There is more to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s installation than meets the eye. Bend and pick up one of the “pebbles” and you can see that it resembles a sunflower seed encased in its striped husk. In fact, each one – and there are 100 million of them, covering an area of 1,000 square metres […]
A Cartier-Bresson picture taken in Shanghai, 1948, shows people storming a bank for gold in the days before the Communist forces arrived. A 1972 photo of a Georgian family picnicking near a medieval monastery A Photographer Whose Beat Was the World, New York Times Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century MoMA April 11—June 28, 2010
The 36-year-old Liu Bolin paints on himself to blend into his surroundings. Liu poses and works for up to 10 hours at a time on a single photo. Sometimes passerbys don’t even realize he is there until he moves. Liu sees his work as a silent protest against the Government’s persecution of artists. The Chinese […]
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Cheeks ballooning, monks force sirenlike blasts from silver trumpets as they clear the way for their king. Top Tibetan officials marvel at a souvenir from America. A finance secretary peers through a slide viewer, memento of a Tibetan trade delegation’s mission to the United States in 1948. Mother and child pray on Chagpori’s crest, a […]
Purely to survive, Song Dong’s parents adhered to the Cultural Revolutionary dictum of frugality in daily life, with his mother carrying conservation to extravagant lengths. The Collected Ingredients of a Beijing Life, New York Times Waste Not MoMA June 24—September 7, 2009
Scelere velandum est scelus. One crime must be concealed by another. —Seneca On June 4, 1989, seven weeks of peaceful protest were ended with tanks and guns. The world watched as soldiers fired on students, workers, and ordinary citizens demonstrating for democracy and human rights. Many were shot in the back as they fled. The […]