Contemporary Chinese Art : A Critical History [1 ed.] 9781780233086, 9781780232690
Since the confirmation of Deng Xiaoping's policy of Opening and Reform in 1978, the People's Republic of China
187 103 17MB
English Pages 320 Year 2014
Recommend Papers
![A History of Contemporary Chinese Art: 1949 to Present [1st ed.]
9789811511400, 9789811511417](https://ebin.pub/img/200x200/a-history-of-contemporary-chinese-art-1949-to-present-1st-ed-9789811511400-9789811511417.jpg)
![Contemporary Chinese Art : A Critical History [1 ed.]
9781780233086, 9781780232690](https://ebin.pub/img/200x200/contemporary-chinese-art-a-critical-history-1nbsped-9781780233086-9781780232690.jpg)
- Author / Uploaded
- Paul Gladston
File loading please wait...
Citation preview
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Contemporary Chinese Art A Critical History
paul gladston
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART A Critical History
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Paul Gladston
REAKTION BOOKS
For Lynne and Alicia
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 33 Great Sutton Street London ec1v 0dx, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2014 Copyright © Paul Gladston 2014 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in Hong Kong by Toppan Printing Co. Ltd
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 978 1 78023 269 0
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 7 1 CHINESE ART IN CONTEXT 41 Cultural Interaction and Exchange from Antiquity to the Mid-twentieth Century – Realist and Modernist Art in China, 1911–1948 – Socialist-Realist and Revolutionary Art in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1977
2 MODERN (CONTEMPORARY) CHINESE ART, 1976–1989 84 The Early Development of Modern (Contemporary) Chinese Art – Avant-garde Art in the People’s Republic of China – The Dissolution of the ’85 Movement
3 CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART, 1990–2001 166
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Contemporary Chinese Art after Tiananmen – The Internationalization of Contemporary Chinese Art – Experimental Art and Social Transformation in the People’s Republic of China
4 CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART, 2002–2013 225 Contemporary Chinese Art on the Global Stage – Contemporary Chinese Art and Contemporaneity – The Political Recuperation of Contemporary Chinese Art
Glossary of Chinese Names 285 References 288 Select Bibliography 300 Acknowledgements 304 Photo Acknowledgements 305 Index 306
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
is book presents a critical mapping of the ideas and practices that have given shape to the development of contemporary Chinese art; not only those relating to the specialist concerns of artists, curators and critics, but also the wider sociocultural, economic and political conditions of present-day artistic production and reception. It is also a book about the ways in which discursive combinations of ideas and practices bind contemporary Chinese art – as a consequence of artistic complicity and/or resistance – to the structures of power and state both within and outside the People’s Republic of China (prc).1 e term ‘contemporary Chinese art’ is now used widely in anglophone contexts to denote various forms of avant-garde, experimental and museumbased art produced as part of the liberalization of culture that has taken place in the prc since the confirmation of Deng Xiaoping’s (1904–1997) so-called policy of ‘Opening and Reform’ (Gaige kaifang) at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) in December 1978. e acceptance of this policy secured Deng’s leadership of the ccp over Mao Zedong’s (1893–1976) designated successor Hua Guofeng (1921–2008); as well as initiating the prc’s centrally driven (and increasingly prodigious) social and economic transformation of the last four decades. It also resulted indirectly in a departure from the extremely close relationship between cultural production and politics that dominated the Maoist period after the founding of communist New China in 1949. Although the principal focus of this book is contemporary art produced by artists from mainland China, it also selectively discusses work made by artists from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau and diasporic Chinese communities outside East Asia. The term currently in use in the prc and other Mandarinspeaking contexts (including Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau) is Zhongguo dangdai yishu, which is often translated literally into English by native Chinese speakers as ‘Chinese contemporary art’.2 The use of ‘contemporary Chinese
8 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
art’ in the context of this book (rather than, for example, ‘contemporary art in China’ or ‘contemporary art from China’) is therefore intended to signify (if only imperfectly) a wider and more differentiated relationship between contemporary artistic practice and Chinese identity than that more usually associated with the term. As such it can therefore be understood to cross over (and through) the contested spatial limits of mainland China to encompass a now globalized and increasingly spatially and historically indeterminate sense of cultural Chineseness. roughout much of China’s pre-twentieth-century history, visual art, in the form of ink-and-brush painting and calligraphy, was closely associated with values supposedly embodied by the imperial Chinese state’s scholar-gentry class. The scholar-gentry in general – and the sub-set of that class widely referred to in English as the literati (shi dafu) in particular, who took up official positions throughout the empire after passing rigorous state-run examinations – administered the practical workings of China’s imperial government. From the Song dynasty (960–1279 ce) onwards, they were also upheld as living representatives of a neo-Confucian order based on secularidealist notions of humanistic altruism, self-cultivation, moral righteousness, and an often rigidly held system of norms determining social hierarchy and everyday interaction between individuals and classes. As such, China’s scholar-gentry were morally obligated to uphold the stability of the Chinese state and to signal any concerns they might have with the direction and administrative conduct of imperial rule, often through passive retreat from public life (understandable in the context of an absolute imperialist monarchy). Ink-and-brush painting and calligraphy produced by China’s scholar-gentry were, as strictly amateur forms, conventionally regarded as aesthetic expressions not only of the high moral values supposedly underpinning the imperial social order, but also the virtuous independence of their makers as defenders of the continuity of China’s civilization-specific identity. In short, visual art in its highest cultural forms was inextricably and durably enmeshed as a form of cultural-linguistic signification with the workings of power and state in imperial China. In the prc, the relationship between the specialist concerns of those involved in the making and showing of art and the wider social, cultural, economic and political conditions of art’s production, display and reception remains, in many respects, especially close. Since the ending of dynastic rule in 1911, the development of art – particularly public art – in China has been
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
9 | INTRODUCTION
intimately bound up with the construction of the modern Chinese nation state. Even the most culturally elevated forms of artistic thought and practice have been assigned positions of intense ideological significance as part of a continuing struggle to give definition to China’s sense of its own present modernity. Indeed, from the founding of communist New China in 1949 up to the present day, all publicly exhibited art in the prc has been required to conform – explicitly or implicitly under changing political circumstances – to the strategic aims of the country’s ruling Communist Party. This exclusory discourse is intended explicitly as a means of limiting and enabling artistic practice in the service of ‘revolutionary’ social progress. Discursive conditions in post-imperial China are such that wider events, and in particular those related to political governance, have therefore played an often definitive role in the formation and organization of cultural thought and practice. In spite of the far-reaching liberalization of society and culture that has taken place since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, there is still relatively little scope in the prc for direct criticism of prevailing governmental authority and, in certain instances, the development of thinking and practice outside often highly conservative social, cultural and political norms (for example, an ingrained patriarchy and homophobia that continues to run – despite official protestations to the contrary – throughout much of Chinese society). It would, however, be a mistake to think of makers, curators and interpreters of contemporary art in the prc as entirely without individual and collective agency in this regard. Contemporary art continues to provide – as scholarly-intellectual ‘high art’ always has in China – a durable locus of critical demurral from the dictates of established authority, albeit under highly restrictive sociopolitical and cultural circumstances. As such, contemporary art in the prc encompasses formalist approaches that signal a critically negative or escapist detachment from established ideology, as well as socially interventionist forms that go covertly against the grain of the prc’s centrally driven programme of post-Maoist reforms. In addition, it has engendered (understandably) rare and usually short-lived acts of open anti-governmental dissent, such as those conducted in recent years by the artist Ai Weiwei (b. 1957). e relationship between public discourse and artistic practice in the prc may, therefore, be described as a fundamentally interactive though highly context-dependent one. e latter is (in much the same way as the scholar-gentry art that preceded it) simultaneously complicit with, and a recognized site of largely oblique moralcritical resistance to, established political authority. As Norman Bryson has
10 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
argued, contemporary art in the prc can thus be interpreted as one capable of divergences from authority conducted very much at a ‘microlevel . . . “below” politics and ideology’.3 Contemporary art’s role as a locus of criticality is, in principle at least, far more clearly delineated and protected in Western(ized) neoliberal/democratic contexts.4 The relationship between public discourse and artistic practice in Western(ized) contexts is, given the nature of neoliberal/democratic politics, neither so tightly or overtly organized nor – given current mainstream political commitments to multiculturalism – as fundamentally concerned with socially and geographically bounded notions of national identity as is currently the case in the prc. Although there are no official, centralized and explicitly stated political directives in Western(ized) contexts requiring artists to conform to the aims of globalized capitalism, dominant sociopolitical and economic discourses nevertheless foster a pervasive, more or less inescapable complicity with the workings of the marketplace. In many cases, this severely compromises the critical distancing of art from social praxis while at the same time enabling the commercial production and showing of the former. As a consequence, the exact nature and extent of art’s critical impact on society is rendered profoundly uncertain. Contemporary art in Western(ized) neoliberal/democratic contexts could thus be said to occupy an effectively similar (if differently ‘grounded’) position of problematic discursive entanglement with established political authority to that occupied by contemporary art in the prc. Since the late 1970s, the prc’s economy has itself become ever more closely bound up with the workings of international capital as a result of the major economic, social and political changes initiated by Deng’s reforms. As a result – and especially after the reassertion of Deng’s reforms in the early 1990s – contemporary Chinese art has become a major commodity on the international art market as well as a significant focus for the development of an indigenous art market within the prc. is has made art produced and shown in the prc subject not only to the persistently restrictive effects of localized political authoritarianism, but also those brought about by an increasing complicity with the demands and pressures of the international marketplace. Current political discourses in the prc, therefore, place contemporary art in a highly restrictive double bind by neither supporting its critical autonomy as a necessary adjunct to social progress (indeed they continue to do the opposite), nor by seeking to protect it from the critically debilitating snares of the marketplace. As Franziska Koch has argued, it is therefore necessary to qualify Bryson’s
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
11 | I N T R O D U C T I O N
vision of the Chinese artist as a critical ‘subject flying below the radar of “macrolevel” politics and ideologies’ by acknowledging the complicity of artistic production within the prc with local and international governmental and commercial interests.5 ose parts of this book which focus specifically on the making, showing and reception of contemporary art within the prc do not, therefore, presuppose that it is fatally constrained by localized political authority in contrast to freely critical forms in neoliberal/democratic contexts. Rather, both are understood to be limited and enabled by differing (though now significantly overlapping) residual, dominant and emerging discursive formations. e mapping of ideas and practices presented here is intended, in part, as a means of analysing the critical significances of contemporary Chinese art (in its broader cultural sense) closely in relation to these differing discursive contexts. Since its beginnings at the end of the 1970s, contemporary art produced by artists from the prc has been characterized by an often conspicuous combining of images, attitudes and techniques appropriated from Western(ized) modernist and international postmodernist art with aspects of indigenous Chinese cultural thought and practice. In the context of an English-language-dominated international art world (still influenced strongly by poststructuralist/postmodernist readings of the critical effects of collage-montage and related forms of allegory6) contemporary art from the prc is widely considered to be a localized variant of international postmodernism. is is in the general sense of an art critical of, or divergent from, the universalizing meta-discursive outlook of Western(ized) high modernism, whose bringing together of differing as well as shifting cultural outlooks and modes of production has the potential to act as a locus for the deconstruction of supposedly authoritative meanings both within and outside the prc. is poststructuralist/postmodernist reading of contemporary Chinese art was first established during the late 1980s and early 1990s in relation to a series of ground-breaking exhibitions held outside mainland China which, for the first time, included or focused solely on works of contemporary art produced by artists from the prc. e first of these was the much discussed Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the Earth) at the Centre Pompidou and the Parc de la Villette in Paris in 1989. is exhibition presented the work of three mainland Chinese artists, Yang Jiechang (b. 1956), Gu Dexin (b. 1962) and Huang Yongping (b. 1954) alongside that of others from various Western and so-called ‘peripheral’ non-Western locations around the world (illus. 1, 2).7 Magiciens de
12 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
1 Yang Jiechang, One Hundred Layers of Ink, 1989, series of four paintings, ink on Xuan paper, each painting 470 × 280 cm. Installation view, Magiciens de la Terre, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1989.
la Terre initiated a still ongoing series of similarly cosmopolitan international survey exhibitions whose curators have, over the last three decades, sought to uphold cultural hybridity and transnationalism in the visual arts as a performative resistance to colonialist-imperialist relations of dominance, chiefly in light of influential critical writings by, among others, Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha.8 International survey exhibitions that have followed Magiciens de la Terre in presenting works of contemporary Chinese art as a focus for postcolonialist resistance include the Venice Biennale, which exhibited work by mainland Chinese artists in its fringe section, ‘Road to the East’, for the first time in 1993 and in its main section, ‘Identity and Alterity’, in 1995, and the São Paulo Biennial, which exhibited the work of artists from mainland China for the first time in 1994. e presentation of contemporary Chinese art as a focus for postcolonialist resistance has not been limited solely to curators from outside the prc. Artists, critics and curators from the prc have also sought to frame the significance of contemporary Chinese art in this way. ey include the artist Huang Yongping, who, since leaving the prc to live and work in France in 1989, has produced numerous sculptures, assemblages and installations that, as the curator Alex Farquharson makes clear, can be interpreted ‘as allegories for conflicts and convergences in traditions and beliefs under the influences of colonization and globalization’ (illus. 3, 4, 5).9 ey also include the curator and critic Hou
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
2 Yang Jiechang, One Hundred Layers of Ink – Voyage en Mexique, 1990, ink on Xuan paper mounted on canvas, 300 × 190 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
3, 4 Huang Yongping, Marché de Punya, 2007, mixed media installation, dimensions variable. Installation view, Huang Yongping – Wael Shawky, Nottingham Contemporary, 2011.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
15 | I N T R O D U C T I O N
Hanru (b. 1963), some of whose published writings of the 1990s seek to further the deconstruction of Western colonialist-imperialist relations of dominance by aligning the underlying precepts of postcolonialist discourse with aspects of traditional Chinese non-rationalist cultural thought and practice. e latter includes geomantic divinatory practices associated with the classic text the I Ching or Zhouyi (the Classic of Changes or Book of Changes, c. 1150 bce) – thereby suspending any sense of the former’s precedence over the latter.10 Magiciens de la Terre was followed in 1993 by two highly influential survey exhibitions of contemporary art from the prc; China’s New Art Post’89, organized by the Hanart TZ Gallery as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival; and China Avant-Garde, staged at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, that first drew international attention to the genres of painting and sculpture known as Political Pop (Zhengzhi bopu) and Cynical Realism (Wanshi xianshi zhuyi) (illus. 6, 7).11 ese genres – the former combining international capitalist and Maoist revolutionary imagery and the latter depicting generic figures convulsed by indeterminate grimacing/laughter – were widely
5 Huang Yongping, The Bat Project IV, 2004–5, mixed media installation, dimensions variable. Installation view, House of Oracles: A Huang Yongping Retrospective, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2005.
16 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
6 Gu Wenda, Equality from Paradise (Refound Oedipus Complex #7), 1992, mixed media installation, contraceptive pill powder (counterpart 1), women’s placenta powder (counterpart 2), 37.5 × 300 × 480 cm. Installation view, China’s New Art – Post ’89, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong, 1993.
7 China Avant-Garde, exhibition view: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 1993.
interpreted (against the background of the crackdown on liberalization that had taken place in the wake of the Tiananmen killings of 4 June 1989) in Western(ized) neoliberal/democratic contexts as deconstructive, allegorical attacks on China’s ruling Communist Party (illus. 8 and 9; 10, 11 and 12).12 A similar view of Political Pop and Cynical Realism was shared by some critics
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
8 Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism (Omega), 1998, oil on canvas, 150 × 150 cm.
9 Yu Youhan, Golden Time, 1993, acrylic on canvas, 86 × 60.8 cm.
10 Fang Lijun, Series II, No.1, 1991–2, oil on canvas, 200 × 200 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
11 Fang Lijun, Series II, No.7, 1991–2, oil on canvas, 200 × 200 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
12 Yue Minjun, Untitled, 2005, oil on canvas, 220 × 200 cm.
20 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
in the prc, including Li Xianting (b. 1949), whose essay ‘Apathy and Deconstruction in Post ’89 Art: Analysing the Trends of “Cynical Realism” and “Political Pop”’ (1992) formed a major part of the intellectual background to the staging of China’s New Art Post-’89.13 e framing of Political Pop and Cynical Realism as a locus for political dissent rapidly entered the public consciousness in Western(ized) neoliberal/ democratic contexts, informing a popular understanding of contemporary Chinese art that has persisted more or less unchanged right up to the present day. e continuing currency of this popular oppositional view is evidenced by the still widespread use of images associated with Political Pop and Cynical Realism as readily recognizable signifiers of contemporary Chinese art in the West. It is also seen in the Western media’s mantra-like presentation of the activities of the artist Ai Weiwei, which have been upheld constantly in recent years as a form of journalistic shorthand for cultural resistance to political authoritarianism in the prc.14 e international art world’s interpretation of contemporary Chinese art as a variant of international postmodernism was reinforced still further by the reception of the work of the artists Gu Wenda (b. 1955) and Xu Bing (b. 1955) in the United States during the early 1990s. After leaving the prc to live and work in the u.s. – Gu in 1987 and Xu in 1990 – both artists secured major international reputations by exhibiting highly ambitious ‘conceptual’ artworks that incorporate, among other things, ‘false’ Chinese calligraphic characters and hybrid language systems. ese artworks include Gu’s Mythos of Last Dynasties – Form #c: Pseudo-seal Scripture in Calligraphy Copybook Format (1983–97) and Xu’s A Book From the Sky (initially titled A Mirror to Analyse the World – Fin de Siècle Book) (1988). In the u.s., they were widely interpreted as self-consciously deconstructive demonstrations of the impossibility of any direct translation of meaning from one cultural-linguistic context to another (illus. 13, 14).15 Although the reception of Gu and Xu’s work in the u.s. in the early and later 1990s is in broad terms theoretically coherent, it can also be understood to enfold a fundamentally generalizing view of contemporary Chinese art. Since the early twentieth century, artistic practice and education in the u.s. has been strongly informed by a durable interest in Chinese art and aesthetics. While that interest is at its best an attentive, scholarly one, it has nevertheless involved inescapably orientalizing appropriations and therefore translations of Chinese cultural thought and practice as a perceived source of critical,
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
13 Gu Wenda, Mythos of Lost Dynasties, a series #1 – #39 (Pseudoseal Scripture in Calligraphic Copybook Format), 1983–6, splash ink calligraphic painting installation, ink on rice paper, silk border, mounting 60 × 90 cm each.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
14 Xu Bing, A Book from the Sky, 1987–91, hand-printed books, ceiling and wall scrolls printed from wood letterpress type using false Chinese characters, dimensions variable. Installation view: Crossings, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1998.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
24 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
non-rationalist otherness. e combinatory use of readily identifiable signifiers of traditional Chinese culture by Gu and Xu can, therefore, be understood to coincide closely with existing American preconceptions of the potential critical significance of Chinese cultural ideas and practices used as part of the making of artworks.16 As a consequence, relatively little credence has been given in the u.s. to the ways in which Gu’s and Xu’s work might be understood to depart from or resist the accepted rubric of international postmodernism and associated orientalizations, particularly with regard to localized conditions of artistic production and reception in the prc. This is also largely the case with regard to the reception of contemporary Chinese art elsewhere outside the prc. As previously indicated, it is often viewed in rather abstract and generalizing terms, as a locus for the deconstruction of colonialist-imperialist relations of dominance and/or dissident resistance to governmental authority. Contemporary Chinese art’s perceived role as a locus of deconstructive resistance to authority has been bolstered still further since the early 1990s by the increasing involvement of artists, critics and curators from mainland China (many of whom began to live and/or work outside the prc as a result of the post-Tiananmen crackdown) in the activities of the international art world. is involvement has contributed strongly to a profound geographic decentralization of contemporary artistic production and display that has taken place as part of the post-Cold War globalization of contemporary art.17 It has also led to the formation of new transnational networks supporting the making and showing of contemporary Chinese art that, as the critic and historian Wu Hung has argued, can be understood not only to deconstruct any clearly defined distinction between the global and the local, but also to implicate those involved in that deconstruction in the mediation of often contrasting local and international perspectives on the significance of contemporary Chinese art.18 In recent years, the alignment of contemporary Chinese art with the concerns of international postmodernism has been supplemented by other, more materially grounded, forms of internationalist critical discourse. ese include Jan van Dijk’s and Manuel Castells’s conception of ‘network societies’ as well as a revival of interest in Marxian thought focused on, among others, the writings of Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek and Jacques Rancière.19 As a result, an existing postmodernist sense of the cultural indeterminacy of contemporary Chinese art has become strongly enmeshed with the view that established social structures (such as the nation state) are now subject to the destabilizing
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
25 | I N T R O D U C T I O N
effects of all-pervasive digital networking technologies that work across and radically unsettle their notional boundaries; as well as a neo-millenarian vision of the consequences of globalization for late-capitalist geopolitical and hierarchical relations of power. Perceptions of the radically decentred nature of contemporary globalized society have resulted in an increasing disinclination within some quarters of the international art world to uphold contemporary art produced by artists from the prc as a specific, geographically circumscribed subset of contemporary artistic practice. When viewed in relation to the increasingly uncertain landscape of globalization, the use of the term ‘contemporary Chinese art’ to identify the work of artists from the prc may be understood to carry with it traces of a residual geographical centrism that glosses over the rather more complex relationships that now exist between contemporary artistic practice and cultural identity. These relationships not only extend across the already uncertain, contested geopolitical limits of the prc (with regard to spaces such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau), but also link differing Chinese diasporic communities worldwide. Moreover, in recent years significant concerns have been raised regarding the quality and critical significance of contemporary Chinese art. In her introduction to the dsl Collection of contemporary Chinese art (established by Dominique and Sylvain Levy), The Unfinished Collection, Iona Whittaker quotes editors at a leading London-based art magazine as saying, ‘As to the Chinese question – aside from a few artists, I don’t really think about Chinese contemporary art’ and ‘Chinese contemporary art is the most uniformly subprime area of the global art economy.’20 Consequently, while contemporary Chinese art now occupies a significant place within the popular imagination outside the prc as an index of China’s post-Maoist transformation, within certain specialist circles its presence as a distinct, geographically and culturally located category of artistic production has been made subject to an increasingly forceful process of ideological dissolution. This is one that significantly downplays or ignores very real differences between the discursive condition of artistic production within and outside the prc in favour of a profoundly de-territorialized view of contemporary Chinese art as a locus for multiple cultural reference points, concepts and histories. is state of affairs arguably signals a triumph of residual internationalist modernist hope over an inescapably less transcendent and more complexly grounded ‘reality’.
