Hu Ming by vrdam

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鸣谢:

呼鸣 HU MING

Wild Peony Pty Ltd ABN 52 002 714 276 PO Box 636 Broadway NSW 2007 Australia Fax: 61 2 9267 0688 Copyright©Hu Ming First published in 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 1 8769 57077 版权所有，翻印必究

北京东方实得文化传播有限公司上海甲一天文化传播有限公司

呼鸣 HU MING www.hu-ming.com/webmail E-mail: ming@hu-ming.com

John McDonald 为呼鸣序 “为了建设伟大的社会主义国家，激励广大的妇女群体参与生育活动是头等大事”，毛主席在他的著作中这样写到。如果我们以情色的角度看待“英姿飒爽”这个词，呼鸣作品中具有强健美的中国女性就恰如其分的表达了毛主席对妇女的定位。她笔下的强悍的士兵和健壮的乡下女孩看起来似乎适合任何形式的“多产”，无论这种 “多产”是出于为社会主义建设的英雄行为还是只是简单的抚育后代。事实上，他们似乎更优于多产计划对人的要求。他们有着足以令奥林匹克运动员自惭形遂的身形。对一个崭新的中国来讲，他们是英勇的女战士、性爱女神、超女。呼鸣笔下是被激发的或者正在被激发的女性。她们的性能力旺盛得富余，但同时也离奇得率真自然。政治宣传海报上的那些在田地和工场里充当劳动力，扛武器，举旗帜，脸上洋溢着幸福笑容的漂亮女孩是她们的先辈。不是你想象的长满老茧的双手和繁重劳动下的龌龊的脏衣服，这些女孩总是穿得干净整洁，打满胭脂和口红。她们对新社会的热情和忠诚延续着她们年轻时的魅力。当然，这是纯粹的幻想，政治的需要不会认为繁重劳动下黝黑的皮肤与过早衰老的妇女形象能够唤起女性的热情。无论是高雅的还是大众的艺术形式，中国艺术从不屑于对女性进行现实主义的描绘。如果我们把儒家思想对女人的评价说成是二等公民，那是对儒家思想的奉承，实际上，更确切的应该说，他们认为女人是没有实体的。“对女人进行教育，你能从她身上得到的回报就是厌倦和抱怨”，宋朝的一篇儒学文章中这样写到。

除了抚养孩子，操持家务这些职责外，女性的美德是通过保守贞节、自我牺牲、无条件服从甚至是自杀来体现。中国的文学史上随处可以找到宁可结束生命也不能丢失贞节荣耀的典范女性。四大美人之一的杨贵妃就是这一类型的一个代表：她让皇帝的士兵来处死自己以此来换取皇帝宝座的稳固。儒家思想认为这才是爱情故事的幸福结局。儒家思想倡导著名的三从：“婚前服从父亲，婚后服从丈夫，丈夫死后服从儿子。”女人被视作美丽的物体——她们是被动的，永远心平气和的，对于男性的决定和要求全盘接受。当毛主席把他的革命矛头指向中国传统价值观时，他的首要目标就是要解放这些受压抑的中国女性。在他的著作中，他不断号召中国女性应受到尊重和平等的对待。毛主席使离婚合法化，但他的所作所为更趋向于政治目的性而不是出于对中国女性的同情。 1923年，Kemal Atatürk — 二十世纪另一位伟大的领导者说到：“如果一个社会只满足于改变一半性别人的生活质量，那么它将被大于另一半的力量所削弱。” Atatürk是在对一位伊斯兰教的教民发表演说，这位教民无疑是因为西方基督教看不到女人对社会的贡献能力而遭受痛苦。土耳其比它的邻国们更加繁荣，是因为它是一个长期稳固的社会，但是生活在信奉正统派基督教政权下的妇女们仍然受到不寻常的残酷对待。毛主席曾经与Atatürk的看法相同：既然女性能够做出重大的贡献，那么为什么把她们排除在正常的社会群体之外? 如果中国想让正在急速发展的人口都能丰衣足食，那么就要发动一切能发动的力量。毛主席这样写到“最大限度的让妇女参与农场劳作，”而且“ 女人可以象男人那样做体力劳动，只是她们不能在生育期间做这种工作罢了。”某些人甚至想用“不幸”来形容女人的这一特殊时期。

