The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of July 9, 2025

Family Plots (from series of Repetitions)

1988
(Chinese, b. 1955)
China
woodcut print with ink on paper
Image: 52.8 x 73.2 cm (20 13/16 x 28 13/16 in.); Sheet: 66.7 x 85.2 cm (26 1/4 x 33 9/16 in.)
Gift of Joe and Nancy Keithley 2019.240
© Xu Bing
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Xu was born during a rare ice storm, so he was named Bing 冰, meaning "ice."

Description

Series of Repetitions, a suite of ten woodcuts, was part of Xu Bing’s master’s thesis project in 1987. He printed images in different stages, each time carving away a little more of the block’s surface. The first print is the darkest; the final one is the lightest, with the image being entirely effaced. Family Plots refers to the landownership arrangement under Mao Zedong that allowed families who worked on state-owned communes to have individual plots of land. The characters in the corners of each plot designate old family names, such as Zhao, Qian, Sun, and Li. These references to script and text laid the groundwork for the artist’s later “landscripts”—landscapes composed of Chinese characters or script-style components.
  • ?–2019
    (Booklyn, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    2019–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Vainker, S. J., Bing Xu, Judith Goldman, and Peter D. McDonald. Landscape/Landscript: Nature As Language in the Art of Xu Bing. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, 2013. Mentioned: cat. no. 69, pp. 100, 108
    Von Spee, Clarissa. “Acquisitions 2019.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 2 (March/April 2020): 8-11. Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 11.
  • Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).
    Spotlight on a New Generation: Contemporary Chinese Artists. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 6-November 1, 2020).
  • {{cite web|title=Family Plots (from series of Repetitions)|url=false|author=Xu Bing|year=1988|access-date=09 July 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2019.240