26 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
The international art world’s reception of contemporary Chinese art has been widely discussed in the prc since the early 1990s. Initially, views expressed as part of that reception were accepted as a positive indicator of contemporary Chinese art’s growing stature on the international stage. However, from the mid-1990s onwards, those same views became subject to increasingly strident criticism from within the prc. As one might expect, local art world perspectives in the prc have tended to consider contemporary Chinese art in relation to the immediate conditions of its production and reception. Such perspectives have inevitably brought the international art world’s (often unduly generalizing and orientalizing) views of contemporary Chinese art sharply into question. Indicative of these localized critical-analytical perspectives are a range of connotations attached to the term Zhongguo dangdai yishu. While the use of the adjective dangdai as part of the term Zhongguo dangdai yishu signifies something that is ‘of the present time’ (in the general sense of the English word ‘contemporary’), it has supplementary meanings specific to a vernacular Chinese cultural context. In mainland China prior to the early 1990s, the prevailing term used to describe what is now referred to as Zhongguo dangdai yishu was Zhongguo xiandai yishu (‘Chinese modern art’). As Wu Hung indicates, the use of the adjective xiandai in this context reflects a localized view that modern Chinese art of the 1980s was, in some sense, a return to the modernizing, Western-influenced cultural movements that had emerged as part of the construction of the Chinese post-imperial nation state during the early twentieth century. is carried with it the implication of occupying a position of retroactive humanist opposition to the restrictive and alienating aspects of Maoist ideology also broadly supportive of the ccp’s post-Maoist programme of Opening and Reform. As Wu also indicates, the shift from the use of the adjective xiandai to dangdai (as part of the coining of the term Zhongguo dangdai yishu after 1989) can be understood to reflect the increasing internationalization of contemporary Chinese art during the 1990s – that is to say, its synchronization with the concerns and practices of the international contemporary art world. It also indicates the emergence of a profound sense of disillusionment with regard to the ccp’s modernizing programme of economic and social reforms that took hold in the wake of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.21 Furthermore, while the adjective dangdai can be understood to signify a specific period of time running from the end of the 1970s through to the present day, in the context of the prc dangdai also points towards a more
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
27 | I N T R O D U C T I O N
complex, culturally specific notion of ‘present time’ as signified by the use of the term dangdaixing (contemporaneity). As the curator and historian Gao Minglu has observed, dangdaixing is used frequently in the prc as a substitute for the word xiandaixing (modernity). e significance of the word xiandaixing should not, however, be conflated here with that of the English word ‘modernity’ as the marker of a sequential shift from the pre-modern to the modern, and the subsequent emergence of sensibilities associated with the postmodern. Instead, xiandaixing is widely understood to signify what Gao refers to as ‘the particular social and cultural environment of a specific period, or what modern Chinese call shidai jingshen, or “spirit of an epoch”’. These conditions are, in relation to the particular context of the prc, informed strongly (as Gao makes clear) by an abiding consciousness that, since the ending of dynastic imperial rule in 1911 and the establishing of the Chinese republic in 1912, ‘Chinese modernity has been determined by the idea of a new nation rather than a new epoch’ and, what is more, that this idea involves ‘both transcendent time and reconstructed space with a clear nationalcultural and political territorial boundary’.22 e use of dangdai in the term Zhongguo dangdai yishu consequently signifies not only a rolling, non-sequential sense of present modernity (that differs markedly from the sequential, temporal logic of a Western modernist conception of history as a differentiated series of fleeting pasts, presents and futures), but also a decidedly non-synchronous view of present modernity as something experienced differently according to the specificity of prevailing spatially-bounded sociocultural conditions.23 With respect to this widely held sense of spatially bounded modernity, Chinese artists, curators and critics involved in the production and exhibition of contemporary Chinese art within the prc have developed two localized perspectives on the identity and historical significance of contemporary Chinese art. In different ways and to differing degrees, these perspectives resist the international art world’s pervasively transnational vision of cultural hybridity and decentring. These resistant perspectives coalesced as the result of an extended debate in the prc throughout the 1990s that culminated in two conferences held in 1998, one organized by the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in Shanxi and another accompanying the 1998 Asia-Pacific Contemporary Art Exhibition at Fuzhou. Together, these perspectives can be understood to mark the emergence of a strongly internalized vision of modernity in relation to the development of contemporary art in the prc.24 One of the perspectives in question seeks to
28 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
uphold contemporary Chinese art’s deconstruction of colonialist-imperialist relations of dominance as a basis for asserting the persistence of cultural differences between China and the West and, therefore, the importance of a ‘granular’ understanding of localized conditions surrounding the production and reception of contemporary art in the prc. e other, rather starker perspective (which resonates with the ccp’s continuing ideological alignment with the rationalist dialectics of Marxism-Leninism) asserts the existence of essential differences between Western and Chinese cultural identities and, therefore, between Chinese and other nationally located forms of contemporary art. Strongly indicative of this latter view of contemporary Chinese art is an essay by the art critic and historian Li Xu, published in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Beyond Boundaries, held at the then newly opened Shanghai Gallery of Art in 2003.25 In his essay, Li contends that contemporary Chinese art has, after an initial twenty-year period of development, reached some sort of crossroads or boundary. In Li’s view, this situation has been arrived at because contemporary Chinese art has achieved a position of equality with Western contemporary art on the international stage. As a result of this achievement, he argues, contemporary Chinese art now faces questions of its own national cultural identity in relation to that of the West. As Li would have it, this is not simply a matter of the assimilation or translation of Western cultural influences in relation to the demands and concerns of an indigenous Chinese art world – as Western commentators have argued.26 Instead, it concerns the capacity of contemporary Chinese art to exceed Westernization by rediscovering ‘the resources of our traditional national spirit’. To which Li adds the somewhat chilling assertion (from a Western post-Holocaust perspective) that ‘culture is to a nation . . . what the flowing blood is to our body.’27 In recent years, Chinese critics have been able to promote exceptionalist views of this sort outside the prc as part of emerging international debates related to the concept of contemporaneity, which – in pursuing pluralistic postmodernist and/or postcolonialist thinking through to its (il)logical conclusions – have opened up space for often starkly differing ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ conceptions and representations of present modernity.28 Writings by Chinese critics published as part of these emerging debates include Wu Hung’s ‘A Case of Being “Contemporary”: Conditions Spheres and Narratives of Contemporary Chinese Art’ (2008), which exemplifies a deconstructive, granular view of contemporary Chinese art; and Gao Minglu’s ‘“Particular
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
29 | I N T R O D U C T I O N
Time, Specific Space, My Truth”: Total Modernity in Chinese Contemporary Art’ (2008), which presents what is ultimately an essentialist, counterdeconstructivist vision of contemporary Chinese art.29 Essentialist counter-deconstructivist views of contemporary Chinese art have also underpinned recent moves by the ccp to co-opt contemporary Chinese art to its programme of Opening and Reform. ese moves include the development of policies aimed at the centralized management of the creative industries, as well as the use of contemporary Chinese art for cultural diplomacy and the international dissemination of ‘Chinese’ cultural values. e digital projection of the work of the contemporary-traditional ink-andbrush painter Pan Gongkai (b. 1947) at the Venice Biennale in 2011 is strongly indicative of the latter (illus. 15, 16). e term Zhongguo dangdai yishu is also regarded widely in the prc as a synonym for qianwei forms of art, which, as Martina Köppel-Yang points out,30 are understood both to ‘merge with’ and to ‘semiotically oppose’ established social, political and cultural norms in a manner broadly commensurate with the meaning of the English-language use of the term ‘avant-garde’. is linguistic connection between the terms Zhongguo dangdai yishu and qianwei can be understood to reflect a durable faith among mainland Chinese artists, curators and critics in the socially interventionist possibilities of art. During the Maoist period, public art in the prc was not only required to reflect the position of the masses but also to serve the revolutionary aims of the ccp, often as part of organized political movements or campaigns referred to commonly in Mandarin Chinese as yundong. The perceived relationship between art and organized political movements continued after Mao’s death. roughout much of the 1980s, Zhongguo xiandai yishu was considered to be part of a wider cultural movement that supported the prc’s Opening and Reform programme by enacting a retroactive humanist opposition to the restrictive and alienating aspects of Maoist ideology. Towards the end of the 1980s – and most definitely after the events of 4 June 1989 – this collective view of the social function of art gave way to more individualistic responses. Nevertheless, the view that modern and contemporary art should have some sort of vanguard status persisted. During the mid-to-late 1990s this took the form of socially interventionist engagements with (and resistances to) the disruptive effects of industrialization and urbanization brought about by the ccp’s then increasingly precipitous programme of Opening and Reform. In the early 2000s, the force of those interventions was weakened significantly both as a result of both the Chinese
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
31 | I N T R O D U C T I O N
Ministry of Culture issuing a notice in 2001 banning extreme forms of art involving pornography and/or acts of violence against human and animal bodies;31 and the increasing synchronization of contemporary Chinese art with the oblique, distinctly non-oppositional character of much international postmodernist art. More recently, however, there has been a revisiting of left-wing conceptions of the social role of art developed as part of China’s entry into modernity during the early twentieth century as well as an engagement with the recent return to Marxian thinking within the international art world.32 e use of the term Zhongguo dangdai yishu, therefore, continues to imply a degree of separation from international postmodernist conceptions of contemporary art insofar as the latter has tended to frame the characteristically negative tactics of the Western historical avant-gardes as something of a spent force. By carrying out acts of social intervention, some artists in the prc (most notably Ai Weiwei) have sought to confront governmental authority directly. For the most part, however, socially interventionist art in the prc has been made with the involvement and/or acquiescence of government bodies. Consequently, there has been and remains a connection between contemporary art and the strategic aims of governmental authority in the prc. Indeed, that connection has been strengthened significantly over the last decade. roughout the 1980s and 1990s, the efforts of the ccp were focused overwhelmingly on social, economic and political reform. During this period, the ccp’s interest in cultural production was limited for the most part to relatively crude appropriations of traditional and institutionally supported forms of art that could be used to reinforce notions of collective economic and social progress. During the last decade, however, the ccp has become increasingly interested in contemporary forms of cultural production, not only as a focus for economic development, but also as a national and international vehicle for the promotion of its cultural values. Contemporary art in the prc has consequently found itself ever more closely caught up with governmental initiatives relating to the economic development of the creative industries; the internal projection of cultural values as a focus for social cohesion; and the external projection of soft power through cultural diplomacy. e role of contemporary art as a focus for social intervention in the prc is, therefore, after a period of relative estrangement during the 1990s, now increasingly subject to governmental recuperation. Alongside a continuing faith in the socially interventionist possibilities of art, there is also a contrasting sense (in some quarters of the prc’s indigenous
15 Pan Gongkai, Snow Melting in Lotus, 2011, mixed media installation, dimensions variable. Installation view, China pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2011. 16 Pan Gongkai, Snow Melting in Lotus, 2011, screenshot, mixed media installation, dimensions variable.
32 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
art world) that the conjunction of modernity and nationalism that has underpinned China’s development since the early twentieth century is now in the process of being overwritten by an irresistible engagement with globalized socioeconomic and cultural forces. is view (which echoes similarly pluralist and de-centrist views held internationally) is evinced by the staging of events such as the Shanghai eArts Festival, as well as the use of new digital media by artists such as Feng Mengbo (b. 1966) as an interruptive form of artistic expression (illus. 17 and 18). Related discourses include (Carol) Yinghua Lu’s (b. 1977) identification of the continuing role of small groups and networks as part of the development of contemporary Chinese art; Jörg Huber’s survey of artistic and critical discourses in the prc on the body as a site of critical resistance to authority (although it should be noted that much of the writing brought together by Huber remains inveterately nationalistic in tone); and Zheng Bo’s (b. 1974) work on the ‘publicness’ of artistic production and display as a focus for critique as part of an emerging civil society in the prc.33 Lu’s and Zheng’s work in particular extends existing debates about the public sphere in China that have their origin in the period immediately following the Tiananmen killings of 1989 when the term gonggongxing (‘publicness’) first emerged in a mainland Chinese context. Here, the term gonggongxing does not refer simply to the ‘public sphere’ as it might be understood in an anglophone context. Rather, it connotes wider and more locally grounded questions of visibility and participation; particular forms of political subjectivity; and forms of communal identification, depending on who is using the term, in what context and for what purposes. Notions of publicness are an integral part of elite intellectual debates surrounding the prc’s contested sense of present modernity which include the views of liberals as well as members of China’s ‘New Left’.34 Gonggongxing is widely used as a synonym for ‘politicalness’ or ‘politics’ (zhengzhi xing) because of sensitivities surrounding the use of the latter in public contexts. At the time of writing, Zheng has begun to extend his discussion of the publicness of contemporary Chinese art to encompass international debates on the relationship between contemporary art and conceptions of radical democracy.35 In spite of a renewed interest in socially-interventionist forms of artistic thinking and practice among elite cultural groups in the prc in recent years, it is important to recognize that contemporary art in mainland China does not enjoy the same level of public recognition and audience engagement as it does in many Western and Westernized neoliberal/democratic contexts. e profile of contemporary art has been raised significantly within mainland China
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
17, 18 Feng Mengbo, Q4U, 2002, screenshot, multi-screen video installation, dimensions variable. Installation view, Renaissance Society, Chicago.
34 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
(particularly among a younger audience) through regular international exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale and the Guangzhou Triennial, as well as a proliferation of cultural hubs and museums across China, following the example of Beijing’s 798 and Shanghai’s m50 art districts. However, for the vast majority of the population (at least half of whom are still living in dire poverty by international standards) contemporary art remains a distant and elitist aspect of life, irrelevant to pressing everyday economic and social concerns. For those who have more than a passing interest in art, their tastes are more likely to extend to traditional or modern-traditional forms often referred to in the prc as guo hua (national art), rather than modernist/postmodernist idioms. It is, therefore, possible to view localized conceptions of contemporary Chinese art in the prc as almost exactly the reverse of those prevailing internationally. e significance of the term ‘contemporary Chinese art’ must, therefore, be seen as both heavily contested and problematic. At its extremes, that significance is subject to two mutually resistant points of view. e first upholds a belief in the existence of an essential, spatially bounded Chinese national cultural identity, and in the potential manifestation of that identity through indigenous cultural practices. e other suspends belief in the existence of essential states of being, caused by the unsettling vision of linguistic signification opened up by poststructuralist discourse, as well as the material effects of globalization. Any searching discussion of contemporary Chinese art consequently raises serious ethical-political questions that, on the face of it, press us to make a choice between essentialist and counter-essentialist perspectives. From an established international postmodernist or poststructuralist point of view, that choice would appear to be, in principle at least, a relatively simple one to make. If we wish to remain consistent with the critically deconstructive insights of postmodernism then we must continue to align ourselves with poststructuralism’s immanent critique of authoritarianism. On closer inspection, however, the implications of that alignment are not so clear-cut. As Craig Clunas, writing with reference to the work of the film and video installation artist Yang Fudong (b. 1971), makes clear, the question of whether we choose to emphasize the ‘Chinese-ness’ or the globalized nature of contemporary Chinese art is a ‘fundamentally political’ one that ‘has no easy or definitive answer’ (illus. 19 and 20).36 Although Clunas does not choose to elaborate further on this statement, he can be understood to imply the following. While Chinese national-cultural exceptionalism remains anathema in relation to internationally dominant postcolonialist attitudes towards the critical standing of contemporary
19 Yang Fudong, Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest Part 1, 2003, 35-mm black-and-white film, 29 mins.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
20 Yang Fudong, Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest Part 2, 2004, video, single-channel 35-mm blackand-white film transferred to DVD, 46 minutes.
36 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
art, any move to dismiss that exceptionalism outright stands in danger of a return to universalizing colonialist relations of dominance. In other words, we cannot choose to align ourselves resolutely with an established international postcolonialist perspective against differing localized points of view without a self-contradictory denial of difference. One possible way forward beyond this intellectual double bind (as I have argued elsewhere) is to explore in close analytical detail potential areas of interaction – as well as resistance – between deconstructivist and localized counter-deconstructivist interpretations of contemporary Chinese art.37 Jacques Derrida has shown, in his radical collage-text Glas, that this strategy has the potential to open up differing discursive positions to one another, while internally dividing and questioning their individual authority.38 What follows this Introduction is an attempt to arrive at a provisional drafting of such an analysis. is book’s critical genealogy combines Michel Foucault’s insights into the enabling as well as limiting effects of discourse (and the inescapable entanglement of discourse) with the workings of power and state, taking a Derridean stance of possible points of deconstructive différance (differing–deferring) between international and indigenous Chinese discursive perspectives. e result of this combination of theoretical perspectives is a mapping of significant divergences in attitude regarding the unsettling implications of poststructuralist and postmodernist theory and practice, particularly in relation to questions of national cultural identity and the wider landscape of postcolonial relations of dominance. At the same time, it is possible to find numerous points of convergence regarding the upholding of non-rationalist forms of critical thought and practice, as well as growing (re-)assertions both within China and elsewhere of modernist-positivist attitudes toward cultural practice. It is hoped that this perspectival (though still closely ‘grounded’) analytical mapping will project a vision of the development of contemporary Chinese art beyond the questionable essentialism of dominant discourses in the prc, as well as the equally questionable abstractions offered internationally. ese are understood to confirm what John Roberts has described as bourgeois liberalism’s continuing comfort with the singing of historically, politically and materially un-located ‘paeans to difference’.39 e genealogy presented here is structured around a more or less linear, four-part historical narrative. Chapter One consists of a concise account of cultural interaction and exchange related to the visual arts between China and
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
37 | I N T R O D U C T I O N
the West from antiquity to the mid-twentieth century, as well as the development of modernist, social-realist and socialist-realist art in China from the ending of dynastic rule in 1911 to the official ending of the Cultural Revolution in 1977. Chapters Two, ree and Four give a critical account of the development of contemporary Chinese art from 1978 to the present, structured in relation to three ‘long’ decades. Chapter Two covers the period from the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 through to the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 4 June 1989; chapter ree, from the conservative crackdown that followed the Tiananmen killings through to the prc’s emergence as a global economic power following its accession to the World Trade Organization along with Taiwan in 2001; and chapter Four, that of China’s increasing presence on the world stage since 2002. is linear-periodic narrative structure is intended to some extent as a means of imparting clarity to events, objects and ideas whose significance remains partially or wholly obscure to readers unfamiliar with contemporary Chinese culture, society and politics. As such, it is broadly similar in its structuring to historical accounts of the development of contemporary Chinese art put forward by Chinese historians (most notably Wu Hung) that seek to divide the development of Chinese art according to seismic events in recent Chinese history, such as the acceptance of Deng’s reforms, and the Tiananmen Square Massacre. However, much effort is given throughout to demonstrating the rather less certain relationship between contemporary Chinese art and the wider contexts of its making, showing and reception. This sense of disjointedness draws on the Derridean conception of ‘trace-structure’ as a way of theorizing at a granular level the uncertain unfolding of historical events and their associated meanings. is mechanism is more or less absent from Foucault’s distinctly periodizing view of epochal shifts in power–knowledge relations.40 Derrida’s conception enables us to draw out the ways in which historical events may be understood to proceed not through simple manifestations of continuity and rupture (as traditional forms of periodizing historical narration often have it), but instead through a rather more complex action of differing-deferring between unfolding events. Each event is marked by (and has the potential to deconstructively re-motivate) the significance of others coming before and after it. In this interpretation, any direct causal relationship between wider sociopolitical, economic and cultural conditions and everyday actions must, consequently, be suspended. ere are a number of existing accounts of the historical development of contemporary Chinese art. Some, such as Lü Peng’s A History of Art in
38 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
20th-century China (2010) and Michael Sullivan’s Art and Artists in Twentieth-century China (1996), while others, including Gao Minglu’s The Wall: Reshaping Chinese Contemporary Art (2005) and Total Modernity and the Avant-garde in Twentieth-century Chinese Art (2011), and the connecting historical narrative set out by Wu Hung in his jointly edited (with Peggy Wang) source book Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (2010), focus specifically on the whole or parts of the historical development of contemporary Chinese art. With the notable exceptions of Melissa Chiu’s Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China (2006), Martina Köppel-Yang’s Semiotic Warfare: The Chinese Avant-Garde, 1979–1989, a Semiotic Analysis (2003) and Wu Hung’s edited collection of essays, Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990–2000) (2002), almost all of these existing accounts tend towards historical description or the piling up of documentary sources rather than theorized analysis.41 Moreover, where theorized analysis of contemporary Chinese art has been carried out, it is either significantly limited in its historical scope (for example Köppel-Yang’s Semiotic Warfare, Wu Hung’s Reinterpretation and Chiu’s Breakout) or fails to address in a comprehensive and/or critically rigorous way both Chinese and international perspectives on the discursive significance of contemporary Chinese art. Consider, for example, Wu’s Primary Documents which, in spite of its clear merits as a source book, pays scant attention to the international reception of contemporary Chinese art; Chiu’s Breakout, which focuses solely on the showing and reception of contemporary Chinese art outside the prc since the early 1990s; and Gao’s two aforementioned books, which both present partisan polemics in support of localized Chinese interpretative and cultural points of view, rooted in the culture and politics of the prc. Sus van Elzen’s Dragon and Rose Garden: Art and Power in China (De Draak en de Rozentuin, 2009) is an admirable attempt to situate the development of contemporary art in China squarely in relation to wider sociopolitical discourses.42 Elzen’s treatment of his subject is, however, highly selective, limited almost wholly in its scope to the prc, and significantly under-theorized. Julia F. Andrews’s Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 (1995) and Andrews and Kuiyi Shen’s The Art of Modern China (2012) perhaps come closest to this book’s attempt at a multifaceted, discursive analysis of contemporary Chinese art.43 However, the former limits its discussion of contemporary Chinese art to the immediate aftermath of the Cultural
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
39 | I N T R O D U C T I O N
Revolution and the latter is rather less focused on the problematic implications of differing critical/theoretical perspectives. In short, running throughout existing writing on the development of contemporary Chinese art, there is a pervasively unreflexive dialectic of centre and periphery, of the sort long since problematized in the context of postmodernist/postcolonialist critiques of Western(ized) contemporary art. It places undue limits on the interpretation of an art that is irrefutably hybrid in its combination of cultural elements and that now shuttles continually between differing (though by no means categorically defined) discursive/interpretative contexts. The incorporation of deconstructive witnessing as a punctuating element of the analysis that follows here is, therefore, made to extend not only to questions of differences in culturalinterpretative perspective (and of the connection between artistic development and wider historical events), but also to sharply dialectical colonialist and counter-colonialist/essentialist conceptions of difference. Crucially in this regard, none of the existing accounts listed above (with the exception of Sullivan, and Andrews and Shen) seek to place contemporary Chinese art (either in its narrow or broader senses) convincingly in relation to a wider history of Chinese art, or indeed of Western art. Consequently, there are numerous lost opportunities to trace breaks and continuities between present discourses relating to the development of contemporary Chinese art and preceding discursive formations. is includes a longer history of artistic and cultural interaction and exchange between China and the West preceding the emergence of contemporary Chinese art. Chapter One of the genealogy that follows has, therefore, been incorporated as a means of problematizing still further notions of an essential difference between Chinese and other forms of contemporary art, by projecting the former as ‘always-already’ part of an impure interaction and exchange between differing cultural discourses. is vision is then extended in chapters Two, ree and Four. In the case of writers from mainland China, the failure to provide an intellectually comprehensive and critically rigorous analysis of the relationship between contemporary Chinese art and the wider social, political and economic conditions of its making and showing is due, in large part, to the lack of a thorough understanding of – and a concurrent desire to resist – Westernized theoretical discourses. is is compounded by continuing restrictions on freedom of public expression within the prc that militate against any close critical analysis of the relationship between contemporary art and indigenous Chinese
40 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
politics. In the case of writers from outside mainland China, it is largely the result of a lack of detailed knowledge, direct experience of, or indeed significant interest in, the particular discursive conditions in which contemporary Chinese art has been produced and received within the prc. is is combined with an often unreflexive approach towards the latent universalism of dominant critical discourses outside China. While this book takes the form of a more or less sequential narrative, it does not seek to present an exhaustive art-historical account of the development of contemporary Chinese art. Instead, it offers a selective, critically motivated reading of the development of contemporary Chinese art, considered closely in relation to the specialist intellectual-practical concerns of artists, curators and critics and the wider social, cultural, economic and political conditions of artistic production and reception both within and outside the People’s Republic of China. Above all, the narrative presented here is, while factually historicizing in its form, intended as a way of elucidating contemporary Chinese art’s critical relationship to society and politics as well as differing discursive perspectives on that significance both internationally and within localized Chinese cultural settings. The selection of individual artworks and related theoretical/critical arguments is, therefore, motivated principally by two things: their relative singularity (that is to say, eventfulness) as part of a wider unfolding discursive schema (including practices and concepts significantly re-motivated by their relocation/translation within novel historical-discursive contexts); and their identity as significant acts of complicity with, and/or resistance to, dominant discursive formations. As we shall see, the two often remain combined. Informed readers may lament the exclusion of particular works of art and related writings, or object to interpretative perspectives presented here that diverge from their own particular cultural-discursive points of view. It is nevertheless hoped that this book will, through its teasing out of ideas and actions which can be said to have been pivotal to the discursive shaping of contemporary Chinese art, have at least some value as an attempt to give shape to a searching multi-voiced analysis of what is an inescapably complex, and uncertainly bounded, emerging field of study. Such an analytical perspective extends conventional politicized views of art as a potential locus of self-reflexive oppositional or antagonistic demurral from dominant discourses to encompass a sense of art’s inescapable entanglement with those discourses strongly evident within the context of the prc.
