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It's a pleasure again to host everyone here today. And I have the distinct pleasure of being able to introduce our second speaker today, Mr. Home to John. I first met home to 22 years ago, and I can, I was excited I was like a fan. Because I had followed his work for so long and it was just such a pleasure to meet him in person at that time, and it's an even greater pleasure now, to have the ability to host him here at UCLA. Mr. John was born in 1943 and Gansu, China and currently lives in New York. He was born into a Muslim family and entered the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts in Beijing in 1964, graduating in 1969. However, if you know modern Chinese history that also corresponded with the Cultural Revolution, and he remained at the school until 1973. In 1980, he took a trip to Dunhuang and there in the Mogao Caves. He studied cave painting for several weeks, which turned out to be a transformative moment in his artistic evolution, and deeply love to deepen into imprint on his later artistic practice. He came to New York in 1982, so Exactly 40 years ago, and 1991 he received the painting prize from the Pollock Kranzler Foundation. And he has done a remarkable series of artistic projects over the years inspired by multitone. In 1987, he launched a whole series of works that reflected on the legacy of Mao Zedong, such as Quaker Oats Mao in 1987, Chairman Mao in 1989, and really wrote a new page in the interaction between China's legacy of political art and socialist realism with pop art in the west and later, he started a whole new series which seemed to kind of topple that or turn it on its head when he started his repainting Chinese century series Sean tray of course, refers to Chinese landscape paintings or, and that series since 1998, has been revolutionary in taking classic works from the Chinese canon and classical painting and reimagining them through the lens of Western masters such as Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet, and taking on this project of radical juxtapositions of different artistic styles. When you think about the variety of mediums he's worked in, it's probably easier to think about which ones he hasn't worked in because he spends so many different areas from oil painting, traditional Chinese landscape painting, cast bronze sculpture, masonry, digital art, and even mediums that don't really exist as legitimate disciplines such as soy sauce painting, which he's done several works at and he has won numerous awards. His work is collected in major galleries and been exhibited around the world. Please look at the incredible publications such as a wonderful retrospective book, co edited by one of our former speakers drum Silbergeld, published by Duke University Press, which has a wonderful retrospective on his work. And so there's a lot to dig deeper. But today without further ado, please join me in welcoming Mr. John home to but before you clap, we also I want to also introduce Felix Chen, who is here helping us with interpretation. Felix is a second year PhD student in the history of art department here at UCLA. He works on modern and contemporary East Asian art with a focus on social and aesthetic history of photography and the globalization of contemporary Chinese art in the post malmark era. Yesterday, Mr. John spoke in English we thought to mix it up a little. Today he will speak in Chinese we know we have a lot of Chinese speakers in the audience and Felix will be interpreting so without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Felix and drywasher and thank you again so much for joining us today

so first of all, I thank Professor berry for the generous introduction and also extend my gratitude to the UCLA central Chinese studies as well as the Lee family for making this event possible. It is also my great pleasure and honor to speak to such a large audience to which I'm very excited to share to you about my art and life. Professor Barry has already talked in length with regards to my upbringing, my biography where I went to school, how I was trained, the media is which I work with these of course are very important events in my life and I look forward to diving into more details in in later in my talk. And of course expanding into other incidents and life changing events in my life such as the cultural evolution as well as the June 4 incident over my span of 60 years of career as an art maker, I have of course been concerned with questions and topics that would concern a normal artists these topics of course, include technique, style, art history itself, theories, the list goes on and on. But I thought that today and at this point in my career, what I prioritize more is in fact my life experience as I believe that my life experience had a has had a much larger effect than the so called techniques and other artistic sort of criteria so I look forward to sharing more thank you

So in the following slides on I'd like to share, I would like to divide them into three main components. The first would be the so called material Mao series, which in fact, originated as an English title, I find it even awkward to translate it back into Chinese. The second would be what I call the reinvention or remaking Chinese Shan Shan landscape. In this sort of process, this stage of my life, I used a three paradigmatic Western modernists techniques, one that of Monet when the verses on when that a Van Gogh to reenter, intervene or reinvent Chinese landscape. And the third component would be what I would consider to be shining straight in the here and now the center of today, where I detract or depart from art, historical reinvention, or concerns of Chinese trade, but instead, look to the harsh reality that concerns landscape, I put it in a more ecological lens of thinking about the effect that the destruction of environment has had on the landscape that we live here and now and I also will dive into an ongoing series which I've been making during the pandemic, which is the bison series.

