24th anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre

This file photo taken 24 years ago shows some of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese gathering around a 10-meter replica of the Statue of Liberty (center), called the Goddess of Democracy, in Tiananmen Square demanding democracy despite martial law in Beijing. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters were killed by China's military on June 3 and 4, 1989, as communist leaders ordered an end to six weeks of unprecedented democracy protests in the heart of the Chinese capital. (CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP/Getty Images)

Great photos of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests (but also of the horrible massacre that ended it)!

Censored in China: 'Today,' 'Tonight' and 'Big Yellow Duck' By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW The words’ today,’ ‘tonight’ and ‘big yellow duck’ are all banned on China’s popular Weibo, or microblog, as the state tries to ensure political calm on June 4, the 24th anniversary of the crushing of the 1989 democracy protests. some of my earlier posts on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and democracy protests:  I write to you from a far-off country...: remembering Tiananmen... Jun 04, 2009 June 4, 1989 ...I was 21 and just coming into my own ...just moving out of my parents' home, just taking on my own ideas about politics, religion, war, life, love and everything... since I was young, every time I had uttered even ... http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/ previously unseen photos of Tiananmen Square Massacre Jun 06, 2009 Previously unseen pictures obtained by the Guardian show how the violence centred on Tiananmen Square played out in surrounding areas... Posted by William Andersen at 4:58 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to ... http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/ meeting a former soldier that fired shoots in Tiananmen... Jun 04, 2009 meeting a former soldier that fired shoots in Tiananmen... ...very strange that I met this artist, Chen Guang, in the summer of 2007 at an art exhibit of the most shocking art that I've ever seen... I had a very difficult time with his art ... http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/ I write to you from a far-off country...: China 22 years later... Jun 04, 2011 China's 22nd anniversary of Tiananmen Square | Video | Reuters.com. Twenty-two years after China's infamous Tiananmen Square crackdown, not much progress on political dissidents. http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/ remembering "Tank Man"... - I write to you from a far-off country... Jun 06, 2009 Mike Licht said... Tank Man lives. New versions of this iconic image are all over the Web. Here, for example: http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/20th-anniversary-of-tiananmen-square/. June 5, 2009 at 4:57 PM ... http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/ I write to you from a far-off country...: Ai Weiwei and the Artist's Role ... Apr 12, 2011 Ai Weiwei and the Artist's Role in China. Ai Weiwei in Tiananmen Square in 2009 (the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre). Ai Weiwei and the Artist's Role in China - Room for Debate ... 12 Apr 2011 . http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/ I write to you from a far-off country...: More Deaths and Anti-Chinese ... Feb 10, 2012 -Tibet Post International. Hong Kong Residents to Hold Vigil Marking Tiananmen...‎ - Bloomberg. Tiananmen Square Anniversary: 22 Years Later - Huffington Post. Tiananmen legacy: Crush any hint of dissent‎ - Vancouver . http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/ Any interest in a counter exhibit/lecture series to Milwaukee's May 21, 2011 Ai Weiwei in Tiananmen Square in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of the massacre. Dear friends, Have you seen Mary Louise Schumacher's article: Should the Milwaukee Art Museum protest Ai Weiwei's detention? - Art City ... http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/ Chinese Artist Who Led Protest Has Been Jailed, His Wife Says Jul 09, 2010 In February, those artists joined forces with artists from another Beijing neighborhood to march down Chang'an Jie, a wide ceremonial avenue that runs past the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Chinese leaders are ... http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/ I write to you from a far-off country...: artist against the state... Nov 28, 2009 But after 1989, and the silencing of protesters at Tiananmen Square, he had decided that “the world became different.” And so he returned to China in 1993, reckoning that one day he might face something like his father's fate. http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/

Artist Sleeps Outside Till the Grass Grows

The artist's "piece is a commentary on human choice in the grand scheme of things…"

Artist He Yunchang (aka A Chang) is sleeping outside in Beijing's Caochangdi art village till the grass grows. (all photos by xingrui_beijing)

Artist Sleeps Outside Till the Grass Grows

hyperallergic.com

Since March 24, He Yunchang, also known as A Chang, has been sleeping outside in the Beijing artist village of Caochangdi (whose name literally means “Grassland/s”) until the grass is fully grown.

