Download or read book Book from the Ground written by Bing Xu and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book without words, recounting a day in the life of an office worker, told completely in the symbols, icons, and logos of modern life. Twenty years ago I made Book from the Sky, a book of illegible Chinese characters that no one could read. Now I have created Book from the Ground, a book that anyone can read. —Xu Bing Following his classic work Book from the Sky, the Chinese artist Xu Bing presents a new graphic novel—one composed entirely of symbols and icons that are universally understood. Xu Bing spent seven years gathering materials, experimenting, revising, and arranging thousands of pictograms to construct the narrative of Book from the Ground. The result is a readable story without words, an account of twenty-four hours in the life of “Mr. Black,” a typical urban white-collar worker. Our protagonist's day begins with wake-up calls from a nearby bird and his bedside alarm clock; it continues through tooth-brushing, coffee-making, TV-watching, and cat-feeding. He commutes to his job on the subway, works in his office, ponders various fast-food options for lunch, waits in line for the bathroom, daydreams, sends flowers, socializes after work, goes home, kills a mosquito, goes to bed, sleeps, and gets up the next morning to do it all over again. His day is recounted with meticulous and intimate detail, and reads like a postmodern, post-textual riff on James Joyce's account of Bloom's peregrinations in Ulysses. But Xu Bing's narrative, using an exclusively visual language, could be published anywhere, without translation or explication; anyone with experience in contemporary life—anyone who has internalized the icons and logos of modernity, from smiley faces to transit maps to menus—can understand it.
Download or read book Xu Bing and Contemporary Chinese Art written by Hsingyuan Tsao and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Chinese is contemporary Chinese art? Treasured by collectors, critics, and art world cognoscenti, this art developed within an avant-garde that looked West to find a language to strike out against government control. Traditionally, Chinese artistic expression has been related to the structure and function of the Chinese language and the assumptions of Chinese natural cosmology. Is contemporary Chinese art rooted in these traditions or is it an example of cultural self-colonization? Contributors to this volume address this question, going beyond the more obvious political and social commentaries on contemporary Chinese art to find resonances between contemporary artistic ideas and the indigenous sources of Chinese cultural self-understanding. Focusing in particular on the acclaimed artist Xu Bing, this book looks at how he and his peers have navigated between two different cultural sites to establish a third place, a place from which to appropriate Western ideas and use them to address centuries-old Chinese cultural issues within a Chinese cultural discourse.
Download or read book Ink Art written by Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2013 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Featuring 70 works in various media--paintings, calligraphy, photographs, woodblock prints, video, and sculpture--that were created during the past three decades, Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China will demonstrate how China's ancient pattern of seeking cultural renewal through the reinterpretation of past models remains a viable creative path. Although all of the artists have transformed their sources through new modes of expression, visitors will recognize thematic, aesthetic, or technical attributes in their creations that have meaningful links to China's artistic past. The exhibition will be organized thematically into four parts and will include such highlights as Xu Bing's dramatic Book from the Sky (ca. 1988), an installation that will fill an entire gallery; Family Tree (2000), a set of vivid photographs documenting a performance by Zhang Huan in which his facial features--and his identity--are obscured gradually by physiognomic texts that are inscribed directly onto his face; and Map of China (2006) by Ai Weiwei, which is constructed entirely of wood salvaged from demolished Qing dynasty temples." --
Download or read book Nine Lives written by Karen Smith and published by Timezone 8 Limited. This book was released on 2008 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lenni wants to find someone to understand her and the new girl could just be that person Lenni can't please anyone lately. At school, her friends want her to kiss someone for a stupid competition. At home, her grandmother wants her to be more ladylike. And on the playing field, her friend Adam has started acting like a big weirdo around her. Then Lenni meets Jo, the new girl at school, and everything feels so normal. Jo is cool, fun, and unlike anyone Lenni's ever known—finally, someone's on Lenni's wavelength!
Download or read book Persistence transformation written by Jerome Silbergeld and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The calligrapher and book artist Xu Bing has been called the most innovative Chinese artist of our time. As a citizen of both China and the United States and the first Asian-American artist to win the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius award," Xu Bing has fascinated and challenged audiences around the world with his imaginative textual art. From his 4,000 unreadable Chinese-looking characters, which unite Asian and Western audiences alike in an egalitarianism of induced illiteracy, to his invention of a "square words" language that makes "Chinese" readable by anyone at all, Xu Bing's use of language is at once artistically brilliant, highly entertaining, and profoundly subversive--a sharp-witted, masterly word-play that, in his own words, "strikes at the very essence of culture." In exhibitions on four continents, Xu Bing's printed art, mixed-media installations, and performance pieces--from books and calligraphic sculptures to inscribed pigs--have fascinated specialists and general audiences alike and generated a growing body of literature. This volume presents the first multidisciplinary study of Xu Bing's art and its intellectual implications. Included is an illuminating account by Xu Bing of his own work, as well as essays by leading scholars in a number of different fields. The essays address the place of this work within the long history of Chinese calligraphic practice, examine it in the context of Chinese intellectual dissidence, discuss Japanese avant-garde parallels, and judge it from a Western art-historical viewpoint.
Download or read book Artefacts of Writing written by Peter D. McDonald and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the relationship between literature and international relations and considers how writing resists norms and puts any fixed or final idea of community in question. Part I examines the European context (1860 to 1945) and Part II analyses the traditions of disruptive writing that emerged out of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia after 1945.
