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Synopsis
The dirty history of a town, a harbor, and its oysters.
Review
It's good roasted, stewed, fried, skewered, poached, pickled, baked, or stuffed — not to mention alive and kicking on the
half-shell. But do we ever stop to think about the history of the humble oyster as it slides down our gullets? In his latest
effort, Mark Kurlansky again demonstrates his immense talent for illuminating the seemingly mundane (as he did with his material
histories of Cod and Salt). The Big Oyster overflows with intriguingly digressive detail. For example, oyster shells make a good fertilizer and, if melted down, can help hold your house together. They measure radiation, prefer to live on the remains of their dead, and, while they don't make pearls, can be trained. In the old days, they would even grow to a foot in length. While they were praised by Casanova and attendees of ancient
Roman orgies, the scientific truth, as far as we can tell, is that they are not an aphrodisiac. Finally, and significantly for this story, they were major protagonists in the history of New York City, a city that for
centuries was world-famous for its oysters — at one point producing 700 million a year, locally, in its very own harbor.
Kurlansky traces the role of the oyster in the history of the city. Despite his many asides — which range from digressions on the invention of the steamship to the bloody draft riots of 1863 and the story of Delmonico's (New York's first restaurant) — the book offers a unified vision of an oyster-loving, sea-faring people. Driven by technological innovation and greed, New Yorkers became so caught up in consumption and production that they became completely completely oblivious to the ocean at their doorstep.
While oyster stands may no longer line the streets of Manhattan like hotdog carts do today, the real tragedy lies deeper.
Kurlansky decries "the trashing of New York," that is, the corruption of the city's natural ecosystem. With all its taste
for historical whimsy, the book, at heart, is not only an elegy to the oyster as an emblem for what New Yorkers have forgotten
in themselves and in the town they built, but also a symbol of what might be recovered.
- Stephen Dougherty
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Synopsis
This lushly illustrated exhibition catalog is a veritable textbook for Chinese contemporary art.
Review
Sotheby's recent, specialized sale of contemporary Asian art — a first for the auction house in New York — proved that deep-pocketed art lovers covet a Zhang Xiaogang canvas for their walls or a Xu Bing installation for their portfolios. The New York auction led to works tripling and quadrupling their already high estimates.
Swiss über-collector Uli Sigg deserves credit for the auction's success. Sigg possesses arguably the world's best collection
of Chinese contemporary art. Mahjong is not only the catalog for his collection exhibition, it could double as a textbook on China's history-making artists. The
book includes essays by leading figures such as Ai Weiwei, a curator and founding father of Chinese conceptual art; international curator Hou Hanru; and Li Xianting, who is regarded as China's premier critic.
The art, of course, tells its own story. Organized into a dozen categories, including Power Play, Consumerism, and Body as
Medium, the works from the exhibition are largely privileged with full-page spreads. In addition to Zhang Xiaogang and Xu
Bing, auction favorites include Fang Lijun, whose pop paintings and woodcuts impress with their saturated palettes; also a standout, performance artist Zhang Huan is known for seminal works such as Family Tree, a stunning embodiment of Chinese attitudes toward lineage.
Sigg is on target elsewhere in his support for photography and video — a popular subject for curators. He picks up Lin Tianmiao's
thread-and-fabric portrait, Zhang Peili's pioneering videos, and Liu Wei's uncanny photographic study of human limbs that evokes traditional ink landscapes. The collector's eye for emerging talent manifests itself through the
inclusion of such rising stars as painters Li Songsong, Xie Nanxing, and Qiu Shihua, and video artist Cao Fei — names that will dominate future headlines. In that department, few can match Xiao Yu's grotesque installation, Ruan, which featured a preserved fetus' head grafted onto a bird's torso. The piece ignited international controversy over taste
and decency when it was exhibited, but it is clear that whether critics approve or not, Chinese art has achieved enviable
status.
- Andrew Maerkle
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