Century Mountain
Encyclopedia
The Century Mountain Project is an East/West collaboration of art between the Chinese poet and calligrapher Huang Xiang and American artist William Rock. Their paintings, which feature Huang Xiang's calligraphy and poetry and William Rock's painted portraits, honor outstanding thinkers, creators, discoverers, leaders—essentially people who stood out like mountains throughout the centuries. Their subjects include Mozart, Lincoln
, Gandhi, Mother Teresa
, Rimbaud, Phillis Wheatley
, Li Bai
, Murasaki Shikibu
, Malcolm X
, Isadora Duncan
, and Edgar Allan Poe
.
In 2009, their portrait of Anne Frank
was exhibited at the Peter Wilhelm Art Center http://peterwilhelm-artcenter.com/ in Budapest; and in June 2010 an exhibit of Huang Xiang and William Rock's Century Mountain paintings will open in Tarragona, Spain.
The artwork created between Huang Xiang and William Rock began in 2006 and continues as an ongoing collaboration. There is no cultural, gender, or race distinctions with regard to the subjects depicted.
was born on December 26, 1941 in Guidong County of Hunan Province. At the time of his birth there occurred a great fire. The fire spreading through his neighborhood reached the very wall of the family compound; newborn Huang and his mother, still connected by the umbilical cord, had to be carried to safety to a nearby temple.
Huang's father was in charge of supply for the army group that fought the GMD's last great campaign in Shenyang Province of Manchuria
in 1948. The decisive battle there, 'Liaoshen,' was won by the communists, and Huang's father was captured. The family learned late in 1951 that earlier that year Huang's father had been summarily shot in a prison camp near Beijing
.
Huang Xiang was only nine years old when he first personally suffered similar treatment. One day in all innocence he pulled an ailing fish from the village well. Immediately the village headman grabbed him and accused him of poisoning the well. For three nights Huang was bound in a dark room, and paraded daily through the streets wearing a dunce cap bearing the legend "Huang Xiang counterrevolutionary poisoner of wells." He was only released when chemical analysis failed to detect any poison in the fish.
Although an excellent student in grade school, he was not permitted to matriculate into middle school because of his class origins. The denial of public education left Huang Xiang feeling severely hurt, for he strongly desired to continue his schooling. The quandary was soon alleviated, however, when he discovered in a concealed loft in his grandparents, home a treasure trove of college books that his father had put away years earlier. Though aged only ten, he began reading them with a will. Most of the books were in Chinese; they included classic works of Lao Tzu, Zhuangzi
, Li Bo and Du Fu
, plus political treatises by Sun Yat-sen
, Chiang Kai-shek
and others, as well as books of literature, political economy, philosophy, religion and the arts. there was also translation of major western authors, poets and statesman, plus the french "Declaration of Right" and the American "Declaration of Independence." moreover there were the extensive notes made by his father in a notebook, including quotations from Walt Whitman
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
, George Washington
and Abraham Lincoln
, as well as Kant
, Hegel, Nietzsche, Shopenhauer, Goethe, Marx, Freud and others.
While working at a Metals Factory at the age of seventeen in 1958, Huang Xiang had several of his poems accepted for publication. These early efforts were entirely in the style accepted by the regime. Huang was invited to join the Guizhou branch of The All-China Writers Association, then its youngest member. Conformity is not one of his attributes, however, he soon became dissatisfied with the tight limitations on style
and subject matter that prevailed, and determined to eschew them completely in the future.
Bored with the unchanging Metal factory routine. ignoring the need for official permission, he boarded a train for the Gobi desert. With roving eyes always open, Huang Xiang soon spied and befriended a half-Tibetan girl who spoke educated Mandarin. Inspired by her, he wrote poetry and perhaps naively he mailed copies of these poems back to friends at the Metal factory. The poems were intercepted by a factory official and was alarmed other workers may want to leave and follow Huang Xiang. A security officer was sent to the Gobi to arrest him. To Huang's great humiliation, the arresting officer charged him in front of other workers "with being an active counterrevolutionary who hated the Communist party and intended to escape across the border." This marked Huang Xiang's introduction to the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Gulags. Huang's cell was barely larger than a bed. It had no window only a hole in the ceiling. The stench was horrible. Huang received extra rough treatment, he was made to carry heavy bricks in the hot sun. During this period, he was accused of writing a reactionary slogan on a toilet wall. The rough treatment increased. One punishment was Huang had to stand on broken bricks with his wrists bound with wire tight enough to cut. He was forced to stand this way all night.
The Party promptly expelled him from The Writers Association, and proposed an absolute ban on publishing his writing for forty years. Huang Xiang was eventually sent to various prison camps.
Huang Xiang continued to secretly write poems.
Once again Huang became a target and found himself in trouble with the authorities. He was sentenced to three years of hard labor, being required to sleep in a cattle shed and he was physically escorted to the hills to do extra hard work.
In 1967, Huang Xiang was on the verge of entering a new phase of his life, beginning to write the serious poems that survive and that mark him as a man of ability, perception and courage.
In 1968 Huang wrote the first of his major political poems, "Wild Beasts" which was well received by the salon.
During this period Huang married his first wife Ai Youjun. They had a young son named Yingzi,"Yingzi" means eagle symbolizing freedom. Yingzi became ill and Huang requested permission at the work camp where he was assigned to visit his nine month old son in the hospital. His request was denied by the Revolutionary Committee. When he protested he received criticism and denunciation; when he refused to bow his head, they hung a heavy weight from his neck from a wire that drew blood. Soon Huang received a death notice from the hospital. Exploding in a frenzy, he bolted shouting from the compound and ran to the hospital. Finding the incubator empty, he was directed by an indifferent doctor to the morgue. After opening several crude coffins, he spied one that was partially broken, a rat jumped out. Opening it, he found his son. part of his ear had been bitten off, and he was bleeding from his eyes, nose and mouth. A finger moved. He was not even dead! Huang carried the small body to the main office, and was assigned a room for the night. Within hours Yingzi was dead. Huang was not at all silent in his anger and grief. An official came and berated Huang for disturbing the revolutionary order of the hospital. The next day Huang carried his son's lifeless body up a hill, and after sitting with him for some hours in a state of deep grief, buried him on a sunny slope above the city. Huang's disoriented wanderings in those devastating circumstances are set forth in his poem "Song of Life," dated October 29, 1970. 1
in Beijing.
China's movement for democracy has been carried forward in thousands of poems and one poet has emerged supreme: Huang Xiang of the Enlightenment Society. When Huang and his companions had come together some years before in their poor, remote home province of Guizhou "to study social problems, under the merciless oppression and cultural despotism of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four," they had asked themselves why China, with its long history of civilization, progressed so slowly, when Yugoslavia, also a "socialist" state, had developed quickly. Like many in their generation they concluded that the first thing to do was to establish respect for human rights
and democracy
. They differed from some of their contemporaries in that they read Western classics and respected Buddhism
, Christianity
, Islam
and Chinese Mysticism. But what distinguished them more than anything else was the visionary poet in their midst. It is characteristic that Huang Xiang was presented not as an individual but as a member of a group. Reading the poems and commentaries published by the society, it is clear he drew strength and enrichment from his companions. In turn he became their most eloquent voice.
Huang claimed that he was harassed by the authorities after reciting his poems before young people. The police searched for his manuscripts, but he had hidden them in candles by wrapping them in plastic bags, then rolling around them wicks, then finally molding wax around them. He melted the candles to get the poems out. On 11 October 1978 they pasted them up on the blank walls of an alleyway that runs beside the offices of the People's Daily, in the busy shopping center of the capital. Huang had taken trouble with the design of the posters to present as clearly as possible the poetry they bore. He brushed his large characters in red instead of black ink. He painted the emblem of the Enlightenment Society, a flaming torch of learning, at the beginning of the poster and between poems. After the last panel, he pasted blank sheets for readers comments.
Six weeks later, when free speech was blossoming on the Democracy Wall, Huang wrote the poems out again as a new ninety-four-panel poster of even larger characters. this he displayed on seventy yards of fence high on an embankment in Tiananmen Square, facing Mao's mausoleum. The site enabled a thousand readers to read the poems at the same time. The poems announce the advent of a god who brings enlightenment to a people living on the darkness of totalitarian dictatorship. 2
on July 3. He was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and lived his early adult life in Los Angeles
, California. He applied for and received his Irish citizenship while living in Paris
in 1992. He studied drawing at the California Art Institute and taught himself to paint and sculpt by traveling to museums around the world. He has been immersed in Eastern thought and practice for eighteen years studying and teaching with Chinese and Tibetan monks. His art is exhibited internationally and he has taught and spoken extensively about the nature of creativity, mysticism and art. He has been instrumental in producing several cultural events that promote the arts as a universal dialogue for humanity. Century Mountain
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
, Gandhi, Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa , born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu , was a Roman Catholic nun of Albanian ethnicity and Indian citizenship, who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, in 1950...
, Rimbaud, Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley was the first African American poet and first African-American woman whose writings were published. Born in Gambia, Senegal, she was sold into slavery at age seven...
, Li Bai
Li Bai
Li Bai , also known in the West by various other transliterations, especially Li Po, was a major Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period. He has been regarded as one of the greatest poets in China's Tang period, which is often called China's "golden age" of poetry. Around a thousand existing...
, Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012...
, Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
, Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...
, and Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
.
In 2009, their portrait of Anne Frank
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...
was exhibited at the Peter Wilhelm Art Center http://peterwilhelm-artcenter.com/ in Budapest; and in June 2010 an exhibit of Huang Xiang and William Rock's Century Mountain paintings will open in Tarragona, Spain.
The artwork created between Huang Xiang and William Rock began in 2006 and continues as an ongoing collaboration. There is no cultural, gender, or race distinctions with regard to the subjects depicted.
Seeing the collaborative paintings of Huang Xiang and William Rock is like having a personal encounter with the subject depicted. They have life. This Western style image with calligraphy is not what one usually sees. William Rock is aware of the negative space and Huang Xiang is using the calligraphy to create as an artist would. Formally the artists are opening to accommodate each other. Both artists working together as one. Huang Xiang knows intuitively and instinctively how to place the calligraphy in relation to the image. The calligraphy of Huang Xiang is special, modern and personal. It is striking! An East/West collaboration, the work is like that of Xu Bing. The fact that Huang Xiang's calligraphy is making commentary about the image adds to the many layers of this work. The paintings have a lot of energy."
— Dr. Stanely Murashige, Specialist in contemporary Chinese art / The Art Institute of Chicago
Huang Xiang early life
Huang XiangHuang Xiang
Huang Xiang was born on December 26, 1941 in Guidong County of Hunan Province. Xiang is currently one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and a master calligrapher...
was born on December 26, 1941 in Guidong County of Hunan Province. At the time of his birth there occurred a great fire. The fire spreading through his neighborhood reached the very wall of the family compound; newborn Huang and his mother, still connected by the umbilical cord, had to be carried to safety to a nearby temple.
Huang's father was in charge of supply for the army group that fought the GMD's last great campaign in Shenyang Province of Manchuria
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
in 1948. The decisive battle there, 'Liaoshen,' was won by the communists, and Huang's father was captured. The family learned late in 1951 that earlier that year Huang's father had been summarily shot in a prison camp near Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
.
Huang Xiang was only nine years old when he first personally suffered similar treatment. One day in all innocence he pulled an ailing fish from the village well. Immediately the village headman grabbed him and accused him of poisoning the well. For three nights Huang was bound in a dark room, and paraded daily through the streets wearing a dunce cap bearing the legend "Huang Xiang counterrevolutionary poisoner of wells." He was only released when chemical analysis failed to detect any poison in the fish.
Although an excellent student in grade school, he was not permitted to matriculate into middle school because of his class origins. The denial of public education left Huang Xiang feeling severely hurt, for he strongly desired to continue his schooling. The quandary was soon alleviated, however, when he discovered in a concealed loft in his grandparents, home a treasure trove of college books that his father had put away years earlier. Though aged only ten, he began reading them with a will. Most of the books were in Chinese; they included classic works of Lao Tzu, Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, a period corresponding to the philosophical summit of Chinese thought — the Hundred Schools of Thought, and is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name,...
, Li Bo and Du Fu
Du Fu
Du Fu was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty.Along with Li Bai , he is frequently called the greatest of the Chinese poets. His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successful civil servant, but he proved unable to make the necessary accommodations...
, plus political treatises by Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" , a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...
, Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....
and others, as well as books of literature, political economy, philosophy, religion and the arts. there was also translation of major western authors, poets and statesman, plus the french "Declaration of Right" and the American "Declaration of Independence." moreover there were the extensive notes made by his father in a notebook, including quotations from Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
and Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
, as well as Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
, Hegel, Nietzsche, Shopenhauer, Goethe, Marx, Freud and others.
While working at a Metals Factory at the age of seventeen in 1958, Huang Xiang had several of his poems accepted for publication. These early efforts were entirely in the style accepted by the regime. Huang was invited to join the Guizhou branch of The All-China Writers Association, then its youngest member. Conformity is not one of his attributes, however, he soon became dissatisfied with the tight limitations on style
and subject matter that prevailed, and determined to eschew them completely in the future.
Bored with the unchanging Metal factory routine. ignoring the need for official permission, he boarded a train for the Gobi desert. With roving eyes always open, Huang Xiang soon spied and befriended a half-Tibetan girl who spoke educated Mandarin. Inspired by her, he wrote poetry and perhaps naively he mailed copies of these poems back to friends at the Metal factory. The poems were intercepted by a factory official and was alarmed other workers may want to leave and follow Huang Xiang. A security officer was sent to the Gobi to arrest him. To Huang's great humiliation, the arresting officer charged him in front of other workers "with being an active counterrevolutionary who hated the Communist party and intended to escape across the border." This marked Huang Xiang's introduction to the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Gulags. Huang's cell was barely larger than a bed. It had no window only a hole in the ceiling. The stench was horrible. Huang received extra rough treatment, he was made to carry heavy bricks in the hot sun. During this period, he was accused of writing a reactionary slogan on a toilet wall. The rough treatment increased. One punishment was Huang had to stand on broken bricks with his wrists bound with wire tight enough to cut. He was forced to stand this way all night.
The Party promptly expelled him from The Writers Association, and proposed an absolute ban on publishing his writing for forty years. Huang Xiang was eventually sent to various prison camps.
Huang Xiang continued to secretly write poems.
Once again Huang became a target and found himself in trouble with the authorities. He was sentenced to three years of hard labor, being required to sleep in a cattle shed and he was physically escorted to the hills to do extra hard work.
In 1967, Huang Xiang was on the verge of entering a new phase of his life, beginning to write the serious poems that survive and that mark him as a man of ability, perception and courage.
In 1968 Huang wrote the first of his major political poems, "Wild Beasts" which was well received by the salon.
