When we arrived at the gate of the museum, entered and tried to go on our visit straightly, we suddenly found that the Museum is such a 'distinguished' museum, for it even devoted its major exhibition building (before) to a notice of 'staff only'... ehh, nothing in irony...Fine, That's a irony. At least they need to notice us at the entrance, eh?
Alright, stop animadverting like a critic. We finally entered the building besides, and found there are so many topics of exhibition rooms and objects in exhibitions that we couldn’t figure out which one to talk about: There’s a room for Chinese lacquerware, one for ancient Chinese bronze works, one for Chinese Jade (also made a lively introduction on carving jade), and one for modern Chinese artwork (tired of these)… We even found Wu Weishan’s sculpture in it! I was wondering he’s an octopus or… something else, I don’t know. Eventually, I think we can bring a brief introduction on one exhibition I thought it’s the best among the long list.
Actually this kind of artwork is also can be considered as a long list—A list of most famous and also strange artists in middle Qing Dynasty: We call them ‘Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou’ (the description eccentric comes from Wikipedia), The Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou is the name for a group of eight Chinese painters known in the Qing for rejecting the orthodox ideas about painting in favor of a style deemed expressive and individualist. One of these 8 ‘eccentrics’ who had a g
reatest influence on the flow of Chinese culture—in my opinion--- is called Zheng Xie, also known as Zheng BanQiao (郑板桥) (1693-1765) I consider that he’s special in these 8 painters is because he actually can represent the main figure of the ‘8 eccentrics’ in his paintings, and also had his individual, unique style. As a good example for proving it, the painting about ‘bamboos growing on hard rocks’ shows Zheng’s excellent technique on dealing with such a object which’s not easy to portray—bamboos—with only several strokes in simplicity. However this kind of painting style exactly matches the main idea of these eccentrics, or all of the artists who’s from impoverished or troubled backgrounds-- Not only for the naturalism thought on their outlook on lives which can almost represent the whole Chinese Culture, but also for this: whatever how severely hard situation they’re in, they all have a strong belief inside their mind that ‘Rainbow will finally appears after severe rainstorm.Finally, we had to leave there because the problem on sandglass. A visit which’s shorter than one and a half hour? Oh, that’s definitely too short for such a distinguished museum—no irony for this time.
