Revolution and Rebellion: Political Activism in 20th-Century Art

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Revolution and Rebellion: Political Activism in 20th-Century Art Transcript

 

Intro: Sound collage taken from the interviews below. 

 

NARRATOR: Welcome to our audio tour about modern art made after 1950. This tour is about revolution and rebellion. We’ll look at how artists have defied convention and embraced political change and their own role in advancing it. There is no neat narrative here, but there are some incredible stories.

Five Series of Repetition, 1987

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In 1987, Xu Bing completed his master of fine arts degree in printmaking, and presented the woodblock print piece Five Series of Repetition as his thesis project. The series showed the evolution of carved wood blocks over time, starting with prints of uncut woodblocks, and finishing with prints where nearly all of the wood had been carved away. In this printing, we see a midway point in the series, in which the carved scenes of farmland are fully etched, their forms not yet chipped away.

 

© Xu Bing Studio, photo: LACMA

Wood Houses in the Mountains, 1964

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Based on Lui Shou-Kwan’s Wood Houses in the Mountains, Background Story is one in a series of works by Xu Bing that recreates modern and historical ink landscape paintings in light-box installations. Though Background Story appears as a peaceful, idyllic landscape from the front, a look behind the piece reveals that it is composed of trash and natural debris, contrasting the historical landscape with allusions to the contemporary polluted environment.

 

© Helen Ting, photo: Maurice Aeschimann, Geneva

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