War, Revolution, and the Heart of China, 1937–1948: The Herman Collection of Modern Chinese Woodcuts
李桦 (Li Hua) (Chinese, 1907 - 1994), Pursuit of Light, 1944, woodcut on laid paper.
Gift of Professor and Mrs. Theodore Herman, 1980.119.1
September 19–December 15, 2024
This exhibition, an in-depth examination of the modern woodcut movement in the decades leading up to the founding of the People’s Republic of China, will be the first time that one of Picker Art Gallery’s most singular and important collections will be shown in its entirety.
The Herman Collection of Modern Chinese Woodcuts contains over 200 works made in China between 1937 and 1948. They were given to The Picker Art Gallery by Professor Emeritus Theodore Herman, who lived in the country during this period, and his wife, Evelyn Mary Chen Shiying Herman. Professor Herman taught at Colgate from 1954 to 1981 in the Geography Department and was the founding director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program.
Coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the exhibition of the Herman collection is an extraordinary resource for the study of Chinese art and of pre-Liberation history. The prints in the exhibition can be seen as direct links to the historical events taking place in China in the years leading up to Liberation. Images made between 1937 and 1945 in areas controlled by the Chinese Nationalist forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War chronicle the progress of the war and promoted good relations between the army and the people; others, produced in the areas controlled by the Communist Red Army, encourage resistance against the Japanese but also illustrate how Chinese society could be transformed through socialism; those prints produced during the Civil War expose many injustices amid the post-war social and political upheavals. Finally, many of the images in the exhibition explore wide-ranging subjects and a variety of techniques that offer glimpses into quotidian Chinese life during this period.
This exhibition is curated by Leslie Ann Eliet.
In coordination with Picker Art Gallery's current exhibition is the Artist-In-Residency: Yang Hongwei, the Deputy Director of the Department of Printmaking, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.
This residency is generously supported by the Colgate Arts Council and co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Program, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, and the Department of Art.
Residency Related Events
Lecture
The Code of Art
Wednesday, November 13, 4:30 p.m.
Golden Auditorium, 105 Little Hall
Yang Hongwei earned his PhD at CAFA in 2015, studying under the mentorship of renowned artist Xu Bing. Over the past 10 years, Yang has been extending and expanding the vocabulary of woodcut and wood engraving printmaking through his Pixel Analysis Project, which combines Chinese and Western traditional wood engraving techniques with the principles of analog movable type and digital dot-matrix display technology. For the Pixel Analysis Project, Yang has hand carved over 100,000 pearwood “pixel modules” of various sizes, colors, and shading – a finite set of elements able to generate infinite sets of images. Yang has exhibited at galleries and museums all over China.
Symposium
Something Revolutionary: print and visual culture in modern China
Friday, November 15, 8 a.m.–2 p.m.
This symposium aims to bring greater attention to the Herman Collection and to modern Chinese visual culture more broadly. Scholars and students of modern China are invited to listen to papers contextualizing the prints in the Herman Collection historically and culturally, and to engage in discussions with colleagues about new directions in the field. The day will also include lunch and a tour of the exhibition.
8:00–9:00 a.m.: Breakfast and registration, Golden Auditorium, 105 Little Hall
9:00–12:10 p.m.: Presentations, Golden Auditorium, 105 Little Hall
12:10–1:30 p.m.: Lunch (provided), Donovan's Pub
1:30-2 p.m.: Exhibition tour, Picker Art Gallery, Dana Arts Center, 2nd floor
Printmaking Demonstration and Workshop
Led by artist Yang Hongwei (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing)
Saturday, November 16, 9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Print Studio, 205 Little Hall
Artist Yang Hongwei (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing) will lead a free woodcut printing demonstration and workshop in Colgate’s printmaking studio. Designed for participants of all abilities and experience to try their hand at creative expression through art-making in a low-stakes environment. All members of the Colgate and Hamilton communities are invited to participate.
Support for this workshop has been generously provided by the Colgate Arts Council.