So the series that we're seeing right now is perhaps still my most well known series. This is the Quaker Oats series that I started making in 1987. The origin story is the reason why I even came to make this as a complete accident. When I moved to New York in 1982. I started eating Quaker Oats like many Americans, in one day as staring into the can looking at this elderly fellow with a really plush red Roush skin. I had the idea and the reckoning that he looks a lot like Chairman Mao. So my decision was to embellish the face with a mouse style hat as well as a red halo around him. This work ended up having a much more of a effect than I would ever put utensil anticipated amongst my American friends who saw the work. The question that they seem to be asking is that we have been eating cereal Sark, oats for almost a century of more, how come you are the one who can make out the affinity between who's on the can and with masa don't. And this, in fact, brought out a very important issue, which is this fundamental memory that I had brought with me to America from China. There's too much that could be said about who Chairman Mao meant to people of my generation. He although he is an atheist himself, within China, he his power and his authority commands no less than that of a deity. And I still have so many memories of which any of the potential offense to the religious icon iconography of Mao could lead to very, very dire consequences. One of such memories is that when I was in 1966, when I was still a student in Beijing, I remember that a fellow classmate of mine was brutally beaten, because he accidentally sat on a newspaper, where Mao's visit was being printed. So this just goes to length to say that what Mao meant to and how, again, offending him in any way could lead to very, very dire consequences. This is all to say that, although I did not have any intention to bring my memory from China to me as I came to the United States, the act of painting and can help but to make out a mouse visit out of a Quaker can suggest to me that the Chinese memory within me perhaps is indelible.

So before I move on to the next series, I would also like to say a couple of things about this series indebtedness to the art that I was seeing as I arrived at United States and that would most most importantly, that would be the trajectory of conceptual art that Marcel Duchamp has had initiated. And would also it would appear to me that the political pop, the pop art trajectory in the United States also had an effect on me. One of salient memories that I had was to visit to come across a mouse six, Andy Warhol silkscreen series of Chairman Mao, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first, I didn't like the work at all because silkscreen, which is the medium of which Warhol executed his works and was hardly considered to be a bonafide artistic medium in China at all. I thought that the work shared that Warhol did shared very little, it's departed very little from the mouth, that portraits that I see that I saw in time and square. However, upon understanding the precise transgression, that the work posed as a anti art or non art in a venue, like the Metropolitan Museum, is when I start understanding and it's what gave me courage to also see my practice to be an embodiment of presenting the non art status of objects in our artistic environment. And of course, what I had to add to the conversation is my own experience of living in China as well as a little bit of courage

After the chairman incident in 1989. I had I continued to work on the mouse series in this collage series, you see, although it might share similarities with the previous series, a lot has already happened. Of course, the anguish meant and the disarmer disappointment from seeing and the chairman incident had given me the urgency to to continue to work on this series, because any words would be lacking. One thing that was memorable was that in order to execute these collages, I've had to use a knife or scissors to say Start cutting apart the visit of Mao which to me was psychologically very fear fearsome as an act like this had been in China would have easily resulted in my execution or my death However, it's important for me to just overcome the fear and keep working on it

So, the images and materials I was working from stemmed from the famous quotation of quotations of Mao which is a which is also known as The Little Red Book. I did specific interpretation or reintervention into the specific quotes that Mao that was written on the page I can't go into detail but in your own time perhaps you can enlarge some of these images and see the specific samples

I can't help myself to tell you a little bit more about three of those works. The one you see where a mouse is seen with the ponytail. I was if you look at to the page, the quotation in fact says that the people are all mighty and powerful, but we are merely the naive children. So I thought the natural thing to do is to put a ponytail and infantilize Mao in some ways. On the top left corner, in fact depicts Mao as the domes on home. So the Eastern sun which is often been compared to or mythologized as the one that is on the left center row is a rework of Duchamp's famous electoral queue. But there I installed a really large beard upon miles village and the initials h i ACS suggest that it's short for he is age he is

So this is a rework of Leonardo da Vinci is famous The Last Supper At the time I was taken by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of what I consider to be the socialist regime, the collapse of socialism what I of course did differently is to replace Jesus and his 12 disciples with Mao himself so multiple mouths of course this seed this narrative scene stemmed from part of the story where Jesus said to His disciples that one of you had betrayed me but if you follow my composition you'll see that with malware to be posting the question of who betrayed me it would have been also allow

so in this series I executed the composition in traditional Chinese rubbing style this is of course evocative of a acupuncture diagram were different points were being highlighted in a person's anatomy which is supposed to register different health benefits or just consequences but I've replaced most of the positions and locations with familiar quoted quotations of course from the communist era which include don't call me out as you phone which means the Eastern wind will conquer the Western wind so the East better than the West what are some of the other ones you'll see

So, of course there are numerous terms and surely they do not promote the effect that a normal occupying troll diagram would have promoted however, it is important for me to incorporate these terms into a human anatomy as they are important to me.