CHINESE ART IN CONTEXT
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Cultural Interaction and Exchange from Antiquity to the Mid-twentieth Century Cultural interaction and exchange between China and the West has no simple, clearly identifiable point of origin. There is material evidence of indirect cultural exchange between China and Europe via the Silk Road stretching back to classical antiquity.1 is evidence includes jade and silks of Chinese origin discovered by archaeological investigations into sites of human activity in Europe and western Asia during the time of the Roman Empire. The first recorded instances of direct cultural exchange between China and the West took place during the thirteenth century as a result of trading expeditions to the East mounted by Europeans, which first established continuous trade routes linking China to Europe. In the account of his travels in China, the Venetian trader Marco Polo comments briefly on architecture and the decorative arts in China, but makes no mention of scholarly Chinese ink and brush painting.2 European art is known to have been introduced to the imperial court in China in the fourteenth century through copies made at the request of the visiting Italian priest Jean de Monte Corvino.3 From the late sixteenth century to the eighteenth century, cultural interaction and exchange between China and Europe began to intensify as a result of maritime trade links established by the Portuguese, who reached Macau in 1516 and who subsequently leased a trading site there in 1557. ese trade links were further developed by the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company who set up trading sites in Canton (modern day Guangdong) and Taiwan in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. One of the consequences of the development of maritime trade links with China was the increasingly large-scale importation into Europe of Chinese ceramics; the first major sales of which took place in Amsterdam in 1600 and 1603.4 is importation impacted not only on European ceramics (which soon began to imitate those brought over from China) but also on European painting. Chinese ceramics were first depicted in Dutch still-life
1
42 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
paintings in 1630 and were included among the inventory of personal possessions registered at Rembrandt van Rijn’s bankruptcy in 1656. As a consequence of the increasingly large-scale importation of Chinese artefacts (as well as the publication of writings by travellers in China), European interest in and admiration for all things Chinese grew significantly throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. is in turn resulted in the development of the style known (since the late nineteenth century) as ‘Chinoiserie’, which saw the reworking of Chinese stylistic and technical influences as part of the production of European ceramics, decorative painting, architecture, fashion, interiors and gardens. One of the most important aspects of European Chinoiserie – much of which involves highly generalized interpretations of Chinese visual and textual sources as well as culturally non-specific combinations of differing technical and stylistic elements – is the production from the early eighteenth century onwards, by factories such as that developed at Meissen, of hard paste porcelain in imitation of Chinese models.5 Eighteenth-century European interest in Chinese artefacts was largely confined to the decorative arts. It did not extend to scholarly forms of Chinese ink-andbrush painting which, as Joachim von Sandrart’s treatise Teutsche Akademie of 1645 makes clear, were widely regarded as inferior to European painting because of their lack of perspectival realism.6 Chinese influences on Europe during the eighteenth century also include thinking and practices relating to the law, literature, politics and philosophy, favourable accounts of which were circulated in Europe via maritime trade links with China from as early as the seventeenth century.7 A major example of the impact of Chinese thinking on that of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be found in the work of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He developed philosophical concepts, including ‘simple substance’ and ‘pre-established harmony’, that were almost certainly informed by sinophile accounts of Confucian thought written by Portuguese missionaries working in China.8 In addition, Leibniz contended (incorrectly) that hexagrams found in the classical Chinese text the I Ching, which correspond ostensibly to the binary numbers from 0 to 111,111, were evidence of a sophisticated mathematical culture in China preceding that of Europe. e I Ching, one of Chinese culture’s oldest historical texts, contains a system of geomantic divination based on concepts of harmonious interaction between opposites and the persistence of change. ese are still used in modern sinophone cultural contexts as part of fortune telling and the surveying of sites for building work.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
43 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
Leibniz also argued that the non-phonetic (pasigraphic or ideographic) system of writing used to communicate between differing cultural groups within China – which, he assumed (following theories developed by the Dutch orientalist Jacob Gohl) transcended indigenous differences in cultural outlook – provided the model for a universal philosophical language, or characteristica universalis (universal character). In Leibniz’s view this would be capable of communicating abstract mathematical, scientific and metaphysical concepts as part of a universal logical calculation, or calculus ratiocinator, regardless of national-cultural divisions.9 Leibniz’s use of Chinese writing as an example to support the idea of a characteristica universalis was a response to continuing theological concerns within Europe regarding the communication of information across cultural boundaries. It was feared that this would, through the effects of cultural-linguistic difference, distort the truth of the word of God. It may also have supported a personal desire on Leibniz’s part to develop a pluralistic philosophy combining differing schools of thought and cultural ways of thinking. European interest in Chinese philosophical thought is also in evidence in relation to Sir William Chambers’s Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (1772). In the 1740s Chambers made three voyages to China, where he conducted studies of architecture and design. Although his vision of oriental gardening is largely a fanciful one, he nevertheless propounded the not entirely misplaced idea that classical Chinese gardens are a manifestation of the Daoist-Confucian philosophical concerns of China’s scholar-gentry.10 Chambers envisioned the Chinese garden as a site of flowing aesthetic experience in marked contrast to the Neoclassical style of his contemporary, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who constructed gardens comprising separate, picturesque and carefully premeditated vistas. European modes of pictorial representation became known in southern China as a result of the founding of Jesuit missions there in the sixteenth century.11 Jesuits first established a presence at Macau in 1557, where they characteristically set about training locals in the techniques of European drawing and painting in support of the dissemination of Catholic theology. However, it was not until the late sixteenth century that the teaching of European drawing and painting techniques gained wider influence in China. In 1592, the Jesuit Matteo Ricci became established in Peking as a teacher and adviser to the imperial court of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). During his time at the Chinese imperial court, Ricci was able to build the foundations of a durable Jesuit missionary presence that would, throughout the seventeenth
44 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
and much of the eighteenth century, serve as a focus for the exchange of thinking and practices related to the visual arts between Europe and China. Ricci not only introduced Western oil painting techniques, perspective geometry and chiaroscuro into the artistic workshops of the imperial court, but also illustrated treatises and engravings on European painting, sculpture and architecture.12 Chinese representations of Catholic Christian imagery during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tended to exclude more troubling scenes such as the Crucifixion, however, because of established restrictions on depictions of violence in Chinese painting.13 Among those who built on Ricci’s pioneering work was the lay Jesuit brother Giuseppe Castiglione (Chinese style name Lang Shining), who worked as an artist in the Chinese imperial court for over five decades from 1715, including the early part of the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1735–99).14 Castiglione’s influence was not, however, solely limited to the teaching of Western drawing and painting techniques. During his time at the Chinese imperial court, Castiglione served as an architect, designing pavilions for the Chinese emperor in a distinctly Sinified Rococo style, and facilitated the gift of furniture, clocks, paintings and tapestries sent by the French king to the Chinese imperial court. He also served as a journeyman painter, producing decorative works that combine Western and Chinese pictorial elements, alongside others that pastiche various Chinese painting styles.15 e impact of European art on the work of Chinese artists outside the imperial court during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was relatively slight. While scholarly Chinese painters admired the spatial accuracy and consistency of perspective geometry and the illusionistic sense of depth brought about by the use of chiaroscuro, they nevertheless viewed European drawing and painting as an artisanal rather than as a truly artistic practice – the precise reversal of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European views of Chinese scholarly painting.16 In some parts of China, however, the impact of European drawing and painting techniques resulted in the development of culturally mixed forms of picture-making that brought together aspects of the technical objectivity of Western illusionism with the more subjective renderings of pattern and form typical of traditional Chinese painting and drawing. Canton was one of the centres for this development, and from the mideighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century it also became a focus for visiting and resident European artists.17
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
45 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
During the second half of the nineteenth century, cultural interaction and exchange between China and the West intensified still further across a range of artistic and intellectual disciplines. In Europe and North America this included increasingly orientalized representations of Asia as a place of decadent and exotic otherness; as well as culturally hybrid presentations and representations of Asian artefacts.18 Examples of these orientalizing representations and hybrid presentations/representations include James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s carefully staged depictions of East Asian artefacts within European settings in paintings such as Rose and Silver: e Princess from the Land of Porcelain (1863–4) and Symphony in White, No. 2: e Little White Girl (1864) in addition to the artist’s heavily mediated appropriation of Japanese motifs as part of the redecoration of the Peacock Room (1876–7), constructed to house an extensive private collection of Chinese porcelain. e combining of East Asian and Western styles was an important aspect of the development of the aesthetic movement in Europe and North America – of which Whistler was an early exponent – throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. e aesthetic movement – which embraced the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’ (l’art pour l’art) expounded by, among others, Benjamin Constant, Victor Cousin, and éophile Gautier – regarded ‘true’ art as an autotelic medium, necessarily separated from any moral, didactic or utilitarian function. For artists and writers aligned with the aesthetic movement, such as Whistler and Walter Pater, this refusal of functionality was not, however, an outright rejection of art’s critical and political significance. Rather, it was an attempt to secure the position of art as a focus for free cultural expression beyond any moral, conceptual and practical constraints, and therefore as the marker of a wider conception of social freedom and the self-actuating individual.19 Oriental influence on European art during the latter half of the nineteenth century was also felt in relation to the work of French Symbolists, including the group known as the Nabis, who drew on Chinese and Japanese conceptions of the metaphorical resonance of poetic imagery as part of their practice.20 During the late nineteenth century there were also appropriations of Chinese cultural thought and practice as part of the development of Western philosophy. Crucially significant in this regard is Friedrich Nietzsche’s stated interest in Buddhism as a religion fostering self-reflexivity and in the classic Daoist text the Daodejing as a focus for intellectual relativism,21 both of which resonate with the pervasively sceptical tenor of Nietzsche’s own non-rationalist
46 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
thinking in books such as us Spoke Zharathustra (1883–85) and Beyond Good and Evil (1886). From the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century, direct Western influence on China diminished significantly as the result of increasingly isolationist Chinese attitudes adopted in the face of encroaching Western colonialism. is was mirrored in the West by a growing understanding of the inherently corrupt and despotic nature of Chinese imperial rule. In 1854, a previously isolationist Japan was forced to open up to the outside world by the so-called ‘black’ iron-clad ships of the u.s. Navy. e forced opening of Japan, combined with China’s isolationism, led to the emergence of ‘Japonisme’, a late nineteenth-century genre of Western art and craft production involving the appropriation of Japanese styles and techniques. is effectively displaced Chinoiserie as the principal expression of Oriental influence on Western fine and decorative arts. In spite of China’s isolationism, Chinese cultural thought and practice continued to have a significant impact on the West. In the United States there was, from the mid-nineteenth century through to the later twentieth, as part of the teaching of art an abiding interest in, and appreciation of, the formal techniques of traditional Chinese calligraphy and ink-and-brush painting, as well as the aesthetic traditions associated with those practices. Among those who incorporated Chinese artistic techniques and thinking into the teaching of art in the u.s. is the painter, printmaker and influential educationalist Arthur Wesley Dow.22 Dow was dissatisfied with the training he had received as an art student in Paris and, in response, began to make a comparative study of differing artistic traditions, which included research into oriental painting and design. During his investigations, Dow met the orientalist Ernest F. Fenollosa, whose extensive knowledge of traditional Japanese and Chinese art and synthetic/ formalist conception of art as a form of ‘visual music’ strongly influenced Dow’s own thinking. In the 1880s, Dow worked closely with Fenollosa on the development of a teaching programme subsequently set out in Dow’s book Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers (1899). Dow taught for over thirty years at a number of major art colleges and institutions in the u.s. including the Teachers’ College at Columbia University, the Art Students’ League of New York, the Pratt Institute and – after 1900 – his own summer school in Massachusetts, during which time his students included the early American modernists Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Sheeler. Other important contributions to the American appreciation of
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
47 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
Chinese cultural thought and practice at this time include Okakura Kakuzo’s e Book of Tea (1906), a text that discusses the Japanese tea ceremony with reference to Daoist and Chan/Zen Buddhist aesthetics. Continuing interest in Chinese artistic thinking and practice as part of the teaching of art in the u.s. had a strong impact, not only on the work of early twentieth-century modernists such as Sheeler, O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, but also later twentieth-century abstractionists such as Mark Tobey, Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, and Brice Marden.23 A journey by Tobey to East Asia in the 1930s to learn more about Chinese and Japanese painting techniques included a visit to Shanghai.24 While it would be a mistake to view the persistence of Chinese cultural influences on twentieth-century modernist/ abstractionist art in the u.s. as a straightforward continuation of nineteenthcentury aestheticism, it is nevertheless possible to see in the conjunction of Chinese painterly techniques and American formalist abstraction the persistent traces of an aestheticizing desire to uphold art as an autotelic focus for freedom of artistic expression. Early twentieth-century European modernist art may also have been influenced by traditional Chinese artistic thought and practice. As Michael Sullivan has argued, it is possible to draw comparisons between thinking and practice associated with traditional Chinese painting and the work of early twentieth century European abstractionists such as Wassily Kandinksy, Paul Klee and Naum Gabo. Although primary sources supporting Sullivan’s comparative reading are at best scant, there is some circumstantial evidence. In 1909 Kandinksy wrote a positive review of an exhibition of Japanese and Chinese art in Munich for the Moscow-based magazine Appollon, and Klee is known to have immersed himself for a time in translations of Chinese poetry.25 e Swiss painter and teacher at the Weimar Bauhaus, Johannes Itten, also wore clothes and adopted meditative practices similar to those associated with Daoism and Chinese Chan Buddhism, although their direct source was almost certainly Itten’s interest in Zoroastrianism. European artists associated with Dada and Surrealism may also have appropriated aspects of traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice in support of their attempts to arrive at a critical/revolutionary reworking of life along the more playful lines of art. ese attempts include the use of chance techniques similar to those employed as part of traditional Chinese divinatory rituals associated with the I Ching, as well as the espousal of non-rationalist modes of thinking associated with Daoism and Chan Buddhism.26 In contrast
48 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
with Western philosophy’s tradition of durable metaphysical belief in the dialectical negation of difference as part of some sort of transcendental unity or whole, vernacular Chinese thought and practice upholds the Daoist/Chan Buddhist notion that cosmic unity arises in relation to a reciprocal interaction between otherwise differing states of being (for example, the dynamic interrelationship between yin and yang given visual expression in the well-known Chinese symbol of the taijitu).27 Evidence of a substantive connection between traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice and the work of European Dadaists and Surrealists (like that between traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice and the work of early twentieth-century European abstractionists) is, however, largely circumstantial. e combination of traditional Chinese cultural thinking and practice and avant-garde techniques certainly did become a feature of the emerging avant-garde art scene in the United States. This combination came about partly through the influence of European avant-garde artists who travelled to America, such as Marcel Duchamp (whose early ‘readymade’, Fountain, was interpreted by one American writer as an expression of Buddhist aesthetics28) and Richard Hulsenbeck, a sinophile and author of the book China frisst Menschen (China Eats People, 1930). In addition, there emerged a crop of home-grown avant-garde sinophiles, such as the film-maker Maya Deren and the musician, writer and artist John Cage. Cage in particular acknowledged a self-conscious use of aleatory techniques associated with the I Ching as part of his musical composition. In early 1951, Cage’s pupil Christian Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the first complete English translation of the I Ching, which had been carried out by Christian’s father, Kurt Wolff, and from then on chance divination techniques described by the I Ching became Cage’s principal compositional tool. e first results of Cage’s use of this approach to composition were Imaginary Landscape No.4 for twelve radio receivers and Music of Changes for piano. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Cage is also known to have attended a series of lectures by D. T. Suzuki on Zen Buddhism, the Japanese variant of Chinese Chan Buddhism.29 Sullivan also makes the case for a connection between traditional Chinese artistic thought and practice and the work of mid-twentieth-century American and European abstractionists, such as Jackson Pollock, Pierre Soulages and Henri Michaux. ere are certainly strong formal similarities between Western modernist abstraction and, as Sullivan argues,30 free-form ink-and-brush paintings produced under the influence of alcohol in southeastern China since
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
49 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
the Tang dynasty (618–907). However, besides the work of Mark Tobey (which was most definitely influenced by an interest in, and direct exposure to, Chinese painting techniques) the supporting evidence for this connection is, again, circumstantial at best. e more immediate and likely context for the development of Western modernist abstraction is the shift towards relativist thinking associated with the emergence of modern post-Newtonian science, as well as the pressures on traditional forms of pictorial representation brought about by the development of modern photographic technologies in the early nineteenth century and moving pictures in the late nineteenth. Other early twentieth-century modernists with a significant interest in China include Ezra Pound, whose development of Imagist poetry is heavily indebted to readings of classical Chinese and Japanese literary sources. While living in London at the beginning of the twentieth century, Pound was introduced to the artists Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Wyndham Lewis (Pound wrote for Lewis’s literary magazine Blast). He also sought to extend his poetic concept of ‘imagisme’ to visual art, renaming it ‘Vorticism’, a term subsequently used to refer to the work of modernist artists in Lewis’s circle. Pound’s continued interest in Chinese culture is evidenced by a series of personal correspondences with Chinese writers and scholars from around the time of the First World War until the late 1950s.31 Unpublished notes by Fenollosa on Chinese poetry and Japanese Noh theatre were passed to Pound by Fenollosa’s wife after his death in 1908. Working with William Butler Yeats, Pound used Fenollosa’s notes to inform a growing interest in Chinese and Japanese literature among Western modernist writers. Pound eventually went on to complete Fenollosa’s notes for publication with the assistance of the British sinologist Arthur Waley. In spite of China’s isolationism, the impact of Western art continued to be felt there throughout the nineteenth century. This impact was most evident in those parts of China under Western colonialist control, such as Shanghai and Canton, where conspicuously hybrid forms of popular and specialist visual imagery developed. Examples of these hybrid forms include illustrations of indigenous Chinese flora and fauna commissioned from Chinese artists in Canton throughout the early to mid-nineteenth century by John Reeves, Chief Inspector of Teas for the East India Company in China, and his son John Russell Reeves.32 During the 1860s, Western drawing techniques were introduced into the curriculum of a number of Chinese educational institutions, including military and naval academies, and in 1902 Western drawing and painting became a compulsory part of
the curriculum in all Chinese schools from primary to college and technical institute level.33 In the late nineteenth century, a number of Chinese scholars and diplomats who had travelled to the West sought to uphold the value of Western realist art over that of the Chinese tradition. Included among them was the banished literatus Kang Youwei (1838–1927), who argued in his book Travels in Eleven European Countries that the example of Western realist art should be used to correct the ‘false’ doctrines of abstraction that had dominated scholar-gentry/ literati painting in China since the Song dynasty.34 At around the same time, artists from China began to go abroad to study in Europe, North America and Japan as part of a growing desire among educated Chinese to engage with Westernized modernity. In centres strongly under Western colonialist control, such as Shanghai, the growing influence of Western art throughout the nineteenth century contributed to an emerging cosmopolitanism among Chinese artists. In Peking, the centre of Chinese imperial power, however, the outlook was considerably less progressive. In Peking throughout the nineteenth century, traditional forms of Chinese art became increasingly entrenched in resistance to outside cultural influences.35 is was accompanied in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by a revival of the idea of guo hua (‘national painting’) – an assertion of the continuing cultural relevance and importance of traditional Chinese artistic thought and practice – as a resistance not only to Western colonialism/ imperialism, but also that of an increasingly expansionist post-Meiji Japan.36
50 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Realist and Modernist Art in China, 1911–1948 In spite of the West’s continuing influence on China throughout the nineteenth century, Westernized forms of art produced by Chinese nationals in direct resistance to established tradition did not begin to take root in China until the first half of the twentieth century. This took place between the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which led to the abdication in 1912 of China’s last emperor, Puyi (1906–1967), and the establishing of republican rule under the provisional leadership of Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) the same year, and the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, there was a growing perception within the educated classes of Chinese society that the country had become an economically, technologically, militarily and
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
51 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
politically backward state. It was felt that the rigid adherence to traditional Confucian values as part of feudal dynastic rule had not only prevented China from developing materially (as modern/modernizing nation states in Europe, North America and East Asia had done), but had also helped perpetuate huge and shameful social inequalities among the Chinese people. Confucianism is an ethical and philosophical system developed from secondary accounts of the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius (Kong Fuzi) (551–479 bce). Confucianism first emerged as an ethical sociopolitical system of thought and practice during the Spring and Autumn Period (c. 771–476 bce) and was further developed during the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) through the incorporation of metaphysical and cosmological elements appropriated from Daoism. After the ending of the Qin dynasty (221–207 bce) Confucianism became the official state ideology of China until the establishment of republican rule in 1912. At the centre of Confucianism is a humanist belief in the perfectibility of individuals through teaching and selfcultivation, as well as in the necessity of a system of norms determining moral social action. Although its lofty aims were well-intentioned, in practice Confucianism supported a profoundly hierarchical and repressive social order, underpinned by rigid deference to authority and tradition within both individual families and the wider Chinese imperial state. e perception that China had become a backward state took hold after a series of military defeats at the hands of foreign forces whose outcomes were – from the perspective of a hitherto regionally dominant Chinese imperial state – nothing short of catastrophic. These included the outcome of the Opium Wars (otherwise known as the Anglo-Chinese Wars) of 1839–42 and 1856–60, which led to the ceding of Chinese territory to British colonial rule and unequal trading arrangements in favour of Western colonialists; and the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–5), which resulted in the handing over of the tributary state of Korea and the mainland Chinese port of Weihai to Japanese imperial control. Following the example set by post-Meiji Japan during the latter half of the nineteenth century, educated Chinese people began to travel extensively in Europe (particularly France and Germany), North America, Southeast Asia and Japan in the early years of the twentieth century, seeking to familiarize themselves with modern Western(ized) society and culture, a development known in China as the Yangwu movement. On returning to China, many of them went on to play a significant role in the modernization of Chinese society by promoting
52 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
practices and ways of thinking that, in many cases, departed radically from China’s long-established Confucian traditions. is led to major and unsettling social reforms including (as part of changes to China’s established educational system) the founding of Western-influenced academies and schools for girls, the vast majority of whom (including women from China’s scholar-gentry class) had previously been denied formal education. In addition, there was a significant broadening of attitudes among educated Chinese classes that extended to both reformist and revolutionary outlooks. During the early decades of the twentieth century, the main rallying point for cultural change within China was the Xin Wenhua Yundong, New Culture Movement, which began to coalesce after the establishment of republican rule in 1912. It was a response to continuing debates on the modern (modeng) and modernization (xiandaihua) among educated Chinese, as well as calls for social, political and cultural change issued in (among other places) the journal Xin qingnian (New Youth, also known as La Jeunesse), whose first edition appeared in September 1915. The New Culture Movement gained national prominence following a wave of student protests on 4 May 1919 in response to the unfavourable terms forced upon China in the Treaty of Versailles of the same year. This led to a cultural upsurge across China known as the May Fourth Movement that, as Lynn Pan has indicated, may be interpreted as ‘the start of the social revolution to which the Chinese Communist Party would eventually lay claim’.37 In spite of its widespread impact, the New Culture Movement was far from being unified in its outlook and aims. While some of those who associated themselves with the movement viewed the persistence of traditional Chinese cultural values as the principal impediment to China’s modernization, others were reluctant to embrace Westernized modernity fully for fear of an uprooting of China’s distinctive, civilization-specific identity. Between 1915 and the founding of the May Fourth Movement in 1919, there were continued disputes between young educated radicals and cultural conservatives on the nature and direction of China’s development. These disputes were initiated by calls to develop a new modern Chinese culture published in the first issue of Xin qingnian and perpetuated through hundreds of other new periodicals that subsequently sprang up across China. As a consequence, the New Culture Movement was torn between the desire to assimilate ideas and practices from outside China that pointed towards the possibility of progressive sociocultural change (most notably those associated with American Pragmatism, social
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
53 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
Darwinism and Nietzschean thought38); and to reconcile that assimilation with China’s long-standing cultural traditions. While the New Culture Movement cannot be disassociated from the spreading of Western attitudes towards modernity and modernization, to describe it simply as a focus for the upholding of Westernization would, therefore, be a gross oversimplification. China’s entry into modernity was not only a response to local political, socialeconomic and cultural concerns, different in substance and timing from those of the West, but can also be understood to encompass a durable desire to uphold and rework indigenous cultural attitudes and values. Not least among these are attitudes and values associated with China’s long-standing Confucian traditions, embodied within China by government officials known as the literati, as well as by China’s wider scholar-gentry class. e literati (shi dafu) served as government officials throughout the period of imperial rule from the Sui dynasty (589–618 ce) to the ending of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. ey achieved their positions by passing rigorous examinations that led to the conferring of academic degrees such as xiucai, juren or jinshi. The vast majority of the literati were scholar-gentry (shenshi) who had been schooled from a young age in a range of skills known as the Four Arts: qin, the playing of a stringed instrument known as the guqin; qi, the playing of the chess-like strategy game go; shu, Chinese calligraphy and hua, Chinese painting; and in the interpretation of Confucian texts. Only a small minority of this scholar-gentry class were able to gain official positions at court, however. Consequently, most scholar-gentry worked in an unpaid capacity, helping to maintain social order by supporting the administration of social welfare, education, community development, tax collection and the law at a provincial level. As such, the literati and China’s wider class of scholar-gentry were seen to embody a Confucian belief in self-cultivation (wenhua) and moral social action. Among other things, this embodying of Confucian values involved a responsibility to demur from any aspect of imperial policy that might threaten China’s social stability; a demurral that ran the risk of violent retribution or exile and that, consequently, often took the form of a deliberate withdrawal from public life rather than any direct criticism of imperial power. Resistance to established authority within China since the late nineteenth century is, therefore, linked to a much older tradition of intellectual individualism and non-conformism that predates the emergence of Western post-Enlightenment reflexivity, and that looks towards social betterment through judicious reform
54 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
rather than wholesale revolutionary change. It is, therefore, unsurprising that many of those on the reformist side of the New Culture Movement saw themselves as modern literati. Set against the wider background of national-cultural reform, modernization of the visual arts in China manifested itself in a number of ways. Of crucial importance was the establishing of art academies dedicated to the transmission of Western artistic values and techniques. Art academies of this sort were eventually opened in a number of urban centres across China including Peking, Xinhua, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Canton and Shanghai. Among the most important of these was the school that would later come to be known as the Shanghai Painting and Art Institute. Before 1912, Western art techniques were taught in a limited way in Shanghai by Jesuits at their Tushan-wan Arts and Crafts Centre (also known as Siccawei or Ziccawei) in Xujiahui. Sometime before 1911, an independent school of Western art known as the Shanghai Oil Painting Institute opened in the city, and eventually combined with a correspondence course teaching guo hua techniques under the revised name of the Shanghai Sino-Western Drawing and Painting School. In 1912, a breakaway group formed its own school in Shanghai which, from 1914, included life drawing as part of its curriculum. In 1915, this school was officially recognized by the Shanghai municipality as the Shanghai Painting and Art Institute.39 Comparable innovations included a course initiated at the Zhejiang First Normal College in Hangzhou in 1912 which included drawing from the life model and outdoors from nature.40 Within academies such as these, Chinese students were taught what were – in Europe and North America at the time – highly conventional academic methods, including drawing and painting directly from the nude and perspective geometry. In China, however, those same methods held out the possibility of a radical overcoming of the perceived decadence of established Chinese pictorial tradition, or, if not that, at the very least a means of its productive renewal. Traditional Chinese painting, which can be divided into gong-bi (meticulous) and shui-mo (ink-and-wash) styles, involves the use of ink and brush on paper or silk. e highest form of traditional Chinese painting is shan-shui (literally ‘mountains and water’ but meaning landscape painting) which seeks to present subjective views of nature, expressive of the character and outlook of the individual artist. e six underlying principles of traditional Chinese painting, or ‘Six points to consider when judging a painting’ (Huihua liufa), were laid down in the fifth century by the writer and historian Xie He (c. 500–535) in
