of a Mexican woman hugging tightly a heart with vines forming number “43”, referring to 43 university students murdered in 2014, allegedly, by the city of Iguala government from Guerrero, a neighboring state of Oaxaca, Carlos jumped right into the most recent bleak political issue in Mexico, the corrupted government and its anti-drug war that for many are violent and murderous to its own people. Carlos surely brought up a surprisingly serious topic for me to digest after a delicious breakfast of Tamale -- corn and beef steamed in wrapped banana leaf, a traditional Oaxaca home-cooked food by my Airbnb hostess Male-- nevertheless, muralism in Mexico became a movement after the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) to reunite people by conveying strong political and social messages. One of the most famous mural artists is Diego Rivera (1886 - 1957), whose pro-communism anti-capitalism murals are still on display at the Detroit Institute of Art, and of course, his national gallery in Mexico City, among many other places.  With such an origin, Carlos’ politically loaded beginning of the day was perhaps unavoidable.

Street Art, Oaxaca, May 2019

Some murals only speak to people who know the background, like the ones Carlos started with. Some are strikingly colorful and artistically expressive with interesting details that could be appreciated by anyone with a glance. For example, a large mural covering the entire corner of a street in Jalatlaco, a neighborhood right next to Centro, Oaxaca, puts the “Day of the Dead” parade on display. A tradition traced back to pre-colonial time, this national holiday now starts on October 31 and ends on November 2, when people offer to the dead food, possessions and respect, while celebrating among the living with hot chocolate, music, tacos , mezcal, and fireworks! In indigenous Mexico culture, there might not be a clear line between the dead and the living. Many murals have a surprising level of comfort with the skulls and skeletons, which are of course symbols of death, but amusingly enjoy everything that life gives - peeing, drinking, dancing, fighting, playing music, etc.

“the Day of the Dead”, Jalatlaco, Oaxaca, May 2019

My favorite ones are mostly contextual: a giant monster coming out of the hallucination one might have after consuming one or more Mexican mushrooms, partially covered by the branches from above and partially disappearing because of the decaying of the wall itself; a mural telling the story of the neighborhood, where a thief was caught and hung (isn’t there a strange acute sense of humor?! Not for the dead thief, sadly. ) while deftly using the living tree behind the wall as part of the painting; or a sexy half-octopus half-female creature romantically kissing a masked human(??) in a quiet, almost deserted street where trees fell down and piled up in front of the mural -- a tender resistance and loneliness. Carlos warned everyone to wear comfortable clothing, sunscreen, and keep hydration, and he was not kidding!  

Street art, Oaxaca, May 2019

Street art, Oaxaca, May 2019

Street art, Oaxaca, May 2019

Most street murals do not last very long, only for weeks, or for the lucky ones, months, which makes them interesting and relevant, as you could feel the concern, humor, passion and stories as walking by. Many art studios scatter along Porfirio Diaz, a north-south street packed with restaurants, bars, and art galleries, presenting a forever changing scene of Oaxaca to both locals and visitors, all within walking distance from Templo De Santo Domingo.

Templo de Santo Domingo, Oaxaca, May 2019

In contrast, the highly decorated baroque-style Templo De Santo Domingo, now standing with its full glory and stature in the heart of Centro Oaxaca, represents an establishment exactly the opposite of the street mural art -- permanent, distant, and power from higher up. Built over 200 years starting in 1575,  its sanctuary covered with 60,000 23.5-karat gold leaves does not fail to instill a sense of awe even I possess very little knowledge of the Dominican Order, which founded the church about 50 years after the fall of the Aztec Empire.

