John Hatch

East Meets West: Shi Zhiying's Picturing of Italo Calvino's ‘Mr. Palomar’

Abstract

My paper explores an intriguing series of 30 black and white watercolour and ink works by the Shanghai-born artist Shi Zhiying that give visual form to the unusual musings of Mr. Palomar, the title character of Italo Calvino's 1983 book. In the novel by the Italian writer, we are witnesses to a wonderful and often haphazard exploration of the world from its smallest creatures to the majestic universe it inhabits. Palomar's attempts to grasp these, to make sense of them, constantly elude and frustrate him, and he yet he never ceases trying despite the growing realization that his futility is the product of a greater sense of things that promises a far richer appreciation of life. It is not surprising to find that Calvino's writing has been long admired in China as it embraces a contemplation of the world that is more familiar in the Far East than in the West. Shi masterfully demonstrates her grasp of the world of Mr. Palomar with a visual panorama that complements perfectly Calvino's text.

Biography

Dr. John G. Hatch is Associate Professor of Art History at Western University (London, Canada) where he also serves as an Associate Dean for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. He received his PhD from the University of Essex and his area of research is 20th-century European and American art and theory, with a special focus on the influence of the physical sciences on modern art. Recent publications include the articles ‘Wrestling Proteus: The Role of Science in Modern Art and Architecture’s New Images of Nature’ (2014), ‘Seeing and Seen: Acts of the Voyeur in the Works of Francis Bacon’ (2012), ‘Nature, Entropy, and Robert Smithson's Utopian Vision of a Culture of Decay’ (2012), and ‘Some Adaptations of Relativity in the 1920s and the birth of Abstract Architecture’ (2010).