Jin Weihong 靳卫红
From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki
Jin Weihong is a painter. Born in 1967, she lives and works in Nanjing.
Contents |
[edit] Date & Place of Birth
Jin was born in 1967 in Jiangsu.
[edit] Education & Development
She earned her Bachelor's degree in Chinese Painting from Nanjing Art Institute.
[edit] Art
Are we to worship beauty from a high moral ground, believing that the transcendental experience generated from contact with an object of beauty, especially in the form of the female nude, is free from sensuous, worldly desire? Or, are the sentiments derived from gazing at this kind of beauty tied to the baser and more personal instincts of erotic desire? As a feminist art historian engaged in the critical debates about beauty and femininity in the West and as a woman who confesses to deriving deep, sensual pleasure from Jin Weihong's work, Bridget Goodbody of the Chinese University of Hong Kong finds that Ms. Jin's paintings induce both the lofty, contemplative and intellectual experience of beauty and the baser experience of physical desire. When she showed her paintings to traditional figure painter Chen Dexi, a colleague from the University who, like Jin Weihong, is from Nanjing, he commented that Ms. Jin's paintings evidenced what Chinese people called "Qing Shui," or "Clear Water." He explained that this meant that her pictures were unpolluted by commercial nuances or immoral connotations that would be evidenced in work more pornographic. In short, he viewed Ms. Jin's paintings as "pure art." Chen Dexi's words indicate that he found Jin Weihong's paintings beautiful while recognizing - albeit by noting that her nudes were not pornographic - their erotic content. Beauty and eroticism (sexual, physical yet contemplative longing) are not universal concepts. Because Ms. Jin's paintings evoke similar reactions in a Western art historian and a Chinese traditional painter, the moments in them where both Western and Chinese elements elicit the sensation of having experienced something beautiful are worth exploring.[1]
The world of Jin Weihong's ink paintings is one where beauty and desire overlap. Jin Weihong's nudes, usually women, lounge on Ming-style horseshoe chairs and overstuffed armchairs or lie languorously on Kang tables. In many pictures, elegantly rendered flower arrangements and potted plants in porcelain pots perch on delicate Chinese-style tables. The references to "real life" environments are abstract. Sleepy palm trees sway in sitting rooms (See "Two People") and watery passages of ink that pass for clouds hover above apparently domestic interiors (See "Air"). The environment belongs entirely to the women in the paintings. When there are at least two women together in a picture, they seem oblivious to one another. Men exist in some of Jin's art but they either lack facial features that would give them individual presence or their heads are cut off at the edge of the painting (See "Green Cloud"). This, combined with their passiveness and inactivity, allows the viewer a personal, meditative response without the interference of a strong narrative or the need for polite or even intimate conversation. This silence and static quality of her pictures is what makes them so ideally beautiful and erotic rather than obscene. As viewers, we are free to enjoy the moment without being confronted by the sweep of Jin Weihong's brush as it caresses the contours of her figures.[1]
[edit] Exhibitions
For Jin's exhibition history, click here.
[edit] Gallery Affiliation(s)
Jin's work is represented by ShanghART and StudioDoor China.
[edit] Acquisitions & Auctions
For Jin's auction record, click here.