Interior of the Sanctuary, Templo de Santo Domingo, Oaxaca, May 2019

In retrospect, the arrival of Columbus in 1492 to Central America was really the beginning of genocide of Mesoamerican peoples and cultures. The ruling Aztec Empire at the time was certainly far from ideal. In fact, it was so unpopular that many native tribes helped Hernán Cortés (1485 - 1547) and his Spanish army to defeat the Aztecs in 1521. The natives might feel relieved to see the tribunal system imposed by the Aztec Empire gone, but would soon find themselves living in a much worse situation: the Spaniards created a Colonial Casta System with people of pure Spanish blood on the top enjoying most legal rights; natives were essentially slaves of Spanish lords who own the land and its product; smallpox ravaged the native population as they didn’t have the immunity to the disease….. By 1600, the native population shrank from 20 million before Cortés to 2 million. African slaves had to be brought in to supplement the labor shortage. (in the end, the Game of Thrones are not at all original!) While gold and glory were taken by Spanish conquerors, natives gods were replaced with GOD -- A Christianized New Spain was what the Spanish Empire wanted.

When three hundred years of colonialism ended in 1820, Mexico was by and large a Catholic state. The Spaniards may have left Mexico, but their GOD stays. The saints of Dominican Order preaching the gospel are all sitting in Templo de Santo Domingo, showered with gold, literally.

Today Templo de Santo Domingo is essentially divided into 3 parts: the sanctuary is open to the public free of charge; the former monastery now is the Cultural Centre of Oaxaca, a museum where the pre-colonial gods of indigenous people are under the same roof as the Christ, in one statue wearing a crown characteristically native; the garden attached to the monastery now is the Botanical Garden of Oaxaca, with a very impressive collection of cactus, agave, corn, trees with a variety of beautiful flowers unique to the region. A charming young lady wearing a summer hat gave a 1.5-hour tour in Spanish, guiding the group through the paved paths in the garden, calmly gave an alarming instruction: you are allowed to pick up flowers falling on the ground, but many are poisonous (i.e. please act with your own judgement!). Today, I am glad to report that M was kind enough to translate this very important warning into English for me.

A Xipe Totec god from 900 A.D. and a statue of the Christ, the Cultural Centre of Oaxaca, May 2019

from the Botanical Garden of Oaxaca, May 2019

I was overloaded with everything for the first full day in Oaxaca, its past, present, and perhaps future (in hallucination?) and effectively forget what I did for that evening. I just hope that I don’t miss anything important.

Astoria, New York

6/9/2019

Related essay：

Entering Mesoamerica (3): Exploring Oaxaca and Mexico City - A VERY Brief Glance of the Ancient Civilizations

Entering Mesoamerica (1) : Exploring Oaxaca and Mexico City - Preface

Read more of Shenzhan Liao’s blog Making Sense. 意

Landscape Photography: An International Symposium and a memorial for Wang Wusheng

by Shenzhan 申展

Wang Wusheng （1945 - 2018)

Huangshan A104, 1984

Taken at Lion Peak, Mount Huang

Inkjet print

on view at China Institute Gallery in New York until February 17, 2018

I didn’t know that Mr. Wang Wusheng (汪芜生）had passed away in April until I attended the International Symposium: Photography and China at China Institute on Sep. 22, 2018. Wang’s landscape photography is a big part of the exhibition, Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens at the China Institute Gallery in New York from February 9, 2018 – February 17, 2019. In a sense, the symposium was truly a memorial for the late photographer.

With his great works in the gallery next door, no memorial could serve Mr. Wang better than a symposium with speakers including his close friends, scholars, photographers, and packed with a group of audience genuinely interested in China and photography. Having lived overseas in Japan and U.S. since 1980s before moving back to Shanghai in 2010, Wang is better known outside of China with his black and white “landscape photography”, poetically and artistically depicting Mount Huang (in Anhui, Wang’s home province in China),  in an aesthetic form resonant with traditional Chinese landscape ink painting. Such connection is easy to establish with the juxtaposition below:

Wang Wusheng (1945-2018)

Huangshan W34, 1984

Taken at Lion Peak, Xihai area, Mount Huang

Inkjet print

on view at China Institute Gallery in New York until February 17, 2018

Shi Yizhi (17th century)

Tiandu peak in the yellow mountains (黄山天都峰 )

Presented by Prof. Joseph Chang at the symposium

Dr. Jonathan Chaves (齐皎瀚）, a good friend of Wang and Professor of Chinese Literature at the George Washington University, pointed out, Wang’s work captures the nature and its spirit in a way rooted in the very ancient Chinese cosmological philosophy, Taiji, with yin and yang as a force-and-antiforce pair that forms the source of energy in the universe. Oddly it reminds me of Stephen Hawking’s theory on quantum physics that everything in the universe comes from the energy released from the particles and the anti-particles at the quantum level, which, in my view, fundamentally very Taoism.