早期宣传海报上的乡下女孩们就是这些启蒙见解下的受益者。毛主席的政策让她们有机会在新社会里发挥自己的作用，她们对此乐此不疲。例如，在这种新的分配制度下，她们有权利驾驶拖拉机——这也成了海报和宣传画最偏爱的主题。这些优秀的社会主义少女，以一种反常的方式，可以被看作是生活在二十世纪三十年代充满罪恶的资本主义制度下的有着错综复杂文化的大上海海报中为香烟作广告的那些荡妇和女的士司机的年轻姐妹。区别在于这些香烟女孩们诱惑的是每一个潜在的可能的顾客，而与她们相对应的是海报上的乡下女孩们并不出卖肉体，她们出卖的是政治态度。她们的潜在顾客不是个体的吸烟者，而是整个团体——或者可以说是整个世界。并且关键问题是性是无处不在的，无论你多么费力试图忽略它，但对每一个年轻有魅力的女人的描绘都少不了这一方面。这也是存在于呼鸣画中的不变的洞察力，无论她是在描绘具有曲线美的乡下女孩还是军队姑娘，她的主题渗透在性的吸引力上，即使她所要表现的人物可能会与共产党宣传画上的人做着同样的例行公事。从上千年的儒家思想的禁锢，到纯粹的清教徒主义的文化大革命，中国就像是一个在性压抑下的活动期的火山，长期处于即将爆发的边缘。如果在当代中国，性似乎看上去已无处不在，但它仍不是一个能广泛讨论的话题。政府也不会钟爱这种可能会引起混乱、无序和个性自由的性解放思想。

ENEMY INVASSION ALARM 紧急集合

2006

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 140 x 106 cm

呼鸣的画是对一个骚乱的、狂饮的真实世界的写照，这个世界对于什么是能被社会尊重和接受的有着严格的限定。她的画可能是拙笨的模仿，但是它们表达了对中国艺术和历史传统的大的情感。她的艺术素材来源于古代的皇帝﹑佛教和道教艺术以及现代艺术。1990年在她去新西兰转向油画创作以前，她的创作主要是中国画的工笔风格，其中所讲究的流畅的线条和对细节的雕琢仍是她现在作品的主要特点。她对中国艺术的掌握通晓豁达，她的作品深深的扎根于中国式的传统象征主义。然而，呼鸣艺术成功的最大关键是她二十年在中国人民解放军军队中的生涯体验，在那里她达到了专业的顶峰。从1970年到1990年间，中国经历了文化大革命的最后六年，毛主席的逝世，东西方紧张关系的逐渐解冻，天安门广场的风云变幻，这一切都促使呼鸣决定离开军队，移居国外。在军队的日子里，呼鸣开始对种种形式的困乏习以为常。她在外科手术室操作间和停尸房里穿梭，处理过被处决犯人的脏器和死去婴孩的皮肤。她看到了太多的阴暗面，以至于在她的画中都影射着对生命的极度热爱。就像许多中国男性理论艺术家那样，呼鸣可以把她的一生用于妇女和裸体画的创作，但是她不竭的想象力使她不可能安顿于这种收入颇丰，妩媚情色的伊甸园世界。呼鸣参军时正是文化大革命的中期，这一时期，艺术家唯一被应允可以进行创作的主题就是宣传画。通过创作的类型和内容对工作进行评价，这样所要表达的信息的细微差别可以被清晰的表现出来。性是主要的禁忌，和其它表现女性柔美的方面一样，这些都被视为是颓废的资本主义的烂疡。单调的着装，简单的发型以及准男子气概的身体，那一时期在海报和油画上的女性的确达到了与男性理想中的平等。在中国的历史上，生平第一次，女人和男人站在了同一条水平线上：同时也成为了机械工作劳动下的英雄和大规模艺术破坏与人文残害下愤怒的赤脚士兵。

