Beijing
Building
Lois Conner
Beijing
Building
Lois Conner
Plate 1
Beijing
Building
Lois Conner
with an essay by Geremie R. Barmé
Beijing Building
Lois Conner’s Construction
Geremie R. Barmé
1 Juliet Bredon, Peking: A Historical and Intimate Description
of its Chief Places of Interest, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1919;
reprinted by Oxford University Press in Hong Kong, 1982, p.2.
The history of Peking is the history of China in miniature.
The town, like the country, has shown the same power of
taking fresh masters and absorbing them. Both have passed
through paroxysms of bloodshed and famine and both have
purchased periods of peace and prosperity by the murder
of countless innocents. Happily both possess the vitality
which survives the convulsions that ‘turn ashes and melt to
shapelessness’.
Juliet Bredon, 1919 1
Ninety years on, perhaps it is Lois Conner’s view from the
outdoor rooftop dining area of Capital M that sums up the
clash of cultural and political motives, architectural styles and
taste of which Juliet Bredon spoke. (Plate 22)
Capital M is the creation of the Hong Kong-China-based
Australian restaurateur cum-cultural entrepreneur, Michelle
Garnaut. With terrazzo floors, a swirling fresco that ribbons the
lengthy back walls of the establishment, and the elegant decor
that embraces guests and resiles from intimidation, Capital M
provides its own unique take on China’s once grand dynastic
capital, now the metropole of the country’s market socialism.
Looking northward from the wall of french windows diners
take in an unparalleled view of the ‘Gate Facing the Sun’,
the Front Gate or Qianmen entrance to the once-walled Inner
City of Old Peking. Beyond it a paired gate, a stump, all that
remains of an enceinte linking it to the towering crenellated
city wall. Then on to the Mao Zedong Mausoleum where the
embalmed corpse of the founder of China’s People Republic
lies in permanent state.
This is the southern precinct of Tiananmen Square, the symbolic
centre of modern China. Further north stands Tiananmen
Gate, the rostrum of which has been used by leaders of the
Communist Party to officiate over major public events in
the history of China since 1949. Further north one catches
glimpses of the golden liuli-tiled roofs of the Forbidden City
itself, and the Pavilion of Imperial Longevity on Prospect Hill
that rises immediately behind the former imperial palace.
Conner has created her own version of Tiananmen. Today little
remains of the area’s imperial geometry for the vast square
was created in the 1950s when the stately entrance to the
palace—The Corridor of One Thousand Steps—was levelled to
make room for spectacular rallies and National Day parades.
(Plates 21 & 35)
Conner watched the 1984 parade on a communal village
television in Yangshuo, Guangxi province, not long after
first arriving in China. Fifteen years later she was in Beijing
as the square was being refurbished in anticipation of the
celebration of half a century of Party rule. In a photograph
made in late 1998 blurred crowds move at the foot of the gate
cut off from the square by the Avenue of Eternal Peace, a sixlane
highway smudged with traffic. (Plate 2) The square itself
is being resurfaced by army workers, the cemetery-heart of
China marked by a flagpole in the foreground; the pagoda-like
Heroes’ Monument erected to the revolutionary dead and the
blockhouse of the Mao Zedong mausoleum both sheathed in
the haze of distance. The scene hints at the concrete reality
of these symbols and the transitory nature of those who make
and witness the mass displays in the square.
In the decade after Lois Conner made her Tiananmen, Capital
M would open for business at the southwest corner of the
square, at Qianmen, the bulldozed and recreated shopping
mall, a futuristic creation of the past of a retail district that
flourished just outside the walls of the old city. Conner’s
Qianmen, seen from the balcony of Capital M, shows the
concertina ages of modern Beijing; it presents an historical
shorthand of the last century. To the upper right-hand corner
of the frame is the newly built socialist-Bauhaus extension of
the Great Hall of the People. Further left a heritage-protected
Republican-era bank. A swathe of macadam covers what was
once the canal surrounding the city, now but a subterranean
stream. There are gargantuan festive lanterns on display and
a temporary fountain gushing at the mouth of Qianmen Mall,
all put in place to mark 1 October 2010. The tiled roofs of the
building in which Capital M is located are all part of a latter-day
chinoiserie ‘imagineering’ of Old Peking.
There was a considerable hue and cry over the demolition
of old Qianmen, an area swept away during the feverish
preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. (Plate 23) Today,
similar anguish is heard for the Bell and Drum Tower (Zhonggu
Lou) area which lies on the same ancient central axis of the
city but a few kilometres north.
