Varieties of cultural hybridity: Hong Kong art in the late colonial era

Public Culture

Volumn 9, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 395-415

  Clarke, David ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0031489954     PISSN: 08992363     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/08992363-9-3-395     Document Type: Review

References (19)

1. In this text I refer to artists by means of a romanization of the Cantonese pronunciation of their names. For convenience I also give pinyin romanization of the standard Chinese pronunciation in brackets at a name's first mention (if there is no bracketed version the name can be assumed to be given in pinyin).
2. The literature on hybridity is now quite extensive, see: Nikos Papastergiadis, "Restless Hybrids," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 9-18; Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1990); Judy Purdom, "Mapping Difference," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 19-32; Jean Fisher, "Editorial," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 3-7; Sarat Maharaj "'Perfidious Fidelity': The Untranslatability of the Other," Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts (London: Kala Press 1994), 28-35.
3. The literature on hybridity is now quite extensive, see: Nikos Papastergiadis, "Restless Hybrids," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 9-18; Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1990); Judy Purdom, "Mapping Difference," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 19-32; Jean Fisher, "Editorial," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 3-7; Sarat Maharaj "'Perfidious Fidelity': The Untranslatability of the Other," Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts (London: Kala Press 1994), 28-35.
4. The literature on hybridity is now quite extensive, see: Nikos Papastergiadis, "Restless Hybrids," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 9-18; Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1990); Judy Purdom, "Mapping Difference," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 19-32; Jean Fisher, "Editorial," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 3-7; Sarat Maharaj "'Perfidious Fidelity': The Untranslatability of the Other," Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts (London: Kala Press 1994), 28-35.
5. The literature on hybridity is now quite extensive, see: Nikos Papastergiadis, "Restless Hybrids," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 9-18; Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1990); Judy Purdom, "Mapping Difference," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 19-32; Jean Fisher, "Editorial," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 3-7; Sarat Maharaj "'Perfidious Fidelity': The Untranslatability of the Other," Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts (London: Kala Press 1994), 28-35.
6. The literature on hybridity is now quite extensive, see: Nikos Papastergiadis, "Restless Hybrids," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 9-18; Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1990); Judy Purdom, "Mapping Difference," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 19-32; Jean Fisher, "Editorial," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 3-7; Sarat Maharaj "'Perfidious Fidelity': The Untranslatability of the Other," Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts (London: Kala Press 1994), 28-35.
7. The literature on hybridity is now quite extensive, see: Nikos Papastergiadis, "Restless Hybrids," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 9-18; Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora," in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1990); Judy Purdom, "Mapping Difference," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 19-32; Jean Fisher, "Editorial," Third Text 32 (Autumn 1995), 3-7; Sarat Maharaj "'Perfidious Fidelity': The Untranslatability of the Other," Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts (London: Kala Press 1994), 28-35.
8. In this text I draw on my earlier attempts to come to terms with the work of Mak, Chan and Wong. On Mak, see my "The Sculpture of Antonio Mak," in The Art of Antonio Mak (Hong Kong: H.K. Arts Centre, 1995); on Chan, see my "Psychic Decolonization," Art AsiaPacific 3, 4 (Oct. 1996), 39-41. My "Between East and West: Negotiations with Tradition and Modernity in Hong Kong Art," Third Text 28/29 (Autumn/Winter 1994), 71-86 deals primarily with Lui Shou-kwan and artists of the New Ink Painting movement and also with artists of Mak's generation not treated here, but Wong's work is also discussed. I am grateful to Ackbar Abbas for feedback on that Third Text article, and to him and Wu Hung for comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
9. In this text I draw on my earlier attempts to come to terms with the work of Mak, Chan and Wong. On Mak, see my "The Sculpture of Antonio Mak," in The Art of Antonio Mak (Hong Kong: H.K. Arts Centre, 1995); on Chan, see my "Psychic Decolonization," Art AsiaPacific 3, 4 (Oct. 1996), 39-41. My "Between East and West: Negotiations with Tradition and Modernity in Hong Kong Art," Third Text 28/29 (Autumn/Winter 1994), 71-86 deals primarily with Lui Shou-kwan and artists of the New Ink Painting movement and also with artists of Mak's generation not treated here, but Wong's work is also discussed. I am grateful to Ackbar Abbas for feedback on that Third Text article, and to him and Wu Hung for comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
10. In this text I draw on my earlier attempts to come to terms with the work of Mak, Chan and Wong. On Mak, see my "The Sculpture of Antonio Mak," in The Art of Antonio Mak (Hong Kong: H.K. Arts Centre, 1995); on Chan, see my "Psychic Decolonization," Art AsiaPacific 3, 4 (Oct. 1996), 39-41. My "Between East and West: Negotiations with Tradition and Modernity in Hong Kong Art," Third Text 28/29 (Autumn/Winter 1994), 71-86 deals primarily with Lui Shou-kwan and artists of the New Ink Painting movement and also with artists of Mak's generation not treated here, but Wong's work is also discussed. I am grateful to Ackbar Abbas for feedback on that Third Text article, and to him and Wu Hung for comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
11. Wong studied in the U.S.A. during the early 1960s. Mak studied in London in the early to middle 1970s.
12. The article was "The Hong Kong Artists' Group," The Studio 148 (July 1954), 84-87. In vol. 150 (1955) he was to write another article, "Fundamental Principles of Chinese Painting." Chan was a prolific author, writing a great many books on art in Chinese.
13. The article was "The Hong Kong Artists' Group," The Studio 148 (July 1954), 84-87. In vol. 150 (1955) he was to write another article, "Fundamental Principles of Chinese Painting." Chan was a prolific author, writing a great many books on art in Chinese.
14. Chan adds ("In Conversation [with Tsong-zung Chang]," in Luis Chan at Eighty [Hong Kong: Hanart 2, 1985]), "if you see one on which I've put my name-chop, it is a Chinese painting, otherwise it is not!" The following two quotations from Chan in the text are from the same book, the first from Tsong-zung Chang's introduction, the second from the above-mentioned interview.
15. See The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
16. Continuity may even be at the level of the art object, rather than just at the level of the signifier. Museum displays can make classical Chinese artworks signify as elements in an entirely modern narrative of national tradition. I discuss museums as propagators of cultural narratives in chapter two of my Art and Place: Essays on Art from a Hong Kong Perspective (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1996), a book which brings together much of my earlier writing on art in Hong Kong.
17. I document a 1995 attempt by the Hong Kong Obscene Articles Tribunal to impose "traditional" Chinese values by removing a sculpture by Elizabeth Frink from public display in my "Art in Trouble with the Law in Hong Kong," Art AsiaPacific 3, 2 (April 1996), 32-33.
18. In an introduction to the catalogue of a 1981 exhibition of Hong Kong art at the museum, Lawrence Tam (Tan Zhicheng, an ex-student of Lui Shou-kwan and formerly the museum's chief curator) talks of the exhibit as containing "happy evidence of the blending of aspects of two streams of world culture, the East and the West" (Hong Kong An, 1970-1980 [Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1981], p. 12). The art of Lui probably fits this ideological frame rather more easily than that of Wong, which refuses to simply "blend" East and West. Wong's paintings seem more aware than Tam's statement suggests of the problems of the "East meets West" project.
19. I discuss the pressure group activities of artists in Hong Kong at various points in Art and Place, especially in the first two sections. See particularly pp. 47, 52, and 58.