In a dialogue on “Black and White Landscape Photography” between Wang and Xia Zhongyi (夏中义）, professor at China Academy of Art and Vice President of the Chinese Association of Literature and Art Theory, who flew to New York for the symposium, the feeling of awe regarding the universe is in the center. Wang talked about the moments when he was trembling in awe at his first visit to Mount Huang in 1974. He subsequently went back numerous times to capture the right moments and develop his own artistic language with his camera to articulate such emotion, and transcend others. It took him over 30 years to mature his “language” with a unique style and technique, with which he meticulously applied a pitch darkness to the body of the mountain in order to create a sharp contrast to and a powerful tension with the cloud.

Wang Wusheng (1945-2018)

Huangshan W25, 1991

Taken at Lion Peak, Mount Huang

Inkjet print

on view at China Institute Gallery in New York until February 17, 2018

To me, Wang’s photography perfectly represents how the essence of Chinese culture is expressed through a non-Chinese technology. The lens may be the product of the West, the eyes and heart behind the lens are undoubtedly Chinese. Wang was not the first Chinese photographer who successfully made such reputation internationally known. Dr. Mia Yinxing Liu, Assistant Professor in Visual Studies at the California College of the Arts, gave a rather thorough academic account on Lang Jingshan （郎静山, 1892 - 1995）, who is considered to be the first (and greatest!) professional photographer in China in 1920s and created “composite photography” (集锦摄影), a collage technique to precisely express Chinese aestheticism through photography.

Lang Jingshan (1892-1995)

A Panoramic Embrace of Landscape, 1993

unknown source online

It’s not difficult to see the similarities between Wang and Lang’s work. And it is certainly not a coincidence that while their photography is deeply rooted in Chinese tradition and culture, their work is celebrated internationally. Lang, “Father of Asian Photography", was named one of the top 10 master photographers by the Photographic Society of America in 1980. For Wang, while it is yet to know whether he would enjoy wider posthumous recognition in China, his favorite photography works are permanent collection in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, one of the top three museums in Europe. According to Prof. Xia, after passing away quite unexpectedly, Wang left behind some twenty thousand negatives in his refrigerator to be sorted out, selected and printed. Those are his “children” yet to be brought to light, literally.

A memorial without mourning would be incomplete. Indeed there was a silent mourning before the symposium started. A touching moment came when Prof. Chaves read a poem he composed for Wang, “Mourning for the Master Photographic Artist Wang Wusheng”, in Chinese Ballad form (古体诗), which I record below in traditional Chinese characters and its English translation to conclude this article:

吊攝影大師汪蕪生 diào shè yǐng dà shī wāng wú shēng

兼示子寧老友 jiàn shì zǐ níng lǎo yǒu

齊皎瀚 qí jiǎo hàn

漸江升天半千崩 jiàn jiāng shēng tiān bàn qiān bēng

蕪生世間作品稱 wú shēng shì jiān zuò pǐn chēng

今日訃告淚雙垂 jīn rì fù gào lèi shuāng chuí

無再攝影千裡鵬 wú zài shè yǐng qiān lǐ péng

知音此世萬有一 zhī yīn cǐ shì wàn yǒu yī

汪公唯實吾心朋 wāng gōng wéi shí wú xīn péng

高士宇宙作行者 gāo shì yǔ zhòu zuò xíng zhě

黃山輸於天堂登 huáng shān shū yú tiān táng dēng

Mourning for the Master Photographic Artist Wang Wusheng

--also sent to old friend Zining (Joseph Chang who introduced us)

Jonathan Chaves

Jianjiang has ascended the skies, Banqian has expired;

In this world, Wusheng’s works have matched those of these men.