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
55 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
the preface to his book e Record of the Classification of Old Painters. ey include: ‘Spirit Resonance’ (Qiyun shengdong) or vitality, referring to the flow of energy that encompasses the painting’s theme; ‘Bone Method’ (Gufa yongbi), referring both to the physical quality of brush strokes as well as to their significance as indexes of a painter’s personality; ‘Correspondence to the Object’ (Yingwu xiangxing), the depiction of form in terms of shape and line; ‘Suitability to Type’ (Suilei fucai), the application of colour; ‘Division and Planning’ (Jingying weizhi), formal composition and its relationship to the depiction of space and depth; and ‘Transmission by Copying’ (Chuanyi moxie), learning through the copying from life and paintings by past masters. Although these principles overlap with some of the established concerns of Western academic painting, Chinese tradition tends ultimately towards a considered subjectivity, and restrictions on depictions of violence and the naked human form, which are absent from Western academicism. Strongly indicative of this difference in cultural outlook is the Shanghai Painting and Art Institute’s involvement in a major public scandal over its use of life models, which was widely perceived within a Chinese society traditionally unused to public depictions of the naked human form, as nothing short of immoral.41 Within China, pictorial depictions of the naked human form were confined traditionally to private collections of erotica. Alongside the establishment of art academies dedicated to the transmission of Western artistic values and techniques, there were also calls for the development of a new approach towards art-making within China based strongly on the principles and values of Western realism. Among those who supported the development of such an approach was the highly influential educationalist, Confucian scholar and member of the Revolutionary Alliance under Sun Yat-sen, Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), who had studied Western philosophy in Berlin and Leipzig between 1907 and 1911. In 1912, as Minister of Education for China’s newly formed republican government, Cai issued his five principles of education, which included the unmistakably Kantian idea that aesthetic education should rank equally alongside that of moral and practical education.42 Cai’s view of the educational value of the aesthetic was informed strongly by a philosophical conception of his own (strongly influenced by his exposure to Western Philosophical teaching) through which he envisaged the expression of a universal ‘world spirit’ and the manifestation of that spirit not through religion but aesthetic experience. In a public speech given shortly after he became Chancellor of Beijing University in 1917, Cai went further by arguing that
56 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
aesthetic education in China should replace religion and that Chinese artists should abandon their traditional emphasis on subjectivity – as given definition by the Chinese aesthetic concept of i-ching (‘idea-realm’) – in favour of Western objectivist attitudes and techniques.43 The term i-ching refers to the notion that a work of art should not simply represent appearances but should also give form to the artist’s subjective experience of the world. is self-consciously non-objective approach towards representation is understood as having the potential to engender an empathetic sense of the artist’s felt relationship with nature on the part of the viewer of the work of art.44 Cai’s notion of a conjunction between aesthetic experience and morality was by no means new, either in a Western or Chinese context. However, his assertion that this conjunction might be achieved through an adoption of Western realism was, in the context of China, perceived as nothing short of revolutionary. In spite of the inherent conservatism of his views from a contemporaneous Western perspective, Cai maintained an interest in European modernism. While on a visit to Europe in 1912, Cai attended an exhibition of the Berlin Secession and saw the work of Käthe Kollwitz, Maurice Vlaminck, Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso. In 1915, Cai travelled to Paris where he visited Picasso’s studio and reputedly bought a number of Cubist paintings. Cai’s allegiance to Western art remained strongly in favour of realist techniques, however.45 Cai’s desire to see traditional Chinese subjectivity replaced by Western realism was shared by the painters Xu Beihong (1895–1953) and Jiang Zhaoke (1904–1986), both of whom adopted, from a Western perspective at the time, an academic-realist approach toward painting that would later go on to inform the development of socialist-realist art within China under Communism after 1949. Alongside those within China who supported the adoption of Western realism during the early twentieth century, there were others receptive to the anti-realist and abstractionist tendencies of Western modernism. ese included members of the Shanghai-based Storm Society (Juelanshe), China’s first identifiably formalist-modernist art group, founded by the artists Ni Yide (1902–1969) and Pang Xunqin (1906–1985) in 1931.46 In their manifesto, the Storm Society (many of whose members had been trained in modern Westernized art techniques in either Paris or Tokyo) announced a collective desire to repudiate the art of their immediate surroundings in China (which they characterized as ‘mediocre, philistine, feeble-minded, shallow, decrepit and sickly’) and to create their own ‘world of intersecting colour, line and
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
57 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
form’, following the example set by the Fauvist, Cubist, Dada and Surrealist movements in Europe.47 While this stated desire to embrace the intellectual and stylistic innovations of early twentieth-century European modernism was evinced to some extent by the formal execution of artworks produced by members of the group, it was by no means fully realized. Paintings by Ni Yide, for example, remain strongly indebted to pre-Cubist stylistic approaches associated with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism; while those of Pang Xunqin emulate the look of Cubism and Futurism but only in a schematic, stylistically superficial and spatially unsophisticated way. e forming of other modern art groups within China, such as the Golden Horse Society (Tianma hui), pre-dates that of the Storm Society. However, the Storm Society is notable as having developed a radically formalist-modernist position that diverged from the political-realist stance of other groups. The modernist approaches adopted by members of the Storm Society and other Chinese artists constituted an emerging art movement in China known as xi hua (new ‘Westernized’ art), which departed radically from the cultural trajectories mapped out in relation to guo hua and realism. Another early twentieth-century Chinese artist who trained outside China (in Paris, Dijon and Germany) and who sought to align himself with Western modernism was Lin Fengmian (1900–1991). Lin’s paintings of the 1930s are stylistically indebted to Fauvism and Expressionism. Unlike members of the Storm Society, however, Lin advocated formal innovation explicitly in support of making an ‘art for people’s life’ or, as Gao Minglu has put it, an ‘art that saw abstract and metaphysical forms as a way to express a kind of humanist concern’.48 Lin was also responsible (in collaboration with Cai Yuanpei) for the establishment of China’s first national academy of art at Hangzhou in 1928. is academy, which included departments of guo hua, xi hua, sculpture, design and music, became a significant focus for attempts to raise the standard of modern Chinese art in line with Cai’s conception of a progressive conjunction between aesthetics and morality. Also of importance at this time were Chinese modernists, such as Sanyu (Chang Yu) (1901–1966) and Pan Yuliang (1899–1977), who (after first studying abroad) chose to live and work outside China; and Zhao Wuji (1921–2013), who left China for Paris in the 1940s, where he produced highly abstract paintings drawing on the Chinese landscape tradition. These artists are the precursors of later generations of diasporic Chinese artists, including those who left China in the 1980s and 1990s in the face of intense political suppression.
58 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Supporters of Western modernism in early twentieth century China also include the French-educated art critic Fu Lei (1908–1966). While Fu recognized the quality and importance of Western modernist art (and in particular the work of Paul Cézanne), he regarded the anti-realist and abstractionist tendencies of Western modernism as having been foreshadowed by the subjectivism of traditional Chinese art. is historicizing vision of traditional Chinese art and Western modernism supported Fu’s view that the late nineteenth and twentiethcentury practitioner of traditional Chinese shan-shui painting, Huang Binhong (1865–1955), was, in fact, a modern(ist) as well as traditional Chinese scholargentry master.49 Shan-shui is a traditional style of Chinese landscape painting involving the use of ink and brush on rice paper or silk to depict natural scenes incorporating mountains, rivers, streams, waterfalls and lakes. Shan-shui first emerged as a distinct painterly style during the Liu Song dynasty (420–479) and is understood to embody a traditional Daoist belief in the desirability of a close interrelationship between human beings and nature, associated with the aesthetic concept of i-ching. Shui-mo ink-and-wash techniques associated with shan-shui were taught as one of the Four Arts traditionally acquired by China’s scholar-gentry class. e notion that traditional Chinese painting is, in some sense, a modernist idiom avant la lettre has been repeated by other writers on Chinese modern art. A recent example can be found in Eugene Y. Wang’s argument that the xieyi, or ‘sketch conceptualism’, of Chinese literati painting is both traditionally Chinese and universally modern, and that early twentieth-century Chinese modernists such as Sanyu had re-appropriated aspects of Chinese tradition already appropriated as part of the development of European modernist art.50 A variation on this culturally mixed outlook can be found in relation to the Lingnan School of painters, active in Hangzhou during the 1930s, whose members produced paintings combining traditional Chinese techniques and modern subject matter. Examples of these combinatory paintings include Gao Jianfu’s (1875–1951) Flying in the Rain (1932), which depicts biplanes flying, rather incongruously, over a typically rendered shan-shui landscape.51 e impact of the modernizing outlook of the New Culture and May Fourth movements can thus be understood to have resulted in the development of three relatively distinct, though still overlapping, genres of artistic expression: realist, modernist (xi hua) and ‘modern-traditional’.52 is latter category, which includes photographs similar in style to traditional shan-shui painting, includes the identification of guo hua (national painting) as a culturally resistant
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
59 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
continuation of traditional Chinese thought and practice within China during the early twentieth century. Major exponents of guo hua during the early twentieth century include the peasant-born painter Qi Baishi (1864–1967), who became President of the Association of Chinese Artists in 1953. From a Western perspective, much of the work produced by Chinese realists and modernists of the early twentieth century ostensibly appears to have little or no critical content other than a formalist desire to move beyond traditional Chinese modes of artistic presentation. Indeed, apart from rare examples of collage-montage – among them an anonymously produced photocollage entitled Standard Chinese (1911)53 – there is no significant evidence of artworks produced in China during the early twentieth century that share emphatically in the pervasively unsettling implications of early avant-garde art in Europe and North America. Seen through the lens of a localized Chinese modernity, however, early twentieth-century works of art produced in China that reference Western realism and modernism can be understood to carry specific connotations of ideological radicalism that exceed the merely formalistic. e appropriation of Western realist and modernist styles by Chinese painters was part of an increasingly intense debate about the direction of modernization that raged between radicals and conservatives within China from the 1920s to the 1940s. The debate encompassed starkly differing interpretations of revolutionary action and tensions between nationalism and imperialism, in addition to differing emphases on the relative values of modernization and tradition.54 As a result, artistic modernism and realism in China became strongly aligned with competing ideological positions: the former with liberal bourgeois-democratic reform, and the latter with socialist-revolutionary change; an alignment that differs strongly from Western conceptions of the political positioning of avant-garde art. It is important, however, not to view Chinese art of the early twentieth century simply as secondary and belated in relation to European and American modernism. Urban China was at this time, as Frank Dikötter makes clear, both globally connected and highly cosmopolitan.55 Correspondingly (and in spite of immediate appearances), China’s urbanized modern art – modernist, realist and modern-traditional – was far from being a straightforward reprise of already hackneyed Western themes. Rather, it was a complex and often subtle melding of Western and Chinese attitudes and techniques that carried significant weight as a focus for critical thinking in relation to its immediate contexts of production and reception.
60 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
21 Li Hua, Roar, China!, 1935, woodcut print, 20 x 15 cm. Collection National Art Museum of China.
By the mid-1930s, the pursuit of modernist approaches towards artistic production within China had become increasingly difficult in the face of hardening attitudes on the political right and left. While those on the right continued to condemn Westernized formalist modernism as a focus for extreme and unwelcome radicalism, those on the left became increasingly entrenched in their ideological positions, resulting in a shift in allegiances towards more populist/realist forms of artistic production (such as those developed by the Chinese modern woodcut print movement). During the 1930s, the Chinese modern Woodcut Print Movement became a focus, with the support of the writer and head of the China League of Left-Wing Writers, Lu Xun (1881–1936), for the making of graphic images and prints that highlighted instances of social injustice and deprivation in support of socialist and communist principles (illus. 21).56 As early as the late 1920s, the Chinese Communist Party (ccp), first formed in Shanghai in 1921, had begun to give intellectual and practical leadership to a movement involving the China League of Left-Wing Writers, the League of Left-Wing Playwrights and the League of Left-Wing Artists, which advocated the development of ‘proletarian’ literature, plays and art. is movement (which gave rise to numerous art groups, associations and societies including the Cartoon Association, the Shanghai May ird Cartoon Society, the Morning Flower Society, the Eighteen Art Society and the Times Art Society) rejected aestheticism and formalist experimentation in favour of the development of an art of everyday life in the service of the education of the masses and radical revolutionary change. e rejection of aestheticism and formalism was further supported by public calls from major cultural figures in China, including Lu Xun who, throughout the late 1920s and into the 1930s, urged young artists to ‘take close heed of the affairs of society’ by engaging as closely as possible with the lives of the urban proletariat and rural poor.57 Although subsequently lauded by the ccp as a major influence on the development of left-wing and revolutionary
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
61 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
art in China, Lu was (like many other participants in the activities of the New Culture and May Fourth Movements who belonged to China’s scholar-gentry class) a liberal who never actually became a member of the ccp. In 1930, the ccp and associated political groups were driven underground by purges instigated by China’s then-ruling Republican Party, the Kuomintang (kmt). In 1932, the kmt sought to counter socialist influence on the arts (which had grown since the purges of 1932) still further by setting up the Chinese Art Association as a focus for the development of art in republican China. However, the association gained little support outside China’s newly relocated capital of Nanjing. In 1934 the kmt launched the New Life Movement, which initially found support among China’s liberals for its promotion of moral-aesthetic principles similar to those espoused by Cai Yuanpei. That support ebbed as it became clear that the movement was nothing more than a desperate attempt to shore up the kmt’s increasingly conservative-nationalist position, which was becoming ever more detached from the pronounced social inequalities prevalent throughout China.58 Shortly after the establishment of republican government under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen in 1912, China began to fragment into competing factions, some under the control of the republican government and some under that of local warlords. After Sun Yat-sen’s death in 1925, leadership of the republican government moved to Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) who, in 1926, led a military action, known as the Northern Expedition, intended to unify the country under his leadership as head of the kmt. In contrast to Sun, Chiang was a traditionalist and nationalist authoritarian who rejected social democracy. In 1927 a major split took place between the Kuomintang and the ccp, which led to intermittent civil war between republican forces and the People’s Liberation Army (pla), the military wing of the ccp. In 1937, after years of escalation, the kmt initiated another conflict with invading Japanese Imperial forces known as the Second Sino-Japanese War, which severely weakened the former’s grip on power while at the same time increasing Chiang’s prominence as a national war leader. During the Second SinoJapanese War, the kmt and ccp entered into an uneasy, and only partially successful, truce in order to coordinate their efforts against invading Japanese forces. With the defeat of Japan in 1945 (and following a failed u.s. attempt to broker a national coalition government), the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party resumed their civil conflict, resulting in the eventual defeat of nationalist forces, their retreat to Taiwan (which became the site of the
Socialist-Realist and Revolutionary Art in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1977 62 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Republic of China under the leadership of Chang Kai-shek); and the setting up of the People’s Republic of China under Communist rule in 1949. During the late 1930s and 1940s, independent artistic production within China became increasingly subject to the pervasively disruptive effects of the overlapping military struggles between the kmt, the pla and invading Japanese forces. ere was a continuation of Westernized modernist tendencies within China well into the 1940s, through the work of the modern woodcut print movement as well as that of painters such as Huang Xinbo (1915–1980). However, these works were very much oriented towards social-realist/ expressionist modes of representation similar to those found in Europe and North America at around the same time (such as the work of Diego Rivera) rather than the extreme formal experimentation and anti-realism that characterized the work of the European and North American avant-gardes. During the military campaigns of the mid- to late 1930s, the ccp and the pla made use of various forms of artistic expression, including folk music, drama and dance, to communicate their ideological position to China’s civilian population. In 1938, the ccp also established the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts at their headquarters in Yan’an in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi, which was intended to provide training in literature, music, fine arts and drama. e establishment of the Lu Xun Academy took place against the background of a wider upheaval of arts education in China during the late 1930s that saw the forced relocation of arts academies in the east to China’s western interior in retreat from invading Japanese forces.59 In 1940, Mao Zedong issued a policy statement in his tract ‘On New Democracy’, in which he claimed that China’s newly emerging anti-imperialist, anti-feudalist and democratic culture was led by the culture and thought of the proletariat. Before 1942, however, the ccp was without a unified cultural policy.
In May 1942, Mao Zedong – who had by then achieved almost total dominance over the Chinese Communist Party as leader of its simultaneous armed struggles with the Kuomintang and occupying Japanese forces – convened a three-week forum on literature and the arts at the Lu Xun Academy in Yan’an. Reputedly, the decision to hold the forum was taken as the result of a request from a writer for Mao to clarify the role of artists and intellectuals in the Communist movement. However, it is important to note that the Yan’an Forum took place
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
63 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
alongside the initiation of the Yan’an Rectification Movement, a campaign in Yan’an and surrounding ccp controlled areas between 1942 and 1944, through which Mao sought to confirm his position as sole leader of the ccp and impose his own version of Marxist-Leninism. This campaign, which resulted in the deaths of over 10,000 individuals, involved an attempt to rid the ccp of the liberal influences of the May Fourth Movement.60 At the Yan’an Forum, Mao gave his now famous ‘Yan’an Talks on Literature and the Arts’, in which he argued that there is no art detached from, or independent of, politics, and that a truly revolutionary Chinese art should be used to represent and promote the view of the masses, meaning the workers, peasants, soldiers and urban petty bourgeoisie who made up the vast majority of China’s population at the time.61 Mao also reiterated the view espoused by the ccp as part of its involvement in the left-wing cultural movement in China during the late 1920s and early 1930s that artists and intellectuals should seek to transform themselves by engaging closely with the lives of the rural poor and urban proletariat. He added that they should incorporate aspects of popular and folk culture into their work as means of communicating and engaging with the masses. is vision of art as part of a larger ‘revolutionary machine’ was influenced strongly by the cultural policies of the Soviet Union, as well as views put forward by Chinese Marxists and socialists as part of the New Culture and May Fourth movements. It subsequently became the basis for the ccp’s administration of artistic production after it came to power in 1949. Under the ccp’s direction all artists working in the newly founded prc were not only required to take the view of the masses, but also to uphold the revolutionary aims of the ccp. e ccp’s policy on artistic production in the newly founded prc was introduced at the first National Congress of Literature and Art Workers in Beijing in July 1949. From 1949 until the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (Wuchan jieji wenhua da geming, literally the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’) in 1966, the ccp’s position on the role of art within the prc was administered by two government bodies. e first, the Ministry of Culture, was answerable to the Civil Government via the State Council, and took responsibility for the ideological direction of artistic production in the prc. The second, the AllChina Federation of Literary and Art Circles (including its various branches – such as the Chinese Artists Association) was, in practice, an extension of the ccp’s propaganda department. It exercised direct control over all practical
64 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
matters related to art education, art-making and public exhibitions, suppressing or censoring anything that might be perceived to depart (intentionally or otherwise) from the stated ideological position of the ccp. e ccp’s policy on art was also supported by the establishment of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing as a model institution.62 In 1951, an initial period of ccp tolerance for bourgeois art came to an end. is resulted in a vigorous programme of political re-education involving the denunciation of teachers. In 1955, the ccp held a meeting at the China Academy in Beijing at which academics from 22 art schools were made to join a movement aimed at denouncing open criticism of the Party’s position on the arts. Among the artists and academics joining this movement were former members of the Storm Society, Ni Yide and Pang Xunqin.63 Prominent artists including Lin Fengmian and Pang Xunqin were also forced to publicly renounce their previous involvement with Formalism.64 While no longer tolerant of bourgeois artistic tendencies, the ccp nevertheless remained pragmatic in its control and promotion of the arts. In 1953 the guo hua artist Qi Baishi was elevated to the position of President of the Association of Chinese Artists. Although Qi’s work deviated conspicuously from Maoist socialist-realist principles (and Mao himself personally disliked Qi’s broad-brush, literati approach to painting), Qi’s credentials as a widely respected peasant-born master nevertheless made him a highly useful representative of proletarian culture. In spite of the severe ideological and practical restrictions that were placed on individual freedom of artistic expression from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, it would be a mistake to see all of the art made within the prc during that period simply as a passive and stylistically monolithic tool of government, focused narrowly on revolutionary change. ere are two observations on the future of artistic production under communism within the prc included in Mao’s ‘Yan’an Talks’ that, from 1949 to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, gave room for a certain degree of professional agency, as well as continuity with tradition as part of the making and exhibiting of art. The first of these is that while literature and art should always be seen as subordinate to political thinking, they ‘in their turn exert a great influence on politics’.65 e second is that art in the service of the ccp should look toward the ‘rich legacy and the good traditions in literature and art that have been handed down from past ages in China and foreign countries’ and that these ‘old forms’ should be ‘remoulded and infused with new content . . . in the service of the people’.66 Consequently, before the extreme anti-imperialistic
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
65 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
resistance to outside cultural influences and widespread denigration of traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice that took place during the Cultural Revolution, artistic production within the prc was able to accommodate a range of contrasting technical and stylistic approaches. ese contrasting approaches include the Soviet-influenced academic socialist realism that became a mainstay of revolutionary art within the prc from the early 1950s through to the mid-1980s. Throughout the 1950s, talented (and ideologically compliant) Chinese artists were sent to Soviet art academies to acquire skills in conformity with the, by then established, conventions of Stalinist socialist realism, including those required for the making of large-scale oil paintings and public sculpture.67 On their return, these artists then became pivotal in disseminating socialist-realist modes of representation through state art academies within the prc. Photography and film were also co-opted to the ideological requirements of the ccp, resulting in the establishment of documentary, reportage and socialist-realist styles of lens-based image making that persist up to the present day within the prc.68 Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, a key use for painting and photography within the prc was the representation of revolutionary heroes in support of ccp campaigns. One of the most notable of these revolutionary heroes is Lei Feng (1940–1962). Feng was reputedly a member of the People’s Liberation Army who, after his death in 1962 at the age of 21, was upheld through photographs, paintings, posters and street murals as a model of selflessness and devotion as part of successive ‘Learn from Comrade Lei Feng’ campaigns initiated by the ccp in 1963. ese campaigns were conducted as part of an attempt to restore Mao’s reputation after the disasters associated with the Great Leap Forward. Lei Feng’s existence as an actual historical figure has been disputed by some scholars and there is some conjecture that photographs of him were staged. Lei Feng is now a figure of fun among young people within the prc who regard him as a representative of outdated values. Also supported by the ccp at this time were traditional styles of Chinese painting, such as shui-mo and gong-bi, and aspects of Chinese folk art that had been adapted more or less successfully to the ideological requirements of the ccp.69 roughout the 1950s, official support for Soviet-style oil painting and sculpture placed traditional Chinese painting under a degree of ideological suspicion as a residual aspect of China’s pre-Communist feudal society.70 Towards the end of the 1950s, however, Soviet-style oil painting fell out of official favour to some degree, as a result of weakening links with the Soviet
66 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Union. is resulted in a renewed enthusiasm for traditional and indigenous folk styles as politicized forms of expression. is shift in official thinking was signalled by a speech given by the Chinese Culture Minister in 1957, insisting on the validity of China’s indigenous cultural traditions and that not everything coming from the West (meaning from the Soviet Union) was correct. At that time, Mao also issued a slogan, ‘Revolutionary Romanticism Combined with Revolutionary Realism’, which upheld the importance of national poetic and romantic traditions alongside the use of socialist realism. is call was accompanied by the two doctrines ‘Red Light, Bright’ (hong guang liang) and ‘e Three Prominences’ (santuchu). The former required artists to include the colour red in paintings both as a symbol of revolution and as a traditional signifier of happiness and good fortune, alongside brightness as a symbol of hope. e latter required the prominent placement of generic representations of soldiers, workers and peasants as the three principal heroic groups at the forefront of the revolutionary masses.71 Throughout the 1950s, Mao also encouraged the development of proletarian art through a mass movement known as the Rural Art Movement, initiated in 1950. As a result, numerous ccp-supported proletarian art groups and art classes sprang up in cities and rural areas across China.72 As Xiaobing Tang has argued, while Maoist socialist realism was purportedly an objective representation of the reality of the masses, in practice it tended to present revolutionary politics as an overcoming of the everyday; one intended to replace the anxiety of the everyday with something akin to a collective spiritual transcendence.73 From 1949 to 1966, artists within the prc were able to assert their professional standing as cultural interpreters/mediators of Maoist thought both through the central and municipal artists’ associations that had been set up to manage the practical direction of official artistic production in the prc after 1949; and the work units (danwei) that were brought together by those associations to produce artworks from the late 1950s onwards, as part of a wider move towards industrial and agricultural collectivization associated with the Great Leap Forward. e Great Leap Forward was an economic and social plan put forward by the ccp during the late 1950s that aimed to transform the prc’s largely traditional agrarian economy into one based on collectivist forms of agricultural and industrial production. e plan, implemented between 1958 and 1961, heavily disrupted agricultural production within the prc. This disruption coincided with extreme weather conditions in 1959 and 1960, bringing about a widespread famine resulting in the death of tens of millions
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
67 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
of people (current estimates range between 18 and 45 million). e disastrous events of the Great Leap Forward led to open criticism of Mao and his marginalization within the ccp. Danwei (work unit) is the name commonly given to a place of work in the prc. Although the term was first used as part of the collectivization of working practices and the setting up of state-owned enterprises during the revolutionary period between 1949 and 1976, it still retains a degree of currency within the prc of the early twenty-first century. Before the initiation of Deng’s reforms, danwei acted as the operational front line in the implementation of Party policy and, therefore, sat at the base of an extended Party hierarchy. As such, danwei were not only sites of work but also provided the workers who were attached to them with housing, shops, medical facilities, canteens and other public services. Workers were usually assigned to a danwei for life, and required their work unit’s permission to get married, have children and travel. Workers who did not comply with the wishes of the danwei could be punished by having their pay, status or living conditions downgraded. From 1949 to 1966, numerous artworks were made in the prc in outward conformity to the directives of the ccp while incorporating coded criticism of the consequences of Communist rule. ese include Fu Baoshi’s (1904–1965) highly selective pictorial response to a poem by Mao Zedong, Heavy Rain Falls on Youyan (1961), which presents an obliquely allegorical (though still discernibly negative) commentary on the events that took place in the wake of the Great Leap Forward.74 At the same time, other artists chose to work outside China’s state-controlled system, under serious threat of official denunciation and punishment. ese artists include Lin Fengmian, the veteran Chinese modernist of the New Culture Movement, who continued to make expressionistic landscape paintings from 1949 up until the early years of the Cultural Revolution, when, after sustained public criticism, he was left with no option but to destroy his work.75 ere is emerging evidence to suggest that artistic production resistant to or divergent from the established conventions of Maoist socialist realism was increasingly prevalent in the prc from 1973 onwards. Another artist who worked outside the prc’s official system of artistic production during the Maoist period was Zhao Wenliang (b. 1937). Along with a small circle of likeminded others in Beijing, including Shi Zhenyu (b. 1946), Yang Yushu (b. 1944) and Zhang Da’an (b. 1941), he began to produce (distinctly non socialist realist) formalist-impressionistic paintings during the mid-1960s,