If tiny Norway can stand up to the Beijing's bullying, why can't the USA?

If tiny Norway can stand up to the Beijing's bullying, why can't the USA?

Limits to Beijing's bullying by Fareed Zakaria, CNN

www.youtube.com

Limits to Beijing's bullying By Fareed Zakaria, CNN March 30th, 2012 In the playground of foreign affairs, you would think that size matters. The biggest bul...

Tenth Tibetan Monk Sets Self on Fire!

Tenth Tibetan monk burns self in west China

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Tibetan Buddhist monk doused himself in fuel and set himself ablaze in far western China on Tuesday, the tenth ethnic Tibetan this ...

Tibetan Monk Said to Set Himself on Fire in Protest

By RICK GLADSTONE (NYT)

The group Free Tibet said the self-immolation happened outside a monastery in Garze, and that the monk’s identity, condition and whereabouts were not known.

For more on Tibet in this blog see:

William of Arabia: Two Tibetan Monks Set Themselves on Fire in Protest

William of Arabia: China 'disappeared' Tibet's Panchen Lama

lecture at Milwaukee Art Museum: Emperor Qianlong & Tibetan ...

William of Arabia: New siege on Tibetan Monastery by Chinese ...

William of Arabia: China Bans Reincarnation Without Government ...

William of Arabia: China 22 years later...

William of Arabia: Opening Reception this Friday, August 27, from ...

Ai Weiwei named most powerful person in art world

Ai Weiwei 'most powerful artist'

www.bbc.co.uk

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is named the most powerful person in the art world, according to a poll compiled by ArtReview magazine.

lecture at Milwaukee Art Museum: Emperor Qianlong & Tibetan Buddhism

The Qianlong Emperor as Manjusri,

the Bodhisattva of Wisdom,

 mid-18th century, Tibetan but 

face painted by Giuseppe

Castiglione (Lang Shining) ,

 (Italian, 1688-1766)

I am back in Milwaukee (Aug. 1-16) and I plan on going to this...  hope to see you there!

Lecture: Palace Tantra: Emperor Qianlong’s Fascination with Tibetan Buddhism

THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 2011, 6:15 PM

Lubar Auditorium of the Milwaukee Art Museum

Free with Museum admission (first Thursdays of the month  are FREE!!!)

Explore the emperor's interest in Buddhism, as reflected in his art collection, with John Johnston, Coates-Cowden-Brown Curator of Asian Art, San Antonio Museum of Art.

Sponsored by the Fine Arts Society

This lecture is presented in conjunction with the Museum's summer-long CHINA series, five exhibitions covering 3,000 years of Chinese art and culture.

John Johnston assumed the Coates-Cowden-Brown Curatorship of Asian Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) in February 2009. Mr. Johnston received his training at the University of Hawaii (MA, 1995) and the Honolulu Academy of Arts. He has conducted lengthy art historical fieldwork in Bhutan, China, Thailand, and Japan. Previous work includes university-level teaching and auction house experience. Mr. Johnston's research interests include the Buddhist art of Bhutan, Chinese porcelain and ceramics, jade, and the history of printing. Mr. Johnston speaks locally, nationally, and internationally on these and other topics.

Articles by Mr. Johnston have appeared in Orientations, Arts of Asia, Far Eastern Economic Review, and other publications. He is co-author and co-curator of the internationally acclaimed catalogue and exhibition The Dragon's Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan organized by the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Mr. Johnston is project director, curator, and catalogue co-author for the forthcoming international exhibition 5,000 Years of Chinese Jade Featuring Selections from the National Museum of History, Taiwan organized by SAMA (opens September 30, 2011). Exhibitions at SAMA curated by Mr. Johnston include Music in Medieval China, Seasons of Beauty: Yoshitoshi's Thirty-two Aspects of Daily Life, and the forthcoming exhibition Chinese Cricket Cages: The Ernest K.H. Lee Collection (opens December 9, 2011).

