How many tourists to Hong Kong, ignorant of local traditions, have innocently (or perhaps that should read ignorantly) marched into one of those shops selling that funny brightly coloured paper that looks like money, and taken it home as a souvenir? And how many foreign-born residents of Hong Kong have popped into those same repositories and taken home a bundle of curiosities to decorate their 1,500 square feet in Mid-Levels? No local person, however anti-traditional in outlook, would even think of using such items purely for decorative effect. Or if they did, it would be with the intention to shock, rather than to prettify their homes.
So when a Western artist uses the gold leaf paper that is folded into little gold bars for funerals, as Australian Tony Scott has done for his exhibition China Gold, which opened this week, what should we make of it? Is this a deliberate cultural affront, or simply insensitivity? One can plausibly argue that the insult, or otherwise, depends on the knowledge of the artist. If Scott just thinks he has found a beautiful new medium to work with, it makes him a less interesting artist, but not necessarily a cruder human being.
In fact he does know what he is using to make his landscapes with, although he admits when he first started using the gold paper in his work after discovering it in Chinese temples in Malaysia five years ago, he just thought it looked nice. Now, he says, 'I think the knowledge makes the pieces more valuable. There is a philosophical content to these paintings, based on the Buddhism I studied at university.' Oscar Ho Hing-kay, visual arts director at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, thinks Scott's initial reaction to the paper is typical of many Western artists. 'Although it isn't insulting anyone [to use it], people might dislike it for superstitious reasons, for bringing in ghosts. It might seem odd. Not disrespectful but odd.' Scott certainly hopes no-one will be affronted. 'I asked Chinese friends in Australia, and they said it would be all right. When I showed these works in China, no-one said anything.' He was taken aback when the head of a local art museum said Hong Kong people might be shocked to see funeral paper used this way. 'No-one commented until I got here. But I hope it isn't an issue. It isn't meant to offend.' China Gold is at the John Batten Gallery until November 22.
Remembering a child prodigy Felix Mendelssohn would have been 188 this week if he hadn't died 150 years ago. His short but spectacularly successful career is commemorated in a concert of his vocal and instrumental music at City Hall tonight at 8pm.
Mendelssohn was a comet that burned brightly but briefly, like Mozart, Schubert and Schumann, but unlike those poor men, he was a good-tempered, likeable chap, and a much-loved son in a happy, Jewish family who converted to Protestantism. His family supported him so fully that at 14, he was apparently given a chamber orchestra 'just to play with'.
It would be easy to say they were just spoiling him. But three years later he wrote his first masterpiece, the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Perhaps his parents knew their little Felix wasn't any old child prodigy, and needed that little push to set him on the road to becoming one of the most admired composers of his generation.
