Terracotta Warriors

Terracotta Warriors: Defenders of China's First Emperor opens today at Discovery Times Square. A collection of terracotta sculptures was buried with Qin Shi Huang, Emperor of China in 210–209 BC, and found again in 1974 when a farmer chanced upon the first of what archaeologists estimate are 8,000 warriors and other figures. Its's a small exhibit, tiny in comparison to the actual, only partially excavated site in China, but it might be your only chance to see these incredibly preserved terracotta warriors stateside. 

Li Songsong at Pace

These huge canvases with their impasto surfaces struck me as almost ugly at first: the colors, the quasi-photographic Gerhard Richter feel, the imagery. But by the time I left Pace these works by Chinese painter Li Songsong had not just grown on me, but wowed me.

I had a visceral reaction to the textured, thick application of paint.

The scale was humbling.

The imagery took on more context and nuance seen together, and the grids of color the images were reassembled in seemed less rigid and more poetic.

This one is incredibly layered both in the subdued pastel and sepia coloring and literally: As you can see below, the artist mounted separate metal panels and layered them on top of one another.

This canvas seems almost Impressionistic in the way it dabbles light through the trees. The subject, however, is anything but.

Up at Pace Gallery through August 5, and certainly worth a viewing this summer.

Ai Weiwei

As you might have heard, China accused Ai Weiwei, artist of Olympic "bird's nest" stadium fame and other internationally-known projects, of economic crimes and has held him in police custody since April 7. This happened right after I saw a fantastic PBS documentary on the artist, Who's Afriad of Ai Weiwei, available here, which gives some nice background on the Chinese government's treatment of the artist.

There have been protests across the world, and this weekend NYC joined in with 1,000 Chairs for Ai Weiwei. It has been suggested that the Chinese government wanted to send the message that no one is immune to the "rule of law"--or the government's censorship--but let us hope that is not so.