China and Taiwan Reunite Painting

The bulk of the artworks in the National Palace Museum, Taipei are from 2,972 crates of shipped artifacts that once made up the imperial collections of the Forbidden City, Beijing

China and Taiwan Reunite Painting - NYTimes.com

By ANDREW JACOBS (NYT)
The reunification of an ancient painting at a museum in Taiwan has become a metaphor for the possibility of reconciliation between the two countries.

Link to the website (which was very difficult to find) on the exhibit: Landscape Reunited

Mary-Louise Schumacher on the Milwaukee Art Museum's "Summer of China"

Review: 'The Emperor's Private Paradise' at the Milwaukee Art Museum - Art City

www.jsonline.com

The Qianlong emperor, aside from being the longest ruling emperor in China’s history, was also the most painted. He was famously image conscious with fleets of artists who were his era’s equivalent of handlers and spin doctors. He commissioned paintings of himself mounted on a horse...

Artists in China and Hong Kong protest Ai Weiwei's detention

Image from Stephen Somers

China Shuts Down Art Show That Mentioned Ai Weiwei

By ANDREW JACOBS (NYT)

A reference to the jailed artist Ai Weiwei was apparently too much for the authorities. 

Defending Dissident Artist, Hong Kong Takes Role as Chinese Rebel

By JOYCE HOR-CHUNG LAU (NYT)

The Hong Kong International Art Fair voiced support for Ai Weiwei in defiance of his arrest in Beijing, with one of his works on sale at the event and satellite shows paying hommage to the artist.

Below is my own call for a protest to Ai Weiwei's detention and Milwaukee's "Summer of China":
Any interest in a counter exhibit/lecture series to Milwaukee's 'Summer of China'

Ai Weiwei still missing after being detained by Chinese police on April 3, 2011

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  Ai Weiwei - The 2011 TIME 100 Poll - TIME

  Source: time.com

Chinese Army Unhappy Over Ai Weiwei ‘Flash Graffiti’ — ANIMAL

animalnewyork.com

As if Chinese authorities weren’t angered enough by the rash of pro-Ai Weiwei stencils popping up all over Hong Kong, someone is now projecting the same message on unauthorized locations around the city, including the barracks of the People’s Liberation Army.

Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei? - Video | FRONTLINE | PBS

He's China's first global art star who is using his fame to push the boundaries of freedom in that country. Can an artist change China? www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ai-wei-wei/ 

I don't think they can stop us all....

The Art of Social Advocacy 

By RON GLUCKMAN

 

Beijing
He may not be China's most famous living artist, but Ai Weiwei's stature defies all odds: He not only delights in infuriating Chinese officials, but this soft-spoken, multitalented artist, known best for his performance and conceptual work, also eschews cocktail parties and claims to spend a mere 5% of his time thinking about or creating art.

Still, Mr. Ai, 53, is undoubtedly China's most outspoken artist. In 2008, as the rest of his country cheered on the Olympics here, the co-designer of the most iconic symbol of that year's Games—the National Stadium, also known as the "bird's nest"—stirred a tempest by insisting there was nothing to celebrate. He accused the Chinese government of putting on a charade, showcasing its modern facilities and economic might while depriving its own people of dignity and basic rights. He called it a fake coming-out party and coined an alternate slogan for Beijing's global welcome: "Pretend smile."

Mr. Ai himself doesn't smile much. "I probably spend 30% of my time meeting with people whose wife has vanished, or son is missing or been arrested without evidence," he says when we met earlier this month in his art studio north of Beijing. "They tell me about their problems, things they should really tell officials. But nobody else is listening."

