Bai Ji Kong (孔柏基)

Born in Shanghai in 1932, Bai Ji Kong (often referred to as "Kong Boji" or "Boji Kong") was a gifted self-taught painter who has long been regarded as a key figure in China's contemporary art movement and is recognized worldwide for his Dunhuang paintings of graceful bodhisattvas. In 1956 he began teaching Fine Arts at the Shanghai Theater Academy and became head of the department in 1976. His first solo exhibition was held at the Shanghai Arts Hall in 1964, and by 1979 he was considered an esteemed painter, likened to Zhu Qizhan, Yan Wenliang, and Jui Guoliang. From 1979 to 1983 he made frequent visits to the Buddhist caves at Dunhuang in Gansu Province in China, and the Yongle Palace Murals in Shanxi, drawing inspiration from China’s rich heritage.

Subsequently, Kong created a series of Dunhuang Images depicting graceful bodhisattvas using oil paints on rice paper, a revolutionary approach in Chinese painting. The series was well-received on the world stage and was exhibited in Japan and the United States. In 1982, he took part in a joint exhibition, “Painting the Chinese Dream—Thirty Years After the Revolution”, which traveled to various museums in the United States. In 1986, he settled in the U.S. and further experimented with incorporating elements of Western art in his creative practices. Harvard University organized one of his first solo exhibitions in the United States in 1988, only two years after his arrival. He passed away in March 2018 in Connecticut, where he lived for 28 years.

His works are included in the permanent collections of a number of important museums and cultural institutions in Asia and the U.S., including The Art Institute of Chicago, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan, Lincoln Center in New York, The National Art Museum of China in Beijing, The Shanghai Art Museum, Harvard University, Smith College Museum of Art (Smith link #2) The Soyanzi Art Museum in Tokyo, The Peace Museum in Hokkaido, Japan, and the sacred Kinpusenji Temple—The Temple of Golden Peaks—a designated national treasure in Nara, Japan.

In 1987, Kong's work was included in one of the first and most significant North American exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art after the Cultural Revolution, which took place at the USC Pacific Asia Museum. Henry Kissinger wrote the forward of the catalog for this exhibition.

"In the 1980s, Chinese artists experienced unprecedented cultural, political and social changes that made ideas from the outside world more accessible than during the Cultural Revolution. USC Pacific Asia Museum’s 1987 exhibition Beyond the Open Door: Contemporary Paintings from the People’s Republic of China was the first U.S. exhibition to introduce the most talented and artistically adventurous young Chinese artists, showing how they were experimenting with Western art theories and practices." - USC Pacific Asia Museum

Kong’s work was exhibited in the Forever Icons exhibit in 2018 at Alisan Fine Arts in Hong Kong—a gallery that has represented his work for many years.

Click here to read the 1998 Forbes article, Modern Chinese Masters, referencing the sale of Kong's work at Sotheby's.

In 2006, The Art Institute of Chicago acquired the below oil-on-rice-paper painting by Kong titled "It's Spring Again", which was featured in the museum’s September 22- November 7, 2007 exhibition, Infinite Shades: Contemporary Chinese Ink.

For a thousand years, ink has been the supreme medium of artistic expression in China thanks to its close association with writing, scholarship, and cultured taste. This time-honored yet daunting tradition has presented a stimulating challenge in modern times. The dichotomy of innovation and tradition and the tension between global convergence and regional cultural identity has energized some of the most talented Chinese artists active in China or on the international stage. This exhibition presents works by five contemporary artists that exemplify the diverse exploration of the infinite shades of ink.

-The Art Institute of Chicago

In April 2012, The National Art Museum of China honored Kong with a solo exhibition showcasing 100 of his paintings. Twenty paintings from the show became part of the museum’s permanent collection. The event served as a retrospective of the work that Kong, who turned eighty the month before the exhibition, produced during the prior sixty years of his life.

In June 2012, China Central Television (CCTV) aired a two-part documentary on Kong that aired globally on CCTV4. To view this documentary, which has English subtitles, click the two images below.

On November 16, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Shanghai's mayor Han Zheng in front of Kong Bai Ji's large mural at the Xijiao State Guest House, China's equivalent of Camp David, in Shanghai.

In 2010, Kong's paintings were on display in a special exhibit in the China Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai.

During a 2011 exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania titled "Post-Mao Dreaming: Chinese Contemporary Art", two noted authorities on Chinese contemporary art, Joan Lebold Cohen and Ethan Cohen, gave a lecture that touched on Kong and on a painting of his that was included in the show: an image of Buddha that Kong painted in the 1970's while visiting the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang—now a UNESCO World Heritage Site—in China's Gansu province. This important cultural area is also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas (Chinese: 千佛洞; pinyin: qiān fó dòng). "I felt of the artists I saw, which were many, who had gone to Dunhuang, none ever captured the spirit of Buddha as well as Kong Bai Ji," commented Joan Lebold Cohen during this lecture.

Joan Lebold Cohen is a photographer, art historian, and curator who has regularly visited Asia since 1961 and lived in Japan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Her book, The New Chinese Painting, 1949–1986 (1987) was one of the first English-language publications to introduce recent generations of Chinese artists to the West and contains selected paintings by Kong. A 2017 talk by Cohen co-sponsored by the Smith College Museum of Art and the Lewis Global Studies Center features commentary by Cohen about Kong and the inspiration he found at Dunhuang. The talk, titled China of the Late Twentieth-Century Through the Lens of an American Photographer and Curator, can be viewed by clicking here. Cohen’s discussion of Kong begins at the 47:31 point of the video.

To view the collection of materials about Bai Ji Kong contained in the Asia Art Archive, click here. Asia Art Archive is an independent, Hong Kong-based non-profit organization co-founded by Claire Hsu and Johnson Chang in 2000 in response to the urgent need to document and make accessible the multiple recent histories of art in the region.