TSENG Kwong Chi 曾廣智

choi

Ken Johnson, A Larky Spirit of the Cacophonous ‘80s. New York Times, Apr 24, 2015 (in the Art section).
www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/arts/ ... ey-art-gallery.html

Note:
(a) “'Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera,' an entertaining and edifying exhibition [Apr 21-July 11, 2015] at the Grey Art Gallery, surveys the brief but prolific 10-year career of one of the decade’s more scintillating but lesser-known players. Presenting more than 80 photo-based pieces, the show was organized by Amy Brandt, curator of modern and contemporary Art at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Va, where it will be shown in August."
(i)
(A) "Grey Art Gallery is New York University's fine arts museum, located on historic Washington Square Park."  From Grey Art Gallery's website.
(B) The Galley's home page display the poster for the Tseng exhibition.
(ii) Chrysler Museum of Art
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Museum_of_Art

is a private museum.

* The benefactor  Walter P Chrysler, Jr was the eldest son (out of two, plus two daughters) of Walter Percy Chrysler (1875–1940) who founded Chrysler in 1925.

(b) "In 1979 Tseng Kwong Chi 曾廣智 began to create his most memorable works: two photographic series, “East Meets West” and its follow-up, “Expeditionary Series,” in which he appeared in dark glasses and a Zhongshan suit, the uniform favored by Mao Zedong. Thus outfitted, he posed in front of famous monuments"
(i)
(A) "Tseng Kwong Chi (born 1950, Hong Kong; died 1990, New York)"
www.tsengkwongchi.com/biography
(B) The en.wikipedia.org says he was American.
(ii) Mao suit
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_suit

(c) "When he’s seen far away in the midst of mountainous landscapes in pictures shot by assistants, he resembles a romantic wanderer in a Caspar David Friedrich painting."

Caspar David Friedrich
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedrich
(1774-1880; German)

* View the second painting in this Wiki page: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818).

choi

(d) "Tseng regularly documented Haring surreptitiously drawing his white-chalk cartoon allegories on blacked-out signboards in New York subway stations; he also made photographs of the dancer Bill T Jones, naked but for patterns painted by Haring all over his body."
(i) Keith Haring
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Haring
(1958-1990; died of AIDS)
(ii) “Haring surreptitiously drawing his white-chalk cartoon allegories on blacked-out signboards in New York subway stations”
(A) Obviously illegally--trespass and all that.
(B) Keith Haring: Subway Chalk Drawing's [sic: should be 'Drawings']. Guy Hepner (contemporary arts dealers), Jan 30, 2013.
www.guyhepner.com/keith-haring-subway-chalk-drawings/
(iii)
(A) “he [Tseng] also made photographs of the dancer Bill T Jones, naked but for patterns painted by Haring all over his body”

Go to images.google.com with the terms (Haring Tseng Bill T Jones)--no quotation marks.
(B) Bill T Jones
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_T._Jones
(1952- ; co-founder of the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company [Arnie Zane: a man (1948-1988; died of AIDS; Arnie most likely contracted from “Arnold”)])

(e) "He was blessed with a larky spirit. In 1980, wearing his Mao suit, he crashed a $300-per-ticket reception for an exhibition of Qing dynasty costumes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. An assistant shot him posing with celebrities like Paloma Picasso, Henry Kissinger and Yves Saint Laurent, who either took him for a visiting Chinese dignitary or didn’t know what to make of him. (He sported a seemingly official but uninformative name tag in a plastic envelope pinned to his chest, with a head shot of himself and the words 'Visitor/Visiteur' stamped on it.)"
(i)
(A) larky (adj): "given to or ready for larking"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lark
(B) lark  (vi; probably alteration of lake to frolic; First Known Use 1813): "to engage in harmless fun or mischief —often used with about"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lark
(ii) French English dictionary
visiteur (noun masculine; visiter to visit +‎ -eur): "visitor"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/visiteur

(f) "For that project ['Moral Majority' (1981)], Tseng wore a seersucker suit, the preppy uniform of a young Republican."
(i) Yo can go to Wikipe4dia or images.google.com to see what seersucker cloths look like.
(ii)
(A) seersucker (n): “1722, from Hindi sirsakar, East Indian corruption of Persian shir o shakkar ‘striped cloth,’ literally ‘milk and sugar,’ a reference to the alternately smooth and puckered surfaces of the stripes. From Persian shir (cognate with Sanskrit ksiram ‘milk’) + shakar (cognate with Pali sakkhara, Sanskrit sarkara ‘gravel, grit, sugar;’ see sugar (n))
www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=seersucker
(B) sugar (n): “late 13c., sugre, from Old French sucre "sugar" (12c.), from Medieval Latin succarum, from Arabic sukkar, from Persian shakar, from Sanskrit sharkara ‘ground or candied sugar,’ originally ‘grit, gravel’ (cognate with Greek kroke ‘pebble’). The Arabic word also was borrowed in Italian (zucchero), Spanish (azucar, with the Arabic article), and German (Old High German zucura, German Zucker), and its forms are represented in most European languages (such as Serbian cukar, Polish cukier, Russian sakhar)"
www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sugar