Mr. Ai spends six to eight hours each day online, largely on Twitter. His blog was blocked long ago. "I'm totally banned in China. Nobody can talk about me or my work," he says, stroking his signature beard. Then, with a grin, he adds: "At least, not officially."

When Mr. Ai was placed under house arrest last November, news immediately spread around the world. "The Internet is a miracle," Mr. Ai says. "It is the thing that will change China, definitely. Of that, I have no doubt."

All this would seem to leave Mr. Ai scant time for making art; instead, it's fueled a prolific and meteoric career. He mounted more than a dozen shows last year, including an exhibit at London's Tate Modern (through May 2, 2011) that features 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds, individually crafted by 1,600 workers. Mr. Ai is also among China's most well-known architects and photographers. He has two major shows soon: a retrospective in Switzerland of his photography and an exhibition in Austria of his architecture.

That he can achieve all this without much time for meetings or networking is all the more astonishing since such work normally demands total immersion and constant self-promotion. Of course, it helps that the Chinese government buoys Mr. Ai's fame by keeping him in the news.

Barbara Kelley

An illustration of Ai Weiwei

At the time of our meeting, Mr. Ai was again making headlines. He had just returned from Shanghai, where on Jan. 11 he watched as authorities demolished his studio there. It was part of a $1 million artistic community center that local officials had asked him to build, hoping Mr. Ai's presence would anchor a new arts district like Beijing's 798 (which he had helped found). The plan worked: With Mr. Ai on board, other artists flocked to the new area. But the welcome mat was soon yanked from under him, Mr. Ai maintains, because of his social advocacy.

Officials had hoped to quietly raze the Shanghai center. When they first told Mr. Ai last year that they planned to tear down the building, he mischievously promised a huge farewell party featuring river crab—which in Mandarin sounds like the term for harmony, the ideological buzzword of the Communist Party. This outraged officials and resulted in Mr. Ai's November confinement at his Beijing home, guaranteeing that word would spread throughout the Internet.

"It's so predictable," he says, almost sympathetically.

China is used to shocking stuff from this bold artist. He's spent years fighting for a full accounting of student deaths from the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan. One of his most powerful works fills a studio wall with the names of 5,000 children. They were in the 20 schools that turned to dust while the surrounding buildings stood firm, he notes. Officials still refuse to investigate the apparent corruption that resulted in such substandard construction or to acknowledge such a large number of deaths.

Instead, they respond with repression and arrests. Several advocates have been detained. When local writer and activist Tan Zuoren went on trial, Mr. Ai flew to the provincial capital of Chengdu but was prevented from attending. "Police beat me, and I nearly died," he says. In Germany for a subsequent art exhibit and suffering from headaches, he saw a doctor and was rushed into surgery to drain blood from his brain.

Critics suggest that Mr. Ai uses advocacy to further his career, and hides behind the security of a foreign passport. "I'm here on a Chinese passport, like everyone else," he responds. While he spent a dozen years in New York, his was a textbook story of the struggling artist. He snapped the odd picture for newspapers, but mostly survived as a day laborer, often demolishing buildings. "I really had a funny feeling when I watched my studio in Shanghai go down," he confesses. "I was sad, but I also thought, 'Man, they really know what they are doing.'"

Mr. Ai's life in the U.S. was, by his own admission, rather aimless. He returned to China in 1993, when his father, Ai Qing, became ill. Back in Beijing, he resumed a life of such leisure that his mother threatened to call the police on him. "After 12 years in the U.S., I came back without a diploma or green card, and no money. I was just hanging around with friends, smoking and playing poker. That's all we did."

To escape the parental nagging, he fled to the outskirts of Beijing, to a bleak village called Caochangdi. It's now one of Asia's chic artist colonies, along with nearby 798. "It was land nobody wanted," he says. "When I saw it and heard a train go by, I thought: 'This is perfect. Nobody will ever want to come here and develop such a place.'"

