Freezing at FRIEZE
· Yu Hong's Security Screening ·
Two years ago I attended FRIEZE, an art fair in New York, for the first and probably last time. It was ice cold in the tents, spread across a small island in the East river, and the air was depleted of oxygen, all of which had been sucked into inflating the egos of the visitors, by my estimate. There were the well-to-do’s, and even more the rich, and then the hanger-ons, and the occasional art student who had scraped together the money for the astronomical entrance prizes. There were also a lot of people in yellow and green pants, and in jewels that by the laws of gravity should have dragged them to the ground but didn’t. Riddle me that.
In any case, the art was, for the most part, what this audience deserved. I was struck, however, by the painting below, which seemed refreshingly unafraid of narrative, and satisfyingly menacing without actual gore. I have now read up a bit on the painter, Yu Hong, and am impressed by her thoughtfulness. She is known for juxtaposing paintings of private scenes, herself, her family and friends, with historical events that happened at the same time of her depictions, not shying away from the long march of Chinese history. She integrates all kinds of models into her art, from early renaissance paintings to cave drawings of monks, combining styles with elegance. Importantly, she is focussing on women’s rights and issues in contemporary Chinese society and in the clip below explores the topic of melancholia in reaction to society developing on hyper-speed for her new series of paintings.
https://www.nowness.com/story/yu-hong-the-laughing-heart
For some reason the young man in the center of the group I photographed somewhere in Soho reminded me of the man in the painting. Would he have that deer-in-the-headlight look if he looked up?
Below is a painting of a sailor by Bohumil Kubista one of the founders of modern Czech painting. (
If you google Eugène Carrière and click on images you’ll face an astonishing array of somewhat monochromatic brown/sepia/beige/black paintings. Lots of them, and all a little bit mysterious, glowing, or, as Wikipedia describes it, with a misty color scheme. I had first seen his famous portrait of Paul Verlaine at the Musée d’Orsay and then encountered the one below, of Alphonse Daudet, in some small museum in San Antonio, Tx.
( Music here:
Freud wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), “The present cultural state of America would give us a good opportunity for studying the damage to civilization which is thus to be feared.” His enduring nightmare, that America, with its notions of Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny, would be “gain[ing] control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man” was made real in 1945. In August of that year atomic bombs were deployed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 100.000 people immediately, 10s of thousands through radiation exposure later, and devastated most of the attacked cities. Current talk of “Let’s make America great again!” hints at a willingness to repeat this kind of strategic annihilation, and one wonders if and what we’ve learned from history, if anything at all; it also makes Freud seem quite prescient.
