Sylvan Shan

Weekly Sculpture Blog

[sylvanshan]

In the modern and contemporary period, the common quality of non-representational and figurative sculptures is that neither is true to life. It is only a matter of how much the real life is manipulated and for what purpose. Giacometti and Newman are both said to be dealing with existentialism and spirituality in their art, yet Giacometti’s sculptures are easily recognized as stylized figures, while Newman’s absolutely geometrical and non-representational. Interestingly, as sculptors, they both seem to have continued the same style of their painting. Comparing their works Man Pointing, 1947 and Here 1 (to Marcia) 1950/62, one obvious similarity is the slim and elongated silhouette, as if deprived of all extra flesh but left only the core, the simple fact that it exists in space.

Although Giacometti’s sculpture is obviously more figurative, it carries a similar sense of universality to the geometrical sculpture of Newman, for there is no intention to emphasize individuality, but rather general states of being. There is a little more emotion that could be picked up from Giacometti’s work, for obviously we can still relate ourselves to manipulated figures, mostly sadness, the state of being lost, or emptiness - all experience and possession of materials and reduced to simply being. Newman’s Here 1 in its geometrical form is less recognizable and in a sense more universal, referring to not only living beings but also objects. Historian Roann Barris makes a good point that Giacometti’s figures do not reward the viewer who comes closer to the figure, and they do not provide a more detailed or refined view of the model. It is the same in Newman’s sculptures -  even the bumpy textures are similar. It can be argued that the artists have chosen the unit they focus on as “a being”, not groups of beings nor detailed components of a being. This is the major way we usually perceive ourself, even though science and philosophy have been exploring the other perspectives. Now that the unit is set up, it is through observing the relationship between this existing unit and the space, the presence and the absence, or “this experience of two competing conditions” as Barris calls it, that one becomes aware of the meaning of existence.

[sylvanshan]

Dia:Beacon  (alternate blog for week 8′s topic on female artists)

The very first art work I saw was Walter De Maria’s 360˚ I Ching/64 Sculptures and I had no idea what I was supposed to get from it. That was probably why through out the rest of the visit I was thinking about the question “how much does an artwork relate to the audience”. It was an interesting aspect to explore especially in a museum largely filled with minimalist and conceptual art. Also it has been a persistent question for me since I came from a non-artistic background but somehow got to be exposed with highly professional art critics and ways of thinking during college. Even though I get excited sometimes finding myself writing sentences that sound a little bit like those we read, you know, the established ones, an original part of me always wants to jump back to an outsider who has not been trained or looking at art for years. Is this art comprehensible? In more neutral words (so as to clarify an elite artist is not authority and it is not the audience’s fault when they do not “understand” or like something ), is this art attractive? Does it matter or get to me? Is the artist being too smart and too exclusive that he is not meaningful anymore to the majority? This is obviously a very subjective side to stand on, for to me art is the most valuable when it talks useful things to people, instead of just a high-end game played by a few.

So, I was walking with my eyes wide open, trying not to have presumptions in mind but simply observing what my eyes are drawn to and for how long (which should to be distinguished from only reacting to aesthetic, since in a quick second the mind is already linking the visual to its thoughts and feelings). It was interesting to find out that intuitively Blinky Palermo’s color combinations in the same frame made more sense (in other words mattered more) to me than the colored pieces cut into different shapes. I suppose those shapes were to a certain degree too random to bring anything feeling to me, so my reaction was not as strong. In the color combination, it is easier to follow what is going on, as you might be choosing your favorite one, or experiencing different feelings emitted from the various combinations. Also I recalled the experience of choosing colors in a store like Ikea or Muji. My logic self tells me that this has nothing to do with the art. But deep down I am really trying to bring in attention how much effect during art looking is caused by subjective memories, and if you are not forced to look at art with a certain purpose, the real experience would really be something more like a constant action of linking random thoughts and emotions.