So, this is just another example of the material now series in this series I use different materials as the margins that make up the hollow center which of course, register as Mao's profile again, this in a sense, I have deliberately uses very cheap materials to execute the series. In this sample, you see that these are corn that I had purchased from from Long Island, These are grains that are meant for horses. But what I am considering and unconcerned with this series is how the interplay between the solid and the void and between the yin and the yang but as you see, and this is all to say that I'm interested in the fact that although one clearly sees a revered figure his sacredness of sanctity it's only made up it's only made possible by the seamlessly invaluable materials

I also chose corn because corn is the main grain that are consumed by the northerners in China.

this one's executed in tiles. Use your popcorn and popcorn.

I like the name popcorn quite a bit. And I also use popcorn because it is just something that you don't expect to be used to construct image of bow. I really enjoy these juxtaposition juxtapositions and I find them to be very important to work my work and in these types of visitors which is when I can and one way relate my work to the greater surrealist tradition of paradoxes.

Here's your shadow wall.

This is stone mouth.

Do you shoot Do you want to know why or shoot?

This is constructed by wire do you call this is constructed by lipstick so there's no lipstick real lipsticks so they're called Real lipstick or they're called lipstick mouth

so I use real lipsticks in these works

gives you tell me all

this is made by soy sauce you can bomb all ping pong mom

you want to shoot or start due to due to the Trinity case and you're shooting for then you'll manage your data teams. You will fill in

people have many interpretations about this work. But if you let me just tell you a bit about the rules. Essentially, in order to not lose a point you must avoid hitting the ball out of bounds as conventional ping pong rule goes, but at the same time you must avoid hitting your ball into the pit. So it's a sight and a sense of loot Sue's condition

So, what I'm also of course interested in talking about and as I'm sure many in the audience could relate is that you could criticize Of course your superiors or your boss, but when you you must be very very mindful when it comes to criticizing Mao because that could lead to very dire consequences

Here you see an insult leash an image of my exhibition in 1995 in the Bronx Museum here you see accumulation of many of the material mouths about works. To me this was a monumental moment for me because upon seeing all these works, I realized that my healing journey has completed as I no longer fear to criticize Chairman Mao and also in being playful with his visit his iconography. So, this is actually also why I from there on I ceased making the series as I believe that this self healing journey and therapy has concluded

So, this work is a transitional series between my mouth earlier mouth series towards the landscape series on the western sort of my take on Western art history. And I depicted again, Mao and nine, signature, Western modernist styles. This, in the sense summarizes my understanding and opinion towards Western art history, which I understood and in a sense of lamented to be a little bit like fashion, in the sense that maybe one could still execute a portrait in William to Kooning's iconic style, but it would have been deemed as old fashion but I believe that we shall transcend the paradigm and the time based reality expired the expiration or reality of art historical style, and look ahead. One One of the series I'd like to highlight is my deconstruction of the character model, using a conceptual artist Joseph cluesive. Icon iconic style in which he uses English definition dictionary definitions to illustrate the meaning of a character those who are native Chinese speakers, or Chinese speakers know that Mao is not only the initial and the last name of Chairman Mao Zedong. It had many, many usages in the Chinese language including hair, fur on a carpet. When one gets angry, you can say it almost translates to this fourth, profanity of what the heck the heck. So this is my way of also borrowing from Yosef way of deconstruction to deconstruct now.

