It might be asked: What has the
Museum of Art Ein Harod to do with an exhibition of Chinese
prints? Since its founding more than sixty years ago in the
heart of a kibbutz, the Museum of Art Ein Harod has
concerned itself with contemporary art and, particularly,
with the charged and complex questions that surround the
relationship between society, art and the shaping of
history.
Half a Century of Chinese Woodblock
Prints is a fascinating exhibition,
not only because of the exhilarating quality of the works on
show but, also and principally, because of the challenge it
poses to the Western eye. We are asked to confront a
different conception of art, one that reflects society but
also takes part in shaping it: art as communication. The
exhibition contains work that is quite remote from the
intimate and autonomous modes of expression of so much
Western art and presents, instead, a charged and complex
dimension of artist-society relationships, a
mobilized,engaged
art.
The curator of the exhibition Chang
Tsong-Zung and the associate curator Iris Wachs have
selected specific material that reflects precisely the
immense upheavals undergone by Chinese art and society in
the present century. Their selection is not exotic, nor does
it present Chinese art as static or unchanged over the
years. On the contrary, works in the exhibition are
documents of the amazing way in which the winds of change
have fanned the dynamics of creativity in the woodcut-an
ancient Chinese medium of art- according it a distinctive
status and an old-new role in society. The rare material
that has been collected by the curators makes perceptible
the way in which Western-European and Soviet-aesthetic modes
have swept over the region and influenced the reshaping of
Chinese aesthetic patterns, at the same time as the old,
local art idioms survive and accord Chinese aesthetics their
own distinctive vitality.
The exhibition draws its strength from its
specificity, and it is relevant to any contemporary public
that attends to the immense emotional and intellectual
wealth to be found in the prints.
It is my privilege to thank Chang
Tsong-Zung, who collected with devotion this rare high
quality selection of prints, and Iris Wachs, who researched
the collection and spared no effort to bring to the Western
public information that enriches our understanding and
enhances our appreciation of the works.
My thanks also to the distinguished museums
in the U.S.A. that have responded to our proposal to present
the exhibition in their galleries, enabling viewers outside
of Israel to enjoy it.
Last-though really first-our blessings and
our appreciation to the Chinese woodcut artists in whose art
the tragedies, crisis and hopes of this tumultuous
century-so soon to end-are communicated and resonate beyond
the boundaries of space and time.
Galia Bar Or
Director, The Museum of Art Ein Harod Translated from the
Hebrew by Richard Flantz