But now arrives his obituary -- tears fall in two streams,

No longer flies the 1000-mile Roc of photographic art!

Those who “know our music” in this life?

One out of thousands,

Master Wang indeed has been a bosom friend of mine.

The noble one is still a pilgrim in the universe:

The Yellow Mountains yielding now to the peaks of Heaven.

Astoria, New York

9/22/2018

"Your Majesty, bad news for you."

A Time Traveler’s Message from NYC to a Chinese King

I recently watched 4 episodes of “the Fabrics of the Cosmos”, a PBS documentary led by celebrity Physicist Brian Greene narrating a story about the relativity of time and space in our universe. The mind-binding part is, what is in science fiction about time travel is not entirely unfounded. In theory, if time and space work the way Einstein predicted, there should be a way travelling back in time.

Let me imagine a theoretically possible time-space travel back to Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – A.D. 9) some 2,300 years ago. If I had a chance to meet the king from the Chu (楚) Kingdom (BTW: I CANNOT think of any reason to meet him. I am merely entertaining the PURE theoretical idea.), how would I have told him what happened to his jade suit, which, made before 175 B.C., with over 4,000 pieces of high-quality Hetian (和田) jade sewed together through gold thread, was believed by the king to preserve his flesh and soul for eternity.

The king might have been VERY surprised to know his jade suit is currently on view in New York City (NYC) at the China Institute Gallery in lower Manhattan from May 28 until November 12, 2017.

2,300 years ago, there was no NYC, no United States. None of the current European countries would have existed yet. Roman Empire is known as the equivalent civilization in the West when Western (or Former) Han Dynasty emerged on the other side of the northern hemisphere. The king might have not heard of the Roman Empire, while there might have been a slim chance that he saw objects of Hellenistic styles and patterns made their way through the Silk Road to his Chu Kingdom, a powerful, wealthy and culturally rich region along the north-eastern coast of China, the birthplace of Liu Bang (刘邦，256 – 195 B.C.), the first emperor of the Han Dynasty.

To begin with, it would be almost impossible to explain NYC to the king. The king and his people believed that they were living in the center of the world, a popular belief among almost all civilizations until Columbus discovered the world is a globe more than 1,500 years later. Such fundamental concept is reflected in the name “中国” (literally mean “middle kingdom”) later appeared in Eastern (or Later) Han Dynasty (A.D. 25 – 220) , referring to the region under the ruling of Han Emperors. How the world has changed in 2,300 years! To make sense, the king must comprehend that not only China is not in the center of the world, but also there is a whole continent on the other side of the ocean (the Atlantic Ocean) and a cosmopolitan city called NYC is hosting his jade suit.

Nevertheless, I would be happy to tell the king that his jade suit was magnificent. A jade coffin made to cover him from head to toe in the shape of his body, the suit is among the 116 total unearthed jade suits in China and arguably the best of all. Placed in a glass case in the inner corner of the gallery, the suit is glowing as if the king is wearing it and lying in the chamber of his mausoleum complex. In addition, just like in his mausoleum, he is accompanied by miniature terra-cotta soldiers, civil attendants, dancers, musicians, etc., each with amazingly vivid details individually captured by his craftsmen. Having survived through over 2,000 years, some still have the original paint. Above all, I would give my highest compliments to the jade pendants. In addition to the jade suit, the king brought to his afterlife many jades such as disks (玉璧), grips (玉握), rings(玉环), headrests (玉枕), facemasks(玉面罩), all with meticulously designed and highly stylish dragons, tigers, cicadas, mystic creatures, clouds, knots, or geometric patterns. Sitting in their individual cases on the wall of the gallery, or in the middle of the room, the jades are lifted from above the ground and floating around the suit, as if it’s a scene in the king’s dream. Exquisite and elegant, jade in Han Dynasty was widely believed to be able to preserve the corpse and the spirit of the deceased; hence jade suits were common at the time among the royalties and aristocrats.

