Taiwanese puppet master fights to save dying art

At 87 years old, Taiwanese glove puppeteer Chen Hsi-huang is the star of a new documentary which reflects his determination to revive the dying traditional craft and a late-life renaissance as a high-profile promoter of the art form.

The film, entitled “Father”, tells the story of how Chen pursued the craft in the shadow of his father, the legendary puppeteer Li Tian-lu, who drew huge audiences to his shows in the 1950-1970s and appeared in several movies.

Also known as “Budaixi”, glove puppetry spread to Taiwan in the 19th century from the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian and was mainly performed at religious and festive occasions, becoming a popular form of entertainment.

Puppeteers manoeuvre small glove dolls on ornate wooden stages to present historical and martial arts stories accompanied by live folk music.

Chen said he values the traditional puppetry because it is characterized by subtle movements, with the puppeteer taking on all roles, from a young woman to an old man. He first set up his own troupe at 23 years old but as business declined he was forced to shut shop at 40. He went on to teach the craft and continued to perform with other groups in Taiwan and overseas.

At the age of 79, motivated by his desire to stop the art form fading completely in the face of modern entertainment, he set up a new troupe and teaches puppetry at weekend classes as well as taking on apprentices.

“There were only two or three traditional troupes left,” he told AFP.

“I used my name to open a new troupe because I didn’t want the traditional craft to disappear.”

– Next generation –

Chen acknowledges the challenges facing the ancient craft, saying people have less time to spare to watch the shows.

But he has taken heart from the positive response to the documentary which premiered in Taiwan last month, directed by local filmmaker Yang Li-chou over a period of 10 years.

“I was worried that people might not understand the film, but young people did, even if they hadn’t watched Budaixi before. They told me they liked it and that puppetry is 

Chen’s current apprentice Chen Wei-you is part of a family troupe that runs around 150 puppet shows a year.

Dozens of students of all ages attend Chen’s classes at the government-funded Puppetry Art Centre in Taipei every Saturday.

Student Hung Wei-heng, 10, said he was interested in learning puppetry because it was “very cool”.

“I want to learn how to operate the puppets and to make the movements,” he said.

Taiwanese authorities are trying to promote the traditional craft, organizing an annual puppet festival in Yunlin county.

Puppet fan Chiang Chi-feng, 41, attended the festival last month with a sense of nostalgia.

“Now that I have kids of my own, I bring them to temple fairs and watch outdoor puppet shows. They are experiencing what I experienced in my childhood,” he said.

Puppet master Chen vows to continue performing and teaching as long as he still has the strength.

“I haven’t completed passing on the art so I can’t retire,” he said.

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David Hockney pool painting soars to $90 mln, record for living artist

NEW YORK:  An iconic 1972 painting by British artist David Hockney soared to $90.3 million at Christie’s on Thursday, smashing the record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by a living artist.

With Christie’s commission, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),” surpassed the auction house’s pre-sale estimate of about $80 million, following a bidding war between two determined would-be buyers once the work hit $70 million.

The previous record for a work by a living artist was held by Jeff Koons’ sculpture “Balloon Dog,” which sold for $58.4 million in 2013. Hockney’s previous auction record was $28.4 million.

The 1972 work by the 81-year-old British artist, one of Hockney’s most famous paintings which depicts a man in a pink jacket looking down on another figure swimming underwater in a pool, was reported to have been consigned by British billionaire currency trader Joe Lewis.

Christie’s did not identify the seller or the successful bidder, who was bidding via telephone during a nearly 10-minute contest for the work.

Morgan Long, senior director of art investment house Fine Art Group, hailed “a great result for Christie’s,” saying it achieved its predicted $80 million price “through a combination of clever marketing and what looked like sheer determination on the part of (a) phone client to take the painting home.”

In a virtually unprecedented move for such a valuable painting, “Portrait of an Artist,” which was on exhibition at Tate Britain, the Pompidou Centre and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art over the past two years, was sold with no reserve, the minimum price at which the consignor agrees to sell a piece.