Richard Serra’s work turned out to be more adorable than I always assumed. I had always had a hard time understanding why necessarily that material, or why necessarily that shape, why block people on their way. The works exhibited in the museum however, all made sense in person. There is a vivid motion in the static metal sculptures. The slope placed in front of windows, especially, looked like something I or my vehicle have stepped onto many times in real life. It was a little hard to distinguish these from Joseph Beuys’ brownish sculptures, for they looked similar and both really talked about industrial materials, materials of our life. His stacks of mat were made with rubber, the identical material, but with a few “fake” ones in metal mixed within them. An absurdity was created when an unfamiliar material replaced the original one together with its original functionality.

Gerhard Richter’s installation did not seem like a very humane piece from far away. However I ended up staying there the longest looking at my reflections from different angles, seated, standing, or moving. It weirdly felt like a chance to see how other people look at me. As I kept moving and looking at the same time I also picked up the feeling I used to experience when editing movies. After a while a couple arrived and marked their location with selfies in front those black stone mirrors. And the stones just watched us without words.

Robert Smithson’s work was to me exceptional - accessible, interactive, intelligent, yet aesthetically pleasing. The dual qualities of lovely and fierce, fragile and strong, simple and abundant made them irresistible.

One could say that “understanding” is simply “being related to”. And since everyone is a unique being, there is no need to force yourself to “understand” something within the artist’s intention if it does not matter to you. And there is nothing wrong about being more attracted to an air-conditioner or the garage doors that are not intended to be part of the art exhibition. In the end no one is judged by solely a certain standard. It is the experience and the initiated thinking process that matters to an individual observer.

It was funny enough though, in the end when I walked my way back to the entrance, the Walter De Maria piece looked so peaceful and within order, and I started to appreciate the almost “book-of-changes” variations in the matrixes.

[sylvanshan]

Fischli and Weiss

   The show of Fischili and Weiss at the Guggenheim was my favorite art exhibition among all that I have been to. It resonates with me to such a degree that bothers, making me wish to have been born earlier and been part of the collaboration. I recognized this resonance first with the drawings of structures, which is how I have always been thinking about the universe but doubt if we can actually do that to understand the whole. And then through out the many sections there is an overall plain, neutral but compelling tone, that of a documentary of real life. The presentations of life are barely manipulated, which usually are for the purpose of becoming art, yet made dramatic simply by focusing on the insignificant scenes that are not “interesting” or “special” for an art project. It becomes clearer to me as I see the TV installation playing multiple mundane scenes at the same time and later the clay sculptures, that there is a notion that we are always looking for something higher or someone we should better become from elsewhere, but what is valuable is what we really are, what we do. We produce the collective knowledge as we experiencing things, subjectively assigned with good or bad feelings. But the collective knowledge from above is really nonjudgmental, unlimited, accepting everything that exists.

   The video of how things go makes such a theatrical version of a physical experiment. As there is no man involved it bears a neutral feeling, as if “so these happened but then what”. However at the same time many of the objects seem to have feelings and characters, as you see the tire rolling down shaking or a balloon being filled and approaching explosion, which makes it kind of a metaphor of a human life, how continuous but curious all the experience happens.

   The “subjective sculptures” are a collection made for everyone, scenes from everyone’s life, so there is just so much to relate. In the sculpted scenes, which are of course inevitably only examples from way too many, there are anonymous people living their lives, some looking stupid, failing at their intention, and some enjoying happy moments they happen to be in, and (there is the artists’ intention to include) people guessing about the origin of their lives and the universe, aliens, significant figures within philosophy science, the higher thing. I saw everyone reacting to these sculptures fully in their own way, linking their previous memories, unlike perhaps in other art exhibitions trying to line up with what they are supposed to understand and judge on. Scenes within the sculptures appear almost not filtered or edited. In other words when they are scenes in one person’s life, they are wanted, unwanted, happy, sad, exciting, disappointing, significant, boring. These are reactions added to the initially neutral stories. As the collection draws all the knowledge into one place, people revisit many old memories, experience other individual’s stories, be reminded how big the universe is, or perhaps experience a glimpse of what a collective knowledge feels like. There Iies the dual of existence as individual and the whole. Within the plain titles there is a sense of observing life experience from far without the habitual judging, but with more acceptance and compassion.

