Cleveland, Ohio.- The Cleveland Museum of Art is showcasing works of art by Fu Baoshi, a preeminent figure in twentieth-century Chinese art, in an exhibition on view through January 8th 2012. “Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965)” is the first retrospective in the Western Hemisphere of the artist who revolutionized the tradition of Chinese ink painting. The exhibition reveals the process of the artist’s self-discovery and personal struggle, as well as the complexity of art and politics in Republican and Communist China. Featuring 90 works on loan from the Nanjing Museum, one of the oldest and most comprehensive museums in China, this is the first collaboration between the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Nanjing Museum. “Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965)” considers the full scope of Fu Baoshi’s artistic career from the 1920s to 1965 within the art-historical, social, political and cultural contexts.
From traditional-style landscape and figure paintings demonstrating Fu’s artistic excellence and profundity, to political artwork manifesting state ideology under Chairman Mao Zedong, the wide variety of work that will be exhibited demonstrates the artist’s search for an artistic language capable of speaking for both self and the nation. Fu Baoshi’s art provides an important insight into the use of native tradition to present modern Chinese ink painting as a discipline distinct from Western and international socialist art of the time. It was symbolic of the Chinese view of their place and national identity in the world during the twentieth century. The exhibition will focus on specific aspects of modern Chinese art during revolutionary change, including the reinvention of a national style of Chinese painting (guohua), the role of Japan in China’s modern art discourses and the new meanings of ink painting in the People’s Republic of China. It will trace the development and transformation of Fu’s paintings at different stages of his life as he embraced Chinese art history and Eastern aesthetics with his early experiences in Japan, developed individual styles in his 1940s landscapes and figure paintings, transformed ink and brush in service to the masses after the Communist victories in 1949, and captured China’s territories with patriotic conviction in his late landscapes of the 1950s and 1960s. The Nanjing Museum, which is loaning the works, currently houses the most significant collection of Fu Baoshi’s art that escaped destruction during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), because they were preserved by both the Fu family and the museum after the artist’s death in 1965.
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) .The museum opened its doors to the public on June 6, 1916, with Wade’s grandson, Jeptha H. Wade II, proclaiming it, ‘for the benefit of all people, forever.’ Wade, like his grandfather, had a great interest in art and served as the museum’s first vice-president, and later as president in 1920. Today, the park, with the museum still its centerpiece, is on the National Register of Historic Places. In March 1958, the first addition to the building opened, doubling the museum’s floorspace. In 1971 the museum again expanded with the opening of the North Wing. With its stepped, two-toned granite facade, the addition designed by the Hungarian-born modernist architect Marcel Breuer, provided angular lines in distinct contrast with the flourishes of the 1916 building’s neoclassical facade. In 1983, a third addition was made to house the museum’s now expansive library, as well as to provide sufficient space for nine new galleries. Both the 1958 and 1983 additions, however, would be demolished to make way for the museum’s largest expansion to date, a glass and steel structure designed by award-winning Uruguyan architect, Rafael Viñoly. The museum’s building and renovation project, “Building for the Future”, began in 2005 and was originally targeted for completion in 2012 (now 2013). The $350 million project—two-thirds of which is earmarked for the complete renovation of the original structure—will add two new wings, and is the largest cultural project in Ohio’s history. The new east and west wings, as well as the enclosing of the atrium courtyard under a soaring glass canopy, will bring the museum’s total floor space to 592,000 square feet (55,000 m2) (an increase of approximately 65%). In June 2008, after being closed for nearly three years for the overhaul, the museum reopened 19 of its permanent galleries to the public in the renovated 1916 building main floor. On June 27, 2009, the newly constructed East Wing (which contains the Impressionist, Contemporary, and Modern art collections) opened to the public. On June 26, 2010, the ground level of the 1916 building reopened and now houses the collections of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Sub-Saharan African, Byzantine, and Medieval art. The expanded museum includes enhanced visitor amenities and a 34,000 square feet (3,200 m2) glass-covered courtyard.
The Cleveland Museum of Art divides its collections into 15 departments including Chinese Art, Modern European Art, African Art, Drawings, Prints, European Painting & Sculpture, Textiles & Islamic Art, American Painting & Sculpture, Greek & Roman Art, Contemporary Art, Medieval Art, Decorative Art & Design, Art of the Ancient Americas and Oceania, Photography and Contemporary Art. Artists represented by significant works include Botticelli, Caravaggio, El Greco, Nicolas Poussin, Peter Paul Rubens, Frans Hals, Gerard David, Francisco Goya, J.M.W. Turner, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pail Gauguin, Church, Cole, Corot, Eakins, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, George Bellows. The Museum has been active recently in acquiring later 20th-century art, having added important works by Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Christo, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, Clemente, Kossoff, Chuck Close, Mangold, Tansey and Sol LeWitt, among others.The museum also maintains a schedule of special exhibitions, lectures, films and musical programs. The department of performing arts, music and film hosts a film series and the VIVA! & Gala concert series, which brings creative energies of internationally renowned artists into Cleveland. The department of education at CMA creates programs for lifelong learning from lectures, talks and studio classes to outreach programs and community events, such as Parade the Circle”, Chalk Festival and the “Winter Lights Lantern Festival”. Educational programs include distance learning, “Art to Go”, and the “Educator’s Academy”. The museum is also home to the Ingalls Library, one of the largest art museum libraries in the United States with almost 431,000 volumes. In addition to its comprehensive collection of fine art, the Cleveland Museum of Art is also home to the Ingalls Library, one of the largest art libraries in the United States. As part of the initial 1913 plan by the museum’s founders, a library of 10,000 volumes was to be assembled, to include photographs and archival works. By the 1950s, the collection of books alone had surpassed 37,000 and the photographic collection neared 47,000. Today, with more than 431,000 volumes (and 500,000 digitized slides), renovation of the library space was one of the focal points in the museum’s $350 million dollar expansion. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.clevelandart.org