TRANSPARENT MILITARY UNIFORM - PATROL 透明军装系列-巡逻

2007

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 140 x 106 cm

HELLO 你好

2007

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 106 x 280 cm

一直以来，每天都要被迫看着那些宣传画，甚至于在这种强硬的意识形态方针下进行主题绘画创作，如今，呼鸣要脱缚这一切曾有的禁锢。她笔下的军队女孩们穿着的卡其色的军装。像猫咪一样懒洋洋的躺靠在军被上，任何的一切军事戒律都似乎抛到了九霄云外。在她其中的一幅画中，一群袒胸露背的女士兵们正在阅读毛主席的著作，看起来就像是在看好莱坞的娱乐杂志。胸部和臀部羞涩的暴露着，看起来像是那些以男人受众为准的杂志里的成人娱乐版面，但这不是色情文学。这些女孩子们不参与任何形式的性活动，她们也从不暴露最隐私的部位。她们是穿军装的孕育女神，高贵、纯洁。呼鸣可能是有一种对她年轻时代的怀旧情结．那时的中国人民生活在全然无视外部世界的无知里，束缚在厚重的宣传画下，并且在毛泽东思想下洋洋自得。“社会主义为我们创造了公平合理的社会，而资本主义和帝国主义把他们的意愿强加于西方那些不幸的公民”。大部分的中国人通过道听途说知道了他们意识形态上的敌人，却从没想过抬眼看一看北京和上海的高墙上飘扬的广告牌和令他们讨厌的设计师的标签。呼鸣画中的军队女孩似乎完全没有意识到她们所穿的制服的精致布料会清晰的暴露她们的身体。她们看起来就像是江青的八个革命样板戏《红色娘子军》中的扮演角色。呼鸣说身体和欲望可以遮挡在军装下，但却不能使其安于此。这些透明或半透明的军装同样不会受到军营里的男性的注意，人们有时候也会诧异于梦到自己坐在学校的凳子上，或是在公共汽车里，但却穿着内衣或是一丝不挂。当我们生活在压力和焦虑下，能准确地意识到失败和蒙羞的可能时，我们也许会经历这种梦境。有什么比文化大革命更能引起人们的忧虑呢? 它是如此暴力地打破了事物的规律。在那个年代里，年轻人对他们的长辈发号施令，学生鞭笞他们的老师，无知的人比有学识的人被认为更有价值。一切按照惯例认为是好的东西都变成了坏的，甚至犯罪的行为可以得到法律的支持。时局动荡，前程未卜，人们期待看到新政策的出现，从而展开一些新的生活形式。

当中国从精神错乱的文化大革命中苏醒过来时，许多人为他们曾经的所作所为感到羞愧，为一个在十年的时间里如此毁灭自己遗产的社会感到羞愧。呼鸣作品中穿着内衣的军队女孩，是对这种羞愧和焦虑的一种幽默式的写照。她们在阅兵场上一付严肃得没有表情的脸，佩戴着一列列整齐的勋章，漾出了一种让人感觉诙谐的、性感十足的奇怪韵味。这种变化可以从Helmut Newton 的照片中体会到，画面中偶尔的裸露可以通过华丽的家居和高级时尚女装的点缀来弥补。正如Freud对我们讲述的那样，幽默，是从紧张中获得的一丝放松。呼鸣作品中那些端庄却极具性感的军队女孩就是要让我们能在刚刚过去的疯狂后可以展露出微笑。艺术家祈志龙绘画过许多以身穿中国人民解放军制服的女性为题材的无声讽刺作品，呼鸣的风格与其截然相反，在呼鸣的作品中，有些东西让人感到过激和不安。她的幽默是超现实的或是与现实对抗的。对于什么是高雅的或是粗劣的品味，她从没有严格的界定，也不会畏惧粗劣的品味和粗野的行为。呼鸣有的是她要执著的从一幅幅绘画中寻求美感。无论她创作的是鱼、动物、工笔手法下的尊贵而有知性的女人，还是她擅长的乡下女孩和军队姑娘，呼鸣的目的是要创造出美丽、难忘的形象。如果这种追求把她导引到一条新奇和滑稽的道路上去，那么在当代这个充斥着抄袭和克隆的艺术世界里，当然我们应该为她的创意心存感激。

