At the auction yesterday Jenny and I saw a few pieces of Xu Bing's art. This got me surfing around to learn a little more about him. I really enjoy his art, particularly the "New English Calligraphy" series.

Many Chinese artists are be masters of 'CPP' (Calligraphy, Painting and Poetry). Their ink paintings display this mastery, usually with a painting and a poem. The poems are complicated with multiple meanings; not only with the words but the choice of kanji, the shape of the words all give layers of meaning. Then you couple this with the painting, and together you can get humor, philosophy, the artist viewpoint and a pretty painting wrapped into one piece.

The problem is, for a westerner like myself who can’t read Chinese, 90% of the meaning is lost.

Xu Bing plays on this in his art. He does this with a style of writing English to look like Kanji. The above picture is a poem, which anyone who can read English should be able to easily read:

Spring Dawn

I scarcely knew it was dawn

So sound was the sleep of

Spring everywhere there was birdsong

All night long was the sough

Of wind and rain how many

Flowers have fallen to the ground

Poem by Meng Hao Ran

Xu Bing

It was fun to come across his work, (after seeing so much that I didn’t understand) and realize “my god, I can read this” It gave Jenny and I a big smile.

Here is some of his other stuff:

And of course stop by his website! http://www.xubing.com/ And here is a very good interview (PDF) with Xu Bing.