Fu Baoshi

Remember this from about ten posts ago?



It was inspired a brush and ink painting by a Chinese artist named Fu Baoshi. I spent a part of the other day staring at his stuff in the flesh, and it was really just extraordinary. There was a moment when I turned and looked at one long vertical work and thought, Lord-have-mercy-I'm-about-to-burst-into-tears.

It was really that good.

These from the Times:



This one above was shot by Jennifer S. Altman for the Mothership, because it's good to give credit where it's due, just to give you a sense of scale.

And this one, from the Nanjing Museum, because... Well, just because.



To see these things in sunlight is to see Marxism die. Which is ironic because Fu--a modern painter, not some guy from the Ming dynasty--was dragooned into the service of the Chinese communists and ended up painting a bunch of quasi-propaganda near the end of his career.

Which must have chaffed a bit.

The show, sadly, is closed. So don't dash out. You can read the story in the Times here, though.