Download or read book Xu Bing written by John B. Ravenal and published by Anchor Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in Chongqing, China, in 1955, Xu Bing is considered one of the most important artists of his generation. Between 1977 and 1987, he studied and taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. He moved to the United States in 1990 and in 1999 received a MacArthur Fellowship, the celebrated "genius grant," in recognition of his "capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly in printmaking and calligraphy." In 2008 Xu Bing was appointed vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and he now lives mostly in Beijing. Many of Xu Bing's print and calligraphic works have appeared on an unlikely but surprisingly receptive medium--the tobacco leaf. A comprehensive overview of Xu Bing's tobacco projects, this volume includes reproductions of all the tobacco works, as well as several essays. Curator John Ravenal discusses the new Virginia work, its relation to the other tobacco pieces, and its place in the context of global contemporary art. Guest authors Wu Hung, Lydia Liu, and Edward Melillo address Xu Bing's work in the context of contemporary Chinese art and the history and culture of tobacco in Virginia. Distributed for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Download or read book Three Installations by Xu Bing written by Bing Xu and published by Chazen Museum of Art. This book was released on 1991 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Art and China s Revolution written by Melissa Chiu and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takes an in-depth look at the period between the 1950s and 1970s, focusing on the formation of a new visual culture and how it was given priority over artistic traditions such as ink painting. This was part of a broader national program to modernize China, and it had a great impact on artists and their work.
Download or read book Tianshu written by John Cayley and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tianshu: Passages in the Making of a Book" examines Tianshu with a focus on the bibliographic and technical details of the work and contains new essays by Xu Bing (published both in Mandarin and in translation); John Cayley (Brown University); Professor Lydia Liu (Columbia University); and Professor Haun Saussy (Yale University). It also includes an essay from 1994 on Xu Bing's "nonsense writing" by Professor Wu Hung (University of Chicago); a detailed bibliographic description of the Tianshu; and a thorough exhibition history. This book is the most comprehensive study of the Tianshu to date.
Download or read book The Allure of Matter written by Wu Hung and published by Smart Museum of Art, the University of C. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This publication was produced by the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, on the occasion of the exhibition The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China, curated by Wu Hung with Orianna Cacchione."
Download or read book Xu Bing written by Sarah E. Fraser and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-20 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a path-breaking reassessment of Xu Bing’s oeuvre by analyzing the diverse cultural environments in which his work has developed since the Book from the Sky. It contains three lecture transcripts and eight art historical essays; these explore themes such as Xu’s animal works, audience participation, new ink, prints, realism, socialist spectacle, and word play. A critical question addressed in this volume is what carries art to a global level beyond regional histories and cultural symbols. Absorbing critical essays on contemporary Chinese aesthetics addressing the social context and philosophical concerns that underlie Xu Bing’s key works. The authors analyze Xu’s art, shedding light on the tangled history of socialism and neoliberalism in the Post-Mao period. --Prof. Dr. Lothar Ledderose, Senior Professor, Institute of East Asian Art, Universität Heidelberg
Download or read book The Art of Xu Bing written by Britta Erickson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Featuring works in Square Word Calligraphy, his whimsical, invented style of writing, The Art of Xu Bing traces the calligrapher's career and provides illustrations and in-depth descriptions of his works, which have been shown from Finland to Australia and the United States. Author and art historian Britta Erickson leads this look into Xu Bing's development as a significant international artist, and Xu Bing himself contributes a chapter on his life and work."--Jacket.
Download or read book Subversive Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Art written by Mary Wiseman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-03-21 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How contemporary Chinese art is creating “a philosophy of life, a philosophy of politics, and a natural philosophy,” as artist Qiu Zhijie says it must, is explored in this collection of essays by philosophers and art historians from America and China.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning written by James W. Tollefson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-07 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook provides a state-of-the-art account of research in language policy and planning (LPP). Through a critical examination of LPP, the Handbook offers new direction for a field in theoretical and methodological turmoil as a result of the socio-economic, institutional, and discursive processes of change taking place under the conditions of Late Modernity. Late Modernity refers to the widespread processes of late capitalism leading to the selective privatization of services (including education), the information revolution associated with rapidly changing statuses and functions of languages, the weakening of the institutions of nation-states (along with the strengthening of non-state actors), and the fragmentation of overlapping and competing identities associated with new complexities of language-identity relations and new forms of multilingual language use. As an academic discipline in the social sciences, LPP is fraught with tensions between these processes of change and the still-powerful ideological framework of modern nationalism. It is an exciting and energizing time for LPP research. This Handbook propels the field forward, offering a dialogue between the two major historical trends in LPP associated with the processes of Modernity and Late Modernity: the focus on continuity behind the institutional policies of the modern nation-state, and the attention to local processes of uncertainty and instability across different settings resulting from processes of change. The Handbook takes great strides toward overcoming the long-standing division between "top-down" and "bottom-up" analysis in LPP research, setting the stage for theoretical and methodological innovation. Part I defines alternative theoretical and conceptual frameworks in LPP, emphasizing developments since the ethnographic turn, including: ethnography in LPP; historical-discursive approaches; ethics, normative theorizing, and transdisciplinary methods; and the renewed focus on socio-economic class. Part II examines LPP against the background of influential ideas about language shaped by the institutions of the nation-state, with close attention to the social position of minority languages and specific communities facing profound language policy challenges. Part III investigates the turmoil and tensions that currently characterize LPP research under conditions of Late Modernity. Finally, Part IV presents an integrative summary and directions for future LPP research.
Download or read book Female CEO s Superior Master written by Gu Lang and published by Funstory. This book was released on 2019-11-16 with total page 815 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Li Wenlong was the driver of the beautiful female leader, so he was well aware of how deep the female leader's background was ...