‘Beijing deconstructs’ has been a popular trope for artists,
photographers, sculptors and video artists for many years. The
doppelganger discourse of construction, or reconstruction,
was born along with the founding of the People’s Republic in
1949. One of the early official propaganda journals was called
unabashedly China Reconstructs (Zhongguo jianshe). At the
height of Utopian socialism from the 1950s to the late 1970s,
4 5
Communist Party hacks would talk tirelessly of the country’s
rebuilding in the wake of devastation wrought by foreign
invasion, political cupidity and civil strife. The reality was more
complex: during High Maoism acts of creation were in constant
congress with egregious deeds of state-sanctioned vandalism
and destruction. Today, more than ever before, China’s
urbanity is the work of the construction state; it is a domain of
steel girders and concrete foundations, lofty frameworks and
profound excavations. (Plates 8, 9, 11, 13 & 19) This is the
world through which Lois Conner’s Beijing Building guides us.
It is in the capital city of Beijing that plans are mooted for
the wide-sweeping national transformations which feature
in cities as far flung as Shanghai and Wuhan, Chengdu and
Guangzhou, not to mention in hundreds of smaller urban
centres around the country. It is in Beijing that the ‘vein of
the nation’ (guomai), the pulse of the polity, is regulated, and
from which it radiates. For centuries Beijing has been home to
titanic aspirations, and it is in the images of this city that the
lingering splendour of the dynastic past and its radical present
are also most readily in evidence.
Much imperial conceit remains in the Chinese capital, for it
still rules over a territory secured by Qing emperors in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While the built legacy
of the past has been dwindling for over half a century, in the
years surrounding the 2008 Olympics a refashioning of a
Beijing, both preserved and transformed, was promised as
part of the largest international spectacle and global event
of its kind. The city that exists in the wake of 2008 is one
that bears more clearly than its predecessors the imprint of
cultural impulses and contradictions, as well as the clashing
planning histories, political forces and socio-economic
imperatives that date back over a hundred years, in turn lateimperial,
nascent capitalist and socialist. The century-old
aspiration of China’s politicians, thinkers and cultural activists
vying to realize a Chinese ‘renaissance’ (fuxing) is no longer
spoken of as a promise to the future, rather it is a programme
being turned into concrete reality today. Beijing Building is
then, also, a visual account of a city in the thrall and paroxysm
of change, self-deception and self-discovery.
Lois Conner’s Beijing is encircled by six ‘rings’: multi-laned ring
roads (huanlu). In an oral history account of Beijing, telling the
story of China during its Olympic decade, the writer Sang Ye
and I present an interview with a Beijing taxi driver. He is one
of those old-style local drivers, not one of the Hebei provincials
who fill the ranks of the newcomers and often don’t know their
way around the ever-expanding city. Like taxi drivers the world
over he is often frank, frequently amusing and devastatingly
insightful about the life, society and politics of his city. He offers
a pithy topographical context for Conner’s Beijing Building:
Beijing is so huge it’s hard to work out where north is. The
First Ring Road, well it’s not really a road, is where the old
Imperial City wall was. The Second Ring is Chairman Mao’s
Ring Road [which follows the phantom footprint of the old
city walls]: inside are still a few things left over from Mao’s
day. The Third Ring Road is Deng Xiaoping’s, the Fourth is
Jiang Zemin’s and the Fifth and Sixth belong to Hu Jintao.
Everything up to the mountains are the fucking rings of Hu!
They’re even crapping on about constructing a Seventh Ring
Road. They’ll be ringing right in to Hebei province soon….
Things are constantly changing. When we were kids, we
thought how great it was that things were different every day
under socialism. But now that things really are in constant
flux with the Hu Ring around the Jiang Ring and new buildings
inside and outside each ring, everyone wanders around as
lost as stray dogs.
It is this world of expanding rings that Lois Conner first entered
nearly three decades ago. Since then she has, through her
work, tracked the outward reverberation of the Rings of
Beijing. Old Peking, the city of dynastic creation that was
slowly modernized during the Republican years, was originally
built on a grid, one whose geometry was determined by the
points of the compass. Since the 1980s, however, it is in the
boastful, upward thrust of high-rise construction that Beijing
has been built. In the patterns of these vertical frames, too,
Conner investigates what lies beneath the integument of the
contemporary city, searching for a lost metropolis whose past
sensibility lies as a gossamer over the exoskeletons of today’s
leviathan signature structures.
Engineered around the imperial throne and the south-facing
emperor, the city’s four cardinal directions of north, south,
east and west were not only points on the compass, but the
means by which people oriented themselves, their houses,
their lives and their movements. To ‘not be able to find north’—
zhaobuzhao bei—is a colloquial Beijing expression that is both
practical and metaphorical. The rings have confounded the
grid, and true north no longer exists.
