The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Record-breaking Chinese artist Zeng lifts the mask Posted: 19 Oct 2013 05:37 AM PDT "The notion of the artist didn't exist," he said of his art school days in the central Hubei province. "We were art workers. We didn't know that we could be free and independent," Zeng, in Paris for a retrospective of his works, told AFP. Based on Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, Zeng's Last Supper - part of the Paris show - set a new record for a contemporary Chinese artist when it was sold at auction in Hong Kong on October 5. The work, which depicts Christ and the disciples wearing masks and communist Young Pioneers uniforms, was purchased by an anonymous private buyer following a 10-minute telephone bidding war. Born in 1964 in Wuhan in Hubei province, Zeng is currently the subject of a show at Paris' Museum of Modern Art featuring around 40 of his works dating back to 1990. "It's the first time in my life that so many of my works have been brought together... It's very important to me," he told AFP, speaking through an interpreter. Currently ranked the fourth highest-selling contemporary artist - in terms of auction turnover - according to art data firm Artprice, his sales in 2012/13 reached US$34.3 million (RM108.3 million). Such success is a far cry from his days as a student at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts. "In the place where I was living, there were no toilets so I had to go to the neighbouring hospital several times a day," he said. This inspired a series of works based on what he had witnessed on his visits. For his graduation painting he presented the expressionistic Hospital Triptych No.1 which attracted the attention of the Chinese art world. In 1993, Zeng moved to Beijing and began working on his masks series. "Behind most of these masks, it's me. I had very few friends because I had just arrived in Beijing," he said. His works have always drawn on his own life and emotions including his childhood, which was indelibly marked by the Cultural Revolution. From its start in 1966 until Mao's death in 1976, this saw the rejection of traditional forms of Chinese culture. In The Last Supper, the disciples' Young Pioneers uniforms feature the red scarves that were a symbol of achievement in Communist China - something Zeng said always eluded him. And the Judas figure "wears a gold scarf which evokes the power of money and capitalism". "I never had the red scarf," he said. "I was excluded from collectivity. It was like a badge of shame for my parents. It was a shadow over my childhood," he added. Zeng is now collaborating on a museum project that he believes will enable him to express his artistic vision. His current work uses a technique which he adopted in the middle of the last decade in which blurred lines are employed to depict landscapes. "Before painting a big canvas, I prepare for several days in order to attain a state of calm and serenity. Then I paint fast, in an intense way," he said. - AFP, October 19,2013 |
| Titanic violin set to fetch record price Posted: 19 Oct 2013 05:13 AM PDT The instrument belonging to Wallace Hartley was found strapped to his body after he drowned with his seven bandmates and some 1,500 others on board the supposedly unsinkable ship in 1912. The violin had a reserve price of £200,000 (RM1.02 million) to £300,000 (RM1.53 million) but was expected to fetch as much as £400,000 (RM2.04 million) when it went on sale at Titanic specialist auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son in Devizes, southwest England. The instrument carries an inscription from the 33-year-old's fiancee Maria Robinson to mark their engagement. It is on sale with its leather luggage case initialed W.H.H. For decades the violin was believed lost but it was found in the attic of a house in northwest England in 2006, prompting a debate about its authenticity which experts only recently resolved. Andrew Aldridge, a valuer with the auctioneer, said worldwide interest in the instrument meant it was likely to break the world record fee for a single piece of memorabilia from the Titanic. "It symbolises love, with a young man strapping it to his body because it was an engagement present from his fiancee," he said. "It also epitomises bravery. He knew there would be no lifeboats. It symbolises everything that's good about people, not just Wallace Hartley and his band, but all the men, women and children who lost their lives." The Titanic was built in Belfast and set sail from Southampton, southern England, for New York on April 10, 1912. The band played the hymn Nearer, My God, To Thee to try to calm passengers while they climbed into lifeboats as the Titanic sank beneath the icy waves in the North Atlantic on April 15 after hitting an iceberg. Hartley and his seven fellow band members all died after choosing to play on. He was given the maple, spruce and ebony violin by his fiancee in 1910. She had a silver plaque fixed to the instrument engraved with the words: "For Wallace, on the occasion of our engagement. From Maria." It is now thought that the instrument was inside a leather bag that was found strapped to his body 10 days after the sinking, and was then passed to Robinson. Robinson never married and after her death in 1939, her sister donated the violin to her local Salvation Army band, where it passed to a music teacher and then the unnamed owner in whose house it was discovered in Lancashire, northwest England. After seven years of testing including MRI scans, researchers said in March this year that the instrument was genuine. – AFP, October 19, 2013. |
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