This painting was created by Xu Bing specifically for the Brooklyn Museum’s new galleries for the Arts of China. The painting reads from left to right, following English word order, and from top to bottom in columns, as in traditional Chinese texts. It also includes an artist’s seal using Square Word
Calligraphy, in red ink. The work is composed of a title and colophon, followed by the first verse of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by the poet Walt Whitman. It reads:
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,
By Walt Whitman
Calligraphy by Xu Bing
An artist who used to live in Brooklyn.
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour
high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the
usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and
hundreds that cross, returning home, are
more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore
years hence are more to me, and more in my
meditations, than you might suppose.
Xu Bing (born China, 1955, lives and works in Beijing and Brooklyn). Square Word Calligraphy: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Walt Whitman, 2018. Ink on paper. Gift of Xu Bing to the Brooklyn Museum in honor of his father, 2018.24a–b
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