Tainan Art Museum (x2); Kinda the National Museum of Taiwan Literature

This afternoon I kind of visited the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and really visited the two buildings of the Tainan Art Museum. (The two buildings are about a five-minute walk apart.

I’m going to try to make this post short for three reasons. For one, I’m tired. For another, I don’t think I have a lot to say. (Recognizing that I often think I don’t have a lot to say only until I get around to saying it.) And, third, I’m a tad distracted. I’ll tell you about that distraction, but I’ll save it for an aside at the end of this post.

Kinda the Museum of Taiwan Literature

My guidebook gives the National Museum of Taiwan Literature a star. It only gives one star or no stars and a star usually means that it considers the sight a “must-see.” It says that this museum has lots of English text and there’s an English-language audio guide available at the information desk.

After visiting three temples and a park with a shrine, I had my fill of temples for the day. The National Museum of Taiwan Literature sounded like a good alternative. So, after lunch, I walked over there.

I went inside, found the information desk, and asked if I could get an audioguide. No, I couldn’t.

The person at the desk told me that the audioguide is only for the permanent exhibition and the permanent exhibition is closed from December 10th to the 13th, inclusive, for an upgrade. Today is December the 13th.

Tomorrow is my last day in Tainan. I tentatively have something in mind for the morning. It might linger into the afternoon a bit. But whether I do it or not is dependent on the weather and whether I want to take an Uber/taxi, because that’s the only reasonable way to get there. So I might try again tomorrow in the morning if I decide to not do that activity or in the afternoon if I do. And this all assumes that Taiwan is still on the face of the Earth tomorrow, he said proving that he knows what foreshadowing is.

There were a couple of temporary exhibitions on and open at the Museum of Taiwan Literature today. I checked them out. (The pun was not intended when I typed it, but I was pleased with myself when I realized it was a pun. You need to read the next paragraph to get how “checked them out” is pun.)

One of the temporary exhibitions was not about Taiwanese literature, but, rather, Czech literature. The text in the exhibition was bilingual, Chinese and Czech. (I confirmed that those were the two languages by using the “detect language” feature of Google Translate’s camera option.)

Most of the text panels also displayed a QR code that took me to an English translation of the text. But I found using Google Translate or the QR codes too painful a way to follow along, so I didn’t spend much time in there.

The other special exhibition also had bilingual text and, this time, the languages were Chinese and English, so, yay! However, the exhibition was about sports literature. I have less than zero interest in sports literature. So as soon as I got close enough to see the subject, I left.

Tainan Art Museum: Building 1

To repeat myself, the Tainan Art Museum has two buildings, which they creatively call “Building 1” and “Building 2.”

Building 1 is right across the street from the Museum of Taiwan Literature. So, rather than letting my walk over to the Museum of Taiwan Literature be a waste, I went into Building 1 of the Tainan Art Museum.

I liked it right away because:

1. A ticket bought at either building gets you into the other one on the same ticket.
2. They have a seniors’ discount, $NT100 instead of $NT200, for people over 65.
3. The person at the front desk insisted on seeing my ID before they’d give me the seniors’ discount. It’s been a long time since anyone carded me as a senior. Usually, they look at me, say, “How the hell are you still alive,” and give me the discount automatically.

Building 1 of the Tainan Art Museum is not huge. The building was formerly the Tainan Police Agency, which was designed by Japanese architect Sutejiro Umezawa and completed in 1931. The exhibits are on two floors.

When I was there, it ran two temporary exhibitions and no permanent exhibitions.

One of the exhibitions was dedicated to “the works of Tseng Pei-yao (1927-1991), a representative artist from Tainan. He is a unique and crucial figure throughout Taiwanese art history.” (Quote from a sign in the Tainan Art Museum, Building 1.)

He covers a broad range of styles, from “Subjective and Figurative Expressionism,” to “Abstract Expressionism,” and to a “Life-Themed Series.”

About that life-themed series, um. The entire exhibit of his work, not just the life-themed series, spanned a few galleries on the second floor. The gallery with the life-themed series was split into a few sections. One of those sections contained ten or so paintings titled “Life” followed by a number.

That series was all abstract, but they looked to me to be beyond just slight variations. I think what Tseng was trying to say is that, despite all of our differences we’re all part of the glorious fabric of life. Either that or he totally sucked at coming up with names for his works.

Oh, one of Tseng’s works was titled, “The Chikan Tower.” I assume that “Chikan” is just a variation of the English transliteration that my guidebook called “Chihkan Tower.” If so, I now have an impression of what the main building there looks like without the current scaffolding and mural covering it.

The other exhibition was titled, “The possibilities of brushstrokes on a flat surface.” It was a solo show by an artist named Hsu Jui Fu. The exhibit occupied a single room and contained works of two very different styles, with multiple works of each style.

One was a series of abstract paintings that looked pointillist, except without tiny dots. Instead, the points looked like adjacent puffballs of different colours creating abstract pieces. That sounds like I’m mocking it, but I found it intriguing.

The other style was monochrome portrait etchings.

All of her works were intentionally untitled. In fact, there were no labels beside her works providing the date they were done.

When I was in the museum, I planned to make a great many more snarky comments in this journal about the art at the Tainan Art Museum than what I’ve made here. But for all the reasons I gave above for wanting to keep this short, I’ll just leave it at this and post a few of the pictures I took of the works.

Tainan Art Museum: Building 2

Tainan Art Museum: Building 2 is bigger and more modern than Building 1, and the exhibit space spans three floors, not two, but it still doesn’t have a ton of gallery space because the centre of the museum is taken up by a large atrium with nothing displayed in the area even on the first floor, where there is indeed a floor in that space.

I’m getting more tired and more distracted, so I’ll cut this section on Building 2 of the Tainan Art Museum even shorter, but I’ll still post some pictures of the works.

There were four exhibitions in Building 2 when I was there. I think one is a permanent exhibition. It’s entitled, “Painting in the Southern Breeze: The Artist Room of CHEN Cheng-Po, KUO Po-Chuan, HSU Wu-Yung, and SHEN Che-Tsai.” The room has “the aim of highlighting the historical contributions of earlier artists.”

I believe that the other exhibitions were temporary. One artistically displayed some creative architectural models, text, and a couple of books on architecture. At least some, and maybe all, of the models were of real buildings, and possibly all of them.

Another exhibition was on ACG (Animation, Comics, and Games), which “is a combined term representing a type of art, which has become a medium commonly used by artists in the digital age and is also an art form closely tied to commercial interests.”

The exhibition focuses largely on Boy’s Love (BL). The text accompanying the exhibition explains that there is a fine line between BL and gay manga. “BL,” it explains, “refers to works depicting romantic relationships between male characters in a fictional world that is created by and for women.”

I know manga has a large following, but I’ve never taken an interest in manga art of any subject matter. I much prefer Italian manga because it’s delicious and provides sustenance.

The fourth exhibition was on prints and print-making.

I can’t carry this any further for the above-stated reasons. So please enjoy the pictures, read the aside below, and wish the world luck.