With the notion of unedited life scenes, it was also an extraordinary experience for me to watch the picture slides on the two big TV screens and people’s behaviors around me. Everything comes into the art, in other words the boundary of what is being observed. After a while of watching, a Chinese man says “this size of the tv should fit perfectly in our living room”. An old couple hold hands and sit down next to me, chatting some useless words back and forth. A restless guy gets bored by the sightseeing photos and walks away. I see the Forbidden City and remember waiting in line under a burning sun, but my feeling bad is really just an illusion attached from the past.

   The dark room with projected questions is the last thing left to see. It feels crazy what I have been reading and thinking is somehow all coming closer together here, being with the two artists with a similar quest, even though the questions we ask do not 100% overlay. Why do we experience what we experience? How do things work? Why do we suffer or feel happy and are they meaningful? Among the millions of thoughts in my mind what are the ones pointing at something and what are just garbage? And in their words, “Is the world there when I'm not? How much resistance does truth take? Can I punish the world by ignoring it? Is resistance useless”, among many more.

Obvious this could have been an interpretation to my own pleasure, but anyways, I would say it is about all, all the thoughts/realities that exist. We know there is the whole. The question is probably still how and why.

[sylvanshan]

The Highline

To me, the most interesting part to notice about the Highline is how the space switches back and force from interior to exterior, to be more precise, how they are blended together. The impression firstly came from the segment of the highline where buildings so closely surrounded it. I could see the sky, I knew it was outdoor, but I could not see the view far from here for it is blocked by the tall buildings. Walking further on the highland, there was the other segment that was halfway closed with a wooden ceiling and walls on the two sides, almost like a tunnel. Sun light was coming from behind and in front of me, but there were light bulbs all over the ceiling that brighten the “interior” space. It is a weird feeling to see light bulbs on and sunlight at the same time, for with the comparison to the sun the light bulbs seem to be dimmer than usual and not functional, yet the tunnel would have been actually so dark without them. The windows that connect the inner space to the view of the coach are also interestingly designed. More interesting were the windows carved in the wall that sits in the middle of the space but does not totally separate it into two rooms. Without knowing the initial purpose of this space, the openings “meaninglessly” connect the air of one side to the other side, as if functioning as viewfinders or nice structures for hide-and-seek. It also reminds me of the traditional gardens in China where windows would be carved on the walls of a long hallway, subtly and gently separating the space in and out while all remains connected and accessible.

Another interesting play with the sense of space comes in when you walk on the lifted “ground”, and see segments of the railway. Immediately my mind was alarming myself to watch out. But the trains are gone and flowers and trees are growing around the rails; sculptures are blocking the way of the coming train.

As always, the experience of an artwork or design is partly determined by the creator and partly left to nature and accidence, the certain time you visit it and how everything is going on around it. When you focus more in the highline itself you see more of the planned structures. As the highline allows you to look over to the other views, the experience expands towards no boundaries: beneath your feet there is something under construction; in the buildings people are running around working for other people; the weather is specific, and this time you cannot see the Statue of Liberty; there is a boyfriend present and he is being naughty and distracting you from the professor; etc. And this is what I really like about artworks that dissolve into our reality. What matters is not just the artwork itself, or, in other words, without perspectives the pieces would not exist; honestly what you remember is the experience particularly made for you, and there does not need to be a separation between the information you get about the art itself and the things you remember yourself associating with, however far it is from what seems to be “relevant”.

[sylvanshan]

What made sculpture modern?

A few features which I have noticed are important to a sculpture bring modern include: the shift from realism towards abstraction, either it is an abstract interpretation of a concrete subject matter, or the subject matter itself being an abstract concept; what we call “true to material”, letting the initial character of the material speak instead of forcing it to look like something it is not; the use of found objects, which trigger people to associate with their experience in life, without having to reproduce the actual objects; the artist often is the designer who gives instructions but does not necessarily make the art himself. Brancusi’s works are good examples of these features, such as the Bird in Space that caused big controversy and discussion about “what is art”. It is a very smart piece in regard to how the sculpture speaks to its title. Obviously it is not a bird. But the stream line form in the shinny material seems to create a motion, and therefore making sense for someone to call it a bird. In contrast to the smooth and shinny metal on top, the base, which is part of the sculpture, is made with rough stone and sometimes with another wooden one underneath. The metaphor here of a flower growing from the earth is fascinating to me.