The taxi driver is scathing in his observations of the new world
that has sprung up around him over the past decade. While
visitors may marvel, older residents are readily appalled by the
wilful dismemberment of the body of Beijing:
This Beijing of ours was (designed according to the form of
the god) Nezha—three-headed, six-armed Nezha with his feet
on wind-fire wheels, golden halberds in his hand, and a sword
and cudgel for defeating demons tucked in his belt. He was
known by everyone—be they in heaven or on earth. From
this you can see we’ve got traitors in our midst: they don’t
like Beijing, they think it’s too backward, not friendly enough
towards the foreign devils. We can’t have that these days, can
we? But all the good things have fallen into the hands of the
devils. Which is why the bastards with all their plans have
turned Beijing into a bird.
‘Bird’ (niao) is a term that also expresses contempt, disgust
and bastardry in the local patois of Beijing. The taxi driver
describes the new contours of the city and its recently famous
iconic buildings, many of which feature in Lois Conner’s work:
The bird’s legs are stabbed into the East Third Ring Road—
the off-kilter ‘big underpants building’ that serves as China
Central TV’s headquarters. (Plates 18, 20 & 34) Its head is
over on the West Ring Road, beak agape—the damn thing
they call the Millennium Monument. Of course, a big bird like
that needs a nest, doesn’t it? Well, the nest has been plonked
down on the North Fourth Ring Road. (Plates 4, 12) On the
radio they even boast that it’s the biggest nest in the world.
Fuck me, but what the hell is so impressive about throwing
scrap metal into a pile?
Of course, a bird needs more than a nest. It needs to eat. So
they built it the Water Cube, a Perspex birdfeeder. Big birds
lay big eggs, and this bastard’s laid its egg right on Chang’an
Avenue—‘China’s Great Whorehouse’. (the Grand National
Theatre, Plate 16)
This garrulous account is a powerful complement to Beijing
Building. For Conner’s Beijing is only seemingly lyrical; it
conveys too a vision of captured change. Certainly, within the
tireless industry of urban transfiguration it provides precious
moments of contemplation, quietude and respite. But Conner
evokes a world in which ideas of Chinese identity and its claims
to greatness are, literally, made concrete. Her account of the
6 7
city’s office towers and the solipsistic workspace of modern
commerce universalises the Beijing experience. (Plates 26,
28, 31 & 33)
From these office windows we catch glimpses of the outside
world—no sylvan idylls promising respite from the daily grind.
These vistas, rather, are of cityscapes in which the office and its
battery life are replicated as if to infinity. Some lunge up close,
confronting, others in orderly ranks are as mute vanguards of
a future that already seems like an eternal present. And within
these four walls that frame them?—crystalline sarcophagi for
the sky-high interment of lives, of dreams, of hopes and fears.
Containers and fishbowls with sheer surfaces, glaciers in which
the life in miniature pulses still. They are replete with industry
productive as it is fickle, demanding ever greater resources as
it engorges all, extending to the very end of history.
In Beijing Building tension and unease over the country’s
economic might and mercantilist ambition roils through the
very foundations of new buildings; it spreads restlessly through
the rubble of the shattered past and entwines the vaunting
structures of a future made imminent.
Through Conner’s sweeping vision our eye is invited to
investigate the patterns of the past, but the artist, while
enjoining us to soar, confronts at every turn, daring us to
overlook the looming meaning of Beijing’s present.
8
Geremie R. Barmé is a writer on China, editor of China Heritage
Quarterly (www.chinaheritagequarterly.org) and Founding Director
of the Australian Centre on China in the World, The Australian
National University.
