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An embroidered version of Liu's classic painting has left a lasting impression on dignitaries and celebrities
The Drunken Beauty, an embroidery based on the famous Chinese oil painting by Liu Linghua, appeared at the Expo 2010 Shanghai recently as one of the most popular artworks of the Intangible Cultural Heritage exhibition during the Expo's Shanghai Week.
This striking piece of art, together with embroidered versions of other masterpieces by Liu, such as The Years and Princess Zhuangji, brought Expo visitors closer to traditional Chinese culture at the BaoSteel Stage in the Pudong side of the Expo Garden. The embroidered version of The Drunken Beauty is said to have taken more than 500 hours to complete.
The exhibition was intended to promote traditional Chinese culture and art, especially local intangible cultural heritage and national folk customs from Shanghai.
The Shanghai Chinese Quintessence Art Co Ltd specializes in promoting, developing and managing Liu's oil paintings. It has established quite a reputation among its peers after participating in both the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Expo 2010.
One of the highlights of the latest show was Princess Zhuangji, a 2-meter by 2-meter canvass based on Liu's painting The Orphan of the Zhao Family. The exquisite artwork took craftsmen three years to finish and has given Expo visitors a visual feast with its vivid characterization and rich colors.
An enamel porcelain plate at the entrance to the exhibition represents a typical Shanghai neighborhood, or Shikumen, and has also been catching visitors' eyes. The hand-painted plate was drawn by Gu Chengqing, a master painter who was hired to produce the chinaware used to celebrate the birthday of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1974. The plate is an example of the lustrous Mao Porcelain, and is also based on The Drunken Beauty painting .
When the exhibition ran two years ago in Beijing, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad gave delegates from around the world 220 embroidered versions of The Drunken Beauty worth a total of 8.8 million yuan ($1.32 million).
This year, the gifts were given to dignitaries and celebrities such as Filip Vujanovic, president of Montenegro, Lien Chan, honorary chairman of the Kuomintang, singer Celine Dion, film star Sharon Stone and director Michelle Tang.
The Shanghai Chinese Quintessence Art Co Ltd also developed a collection of postcards for art lovers to take home. The collection, consisting of 10 Beijing Opera-themed oil paintings by Liu, combines key features of the Expo 2010 and elements from traditional Chinese art. The postcards have attracted many visitors with their high artistic value. The State Grid Pavilion ordered 900,000 copies so it could give them away as free gifts for visitors to its pavilion.
All of these artworks were subsequently exhibited at the first Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage Fair in Jinan, Shandong province, where they left a lasting impression on art lovers from northern China.
(China Daily 10/22/2010)