Mr. Ai reckons he's responsible for the design of perhaps 100 units around Caochangdi. Other artists began hankering for similar spaces, and many found them in the abandoned warehouses at 798.

Celebrated internationally, Mr. Ai has largely escaped a backlash against his activism. Until now. Days before we met, his first major exhibit at 798 was abruptly canceled. Yet there is little chance he will back down. Perhaps unapparent earlier to his parents, his veins are unquestionably filled with the blood of his father, an artist and celebrated poet exiled to a labor camp during Mao's purges. Ai Weiwei grew up in China's desolate Xinjiang province, watching his father clean toilets.

Why put himself at similar risk? "No reason, really," Mr. Ai says, mumbling into his beard. But then he rises up, adding: "I want to have a purpose, to protect the dignity of life. I feel it's ridiculous to live in a condition where people cannot access their rights. I don't want children to live in this situation.

"We have a responsibility, as artists, to fight for better conditions. I see freedom and justice as basic, fundamental rights for everyone. I'm just in this position to make my voice heard." He acknowledges that his fame, and friends around the world, afford him that ability. "But there are a million people like me in China. I don't think they can stop us all."

Mr. Gluckman is a writer based in Beijing.

original article here: 

Ai Weiwei | The Art of Social Advocacy | By Ron Gluckman - WSJ.com

 

Chinese Artist Who Led Protest Has Been Jailed, His Wife Says

In February, Chinese artists, including Wu Yuren, center, protested a real estate developer's plan to demolish their Beijing studios.

By EDWARD WONG

Published: July 8, 2010

BEIJING — Wu Yuren, an artist who helped lead an unusually bold public protest last winter over a land dispute, has been languishing in a Beijing jail for almost six weeks after having been beaten by police officers, his wife said on Thursday.
Mr. Wu’s wife, Karen Patterson, a Canadian citizen, said in a telephone interview that the police were accusing her husband of assaulting an officer when he visited the police station on May 31. Ms. Patterson said she learned this only through their lawyer because the police had so far not formally told her that Mr. Wu had been arrested. She decided to publicly discuss the arrest in recent days, she said, because of what she called her frustration with China’s opaque legal system.
“You don’t realize how arcane this system is until you have to deal with it,” Ms. Patterson said. “It’s a nightmare.”
Ms. Patterson said she and friends of Mr. Wu, 39, believe that he had been arrested because of his recent activism, including his leadership of a group of artists from an artists’ district known as 008 in resisting the encroachment of a real estate developer. In February, those artists joined forces with artists from another Beijing neighborhood to march down Chang’an Jie, a wide ceremonial avenue that runs past the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Chinese leaders are especially sensitive to protests in that area, and police officers stopped the protesters after they had walked about 500 yards.
The police detained Mr. Wu briefly in March. After he was released, he and the other artists successfully negotiated for compensation for the seizure of their studio space by the developer. Mr. Wu and some other artists then moved their studios to 798, Beijing’s largest arts district.
The land grab dispute had attracted lots of attention in the news media, in part because Ai Weiwei, a well-connected artist who is a vocal critic of the Communist Party, had joined the street protest and sent out Twitter feeds about it. Some of the artists in the protest, including Mr. Wu and Mr. Ai, had taken part in other kinds of activism, including signing Charter 08, a liberal manifesto calling for democratic changes that was signed by thousands of Chinese. Liu Xiaobo, an author of the manifesto, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last December.
Mr. Wu’s latest fracas with the police began on May 31, when Mr. Wu went with a friend, Yang Licai, to the Jiuxianqiao police station to discuss a dispute with a landlord at 798, Ms. Patterson said. The police argued with the two men and took away their cellphones, which then led to more insults, Ms. Patterson said, citing an account by Mr. Yang.
The two men were interrogated separately, and Mr. Wu was beaten by about five policemen, Ms. Patterson said. He has been held since then and was not allowed to see his lawyer until this week, she added. For reasons that remain unclear, Mr. Yang was released after 10 days.
A person answering the phone at the police station declined to comment and said senior officers were not available to talk.
Ms. Patterson and the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Hannah, have not been allowed to see Mr. Wu. Ms. Patterson said she expected that Mr. Wu would be formally charged within a few months.
On Tuesday, she went to collect his personal belongings from the police station. His shirt, pants and shoes were in a plastic bag, she said, along with a letter he had written to the police telling them to call his wife.
Ms. Patterson said Mr. Ai, the prominent artist, had been lobbying on Mr. Wu’s behalf, but she had little hope that his case would be dropped.
“The police haven’t explained anything to me,” she said. “Trying to ask for accountability is very difficult.”