Photographs
10 Plate 2
Plate 3
Plate 4
Plate 5
Plate 6
Plate 7
Plate 8
18
Plate 9
Plate 10
Plate 11
22 Plate 12
Plate 13
Plate 14
Plate 15
Plate 16
Plate 17
Plate 18
Plate 19
Plate 20
Plate 21
Plate 22
34
Plate 23
Plate 24
Plate 25
Part II
38 Plate 26
Plate 27
Plate 28
Plate 29
Plate 30
44 Plate 31
Plate 32
Plate 33
48 Plate 34
Index
Chang’an Jie, World Fantasy Hotel, Beijing (2000), cover
Lujuan Village, Beijing (2010), plate 1
Tiananmen reconstruction, Beijing (1998), plate 2
Olympic Park construction, Beijing (spring, 2008), plate 3
Near Guomao bridge, Beijing (2010), plate 4
Yuanming Yuan excavation, Beijing (2004), plate 5
Ganmien Hutong, Dongdan, Beijing (2010), plate 6
Dongzhimennei Lu, Dongdan Subway, Beijing (spring, 2008), plate 7
Wangfujing construction, Beijing (1998), plate 8
Mandarin Oriental construction, Beijing (2005), plate 9
Wangfujing construction, Beijing (1998), plate 11
National Stadium construction, Beijing (spring, 2008), plate 12
Xizhimen, Bank of China construction, Beijing (1998), plate 13
Madian Bridge (link to Badaling Highway), Beijing (2003), plate 14
National Stadium construction, Beijing (spring, 2008), plate 10 Ming Dynasry City Wall Relics Park, Beijing (2004), plate 15
National Grand Theatre, Beijiing (2009), plate 16
Andingmen Donglu Construction, Beijing (2002), plate 17
Jintaixi Lu, Beijing (2008), plate 18
Xizhimen, Beijing (1998), plate 19
CCTV Construction, near Chaoyang Lu, Beijing (2009), plate 20
Tiananmen, 50 th Anniversary Floats, Beijing (1999), plate 21
Qianmen, Beijing (2010), plate 22
near Zhengyangmen, Beijing (2008), plate 23
Olympic Park, Beijing (2008), plate 24
50 51
Shell Oil, Beijing (2009), plate 25
Coca-Cola, Beijing (2010), plate 26
Saatchi and Saatchi, Beijing (2010), plate 27
Saatchi and Saatchi, Beijing (2010), plate 28
Boeing, Beijing (2008), plate 29
From Guo Mao, Beijing (2004), plate 30
Coca-Cola, Beijing (2007), plate 31
Coca-Cola, Beijing (2010), plate 32
Shell Oil, Beijing (2009), plate 34
Tiananmen, 50 th Anniversary floats, Beijing (1998), plate 35
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2011 Building Beijing, Rossi & Rossi, London
2010 Life in a Box, Hanart, Hong Kong; Embassy House, Beijing
2008 Spring Training, Beijing 2008, Pékin Fine Arts, Beijing
Angkor Wat, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario
2007 Twirling the Lotus, Rossi & Rossi, London
China Lucida, Myrna Myers Gallery, Paris
2006 Lotus, Eric Zetterquist Gallery, New York
Thogan, Tibetan Plateau, Latse Tibetan Cultural Library, New York
2005 The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith, The British Library, London
2004 Lois Conner, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou
2003 To Be, Laurence Miller Gallery, New York
2002 Across China, Embassy House, Dongzhimenwai, Beijing
About Landscape, Hollywood Center for Art and Design, Florida
2001 Yuanming Yuan, Sherman Gallery, Sydney
Depicting China, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong
2000 Lotus, Selections from the China Book, Laurence Miller Gallery, New York
Selected Group Exhibitions
2010 Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Platinum Process: Photographs from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century,
Philadelphia Museum of Art
2009 Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West, Museum of Modern Art,
New York
Tibetan Contemporary Art; from the Collection of Shelley and Donald Rubin,
Museum of Art, Oglethorpe University, Georgia
Eye/World, curated by E. Cheng, M. Loh, Triple Candie, New York
Picturing New York, Museo di Arte Moderna di Trento e Rovereto
2008 The Printed Picture, curated by Richard Benson, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Picturing Modernity: Photography Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
First Doubt: Optical Confusion in Modern Photography, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
The Wide Open, Missoula Art Museum, Montana
2007 Art for Yale: Collecting for a New Century, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
China Seen By…, University of Rhode Island Art Museum, Providence
2006 New York, New York, Grimaldi Foundation, Monaco
Office Aura, Dorsky Gallery, Long Island City, New York
2005 Peonies and Lotus (with Andrea Modica), New York Horticultural Society, New York
52 53
Coca-Cola, Beijing (2007), plate 33
Lois Conner
Biography
Education
1981 Yale University, MFA, Photography
1975 Pratt Institute, BFA, Photography
Grants and Fellowships
2007 Anonymous Was a Woman Fellowship
2007, 2010 Princeton University Research Grant
1984 Guggenheim Fellowship
1983 New York State Council on the Arts
1979 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1975 Pratt Institute Research Grant
Selected Teaching Positions
Princeton University
Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York
Yale University
China Academy of Arts, Hangzhou
International Center of Photography, New York
Stanford University
Selected Collections
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Philadelphia Museum of Art
