{"id":42153,"date":"2009-07-15T18:57:24","date_gmt":"2009-07-16T01:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=42153"},"modified":"2009-07-15T18:57:24","modified_gmt":"2009-07-16T01:57:24","slug":"the-collected-ingredients-of-a-beijing-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2009\/07\/the-collected-ingredients-of-a-beijing-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Collected Ingredients of a Beijing Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/15\/arts\/design\/15song.html?_r=1&#038;ref=global-home\">Holland Cotter of the New York Times reviews<\/a> an unusual exhibit at MoMA, in which the full contents of the home of the artists&#8217; mother are on display:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nFor nearly 60 years she lived in the city with her husband and two children in a tiny house crammed with domestic odds and ends \u2014 clothes, books, kitchen utensils, toiletries, school supplies, shopping bags, rice bowls, dolls \u2014 which were used, then recycled, then indiscriminately hoarded. Now the entire cache, every odd button and ballpoint pen, is at MoMA, along with Ms. Zhao\u2019s fridge and bed.<\/p>\n<p>How did it get here? Ms. Zhao was the mother of the artist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artnet.com\/artist\/150708\/song-dong.html\">Song Dong<\/a>, one of the most inventive figures in contemporary Chinese art. He is often referred to as a Conceptualist, meaning an artist who trades as much in ideas as in materials. And it was he who had the idea of turning the contents of his mother\u2019s home, which was also his childhood home, into the installation titled \u201cWaste Not.\u201d It is at once a record of a life, a history of a half-century of Chinese vernacular culture and a symbolic archive of impermanence.<\/p>\n<p>Although new Chinese art has a reputation for brash iconoclasm, loss is really its big subject. Political Pop painting may be big at auctions, but much of the most interesting new work is less about attacking the powers that be than about regretting the diminishment of the powers that were, or might have been: familial cohesion, social stability and spiritual certainty. In this respect, China\u2019s new art is very much on a continuum with its old art, specifically with the tradition of landscape painting with reiterated motifs of changing seasons, parting friends and dreams of a golden age. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>See more about the exhibit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moma.org\/visit\/calendar\/exhibitions\/961\">from MoMA<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Holland Cotter of the New York Times reviews an unusual exhibit at MoMA, in which the full contents of the home of the artists&#8217; mother are on display: For nearly 60 years she lived in the city with her husband and two children in a tiny house crammed with domestic odds and ends \u2014 clothes, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,5],"tags":[1395,5811,2753],"class_list":["post-42153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-society","tag-art","tag-beijing","tag-song-dong","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.1 (Yoast SEO v24.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Collected Ingredients of a Beijing Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2009\/07\/the-collected-ingredients-of-a-beijing-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Collected Ingredients of a Beijing Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Holland Cotter of the New York Times reviews an unusual exhibit at MoMA, in which the full contents of the home of the artists&#8217; mother are on display: For nearly 60 years she lived in the city with her husband and two children in a tiny house crammed with domestic odds and ends \u2014 clothes, [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2009\/07\/the-collected-ingredients-of-a-beijing-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"China Digital Times (CDT)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ChinaDigitalTimes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-07-16T01:57:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/CDT-logo.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"186\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"177\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sophie Beach\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@cdt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@cdt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sophie Beach\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2009\/07\/the-collected-ingredients-of-a-beijing-life\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2009\/07\/the-collected-ingredients-of-a-beijing-life\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sophie Beach\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/#\/schema\/person\/7f19e31b674d57a7dc20aab8e908c663\"},\"headline\":\"The Collected Ingredients of a Beijing Life\",\"datePublished\":\"2009-07-16T01:57:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2009-07-16T01:57:24+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2009\/07\/the-collected-ingredients-of-a-beijing-life\/\"},\"wordCount\":304,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"art\",\"Beijing\",\"Song Dong\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Culture &amp; 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