It is a mistake to criticize | to deny Bacon, but it is also a mistake not to question it

The Paper's Art Review's "Review" section continues to focus on some of the current exhibitions.

The auction house of Bacon: Man and Beast, the patron of the Royal Institute of Art in London, unveiled a bacon triptych and called bacon "one of the greatest painters of the 20th century," raising questions about the artistic value of Bacon's work — denying Bacon could be a mistake, and not questioning it seemed like a mistake.

"Painting Shanghai – Shanghai Style in Comics," which is currently on display at Shanghai Culture Square, attempts to tour the development of Shanghai comics and dialogue with French comics, but it still seems to be superficial.

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Bacon: Man and Beast

Venue: Royal Academy of Arts, London

Exhibition period: January 29-April 17, 2022

Comments: The exhibition itself is commendable, but the life of the artist himself is full of controversy. Christie's use of exhibitions to photograph works is also a common practice, but the evaluation of it as "one of the greatest painters of the 20th century" has been questioned. If there is a person in the future who does not know Bacon and his living environment, will there be a new judgment simply to review and evaluate Bacon's works?

Rating: Four stars

It's a grand and disturbing retrospective, with a question lingering on every wall: Are we human or animal?

Bacon, who lived through World War II and may even have been transformed into an artist by the Holocaust, pulled out corpses from the wreckage of Blitzkrieg and saw the horrors of terror in concentration camps. These experiences allowed his beastly anger to spread through the picture to every exhibition hall.

Exhibition site

Bacon presents his lover like an animal, making people feel physical and tortured. He wanted to summon alienation and pain, and had the ambition to "one day paint the best painting of human crying." He combined human and animal instincts to make desire and violence inseparable, and even the Pope uttered a barbaric howl in his writings.

Bacon, Avatar 6, 1949, 91.4x76.2cm

The exhibition was sponsored by Christie's, and it was not surprising that shortly after the opening of the exhibition, Christie's announced that it would be selling a large bacon piece. Created between 1986 and 1987, the triptych, estimated to be between £35 million and £55 million, ended up selling for £38.45 million in early March, the top 10 auctions in London over the past 10 years. It is not surprising that auction houses use "superlative" to attract collectors' interest in the lot. But it was a surprise when one Christie's expert declared on social networks that "Francis Bacon is undoubtedly one of the greatest painters of the 20th century."

Christie's Lot: Bacon, Triptych 1986-7, 198 x 147.5 cm, 1986-1987, sold for £38,459,206

In 1952, Johann Berger commented on an exhibition by Bacon at the Hanover Gallery, writing: "What has always bothered me is Francis Bacon's fame, not his work. In another commentary, he added: "Bacon's art is actually conformist. ”

Curiously, why are Bacon's works so exciting to contemporary audiences? His work, as shown in the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, is strikingly consistent in the language of painting and the tone of expression. The dark side of the human world appears in every work—mutilated figures and claustrophobic spaces fill the canvas. His technique is difficult to parse, as the violence he tries to portray may be hidden in the studio. But is the insistence on the surface of violence really a profound expression?

Bacon, The Man with the Dog, 1953, 152x117cm

When thinking about Bacon, John Berger had a different perspective. In 2002, after visiting the exhibition of Bacon's "Sacred and Secular" works at the Musée Mayor in Paris, he wrote: "As I walked back and forth around the paintings, I found something that I could not understand before. What he couldn't understand was the ruthlessness in Bacon's eyes, "and none of the people in his writing notice what's going on in them, and this ubiquitous indifference is crueler than any harm." ”

There is no denying that Bacon's work is powerful. But at the end of the day, how is greatness constituted? It may be wrong to deny Bacon; likewise, not to question it seems to be a mistake. In the words of another escapist modernist, is this the best we can do? (Text/Lackwell)

Painting Shanghai - Shanghai style in comics

Venue: Shanghai Cultural Square

Exhibition period: February 3-March 26, 2022

Comments: Holding comic exhibitions in non-professional venues shows the enthusiasm of Shanghainese for art exhibitions. But the non-professional venue does not mean that the exhibition can be mixed. At the same time, the high-quality exhibitions in professional venues should be paid more attention.

Rating: Two stars

The Chinese character "comic" first appeared in the Northern Song Dynasty, referring to a water bird. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Hong Mai's "Rong Zhai Essay" has a more detailed description of this water bird, and the "comic" is the heron. Later, "Rongzai Essay" spread to Japan, because he liked the name of "manga bird", the 18th-century Japanese literary scholar Suzuki Huanxiang named his collection of essays "Manga Essays", which shows that the word "manga" was first introduced to Japan from China.

Manga appeared as a genre, from Hokusai Manga. After the book spread to China, the word "manga" came to China from Japan as a painting name, in 1904 the paintings with comic characteristics in the Shanghai "Alarm Bell Daily" were named "current affairs comics", in 1925 the "Literature Weekly" began to publish Feng Zikai's paintings continuously, Zheng Zhenduo set the title of "Zikai Comics", "Comics" has been popular in China ever since. In 1926, the "Comic Society" was established, and two years later, the journal "Shanghai Comics" was published, coupled with a series of names such as Ding Shu, Zhang Leping, He Youzhi, etc., which expanded the meaning and boundaries of "comics", and Shanghai comics also shone brightly.

