Ma Liuming 馬六明

Ma Liuming 馬六明

Jean pointed out to me a Chinese artist of some interest for his gender-bending and sexual-themed performance pieces and photo shoots. A lot of it looks too in-your-face somehow to really succeed as art, but some of the images are haunting. I found a representative set of images at a site called ionly.com, which bills itself as an "history of exhibitions" (zhanlan shi 展覽史). What a cool resource that is! In addition to 144 images with complete citation and exhibition information, there are three full-length feature articles in Chinese on Ma Liuming.

Also of interest, perhaps: an English article from Artzine ("a contemporary Chinese art portal") laments that Ma Liuming got chubby, though lucky for him the value of his sexy photos continues to escalate. Hmm...

Black Dossier: I heart Reading

Moore, Alan and Kevin O'Neill and others. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier. La Jolla, CA: America's Best Comics, 2008.

Overall, Black Dossier was a disappointment. I like the idea of a syncretic history of the world through fantastic stories and myths, but unfortunately none of the characters are particularly interesting. Lacking a Batman or other properly mysterious and angsty hero or villain, Black Dossier builds a nice house but doesn't rent it out to anyone.

That said, I did sort of enjoy trying to identify all of the references. In this panel, for example, we have a major figure in ancient Chinese mythology having some fantastic same-sex lovin' with Orlando, a popular figure among historically-minded Western gender-wonks.

So that panel's fun. And I must admit, I don't know if Alan Moore combined the Queen Mother myth with the later trope of the sexual-vampire-witch, or if there is some story about that in the tradition that he read somewhere. Either way, he is definitely a genuine lover of art and literature, and if that comes across to readers, he's still earning his keep.