Week 7-Industrialisation and Cao Fei's RMB City

The artists of the late 1800's and early 1900's, in Europe, were influenced by the Industrial revolution.

1. What and when was the Industrial Revolution?

The Industrial Revolution defined as the application of power-driven machinery to manufacturing. It had its beginning in remote times, and is still continuing in some places. In the eighteenth century all of western Europe began to industrialize rapidly, but in England the process was most highly accelerated. England’s head start may be attributed to the emergence of a number of simultaneous factors.

Britain had burned up her magnificent oak forests in its fireplaces, but large deposits of coal were still available for industrial fuel. There was an abundant labor supply to mine coal and iron, and to man the factories. From the old commercial empire there remained a fleet, and England still possessed colonies to furnish raw materials and act as captive markets for manufactured goods. Tobacco merchants of Glasgow and tea merchants of London and Bristol had capital to invest and the technical know-how derived from the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Last, the insularity of England saved industrial development from being interrupted by war. Soon all western Europe was more or less industrialized, and the coming of electricity and cheap steel after 1850 further speeded the process. (Rempel, 2006).

Both paintings featured on this blog, that are from the early 1900s were painted by Modernist painters from the group called 'Futurists'. The Futurists celebrated the machine, and objects in motion. Their primary objective was to depict movement, which they saw as symbolic of their commitment to the dynamic forward thrust of the 20th century.

2. Research both Modernist paintings in order to comment on the subject matter, form and style used to celebrate the machine and motion in each painting. Answer the question in 2 parts for each painting.

The City Rises (La città che sale) (1910) is an important painting by the Italian painter Umberto Boccioni.

The City Rises is a monumental painting that depicts the construction of an electric power plant. In this idealized scene, the structure being built is overshadowed by the workers whose activities fill most of the canvas.

Buildings in construction in a suburb can be seen with chimneys in the upper part, but the most of the space is occupied by men and horses, melted together in a dynamic effort. Boccioni thus emphasizes some among the most typical elements of futurism, the exaltation of human work and the importance of the modern town, built around modern necessities. The painting portrays the construction of a new city, with developments and technology. Suburbs, and the urban environment in general, formed the basis of many of Boccioni's paintings, from the capture of the staccato sounds of construction in Street-pavers to the riot of sound and colour offered to the observer of street scenes, as typified by The Street Enters the House.

Dynamism of A Dog on a Leash (1912) Giacomo Balla

This painting shows A lady is walking a dog; a widow and her pet. There are many legs, tails and strings to show the movement. The lady has roughly 15 feet, variably solid and see-through. The dog has eight countable tails, while its legs are lost in flurry of blurry overlays. Four swinging leads go between them. The idea of breaking down a movement into separate positions wasn't unknown to our ancestors. But between medieval and modern art, the trick is kept out of painting. The picture's sense of movement is created out of stark black forms and weird flowing lacey veils. (Lubbock, 2009)

Cao Fei's RMB City (2007-9) refers to China's recent rapid industialisation and urbanization.
(www.artspace.org.nz/exhibitions/2009/cafeintopia.asp)

3. Research Cao Fei's RMB City (2007-9)  in order to comment on this work in more depth.
i.e what images has she used in her digital collage that refer to China's present and history, and why has she used these.

She used China’s flag, panda, Shanghai Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Tian an men gate, Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Chinese characters, which tell us it’s in China. The crane, skyscrapers, wheels, flyovers show the development of Industrial Revolution at full speed and great and earth-shaking historical changes have taken place in China in the 20th century.

Named after Chinese money, RMB City shows a perverse view of Beijing—a blend of communism, socialism, and capitalism. Like Beijing itself, it is constantly under construction, candy-striped smoke stacks suggest continuous industrial production and ships move goods swiftly in and out of port. A giant shopping cart, filled with skyscrapers and religious monuments, floats nearby; and Tiananmen Square has been converted into a swimming pool. (Artspace, 2009)

4. RMB City is described as a utopia/dystopia. Comment on what these terms mean, and how they can be applied to the work.

RMB City is not a real exist city. It has been created by Cao Fei’s avatar China Tracy as an experimental utopian world for the 3D online virtual community of Second Life. Institutions and investors have been invited to buy buildings in RMB City and program events and activities within them where other Second Life users can participate. Thousands of young people in Asia and around the world are embracing Second Life as a “parallel universe” on the Internet.

RMB City will be the condensed incarnation of contemporary Chinese cities with most of their characteristics; a series of new Chinese fantasy realms that are highly self-contradictory, inter-permeative, laden with irony and suspicion, and extremely entertaining and pan-political. China’s current obsession with land development in all its intensity will be extended to Second Life. A rough hybrid of communism, socialism and capitalism, RMB City will be realized in a globalized digital sphere combining overabundant symbols of Chinese reality with cursory imaginings of the country’s future.

5. Although the Modernist paintings and the contemporary digital work have emerged from different contexts, there are also many similarities. Comment on the similarities that you can see in the work. Look at the moving digital image at vimeo.com/4272260, if you have not already researched it.

There are many similarities between Modernist painting and the contemporary digital work:

1, Expressing own incenter feeling.

2, Transform incarnates in many ways and implicates enormous spirit connotations. Analyzed form idea to the spirit connotation, and compared from landscape orientation to portrait, in which many objects are applied, such as psychology and receive aesthetics theories and so on.

3, The culture significances are revealed deeply.

4, Expression in multiple viewpoint, interlaced spatio-temporal illusory.

5,  Pursuit new ideas and display mechanical beauty.

References:

Artspace, （2009， June 18）.  Cao Fei – Utopia. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0906/S00212.htm

Lubbock, T. (2009, September 4). Great Works: Dynamism of A Dog on a Leash (1912) Giacomo Balla http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/great-works-dynamism-of-a-dog-on-a-leash-1912-giacomo-balla-1781174.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_Rises_(Boccioni)

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/boccioni.html

http://www.learner.org/courses/globalart/work/173/index.html

http://www.douban.com/event/10228289/

http://turbulence.org/blog/2008/02/27/live-stage-cao-feis-rmb-city-nyc/

http://www.lw23.com/lunwen_213884927/