| The article in previous blog talks about how the Chinese model Du Juan (originally from Shanghai ) became so well-recieved in NY and major fashion capitals in Europe featuring in prominent <> as well as Roberto Cavari runway shows while stirring no applaud back at home in China.
So much of the conflict between Western and Chinese culture (as reflected here in our different aesthetic standards ). On one hand, we hate it so much when westerners pick those "ugly" ones among "us" and make them big stars, we hate it because first of all, they were picked by westerners, secondly, in some people's mind those picked get to represent all Chinese people (in this case here, it's Chinese women) in front of the world; On the other hand, those super stars Chinese public adore back at home, with almost no exception have a touch of western aesthetic in their looks such as large eyes, high cheek bones, how ironic!
Are we really embracing western influence ( a dominating civilization at the time being )with a hard-to-describe-bitterness and a stong desire of resisting because we want to remain loyal to our own roots? Hence we are struggling in seeking a new Chinese cultural identity that has absorbed western nutrition but still makes sense to our aesthetic tradition ???
Is Chinese the one and only ethnic group experiencing such pain in face of the evasion of foreign cultural incluences??? No! Every each culture in this world has or is experiencing what Chinese people are experiencing when facing the envasion of foreign cultural influences.
I am an artist, the first thing coming into my mind is some charcaters in art history. Beginning from late September. There will be two major exhibits here in New York City demostrating how American modern art has been fundementally influenced by Spanish and French Art. One at the New York Whitney Museum of American Art, the other at the famed Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The first one is a groundbreaking exhibition examines the fundamental role that Pablo Picasso had played in the development of American art during the last century. The extremely diverse group of American artists, whose works are juxtaposed with Picasso's, these big American names include Andy Warhol, Max Weber, Roy Lichtenstein, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, David Smith, and Jasper Johns (by the way, Picasso himself had never set his foot on American soil). But his influence is everywhere in America's art. Those above mentioned American artists, had all with no exception resisted Picasso so hard , but at the same time, they all had absorbed (consciously or unconsciously, which, only art historians could help us on this front) much of picasso in their works. In the end they emulated him in many ways. This is the very reason, why their works are hung together in the museums where Picasso's are seen today, on and out of American soil.
The other one at the Met Museum. There, one would see how Paris had been part of the American Dreams for writers, and artists at the turn of last century. How Paris had deepedned and polished those artists and writers' rawness, sensibilities. How it was in Paris that Marry Cassat (being the first and only American female artist at the time allowed to exhibit together with the Parisian Impressionists in France) had found the psycological freedom that otherwise could not be found at home in America, and yet; How she persistantly sticked to her roots by painting her own people throughout her artistic lifetime- Her main theme: mother and children.
All these modern American masters had painted (Marry Cassat) and written (Fitzgerald) with a French accent , but they all remained loya to their own roots as the theme of their works have showed us plenty of evidence: all the works are surrounded with America- their home country and its people, even though they lived in Paris at the time.
Today, Marry Cassat is regarded as one of the absolute American classics and one will instantly remember the Great Gatsby speaking of American literature.
I would really recommend seeing these exhibits. Until you see the exhibit, one would find it hard to understand why American Modern art is called American not French even though it has a French passport (being accepted and praised by Paris back then).
It will proberbly help us understand how a culture can remain truthful to herself while constantly absorbing nutritions from other influences and grow from them........
Enjoy the feast of visual art created by modern masters. |
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