As different medias of art alternatively exchange and influence each other, these changes in sculpture went hand in hand with those in the evolutions of painting. Almost all of these are still influential  in contemporary sculpture, more often integrated as installation or performance art. To a certain degree, sculpture also took over the significant importance of painting in the modern period, because of the readymade and the performance art, both of which could benefit from three-dimensional experience more than a flat interpretation.

It was interesting for me and perhaps other art students to think about the creative process of modern sculpture, “the artist not as the maker”. From my experience I would argue that it is a very different process if the artist makes the art or simply comes up with the idea and have other people realize it for him. The reason is the amount of unexpected results that usually come in during the making, the interactions with the material, which could either lead to good results beyond human logic or imagination, or confusion, distraction, overthinking and starting-overs. It has always been hard for me to decide which process is better, but perhaps the ideal is to always be conscious of the potentials within both processes and utilize the positive aspects.

[sylvanshan]

Socrates Sculpture Park

It was a very contrasting experience coming out of the Noguchi Museum and walking into the Socrates Sculpture Park. Both exhibiting art works, one is a delicately designed, perfected, “high art” museum in which I walked somehow over-cautiously and seriously, and the later is a rough, wild, mini grassland, where I ran and didn’t care about looking at the artworks at first but they all came to me themselves.

I have so much love for the space because it is not so well defined or imposing, forcing people to look at the arts. Rather, it leaves people to do whatever they want, and almost “happen” to meet and like the artworks or feel nothing about it. For me it is a more natural and exciting way to see artworks because there is much less resistance. Although I have been studying visual arts all through college, my almost irrelevant background, somehow a mixture of music, literature, philosophy, religion studies and love for middle class life scenes and nature, always tend to switch me back to a perspective as an outsider, which most of my friends and families are. I can not resist liking it more when visual art appeals and resonates in more aspects, for example recalling memories, and to people from more various fields, apart from the topics that can be discussed purely as forms or in regard to art history. And this sculpture park sort of gave me this multi-dimensional experience where I see not only the arts but also memories from the past and inspirations into the future, in forms of writing, sound, or loose concepts. The appearance of the park recalled the many of the music festivals I went to. And then I remembered from high school the picnics we used to have at sculpture parks or botanic gardens when spring came. It was like, there you were not forced to look at plants, but you really enjoyed the plants anyways.

All of the above is not to say I did not love the actual sculptures. My aesthetic really aligns with many of them, those that deal with objects and scenarios in everyday life.

My favorite piece was the Eaf15, Tactile Formation by Melanie Mclain. The tile is so iconic that it immediately associates me with interiors of, at first, an indoor swimming pool, and then other interiors related to water and cleaning. Even the footprints and dust left on it resembles a real life experience. The stainless steel poles, white plastic boxes and the window in the back are details that can be interacted with and experienced. They are also structures that scream “intended for functionality” but are out of place. From the information I have gathered it is not certain how much of its visual form is realistically taken from an eaf. Yet it is interesting to look at and experience the different compositions of the parts. For example, in the front view it is symmetrical at the middle but asymmetrically balanced on the sides. It feels generally stabile yet a little unsettled. The surface that faces above is broken into small portions with different sizes and sliding angles. Therefore on some surfaces you might easily slight down; on others you are at ease because the surface is rather flat or you have something to push against your feet; on a smaller surface you can only sit or stand while on a bigger surface your body might choose to lie down or even roll about; climbing to a higher level you would feel the ground differently, or possibly more scared of falling off. All these variations of experience are perhaps what the artist refers to as a “tactile formation”.

I also loved the boat. But I could almost imagine it actually exhibited the way it was, hung high above, in the process of production, in front of temporary houses and containers,with a man hanging around, as if blurring the line between a contrived presentation and a reality being lived.

