Cheng's Student Ed Young to Have Art Exhibit

Ed Young, children's book artist and tai chi teacher, will be having an exhibit of his works in Abiline, Texas,  November 11, 2011-January 28, 2012 at the National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature. Young, who is about to turn 80, immigrated to the United States as a youth, and studied architecture, before turning to illustration.
In 1964, he happened to meet Professor Cheng Man-ch'ing, who was visiting the United States. After Cheng decided to stay on in New York City, Young became one of his assistants and translators, and became a taiji teacher himself in the New York area and beyond.

Young's book Lon Po Po, the Chinese Red Riding Hood story, won the Caldecott Medal, the highest US honor in children's book illustration. Two other books, The Emperor and the Kite, and Seven Blind Mice, by Young himself, have won Caldecott Honors. Recent books include Wabi Sabi (with Mark Reibstein), Moon Bear (with Brenda Guiberson),  Hook, and Tsunami (with Kimiko Kajikawa). His newest book, The House Baba Built, a picture-book memoir about his boyhood in wartime Shanghai, is meeting with critical acclaim.
For an article about the exhibit, see the Abiline Recorder.
Young can be seen on this BBC video discussing The House Baba Built.

Tracing the Past: Art Exhibit

"Tracing the Past, Drawing the Future: Master Ink Painters in 20th-Century China," an exhibit of Cheng Man-ch'ing's elder colleagues works will be held at Stanford University in California.

The exhibit presents more than 110 works, in two rotations, February 17 through July 4, 2010. Admission is free. “This landmark exhibition illuminates a turning point in the development of Chinese ink painting during the 20th-century,” explained Dr. Xiaoneng Yang, the Cantor Arts Center’s Patrick J. J. Maveety Curator of Asian Art. “Drawing upon paintings and calligraphy on loan from Chinese collections new to American audiences, the exhibition presents monumental portraits, vibrant bird-and-flower painting, and spectacular landscapes by Wu Changshuo (1844–1927), Qi Baishi (1864–1957), Huang Binhong (1865–1955), and Pan Tianshou (1897–1971). Collectively known in China as the ‘Four Great Masters of Ink Painting,’ these artists faced the dual challenges of negotiating the impact of encounters with the West, while inventing new directions for long-held practices of ink painting.”
A fully illustrated catalogue with scholarly essays in English accompanies the exhibition, including two introductory essays and essays on each artist. Full entries, translated from Chinese, accompany images of the works in the exhibition.
An international symposium, "The Politics of Culture and the Arts in Early 20th-Century China" will be held February 19–21. Cosponsored by Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, Center for East Asian Studies, and Department of Art and Art History, the symposium is open free to scholars and the public."

Cheng Man-ch'ing was well acquainted with these men as colleagues in the Shanghai art scene, the art colleges, and painting societies. Wu Changshuo wrote a colophon for Cheng's 1924 album and praised the young Cheng highly. We can see an influence of Wu and Qi Baishi on Cheng Man-ch'ing's painting.

Painting by Wu Changshuo
Flower and Vegetables album:
Narcissus, Eggplant, Grapevines, Lotus, Chrysanthemum, 1904.
Album Leaves. Ink and colors on silk. Zhejiang Provincial Museum.
Reproduced with permission. 

Seven Friends of Painting Exhibit

Cheng Man-ch'ing and six of his colleagues started the "Seven Friends of Painting Association" (七友畫會) in Taiwan, holding annual exhibits. This May, a retrospective exhibit is being held May 22–June 14, 2009 in honor of the group's 50th anniversary, at the National Museum of History in Taipei. The seven artists were Ma Shouhua, Chen Fang, Tao Yunlou, Zheng Manqing (Cheng Man-ch'ing, Liu Yantao, Gao Yihong, and Zhang Gunian (馬壽華、陳方、陶芸樓、鄭曼青、劉延濤、高逸鴻、張穀年), all influential figures in the painting scene during their lifetimes.