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Viewing the Tide

2008
Not on view
Yang Yongliang’s photo collages combine the visual language of premodern landscape painting with digital techniques to engender moments of shock and surprise. Viewing the Tide faithfully follows the composition of Zhao Fu’s (active 12th century) Ten Thousand Li of the Yangzi River (Palace Museum, Beijing), but close examination reveals that the majestic mountains are composed of countless high-rise apartments, while the trees are actually power-line towers and construction cranes. In this dystopic vision of a landscape overrun by human development, the surging river at the end of the scroll seems to express nature’s wrath rather than her majesty—a tsunami come to sweep the excesses of humankind from the face of the earth.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • 當代 楊永梁 觀潮圖 卷
  • Title: Viewing the Tide
  • Artist: Yang Yongliang (Chinese, born 1980)
  • Date: 2008
  • Culture: China
  • Medium: Handscroll; inkjet print of a digital photographic collage on xuan paper
  • Dimensions: Image: 17 3/4 in. × 32 ft. 9 3/4 in. (45.1 × 1000.1 cm)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gift of My Humble House Art Gallery, 2016
  • Object Number: 2016.378
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Yang Yongliang
  • Curatorial Department: Asian Art

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