S-shaped dragon jade pendant, early Western Han Dynasty

Photo from the catalogue, Dreams of the Kings: A Jade Suit for Eternity, China Institute Gallery / Xuzhou Museum, 2017

While it is farfetched for the king to dream of coming to NYC, it’s almost certain that he dreamed of living a luxurious afterlife: numerous jade wine cups, bronze cooking utensils, bathing baskets, and so on, were buried with him; a full banquet was in a chamber next to him; the remains of his chief chef were found in the same tomb, so as two females in two separate chambers right next to the king. The arrangements were obviously made for the king to continue what he enjoyed in his lifetime. In fact, he might not consider all these to be in a dream: after all, the jade suit should have protected the king’s body from decaying and preserved his spirit to ensure his luxurious life in eternity!

Here comes the sad message, surely more difficult for the king to swallow than the idea of NYC: the jade suit actually didn’t work. When discovered, the tomb was already previously looted, the jade pieces piled up in the chamber, the gold thread mind-bending gone, and the king’s body long decayed (as we truly don’t know about what happened to the spirit, I can’t talk about it.). Since jade suits were proven not working (with the looters’ help, ironically) while making one (and build a mausoleum complex around it) cost a fortune, which subsequently enticed loads of looters to disturb the tomb owners,  extravagant burials were banned later during Cao Wei (曹魏，220 - 265) period. No jade suits after Eastern Jin (东晋，317 - 420 ) were unearthed so far.

Jade suits unearthed are mostly exhibited in museums in China, some traveling around the world. There are currently two in New York City alone, one at China Institute, the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until July 16, 2017, less than one hour apart from each other on the subway (assuming the traveling is not delayed as it routinely happens nowadays). A third suit is on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Archeologists and art historians are almost certain there are more underground. The first emperor of Han Dynasty, Liu Bang (刘邦), was VERY LIKELY buried with a jade suit but is yet to be proven. While China’s policy banned any tomb excavation, it’s possible one day a construction truck might dig into the dream of another king, or a farmer might find a Terra-Cotta soldier’s oddly small head in his own rice field, just like the accidental discovery of this Chu King’s tomb in the Lion Mountain of Xuzhou in 1986.

The king’s body may be decayed, however, his jade suit and all the other burials survived are excellent authentic materials for people in NYC to appreciate Chinese fine art, history and culture. However, I would imagine the king would be more concerned about eternity, less about helping others understand China, Han Dynasty, or even his own kingdom. So all these would be truly terrible news for him, and not so good for me to be the messenger: after all, given his extremely high-profile jade suit and mausoleum, he was surely an all-powerful king when I met him in this time-travel.

That said, I would congratulate the king for what was created for his eternity. In the end, while it turned out to be a mere dream for him, his jade suit, along with other objects, are truly the messengers of the past that have disappeared 2,300 years ago.

In this sense, the jade suit, not me, is the real time traveler.

Fangsuo Bookstore, Chengdu, China

2017/6/20

Personal Notes: In a Time of Chaos

SZ @ China Institute

Art in the Time of Chaos, China Institute Gallery, 2016

Photo credit: Perry Hu

“What a shock to wake up one morning and find armed men, who spoke no language you knew and looked like no people you’d ever seen, roaming the streets of your city.” With these words, Holland Cotter, the Asian art critic of New York Times, opens his review on China Institute’s fall 2016 exhibition, Art in a Time of Chaos: Masterworks of Six Dynasties China, 3rd to 6th Centuries. (Chinese History, Writ in Stunning Stone, 11/17/2016).

It’s New York on November 17, 2016. I can’t help but think Cotter does not just refer to the nearly four hundred-year division and chaos in China more than 1,500 years ago.

Standing next to “Art in a Time of Chaos: Masterworks of Six Dynasties China, 3rd to 6th Centuries” written in burning red letters against a deep blue background, I often tell visitors before entering the gallery, “There are 115 objects from 3 museums in China in this gallery behind me, and the youngest is from fourteen hundred years ago.”

