Chinese characters morph into birds in Xu Bing’s site-specific installation at the Morgan (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 2, $10-$15 (free Friday 7:00 – 9:00)
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org
the living word slideshow
Language, politics, history, and the journey toward enlightenment come together in delightful, meaningful ways in Xu Bing’s “The Living Word 3,” on view in Renzo Piano’s bright, modern Gilbert Court atrium in the Morgan Library through October 2. The third iteration of the work, previously shown in slightly different versions at the Smithsonian in 2001 and at the seminal 1989 Chinese Avant-Garde exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Beijing, was designed specifically for this space, as accompanying preparatory drawings attest. On a white board on the gallery floor, contemporary Chinese characters spell out the dictionary definition of “bird” (niao): “vertebrate animal, warm-blooded, oviparous, lung breather, body covered in feathers, bipedal, forelimbs modified as wings, usually able to fly.” The letters then begin to fly off from the upper-left-hand corner, reaching toward the sky. As they continue up, they go backward in time, morphing from Mao’s simplified text into older, standardized Chinese writing and eventually into ancient pictographs representing the word “bird” (鸟) while also changing colors, resulting in a rainbow effect that is heightened when seen against the green leaves of the trees in the atrium. As Xu, who is based in New York and Beijing, explains, “Buddhists believe that ‘if you look for harmony in the living word, then you will be able to reach Buddha; if you look for harmony in lifeless sentences, you will be unable to save yourself.’ . . . My work and my method of thinking have been my search for the living word.” As the words take flight, they celebrate freedom while evoking the censorship so prevalent in modern China, as evidenced by the recent arrest of one of Xu’s contemporaries, Ai Weiwei. And the Morgan is a fitting place for the work, an institution devoted to writing, filled with so many classic texts, original musical scores, and historical documents that honor language. Among the other exhibitions on view at the Morgan right now are the excellent “Jim Dine: The Glyptotek Drawings” (through September 4), the fun “Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art” (October 2), and “Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands” (September 4).