Week 2

Dunhuang Chen

0244729

Critical Practice

This photo belong to the well-known Chinese artist - Weiwei Ai. It is called ( One tiger with eight nipples ). That is so obvious to understand this picture through its name: a man with four women. the tiger means the man with full bread who is siting in middle of picture and eight nipples represent four women surrounding him.

There are totally five nude figure there (a male and four females) and each character’s pose is slightly different. Take a quick look, three figures are siting and other two are standing somehow. Then we observe them individually, the first left female is sitting in a chair and facing right from audience`s view. Then the second right female is standing on the ground and smiling, using a hand to cover her mouth. The man is also siting in a chair in dead center of picture visually and placing both hands on his thigh. A female is standing just behind the man closely. Then the last female is siting on his right side.

We need to carefully look at plenty details from each figures regard their micro-behaves, expressions and other objects in this picture. Apparently, the men is in the most important position of all. He is siting in a large chair with backrest and the central part of him-his genitals is covered by his arms and both hands is put on his left thigh. The first left girl with glasses is siting in a chair without backrest and facing right toward the center-the man. The right girl next to her is standing near the man, she is smiling with covering her mouth by hand and her left hand is holding the backrest of man`s chair. The third girl is standing behind the man and just showing her head only. The last women is relatively fat than other females, she is wearing a jade bracelet and a jade necklace particularly and siting in a backrest chair.

Actually, each person and his or her behavior has deeply connections and implied meanings. The only man here is covering his central part, the Chinese character “挡” （dang) means covering, and “central part” is translated into Chinese that is 中央（zhong yang）, therefore “covering central part” could be pronounced as “dang zhong yang” . What is interesting that 挡（covering) and 党 ( political party) are homophones. So the man with his performance could be interpret as dang zhong yang ( 党中央）which means the central government. the hands putting on his left thigh may means left learning persistently. The first left women with long hair represent intellectuals because of wearing glasses. Playing her hair means intellectuals are flattering the central government, Raised buttocks implies they have social positions, facing towards man shows they are always led by government. Her chair has no backrest indicate that intellectuals is unreliable! The right girl next to him is considered as the media. She is standing between two figures with smiling means that she has no position at all. But her hand is grasping the backrest of man`s chair and she is ready to site with the man together seemingly, it tells that government controls the media. the fat women wearing jewelries most the right side represent wealth so obviously, that is bourgeoisie. She is siting in a backrest chair tells us that they are absolute dependable. She and the man have a group photo If we look at them very closely, that make sense because fortune is government`s favorite after all. The last pool girl standing behind the man whose most part is covered. She must be people definitely because she has no space and being ignored.

This picture perfectly explain the reality of the present Chinese society. I cannot agree more as a Chinese.

critical practice week 1

Critical Practice

0244729

Dunhuang Chen

Generally, I disagree with Andersen’s argument from my own perspective. We all have been through dramatic changes of every social aspect such as arts, technology, climate, globe geopolitics, economies etc. You will realize how huge this world has been changed since last two decade if you watch news every single day.  His article points out that our cultures of innovation and cultural aesthetics is a stagnation. Like what he said, late 20 years our art style is no longer innovated and artists just mimic previous styles but never come up with creative ideas.

For me I less care about what happened to fine arts, especially I cannot understand the abstract art because I was to be a entertainment artists, is dreaming about creating products for Sci-Fi films or video games etc. I could fairly say that the entertainment arts’ style has been changed tremendously. Think about star wars episode 1 during the 1970s, people have never seen somethings like space fight before and they were shocked by those giant imperial spaceship and death stars. No one deny that most of designs in old star wars was quite faddish and marvelous. Actually, in addition to Sci-Fi movies in 1960s, the entire fashion, car designs and architectures were refer to space shapes because the people has entered the “ space time” during that period. Most of designs were with the tear drop ship and “ wings” such as “ alien” juicer and transportation designed by Luiqi Colani.

The “innovation” does not necessarily means creating new art style or visual effects that we have never produced before, but means creating somethings we have never realized before. For example, nowadays people are more suitable with “21s century” artistic styles than 20s, the art style in Sci-Fi movies like ( District 9, Elysium, Pacific Rim, Gravity, Transformer, GI Joe, etc) are obviously more realistic and convincing, reasonable and rational. People would like to see more real structures behind those fancy designs. So the old art style looks childish, ridiculous cheap because they lack of real industrial structures and textures. So in 1970s the audience confirmed that the designs in film was very neoteric when they have seen them first time. However, I just saw the latest star wars: Rogue One and I realized how huge improvements has been made there. Not only the incredible visual effect but also the design style is much better than previous. Similarly, the designs in the movie “Prometheus” is further more better than old “Alien” movies. I consider this as an innovation,

Further more, every artistic event is just a reflection of social development. The booming of economy and industrial revolution, religious reform, science change the world from century to century. In the 20s, every social aspects was fiercely changing due to stimulation by world war and arms race. The quantum physics and rocket science prompts the third industrial revolution. Therefore unsurprisingly we have witnessed amazing leaps of innovation of art, fashion, science every 20 years until late 20th. However unfortunately, we are facing countless issues like global warming, air pollution, race, terrorism. The rate of development of world’s economy is slowing down by those obstacle, the art style does not change too much as a society’ reflection seemingly. Actually, the invention of internet started a new revolution for people all over the world, they could express their own art style through internet. Like what postmodernism point out: every one is the artist. That is a biggest innovation. Besides social development, the market determines what kind of products we need. People still love old dramas, poem, impressionism, and being mimic old art styles. But does not means that we are trapped in a dead circle and people lost the spirit of innovation at all. Sometimes, returning to the ancients is the best innovation.