Mongolia (Mongolian: монголулс, English: Mongolia) is the country with the smallest population density in the world. This land covers an area of10.5 million square kilometers and is inhabited by more than 3 million people, nearly half of whom live in the capital Ulaanbaatar, which means "red hero city".
Everything in Ulaanbaatar is new to me. According to local friends, there is almost no urban planning here, so everyone can build it as they want, which is incredible for me who was born and raised in China.
Because of historical reasons, the city has left traces of Russian assimilation everywhere, and the most direct manifestation is probably the change of writing and eating habits.
Mongolian belongs to Altaic language family, and its glyph is very similar to Russian. Most local dining tools are knives and forks.
On the third day in Ulaanbaatar, we arrived at Mongolian National Museum of Modern Art early in the morning. It was not until our car stopped outside the building of the National Art Museum of Mongolia that I suddenly discovered that I had passed in front of it many times and even had dinner in the restaurant across the street last night.
Because I can't understand Mongolian, all my memories and impressions of Ulaanbaatar come from all kinds of colorful buildings. After so many times, I realized that this is the National Gallery. As far as I know, an art gallery or museum is either large in scale or unusual in architectural style, but it is so inconspicuous that I hurried into the gate before I could photograph the outside of the building.
Indicating sign at the door
The whole building is old-fashioned, small-scale and permanently displayed on the third floor. It is said that a large number of paintings from the socialist period have been concentrated. When we entered, there was no one at the front desk, only two staff members were chatting loudly (in Mongolian, of course).
When my colleagues went to buy tickets, I took the opportunity to look around, although it was small. I especially like these two stained glass windows full of Mongolian customs. The pictures are abstract Mongolian girls and ethnic patterns.
Admission to Mongolian National Art Museum, the fare is 8000 Tugrik, which is about 22 yuan RMB.
Mongolian art galleries and museums are very interesting. You need to buy a photo ticket separately for taking photos. Tickets are usually higher than ordinary tickets. The photo ticket price of Mongolian National Art Museum is 1000 Tugrik.
In the art museum, the first work we saw was a three-story contemporary installation "Mercedes-Benz" in the hall. It is said that it won an international award.
The artist who created this work has collected 1 ***2 1 stirrups of various ethnic groups in Mongolia. These stirrups are both ancient and contemporary, and each one looks different. They are engraved with different totems, just like the family emblem, reflecting different personalities and cultures. The artist hangs them at will, conveying the heroism of the Mongols when riding horses.
Around this work, we walked up the spiral stairs to the third floor and entered the exhibition hall through an iron gate that only allowed one person to pass through. The decoration of the exhibition hall is old and the lights are dim. Most of the exhibits are oil paintings. Because there is no light in the works, most of them will reflect light when watching. Maybe not many people come here at ordinary times. The staff didn't use isolation belt or glass cover to stop painting and sculpture, but just posted a warning line on the ground, which was easily ignored by tourists.
It can be seen that the expression techniques of early Mongolian paintings absorbed the artistic nutrients of Soviet paintings, and mostly used realism to create works of Mongolian people's revolutionary deeds, natural scenery, praising labor models and criticizing realism.
A horse with a Mongolian flag.
This painter was a classmate of Gumbart's father when he was studying at Leningrad University of Fine Arts in the Soviet Union.
Genghis Khan's expedition to grassland
This painting is the work of the father of the great Mongolian painter Mufuqin. It depicts a girl riding a horse and herding sheep. It is understood that Mufuqin's father has an indelible pioneering role in the development of Mongolian painting art. ..
This painting is called stallion fight, which shows the moment when two stallions fight. It is said that in order to paint this painting, the painter waited on the grassland for fourteen years, and didn't finish the painting until he saw two horses stand up and fight with his own eyes.
There is a female staff member in the exhibition hall. She is very friendly to us. After learning that we are picture book editors from China, she introduced these works to us.
During the chat, we learned that this staff member is also a painter. When she saw this painting, she proudly said that it was her teacher's work. In the picture, everyone criticizes the man in the lower left corner because he is lazy at work.
The background of this painting is also in the socialist period, and citizens need to pay attention to their appearance and clothes. The man in the painting is ashamed because he appeared in the newspaper in rags.
When I saw this painting in the art gallery, I was immediately shocked. The size of this painting is relatively large. In the painting, an old man with white hair wears a cloak, sits on leopard skin, and pulls a Ma Touqin made of horse bones with his eyes closed. The endless Gobi, the withered branches, the faintly rolling airflow, and Ma Touqin, the only one who opened his eyes in the painting, all conveyed a dreamy feeling to the viewer.
"Ma Touqin" is an important element in Mongolian traditional themes. Before I met the real Ma Touqin, my understanding of it only came from the works of White Horse (Ai Shu Tong Shu, published in May, 20 13) by Su He, the first Japanese picture book master in Asia who won the International Andersen Illustrator Award.
Su He made Ma Touqin from the skin, hair and bones of his dead partner (White Horse). Whenever he pulls up Ma Touqin, he will think of the hatred when the white horse was killed, and the happy event when he galloped on the grassland, as if he could feel that the white horse was still around. This is the legend of the origin of Ma Touqin.
The same theme is Ma Touqin's performance. This painting is a work on the ticket of the art museum. The details of the picture changed my impression of the rough and general Mongolian painting. This painting combines Mongolian traditional painting techniques and western perspectives, and also represents the importance and return of Mongolian painters to traditional culture.
In addition to the early realistic paintings, there are many works by Mongolian new generation artists in this exhibition. Artists' works about the motherland, grasslands and other themes mark that Mongolian painting art has entered a brand-new era.
Created in 1958, this painting is the first abstract work in Mongolia with the theme of kind mother.
The following works are quite special. They are all made of different types of materials.
Leather painting
Forged copper relief
This kind of work only appeared in the socialist period, but no one does it now because of the high cost and no market.
Looking at these works, I can feel the love of Mongolian artists for their own culture. They often take horses, grasslands and some symbols representing Mongolian spirit and culture as their creative themes. With the development of the times, painters who tend to explore new art forms will learn from the expression techniques in the works of modern and contemporary artists in the East and West, and combine new creative ideas to express this theme.
These different works of art give me a more comprehensive understanding of the artistic background and cultural development of Mongolia. I hope that through them, you can also be closer to Ulaanbaatar.
(The article was first published in Little Movable Type by Cato, editor of Little Movable Type, and won the German Red Dot Design Award)