“Summoning Ghosts:” Hung Liu’s Amazingly Apt Life Arc

In Kansas City to attend the UMKC Conservatory dance concert, I took a side trip to the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art to see “Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu,” a retrospective of the work of the Chinese-born, U.S.-based contemporary painter.

What I found was visually striking, but permeated by a subtle aura of grift — not Liu’s, necessarily, but that of big-time art in general.

Hung Liu benefits from an amazingly apt life arc. Born in China just as the Communists were taking over, she spent her childhood in an environment suffused by Maoist propaganda. After a four-year stint doing agricultural labor during the Cultural Revolution, she was able to return to formal art study, eventually becoming an art teacher and the host of an award-winning Chinese television program for children, “How to Draw and Paint.”

Leaving in 1984 to attend graduate school at the University of California – San Diego, she arrived about the same time as a different kind of propaganda – the doctrine of contemporary-art-as-big-money-buyable that arose to cash in on the triumph of global capitalism.

I don’t know anything about Liu personally, but I can’t help thinking her career is now ideally positioned to benefit from a rising class of newly-minted Chinese millionaires with a taste for western-style contemporary-art prestige combined with homeland cultural relevance.

In staking out this admittedly (and deliberately) snarky position, I’m not trying to understate the existential suffering of ultra-high-net-worth individuals in their quest for purchased self-expression.

It’s got to be tough, in a way, to be super-rich nowadays: you can order, say, a bespoke Bentley Continental with cerise paintwork and turquoise ostrich-skin upholstery – and there’s nothing to stop the guy with the next slip at the yacht club from saying, “Cute. I think I’ll order a couple just like it for my kids to use on our island.”

On their private planet of unlimited self-indulgence, there is no way for the Richies to possess something truly unique except by concentrating on goods of which the supply is inherently limited: contemporary art and Supreme Court justices, for example.

Further, I don’t want to minimize the degree of difficulty for contemporary artists in cashing in on this zeitgeist.

To make it in contemporary art, you have to be willing and able to work within the subset of ideas that curators, dealers, academics, and influential critics are interested in discussing; that’s critical because these cultural horse-holders do double duty as the art consultants who advise the super-rich on what to collect. (Learning who these people are and how to suck up to them is one of the principal value propositions of attending art grad school.)

Furthermore, you have to be able to work in the art media, styles, sizes, and color schemes that will fit in with the existing collections and decor preferences of the Gulfstream set.

Liu, it seems to me, has nailed both strands of this double-high-wire balancing act. Her works are large, impactful, and energetically designed.

And she nods toward the critical fascination with the concept of “appropriation” by basing her works on uncredited vintage photographs, and illustrations.

(Bonus snark: In art-world theology, when a painter steals a photographer’s work, it’s appropriation; if a photographer does likewise, it’s copyright infringement.)

Of course Liu takes care to put her own stamp on this imagery by recreating it at the heroic sizes that look good in Fifth Avenue high-rise condos and prestige office spaces; she combines and juxtaposes themes from the source images in ways that add layers of meaning; and she has an interesting practice of acknowledging the painterly quality of her medium by allowing drips and smears to form a significant part of the contour of each work.

Further, she pairs some of the paintings with three-dimensional found objects that tie in to their significance – a tank-shell casing with a Tienanmen Square-themed painting, for example.

And as I said, in spite of my distaste for the milieu from which it comes, there is no denying that this collection of work is impressive and impactful.

I suppose there’s even something to be said for intellectual challenge of the Bayesian exercise of trying to tease out the distribution of sincerity and schtick that became adhered to it during its travel from Liu’s mind to the gallery wall where I encountered it.

That’s a game that only a handful of embittered-outsider critics are interested in playing… but hey, I’m one of them, and I make no apologies.

(For a synopsis of the painter’s rather remarkable life, visit: http://www.nancyhoffmangallery.com/artist/display/6/Hung-Liu)