So, what I also also like to finally say with this series is that my attempt to revive these styles or to execute works in this style is to bring in illustrative cyclical pattern of our history in that some styles do come back

so this work. I'm sure it's all too familiar to those who take Professor Lee, which was less classes and lectures in Chinese art. This is a monumental landscape painting. The concept that under underlying of my reinterpretation is quite simple. I, in fact, did take did receive some sort of Chinese classical training when I was a kid. However, I didn't like it that much. I thought that I did couldn't see any vibrant colors amongst classical landscapes. And when I, but then as I got to understand, Vincent Van Gogh's work, I realized that as much as I like the vibe, right vibrancy of the color, I do not see the sort of untrammeled freedom that a classical landscape artist take liberty in as they construct the landscape. So I simply use the series to synthesize what I've perceived to be the advantage of both classical landscape style painting, Chinese language, classical landscape style painting, and the colors of someone master like Vincent van Gogh. I remember visiting ARL which is the Southern French, a French town that Vincent van Gogh last took residence and, and thinking of the pointlessness of going there, because to a Chinese classical landscape artist, the imagination the sort of mental traveling that one did, would have been sufficient for one to construct a classical Chinese landscape imagery. When I find it funny that when a gallerist tried to promote this work to potential buyers, The Gallerist noted that with when you buy this work, you actually got two masterworks one of Franklin and one of Vincent van Gogh

So, of course, this, this work is realized in a very similar sort of conceptual undercurrent. But I would like to highlight what I would like to highlight is that I have a tremendous respect for the tradition of imitation in the Chinese painting history. I found it very fruitful, that old masters were able to reinvent themselves by copying even older masters. So to imitate one's an old masters signature style is to pay your respects for older master, but to also regenerate and come up with something that's new. I in this work, I basically projected a computer the digital image of an imitation of donkey Chun imitating an older master gun onto a new surface. So I often joke that I'm still the only person that is truly imitating Chinese paintings because one cannot imitate in a more accurate manner than digitally duplicating a composition

In this work, I imitated a work by the Grandmaster, trombone fool. Using Monet's signature impressionist style, like Monet, I also worked on this composition of three times just slice Manet wood towards the dry hay that he painted on plein air

your shoe should hold him to you

this is an imitation of a small album Leaf Painting by shuttle

this is this work signal signals the what I understand as the shine shade today series. So in this series I incorporated methods that have done by used by passes on and also some of the Cubist to reinterpret the iconic drawings and photo mountain by Wonka Wong Of course, I imitated only the last section of this role. You see that I did some of my own interpretation. Most namely in the emptiness and the further. That's the structure that is on the left side of the composition, which to me conveys the sentiments of abandonment and the the desolate, desolate sort of aura of the landscape

That was a song. A song. Interpretation imitation

This is my soy sauce calligraphy series. In this series, you can see that I write calligraphy and very well known styles that were made popular by monumental calligraphers who executed their calligraphy and clerical scripts, in sealed scripts, etc. But the content of the calligraphy of the text are in fact, hiring notice that I came across in the Chinese laundromats in New York's Chinatown, Manhattan Chinatown. So this is my attempt to bridge the high and low and of course this is the caveat is that this is all executed in soy sauce as well which is a very if I if I may low material

and this series, you'll see that the landscape of which the bikers are departing from are a monument. It's a monumental competition in the Ming Dynasty. But you see that where all these bikers are headed towards is a lot of negative space, which featured a poem by Chairman Mao

These are a diptych of hanging squirrels a pair of hanging squirrels.

This is a hybrid of a Coca Cola bottle with the Simha style of that are popular in Ming and Qing Dynasty. The blue and white style

this is of course, shares a lot of resonance with the Coca Cola series instead, but instead I fabricated McDonald's food containers and cutleries in styles that are evocative of Shang and Joe bronze vessels.

this is a more recent composition but it's something that's been in my mind in a long time and this series I use the style that's typical of Japanese Zen monk tradition to depict the 39 remaining self portraits left by Vincent van Gogh

gives you perfect

this is just some of them

So, there's not much that can be said about this. But this is a repainting of southern stone painter Mayans famous called water views series. I left I tried to bring back most of the linear drawings. However, you see that the surface of the water is

So, I try in this series, I tried to invite the audience to see to temporal modes that are embodied in this body of water

in this composition, you see Mayans original drawings, evoking bodies of water flowing above a dry riverbed which is the Yellow River

This is somewhat evocative of Nissan's painting style but you'll see that there is it's the the compositions filled with disharmony do you need handle to this is reinterpretation of the tongues work?

1:06:11

in this painting, you'll see that I no longer am consciously imitating Eastern or Western masters but I did incorporate some of the motifs that can be found in the Dunhuang cave paintings into my composition but the monkeys are of my own do similar work

1:07:48

this is my tribute to all young shows poet show early on shows autumn Sonic poetry. But you see that also borrow a bit of a bit of the architectural drawings from doing Hong cave paintings. You will see that the there are modern skyscrapers that are looming in the receding horizon and that they are slowly taking over the landscape.