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD SERIES I - PROCESSED FOOD 转基因食品系列之-流水作业 2006

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 90 x 122 cm

此次展览的作品中《新八十七神仙卷-我们的队伍向太阳》是呼鸣的艺术生涯中最巨大和宏伟的创作。长度上有十四米长，它的创作灵感来源于北宋朝代的卷轴画《八十七神仙卷》，此原作现存于徐悲鸿纪念馆。呼鸣的作品替换了原创中的八十七位神仙中的男神仙的位置，而相对应的是按照朝代的顺序编排设计了一系列的有代表性的中国女性，从十七世纪末一直到今天，包括从古代的皇后、妃嫔和劳动妇女到当今时代的时尚宠儿。这是一幅过去与当今交织缠绕的作品，会让现代女性更清楚看到祖先所受的可怕束缚的阴影。这是一幅强调代与代之间演变的完整画卷，尽管人物服饰的不同，时代政治的各不相同。让人时时感到巨大变化中的惊憾。画卷的结尾，恰到好处地处理为两个穿着比基尼这种至今仍会让人发表一番时尚言论的时装的女孩快乐地跳跃着。比基尼女孩的出现为呼鸣在我们眼前展示的这场长篇复杂的戏剧画上了完美的惊叹号。像是在宣告，中国女人朝着太阳向前迈出自己伟大一步的时刻到来了。 2007年7月

John McDonald 为《悉尼早报》作了二十多年的著名艺术评论家。他与摄影师Ian Lloyd合作出版了《工作室—澳大利亚画家创造性本质的发源地》，目前他致力于研究澳大利亚艺术的新动向。

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD SERIES II - METAMORPHOSIS 转基因食品系列之-蜕变

2007

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 160 x 200 cm

BIG ANT 大蚂蚁

2006 Oil on Canvas 布面油画 68 x 82 cm

WAKE UP CALL 起床号

2007 Oil on Canvas 布面油画 140 x 106 cm

Hu Ming by John McDonald “In order to build a great socialist society,” wrote Mao, in his little red book, “it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity.” If we consider the erotic overtones of the English word “arouse”, Chairman Mao’s vision of women’s role sets the scene for Hu Ming’s gallery of strong, sensuous Chinese women. Her sturdy soldiers and peasant girls seem fit for any kind of ‘productive’ activity, whether it be the heroic task of building socialism, or the bearing of children. In fact, they seem almost too well adapted to the needs of production. They have the kind of bodies that would put Olympic athletes to shame. They are amazons, sex goddesses and super models for a new China. Hu Ming’s women are both aroused, and arousing. Their sexuality is superabundant, overflowing, but also strangely ingenuous. They are the descendants of all the pretty girls in CCP propaganda posters who laboured in the fields and factories, carried weapons and banners, with looks of beatific happiness welded to their faces. Instead of the calloused hands and filthy clothes of hard-working peasants, these girls always looked neat and clean, and seemed to have an ample supply of rouge and lipstick. Their incipient glamour was sustained by their burning faith in a new society. It was sheer fantasy, of course, but the party authorities could hardly expect the masses to be inspired by images of sun-ravaged women, prematurely aged by back-breaking labour.

