{
"data": {
"id": 172598,
"accession_number": "2015.80",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "New Primordial Chaos (\u65b0\u6e3e\u6dea\u5716), 2014. Michael Cherney (American, b. 1969). Photograph in handscroll format, ink on mitsumata washi paper; image: 29.7 x 86.2 cm (11 11/16 x 33 15/16 in.); overall: 31.6 x 337.2 cm (12 7/16 x 132 3/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Jane B. Tripp Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, 2015.80",
"current_location": null,
"title": "New Primordial Chaos",
"title_in_original_language": "\u65b0\u6e3e\u6dea\u5716",
"creation_date": "2014",
"creation_date_earliest": 2014,
"creation_date_latest": 2014,
"artists_tags": [
"Jewish artists",
"male"
],
"culture": [
"China"
],
"technique": "Photograph in handscroll format, ink on mitsumata washi paper",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Chinese Art",
"collection": "Chinese Art",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Image: 29.7 x 86.2 cm (11 11/16 x 33 15/16 in.); Overall: 31.6 x 337.2 cm (12 7/16 x 132 3/4 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.297,
"height_inch": 11,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.6875,
"width": 0.862,
"width_inch": 33,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.9375
},
"overall": {
"height": 0.316,
"height_inch": 12,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.4375,
"width": 3.372,
"width_inch": 132,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.75
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Artist's seal \"Qiu\" \u79cb impressed in the lower left corner of the photo",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 202963,
"title": "Chinese Landscape Duets of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney",
"description": "Chinese Landscape Duets of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 12, 2015-February 7, 2016).",
"opening_date": "2015-07-12T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Collection of the artist",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2014\u20132015",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(Kaikodo America Inc., New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2015",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2015\u2013",
"sortorder": 3
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "On the day Cherney took the photograph, Beijing\u2019s Air Quality Index was 517 (150 is unhealthy).",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Michael Cherney has a \"painterly\" style of landscape photography much inspired by the aesthetics of Chinese painting. Here, he superimposed a photograph of the sun onto the composition of Hunlun tu by Zhu Derun (1294\u20131365), a famous 14th-century Chinese painting variously translated as \"Primordial Chaos\" or the \"Cosmic Circle.\" Zhu Derun depicted a circle to convey the Daoist cosmological idea of primordial chaos\u2014the great undifferentiated matter out of which heaven and earth and all forms emerged.
Cherney's New Primordial Chaos revisits the chaos after creation, a human-generated chaos that is so overwhelming and toxic that it can cloud the sun, making it look like not itself but the moon. Polluted air and clouds shroud the sun on a Beijing day. The resulting image, which resembles the moon shining in the night sky, is the artist's deliberate attempt to create confusion and subtle critique of the contemporary environmental crisis.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60482453"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "\"Elegant Solutions.\" Kaikodo Journal XXXI (Spring 2015).",
"page_number": "Reproduced: cat. no. 60, pp. 132\u2013133, 213\u2013214",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "von Spee, Clarissa. \u201cInterview-Clarissa von Spee: Better understanding the close cross-cultural ties among Asian cultures.\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 57, no. 1 (January/February 2017): 14\u201315.",
"page_number": "Reproduced and Mentioned: p. 14",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMM2017-01/page/n7/mode/2up"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2015.80",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "The Jane B. Tripp Charitable Lead Annuity Trust",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 172598,
"creators": [
{
"id": 66158,
"description": "Michael Cherney (American, b. 1969)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": "\u79cb\u9ea5",
"birth_year": "1969",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2015-09-08T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 2014,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "2014",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:53:36.542000"
}
}