Q: We are very glad and honored to have you here today, Mr. Gaither. Could you tell us since when have Mr. McFarlane’s works caught your eyes?

A: I’ve been interested in Mr. McFarlane’s works since early 1980s, so that’s already more than 20 years. I knew him when he’s still a student in art school.  

Q: What in particular do his works appeal to you most?

A: I like to watch artists as they grow in their works from study and travel, and their use of symbols becomes more effective and interesting. When I first knew Mr. McFarlane’s works, he was principally working with the Figure, and the art was very much about the Figure. But over the time that I have followed his work, he has become more abstract, more emotional and more mythical in his works. And I find interesting the evolution of the work from the Figure to more symbolic language.  

Q: It can be felt that Mr. McFarlane’s works exude a sort of complicated strength. Does it have anything to do with his traveling experiences? What do you think about it?;

A: Jamaica, which is Mr. McFarlane’s home, is a small country in the Caribbean. It was once a British colony and gained its independence in 1962. When independence came, one of the things that artists had to do is to help visualize and express the image of the post-colonial Jamaica. McFarlane is in the first generation of artists who take on this large project. So he comes from a national environment in which finding and expressing a new identity was important. To that he added a lot of travel which gave him a much bigger exposure. This exposure helped him to develop strength from his own background, but to also that in the international context. So he went to places that were very old, some of them very old in the Americas, like Brazil, some of them very old in the east of Asia, like Turkey. Others included coming to China. But one of the things that some of these countries had in common was at least for some period of time they too had to deal with colonial experience and reassert their identity. In the case of a society like China, it’s a very ancient identity. In the case of the Americas, it is a less ancient yet deep experience. So he was taking in all of these experiences and trying to make a way of talking about what they meant. What they meant was how the old can be transformed to new, and at what emotional cost, so in his works there is a great deal of wrestling with how the old becomes the new and how the ancient becomes contemporary.  

Q: How many times have you cooperated with Mr. McFarlane? Why do you choose Sunshine International Art Museum to stage the exhibition?

A: I have organized two other exhibitions that are one person, and I have included Mr. McFarlane’s works in several group exhibitions. Also the museum that I direct owns work of Mr. McFarlane’s. So I have had many opportunities to present his work. The selection of Sunshine International Art Museum was Mr. McFarlane’s, so I didn’t have anything to do directly with that, except he asked me if I would help to curate the show, and I said “I would be very pleased to”.  

Q: What are your expectations for the show?

A: I would like the show to be seen and enjoyed by as many Beijingers as possible, so that it would be a bridge between an artist at a very far distance from China and audiences in China, because I think it’s very important that we know each other better across time and space. So I hope the exhibition will be enjoyed as an exhibition that the art will be well received and discussed to the effect that the exhibition will be a very good bridge but friendship between those of us in the Americas and China.  

Art is like language but easier to learn. So if art can be shared because it’s about the human spirit and the heart, it can be a way of understanding that we are all human with the same passion. And art in that way is easier as a tool of communication than words, because for words you have to know the specific language, but for the heart, you only need to know love, hate, compassion and friendship. And these things can be part of how the language of art is understood. Contemporary artists are almost always interested in issues, sometimes political, social and otherwise. These are also issues that young people everywhere are all interested in. So art can also give us a way of talking about the issues of our times.

The same symbol can have a different meaning, but sometimes it’s possible that it means something similar in more than one use. For example, in many paintings, there are cannonballs. And cannonballs refer to the colonial era. The colonial era in 19th century when the British dominated much of the world including Asia is represented by cannonballs because the cannonballs represent power. And it was the mighty power that made the colonial era possible, and ultimately it was the power of people that free them from the colonial. So if you look at the pyramids of cannonballs, they speak about the necessity to come to grips with power and the relationship of power to freedom.

Another symbol that you see a lot in McFarlane’s works is the egg. I think in Chinese there is more than one word to express egg. But in the way the egg appears in his work, it is not just the egg from the chicken, but it also represents the possibility because it’s like a seed from which something new can happen. It also represents transformation because first it’s just this round thing, then it becomes a whole bird, which is very different. That’s a change of form. It is also easy to break, so it also represents fragility. So all of these meanings there can be understood as ways of penetrating what the paintings mean.
 

Q: I hope more people can understand Mr. McFarlane’s works. And I wonder are you interested in Chinese Contemporary Art? Have you found any Chinese artist whose works bear similarity to McFarlane’s? If so would you plan to stage a group exhibition for them?

A: I am new for Chinese Art that is Contemporary. Yesterday I was in 798, and I saw some work of Contemporary Chinese artists, which was very interesting. But I’m a student of this area because I don’t know it very well yet. I’m interested in Contemporary Art in parts of the world that are recreating themselves and making a new and modern self. China is a leading part of it because it is moving forward so fast, it has so many people and it has enormous resources. I’m also interested in the Caribbean, South America and Africa because in all of those places the process of being born new and modern is going on. So in the future I hope to do exhibitions which may come from any of those. But I have not yet learned enough to know how that will go forward. I’m very open to the possibility because I’m very open, as I said before, to helping to make bridges. But we’ll see how we’ll move ahead.

Mr. McFarlane has friends in the artist community here who are Chinese artists. He has also students. One student of his is now successful Chinese artist. So he’s been trying to introduce me to as many but I’m not here for very long, so I only get to see a little bit of work. But I’m very interested in the work I can’t see.

 

Edmund Barry Gaither is the Director of the National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA) and its Museum, and Special Consultant to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Mr. Gaither is known nationally in the arts having served as a panel chairman for the Expansion Arts Division of the National Endowment the Arts as well as overseeing the national competition for the Martin Luther King, Jr. bust in the nation’s Capitol. He also served on the George H. Bush’s President’s Advisory Board on Historically Black College and Universities.

Locally, he received the Commonwealth Arts Award, several honorary doctorates and numerous other honors. Mr. Gaither, who lectures widely, developed and taught a course on African American art for Boston University, Harvard and Wellesley Colleges. He has also authored many essays and articles in art and cultural history.

At the Museum of Fine Arts, he has served as curator for ten exhibitions including Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston, a ground breaking show of l970. For the NCAAA, he developed the Museum from a concept to an institution with collections exceeding three thousand objects and a forty year history of exhibitions celebrating the visual arts heritage of black people worldwide.

Gaither has traveled widely. Among places where he has worked or conducted research are: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada (Museum Consultant); Paris, France (Symposium Presenter at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, 2000); Jamaica, West Indies, (Adjudicator for Independence Festival, Museum Consultant, independent research); Ethiopia (researcher); Israel (researcher); Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (researcher in art and museum education); Germany (studying models for museum education); Haiti (researcher); Senegal (Presented at Symposium in honor of President L.S. Senghor; delegate to planning conference for Black Arts Festival); Barbados, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic (researcher); Guyana (Presented: Celebrations for the 150th Anniversary of Emancipation in British Caribbean), and Mexico.

(文：柯妍/摄影：/责任编辑：CF)

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