NATURAL COLOR 本色布

2006 Oil on Canvas 布面油画 137 x 96 cm

Chinese art, in both its élite and popular forms, has never been interested in a realistic portrayal of women. It would be flattering to say that Confucianism treated women as second-class citizens – “nonentities” would be a more accurate description. “Give a woman an education and all you get from her is boredom and complaints,” says one Confucian text from the Song dynasty. Apart from their assigned roles as child-bearers and housekeepers, women attained virtue through chastity, self-sacrifice, blind obedience and frequently, suicide. Chinese literature is filled with stories of Exemplary Women who killed themselves rather than lose their honour, or in order to save their husbands. Yang Guifei, one of the legendary Four Beauties, is representative of the type: she allows herself to be executed by the Emperor’s men so they might continue to obey and protect him. In Confucian terms, this was the happy end to a love story. Confucianism imposed the famous rule of Threefold Obedience: “Obey your father before marriage, your husband after marriage, and your son after the death of the husband.” Women were depicted as beautiful objects – passive, calm, and accepting of all male decisions and desires. When Mao began his revolutionary assault on traditional Chinese values, he took the subjugation of women as one of his prime targets. In his writings, he continually calls for women to be respected and treated with equality. Mao liberalized the divorce laws, and ushered in a brief period of sexual liberation, but his agenda seems to have been pragmatic rather than compassionate.

TRANSPARENT MILITARY UNIFORM - YELLOW RIVER, IT'S ME 透明军装系列-黄河黄河我是泰山

2007

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 140 x 106 cm

It was another great twentieth century leader, Kemal Atatürk, who in 1923, said: “If a society contents itself with modernising only one half of the sexes, that society will be weakened by more than one half.” Atatürk was addressing an Islamic audience that has undoubtedly suffered in relation to the Christian West, by its failure to recognize women’s capacity to contribute to society. Turkey is more prosperous than its neighbours because it is a largely secular society, but in more fundamentalist regimes women are still treated with extraordinary brutality. Mao had come to the same conclusions as Atatürk: why exclude women from the normal social processes, when they can make such a significant contribution. If China was going to feed its booming population, then all hands were needed. “Rely overwhelmingly on women to do farm work,” wrote Mao. And again: “Women can do as much physical labour as men. It’s just that they can’t do such work during childbirth.” One almost feels like adding the word, “unfortunately”. The peasant girls on the early propaganda posters were the beneficiaries of this enlightened attitude. Mao had made it possible for them to play their part in the new society and they couldn’t stop smiling. Under the new dispensation, for instance, they had the privilege of being able to drive tractors – a favourite theme of posters and propaganda photographs. These good communist maidens were, in a perverse way, the younger sisters of the vamps and taxi girls who advertised cigarettes on posters in the sinful, capitalist, multicultural Shanghai of the 1930s. The difference is that the cigarette girls were giving the come-on to each potential customer, while their peasant relations were not selling sex, but the right political attitude. Their potential customers were not individual smokers, but an entire community – perhaps the entire world.

The only problem is that sex is everywhere, no matter how strenuously one tries to ignore it, and every depiction of a young, attractive woman will have its own sexual undertones. This is the abiding insight of Hu Mingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings, whether she is depicting curvaceous peasants or army girls, her subjects are saturated in sexual allure even as they go through the same routines that might be found in CCP propaganda paintings. From a thousand years of Confucian up-tightness, to the extreme puritanism of the Cultural Revolution, China appears as a rumbling volcano of sexual repression, forever on the verge of eruption. If sex seems to be everywhere in contemporary China, it is still not a subject that is widely discussed. Neither do the authorities look indulgently on the idea of sexual revolution, with its suggestions of anarchy, disorder, and personal freedom. The world of Hu Mingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings is a riotous, Dionysian reflection of the real world, with its rigid conventions as to what is socially respectable or acceptable. Her paintings may be parodies but they demonstrate the greatest affection for the traditions of Chinese art and history. She draws her imagery from the imperial past, from Buddhist and Taoist art, as well as the art of the modern era. Before turning to oil paints when she moved to New Zealand in 1990, Hu Ming worked in the Gong-bi style, with the fine lines and attention to detail that still features prominently in her paintings. She is immensely knowlegeable about Chinese art, and her works are steeped in traditional symbolism.