1:08:44

So this is a pretty simple composition where our future for monkeys for mountains, I guess five mountains and as well as the iconic CCTV tower. I'm not a big fan of the CCTV as they are. They have fabricated too many lies and you'll see that the four monkeys felt a bit helpless.

1:09:40

I made this painting after the birth of my granddaughter and you'll see that in the monkeys eyes. The clarity and innocence of her vision evokes that of my granddaughters. You'll see that the US clusters of skyscrapers and that and that monkey is very hopeless. So this is sort of very much a mental sort of state that I like to convey that is influenced by the birth of my granddaughter

1:10:32

I've decided to not sell this painting even though it's very sought after by collectors, because I would like to leave this to my granddaughter who might Mahler gathered an inkling of what what was going through her grandfather's mind

1:12:47

I would like to now finally move on to the bison series which is a series that I've been working on since the pandemic. But my story with bison start at a very young age when I first encountered them in Beijing CGL zoo, where I saw two Bisons that were most likely gifted by the American government or from a country in North America. I was really struck by the beauty and the strength of the bisons. However, what I also noticed is that they were confined in an environment that was much much smaller than their physique seemingly deserve. But of course, it was it was a really distinct childhood memory. But as I matured, I in a sense, have left them out of my memory. But it is not until I moved to the United States and years later, I was invited to hold an exhibition in Kansas that I read Kindle that that had rekindled my interest in Bisons I immediately asked the curators to show me Bisons in the reservation area. However, just like the bisons that were that I encountered, I remember seeing in the Beijing sue the bisons in the reserve also appear to be confined by fences.

1:14:47

So I decided to read a lot more into the history of bison in the United States. And of course I found out this very fraught and complicated violent history of history Bisons were Um, first of all, a shared a very symbiotic relationship with indigenous population in this country in this in this land, but then they were decimated in large numbers by European settlers later on. So this resonated with me deeply and I've decided to feature Bisons and use them as an allegory of what I perceive to be nature. And of course, when I say nature, it is one that stems from my very inner mental state.

1:15:56

Although one can argue that thanks to conservational effort, Bisons are now living in a much better state than they were years ago. Some of their grasses were even added with vitamins to foster their health. But I would also like to mind you that where they truly belong are just plateaus and fields where they can roam freely.

1:16:41

So, I started when I came across the word roaming, I thought this is I love the words a lot because it encapsulate to me the very existence and the activity that Bisons do which is to roam in the wilderness. So this composition it's my way of reinterpreting are reimagining the bisons roaming in the wilderness.

1:17:08

This is the first one of the series

Do you like to and that will teach you to do that

1:17:20

I'm sure you know that this is a inspired by on personal hygiene which auspicious crane composition

1:17:38

Bison immigration

1:18:24

You see that the bisons are moving sandwiched by railroads and just asphalt roads highway. And this is my interpretation or introduction into my own identity as an immigrant because some of the earliest Asian Americans were railroad constructors. And a really interesting anecdote is that the earliest railroad designers and road builders realized that the most logical paths were in fact, paths they're already occupied by the bisons. But of course now these paths have perhaps turned into roads. If you go to the Yellowstone Park, you'll see that the bisons now walk on the various routes that they might have originally inspired.

1:19:32

This one evokes Of course my upbringing in Beijing Of course, the time and incident. So this is a big return for me.

Both in building the union in believing

1:19:46

this is Bisons roaming in the shadows in the wintry landscape.

1:20:10

this is not of the building is not of course my my own design but it's a design of a hyper modernist architect. But I see the affinities between the bisons physique and something that have modernist architecture

1:20:46

I personally detest this type of architecture style as I as I believe they're superfluous excessive. So yeah, I just want to state my stance

Do you show me a yachtie when you potentially see the show titled to clench your like also? Sue Maria. Thank you. Well, you will basically thank you

1:21:25

you must know that this is a very iconic Italian Renaissance portrait of narrative scene

1:21:44

this is this is the most recent one that I've been working on that's unfinished,

digging into your toe. So

1:21:51

these are stone reliefs that I've been working on. Do

1:22:29

So the choice of the stone I in fact limestones that were a native to Kansas and of course 10,000 years ago, this is the very place where the bisons would have roamed freely. So I thought that I would use a native material material to evoke the prehistory history, the early histories of devices

such as your faith. Thank you very much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai