Chinese line up to see top internet mahjong painting
- Details
- Created on Tuesday, 21 February 2012 06:49
- Last Updated on Friday, 07 December 2012 22:58
- Written by By Zhang Zixuan (China Daily)
SHANGHAI - An exhibition featuring 30 oil paintings by Toronto-based Chinese artist Liu Yi has attracted thousands of viewers to line up at Shanghai Art Museum.Many of them have come to see the painting 2008 - Beijing, a portrait of four women playing mahjong and a girl watching.
The five figures are of different races and assume varied postures in a surreal environment.In the painting there is also a portrait of Mao Zedong's face on Chiang Kai-shek's head with Sun Yat-sen's moustache.It's believed a metaphor about international relations is buried in the image, although there are various interpretations.
Since 2006, the painting has flooded the internet and has garnered the third most clicks ever for a picture, after Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Van Gogh's Starry Night.Liu probably didn't think that much during creation. But his solid Realistic painting skills and the dramatic tension of Modern Expressionism indeed makes him stand out as "the explorer between Surrealism and Pop Art", and an important figure of Magic Realism.His new book, Liu Yi - Behind the Work, was released at the exhibition on Feb 11. Readers can discover how the artist interprets his work.
The chances of that happening are slim to none. At least slimmer than say, forcing non-alcoholic venues...
When DMJL was approached by Spielbank Hannover in 2011 about providing know-how and material for a Mah-Jongg tournament with money prizes the board discussed, if a cooperation seemed possible and worthwhile - the publicly available board minutes from March 2011 reflected on this (originally in German - inofficially translated [and commented] here): Apart from earnings for the association a cooperation promises a possible contact to the responsible regulatory authority [to gain higher legal certainty about DMJL's self-organised non-gambling tournaments] and obviously the development of contact to a potential sponsor, namely the Spielbank herself. The board decided unanimously that a cooperation was desirable.
To draw a line between the paid-for support of legal gambling and DMJL's very own activities, the board also decided (also unanimously), that DMJL would only act as a service provider for the said tournament, but would not want to benefit from publicity in the course of gambling activities, so that it would not be (even mistakenly) seen as an organiser of such. More over the board stressed the importance of an adequate distinction (in rules, exposition of differing procedures etc.) between events of gambling and mind sport.
There was not a minute of discussion within the board, before Uwe Pelzer terminated the cooperation with the Spielbank/RP5 - no information about his findings, no questions, no suggestions, he just acted on his own. So, Frauke, the board was neither unable nor unwilling to find an answer to the question, if this said (and before unanimously supported) cooperation should've been terminated - it was simply not asked.