[hamermansculptureblog-blog]

It was challenging for me to select a sculpture at Pratt to discuss in this post. As a general rule, I’m not drawn to public sculpture – I find most of it merely decorative, distant, and even alienating. For me, most of the sculpture on Pratt’s Brooklyn campus helps liven up the environment; it helps give it a parklike atmosphere that’s separate from the bustling city. But in my everyday routine, I rarely stop to appreciate these sculptures as art. 

Raphael Zollinger’s Welcome is one work that I’ve stopped by again and again, perhaps because it’s so suggestive without suggesting anything in particular. The figurative piece features five cement cast “prisoners” – as Zollinger refers to them – about life size, kneeling with their heads down and their hands behind their back. The figures are identical: bald and masculine, without any glaring personal features. Furthermore, they are placed directly on the ground, without any base or separation from the viewer. When I pass by them, they immediately evoke a sense of suffering and violence that draws me out of the mundane and everyday. 

But it’s not the evocation of suffering that makes the work interesting to me. It’s the fact that I can’t place this suffering, connect it to any particular historical event. Are they torture victims? Prisoners of war? Enslaved men? Even the undated artists’ statement gives no real clue, referencing “recent” events and “contemporary social change.” The title, Welcome, is dissonant, as if the viewer is being invited to witness something he or she can’t un-see. I am still not sure what that “something” is – if Zollinger had a particular tragedy in mind. However, his work is successful precisely because it manages to universalize human suffering and human cruelty. The figures don’t represent particular people, and it can even be argued that they are genderless (they lack genitalia). The figures get at the psychological and existential “truth” of suffering, one that can be personal and internal as well as historical and social.

This sculpture does have aesthetic beauty and pleasing lines, but it stands out to me because it’s troubling. Traditional public sculpture seems to exist to glorify the powerful and beautify significant spaces. Even sculptures that touch on tragedy and conflict often do so in order to uphold values of heroism. For me, Zollinger’s rejection of these edifying themes makes his work powerful but also very contemporary.

[sylvanshan]

I was drawn to your post at first because I have felt the same way for most public sculptures as you states in the first paragraph ;) Your description of the sculpture is intriguingly detailed, yet concise. It is interesting when you talk about your personal reactions, such as not being able to place the suffering. The observation of the title is also smart. I agree with you that the unclear identity of these figures make it a more universalized suggestion of human suffering and the lack of aesthetic beauty makes them actually matter/hurt.

[sylvanshan]

Arman and Michael Malpass are two of my favorite sculptors whose works are displayed on Pratt’s campus. Interestingly, this has never changed since my earliest days at Pratt.

The form of both are somewhat recognizable, related to everyday object, thus associate me more easily with thoughts and memories. And they are both composed with more complex and organic structures, compared to the rest of the sculptures that are more minimal and abstract.

Armani’s piano, “They Wouldn’t Let Me Play at Carnegie Hall” was my first favorite piece among all, simply because of my association with music since a kid. Visual art was something so new to me at the point I came to Pratt that I used to find comfort in objects I was familiar to, this sculpture, the pianos at Stabile, Willoughby, the Chaple, etc. Apart from this reason, there were both strong and subtle visual impacts in the smashed piano, which only later was I able to articulate. The most obvious, of course, is that it is smashed, or destructed. The scale of it is weirdly smaller than a regular piano, but not way much smaller. Therefore each time I walk past it by it feels like a life-size piano, but something is always off, as if shrunk or condensed. In addition, the angles of the fragments are built in a way that creates an unsettling tension, a tendency of further falling apart. Meanwhile the shape and surface of the lid and the legs remain beautiful nonetheless, forming a contrasting impact. It is also weird to realize that the smashed piano is made out of metal and not wood, which in reality is never going to be smashed into the same look it is now.

