cai guo-qiang arth 361

Stephanie Lee 58357062ARTH 361Final PaperApril 15, 2011

Cai Guo-Qiang:

New Ways of Tradition

Cai Guo-Qiang's art draws from many facets of Chinese

culture and traditional Chinese art. Cai says he was "inspired

by Chinese mythology and themes of power, class, and

defeatism," and was influenced by his father whose passions

were "history, calligraphy and traditional Chinese art" in an

article titled "Cai Guo-Qiang’s Creative Destruction" by Tim

Chan in Theme Magazine. Cai's signature works are made from

the image of gunpowder exploding onto the canvas. Cai says he

likes using this material because it "originated from the

exploration of life" (YouTube), accidentally invented as a by-

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product of alchemy in China around 200 B.C. in an attempt to

produce a medicine. Cai calls his works "creative destruction,"

an interesting twist to Mao Zedong's principle: "destroy

nothing, create nothing." Like a lot of traditional Chinese art,

his gunpowder works are a combination of chance and skill,

and also mimic the muted grey and black palette of traditional

Chinese art. His work with gunpowder has lead him to work

with explosives, for example "Fallen Blossoms" an explosion on

the facade of the Philadelphia Museum of Art at sunset (Image

1). Another interesting layer to this material is that in China, all

important social occasions, good or bad, weddings, funerals,

and elections, are marked by the explosion of fireworks,

announcing whatever's going on in town. (Friis-Hansen, 14). It

only seems natural, then, that a Chinese artist would innovate

this material artistically.

Cai likes the muted palette of browns, beiges, and grays,

saying that "wolves and tigers are muted in color" as well

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(Chan). In his work titled "Head On" (Image 2) 99 wolves run

uniformly in a pack toward a glass wall, vicious, blind and

relentlessly. He conceptualized this work for the Deutsche

Guggenheim in Berlin so the history of Germany plays in

important role in it. He used tigers in a work titled

"Inopportune: Stage Two" (Image 3) in which their writhing

bodies are pin cushioned with arrows. The work alludes to the

14th century Chinese literary work, Outlaws of the Marsh. In

the story the "bandit hero Wu Song slays a man-eating tiger

that had been terrorizing a village" (Harrison, 5). This piece

successfully draws upon that terror, even in the tiger who has

been terrorized by man. The work as a whole, alongside

"Inopportune: Stage One" (Image 4), exhibits Cai's theme of

"creative destruction" in that one feels the terror.

Part of Cai's process with gunpowder, is filming the

process, because it is about the explosive moment in which his

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creation happens. In his newest artwork titled "Odyssey" he

exhibited the making-of his largest gunpowder pieces in a

warehouse in Houston, Texas. This work, commissioned by the

Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, was eventually shown

alongside ancient materiel such as "ceramics, bronzes,

sculptures, and paintings dating from 3000 B.C." (Smith). I

think this is interesting because the work becomes a

celebration of Chinese history, and his finalized product of

“Odyssey” (Image 5) references traditional Chinese art in a new

modern way.

Cai claims to be both "statement and spectacle"

(Chan), but some criticism to his work say that his works are

often quite empty and are mostly driven by spectacle. This is

because the art market, which makes large amounts of money

from large, scale works or feats of installation. For example

Roberta Smith writes in a NY Times article titled "Cars and

Gunpowder and Plenty of Noise" calls his hanging cars

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"Inopportune: Stage One," "an ambiguous comment on car

bombings or Nascar racing." Or his piece called "Reflection - A

Gift From Iwaki." This work is a large hull of a Japanese fishing

boat, that was "resurrected from the sea and now marooned on

a bed of shattered white porcelain statues," the boat has been

shown a few times, and each time it is taken apart and put back

together it is done by the "crew of Japanese workers and

fisherman who originally recovered it" (Smith), which I think is

the nicest part of this work. Smith calls this piece an "extreme

appropriation art; the hull is hauntingly beautiful, not primarily

as art but as an archeological specimen and feat of engineering

both in its construction and its placement in a museum." And I

have to say I agree with this statement, however, it can be read

as being another piece of "creative-destruction" where the boat

has been re-created as art, and the porcelain have been

destroyed as art.

Although his work might claim to be about the

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process, it also doubles as a press and media market. The

museum also makes a lot of money off of his name, because like

any international popular artist like, the solo exhibit is a

spectacle of the artist's name. For example the exhibition sold

water bottles that have his signature printed right on them.

Although all of his works attract the masses, that is not a

downside to them. It is the terror that people are drawn to: the

sight of an explosion, or the seemingly impossible installations.

Still the question remains, are they about something more? It's

hard to say if he has truly mastered the balance between

statement and spectacle.

Image 1: http://hydeordie.com/post/284941601/cai-guo-

qian-fallen-blossoms-2009-via

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Image 2: http://www.lostateminor.com/2008/03/22/cai-

guo-qiang/

Image 3:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XOCwAsolgv8/TLKfClInS8I/AAAAAAA

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AAWM/RcRYXkUEjAI/s1600/inopportune.184.583.jpg

Image 4: http://www.lostateminor.com/2008/03/22/cai-

guo-qiang/

Image 5:

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http://caiguoqiang.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/2010_odyssey_

web2_a22041.jpg

Works Cited

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"Cai Guo-Qiang Explosion Work." Youtube.com. Dec 11, 2008. Video. April 15th 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrTrKJQnwJs>

Chan, Tim, Cai Guo-Qiang’s Creative Destruction: Beijing Olympics. Thememagazine.com. Issue 15, Jun/Jul/Aug 2008. Web. April 15, 2011 <http://www.thememagazine.com/stories/cai-guo-qiang/>

Friis-Hansen, Dana, Zaya, Octavio, Takashui, Serizawa eds. (2002) Cai Guo-Qiang. New York: Phaidon.

Harrison, Robert Pogue, Of Terror and Tigers: Reflections on Cai Guo-Qiang’s Inopportune. Stanford University, n.d. Web. April 13, 2010. <http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:0NZKC73gs8EJ:www.caiguoqiang.com/pdf/essays/inopportune.cat.harrison.pdf+cai+guo+qiang+robert&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESirqCjauCmLknrh38s7

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SpF6DhLmBmD95aDZGaPIn83RLIEcdbh5XSKstCAIA3F75u86XmyOIMBth3bklJ8jQuonHtLdx3Zm-t2m-NOZqs9NgDFfPEST-hJvY8b5qWqugqUKtXZr&sig=AHIEtbScrz42fhq6fXdqWGO7iZKh29tJiw&pli=1>

Smith, Roberta, Cars and Gunpowder and Plenty of Noise. Nytimes.com. February 22, 2008. Web. April 14 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/arts/design/22cai.html?ref=caiguoqiang>

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