I would pause for a few seconds to let the historical distance sink in before silently push the heavy glass door open. Walking into a tiny room with all four walls in dark purple, everyone would suddenly face a small group of Celadon musician figurines from 3rd A.D.

Each figurine is less than 3 inches tall, some playing Qin (an instrument associated with cultured elites from ancient time China till today), some just standing or sitting with folding or open arms. They all share similar facial features with almond-shaped eyes, round cheek and hair tied up on top of the head with a stick.

Except for one.

He is notably shorter, standing with his right foot stepping forward, arms missing. His nose is pointier, cheekbones higher, and most unusually, he wears a triangle-shaped pointed hat. Art historians like Annette Juliano, guest curator of the exhibition and professor of Asian art history at Rutgers University, would immediately identify him as a huren, a non-Han (or non-Chinese), from a nomadic tribe in northern China.

Six Dynasties were in chaos precisely because China back then was divided into southern dynasties with Chinese courts ruled by Han, and northern dynasties controlled by mainly Xianbei, among many other northern nomads. It was a period of almost 400 years of political division, wars and murders, and frequent social upheavals. While politically defeated and yet with an obvious sense of privilege of the Han culture, Chinese, or hanren (汉人), referred to their northern neighbors “huren” (胡人), often with a derogative connotation. In fact, the term “Six Dynasties” is Han-centric in itself as it refers to only the dynasties with capitals in Jiankang (today’s Nanjing), the center of the Han power in southern dynasties. While some hanren during Six Dynasties would strongly resist huren influence (and some are still insisting even today), there is plenty of evidence from Chinese history, as examples in this exhibition, that hanren, after this chaotic 400-year cultural integration with northern huren, and foreigners from Central Asia, Indian, or regions even further in the west, were no longer the same hanren in Han Dynasty, the big, powerful, united empire lasting about four hundred years prior to Six Dynasties.

Besides the celadon musicians from the south (unearthed near Nanjing), I often would point to the visitors a yellowish celadon flask discovered in the north. On its body are two sitting lions, with a slim male figure with deep eyes and curly beard in between, presumably training the two lions for entertainment. “Sogdians and Sasanians from Central Asia were very active along the Silk Road, traveling, trading, and exchanging religions, arts and skills wherever they went.” For someone who didn’t know much of Central Asia history in 3rd A.D. before studying for this exhibition, I would enjoy secretly the little pleasure for being able to talk about Sogdians and Sasanians at all. Morris Rossabi, a renowned scholar on Inner Asian and East Asian history at Columbia University, and working with China Institute for years, gave a 3-hour lecture to K-12 educators on Six Dynasties one Saturday and spent a good amount of time talking about these two groups, unknown to many Americans and Chinese. The figure on the flask, probably a Sassanian, together with a silver plate depicting a Persian prince hunting three boars (according to stories from Zoroastrianism, the state religion of the Persian Empire), and the stone panels and mural from the sarcophagus belonging to Yu Hong, a Sogdian and elite official in the court of Northern Qi, a later northern dynasty, collectively present a time when people, cultures, and objects flew in and out of China.

Picturing the world map during China’s Six Dynasties is fascinating too. In the West, a powerful empire established by Constantine was rising after the Roman Empire came to its end. Byzantine Empire, with its peak around 5th and 6th A.D., would “watch” from afar its contemporary Chinese dynasties trying to figure out in what shape they would come out of the chaos. In Central Asia, the Sassanian would have just risen into power around 3rd A.D. in southern Iran as the last powerful Persian Empire. By 6th A.D., before China came together in one piece again (as this was not the first time China was divided, neither the last time), the Sasanian Empire would have been weakened by conflicts with Byzantine Empire and lost their battles with the Arab armies of Islam. Their rulers would seek asylum in China, probably the Northern Zhou, or Northern Qi (the last two northern dynasties). Meanwhile, in the Indian subcontinent, a good part of this period witnessed the rising and falling of the Gupta Empire, which, according to Wikipedia (“the source of all knowledge” as I would joke these days), was the “Golden Age of India” when extensive innovations in science and developments in arts, religions, literature, philosophy, and all aspects of human life imaginable at that time period, flourished. 