Michael Malpass’ group sculptures relate to daily objects in a different way. According to his website his work “re-examined the artistic possibilities of every day objects and elevated the ordinary to the extraordinary”. He uses found industrial objects of iron, steel, brass, bronze or copper, and transforms them by either forging or slicing on a bandsaw. In the end result, all the singular objects are fused together as one bigger and more simple form, a sphere or a cube, most of their identities still visible. Although the artist is famous for his spheres, I have found the one cube more interesting than the rest. It is not necessarily for the shape but that impact that a smooth surface almost completes the cube except the corners where the industrial parts are exposed. Despite my attraction to the formal qualities, the message of the artist seems unclear to me. As he switches from one basic element to another and make numerous spheres, the only thing that really seems to be coherent is just the sphere, which has made the sculptures “animated, yet peaceful”, as he himself describes. Or maybe he is aiming at some message way more simple than I thought it “needed” to be. “Discovery is important. This is a significant aspect of what I believe. I find the pieces in the scrap yard. I discover the shapes inside as I cut. I discover syncopated rhythms and their complementary contrasts in a simple form. It is a great joy to me. If I can share that with the viewer, that sense of discovery, then that is good.”

Before Pratt I went to Beijing No.4 High School and there were a few sculptures around the campus. Most of them were displayed for either monumental or educational purposes, such as a stone curved with school motto from the first president, statues of young kids playing tug-of-war together, and a copy of the Knotted Gun at the UN. There was little emphasis on aesthetic. Sculptures at Pratt as an art collection, on the other hand, appear to show more variety in artistic practices. Pratt Institute is more than just a campus for it is also viewed by the public as a sculpture park.

In my opinion, it is not easy for all these sculptures at Pratt to compliment the architecture on the campus. The various styles of the sculptures and the architectures themselves have made it hard to be perceived as one consistent story, except perhaps the variety itself. There are a few sculptures, however, that individually interact with the architectures in very smart ways, such as the hanging figures by Marsha Pels near Main Building, the radius shovels on the wall by Donald Lipski, and the drowning figures in front of the Mail Center.

[sylvanshan]

Exhibition Review: Picasso Sculpture at MoMA

Jan 29th, 2015

Visiting the Picasso exhibition for the second time was a multi-dimensional experience as multiple layers of thoughts extended and converged back into this space.

The first time I was here was last fall. Although the rooms were less crowded back then, it did not feel like an experience half as rich as this, since, one, I was on a mission accompany some celebrity to the museum and two, I personally had been holding pretty bad impression and presumption about Picasso’s art, especially comparing his work with how phenomenal the name has become in art history. Walking carelessly through the exhibition rooms, all the childish and ridiculous forms simply seemed to match up with my presumptions about it. The same question had been going to lots of his paintings as well, which is like, “yes it is pretty avant-garde looking, so what?”

The readings before the visit this time is partially what really changed the experience. Although I am still not too amazed by any of his conceptual ideas, the process of making these sculpture and the change of style through years appear to make more sense and carry more meaning to me, since as a designer I could feel it – I could relate to the way how actions were taken and decisions were made, in relation to material, accessibility, collaboration, personal conditions and so on. More subtle details of form and dynamics of humanities also came into attention with a closer observation.

Since the earlier years, there has been an interesting and pervasive flatness within lots of the sculptures. This seems to have happened after the nature of 2 dimensional sketches from Cannes. “Picasso was aware of the relation of external contour to framing edge and background, thereby sacrificing any suggestion of depth or multiple views.” However, instead of a sacrifice, it seem to me a fascinating visual impact when a spectator circles around the sculpture and sees the frontal view swiftly transform into flat surfaces, and finally weird and meaningless lines hanging in the space.

Another intriguing quality of many of these sculptures is the way they interact with light. In the Head of a Woman from 1961, flat white surfaces are connected with different angles, painted with black strokes that abstractly define a woman’s head. In academic paintings, there would have been modeling according to the organic anatomy of the head and the lighting condition. Here however, the process seems inverted. Different angles of flat surfaces are built. Then the lighting becomes the modeling, which is not to emphasize the human anatomy but the abstract background sheets, as one places the sculpture in different positions. In a smaller metal piece made as a proposal for the monument to Apollinaire, iron wires are twisted complexly against a clean geometrical base, leaving small negative spaces. When two different light source shine from the above, with slightly tilted angles, the whole structure is twice projected onto the flat surface that holds the sculpture, creating an amazing “drawing” which potentially is yet to alter if moved around under the same or different lighting conditions.