ENEMY COMING AND I FORGOT TO WEAR UNDERWEAR AGAIN 敌情紧急又忘穿内裤 2005

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 136 x 97 cm

Yet the ultimate key to Hu Ming’s art must lie in the twenty years she spent in the People’s Liberation Army, where she rose to the rank of major. Those years, from 1970 to 1990, encompass the last six years of the Cultural Revolution, the death of Mao, the gradual thaw in East-West relations, and the savage repression of Tiananmen Square, which convinced her to leave the army and emigrate. During her years in the army, Hu Ming became accustomed to all kinds of privations. She worked in operating theatres and morgues, she dealt with the bodies of executed criminals and dead infants. She saw so much of the dark side that her paintings now project a ferocious love of life. In the army she lived in close proximity to other women, with communal showers, mess halls and sleeping quarters. Women were the objects of her closest study, and have become the predominant subject of her work. Hu Ming says she loves men, but doesn’t understand them. When she looks for beauty, she turns always to the female form. In those sculptured faces, those perfect hips, waists and busts, Hu Ming finds a kind of timeless, classical ideal. She could spend her life painting nudes and courtesans, like so many (male) Chinese academic artists, but her restless imagination could not settle down in this well-paid, softporn paradise. When Hu Ming joined the army it was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, when the only permissible

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD SERIES III - SLOWLY CHANGING COLOR 转基因食品系列之-渐变

2006

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 137 x 104 cm

subjects for artists were propaganda images. Works were closely vetted in terms of style and content, so that every nuance of the intended message would be clearly conveyed. Sexuality was a major taboo, as was any vestige of femininity – viewed as a sign of bourgeois decadence. With their drab clothes, functional hair styles and quasi-masculine bodies, the women that appeared in the posters and paintings of the time achieved an ideal equality with their male counterparts. For the first time in Chinese history, women and men found themselves on the same level: as ciphers, robots, heroes of industry, and angry foot-soldiers in Mao’s campaign of full-scale cultural vandalism and thuggery. Having been forced to look at those images, and even obliged to paint and draw within such uncompromising ideological guidelines, nowadays Hu Ming is getting her revenge. Her army girls wear their khaki uniforms like boutique fashions. They lounge around like cats, all thoughts of military discipline vanished from their minds. In one of her paintings, a group of scantily-clad soldiers are reading Mao’s little red book as if it were a Hollywood gossip magazine. Breasts and buttocks are coyly exposed, as if for one of those men’s magazines that aims to be “adult entertainment” rather than pornography. These girls are not engaged in any form of sexual activity, and even though they seem completely at ease with their bodies, they never expose their most intimate secrets. Fertility goddesses in uniform, they have an air of dignity, even innocence.

TRANSPARENT MILITARY UNIFORM - STAND UP 透明军装系列-立正 2007

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 140 x 106 cm

This may be Hu Mingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nostalgic view of those days of her youth, when the Chinese population lived in massive ignorance of the rest of the world, cocooned by a thick blanket of propaganda, being sustained by the wisdom of Chairman Mao. Socialism provided a fair and just society, while capitalists and imperialists imposed their will on the hapless citizens of the west. The vast majority of the Chinese people knew only what they were told about their ideological enemies, and never expected to see the day when neon advertising signs flashed from the walls of Beijing and Shanghai, and clothes bore designer labels. Hu Mingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s army girls often seem completely unaware that the uniforms they are wearing are made from some diaphanous material that exposes their bodies with perfect clarity. They are like characters from one of Jiang Qingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Model Revolutionary Operas adapted for a season at the Folies Bergeres. Hu Ming is saying that the body and its sexuality can be clothed in a uniform, but never fully tamed. But because these translucent uniforms seem to go equally unnoticed by the male soldiers in the same battalion, one thinks also of that common dream whereby we find ourselves sitting at a school-desk, or on the bus, wearing only our pajamas or perhaps nothing at all. These dreams occur in times of stress and anxiety, when we are acutely aware of the possibilities of failure or humiliation.

