The National Palace Museum has announced that it would remove 12 bronze Chinese zodiac animal heads that it received as a donation from Hong Kong film actor Jackie Chan (成龍), and which are currently installed in the courtyard of the museum’s newly opened southern branch in Chiayi County’s Taibao Township (太保). There is no need to waste public resources on holding a public hearing to discuss what to do with these replicas, which are craft items rather than works of art, and as such have no place in such a prestigious museum. The museum would gain more credibility if it makes a prompt and firm decision on its own initiative.
The animal heads lack aesthetic appeal. True art has a natural appeal that does not need to be explained. A statue of Venus, Rodin’s The Thinker and the Mona Lisa with her enigmatic smile were created in different centuries, but when we look at them we are intuitively struck by their beauty. Their impact is felt by mind and spirit and is not something that money can buy. Art is a purely sensual perception whose thrill you naturally feel when you approach it.
The first thing that strikes you when you look at the animal heads donated by Chan is the form of their artistic presentation. As soon as you set eyes on them you get an impression of a ruinous scene of severed heads and dismemberment. One dark gray-black disembodied animal head after another is mounted atop a thin metal pole, its mouth open, but unspeaking. Below that are rows of metal bars connecting a platform above and a pedestal below. The entire presentation is utterly stiff and cold, without the aesthetic sense inherent in any artistic form.
The animal heads also embody a great taboo of feng shui. The severed heads from China’s Old Summer Palace are works of industrial craftsmanship, but have little artistic value. In their original parkland setting, they served as gargoyles to ward off evil and disasters, while also functioning as fountain spouts, and they were placed in a low position. However, the 12 animal heads copied for Chan are taken to represent the months of the year and set in a high place like a dragon soaring freely into the clouds. The intention of using this reversal to ruin Taiwan by transforming its feng shui is all too obvious and definitely not worthy of praise.
On further examination of the design, one finds that the rows of columns in each plinth form a dark hollow space that is entirely enclosed, with no exit. The animal heads appear to be mounted on sacrificial altars. On further consideration, the plinths also resemble cages or prison cells. Although made by human hand, the display gives the impression of something formed by nature. This is completely contrary to the form and arrangement of the space that they originally occupied in China. Behind the animal heads is a black wall covered with round convex dots. Apart from failing to blend in with its surroundings, how can this setting provide a suitably contrasting backdrop for the equally black animal heads?
Should the animal heads be auctioned off or returned to the donor? In considering what to do with these artistically valueless industrial craft items, the National Palace Museum should not convene meetings to discuss the matter just to avoid criticism. That would be a waste of resources. Given the low artistic value of the heads, as well as the clumsy way in which they have been displayed, they are sure to be discarded eventually. They could either be given back to the donor or, if market conditions suggest that they would fetch a good price, be put up for public auction. In the latter case, the proceeds of the auction could be used to publicize and promote the museum.
Yang Chyi-wen is president of Taipei National University of the Arts.
Translated by Julian Clegg
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
Eighty-seven percent of Taiwan’s energy supply this year came from burning fossil fuels, with more than 47 percent of that from gas-fired power generation. The figures attracted international attention since they were in October published in a Reuters report, which highlighted the fragility and structural challenges of Taiwan’s energy sector, accumulated through long-standing policy choices. The nation’s overreliance on natural gas is proving unstable and inadequate. The rising use of natural gas does not project an image of a Taiwan committed to a green energy transition; rather, it seems that Taiwan is attempting to patch up structural gaps in lieu of
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
The Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office on Monday announced that they would not countersign or promulgate the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) passed by the Legislative Yuan — a first in the nation’s history and the ultimate measure the central government could take to counter what it called an unconstitutional legislation. Since taking office last year, the legislature — dominated by the opposition alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party — has passed or proposed a slew of legislation that has stirred controversy and debate, such as extending
RSS