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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Stephanie Lee 58357062ARTH 361Final PaperApril 15, 2011
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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Stephanie Lee 58357062ARTH 361Final PaperApril 15, 2011
(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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Stephanie Lee 58357062ARTH 361Final PaperApril 15, 2011
"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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Stephanie Lee 58357062ARTH 361Final PaperApril 15, 2011
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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Stephanie Lee 58357062ARTH 361Final PaperApril 15, 2011
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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Stephanie Lee 58357062ARTH 361Final PaperApril 15, 2011
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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Stephanie Lee 58357062ARTH 361Final PaperApril 15, 2011
http://caiguoqiang.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/2010_odyssey_
web2_a22041.jpg
Works Cited
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Stephanie Lee 58357062ARTH 361Final PaperApril 15, 2011
"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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