68 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
22 Zhao Wenliang, untitled, c. late 1960s – early 1970s, oil painting, dimensions unknown.
and from 1973 he became the leader of the No Name Group (Wuming huahui) of artists (illus. 22, 23). e No Name Group was the first unofficial art group to emerge in China after the founding of the prc. e group, whose members were largely self-taught, set itself apart from the official ideology of socialist realism by painting still-lifes, portraits and landscapes that emphasized formalist aesthetics over social content. e group, which included between 20 and 30 members, staged clandestine exhibitions of its work in private apartments from around 1973. It also staged a public exhibition of its work in Beijing’s Beihai Park in 1979 and another in 1981.76 During the early to mid-1970s, the artist Yu Youhan (b. 1943) taught Westernized techniques and produced landscape and portrait paintings in distinctly post-Impressionistic styles reminiscent of the work of artists such as Maurice Utrillo and Vincent van Gogh more or less openly, just outside Shanghai (illus. 24, 25).77 e political and social misfit Kang Wanhua (b. 1944) also made paintings in contravention of socialist-realist principles during his imprisonment by the authorities after 1975.78 e Cultural Revolution was a period of widespread political, cultural and social upheaval that took place within the prc between 1966 and Mao
69 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
Zedong’s death in 1976. e active phase of the Cultural Revolution extended from 1966 to 1971, but events within the prc between 1971 and 1976 are generally considered to be part of the Cultural Revolution. During the early years of the Cultural Revolution (between 1966 and 1968), young leftist revolutionaries known as Red Guards mounted attacks on individuals and institutions within the prc perceived to be in opposition to established Maoist thought. The Red Guards were a revolutionary mass movement of young people that, between 1966 and 1969, played a central role in the events of the Cultural Revolution by rooting out and violently combating what they saw as counter-revolutionary and elitist activities at all levels of Chinese society. In doing so, the Red Guards operated with Mao’s approval outside the ccp’s institutionalized bureaucratic system. Shortly after its coming together in 1966, the movement broke up into different factions with ‘radicals’ adopting an uncompromisingly critical attitude towards established power short of that of Mao himself, and ‘rebels’ who attempted to protect Party structures from direct attack by the Red Guards. is led to violent confrontation between radical and rebel groups until Mao intervened to disband the latter in 1967, giving radicals free rein to pursue their revolutionary aims. Following intervention by the pla, and with Mao’s agreement, the Red Guards were disbanded in 1969 in order to curb the extreme civil disorder that had ensued as a result of their actions.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
23 Zhao Wenliang, Untitled, c. late 1960s–early 1970s, oil painting, dimensions unknown.
70 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
e circumstances that led to the launching of the Cultural Revolution are contested, with some arguing that students responded to calls from Mao for renewed class struggle, and others that Mao himself responded to spontaneous student action. There is, however, general agreement that the onset of the Cultural Revolution enabled Mao to regain power following his marginalization within the ccp after the disastrous events of the Great Leap Forward. roughout the Cultural Revolution, Mao was closely supported by the ccp faction known as the Gang of Four. e exact nature of the involvement of this faction, which comprised Mao’s last wife Jiang Qing (aka Madam Mao) (1914–1991) and her close associates Zhang Chunqiao (1917–2005), Yao Wenyuan (1931–2005) and Wang Hongwen (1935–1992), in decisions made during the Cultural Revolution is subject to debate. Indeed, the four named members of the Gang of Four had a number of close associates including the pla General Lin Biao (1907–1971), who headed a separate revolutionary faction in support of the Cultural Revolution before his death in a plane crash (following what may have been an attempted coup against Mao) in 1971. However, it is likely that members of the Gang of Four were in control of the major organs of power within the ccp throughout the latter stages of the Cultural Revolution. e principal focus for revolutionary action during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution was the ‘Four Olds’ (si jiu) – ‘old thought, old customs, old culture and old morals’. The campaign to destroy the Four Olds, which looked to overcome the residual influence of Confucianism on Chinese society, began in Beijing on 20 August 1966, shortly after the initiation of the Cultural Revolution.79 Between 1966 and 1968, this campaign resulted in the widespread destruction and sequestering of traditional Chinese cultural artefacts and damage to cultural sites by Red Guards. Also of significance at this time is the use of passages from Mao’s ‘Yan’an Talks’ as the basis of the section on ‘Culture and Art’ in Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (first published in 1964), otherwise known as the ‘Little Red Book’. is was the key source of correct ideological thinking for millions of young revolutionaries throughout the Cultural Revolution. Between 1966 and 1968, Mao supported the Red Guards in assuming a position of authority within the prc that effectively exceeded that not only of the government but also the pla. As a result, the Red Guards were empowered to denounce, violently attack, kill or drive to suicide ‘capitalist roaders’ (perceived to be in direct opposition to Maoist ideology), including many established Chinese artists and cultural administrators.80 e number of deaths resulting
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
71 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
from the events of the Cultural Revolution is unverified but may well be in excess of 1 million. During this period, practitioners of traditional Chinese ink-and-brush painting such as Li Keran (1907–1989) and Pan Tianshou (1897–1971), who had previously been revered as masters, were publically denounced as bourgeois counter-revolutionaries. While some of these practitioners of traditional Chinese painting responded by adapting their work more forcefully to the representation of revolutionary themes, others had their work included in touring exhibitions of ‘black painting’ that were held up to public ridicule throughout the prc. At this time, many senior practitioners of traditional Chinese painting were imprisoned and forced to re-educate themselves in Maoist thought. Artists who wished to make paintings outside the prc’s statecontrolled system using modern Western-influenced techniques were also persecuted and forced to pursue their artistic aims in secret. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, the complex system set up to administrate artistic production within the prc after 1949 came to be viewed by Mao and his supporters in the Gang of Four as both reactionary and irredeemably corrupt. It was seen, therefore, as a blockage to any direct interpretation of Maoist revolutionary thought, a view which Mao signalled as early as June 1964 in a call for renewed reform of the prc’s literary and art circles.81 As a consequence, established administrative structures were replaced by a ‘pure model’ of cultural production, involving the dissolution of the prc’s cultural bureaucracy, the banning of art magazines and periodicals, and the widespread closure of universities and art academies as academic awarding bodies. For a time, this gave the Red Guards more or less free rein to promote Maoist ideology through cultural means of their choosing. In response to this freedom, they developed various forms of visual propaganda including dazibao (big-character posters), large-scale mural paintings, mass-produced posters showing cartoon-like images of generic figures accompanying revolutionary slogans, street performances, multimedia events and mass-produced images of Mao Zedong, aimed at communicating Maoist thinking to the masses at a grassroots level. From spring 1968, the same means were also used to promote the standing of Mao as a personality cult. In one instance, a publishing house is reported as having produced over 900 million reproductions of a painting of Mao in support of a government campaign.82 Although China’s art academies and craft colleges ceased to act as academic awarding bodies throughout the Cultural Revolution, in many cases they remained open as a focus for the political activities of young revolutionaries.
72 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
24 Yu Youhan, untitled, 1973, oil on canvas, 30 × 25 cm.
Moreover, after 1973 some academies and colleges began to admit selected revolutionary workers, soldiers and peasants as students in support of the Cultural Revolution.83 In the face of the growing civil disorder that ensued as a result of the actions of the Red Guards, in July 1968 Mao agreed to reinstate the authority of the pla. In December of the same year, Mao and his followers initiated the ‘Down to the Countryside Movement’ (Shang shan xia xiang yundong, literally ‘Up to the mountains and down to the villages movement’), which involved sending the Red Guards along with others of their generation to work in the countryside, giving them an opportunity to cool off and confront the stark
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
25 Yu Youhan, untitled, 1973, oil on canvas, 40 × 30 cm.
74 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
realities of materially impoverished rural life within the prc. is reversal of political direction, which continued for the next decade, did not, however, lead to the immediate reinstatement of organized bureaucratic control over the arts within the prc. Instead, the ideological and practical administration of the arts remained with central government officials (including the Gang of Four) until the death of Mao in 1976, after which it was handed back to newly constituted versions of the government bodies that had administered the arts prior to the Cultural Revolution. The centralization of authority over cultural production throughout the Cultural Revolution led to a significant curtailing of professional agency among artists within the prc. At the same time, the Cultural Revolution also enabled young art workers to develop a significant (though by no means always welcome) public profile through their involvement in the collective making of various forms of what might be referred to as revolutionary street art. Furthermore, some of the methods employed by artworkers during the Cultural Revolution, among them dazibao, street performances and multimedia events, are similar in some respects to anti-realist techniques used by the Western avant-gardes. Consider here, for example, the use of dazibao. Dazibao (literally, ‘big-character reports’) are handwritten, wall-mounted posters with large-scale Chinese characters that were used historically in China as a form of popular communication and protest. In modern times, dazibao have been supplemented by fragments of text taken from newspapers as well as printed reports and photographic images. During the Cultural Revolution dazibao were produced as a means of communicating political directives and of denouncing individuals and groups perceived to be in opposition to established Maoist thinking. Dazibao were also used as a means of public protest during the Democracy Wall Movement. While the similarity between techniques used by the Red Guards and the Western avant-gardes did not come about as the result of any direct cultural interaction or exchange between the West and China (given the closed, anti-Western nature of Chinese society at the time), it is nevertheless possible to register a further diversification of the possibilities of revolutionary art within the prc during the Maoist period between 1949 and 1966 beyond the mixing of socialist-realist and traditional Chinese modes of production. Although localized conditions of artistic production and reception within the prc between 1949 and 1976 were similar in some respects to those within other highly authoritarian communist states, such as North Korea and the German Democratic Republic, they diverged markedly in intent from those
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
75 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
within Western liberal-democratic and Westernized capitalist contexts including in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Between the retreat of Chiang Kai-shek’s republican forces to Taiwan in 1949 and the lifting of martial law (known as the ‘White Terror’) imposed in Taiwan by Chiang as a counter-revolutionary measure between 1949 and 1987, the Taiwanese government supported a distinctly nationalistic view of traditional Chinese culture, in opposition to the adoption of socialist realism within the prc. Although realist approaches were tolerated, variations on guo hua remained predominant until the establishment of the ‘modern movement’ in Taiwan in the 1970s. Modernist forms of artistic practice existed in Taiwan alongside traditional approaches as early as the 1960s, but these were initially marginalized. Among the early exponents of modernism in Taiwan were members of the Fifth Moon group who, from the mid-1960s, developed forms of abstraction using techniques adapted from traditional Chinese landscape painting (illus. 26, 27). During the 1980s and 1990s, official government support within Taiwan shifted towards the making and showing of contemporary forms of art, although major public art institutions tended to exclude artworks that might be interpreted as critical of governmental authority. Since the 1990s, contemporary Taiwanese art has not only become increasingly pluralistic, drawing on a variety of indigenous Taiwanese, Chinese and non-Chinese cultural influences, it has also become enmeshed ever more closely with international artistic and curatorial trends. is has resulted in the development of a contemporary art that is both critical and socially engaged (illus 28, 29).84 A similar state of affairs existed in British-ruled Hong Kong, where guo hua and modernist approaches to art-making developed after 1949 with the support of artists who had fled there either to escape the civil war or the onset of communist rule in mainland China.85 e second half of the twentieth century also saw the growth of Chinese artistic communities outside the prc, Taiwan and Hong Kong, the most important of which were in Paris and North America.86 Artists involved in these communities include Li Yuan-Chia (1929–1994), who became part of the minimalist–conceptualist movement in London during the 1960s before setting up his own museum in Cumbria; and members of diasporic AsianAmerican art groups, such as Godzilla, Godzookie and the Barnstormers, many of whom were of Chinese cultural descent.87 From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, the most significant contrast between the prevailing conditions of artistic production and reception within
26 Hu Chi Chung, Painting #6767, 1967, painting, oil and sand on canvas, 60 × 120 cm.
76 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
27 Hu Chi Chung, Painting #6754, 1967, painting, oil on canvas, 115 × 90 cm.
the prc and those elsewhere in the world existed in relation to developed liberal-democratic contexts in western Europe and North America. Within those contexts, discourses and techniques associated with European and American modernist and avant-garde art of the early twentieth century had become more or less established as a dominant cultural form, not only in highart contexts, but also as part of popular culture. In Europe and North America, a new category of museum dedicated to the collecting and exhibiting of modern art emerged. It was one envisaged as a place to house the supposedly progressive rationalist-formalist abstractions of high modernism – whose significance could be framed with relative ease in relation to the by-then established post-Enlightenment conventions of aesthetic transcendence and uplift. It was also a place to house the increasingly recuperated provocations of the politicized avant-gardes, many of whose members had previously concurred with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s call to ‘destroy the museums, the libraries, every type of academy’.88 Despite the closed nature of Chinese society during the Maoist period, it would be a mistake to view postwar modern art in China and in Europe and North America as wholly detached from one another. Interest in, and appreciation of, traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice and the impact of the work of European Dadaists and Surrealists (many of whom fled to the u.s. before and during the Second World War to avoid Nazi oppression)
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
78 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
continued to cast a long shadow over artistic production in the u.s. during the second half of the twentieth century. e coming together of these factors not only supported the continuing development of Formalist abstraction as part of American high modernism before and after the Second World War, it also contributed to the persistence of counter-abstractionist tendencies within the u.s. During the 1950s, these counter-abstractionist tendencies began to return to the fore through the work of neo-Dadaist American artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns (both of whom drew on the work of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage), thereby forming part of the context for the emergence of American Pop art and conceptualism of the 1960s. Although cultural, socioeconomic and political conditions in postwar Europe differed considerably from those in the u.s., neo-Dadaist tendencies also began to come to the fore there. This was partly in resistance to the hegemony of American formalist abstraction, and partly as a re-engagement with aspects of the critical project of the early twentieth-century European avant-gardes. Key players in the resurgence of counter-Abstract Expressionist tendencies within Europe during the immediate postwar period include Joseph Beuys and Yves Klein, both of whom expressed an interest in, and appreciation of, Eastern non-rationalist thinking and practice.89 A similar shift in attitudes can be understood to have taken place at more or less the same time among radicalized non-Western artists and curators who had by then appropriated collage-montage techniques associated with the Western avant-gardes as part of their own practice. ey had begun to deploy those techniques as a way of actively resisting the assumed hegemony not only of Western high modernism, but also its underlying adherence to Western colonialist/imperialist relations of dominance. A very early example of this resistance can be found in the work of the Gutai group, formed in Tokyo in 1954, which, despite formal resemblances between the work of its members and French art informel of the same period, claimed a specifically Japanese approach towards the use of materials.90 In the wake of the failed European and u.s. uprisings of 1968, many radical left-wing European and American intellectuals and artists began to break with established Soviet-influenced revolutionary politics, looking instead to the Cultural Revolution within the prc as a source of renewed political direction. These artists and intellectuals included Jean-Luc Godard, whose engagement with Chinese revolutionary politics was made explicit before the Paris Riots of 1968 by the film La Chinoise (1967), depicting the activities of a
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
79 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
Maoist group in Paris; the theorist, psychoanalyst and feminist Julia Kristeva, whose collection of writings About Chinese Women (1977)91 discusses Chinese women’s experience from the perspective of continental poststructuralism; and the film-maker Michelangelo Antonioni, who was invited to visit the prc in 1972 to make the documentary of the Cultural Revolution, Chung Kuo, Cina (which was later denounced by the Chinese government as ‘anti-Chinese and anti-communist’). In 1974, the Paris-based Tel Quel group, which had broken with the French Communist Party in favour of Maoism in 1971 and included among its members Kristeva and Roland Barthes, was invited to visit the prc.92 This visit was to divide the group between members such as Kristeva who continued to align themselves (for a time at least) with Maoist principles, and others including Barthes whose commitment (if it ever really existed at all) to those principles waned significantly as a result of the group’s exposure to the material realities of Chinese life under Communism.93 Tel Quel distanced itself publicly from Maoism in 1976. Among the markers of this alignment between radical Western art and politics and Maoist ideology is Andy Warhol’s serial depiction of Mao in various drawings, prints and paintings, the first produced in 1973. Warhol’s depictions of Mao also reflected a popular counter-cultural interest in Maoism that had developed in Western Europe and in the u.s. during the late 1960s and 1970s, not least following u.s. president Richard Nixon’s historic visit to the prc in February 1972. Warhol visited the prc in 1982. During the 1960s and 1970s, optimistic assumptions of progressive social change and cultural innovation that accompanied the development of Western high modernism throughout the early and mid-twentieth century gave way by degrees to more pervasively sceptical attitudes associated with postmodernism. Continuing interest in, and appreciation of, traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice (and in the legacy of Dada and Surrealism) have also impacted strongly on the work of contemporary American artists such as Bill Viola, James Lee Byars and Kim Jones. eir use of video and installation is exemplary of a self-consciously postmodernist shift away from the formalist abstractions of Western high modernism.94 While a searching discussion of the critical relationship between modernist and postmodernist sensibilities lies beyond the scope of this present text, an indispensable aspect of the shift from the former to the latter is a move away from post-Enlightenment philosophical rationalism. Instead, there was a leaning in favour of attitudes and practices associated with Jacques Derrida’s
80 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
28 Wu Mali, The Road is Carved by Man, 2004, mixed media site-specific installation, dimensions variable.
theory and practice of deconstruction as a way of demonstrating the fundamental illegitimacy of Western philosophy’s claims to metaphysical truth. Key to Derrida’s development of the theory and practice of deconstruction is an assertion that language does not signify as the result of a reflective correspondence between signifiers and signified meanings, nor simply (as structuralist linguistic theory would have it) structural differences between signs within a given language system. Instead, it signifies through a persistent action of differing and deferring between signs, for which Derrida coined the term différance. In light of this, it becomes necessary to think of linguistic meaning as something that is not only subject to continual re-contextualization and re-motivation, but also spatial and temporal dispersal along unfolding networks of signification.95 As Fredric Jameson indicates, postmodernism involves attitudes and cultural practices that look towards the deconstruction of a range of rationalist conceptual oppositions underlying the progressive outlook of modernism. is
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
81 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
includes notions of appearance and essence, centre and periphery, high and low culture, art and life, and past, present and future.96 As a consequence, universalizing modernist notions of Western-centric progressive development are suspended in favour of a more complex envisioning of history as an unfolding of events that are made subject to continual deconstructive reinterpretation in the face of changing circumstances of time and place in such a way that any hierarchical structuring of time and/or place is persistently suspended. As Gregory L. Ulmer makes clear in his essay ‘The Object of PostCriticism’, Derrida’s development of the theory and practice of deconstruction as a focus for the undoing of Western philosophical truth claims can be interpreted as an extension and reworking of the use of collage-montage by the early twentieth-century European and American artistic avant-gardes.97 In the case of the artistic avant-gardes, collage-montage involves the remounting of texts, images and/or objects within unusual settings, wherein they take on new
29 Chen Shun-Chu, Discovering Hai-an Road, 2004, mixed media site-specific installation, dimensions variable.
82 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
and unexpected meanings in addition to those conventionally ascribed to them. As a consequence of this, the significance of those objects, images and texts is rendered irretrievably undecidable. Consider here, for example, Marcel Duchamp’s readymade Fountain, which involves the proposed remounting of a urinal as a work of art. In the case of deconstructive practice, argues Ulmer, analogous techniques, such as textual inversion, juxtaposition and dislocation, are used to much the same end. Derrida’s development of the theory and practice of deconstruction can, therefore, be understood not only to carry the traces of the prior actions of the Western artistic avant-gardes – which are, as consequence, retroactively repositioned as ‘deconstructive’ avant la lettre – but also the appropriation of Chinese cultural thought and practice by the avant-gardes in support of their own critical use of collage-montage. Indeed, Ulmer buttresses such a reading in the second part of his essay by presenting a close comparative analysis of John Cage’s use of collage-montage techniques and Derridean deconstruction.98 Derrida himself gives further credence to the connection between deconstruction and Chinese cultural thought and practice in his text Of Grammatology (1967) by effectively aligning the former with the latter as part of a deconstruction of Leibniz’s assumptions about the capacity of Chinese writing to transcend differences in cultural-linguistic outlook. Here, Derrida argues that Leibniz’s upholding of Chinese writing as an exemplar in support of the idea of a characteristica universalis involves an unduly abstract view of Chinese cultural thought and practice – or, as Derrida terms it, a ‘European hallucination’ – that overlooks the pervasively deconstructive effects of language associated with différance.99 Further circumstantial evidence of a link between deconstruction and traditional Chinese thought and practice also resides in Derrida’s acknowledgement of his debt to Nietzschean non-rationalism. It is, therefore, unsurprising to find persistent assertions within the literature on contemporary art that there is some sort of correspondence between the non-rationalism of traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice and the deconstructivist tendencies ascribed to artistic modernism and postmodernism. Assertions of this sort are most definitely a powerful subtext to the work of present-day American abstractionists and postmodernists such as Marden and Viola. ey also emerge forcefully in the literature relating to contemporary Chinese art.100 One of the most insistent claims in this regard is that the theory and practice of deconstruction, as well as related postmodernist notions of the indeterminacy of the sublime, are in some sense commensurate with Chinese
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
83 | C H I N E S E A R T I N CO N T E X T
Daoist and Chan Buddhist conceptions of the ‘emptiness’ of linguistic representation and aesthetic affect.101 Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Central Committee of the ccp, died on 9 September 1976. Mao’s death resulted in a change of political conditions that would bring to an end both the Cultural Revolution and the wider period of anti-capitalist revolution in China. Preceding Mao’s death was that of Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) on 8 January 1976. Zhou Enlai was a close political ally of Mao and the first premier of the prc, serving from 1949 until his death. Although persistently loyal to Mao, Zhou reputedly took steps to mitigate the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution; a perceived stance that earned him widespread popularity throughout the prc. Zhou’s death sparked major public displays of grief in Beijing, including one in Tiananmen Square on 5 April 1976 that resulted in violent clashes between protesters and the pla after an order issued by the Gang of Four to clear the square. e event was recorded by photographers, who subsequently distributed photographs of the event in secret. Mao’s death was also preceded by a major earthquake centred on Tangshan in Hebei province in July 1976. The Tangshan earthquake is estimated by official Chinese sources to have killed 250,000 people (although other sources claim that as many as 700,000 people died as a result). Traditionally, major earthquakes have been seen as portents of dynastic change in China, and the Tangshan earthquake was widely regarded as such.
