Artists in Residence

Academic Year 2010-11

Ertai and Maya Gao

Writer, critic, painter and scholar Er Tai Gao was born in 1935 near Nanjing. A former member of the Council of the National Association of Art and Literary Theory, he is widely known in China for his contributions to aesthetic theory. In 1957, he published an essay, "On Beauty," that challenged the prevailing Communist stance on aesthetics and objectivity. Gao was quickly branded a "rightist" and sentenced to three years of hard labor in the Gobi desert, where nearly three-quarters of his fellow prisoners died. Over the next forty years, as the Cultural Revolution overtook China and ensuing campaigns toward "eradicating spiritual pollution" rose in its wake, Gao's strong humanist views, which he expressed through his writing and teaching, made him a target of the Chinese government. He was sentenced again to hard labor from 1966 to 1972, and later dismissed from his duties at Lanzhou University and prohibited from writing and publishing. He was arrested in 1989 following the Tiananmen Square protests, and, after spending nearly a year in prison, was again prohibited from teaching and publishing. In 1992, he and his wife, the painter Maya Gao, escaped to Hong Kong and now live in exile in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gao's published works include The Struggle of Beauty and Beauty, The Symbol of Freedom (1987). His memoir, In Search of My Homeland, was published October 20, 2009 by HarperCollins.  It was also the subject of the 2009 Golo Mann Lecture at CMC.

Ertai has been a member of the faculty at the Dunhuang Cultural Relics Research Institute and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Philosophy, and a professor at Lanzhou University, Sichuan Normal University, Nankai University, and Nanjing University.

For more than 30 years, Maya has worked as a professional artist and art instructor. Her work appears in the Leiyin Temple of Taiwan and has been on exhibit in New York, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

The inspiration for the Gaos’ work is taken from the graceful curves of traditional calligraphy, the themes of Chinese legends, and the elegant movement of ancient Buddhist cave paintings. Their paintings were on display last spring at the Marian Miner Cook Atheneum in an exhibit co-sponsored by the Gould Center.

The Gaos will teach a studio seminar in the Spring 2011 semester on Chinese painting and calligraphy.  For more details click on "Gould Center Seminar" at left.