| |
Mu Xin (b. 1927, China)
Ancient Fountainhead of the Yellow River
Ink and gouache on paper
Promised gift of the Rosenkranz Charitable Foundation to Yale University Art Gallery
“The Art of Mu Xin: Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes” was organized by the Yale University Art Gallery. It traveled from Yale to the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, The Honolulu Academy of Art, and The Asia Society in New York. At the completion of the exhibition, the paintings were donated to Yale University Art Gallery.
The first major exhibition of works by the contemporary Chinese writer-artist Mu Xin featured works created while the artist was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and its immediate aftermath. The two series, 33 ink-and-gouache landscape paintings and 66 inscribed sheets, are virtually the only surviving works that predate the artist’s immigration to the United States in 1982. Together they offered the first comprehensive evaluation of Mu Xin’s art and confirmed his importance as an independent, experimental artist and thinker in the history of twentieth-century Chinese painting and literature.
The paintings were drawn from the collection of The Rosenkranz Foundation and the Prison Notes from Mu Xin’s own collection. The co-organizer of the exhibition, with the Yale University Art Gallery, was the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago.
| |
Mu Xin (b. 1927, China)
Selection of prison note pages. Collection of the artist |
| |
| |
“The Art of Mu Xin: Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes” was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by co-curators Alexandra Munroe, then-Director of Japan Society Gallery, and Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Chinese Art History, University of Chicago.
As Mr. Rosenkranz wrote in his preface to the catalogue, “It is clear that Mu Xin risked his life to produce both the Prison Notes and the landscape paintings. When I asked him why he took this chance, he replied that he would be risking his life to not produce them. And so he would have been, for his life is so much a life of the mind.” |
From left to right: Colin Mackenzie (Associate Director and Curator, Asia Society Museum), Vishakha Desai (Senior Vice President and Director of the Museum and Cultural Programs, Asia Society), Wu Hung (the Harrie A. Vernderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Chinese Art History, University of Chicago), David Sensabough (Curator of Asian Art, Yale Art Gallery), artist Mu Xin, Robert Rosenkranz, Jock Reynolds (Director, Yale Art Gallery), and Alexandra Munroe (curator and Director, Japan Society Gallery)
More Arts
 The Rosenkranz Foundation has provided funding for a series of large-format, fully-illustrated books entitled The Culture & Civilization of China published by the Yale University Press. Spearheaded by Ambassador Joseph Verner Reed and Yale University with the cooperation and collaboration of The People’s Republic of China, an international roster of scholars has been assembled to provide in-depth and exhaustive content for the books. To date, the Foundation has contributed toward three illustrated volumes: Chinese Architecture, The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective and Chinese Sculpture.
 |
 |
 |
| Chinese Architecture |
The Formation of Chinese
Civilization: An Archaeological
Perspective |
Chinese Sculpture |
The Rosenkranz Foundation contributed to The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s purchase of the Gilman Collection of photographs and donated a group of modern Chinese paintings to the Harvard University Art Museums..
|