During this period Huang married his first wife Ai Youjun. They had a young son named Yingzi,"Yingzi" means eagle symbolizing freedom. Yingzi became ill and Huang requested permission at the work camp where he was assigned to visit his nine month old son in the hospital. His request was denied by the Revolutionary Committee. When he protested he received criticism and denunciation; when he refused to bow his head, they hung a heavy weight from his neck from a wire that drew blood. Soon Huang received a death notice from the hospital. Exploding in a frenzy, he bolted shouting from the compound and ran to the hospital. Finding the incubator empty, he was directed by an indifferent doctor to the morgue. After opening several crude coffins, he spied one that was partially broken, a rat jumped out. Opening it, he found his son. part of his ear had been bitten off, and he was bleeding from his eyes, nose and mouth. A finger moved. He was not even dead! Huang carried the small body to the main office, and was assigned a room for the night. Within hours Yingzi was dead. Huang was not at all silent in his anger and grief. An official came and berated Huang for disturbing the revolutionary order of the hospital. The next day Huang carried his son's lifeless body up a hill, and after sitting with him for some hours in a state of deep grief, buried him on a sunny slope above the city. Huang's disoriented wanderings in those devastating circumstances are set forth in his poem "Song of Life," dated October 29, 1970. 1
The Democracy Wall and Huang Xiang
In 1978 Huang Xiang was the first to post on the Democracy WallDemocracy Wall
The Democracy Wall was a long brick wall on Xidan Street, Xicheng District, Beijing, which became the focus for democratic dissent. Beginning in December 1978, in line with the Communist Party of China's policy of "seeking truth from facts," activists in the Democracy movement—such as Xu...
in Beijing.
China's movement for democracy has been carried forward in thousands of poems and one poet has emerged supreme: Huang Xiang of the Enlightenment Society. When Huang and his companions had come together some years before in their poor, remote home province of Guizhou "to study social problems, under the merciless oppression and cultural despotism of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four," they had asked themselves why China, with its long history of civilization, progressed so slowly, when Yugoslavia, also a "socialist" state, had developed quickly. Like many in their generation they concluded that the first thing to do was to establish respect for human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
and democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
. They differed from some of their contemporaries in that they read Western classics and respected Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
and Chinese Mysticism. But what distinguished them more than anything else was the visionary poet in their midst. It is characteristic that Huang Xiang was presented not as an individual but as a member of a group. Reading the poems and commentaries published by the society, it is clear he drew strength and enrichment from his companions. In turn he became their most eloquent voice.
Huang claimed that he was harassed by the authorities after reciting his poems before young people. The police searched for his manuscripts, but he had hidden them in candles by wrapping them in plastic bags, then rolling around them wicks, then finally molding wax around them. He melted the candles to get the poems out. On 11 October 1978 they pasted them up on the blank walls of an alleyway that runs beside the offices of the People's Daily, in the busy shopping center of the capital. Huang had taken trouble with the design of the posters to present as clearly as possible the poetry they bore. He brushed his large characters in red instead of black ink. He painted the emblem of the Enlightenment Society, a flaming torch of learning, at the beginning of the poster and between poems. After the last panel, he pasted blank sheets for readers comments.
Six weeks later, when free speech was blossoming on the Democracy Wall, Huang wrote the poems out again as a new ninety-four-panel poster of even larger characters. this he displayed on seventy yards of fence high on an embankment in Tiananmen Square, facing Mao's mausoleum. The site enabled a thousand readers to read the poems at the same time. The poems announce the advent of a god who brings enlightenment to a people living on the darkness of totalitarian dictatorship. 2
Huang Xiang 2010
Huang Xiang uses his art and poetry to build a bridge between East and West and to honor a "Universal Humanity". He considers the paintings in the Century Mountain Project he creates with William Rock, "highly creative something that has not been done before." Huang Xiang completed a Residency with The City of Asylum Pittsburgh in 2007. In April 2008 he returned to China and visited family and friends for the first time in eleven years. Currently, he lives in New York city with his wife, the writer, Zhang Ling. Century MountainWilliam Rock Biography
William Rock was born in Lorain, OhioLorain, Ohio
Lorain is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Black River, about 30 miles west of Cleveland....
on July 3. He was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and lived his early adult life in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California. He applied for and received his Irish citizenship while living in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1992. He studied drawing at the California Art Institute and taught himself to paint and sculpt by traveling to museums around the world. He has been immersed in Eastern thought and practice for eighteen years studying and teaching with Chinese and Tibetan monks. His art is exhibited internationally and he has taught and spoken extensively about the nature of creativity, mysticism and art. He has been instrumental in producing several cultural events that promote the arts as a universal dialogue for humanity. Century Mountain