This composition is similar to many of the drawings Xu Bing made of scenery north of the Great Wall around the village of Shouliang Gou, where he lived between 1974 and 1977 as an urban youth sent to the countryside for re-education. Those drawings, like Jean-François Millet’s sketch here, were also on unconventional papers; materials were scarce, and Xu Bing used wrapping paper from the commune supplies.
Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 28 February-19 May 2013, Xu Bing Landscape/Landscript: Nature as Language in the Art of Xu Bing, Shelagh Vainker, ed. (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2013), no. 20 on p. 55, pp. 16, 52, 155, illus. p. 55 fig. 20
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