My favorite ones however are those later sculptures with more solid forms and heavier weights, made in the Boisgeloup Sculpture Studio. There Picasso managed to build sculptures in a more mature way, using seemingly more traditional basics but therefore able to focus on the characteristics in stronger ways. For example, the plaster Head of a Woman is given a rather simple form, in which the abstraction of the nose, the eyes, and the neck is hurtfully obvious. The distance between the two eyes works together with the extraordinary sculpting around the open mouth, bringing about the sense of a woman being extremely gentle but slightly empty and lost. Similarly, the bronze statue Woman with Vase looks like just an amount of solid matter at the first glance. As one recognizes a human form yet fail to match all the off proportions and absurd details to a real one’s, he/she can visualize and feel the description “standing on the plaza outside the Pavilion, she appeared as a loyal sentinel guarding the works of art inside”. If observing closely at the right leg from behind, one can still find the thread of geometry and flatness extending to this almost-melting streamline figure. To me it is in these sculptures that Picasso’s early ideas and practices start to support each other, in contrasting juxtapositions and in subtle ways.

[sylvanshan]

For this week’s sculpture blog I have chosen Chinese statues of guardian lions to begin with. It was the first thing that popped into my mind, perhaps because I am generally interested in objects that are closely and unconsciously experienced by ordinary people, objects in which layers of meanings can be found but objects that are not always highlighted as art. There are probably dozens of guardian lion statues in Beijing that I have once walked past by, big or small, damaged and lying in a corner or carefully preserved and visited by numerous tourists. It is interesting to think about the fact that for many people who now live closely with these lion statues, their existence might have been too familiar to grab any more attentions. However, to most of them, the story of the original owner and the place from hundreds or thousands of years ago will forever remain a mystery, not that they would care or think of.

 In modern China, apart from some imperial palaces and tombs as well as religious temples, these statues exist largely in the homes of ordinary people, in front of the old buildings that have not been taken down and in the areas that are either hardly developed or specially preserved. In the past, however, these lions would have been standing in front of government officials and the wealthy only, since the Han Dynasty (206 BC- AD 220). They were believed to have powerful mythic protective benefits and most of them were made out of various kinds of stones and sometimes bronze. Unlike most of the sculptures in the west, these statues have been produced in many different regions with a great amount, which is possibly the reason why few names of the commissioned sculptures are ever documented or remembered. While most of the lion statues share certain common features, each seems to have been specifically designed and made with extraordinary craftsmanship. 

In the first image above, the lion statue is standing in front of the gate of Peking University, where it was originally a temple built in the Ming Dynasty and later altered to be the palace of Princess Hejia during Qianlong’s time in Qing Dynasty. To me, the most fascinating quality of the statue is that it really requires a 360 degrees of looking to fully appreciate the dynamic and details endowed by the sculpting. What would always catch my eyes first is the figurative expression in the lion’s face. There is a pair of eyebrow lowered towards the middle, looking furious and extremely powerful, as if to scare the intruders and bad luck away and to guard the palace in peace. The mouth, however, has a weirdly smiley expression, showing off its petrifying valiance and boldness. On its neck, though, hangs a bell held in the mouth of a tiny version of a lion, symbolizing the ultimate power of the residence over this wild beast. As the eye moves around the body of the lion, one may realize that it is depicted in a highly stylized manner, for example the simple line that defines the open mouth, the three pairs of curves that represent the whiskers, the “copper cash” hair and the cone-shaped toes that seem to be made out of not flesh but decorative motifs.

 As in many other statues, with one of its arms the lion is playing with a silk-strip ball, which was traditionally believed to bring auspicious events. Another commonly used element is a square platform rising up the lion from the ground. On this platform there are complicated motifs covering each horizontal level. Going around the middle level is a delicate relief of dragons, another lucky type of animals in traditional eastern mythologies.

 Below the first image are examples of a few different forms of guardian lions located at other places.