This work, titled "Eroding Inscription of the Han," is one of 33 paintings by Mu Xin on display. Rich in imagery, the paintings are all small in size because the artist had to hide them during his 10-year stay in prison.

Exhibit features Chinese artist's prison paintings, notes

When the Chinese government put him into solitary confinement for 18 months, artist and author Mu Xin discovered a match could be a form of entertainment. "All I had to do was plant the stick gently in the ashes of the ashtray and watch it burn from top to bottom," wrote Mu Xin during his confinement. "For several months I have been directing the same drama: the ashtray resembles a circular stage on which the matchstick, like a legendary diva, sings her swan song before she slowly falls on the ground and dies." Mu Xin's prison writings and landscape paintings, rendered on smuggled pieces of paper and hidden from his captors, are on view in a new exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery. Titled "The Art of Mu Xin -- Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes," this is the first major show by the contemporary writer-artist, who now lives and works in New York. The exhibit will continue through Dec. 9. The works in the show -- 33 ink-and-gouache paintings and 66 inscribed sheets -- were created while the artist was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and its immediate aftermath. They are virtually the only surviving works that predate the artist's emigration to the United States in 1982. Originally named Sun Pu, Mu Xin was the only child of a prominent family with business connections in Shanghai. He received a classical Chinese education at home and, during the war against Japan, had the privilege of using the library of renowned writer Mao Dun, where the young scholar was introduced to masterworks of Western literature. This grounding in both Chinese and Western literature became the basis for his own writings. After the war, Mu Xin studied Western painting with artist Liu Haisu at the Shanghai Fine Arts Institute and, later in Hangzhou, with celebrated instructor Lin Fengmian, whose ideas on the integration of Chinese and Western art profoundly influenced the young man. The Japanese occupation, the civil war and the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 took a heavy toll on Mu Xin's family. The family estate was devastated, and its members dispersed, imprisoned or killed. In 1966, all of Mu Xin's voluminous works -- including 21 book-length manuscripts and some 500 paintings -- were confiscated and destroyed. The artist himself was incarcerated three times over a 10-year period, culminating with his solitary confinement in an abandoned air-raid shelter in Shanghai in 1971-1972. Since leaving China, Mu Xin has published 12 books of poetry, essays and fiction, and his artistic works continue to garner acclaim. "Mu Xin fuses his knowledge of Chinese and Western literature and philosophy in his writing and painting with equal mastery, stylistic subtlety and thematic richness," says Wu Hung, the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Chinese Art History at the University of Chicago, who is co-curator of the show. "When Mu Xin left China in 1982 and his writings flooded Taiwan's literary journals and newspapers, his readers felt they were encountering a literary genius out of nowhere." The 33 paintings in the Yale Art Gallery exhibit are small, each about 13- by 7-inches, which made them easy to hide. They depict both real and imaginary sites, and are rendered in ink and gouache, often rubbed or burnished to create certain effects. In style, they are dramatically different from anything else produced in China in that period, says the show's other co-curator, Alexandra Munroe, director of the Japan Society Gallery, adding that this uniqueness of vision is present in Mu Xin's later works as well. "The single imperative of modern Asian artists is to define a space that absorbs the cultures of traditional Asia, the classical West and of modernity," says Munroe. "Few artists are able to arrive at an authentic synthesis. Fewer still are able to create a genuinely original art that goes beyond a mere integration of artistic forms and styles to achieve an intelligence that transcends the boundaries of, yet resonates with, all three cultures. The artist and writer Mu Xin does this with uncommon grace ..." The prison notes on display were all composed during Mu Xin's solitary confinement. They are inscribed in tiny, stitch-like script on both sides of 66 pages of paper that the artist salvaged from his forced confessionals and folded for hiding in his padded prison clothes (somehow they were never discovered and remain in the possession of the author, who has loaned them for the show). The notes range in topic from world literature to painting, music and philosophy. In one, Mu Xin asserts: "When catastrophe comes one must find ways to resist it. You are obliged to hold your own life in your mouth -- like a tigress holding her young in her mouth -- and be the first to advance, not retreat. To sacrifice by staying alive is a struggle with wisdom so that one can escape all the death traps. It is not unlike the dandelions scattered in smoking debris after a war, which proves that, like plants, culture and the arts will strategically prevail." The paintings in the show are drawn from the collection of The Rosenkranz Foundation, which also funded the accompanying exhibition catalogue. The foundation was established in 1985 by Robert Rosenkranz, Yale Class of 1962, a leading collector of Chinese art and a member of the University Council. The Yale Art Gallery co-organized the exhibit with the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, where the show will be on view Jan. 24-March 31 before moving to the Honolulu Academy of Arts in Hawaii. Several special events will take place at the gallery in conjunction with the exhibition, including a "Contemporary Chinese Film Series." Information about these activities will appear in the Calendar section of this newspaper. The Yale University Art Gallery, located on the corner of Chapel and York streets, is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 1-6 p.m. Sunday. 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