Controversial Show Opens At Guggenheim
At the entrance ramp that takes you into the exhibition Art and China After 1989: Theatre of the World at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, there is a modest pile of paper pulp in a wooden crate by the artist Huang Yong Ping entitled The History of Chinese Painting and A Concise History of Modern Painting Washed in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes. The work, created in 1987 and reconstructed in 1993, gives a predictable Conceptualist take on all received wisdom—that it’s worthless. The exhibition shows around 150 works by more than 70 artists. Near the pulped book is the now-notorious Theatre of the World (1993), a sculpture also by Huang Yong Ping, who lives in France. It is a wood and metal enclosure designed to hold insects and the lizards that feed on them, with the provision that the bugs be replaced regularly as others are eaten. After a public outcry, the structure is now on view, but empty, without predator or prey.