COOL 爽

2007

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 160 x 200 cm

SUN SHOWER 日光浴 2003 Oil on Canvas 布面油画 102 x 136 cm

What could have been more conducive to anxiety than the Cultural Revolution, when the age-old order of things was so violently upset? In those days the young people gave orders to their elders, students bullied their teachers, and the ignorant were judged more valuable than the learned. Everything that had been conventionally seen as good was transmuted into bad, while criminal behaviour received the backing of the law. The times were so unstable and unpredictable that people waited for each new proclamation before undertaking any form of activity. When China awoke from the delirium of the Cultural Revolution, many people felt ashamed of their behaviour and ashamed for a society that could destroy so much of its own heritage in the course of a decade. Hu Mingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s army girls in their negligĂŠe-uniforms, are comic symbols of that shame and anxiety. Their deadpan appearance as they stand to attention on the parade ground, or tag along with a line of soldiers, incites the kind of humorous, sexually-charged surprise that one finds in a Helmut Newton photograph, where casual nudity is offset by opulent furnishings and haute couture. Humour, as Freud tells us, is a release from tension, and Hu Mingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s demure but sexy army girls are intended to make us smile when we look back on the madness of the recent past.

As opposed to an artist such as Qi Zhi Long, who has painted many quietly-ironical pictures of women in PLA uniform, there is something excessive and unsettling in Hu Mingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work. Her humour is surreal and confronting. She has no constricting ideas about good and bad taste, no fear of kitsch or vulgarity. What Hu Ming does have is a sense of beauty that she pursues fearlessly from one picture to the next. Whether she is painting fish or animals, courtly women in the Gong-bi manner, or her familiar cast of nubile peasant girls and soldiers, Hu Ming is aiming to make beautiful, memorable images. If that quest leads her down strange and comical pathways, we should perhaps be grateful for her originality in a contemporary art world over-populated by copycats and clones.

TRANSPARENT MILITARY UNIFORM - KUNG FU 透明军装系列-武打 2006

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 140 x 106 cm

It is fitting that for her most important exhibition in China, Hu Ming has painted the largest, most ambitious work of her career. At 14 metres in length, 出土文物新八十七神仙卷（Relic of the New 87 Immortals) takes its inspiration from a scroll painting of the Northern Song dynasty, secured for the nation by the wellknown artist Xu Beihong. In place of the 87 Immortals in the original painting, Hu Ming choreographs a procession of Chinese women through the ages, from the empresses and concubines of ancient times to the fashion victims of today. It is a work in which the past and the present intertwine promiscuously, with the modern women being shadowed by the ghostly forms of their ancestors. It is a triumphal march that emphasizes the continuity between generations, no matter how different the garments and the politics. It ends, appropriately enough, with a jump for joy by two girls in bikinis, the smallest garments with which one may still make a fashion statement. The bikini girls act as exclamation marks for the long, complex drama that Hu Ming has unfolded before us. She seems to be saying that is time for Chinese women to take their own great leap forward.

July 2007

John McDonald has been art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald for more than twenty years. He has collaborated with photographer, Ian Lloyd, on the book: Studio, Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity (2007) and is currently working on a new history of Australian art.

RELIC OF THE NEW 87 IMMORTALS - FOLLOWING THE SUN

新八十七神仙卷 - 我们的队伍向太

阳 2007

Oil on Canvas 布面油画 140 x 1400 cm

Detail No.1 of Relic of the New 87 Immortals 新八十七神仙卷 - 我们的队伍向太阳细节1 2007