The Economist - USA (2022-02-12)

The Economist February 12th 2022 Culture 75

writerschurningoutasmanyas30,000

wordsa day.Allthesame,itprovidesthe

fantasyworldstowhichhundredsofmil­

lionsofChinesepeopleregularlyescape—

mythological and imperial pasts, the

underworld,thezombieapocalypse.

A gripping chapter of “The Subplot”

mapsouttheimaginaryelementsofChi­

nesesciencefiction—thegenreinwhich

Chinesewriters,aboveallLiuCixin,have

enjoyedmostsuccessoverseas.Boostedby

thepandemic, intrusive technology has

cometoseemall­pervasiveinChina;inter­

net censorship and granular high­tech

surveillanceare nowroutine.Storiesby

writerssuch asNian Yu andHan Song

explorethedystopianimplicationsofthe

“monstersthatrampantnewtechnologies

havethoughtlesslycreated”,asMsWalsh

putsit.MrHan,forinstance,depictsthe

transformation of human minds and

bodies into “another outdated piece of

hardwareinneedofanupgrade”.

Thebookmakesa powerfulcaseforAn­

glophonereaderswhowanttounderstand

Chinatolookpasttheheadlinesandturn

toliterature.Thecountry’screativewriters

navigatebothencroachingcensorshipand

relentless commercial pressures. Yet in

fantastical,satiricalandprovocativeways,

their work vibrantlyreimagines China’s

past,presentandfuture. n

Contemporaryart

Heart in mouth

W

ithitssunlitcupolaandflutedmar­
ble  staircase,  Ely  House  has  long
been a place of silent contemplation. In the
18th century the grand Mayfair town house
was  the  episcopal  residence  of  Edmund
Keene, an English bishop. Since 2017 it has
fostered  a  different  kind  of  reverence,  as
one  of  the  contemporary­art  showcases
run by Thaddaeus Ropac, an Austrian gal­
lery owner. In this normally hushed envi­
ronment,  the  sound  of  giggling  that  rang
through the building on a recent afternoon
was pleasantly jarring.
Two  students  from  east  London  were
lying  on  the  floor  to  gaze  at  a  long,
unframed  canvas  tacked  just  above  the
skirting  board.  They  pointed  and  laughed
as they tried to decipher the imagery, with
its  scribbles  and  slabs  of  pinks  and  yel­
lows, greys and reds. A third young visitor
was poised on one leg, wondering whether
to  hop  over  or  onto  another  painting  that
had been stuck to the floor like a doormat. 
Like  that  of  the  Italian  Arte  Povera
movement in the late 1960s, this is art that
toys with traditional notions of painting—
all  that  rectangular  formality,  respectful
framing  and  careful  placing  of  pictures  at
eye  level  on  a  gallery  wall.  Both  paintings
are  by  Rachel  Jones,  a  31­year­old  black
British artist who was brought up in Essex
by  a  Jamaican  mother  and  a  Bajan  father.
The  laughing  young  visitors  might  not
have ventured into a Mayfair gallery were it
not showing work that captures their con­
cerns and shares their cultural references,
including music, Instagram and the Black
Lives  Matter  protests.  “She  paints  our
world,” one of them said. 
Ms Jones studied at the Glasgow School

ofArtandthenatthe  Royal  Academy  of

Arts  in  London.  There  her  graduate  show

caught  the  eyes  of  Zoe  Whitley  of  the

Chisenhale  Gallery  in  the  capital’s  East

End,  who  is  known  for  discovering  and

nurturing  new  talent,  and  Ralph  Rugoff,

head of the Hayward Gallery and curator of

the  Venice  Biennale  in  2019.  In  “Mixing  It

Up”, an exhibition of British painting at the

Hayward last autumn, Mr Rugoff chose to

place two of Ms Jones’s biggest pictures op­

posite  some  by  Oscar  Murillo,  a  dynamic

Colombian  painter.  In  their  colour  and

intensity,  her  pieces  were  more  than  a

match  for  Mr  Murillo’s  muscular  blues,

blacks and reds. 

At  the  Hayward,  Ms  Jones’s  paintings

were not formally hung but simply tacked

to  the  wall—as  they  were  in  the  recent

show  at  the  Ropac  gallery,  and  will  be  in

another  that  is  scheduled  to  open  at  the

Chisenhale  on  March  12th.  Unstretched

and raw­edged, one was over seven metres

wide and both were majestic. The bigger of

the  two,  “lick  your  teeth,  they  so  clutch”,

pulsates with colour and depth. Its jostling

shapes  cohere  into  a  recognisable  form:

around  the  outer  edge  is  a  patchwork  of

blood  and  flesh,  and  teeth  are  strung

across  the  middle  like  gravestones.  It  is  a

painting  of  a  mouth,  but  viewed  from  an

intriguing  perspective.  You  cannot  tell  if

you are inside it peering out or on the out­

side looking in. 

Even  to  fill  her  biggest  canvases,  Ms

Jones uses only oil sticks and pastels. She

says  she  can  work  both  faster  and  more

precisely  with  these  than  with  paints  and

brushes, a technique that yields a raw, elec­

tric  energy.  In  contrast  to  some  big­name

contemporary  artists,  whose  output  is

manufactured  in  studio­factories,  she  is

herself part of the picture: every mark, ev­

ery  line,  every  frenzied  dash  shows  what

the  artist’s  hand  is  doing.  The  composi­

tion, the velocity and the riot of colours—

some  hot  and  some  cool—all  suggest  an

artist in pursuit of an emotional response.

As she once put it, the experience of seeing

her paintings is meant to resemble “feeling

with your eyes”.

At  school,  Ms  Jones  says,  she  was  only

ever  one  of  a  small  handful  of  black  chil­

dren; later, as an art student, she respond­

ed to being stared at by painting eyes. The

mouth, with its contradictory allusions to

nourishment  and  vomiting,  smiling  and

grimacing,  offered  her  a  broader  visual

metaphor.  For  Ms  Jones,  it  evokes  an  era

when the health of African slaves who had

been shipped across the Atlantic was cali­

brated by the state of their teeth. One of the

teeth  in  the  Hayward  painting  is  orna­

mented  with  small  circles  outlined  in

red—a reference, she says, to the success of

contemporary black fashion designers and

musicians,  who  sometimes  adorn  their

teeth with coloured gemstones.

Painting  is  a  form  of  political  engage­

ment  for  Ms  Jones,  but  her  art  is  more

thoughtful than didactic. As much as polit­

ical  slogans,  the  mouths  she  paints  speak

of joyful human pastimes such as singing

or kissing. Her technical prowess, and her

deep engagement with urgent ideas about

race  and  justice,  have  attracted  museums

and  collectors.  Her  most  recent  commer­

cial show sold out; institutions are eager to

exhibit  her  work.  But  it  is  the  emotional

impact it has on youngviewers, like those

lying  on  the  floorinMayfair,  which  best

attests to its power.n

Theme and technique make Rachel Jones an artist of the moment

Abigger canvas