New Orleans Museum of Art
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
Cleveland Museum of Art
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
The British Library, London
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Australian National Gallery, Canberra
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
2005 Surface (incl. Harry Callahan and Lee Friedlander), Laurence Miller Gallery, New York
2004 New Selections from the Permanent Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Arti & Architettura, 1900-2000, Palazzo Ducale, Genova
Celebrating Contemporary Chinese Art and Culture, Sotheby’s, New York
New Work, Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai
2003 The Land Through a Lens, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC
Oasis, Laurence Miller Gallery, New York
The Auroral Light: Photographs by Women, The Grolier Club, New York
2002 Photography: Past Forward, Aperture, New York
Line and Landscape, Asia Society Benefit, Ethan Cohen Gallery, New York
A City Seen, Cleveland Center for the Arts, Gund Foundation, Ohio
Selected Anthologies
2008 The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie, National Prairie
Foundation, Montana
First Doubt: Optical Confusion in Modern Photography, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
2005 The Physical Print, Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, Richard Benson
2004 Arti & Architettura, 1900-2000, Palazzo Ducale, Genova
Chinese Photography, Christie’s Catalogue, Hong Kong
2002 Photography: Past Forward, Aperture, New York
Autopia: Cars and Culture, Reaktion Books, London
2001 The Great Wide Open: Panoramic Photographs of the American West, The Hunington
Library, San Marino, California
1999 Imaging China: Fifty Years Inside the People’s Republic, 1949-1999, Aperture, New York
Selected Museum Catalogues
2009 Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West, MOMA, New York
2008 First Doubt: Optical Confusion in Modern Photography, Yale University Art Gallery
2007 Life of the City: New York Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of
Modern Art, New York
2005 Keeping Shadows, David Acton, Worcester Art Museum
1998 Beyond the Legacy: Anniversary Acquisitions for the Sackler Gallery of Art, Sackler
Gallery, Smithsonian, Washington, DC
1997 Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the Present,
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1996 The Enduring Illusion: Photographs from the Stanford University Museum of Art,
Joel Leivick, Stanford University Museum of Art, Stanford University, California
Selected Reviews
2010 Inside the Box, Koon Yee-wan, Muse Magazine, Hong Kong, Issue 39
Offices with a View, Karen Yan, Baccarat Magazine, Hong Kong, Smart Arts, April
Offices, Ming Pao Weekly, Hong Kong, Essential, April 14
2007 Art: Twirling the Lotus, Peter Chapman, The Independent, October 27
News Brief England: Twirling the Lotus, Asian Art News
2006 Artistic Treasures Take Manhattan During Asia Week, Art Review, The New York Times
2005 The Nobel Metals, Platinum and Palladium, International Photography, Spring
2004 End Frame, Holly Stuart Hughes, Photo District News, November
Lois Conner ‘To Be’, Ken Johnson, The New York Times, Art Reviews, January 2
Emily Cheng and Lois Conner, Chris Moylan, Art Asia-Pacific, Fall
Beyond Place, Priya Malhotra, Asian Art News, September/October: V14 No. 5
Photo Echo, Aperture, November
Photographic Harvest, Shanghai Star, December 12
Emily Cheng and Lois Conner, Roberta Smith, The New York Times, Art Review, June 25
Lois Conner, Joel Simpson, The New York Art World.com, September
2003 A View of the City, Christopher Ringwald, PDN: Photo District News, January
Voice Choices, Vince Aletti, The Village Voice, December 24-30
2002 Lois Conner, Mathieu Borysevicz, Art Asia Pacific, March
A City’s Many Faces Reflect Photographer’s Vision, Jo Thomas, The New York Times
2001 China: The Photographs of Lois Conner, Andrea Birnbaum, Graphis, January/February
2000 Pics of the Week: Hong Kong, Desiree Au, South China Morning Post, January 19
Allowing the Chinese to Look Chinese, Vicki Goldberg, The New York Times, October 29
Book Review: Photography, Andy Grunenberg, The New York Times, December 3
Art in Review, Margaret Loke, The New York Times, October 20
54 Plate 35
first published as part of the exhibition:
Beijing
Building
Lois Conner
3 February - 5 March 2011
16 Clifford street
Rossi London W1s 3RG
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© Rossi & Rossi Ltd. 2011
Text copyright © the authors. Images courtesy of the artist
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means,
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ISBN 978 1 906576 21 9
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Coordination: Martin Clist
Assistance: Mauro Ribero
Design: Ruth Höflich
Cover image:
Chang’an Jie, World Fantasy Hotel, Beijing (2000)
Pigment ink on Hahnemuhle
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