Quaderni di Venezia Arti

Liu Yonggang and the Images of Chinese Calligraphy

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Abstract

The idea that Chinese characters are essentially pictures interests many artists of the contemporary scene that use the ambivalence of Chinese calligraphy to break up the normative communication system. Liu Yonggang (Genhe, 1964) is a singular case because in Standing Characters he dismantles the ordinary reading process of Chinese characters, maintaining the cognitive purpose of the ideographic language. Since the use of words in Liu’s production is not limited to his renowned anthropomorphic sculptures, the paper presents the overlapping of visual and verbal languages in different artworks focusing on the ‘intermediality’ aspect of his art. The mutual references of word and image are investigated to unveil the artist adoption of words and pictures as a whole and a unique entity, rather than a totality of complementary and interrelated languages.


Open access

Submitted: Oct. 28, 2021 | Published May 13, 2022 | Language: en

Keywords Chinese Contemporary art • Re-iconocity of characters • Iconotext • Word-picture relationship • 当代艺术 • 刘永刚 • Liu Yonggang

Copyright © 2022 Veronica Di Geronimo. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-588-9/015


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