2
MODERN (CONTEMPORARY) CHINESE ART, 1976–1989
The Early Development of Modern (Contemporary) Chinese Art Following the death of Mao Zedong in September 1976, the prc entered a period of significant political uncertainty that saw increasing public opposition to the established policies of the ccp. is public opposition was at its most intense during the brief period of liberalization known as the ‘Beijing Spring’, which began shortly after the formal ending of the Cultural Revolution at the 11th Chinese Communist Party Congress in August 1977, and effectively came to an end with the initiation of a crackdown on the Chinese Democracy Movement in March 1979. e Beijing Spring derives its name from a similar period of liberalization in Czechoslovakia between early January and late August 1968 known as the ‘Prague Spring’. e term ‘Beijing Spring’ is also used to refer to another brief period of liberalization in the prc following the death of Deng Xiaoping and the handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese control in 1997. e second Beijing Spring, which took place between September 1997 and November 1998, saw the founding and official registration by some local authorities of the China Democracy Party as well as the prc’s signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. During the first Beijing Spring of 1977–79, the Chinese people were able to criticize the ccp more freely than had been the case under Mao. Much of that criticism was directed away from the prc’s current political situation towards the involvement of government officials, including the Gang of Four, in the events of the Cultural Revolution. The Gang of Four were removed from power by what was effectively a coup d’état on 6 October 1976, barely a month after the death of Mao. e members of the Gang of Four were eventually subjected to a public show trial in 1981, where they were given long prison sentences for instigating the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution. ere was also direct criticism of the prc’s prevailing political structures that looked towards the overthrow of the ccp and the setting up of a democratic Chinese state.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
85 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
A significant instigator of public criticism of the ccp and the Cultural Revolution throughout the Beijing Spring was the loosely organized coalition of political groups known collectively as the Chinese Democracy Movement, which first came together under a common manifesto in 1978. In its manifesto, the Fifth Modernization, the Chinese Democracy Movement argued that the prc’s progressive development depended on increased liberalization and empowerment of the masses in addition to the overthrow of reactionary elements within the ccp. The Democracy Movement included numerous radicals who had recently returned to Beijing after being sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. e immediate aftermath of Mao’s death also saw the surfacing of previously underground cultural movements including that associated with the impressionistic genre of writing known as ‘misty poetry’ (Menglong shi) and the literary magazine Jintian (Today). Towards the end of 1978, Deng Xiaoping, who had been a leading member of the ccp since the 1930s (and who had recently returned to a position of authority within the Party after having been purged during the Cultural Revolution), proposed a programme of far-reaching economic and political reforms designed to take the prc beyond the severe material impoverishment of the Cultural Revolution as well as the political uncertainty ushered in by Mao’s death. The confirmation of Deng’s so-called policy of Opening and Reform at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Part of China in December 1978 not only marked the legislative starting point for the prc’s centrally driven and increasingly prodigious programme of modernization of the last four decades, it also effectively secured Deng’s leadership of the ccp over Mao’s designated successor Hua Guofeng. While Deng never actually held office as head of state, head of government or General Secretary of the Communist Party of China – the highest positions of political authority in the prc – he was nevertheless recognized as the ‘paramount leader’ of the prc from December 1978 to his ostensible retirement from active politics in 1992. Deng’s policy of Opening and Reform was actually a range of related policies and directives, including the ‘Four Modernizations’, the ‘Liberate Your inking and Search for the Truth in the Facts’ directive, and the ‘Two Hundreds’ directive. The combination of these policies and directives was intended to bring about a significant liberalization of thinking and practice in the prc that would allow for the formal rehabilitation of intellectuals and the opening up of space for entrepreneurial activity outside the previously
86 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
all-pervasive ideological reach of the ccp. e ‘Four Modernizations’ calls for the modernization of technology, education, agriculture and the military; the ‘Liberate Your inking and Search for the Truth in the Facts’ directive seeks to promote experimental research and the discussion of subject-specific questions rather than purely ideological ones; and the ‘Two Hundreds’ directive (which takes its name from Deng’s use of the slogan ‘Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom and One Hundred Schools Contend’) calls for greater diversity of thought and public debate as part of the process of reform, effectively reviving a similar campaign initiated by Mao in 1956 known as the ‘One Hundred Flowers Bloom Campaign’. e ‘One Hundred Flowers Bloom Campaign’ of 1956–7 was a ccp initiative designed to promote a flourishing of the arts and progressive developments in science that encouraged Chinese citizens to openly express their views on matters of national government policy. e campaign was launched under the slogan: ‘Letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.’ is slogan makes reference to competing systems of thought known as the ‘Hundred Schools of ought’ which existed during China’s Warring States period, before the unification of the empire under the Qin dynasty in 221 bce. Mao’s campaign of the 1950s was eventually brought to an end after soliciting comments highly critical of ccp policy. Many of those who voiced criticism of the Party were severely punished or killed. Some commentators have interpreted the ‘One Hundred Flowers Bloom Campaign’ of the 1950s as a calculated attempt by Mao to flush out and crush dissent within the prc, though this is by no means certain. e campaign was followed by a reassertion of orthodox Maoist ideology. In light of Mao’s campaign and other reversals of ideological direction throughout the Maoist period, Deng’s own call for open public debate at the end of the 1970s was greeted by the Chinese people with a mixture of hope as well as a degree of understandable scepticism. A major focus for public criticism of the ccp towards the end of the Beijing Spring was Beijing’s so-called Democracy Wall. e Democracy Wall was a large brick wall running along Xidan Street in the Xicheng district of Beijing on to which members of the general public (including individuals belonging to the prc’s nascent Democracy Movement) posted texts, posters, images and dazibao critical of government policy. e general up-swell of public criticism associated with the Democracy Wall is often referred to as the ‘Democracy
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
87 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
Wall Movement’. e Wall, which first came into use in December 1978, was initially tolerated by government officials who wished to secure Deng’s newly attained grip on power by encouraging criticism of previous government failures. However, as a result of sustained public criticism of the current political order, under Deng’s instructions the ccp initiated a crackdown on the Democracy Movement in March 1979. is not only led to the arrest of the de facto leader of the movement Wei Jingsheng (b. 1950), who was later sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for writing the Movement’s manifesto; but also, in December 1979, to the removal of the Democracy Wall from Xidan Street to Ritan Park, where public access was strictly monitored. Shortly afterwards, the Wall was closed down completely as part of a government campaign to end all public opposition to socialism. During the latter stages of the Beijing Spring, official and semi-official art groups began to stage public exhibitions of art works that departed openly from the established conventions of Maoist socialist realism. ese exhibitions included the Painting Exhibition of the Twelve, which was held outdoors in Shanghai in 1978, and an exhibition of work by the Oil Painting Research Association, staged in Zhongshan Park in Beijing in February 1979.1 e work exhibited by these official and semi-official groups was invariably formalistic in approach and had little or no obvious social or political content. Nevertheless, its public showing marks a significant repositioning of the limits on artistic production in the prc. The period immediately following the death of Mao saw significant changes in official thinking regarding the making and showing of art in the prc. After the formal ending of the Cultural Revolution in 1977, there was not only a reinstatement of the institutional structures used to govern the ideological and practical direction of artistic production prior to 1966, but also a reconstituting of the prc’s fine art academies and craft colleges as academic awarding bodies. Following the acceptance of Deng’s reforms in late 1978, this return to previously established institutional structures and systems of education was accompanied by an official ccp directive – supported by Deng’s ‘Congratulatory Message to the Fourth Congress of Chinese Writers and Artists’ on 30 October 1979 – which attempted to draw a line under the ‘irrational’ personality cult that had grown up around Mao during the Cultural Revolution. is directive called upon artists to praise ‘the masses of workers, farmers and soldiers, the Party and the old generation of revolutionaries rather than celebrating single personalities’.2 As part of the reporting of the Fourth Congress of Chinese Writers and Artists,
88 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
which took place in Beijing between 30 October and 16 November 1979, public statements were also issued calling upon artists to ‘Emancipate ought and Encourage Literary and Artistic Democracy’. e directive to end the personality cult surrounding Mao was the first move in a wider re-evaluation of the ccp’s established ideological position on artistic production as set out in Mao’s Yan’an Talks of 1942. In 1982, however, the ccp publicly reaffirmed its requirement that art should reflect the position of the masses realistically; but the Party also declared that the view put forward by Mao at Yan’an that literature and art are subordinate to politics was an ‘incorrect formulation’. e late 1970s also saw the lifting of the ccp’s ban on the publication of art magazines and journals, with some previously established titles returning to circulation as early as 1976. Soon after the ending of the Cultural Revolution, art magazines and journals published in the prc began to include reproductions of, and introductions to, Western modernist and classical Chinese art. ere were also exhibitions of reproductions of Western art, including one of reproductions of Impressionist painting in Beijing in June 1979. Official administrative bodies, such as the Chinese Artists Association, gave their public support to Deng’s reforms. However, unlike the period from 1949 to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, they made no attempt to supplement those reforms with concrete administrative programmes of their own. Consequently, while directives issued at the ird Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the ccp and in relation to the Fourth Congress of Chinese Writers and Artists can be understood to have opened up space for artists to go beyond the ideological outlook of the Cultural Revolution, there were no official initiatives or campaigns to which artists might be expected to contribute in practical terms. Paradoxically, this lack of administrative clarity allowed the ccp to maintain and even strengthen its control over developments in the cultural sphere.3 Not only did the ‘vague directives’ of the prc’s cultural bureaucrats compel artists to exercise self-discipline in relation to their activities for fear of the possibility of official reprisals (a situation exacerbated by previous reversals of ideological direction in the prc, such as that associated with Mao’s ‘One Hundred Flowers Bloom Campaign’ of the 1950s) they also left considerable scope for the ccp to re-tighten ideological limits if the outcomes of Deng’s reforms were perceived to threaten social stability or the authority of the Party in any way.4 Also significant at this time, were calls made (as part of official debates surrounding Deng’s economic and social reforms) for an accompanying
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
89 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
redefinition of Chinese culture. ese calls, which were influenced strongly by Deng’s use of the slogans ‘Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom’ and ‘Liberate Your Thinking’, involved a return to ideas of cultural enlightenment first developed during the 1920s and 1930s by China’s New Culture and May Fourth movements. This official interest in cultural enlightenment was accompanied by the emergence of a widely felt climate of ‘humanist enthusiasm’ (renwen reqing) within the prc. For the next ten years (and with varying degrees of intensity) this would support active public involvement in the ccp’s centrally driven programme of economic and political reforms by overwriting the profound sense of alienation experienced by the Chinese people during the Cultural Revolution. Alongside official directives on the role of art in the immediate postMaoist period, there was also a return to formalist debates on the nature of art initiated in the prc during the early 1960s. In June 1960 the French-trained artist Wu Guanzhong (1919–2010) wrote an article titled ‘On the Beauty of Form in Painting’. The content of this article diverged markedly from the established conventions of Maoist socialist realism by asserting that the principal value of painting lay in its formal beauty rather than its capacity to represent reality, that form should consequently not be subordinated to content, and that content should be made to coincide with form. Understandably, Wu’s article remained unpublished during Mao’s lifetime. In 1978 a new edition of Mao’s Letters on Poetry was published, which included writings on the positive role that ‘xingxiang siwei’ (‘image-thinking’) might play in the process of artistic creation. e publication of these writings opened up an ideologically acceptable space for renewed public debate on the relationship between form and content in official Chinese art. is debate was initiated by the publication of Wu Gaunzhong’s article ‘On the Beauty of Form in Painting’, which finally appeared in print in the magazine Meishu zazhi (Art) in May 1979. The publication of Wu’s article led to a string of others between 1979 and 1986, including an official rebuttal by the conservative critic Jiang Feng (b. 1910), and responses by Wu in 1980 and 1981.5 Liu Shaohui (b. 1940) also published a defence of Wu’s position, titled ‘Emotion, Individuality, Formal Aesthetics’, in 1979, which stressed the importance of individual creativity over collective action rooted in official ideology.6 The return to formalist debates was echoed by a controversy surrounding the installation of a series of decorative murals depicting aspects of traditional Chinese culture at Beijing’s newly opened international airport in 1979,
90 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
30 Yuan Yuansheng, The Water Splashing Festival, 1979, site-specific mural, oil on canvas, 340 × 2,100 cm. Installation view, Beijing Airport, 1979.
including one by the artist Yuan Yuansheng (b. 1937), e Water Splashing Festival (illus. 30). After initially receiving official approval, this series of murals was denounced because of its assertively formalist style and depiction of nudes, which were perceived by some government officials as profoundly unrealistic. As a result, the murals were first covered over and then removed.7 Following Mao’s death, academic-realist painting and sculpture was effectively reinstated as the dominant form of official artistic production in the prc. is reinstatement was supported by the prc’s recently reconstituted art academies, which began to produce a new generation of graduates at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. Two of the best-known academicrealist artists of this generation are Cheng Conglin (b. 1954) and Luo Zhongli (b. 1948), who, shortly after graduating from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in Chongqing, became the principal focus for what is known as the Sichuan School of Painting. Both of these artists responded to official calls for a departure from the established artistic conventions of the Cultural Revolution by producing paintings that not only depicted recognizable individuals and individual life experiences, but also distinct human feelings and emotions. In the case of paintings by Cheng, such as Snow on a Certain Day of a Certain Month, 1968 (1979), this departure from established artistic convention became the basis for a poetically charged reappraisal of the traumatic events of the Cultural Revolution (illus. 32). Expressions of human feeling and emotion are presented as a justifiable response to traumatic events, rather than as an escape into bourgeois subjectivity. In the case of paintings by Luo, such as his celebrated close-up portrait
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
91 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
of an ageing peasant, Father (1979), representations of China’s rural poor are subtly critical of the supposedly socially inclusive policies of the ccp (illus. 31). Luo’s highly detailed style was strongly influenced by reproductions of the super-realist paintings of the American artist Chuck Close.8 Although criticized at the time of their initial showing as ‘inadequately realistic’,9 paintings produced by Cheng and Luo at the very end of the 1970s nevertheless served as models for the development of three genres of painting at the forefront of official academic-realism in the prc during the early 1980s. ese were: revisionist depictions of events during the Cultural Revolution, often referred to as ‘Scar Art’, echoing a similar tendency within Chinese literary circles at that time known as ‘Scar Literature’; depictions of rural life known as ‘Rural Realism’ or ‘Native Soil Art’; and depictions of China’s lost generation of ‘sent-down youth’, known as ‘Melancholy Youth Painting’ or ‘Contemplative Painting’.10 Notable exponents of these genres include Chen Danqing (b. 1953), who remains well known in the prc for his series of Rural Realist ‘Tibetan’ paintings of the early 1980s; and He Duoling (b. 1948), whose paintings of melancholy youth were influenced strongly by reproductions of paintings by the American modernist-realist Andrew Wyeth.11 Official acceptance of the new direction taken by the Sichuan School was signalled by the decision to award Luo Zhongli’s painting Father first prize at the Second National Exhibition of Young Art in 1980, and the subsequent acquisition of the painting by the permanent collection of the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.
31 Luo Zhongli, Father, 1979, oil on canvas, 222 × 155 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
32 Cheng Conglin, Snow on a Certain Day of a Certain Month, 1968, 1979, oil on canvas, 202 × 300 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
93 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
Following the confirmation of Deng’s reforms, unofficial art groups also began to stage public exhibitions of their work. These included the April Photography Society’s exhibition Nature, Society and Man, which opened in Beijing on 1 April 1979, and the No Name Group’s first public exhibition, staged in Beijing in July of the same year.12 e public exhibitions staged by the April Photography Society and the No Name Group in Beijing in 1979 were the first of their kind to be held in the prc since the early 1950s. However, because of the resolutely formalistic approach to art-making adopted by the groups in question, the significance of these exhibitions as a definitive starting point for the development of contemporary art in the prc remains somewhat compromised. ere is a general acceptance in the existing literature on the subject of contemporary Chinese art (both in and outside the prc) that the development of contemporary art in the prc was initiated by the group known as the Stars (Xingxing). In Beijing, towards the end of September 1979, they were the first to stage an unofficial public exhibition of artworks that not only rebelled against the established conventions of Maoist socialist realism,13 but also (in some cases at least) presented thinly veiled criticism of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. e Stars group was formed as a result of the actions of two mature students at the Beijing Workers’ Cultural Centre, Ma Desheng (b. 1952) and Huang Rui (b. 1952).14 Encouraged by views solicited from fellow students and teachers at the Centre, including the artist He Baoshen (b. 1938), they approached government officials requesting permission to stage an exhibition of experimental art alongside China’s Fifth National Art Exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in September 1979. Ma and Huang’s request was turned down on the grounds that there would be no space available within the museum to house such an exhibition. is was a predictable outcome, given the then-established government policy that those exhibiting art publicly within the prc should first gain officially approved political status and give proof of long-standing conformity to nationally codified aesthetic principles (neither of which could be claimed by Ma and Huang). Undaunted, Ma and Huang requested access to an alternative exhibition space. is second request was also turned down. In response, Ma and Huang then set about organizing an unofficial exhibition of the work of 23 largely self-taught artists, including Zhong Ahcheng (b. 1949), Bo Yun (b. 1948), Qu Leilei (b. 1951), Yan Li (b. 1948), Li Shuang (b. 1957), Wang Keping (b. 1949), Gan Shaocheng, Yang Yiping (b. 1947), Mao Lizi (b. 1950), Chen Yansheng and Ai Weiwei (b. 1957). e
94 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
exhibition was staged outdoors in public space to the east of the National Art Museum in Beijing on 27 and 28 September 1979, with the title Exhibition of the Stars. Works exhibited, many of which were hung on street-side railings adjacent to the National Art Museum, included paintings, prints and wooden sculptures, often produced in a distinctly amateurish manner at odds with the accepted conventions of Maoist socialist realism. There has been a suggestion that the decision to mount an unofficial outdoor exhibition may have been influenced by performance installations staged outdoors in Beijing and surrounding areas in the late summer or early autumn of 1979 by the Hong Kong-based artist Kwok Mang-ho (b. 1947) titled Plastic Bag Happenings in China. Kwok staged his Plastic Bag Happenings in China following an invitation to participate in an exhibition at the Central Art and Craft Institute in Beijing (illus. 33). Kwok’s happenings featured plastic bags which the artist inflated and strung up in various locations in and around Beijing, including the Great Wall, the Summer Palace and Tiananmen Square. Kwok’s series of happenings attracted the attention of local artists in Beijing, including Huang Rui, who reportedly witnessed some of them firsthand.15 A more likely precedent for the unofficial exhibition, however, is the staging of semi-official and unofficial outdoor exhibitions in the prc prior to the Exhibition of the Stars. ese include the exhibition of the work of the Oil Painting Research Association at Zhongshan Park in Beijing in February 1979, as well as unofficial showings of artworks at the Democracy Wall. One source states that a minor member of the Stars, Yin Guangzhong (b. 1942), organized an exhibition of artworks titled Exhibition of Five Guizhou Youths at the Democracy Wall prior to the unofficial Exhibition of the Stars.16 In addition, the French post-Fluxus group member Julian Blaine reputedly collaborated with members of the Stars in Beijing between 1979 and 1980, with the assistance of the French diplomat Emmanuel Bellefroid. However, the impact of this collaboration on the Stars has yet to be fully ascertained. is unofficial outdoor exhibition attracted considerable public attention and was closed down on the orders of the Dongcheng Public Security Bureau on the morning of 29 September, after only two days. An account written by Chinese Democracy Movement activists Xu Wenli (b. 1943), Liu Qing (b. 1948) and others, titled ‘A Letter to the People’, was posted publicly at various sites around Beijing in October 1979. It claimed that the Dongcheng Public Security Bureau mobilized ‘nearly one hundred policemen’ who ‘seized all of the exhibited works [by the Stars] left in the care of the National Gallery’. e
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
95 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
letter also claimed that in addition to the police, there was a ‘group of unidentified people who gathered together in an organized way to cause a commotion and to harass and abuse the exhibition’s personnel’, and that this unidentified group ‘made trouble with foreign reporters for no reason’.17 Immediately following the closure of the Stars’s outdoor exhibition, Ma and Huang were taken to a local police station where government officials explained the reasons for their decision. First, as organizers of the exhibition, Ma and Huang had not received legally required permission from municipal and national artists’ associations, the Public Security Bureau and the Cultural Branch of the Beijing Municipal Government; second, the event broke newly issued restrictions on unofficial public displays known as the ‘Six Announcements’; and third, growing interest in the exhibition posed a serious threat to public order (a significant concern to the authorities in Beijing at the time because of continuing public unrest associated with the prc’s Democracy Movement). On the same day, Huang turned to his friends Bei Dao (b. 1949) and Mang Ke (b. 1951), the founding editors of the literary magazine Jintian
33 Kwok Mang-ho, Plastic Bag Happenings in China – Tiananmen Square, 1979, performance in various locations across Beijing, plastic bags, string.