That probably explains the flourish of Buddhism in China during the Six Dynasties. My favorite of all pieces in this entire exhibition is a sandstone head of a Bodhisattva from around 550 C.E. from Northern Qi Dynasty (today’s north-eastern region in China including Shandong, Henan, Hebei, etc.). In a feminine image with plump round cheek and eyes gently closed, the Bodhisattva, radiating peace and calm in a quiet corner on a tall stand against the brick-red wall, would instantly yet quietly shed the noise most visitors carry, vocally, or in their minds.

Don’t get me wrong. Chinese culture with its core established by hanren was still predominant and thriving. Wang Xizhi, the Sage of Calligraphy, and the legendary “Preface of the Orchid Pavilion”, were from this period. His original writing of the Orchid Pavilion might be lost in the tomb of a Tang Dynasty emperor, though the running and cursive style of calligraphy he started and the true artistic spirit his works expressed, were set to be followed by generations of Chinese calligraphers, artists, and in general, all well educated Chinese. The same spirit is also exampled by the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, who appeared on the rubbings of a tomb mural and four panels of the brick mural itself. Whatever the history books say about these sages, I would tell people they were the fashion leaders of the day. They were philosophers, musicians, artists, poets, and wine lovers.  The so called “Neo-Daoism” escaping from the suffering reality for an idealistic peaceful world closer to the nature, was best represented by their life style and tales (as recorded in the “New Tales of the World” 《世说新语》by Liu Yiqing), and preserved on the mural for the visitors in New York 1,500 years later to admire, and surprisingly, to resonate. Cotter mentions one particular sage, Liu Ling, who is most known as a wine lover and legendarily hired a servant carrying a shovel following him around, with a standing order to bury Liu immediately on the spot if he drops dead. Liu Ling ended up retreating from the court and passed away peacefully at home. However, not all of the seven sages were so lucky. Ji Kang (嵇康), the most famous one, was in fact sentenced to death after losing a political battle. Regardless, thousands of years later, they were still in the mural, sitting under ginkgo trees in loose robes, drinking, playing music, and probably enjoying their “witty conversations” that would make them forget about the chaotic reality for a moment.

Drinking is not a recommended alternative of the chaotic world. Art and literature are. On the evening of Nov. 9, a public lecture on literature in Six Dynasties was given by Mr. Ben Wang, Senior Lecturer on Humanities at China Institute for over 30 years. As usual, I opened the evening with a brief introduction of Mr. Wang, and also said,  “Thank God we have art and literature to turn to in a world of chaos.” It was the day after the election. To many New Yorkers, it was still a shock to wake up in a world with Trump as the President-elect. The audience didn’t say anything, but smiled and continued to listen to Mr. Ben Wang’s lecture, on Returning Home (《归去来辞》)，by Tao Yuanming (陶渊明), who’s known to many Chinese since middle school with his “Peach Blossom Spring” （《桃花源记》）, describing a fictional world secluded from the real world and thus enjoying peace undisturbed by wars and sufferings for generations.

A forever-peaceful “Peach Blossom Spring” could only exist in Tao Yuanming’s poem. However, I could truly enjoy a peaceful moment by standing in front my favorite Bodhisattva in the gallery for a few minutes, ignoring the busy work in office just next door, or other visitors walking around (which are not many anyway).

At China Institute, people have joked that next time, Willow Weilan Hai, Director of China Institute Gallery and the curator of this exhibition, MUST select a much more peaceful and serene theme, given how accurately this exhibition predicts what’s happening now in the world.

11/27/2016

Astoria, New York

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Related links:

A resource collection on the exhibition: http://china360online.org/?property=introduction-to-dark-ages-in-china-220-581