The Character of Characters

Xu Bing is renowned for his artistic explorations of the role of language in human life. The Character of Characters is a playful yet profound narrative executed in animation. It touches on such varied subjects as the genesis of writing, the connection between Chinese calligraphy and painting, the role of copying in art and society, and the trust native Chinese readers place in symbols, including their current love affair with name-brand luxury goods. The animation moves fluidly from topic to topic, from drawing to diagram to text. Xu created The Character of Characters in response to Zhao Mengfu’s horizontal scroll Sutra on the Lotus of the Sublime Dharma, a work from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.

Words and symbols have always been central to Xu’s work. This is due in part to his facility with writing from a young age during the Cultural Revolution, a time when language, like art, was used for very specific political purposes:

As a child, I was taught by my father, who had me trace characters every day; later, this became a habitual activity for me. . . .Yet in all that time, I had never done any calligraphic creation, for tracing characters was simply a means of practicing writing. . . .I had never felt it was art. But this bit of craftsmanship was put to use during the Cultural Revolution: ‘Pick up your brush to use as a weapon.’. . .My class status was not good, but my characters were; consequently, with some difficulty I became a useful person—a ‘character-writing tool’ within the ‘machine of the whole revolution.’ "

Born in Chongqing, Sichuan province, in southwest China, Xu Bing earned a bachelor’sdegree in printmaking from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing in 1981, followed by an MFA in 1987. He was a leading figure in China’s ’85 New Wave and moved to the United States in 1990. He currently lives and works in New York and Beijing.