A Long Lecture from My Son: Father. (The Pen.)

[NNadir]

My son will be giving some lectures relating to his study in China this summer studying a Chinese artist.

He was very nervous meeting his sponsors to discuss it, but apparently it went well, and when he told me that this morning, well, he started in on a lecture on the history of Chinese art, which included deprecating works by Picasso, saying that "The Chinese were doing that a thousand years ago..."

Really...??...??

Anyway...

The part of the lecture (for which I was not really in the mood as I was focused on some scientific reading) that brought me to interest was his discussion of Luo Zhongli's famous painting "Father."



[link:Luo Zhongli, Father|SmartHistory, Luo Zhongli, Father]

He relayed the history basically told on the link above, apparently well known, describing the reason for the pen in the subject's ear.

From the text:

When Luo Zhongli’s oil painting, Father, was first exhibited at the Second National Youth Exhibition in 1981 in China’s capital, Beijing, visitors were astonished by what they saw. It was not necessarily the subject matter, composition, or colors that drew them in. Rather, it was the raw truthfulness with which Luo depicted his subject. Originally titled “My Father,” this painting is based on sketches he made of a man whose job was to guard a local manure pit in the remote Daba Mountains. This artwork elicited strong reactions among the Chinese public and remains one of the most revered paintings from this period in China’s history.

A rural inhabitant
The subject matter of a rural inhabitant would not have been new or shocking to a Chinese audience at the time. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, the “peasant” was upheld as one of the three “heroes” of Communist leader Mao Zedong’s socialist revolution, alongside soldiers and workers. In fact, it was only through the support of China’s vast peasantry that the communists were able to consolidate power in 1949 after many years of civil war.

Lasting from 1966–1976, China’s Cultural Revolution was Communist leader Mao’s last push to maintain his power over the nation. Marked by anti-intellectualism, cultural and economic isolation, and totalitarianism, it was one of the most oppressive and violent periods in China’s modern history. In 1968, in an attempt to diffuse the violent uprisings of the student militants known as the Red Guard, Mao declared that the youth of China’s cities should move to the countryside to be re-educated by the rural peasantry. Luo Zhongli, after graduating from the Sichuan Academy preparatory middle school in Chongqing in 1968, was one of millions impacted by this policy. He lived for ten years in the rural Daba mountain region on the border between Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces, where he encountered the man who would later become the subject of his most celebrated painting...

...One reason this painting was so moving to viewers was its monumental size, measuring about 215 x 150 cm. Such a large scale had previously been reserved for portraits of powerful politicians, and before that, emperors, ancestors, and literati officials. In fact, Father’s large scale and composition is reminiscent of the most famous Chinese portrait at the time: the portrait of Mao Zedong by artist Wang Guodong, a version of which continues to hang above Tiananmen Gate watching over Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Some were so moved by the painting that they even suggested that Father should replace Mao’s portrait...

So what's with the pen?

My son relayed to me what is said in the text of the link...

What’s with that pen?

One detail that strikes many viewers as out of place within the composition is the ball point pen resting behind the man’s left ear. It is important to note that the exhibition where this work was first displayed was officially sponsored by the central government and therefore had a political agenda to promote the positive elements of Chinese society. It was within this context that the chairman of the Sichuan Artists Association, Li Shaoyan, insisted that Luo add the ballpoint pen to the composition for fear it would not be accepted into the exhibition without it. The pen was pivotal in expressing that this peasant was modern and educated, representative of China’s hopeful future, rather than being seen as a direct attack on the policies of the Chinese Communist Party, who continued to hold power after Mao’s death and remain in power today...

In his lecture, my son is having difficulty negotiating a discussion of his artist's life in the era of the Cultural Revolution, and in fact, during his research in China, his efforts to explore the deeper details, were kind of handled, when he asked to review materials connected with that period with a statement that translated roughly as "Don't go there..."

We of course, are not used to that sort of thing, but we are entering an age of what may be violent anti-intellectualism.

Get used to it, if, in fact, you can. I may not be able to do so, myself, but happily, I cannot live all that much longer.

When I was young, frightened, fearful and depressed, well before my life changed by meeting my wife, I used to tell myself that no matter how bad things got, I would get out of it in the end since I'm mortal. That thought hasn't occurred to me for decades, but it is doing so now, as my country committed suicide.