96 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
(Today), for advice on what action might be taken in protest to the closure of the outdoor exhibition. As a result, the Stars became a focus of interest for Liu Qing and Xu Wenli, founders of the underground samizdat-style political magazine April 5th Forum (the title of which refers to public protests in Tiananmen Square following the death of China’s long-serving Premier Zhou Enlai on 5 April 1976). Liu and Xu viewed the decision of the Dongcheng Security Bureau to close down the exhibition as unconstitutional and were concerned that jurisdiction over public exhibitions of art might begin to shift dangerously away from recognized government bodies to the police. In light of these concerns, Liu and Xu encouraged the Stars to demand a public apology from the Bureau with a deadline of 9 a.m. on 1 August. In response, Ma and Huang posted two copies of a letter of public protest, one at the Democracy Wall on Xidan Street and another at the site of the outdoor exhibition, next to the National Art Museum. According to Xu and Liu’s ‘A Letter to the People’, Ma and Huang’s letter of public protest called on the Beijing Municipal Government to ‘redress’ the Dongcheng Bureau’s ‘mistaken behaviour’.18 Ma and Huang’s letter was also taken by hand to the Confidential Communications Office of the Beijing Municipal Committee. The following day, the police responded by posting their own public notices at the site of the exhibition, stating that it had been taken down solely in order to safeguard public order. Soon after the closure of their outdoor exhibition, members of the Stars were invited to attend a meeting at the National Art Museum by Liu Xun (b. 1923), head of the Beijing Municipal Artists Association. Liu, who had been imprisoned for ten years as a result of his denunciation as a ‘rightist’ in 1957 (and who almost certainly sympathized with the stand taken by the Stars), announced to the Stars that their exhibition would be restaged officially in mid-October 1979 at the Huafang Studio in Beihai Park, just north of the Forbidden City in Beijing. In response, some members of the Stars moved their work from the National Gallery, where it had been kept under protection on the instructions of Liu Xun, to the Huafang Studio in preparation for their forthcoming exhibition there. Despite Liu’s conciliatory offer, and as there was no response to Ma and Huang’s open letter from the Beijing Municipal Committee, eight of the Stars took part in a public protest against the closure of their exhibition.19 (According to one source, immediately after the closure of the unofficial exhibition on 28 September only three of the participating artists wanted to
97 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
join the protest, but by the following day this number had grown to eight.20) e protest, which had been jointly organized by Huang Rui, Bei Dao, Mang Ke, Liu Qing and Xu Wenli, began at 9.15 a.m. on 1 October with speeches at the site of the Democracy Wall in Xidan recounting the aims of the Stars and their grievances against the Dongcheng Bureau (illus. 34). ese speeches were then followed by a partially rain-sodden march through the streets of Beijing to the offices of the Beijing Municipal Committee. During the march (which attracted the attention of foreign journalists gathered to report on the prc’s National Day celebrations in Beijing the same day), somewhere between 700 and 1,000 participants took to the streets of Beijing preceded by the carrying of red banners emblazoned with the slogans ‘March to Uphold the Constitution’ and ‘Political Democracy – Artistic Freedom!’21 (the latter having been inscribed somewhat cautiously on the back of the banners so as to avoid any undue confrontation with the Beijing authorities). At Liubukuo, the protesters encountered a police picket line that prevented them from marching further along Chang’an Avenue. Published accounts of what happened next differ. According to one account, the appearance of the police caused all but a very few of the protesters to disperse into Beijing’s side streets.22 However, Xu and Liu’s ‘A Letter to the People’ states that the protesters were simply diverted and carried on in an orderly fashion to their destination.23 Both Xu and Liu were later arrested and imprisoned for three years as a consequence of their continuing involvement in the Democracy Movement.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
34 Speeches at the Beginning of the Stars Group Protest March, 1 October 1979.
98 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
By contrast, none of Stars who took part in the protest were detained or imprisoned by the authorities.24 Following their public protest, the Stars were allowed to restage their first exhibition at the Huafang Studio in Beihai Park, not in mid-October as initially promised, but instead from 23 November to 2 December. The exhibition reportedly attracted over 200,000 visitors.25 In the summer of 1980, the Stars Painters’ Association was formally recognized by the Chinese authorities, although it could not register officially because of its continued standing as an autonomous group. With the support of another one-time ‘rightist’, Jiang Feng, chairman of the Chinese Artists Association, the group was eventually allowed to stage a second official exhibition of its work at the National Gallery in Beijing titled Exhibition of the Stars between 24 and 30 August 1980. is exhibition, the first by an independent art group to be held in a major state-run institution in the prc since 1949, reportedly attracted an audience of 80,000–200,000, and significantly polarized public and critical opinion. e exhibition was originally scheduled to run for three weeks, but was extended for a further two because of extraordinary public interest. The Stars were subsequently refused permission to mount any further exhibitions of their work because of the onset of the campaign against ‘bourgeois liberalism’ in 1981. Over the course of the next few years, most members of the Stars and others on the periphery of the group left to pursue their artistic and literary ambitions outside the prc, including Yan Li and Ai Weiwei, both of whom moved to New York City, and Wang Keping, who moved to Paris. In light of the public protest surrounding their first unofficial outdoor exhibition, many commentators have characterized the Stars as politically motivated artists who deliberately sought to challenge the authority of the ccp by openly transgressing established ideological limits on the production and public display of art in the prc.26 What is more, many of those same commentators have further characterized the supposedly transgressive actions of the Stars as a definitive starting point for the progressive liberalization of the visual arts within the prc, running alongside the social and economic reforms initiated by the adoption of Deng’s policy of Opening and Reform.27 ese views have been further bolstered by assertions that the seemingly radical anti-authoritarian stance taken by the Stars was strongly influenced by the active participation of many of its members in the events of the Cultural Revolution.28 ere are, however, significant grounds for qualifying these views. While it should not be denied that the actions of the Stars deviated strongly from
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
99 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
established cultural orthodoxy within the prc, and that the group ran a significant risk of punishment by state bodies as a result of its actions within a climate of continuing political uncertainty, it is by no means clear that the long-standing ideological restrictions on individual freedom of expression that the Stars are supposed to have transgressed were, in fact, still unequivocally in place at the end of 1979. Although Deng’s policy of Opening and Reform makes no specific provision for the production and display of visual art outside the socialist-realist discourses established by Mao during the 1940s, it does call explicitly for the opening up of space for social and economic activity away from the previously all-pervasive ideological purview of the ccp. It also calls for the rehabilitation of free-thinking intellectuals and experts as a necessary catalyst of social and political reform – a significant inversion of the prc’s social hierarchy under Mao, which placed the interests of workers, soldiers and peasants above those of the bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. Moreover, before their first unofficial exhibition, members of the Stars were already immersed in an existing climate of cultural liberalization and protest associated with the Beijing Spring and the Democracy Wall Movement. e decision to mount their work on railings close to the National Art Museum in Beijing was almost certainly influenced by similar displays at the Democracy Wall during the Beijing Spring.29 In addition, almost all the Stars enjoyed a relatively privileged and politically informed social standing as children of intellectuals, army officers and high-ranking government cadres (ganbu) – full-time public officials responsible for managing the implementation of an aspect of Party or government policy. is relatively privileged standing gave the Stars direct access to (and a degree of indirect influence over) official circles involved in the making and showing of art in the prc. It had also disqualified almost all of the group’s members from direct participation in revolutionary activities during the Cultural Revolution. e only core member of the Stars known to have been a Red Guard is Wang Keping. Without the combination of a major shift in government policy, prior public displays of non-governmental resistance to political authority, and their relatively privileged social status, it seems unlikely that the Stars would have been in a position to depart in such a public manner as they did from established political conventions surrounding the making and showing of art in the prc. e actions of the Stars are, therefore (alongside those of progressive official and semi-official art groups within the prc at that time), open to interpretation, not as a formative breaking with established convention but as a performative
35 Wang Keping, Idol, 1979, wooden sculpture.
100 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
36 Wang Keping, Silence, 1978, wooden sculpture.
manifestation of attitudes and practices already prefigured (if not explicitly legitimized) as part of the prc’s newly emerging discursive landscape after the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, given that the initial aim of the Stars was to stage an exhibition of their work in the prestigious National Art Museum of China, it is possible to interpret the actions of the group as a calculated bid for acceptance by the state within an emerging context of reform. It is also possible to go further in this regard by drawing attention to connections between the work of the Stars and earlier instances of art-making in China. As a number of commentators have indicated, while many of the artworks included in the Stars’s exhibitions were formalist in approach, others can be interpreted as allegorical criticisms of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Among these latter works are wooden sculptures by Wang Keping, including Idol, Long, Long Life!, Breathing and Silence,30 as well as paintings and prints by Yan Li, Ma Desheng, Huang Rui and Qu Leilei (illus. 35, 36, 37). This reading is supported by a conversation with the critic Li Xianting published in
101 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
the journal Meishu in 1980, in which Wang Keping, Ma Desheng, Huang Rui and Qu Leilei seek to present their work collectively as a critical response to the events of the Cultural Revolution and the actions of the Gang of Four.31 In the same published conversation, Wang, Ma, Huang and Qu also acknowledge the influence of early twentieth-century Western and Chinese modernists on their work, including Pablo Picasso, Käthe Kollwitz and members of the Chinese modern Woodcut Movement. It is, therefore, possible to interpret works exhibited by the Stars not simply as a progressive departure from established convention but also as a revisiting of prior examples of artistic unorthodoxy (illus. 38, 39). As previously indicated, most of the Stars enjoyed a relatively privileged social standing. In addition to giving them access to official circles, this privileged
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
37 Yan Li, Home, 1979, oil on canvas, dimensions unknown.
102 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
38 Huang Rui, Outside the Gate, 1981, oil on canvas, 90 × 760 cm. 39 Huang Rui, Seamstresses in a Street Production Unit, 1980, oil on canvas, 139 × 120 cm.
standing exposed at least some of the Stars to attitudes and practices associated with China’s long-standing scholar-gentry traditions as part of their early education. ese traditions upheld the value of a subjective, spontaneous and somewhat amateurish approach toward the making of art.32 Their largely autodidact challenge to established artistic convention at the end of the 1970s can thus be understood to stem from a desire not just for modernizing social progress, but also to achieve that progress (in part at least) through a return to cultural values associated with China’s historically free-thinking scholar-gentry/ literati culture. It is important to note that the Stars had no clearly stated political agenda outside a general resistance to restrictions on freedom of personal expression and
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
104 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
an associated critique of the Cultural Revolution, both of which were (in principle) supported by Deng’s reforms. Their reluctance to adopt an explicitly stated political position and, consequently, to make artworks with unambiguously anti-governmental political content is an understandable response to the persistence of tight governmental restrictions on freedom of speech still in place in the prc at the end of the 1970s. However, their aversion to any sort of formal artistic training (and the decision of most of the group not to take part in the protest march following the closure of their first unofficial exhibition) can also be interpreted as a way of resisting any continuing entanglement with the restrictive effects of the immanent politicization of life in the prc under communism. is position is redolent of the Chinese scholar-gentry’s historical use of withdrawal from politics as a sign of individualistic dissent. During the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, the ccp’s emerging policy of Opening and Reform can thus be understood to have accommodated official, semi-official and unofficial departures from the established conventions of Maoist socialist realism. However, given the clandestine persistence of modernist-formalist, allegorical-critical and traditional approaches to art-making throughout the Maoist period, those departures should not be interpreted as an abrupt historical breaking with the past. Instead, they are perhaps better viewed as a politically mediated moment of redefinition and disclosure in which pre-existing artistic tendencies (hitherto seen as beyond the ideological pale) were allowed to enter into full public view, albeit against the background of continuing governmental controls on anti-authoritarian thought and action. In response to repeated and increasingly strident challenges to its authority, in late 1979 the ccp initiated a series of political campaigns aimed at suppressing public criticism of its policies. As a result of these campaigns (which included a government crackdown on the Democracy Movement and the Democracy Wall from March to December 1979; the campaign against bourgeois liberalism of 1981; and the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign of October 1983 to February 1984) all unofficial public activities between 1981 and 1984 within the prc were, in principle at least, suspended. is included those associated with the production and exhibiting of art. The Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign (launched by the Propaganda Department of the ccp as a way of resisting ‘bourgeois imports’ that threatened to undermine the established values of Chinese socialism) resulted in the suspension of any exhibitions of Western art, as well as the cancellation and denunciation of a number of
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
105 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
indigenous art exhibitions, including the Experimental Painting Exhibition: e Stage 1983, due to be staged in Shanghai in 1983. e campaign also precipitated the emigration of numerous artists (including, as previously indicated, many of the Stars) whose liberal attitudes were very much at odds with the prevailing ideological climate in the prc. Towards the end of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, conservative elements of the ccp sought to reinforce the Party’s return to orthodoxy by supporting the staging of the Sixth National Fine Art Exhibition in Beijing in 1984. This exhibition (which reasserted the Maoist doctrine of art in the service of politics) was widely denounced by young artists in Beijing, who rallied behind the staging of the Progressive Young Chinese Artists Exhibition at the National Art Museum early in the following year. Included in the Progressive Young Chinese Artists Exhibition were a number of artworks that adhered to aspects of officially supported academic realism while also openly embracing influences from Western modernist art. Among these was the painting In the New Era: Enlightenment of Adam and Eve (1985) by Meng Luding (b. 1962) and Zhang Qun (b. 1960), which is clearly indebted to the later religious paintings of Salvador Dalí (illus. 40). Away from the tight political restrictions of Beijing, resistance to the limits imposed on artistic production by the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign was both earlier and more obviously confrontational. In May 1983, five artists (who would later go on to form the core of the avant-garde group Xiamen Dada), Huang Yongping, Jiao Yaoming (b. 1957), Xu Chengdou (d. 1999), Yu Xiaogang (b. 1958) and Lin Jiahua (b. 1953), attempted to stage an exhibition at the Xiamen People’s Art Centre, titled A Modern Art Exhibition of Five Artists. This exhibition, which included a range of readymade and conceptual artworks as well as more conventional forms of painting, was hung on 9 May, but as a result of objections from the work unit (danwei) involved in its staging was not opened to the public. Among the artworks included in the exhibition was a painting by Huang titled Haystack, which reprised a painting made by one of Huang’s teachers at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in 1978, itself a reworking of Jules Bastien-Lepage’s Haymakers (Les Foins, 1877). Huang’s version involved the highly unorthodox placing of a plaster cast of a face over that of a peasant woman depicted in the painting; a move that can be interpreted as a critical commentary on the tendency of Chinese artists working within official circles at the time to copy Western art without any significant understanding of its underlying precepts and meanings.
40 Meng Luding and Zhang Qun, New Era: Enlightenment of Adam and Eve, 1985, oil on canvas, 196 × 164 cm.
Huang went on to publish comments on, and documents related to, A Modern Art Exhibition of Five Artists in the journal Meishu Sichao (Art Trends) in 1985.
106 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Avant-garde Art in the People’s Republic of China e Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign came to an abrupt end in February 1984 as a result of power struggles within the ccp that eventually led to a reassertion of progressive economic and political reform over Party orthodoxy. Almost overnight, many of the tight restrictions on the production and exhibiting of art outside the prc’s state-controlled system were curtailed. Although the ccp persisted in upholding its previously stated view of 1982 that art should continue to reflect the position of the masses, a tacit understanding was arrived at (again through the issuing of vague governmental directives rather than detailed initiatives and programmes) that the unofficial production and exhibiting of art outside the prc’s state-controlled system, including the use of non-realist styles, would be tolerated as long as those
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
107 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
activities did not undermine the integrity of the prc or the authority of the ccp. Consequently, a state of affairs developed – which still exists in the prc today – that gives considerable scope for freedom of artistic expression while upholding generalized and ultimately mobile limits on that freedom, requiring persistent self-reflection and self-discipline on the part of those making and exhibiting art in the prc. Another factor limiting artistic production in the prc during the mid1980s was the long shadow cast over Chinese society by the events of the Cultural Revolution. roughout the early years of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards had subjected individuals and groups perceived to be in opposition to Maoist ideology to violent and often protracted forms of castigation (pipan) requiring those targeted to admit their misdemeanours and criticize themselves publicly. Within the climate of humanist enthusiasm that emerged after the death of Mao, all forms of public criticism (piping) were themselves cast in a negative light, making any direct opposition to the policies of the ccp doubly difficult. In response to the qualified freedoms established after the ending of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, a new generation of artists emerged who opted to work openly outside the prc’s state-supported system of artistic production. is generation, later known as the ’85 New Wave, came together in the context of new, relatively laissez-faire governmental attitudes towards the making and showing of art; and against the background of renewed official support for the humanist enthusiasm that had first developed immediately after the ending of the Cultural Revolution. This support had persisted throughout the early 1980s, despite intervening government campaigns against freedom of expression and outside cultural and political influences. Unlike the Stars at the time of their first unofficial exhibition, this new generation was, therefore, no longer in ostensible opposition to established government policy. Within the context of a return to progressive reform, artists belonging to the ’85 New Wave were strongly empowered to develop artistic techniques and critical approaches that departed markedly from the established conventions of Maoist and post-Maoist socialist realism. is departure from cultural orthodoxy – which was widely referred to in the prc at the time as Zhongguo xiandai yishu (Chinese modern art) and which the art critics Lü Peng (b. 1956) and Yi Dan (b. 1960) interpreted as a revival of the modernizing ‘cultural revolution’ initiated by the May Fourth Movement in 191933 – was supported by an increased openness to outside cultural influences. is was mediated by a range
108 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
of established and newly founded magazines and periodicals, including Meishu zazhi (Art), Jiangsu huakan (Jiangsu Pictorial) and Zhongguo meishu bao (Fine Arts in China).34 is increased openness resulted in sporadic exhibitions of the work of modern Western artists including Pablo Picasso (May 1983), Edvard Munch (October 1983) and Balthus (1995). Artists and critics associated with the ’85 New Wave therefore had access to a slew of previously suppressed information on the development of modernist and postmodernist art outside the prc; as well as numerous translations of art-historical and theoretical texts relating to that development, including recent poststructuralist texts by, among others, Foucault and Derrida. It is important to note here, however, that information about Western art received in the prc throughout the 1980s did not arrive according to the actual sequence of its historical development. Consequently, the precise chronological ordering of modernist and postmodernist art remained almost wholly obscure. Also of crucial importance to the development of ‘modern’ art in the prc at this time were conferences and symposia that brought artists and critics together from across the prc. At the first Huangshan Symposium, held in Anhui province in April 1985, over 70 artists and critics met to discuss trends in Western and Chinese art and to call for greater freedom of artistic and critical expression within the prc. At the Zhuhai Conference of August 1986, the idea of a national exhibition of modern art was first proposed, which would eventually lead to the staging of the major retrospective exhibition China/Avant-Garde in 1989; the second Huangshan Symposium of November 1988 set out to reorient the ’85 Movement in preparation for the staging of this exhibition the following year.35 Another significant influence on the development of the ’85 New Wave was a major exhibition of work by the American artist Robert Rauschenberg at the National Art Museum in Beijing between 18 November and 5 December 1985, under the joint curatorial direction of Dr Donald Staff and Chun-Wuei Su Chien. The exhibition, which occupied the entirety of the Museum’s 2,250-square-metre first floor, was the first solo show of the work of a living modern Western artist to be held in the prc. It was part of a collaborative project between Rauschenberg and local artisans, known as the Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange project (roci China), which took place between 1985 and 1991. Work produced as a result of this collaborative project brought together traditional Chinese art- and craft-making techniques with images and found objects from everyday Chinese life. e Rauschenberg
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
109 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
exhibition attracted more than 300,000 visitors over the course of its threeweek run. While few (if any) of those who saw the exhibition would have grasped the deconstructive implications of Rauschenberg’s neo-avant-garde use of collage-montage, pastiche and appropriation with any degree of conceptual rigour – as the article ‘Beijing Theorists’ Reactions to the Art of Robert Rauschenberg’, published in the magazine Zhongguo meishu bao (Fine Arts in China), shows – the extreme unorthodoxy of his work in that context nevertheless sparked significant debate and controversy.36 Among the audience for the Rauschenberg exhibition were many artists and critics associated with the ’85 New Wave, who saw within it possibilities for the development of an indigenous modern art, involving a combination of the use of local materials, techniques and imagery with Western artistic thought and practice, outside the established conventions of Maoist and post-Maoist socialist realism. e ’85 New Wave’s departure from Maoist and post-Maoist orthodoxy took a number of forms. Among them was the continuation (albeit under the influence of modernist and postmodernist art from outside the prc) of realist approaches to image- and object-making. is continuation, which Gao Minglu has referred to under the collective title ‘Trans-realism’, encompasses a range of stylistic idioms and influences.37 Among these are paintings that present highly idealized symbolic imagery, made with direct reference to the work of Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, such as Zhang Qun and Meng Luding’s In the New Era: Revelation of Adam and Eve. When it was first shown at the International Youth Art Exhibition in Beijing in 1985, the painting generated enormous controversy because of its unusual subject-matter and depiction of nudity. However, as Gao makes clear, in spite of their ostensible stylistic similarity to works by the Surrealists, such paintings were not intended to commingle everyday reality and dream states as a means of breaking through the normal constraints of quotidian rationality in direct imitation of Surrealist thinking. Rather, they were an attempt to present idealized states of being, in support of the new revisionary era seemingly envisioned by Deng’s reforms.38 Another related form of Transrealism is that involving highly realistic depictions of young Chinese educated elites, which Gao refers to – following the visual content of a painting by Yuan Qingyi (b. 1960) titled e Spring is Coming (1985) – as ‘Apple and Book’ paintings. As well as acting as idealized symbols of the progressive revival of a scholar-gentry class in the prc, it is also possible to interpret such paintings as variations on the general themes established by ‘Melancholy Youth Painting’ and ‘Contemplative Painting’.
110 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Alongside realist idioms, there was also the redirection of conventional techniques such as oil on canvas and ink-and-brush painting towards the making of abstract artworks. Significant exponents of such works as part of the ’85 New Wave include Yu Youhan, Li Shan (b. 1946) and Chen Zhen (1955–2000), all of whom produced abstract paintings under the combined influence of Western modernist and traditional Chinese painting during the second half of the 1980s. In addition to realism and abstraction, the ’85 New Wave became a focus for the making of the prc’s first examples of conceptual, site-specific, installation, video and performance art. An early example of conceptual art in mainland China during the 1980s is an exhibition by the artist Gu Dexin at the International House in Beijing in 1986, titled Gu Dexin’s Works. In this exhibition, Gu, a self-taught artist, exhibited paintings and works on paper using a variety of styles and techniques, none of which was given a specific title. Gu also gave almost no information to contextualize the works on show or on how they should be read, stating simply: ‘Now my works are here, together with everyone. Each person will understand and experience them in their own way. And that is precisely my hope.’ is view arguably resonates with the subjectivist standpoint traditionally associated with the traditional Chinese aesthetic conception of i-ching and the related approach to the reading of artworks signified by the term wan shang (‘play appreciation’, a poetic appraisal of an artist’s work among a small group of close friends or associates). An early example of performance art in mainland China is Wei Guangqing’s (b. 1963) Suicide Project/Personal Experience of the Simulated Suicide Project Relating to ‘One’, which was staged at various locations in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province in September 1988, with the assistance of Wei’s student Ma Liuming (b. 1969) (illus. 41, 42). Suicide Project consisted of a series of performances simulating various ways of committing suicide. ese included performances in which Ma simulated a self-inflicted stabbing, and in which he lay down on a railway track wrapped in bandages. e series culminated with Wei’s simulated hanging in front of a collection of photographs of previous performances enacted as part of the project. An installation representing the project as a whole was shown at the second Huangshan Symposium on 22 November 1988. Underlying Wei’s decision to stage Suicide Project is a perceived relationship between the Daoist concept of ‘One’ (Yi, Tai yi), a state of unity preceding the division of heaven and earth; and the existentialist view, set out in Albert Camus’ e Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 1942), that suicide is the only ‘truly serious’ problem in philosophy.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
a process of constant change in the universe, the duality and interconnectedness of necessity and chance, of the rational and irrational, culture and anti-culture, but also a strategy to launch ‘attacks’ on the legitimacy of the West-centric monopoly in intellectual and everyday life.40 e implication of Hou’s reading of Huang’s work here is that non-rationalist aspects of traditional Chinese thought and practice associated with the I Ching can be understood to have presaged the conceptually uncertain outlook of Western(ized) deconstructivist postmodernism,41 thereby suspending any sense of the latter’s ascendancy over the former as part of the unfolding of modernity. Traditional Chinese thought and practice is informed by a ‘nonrationalist’ dialectical way of thinking associated with the Daoist concepts of yin and yang. e term yin-yang refers to the notion that seemingly opposing forces (for example, light and dark, male and female) are, in actuality, both interconnected and interdependent. It is, however, important to note that
111 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
e first known example of a work of video art by an artist from mainland China is 30x30 by Zhang Peili (b. 1957), which was filmed in 1988 and first shown at the second Huangshan Symposium on 22 November 1988 (illus. 43). Zhang borrowed a Betamax camera from the Hangzhou Customs Bureau to make the film which is, in effect, a record of a performance by the artist involving the repeated smashing and sticking-back-together of a mirror measuring 30 × 30 cm. In light of more recent statements by the artist, it is possible to interpret this work as an allegory of the persistent possibility of disorder in relation to hubristic human attempts to organize society and to control nature.39 As the artworks discussed above indicate, much of the work produced by the ’85 New Wave was strongly informed by a desire to combine techniques and attitudes appropriated from modernist and postmodernist art with aspects of traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice. Further examples of this tendency include conceptual works produced by the artist Huang Yongping, such as Non-Expressive Painting (1985), Big Roulette (1987) and Small Portable Roulette (1987), which combine avant-garde collage-montage and automatist techniques with traditional Chinese divinatory practices associated with the I Ching, following similar combinatory techniques developed by John Cage (illus. 44). As the curator Hou Hanru indicates, these and similar works by Huang not only suggest
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
41 Wei Guangqing, Suicide Project/Personal Experience of the Simulated Suicide Project Relating to ‘One’, 1988, performance, various locations across the PRC.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
