The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of July 21, 2026

A horizontally oriented woodcut print in black ink depicts an overhead view of various agricultural plots. Rectangular fields are filled with dense, repetitive marks of black ink representing various crops. Textures range from thin vertical strokes on the left to leaf-like shapes on the right. Small black squares containing white Chinese characters are scattered throughout. The image sits within wide cream margins featuring handwritten text and a small red seal at the bottom.

Family Plots (from series of Repetitions)

1988

Xu Bing

(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 archive.org
    Von Spee, Clarissa. "Chinese Ceramics and Works on Paper." In The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, edited by Heather Lemonedes Brown, 194-229. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 224-227; Mentioned: p. 275
  • 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=21 July 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

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