A version of this article appeared in print on July 9, 2010, on page A9 of the New York edition.

21 years ago today... June 4, 1989

 

almost 20 years since June 4th, 1989... 

remembering "Tank Man"...

installed guerrilla style on the streets of Beijing...

remembering Tiananmen...

meeting a former soldier that fired shoots in Tiananmen...

Lo Ch'ing's poem for June 4...

 

Has the Commercialization of 798 Saved Chinese Art?

Spent a lot of time this summer looking at "contemporary Chinese art" in Shanghai and Beijing and thinking about the rapid changes in its exposure, acceptance and infrastructure.

Here are a few thoughts on the "798 Art Zone" in Beijing by the marvelous Fred Dintenfasson (who extensively quotes me on the second page)... enjoy:

Has the Commercialization of 798 Saved Chinese Art? -Expat Corner-eChinacities.com

remembering "Tank Man"...

In the summer of 2007, I was invited to take part in an artist residency program at Platform China's Beijing International Artist Platform (BIAP). The project that I completed during my residency included wheatpasting up sections of hand printed wallpaper on the streets of Beijing, China. My prints, installed guerrilla style without permission, not only engendered much discussion with local residents but surprisingly stayed up for more than a week before all traces were removed. The prints conflated two divergent images of China. On top of highly romanticized images of China from anachronistic chinoiserie wallpaper, I silk screened photographic images of the "Tank Man ," an image banned in China, of a lone city resident standing up to a column of tanks on June 5^th, 1989 in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The image above and the images in my previous post show some of the installation of that project on the streets of Beijing. Also, the following blog mentions my work in connection with a series of paintings by Chen Guang, a former soldier that fired shoots in Tiananmen, - William Andersen

installed guerrilla style on the streets of Beijing...

Behind the Scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen

remembering Tiananmen...

June 4, 1989 ...I was 21 and just coming into my own ...just moving out of my parents' home, just taking on my own ideas about politics, religion, war, life, love and everything... since I was young, every time I had uttered even the slightest criticism of the USA, my parents would tell me to "go live in Russia," and I still remember having to crouch down under my desk or go hide in the basement of my grade school as a drill to prepare for a Russian atomic missile strike (like that would have saved us in any way)... now, in the summer of 1989, the Soviet Union was collapsing, Poland's Solidarity movement was challenging Communist rule and winning 99% of the vote in semi-free elections, the Berlin Wall was soon to fall, it seemed only inevitable that the peaceful pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square would mean an end to Communist totalitarian rule in China. I remember watching the students live on all the TV screens at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where I had just declared my major as art (against my parents' wishes) and I felt a real solidarity with these rebellious freedom lovers...

...then the tanks rolled in, the guns were fired across the square... hundreds, perhaps even thousands, were murdered...

...lots of excellent articles in the New York Times today, especially by Nicholas D. Kristof who personally witnessed the massacre:

Bullets Over Beijing

Remembering the Tiananmen Protests

On the Ground

China Floods Tiananmen Square With Police to Bar Protests

GM bankrupt/US Treasury Secretary in China...

On Monday, General Motors files for bankruptcy protection and US Treasury Secretary in China

Just a coincidence? ...maybe we should be worried:

Selling out to big brother: China, Inc. and the US, Inc.

No Laughing Matter

Why The Chinese Laughed At Geithner