The price went far to boost the success of Christie’s post-war and contemporary art auction, which took in a total of $357.6 million, roughly the middle of its expected range, with 41 of the 48 lots on offer finding buyers.

“What we have learned from this week is that demand for great art remains global, with strong participation from American bidders and good activity from Europe and Asia,” Chief Executive Guillaume Cerutti said after the sale.

Other sale highlights included Francis Bacon’s “Study of Henrietta Moraes Laughing,” which sold for $21.7 million against a pre-sale estimate of $14 million to $18 million, and Alexander Calder’s “21 Feuilles Blanches,” which more than doubled its high estimate, selling for just under $18 million.

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Oh boy – vintage Mickey Mouse posters to fetch thousands at auction

LONDON: Seven rare vintage posters of Mickey Mouse are expected to fetch thousands of dollars at an auction that coincides with the 90th anniversary of the cartoon character’s first film appearance.

The seven posters, dating from the 1930s and 1940s, went on display on Friday at a commemorative exhibition in London organised by Disney.

They are going under the Sotheby’s hammer in an online auction that runs until Nov. 26. A price list in a statement from the auctioneer and Walt Disney Co. UK & Ireland suggests they could fetch more than 130,000 pounds in total.

“We’re expecting a lot of interest… There are collectors who collect animation posters from all over the world and Mickey Mouse historically is the most valuable of all the animation characters,” Bruce Marchant, Sotheby’s film poster consultant, told Reuters.

“They’re particularly rare posters from England, France, Belgium and two of them are the only known surviving examples and for three of the others, there are certainly less than five known.”

Such posters were reused several times at cinemas and, being made of paper, most eventually fell apart and were thrown away. “So they were never meant to be looked at 80-90 years later” or viewed as works of art, Marchant added.

The exhibition, “Mickey’s UK Art Collective Exhibition”, is also showcasing new Mickey-inspired works by established and emerging UK artists including Jimmy C, Michael Bosanko and Pal Kumar.

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Saudi women mount ‘inside-out’ abaya protest

RIYADH: Saudi women have mounted a rare protest against the abaya, posting pictures on social media wearing the obligatory body-shrouding robe inside out.

The conservative petro-state has some of the world’s toughest restrictions on women, who are required to wear the typically all-black garment in public.

Powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in March said wearing the robe was not mandatory in Islam, but in practice, nothing changed and no formal edict to that effect was issued.

Using the hashtag “inside-out abaya”, dozens of women have posted pictures of flipped robes in a rare protest against the strict dress code.

“Because #Saudi feminists are endlessly creative, they’ve come up with new form of protest,” activist Nora Abdulkarim tweeted this week.

“They are posting pictures of (themselves) wearing their abayas inside-out in public as a silent objection to being pressured to wear it.”

Another woman on Twitter said the online campaign, which appears to be gaining traction after it surfaced this week, was an act of “civil protest”.

In an interview to CBS Television in March, the crown prince said: “The laws are very clear and stipulated in the laws of Sharia: that women wear decent, respectful clothing, like men.”

But, he added, this “does not particularly specify a black abaya. (It) is entirely left for women to decide what type of decent and respectful attire to wear.”

After his comment, prominent Muslim cleric Sheikh Ahmed bin Qassim al-Ghamdi added a new wrinkle to the debate when he dismissed the long-held view that black was the only colour for abayas permissible in Islam.

Prince Mohammed, currently facing global criticism over the murder of critic Jamal Khashoggi, has spearheaded a liberalisation drive in the conservative kingdom.

In June, women celebrated taking the wheel for the first time in decades as the kingdom overturned the world’s only ban on female motorists.

The kingdom has also allowed women to enter sports stadiums, previously a male-only arena, and is pushing for greater participation of women in the workforce as it seeks to diversify its oil-dependent economy.

But in tandem with the reforms, the kingdom has seen a wave of arrests of women activists in recent months as it steps up a crack down on dissent.

The country also faces criticism over its male guardianship system, which allows men to exercise arbitrary authority to make decisions on behalf of their female relatives.

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