At the exhibition site, he Youzhi's works are exhibited. The original works are in the display case.

The exhibition "Painting Shanghai - Shanghai Style in Comics" has the ambition to tour the development of Shanghai comics. In addition to Feng Zikai, Ding Shu, Zhang Leping, Ding Cong, He Youzhi and others, the timeline has also run through to the present, and the works of Jin Yucheng, Tango and others on display provide the perspective of contemporary people to see Shanghai. In addition, one of the curators is French, and the exhibition also implies the meaning of Sino-French dialogue. From the perspective of curatorial intent, there are many points of view from the perspective of comics to overlook the changes of new and old Shanghai, telling the relationship between comics and Shanghai, but the points of view and the blessings of famous artists do not cover up the shallow taste of the exhibition itself.

At the exhibition site, Ding Shu's "Baimei Tu" is arranged by printing the work on canvas and wrapping it directly outside the wooden frame.

Secondly, the setting of the exhibition line makes people feel quite jumpy, the first group of exhibits at the entrance of the exhibition is Ding Shu's "Baimei Tu", followed by He Youzhi's "I Came from the Folk" and "360 Lines of Old Shanghai", which can be understood as expressing the life of different eras; followed by the Shikumen style of two lesser-known painters born in the 1940s, followed by Zhang Leping's "Sanmao" series and propaganda paintings and comic strips after the founding of New China. Around to the other layer, I just saw Feng Zikai. In the process of watching the exhibition, this kind of jump is everywhere, such as seeing Ding Cong's "cultural celebrity" after watching Tango, turning his head after watching Ding Cong, which is a delicate but ingenious long scroll of pen paintings on both sides of the Pujiang River... It feels like the whole exhibition has a sense of mixed miscellaneousness. The organizers said that "nearly 600 works by 18 Chinese and foreign cartoonists and four collectors" were exhibited, and the exhibition place was an indoor public space outside the Shanghai Culture Square Theater, and there was no particularly clear exhibition line, and the audience unconsciously lost nearly 600 works.

The original works of He Youzhi are displayed in the exhibition cabinet. But the sun came in and the paper rolled up.

It is precisely because the exhibition space is not an art museum, so some operation methods make people who are accustomed to art museum exhibitions feel confused. For example, what are the originals in the "nearly 600 works"? Although the original works of famous artists such as Feng Zikai and Ding Shu will not be exhibited outside professional venues, it is surprising that the works are printed on canvas and wrapped directly in wooden frames; some works can be sold on the spot. I have to say that if it is a public welfare exhibition that popularizes comics, it is understandable to do so, but the exhibition tickets are nearly 100 yuan.

The reason for this operation is probably because the audience of the exhibition is not professionals. But the more unprofessional, the more correct aesthetic guidance is needed, even if the exhibition is a reproduction, but the exhibition is of quality and still valuable.

The "Wanderings of Sanmao" at the exhibition site is originally collected in the National Art Museum of China.

Of course, this phenomenon is not an isolated case, and there are many spaces that hold various ticketing exhibitions in the name of art, some of which are worth the money, but some are also debatable. Taking the more popular ukiyo-e exhibitions as an example, most of them are mixed with original engravings, new engravings, and even replicas, and most of the audience cannot distinguish them. However, if you compare the calmness of the "broad heavy blue" of the Edo period, the blue color of the new engraving is obviously floating on the surface. However, under the immersive exhibition of commercial exhibitions and multi-channel publicity, the work itself is only one of many elements.

Whether it is manga or ukiyo-e, state-owned public art museums have already had special exhibitions. In 2020, the China Art Palace (Shanghai Art Museum) launched the "110th Anniversary of Zhang Leping's Birth Anniversary Exhibition", which looks back at different periods of his life with works, because of the collection of public institutions and the help of his family, the vast majority of the works are exhibited in originals, including the original manuscript of the museum's collection "Sanmao From the Army" (donated by Zhang Leping in 1991); the "Wanderings of Sanmao" now in the National Art Museum of China is exhibited in high definition, which is also clearly marked on the exhibition. At the beginning of 2019, Shanghai Liu Haisu Art Museum also launched exhibitions related to Peach Blossom Wood and Ukiyo-e, the ukiyo-e paintings on display are all original engravings, and the "Gusu Edition" (a kind of Peach Blossom Wood Prints during the Yongqian Period) is a replica, and the replicas are marked in the exhibition signs and media publicity. The exhibition tells from the academic interpretation of the influence of Western copperplate engraving on Peach Blossom Wood, the influence of Peach Blossom Wood on ukiyo-e, and the relationship between ukiyo-e and then the formation of Western Impressionism. It is also one of the earliest exhibitions in Japan to focus on ukiyo-e. Moreover, the China Art Museum and the Liu Haisu Art Museum are open ticket-free.

Zhang Leping's "Three Mao from the Army", photographed in the exhibition of Zhang Leping at the China Art Palace, can be seen in the original traces of the artist's modification.

This creates another problem worth pondering, on the one hand, the sales of tickets to exhibit replicas, while the originals are exhibited but few viewers. Is it a reminder that public art museums should also keep pace with the times on the basis of practicing their internal skills and use the new publicity model to take the initiative to shout? Let art lovers see the value of art, rather than being touched by replicas. (Text/Komatsu)