In 1966 Wu Hung, who teaches art history at the University of Chicago, was himself just an art student. He was attending a state-sponsored exhibit of “reactionary” paintings in Beijing when a group of Red Army guards, incensed by a set of cartoon portraits of Mao, dragged the artist into the room with a leather belt around his neck. They forced him to kneel in front of his paintings and demanded that he confess to making the works with criminal intent, savagely beating and kicking him. Not long afterward Wu was placed in a detention camp. His father, a Harvard-trained economist, and his mother, a prominent Shakespeare scholar, had already been declared enemies of the state.
Mara Tapp: There was something you said at the opening tour of the MCA exhibit that I feel informs the show. You told us that for these Chinese artists there is no chronological order—it’s all just information. Could you expand on that?
MT: Paint by number—
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WH: Yes, or “you will have some white and yellow mixed together for the forehead.”
WH: Exactly. Exactly.
MT: What is that specific meaning?
WH: Yes. This generation actually entered art college, often the prestigious ones, after the Cultural Revolution. Basically the schools reopened around 1980, so they’re typically schooled through the 80s.
