Guanxi Master

A Contrastive Look into the Meaning of North Korean Paintings

A few years ago, I remember looking on in anticipation as a batch of paintings from several North Korean “National Treasures” artists, slowly slid from their protective coverings to form a small pyramid of scrolls on a white sheet spread out on my apartment floor. My best friend from college, Mike, art dealer and media producer in China, brought them back to the US, partly as a gesture of good will and partly to show the American art community the unexpected serendipity of having a North Korean communicate over the gulf of ideology and politics that separates our two nations through the flimsy elements of water, soot, and rice paper. I don’t know what I was expecting, but as scroll after scroll was unfurled before me, the swirls of color and bold brush strokes seemed to catch me off balance and lodge in my mind’s eye in a profoundly simple expression of joy. A kind of joy unexpected from a land associated in the media with terror, famine, and deprivation. I had not expected to be moved by art from the most narrowly defined ideological genres in existence… instead I was overwhelmed.

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An Omen of the Middle Kingdom’s Rise in Middle America

In the last few years, fishermen in the United States have started to notice that the old bluegill, sunfish, bass, and catfish of the Illinois, Mississippi and the Ohio rivers have been disappearing. In their place a new kind of fish is gobbling up resources, feeding on the other species, and reproducing at an astonishing rate. The problem has become so intense that officials are now afraid that the Great Lakes are doomed to fall in the onslaught. They call these ferocious invaders “Asian carp”. The Chinese call them “Li Yu” (鲤鱼), “Black” or “Silver” carp, and have cultivated these breeds for their amazing reproductive vitality and hardiness for thousands of years. Read the rest of this entry »