42 Wei Guangqing, documents relating to the performance Suicide Project.
43 Zhang Peili 30 x 30, 1988, video.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
44 Huang Yongping, Big Roulette, 1987, mixed media construction, dimensions variable.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
115 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
the similarly non-rationalist view of dialectic thinking associated with the Derridean term différance looks towards a persistently disjunctive deferral of absolute meaning, while yin-yang is conventionally understood within a Chinese cultural context to support the possibility of reciprocation between opposites. Huang’s thinking on the relationship between Western Dada and traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice is set out in two related essays: ‘Xiamen Dada – A Kind of Postmodernism?’, which was first published in Zhongguo meishu bao in 1986, and ‘A Completely Empty Signifier’, which was first published in Meishu zazhi in 1989.42 e essays are significant in this regard because they make a case for the continued relevance of attitudes associated with Western Dada within the context of the indigenous Chinese art world of the 1980s. In ‘Xiamen Dada – A Kind of Postmodernism?’ Huang makes five related assertions: first, that modern art produced and exhibited in China between 1983 and 1986 ‘was obviously very “Dada”’ because it had ‘turned the art establishment upside down and contributed to the emergence of a new generation’; second, that ‘the time to promote the Dada spirit explicitly in China’ had therefore ‘arrived’; third, that the strain of artistic postmodernism exemplified by Western Dada can be seen to correspond in detail with aspects of traditional Chinese thinking and practice associated with Daoist influenced Chan Buddhism – such as the classical Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi’s (c. fourth century bce) notion of ‘the ubiquity of the Dao’ (and a related Daoist belief in the ‘equality, sameness, and coexistence of everything’); fourth, that works by Western postmodernist artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Joseph Beuys therefore ‘embody the essence of Eastern thought – that is, greatness and vastness, nonattachment, and following nature’s lead’; and fifth, that Dada can thus be interpreted as a modern ‘renaissance’ of Chan Buddhism insofar as both uphold ‘the impossible reality of reality, as well as extreme doubt and disbelief’. Although he does not say so explicitly in this essay, by making these assertions Huang can be interpreted as having put forward what is effectively a deconstructive view of the historical relationship between Western avant-garde art and that of China by undermining the supposedly originary status of the former. He complicates this situation still further by arguing that, while close in spirit, art and Chan are not equitable with one another, and neither Dada nor Chan Buddhism have any fixed historical standing but are constantly open to reinterpretation within differing historical contexts. Indeed, Huang gives further credence to such a reading by stating explicitly that:
116 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Everything that hasn’t yet appeared will certainly disembark one day – it’s just a matter of time before everything comes to China – which will bring about a more complete confusion . . . in the art world, everything is permitted, but this freedom and this permission are not worth anything in themselves, because having freedom, and even the greatest extent of permission, also means that untruthfulness exists . . . erefore, one of the main characteristics of a new kind of artwork, artist and public is the blurring of boundaries. In his essay ‘A Completely Empty Signifier’, Huang then goes on to bolster the arguments set out in ‘Xiamen Dada – A Kind of Postmodernism?’ by arguing that signifying practices associated with Dada and Chan Buddhism can be interpreted through the use of structuralist theory as revealing the inherent emptiness of linguistic signification. Both leave the meaning of linguistic signs open to the meditations of the reader, an argument which Huang illustrates by referring to a passage from volume one of the Buddhist classic the Compendium of Five Lamps, in which Buddha holds up a flower as a sign to a group of his followers, saying ‘I have the eye of the true law, the secret essence of Nirvana, the formless form and the ineffable Dharma which is not dependent on speech or words; a special transmission beyond all the other teachings.’ As the art historian David Clarke has indicated, this desire to bring together outside cultural influences with indigenous Chinese cultural thinking and practice (which was also a salient feature of modern art produced in China during the early twentieth century43) can be seen as a reaction to the ‘seeming unavoidability of the inherited visual tradition in China and the difficulty of simply denying or discarding [that tradition] to achieve modernity without risking some kind of felt deracination’ as well as ‘the difficulty of simply continuing to produce the kind of art that had been made in quite different pre-modern cultural circumstances’.44 It is, therefore, possible to view the work of the ’85 New Wave – and the work of subsequent generations of contemporary Chinese artists who have built on that work – not simply as variations on pre-existing Western models, but as simultaneously modernizing and culturally resistant assemblages of Western and Chinese influences. It is also important to note that the combining of Western and Chinese cultural influences by the artists of the ’85 New Wave is, as has been previously indicated here, part of an extended history of active cultural interaction and exchange between the West and China that can be traced back at least as far as
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
117 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
the sixteenth century. is history encompasses the assimilation and translation of Western cultural influences by China (such as oil painting and geometric perspective) prior to the twentieth century; European and North American modernism during the early twentieth century (as amply demonstrated by the pre-war architecture of Shanghai); and Soviet socialist realism during the Maoist period. It also includes the assimilation and translation of Chinese cultural influences by the West, including those informing the development of Chinoiserie in Europe during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the activities of the historical and neo-avant-gardes during the early to midtwentieth century (for example, automatist techniques adopted by European Dadaists and Surrealists).45 In light of this, it becomes possible to view contemporary Chinese art as part of a genealogy of multidirectional cultural recontextualizations and re-motivations that effectively deconstruct the notion that there is any sort of categorical distinction between the visual culture of China and that of the West; and what is more, the view that contemporary Chinese art is simply a belated extension of Western modernism/postmodernism. In addition to the appropriation of images, techniques and attitudes associated with Western modernism and postmodernism and the reworking of traditional Chinese modes of art-making, the ’85 New Wave is also notable for its critical reworking of official imagery drawn from the time of the Cultural Revolution. Among the most notable exponents of this reworking are the artists Wang Guangyi, Yu Youhan and Wu Shanzhuan (b. 1960). In different ways, during the 1980s they sought to intervene in the authority of official modes of visual communication used during the Cultural Revolution by bringing them together with images and techniques culled from Western art and capitalist society, running counter to the direction of Maoist thought. This move also had the effect of intervening in the authority of the Western elements incorporated into the work. Consider, for example, Wu’s performance-installation Red Humour No. 1: is Afternoon No Water (1986), which comprised dazibao-like assemblages accompanied by a megaphone-assisted declamation similar to those made by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution (illus. 45). Wu staged the first public performance of this work (the first in a series of similar performance installations known as the Red Humour Series) in Hangzhou in 1986. At the time, Wu was part of the group Red Humour (Hongse youmo), which he co-founded in Hangzhou in February 1986. e group consisted mainly of graduates from the education department of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine
118 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Arts. Its principal members also included Ni Haifeng (b. 1964), Zhang Haizhou (b. 1959), Lü Haizhou, Luo Xianyue (b. 1960), Song Chenghua and Huang Jian (b. 1961). Red Humour’s work is characterized by the use of humour and irony as means of derailing the intended significance of actions, images and texts. Wu’s This Afternoon No Water brings together individual words, phrases and sentences taken from a wide variety of sources (including advertising campaigns, news broadcasts, colloquial sayings, and philosophical and religious texts) with forms of public expression used by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. e resulting assemblage dislocates the words, phrases and sentences from their intended meanings, thereby bringing the ‘pure model’ of cultural production and communication upheld during the Cultural Revolution sharply into question. It is, therefore, possible to differentiate the work of the ’85 New Wave and that of subsequent generations of contemporary Chinese artists not only from official socialist-realist art produced within the prc after 1949, but also from two official/semi-official genres of contemporary Chinese art which, from the late 1970s onwards, have occupied an important position within the prc’s cultural mainstream. ese are modern variations on traditional Chinese shanshui ink-and-brush painting often still referred to under the durable title of guo hua (national painting), which have enjoyed a significant revival in the postMao period; and institutionally acceptable forms of formalist realism and abstraction sometimes referred to (somewhat confusingly) in English as ‘Chinese Modern Art’.46 While artists who produce work associated with these genres have almost invariably been influenced by aspects of Western visual art, that influence has been limited almost entirely (in the case of guo hua and institutionally acceptable forms of abstraction) to a perceived affinity between the explicit brushwork of Western expressionism/Abstract Expressionism and that of traditional Chinese painting; and (in the case of institutionally acceptable forms of realism) to the persistence within Chinese art schools of academic (socialist-realist) teaching methods imported from the Soviet Union during the 1950s. As such, both can be seen to diverge strongly from the more critical tendencies exhibited by contemporary Chinese art through their adherence to a rather less challenging formalist aestheticism. To complicate matters, since the turn of the new millennium a new category of present-day Chinese art known as ‘New Ink Painting’ has been identified, which encompasses works understood to belong to that of a critical contemporary Chinese art but which draw heavily on traditional Chinese painting methods. This latter category
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
119 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
reflects in part an increasingly exceptionalist positioning among some Chinese artists in resistance to Western(ized) cultural influences. A significant manifestation of this arguably exceptionalist stance is the recent exhibition Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York between 11 December 2013 and 6 April 2014. is exhibition included stylistically diverse works by artists such as Xu Bing, Gu Wenda and Yang Jiechang presented as a contemporary continuation of traditional Chinese artistic ink-and brush-techniques. Another prominent feature of the development of ‘modern’ art within the prc during the late 1970s and 1980s is the coalescing of artists into groups and associations. From the inception of contemporary Chinese art (in the two years immediately following the confirmation of Deng Xiaoping’s programme of economic and social reforms in December 1978) through to the conservative crackdown that took place in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 4 June 1989, perhaps as many as 100 of these groups and associations were formed throughout the prc.47 While some had clearly defined organizational
45 Wu Shanzhuan, Red Humour No. 1: This Afternoon No Water, 1986, installation and performance, dimensions variable.
120 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
structures and collectively agreed aims, some came together rather more loosely, perhaps only for a single meeting or exhibition, while some existed in name only. As Gao Minglu has indicated, groups and associations of this sort fulfilled an important role. As well as being forums within which artists could share ideas and stimulate one another’s creative ambitions (at a time when the possibilities and parameters of unofficial art-making in China had yet to be established), they were also protective cells, shielding artists wedded to the pursuit of individual creativity from the normative expectations of a society that, at the time, remained strongly under the collectivising influence of Maoist thought.48 As such, these groups can be understood to have occupied a position similar to that ascribed to Western avant-garde groups and movements insofar as they served as a locus for the collective envisioning of forward-looking cultural change. Indeed, within the prc the adjectives xiandai and dangdai, used as part of the terms Zhongguo xiandai yishu and Zhongguo dangdai yishu, are widely seen as synonymous with the term qianwei which, as Martina Köppel-Yang points out, signifies a state of merging with (and semiotically opposing) established social, political and cultural norms (broadly commensurate with the meaning of the English-language usage of the term ‘avant-garde’).49 It would, however, be a mistake to align art groups active in the prc during the late 1980s directly with a Westernized understanding of the term ‘avant-garde’. Western historical avant-gardes are widely acknowledged to have sought a blurring of the boundary between art and life as a way to bring about a critical reworking of the latter along the more playful lines of the former.50 However, this is by no means straightforwardly the case in relation to the work of qianwei art groups active in the prc during the 1980s. It is important to acknowledge that the emergence of qianwei art within the prc during the late 1980s involved the necessary reconstruction of a relatively autonomous sphere of artistic self-expression as a move away from the Party-dominated (and distinctly non-autonomous) socialist realism and street propaganda of the Maoist period. Consequently, while the term qianwei signifies an oppositional stance towards established convention broadly consonant with that of the Western historical avant-gardes, the general trajectory of ‘avant-garde’ art within the prc after 1979 can be seen to run, as the philosopher Zhenming Zhai (b. 1957) has argued, more or less contrary to the Western historical avant-gardes’ desire to negate artistic autonomy as part of a critical sublation of art within everyday social praxis.51 What is more, as has already been shown,
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
121 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
in seeking to rebuild a relatively autonomous aesthetic sphere after the ravages of the Maoist period, many of those involved in the activities of ‘avant-garde’ art groups within the prc during the late 1980s were actively involved in revisiting and reworking aspects of traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice. It is, therefore, necessary to make a distinction between qianwei forms of art within the prc and the Western historical avant-gardes. The former can be understood to go against the grain of the latter’s intentions by actively seeking to reinstate autonomous cultural practice and tradition as part of its opposition to established social, political and cultural norms. at said, it would also be a mistake to assume that ‘avant-garde’ art produced within the prc during the 1980s was entirely successful in setting itself apart from the established interests and control of the state. In spite of the progressive liberalization of many aspects of Chinese culture and society after 1979 (including the effective freeing of artists from any direct responsibility to serve the interests of the masses and the revolutionary aims of the ccp), artists within the prc during the late 1970s and 1980s were still subject to significant restrictions with regard to open public criticism of the ccp, as well as anything that might be perceived to threaten the integrity of the Chinese nation state. Consequently, while ‘avant-garde’ art groups occupied a position of relative freedom from government intervention, they and their members were nevertheless strongly discouraged from using their art as a platform for anti-authoritarian criticism by the constant threat of state violence. During the 1980s, ‘avant-garde’ art groups within the prc were also subject to the limiting effects of the ccp’s chosen way of doing governmental business after the death of Mao. Following the ending of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1984, this tended strongly (as previously described) towards the handing down of vague rather than explicit directives on individual and collective behaviour. While this made space for greater social freedoms, at the same time it instilled a pervasively controlling (panoptical) sense of self-surveillance and selfdiscipline throughout Chinese society with respect to imprecise boundaries of social acceptability. Moreover, while ‘avant-garde’ art in the prc during the latter half of the 1980s most certainly did act as a focus for cultural critique (similar to that launched by the May Fourth and New Culture movements of the early twentieth century), its part in the opening up of a relatively autonomous cultural sphere after the ending of the Cultural Revolution can also be seen to correspond to the clearing of ‘depoliticized’ space for entrepreneurial activity associated with Deng’s programme of modernizing social and economic reforms.
122 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
To this extent, ‘avant-garde’ art produced within the prc during the late 1980s made itself very much party to the political/ideological aims of the ccp. Indeed, many of those (though by no means all) involved in the ’85 New Wave saw themselves as part of a cultural movement (yundong) whose humanistinfluenced pursuit of freedom of expression was entirely congruent with the progressive aims of the ccp under Deng’s leadership.52 Furthermore, while the ’85 New Wave was a largely unofficial self-actuating movement, there was nevertheless significant mediation between some of its leading members and official circles – a situation that blurs any absolute distinction between the official and the unofficial in relation to the activities of the ’85 New Wave. As a consequence, much of the ’85 New Wave’s criticism of the ccp was aimed not at current political events but at those of the Cultural Revolution. It is therefore possible to view the ’85 New Wave not only as a movement of delayed action in relation to its revival of the humanist attitudes of China’s modernizing cultural movements of the early twentieth century but also as a focus for retroactive rather than immanent political critique within acceptable reform era ideological bounds. at said, it would also be wrong to assume that all artists involved in the production of ‘avant-garde’ art within the prc during the late 1970s and ’80s were in full support of the outcomes of Deng’s programme of Opening and Reform. Consider here, for example, statements made by the artist Yu Youhan who, along with Wang Guangyi, was one of the initiators of the Chinese art movement known as ‘Political Pop’ (illus. 46). Yu discusses his intentions in making a series of paintings incorporating images of Mao Zedong at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s as follows: When I painted the Mao series, though I cherished the Maoist period, I also held more reflective and critical feelings about that period too. So, some paintings, which may appear to be a form of bohemian realist art, didn’t express optimistic feelings at all. Instead, they were trying to reveal feelings about the betrayal of socialism. I think the Mao series of Pop paintings should belong to the history of China’s folk or historical paintings. In these paintings, the background colours are very bright. But, if you look carefully, there are unstable elements in the background suggesting that disaster may take place at any time. As for my feelings towards Mao, though I no longer admire him as I used
123 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
to during the Cultural Revolution, I don’t think we should deny him totally. And I don’t think Western propaganda about Mao is right either. I think every leader would like to lead their country toward a better future.53 As numerous commentators, including Köppel-Yang,54 have suggested, it is possible to view the appropriation of images of Mao as part of the making of Political Pop as a covertly counter-authoritarian (if critically retrospective) gesture. Nevertheless, as the statement above shows, Yu’s own intentions in doing so would appear to be far less than straightforward. It is, therefore, necessary to view the grand political vision espoused by leading members of the ’85 New Wave in support of economic and social reform as one coexisting with rather more complex and individualistic political positioning. ‘Avant-garde’ art produced within the prc during the 1970s and 1980s can, therefore, be understood to have occupied a highly indeterminate position
46 Yu Youhan, The World is Yours, 1994–5, acrylic on canvas, 158 × 117 cm.
124 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
in relation to the prevailing sociopolitical/economic mainstream. It can be seen to have shuttled continually (like Western(ized) postmodernist art but under somewhat different sociopolitical and economic circumstances) between resistance to, and complicity with, established authority. It is, therefore, necessary to qualify perceptions of the use of ‘avant-garde’ tactics within the prc insofar as qianwei art produced within the prc can be seen not only to upend the negative anti-autonomous tendencies of the Western historical avant-gardes, but also to share in postmodernism’s somewhat indeterminate positioning in relation to established authority. Significant ‘avant-garde’ groups formed as part of the ’85 New Wave include Red Humour, Xiamen Dada (Xiamen Dada), the Northern Art Group (Beifang yishu qunti), the Pond Association (Chi she), the Southern Artists Salon (Nanfang yishujia shalong), the M Group (M Yishuti), the Red Brigade (Honse Lü) and the New Analyst Group (Xin jiexi xiaozu). Among the first of these groups to come together was Xiamen Dada, whose core members, Huang Yongping, Jiao Yaoming, Xu Chengdou, Yu Xiaogang and Lin Jiahua, staged A Modern Art Exhibition of Five Artists at the Cultural Palace in the city of Xiamen in 1983. Over the next three years, the group came increasingly under the leadership of Huang Yongping, who began to explore the relationship between Western Dada and Chinese (principally Daoist and Chan Buddhist) cultural influences as part of his artistic practice. In 1986, members of the group staged two further exhibitions under the collective name of Xiamen Dada: one titled the Xiamen Dada Modern Art Exhibition, which took place at the Cultural Palace in the City of Xiamen between 28 September and 5 October 1986; and another known as Events, which opened in December 1986 at the Fujian Fine Art Museum in Fujian province (illus. 47, 48). On 23 November 1986, following the ending of the first of these exhibitions, seven artists under the leadership of Huang Yongping took part in an action known as the Burning Event in Wenhua Gong Square next to the Cultural Palace in the city of Xiamen. ey publicly incinerated 60 artworks included in the Xiamen Dada Modern Art Exhibition, accompanied by slogans daubed on the ground around the fire, among them the statement ‘Dada is Dead!’ (illus. 49) A declaration written to accompany the Burning Event, titled ‘Statement on Burning’, is somewhat elliptical in tone.55 Nevertheless, it can be interpreted as upholding a resolutely non-desiring stance towards art, which, it suggests, can be arrived at through a calculated act of negation involving the destruction
125 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
of artworks and the consequent extinguishing of desire. The final passage of the statement asserts:
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Artworks are to artists what opium is for men. Not until art is destroyed will life be peaceful. Dada is dead! Beware of Fire!56 As Yu Xiaogang makes clear, the Burning Event is, therefore, open to interpretation as having been influenced not just by a Western Dadaist intention to negate art through the production of a work of anti-art, but also (and perhaps more importantly given the immediate cultural context within which the event took place) by a Buddhist belief in nirvana as the extinguishing of all desire and of individualism, and as a sign of the ultimate emptiness of all things.57 It is also possible to read intentional or unconscious allusions to the AngloChinese Opium Wars (1839–42 and 1856–60). In this light, the incineration of modern Westernized art can also be interpreted as a symbolic resistance to the persistence of Western colonialist/imperialist influence. As a result of the incineration of their work during the Burning Event, the four members of Xiamen Dada who subsequently took part in the Events exhibition at the Fujian Art Museum – Huang Yongping, Lin Jiahua, Jiao Yaoming and Yu Xiaogang – were compelled to exhibit a combined work involving various found objects which were distributed around the Fujian Art Museum with accompanying labels. This final public exhibition of work by Xiamen Dada proved too much for the authorities and was closed down on the orders of the local branch of the Ministry of Propaganda only two hours after its opening. A statement relating to the Events exhibition written by Huang Yongping, ‘Introduction to the Events Exhibition that Took Place at the Exhibition Hall of the Fujian Art Museum’, was posted in the exhibition hall during the exhibition.58 e statement claimed that the exhibition was an intentional ‘assault’ on the audience’s ‘views of “art”’ as well as on the exhibition hall as a ‘model of the art system’. It also states that the Fujian exhibition was one ‘without works of art’. While the exhibitions and events staged by Xiamen Dada were clearly highly provocative in their departure from established cultural values in the prc, it would, however, be a mistake to see such cultural provocations as involving a clearly defined political or critical intent on the part of the group beyond the addressing of localized Chinese concerns related to the production
overleaf: 47, 48 Lin Jiahua, Projection Performance, 1986, performance, slide projector, human body.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
130 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
previous page: 49 Xiamen Dada, Burning Event, 1986, site-specific action, Wenhua Gong Square, next to the Cultural Palace in the City of Xiamen.
and reception of art. Again, it is conceivable that the group chose not to disclose its collective political position for fear of the consequences of doing so. However, in the absence of any evidence supporting such a view, no unequivocal statement on the subject can be made. Nevertheless, it is possible to view Xiamen Dada’s profoundly sceptical vision of linguistic signification (alongside that of the Red Humour group) as implicitly critical, intentionally or otherwise, of the ccp’s long-standing alignment with the principles of scientific Marxism-Leninism and the associated notion that historical events are subject to objective representation. In July 1984, a small group of university graduates who had recently returned to Harbin and surrounding cities in northern China to take up employment assigned to them by the Chinese government, initiated an unofficial forum for discussion about culture and the arts known as the Youth Information Communication Centre of Northern Art. Initially, the discussions of the Centre were broad, encompassing literature and poetry as well as the fine arts. Gradually, however, the centre’s leading members – who included Shu Qun (b. 1958), Wang Guangyi, Liu Yan (b. 1960), Ren Jian (b. 1955), Gao Minglu, Li Xianting, Wang Xiaojian (b. 1965), Zhou Yan (b. 1954) and Huang Zhuan (b. 1958) – abandoned this broad approach in favour of more focused debate about the practice and significance of painting. To reflect this change of direction, in January 1985 the Youth Information Communication Centre of Northern Art decided to rename itself the Northern Art Group (illus. 50). e position adopted by the Northern Art Group was similar to that of others associated with the ’85 New Wave, insofar as the group chose to work unofficially outside the prc’s state-controlled system of cultural production. In contrast to other groups, however, the Northern Art Group did not seek simply to promote individual freedom of artistic self-expression. Rather, its leading members attempted to develop a resolutely collective view of artistic production, rooted strongly in the group’s immediate geographical, social and cultural surroundings in northern China. One of the manifestations of this collective approach was the staging of a number of group exhibitions, including the Biennial Exhibition of the Northern Art Group, which was held at the Jilin Art Academy in Changchun in February 1987, as well as participation in collective national art events such as the Huangshan Symposia (illus. 51, 52, 53). Moreover, the Northern Art Group adopted a distinctly hierarchical organizational structure, with Shu Qun as chair of the group responsible for theory and Wang Guangyi as vice-chair responsible for
131 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
practice, mirroring that used to direct official artistic production within the prc at a national level. The collective vision of artistic production promoted among the Northern Art Group by its leading members proceeded on the basis of three key assertions. e first of these was that the prc’s renewed openness to outside cultural and social influences following on from the adoption of Deng’s policy of Opening and Reform in 1978 had led to the beginnings of a move away from the naturalism and irrationality of traditional Chinese society and culture towards Western urbanization, design and rationality. The second key assertion was that the meeting of Western and Eastern culture that had begun to take place as a result of China’s renewed openness to outside social and cultural influences would result in the emergence of a new ‘Northern Culture’, replacing those of the East and the West, and that the emergence of this new Northern Culture reflected the historical tendency of ‘strong’ people to move northwards into cold, physically challenging environments (illus. 54). The third assertion was that this move towards urbanization, rationality and design within the prc, and the supersession of Western and Chinese culture by Northern Culture, would be accompanied by a paradigm shift within Chinese culture that would see a radical departure from established modes of artistic production associated with socialist realism and, in particular, its recent variant, the Rural Realism of the Sichuan School.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
50 Members of the Northern Art Group (Liu Yan, Ren Jian, Wang Guangyi and Shu Qun), Wuhan University, 1990.
132 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
51, 52 Biennial Exhibition of the Northern Art Group, Jilin Art Academy in Changchun, February 1987; paintings by Shu Qun (right); paintings by Wang Guangyi (below).
opposite: 53 Ka Sang, Boating on Songhua River, 1984 or 1985, oil on canvas, dimesions unknown, painting lost or destroyed.
e key documents setting out these views and aspirations are Shu Qun’s manifesto for the Northern Art Group, ‘e Spirit of the Northern Art Group’, which was published in Zhongguo meishu bao (Fine Arts in China) in 1985; and ‘An Explanation of the Northern Art Group’, which was published in the journal Meishu sichao (e Trend of Art ought) in 1987.59 Other important texts relating to the activities of the Northern Art Group include Wang Guangyi’s ‘We – Participants of the “’85 Art Movement”’, which was published
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
134 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
in Zhongguo meishu bao (Fine Arts in China) in 1986;60 and ‘Which Kind of Painting Is Needed in Our Age?’, which was published in Jiangsu huakan (Jiangsu Pictorial) in 1986. In arriving at these ideas, leading members of the Northern Art Group drew on a wide range of writings taken from both the Western and Chinese intellectual traditions. The Western writings that most strongly influenced the thinking of the group included works by Hegel, Nietzsche and the art historian Ernst Gombrich. Hegel’s dialectical vision of history as a progressive realization of spirit (Geist) supported the group’s belief that the meeting of Eastern and Western culture would lead inevitably to the emergence of a new combinatory Northern Culture; and Gombrich’s appropriation of the concept of ‘paradigm shift’ from Thomas Kuhn enabled them to think of the emergence of Northern Culture as something that would be marked by a sharp move away from conventional forms of artistic expression.61 However, it was Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch that encouraged the group to see themselves as aristocratic/elitist agents of iconoclastic cultural change. e Chinese writings that influenced the thinking of the Northern Art Group include those of Confucius and Laozi and texts associated with Buddhist thought. In the case of the writings of Confucius, the group drew principally on traditional northern Chinese Confucian thinking associated with the aesthetic concepts of sublimity and magnificence (da). In traditional Chinese culture, there is no term corresponding exactly to the Western concept of ‘the sublime’. The Confucian notion of da (‘big’ or ‘vast’) is, however, broadly equivalent. In the Analects, Confucius uses the term da to praise the Emperor Yao. According to the present-day Chinese philosopher Liu Yuanyuan, da is used by Confucius in this context to signify the limitlessness of Yao’s power which, he asserts, can be understood to instil feelings of horror and fear in the viewer.62 In contrast to a Western Kantian conception of the sublime, these feelings of horror and fear are not overcome through the intervention of reason, but instead persist in making the viewer hold the object of vision in awe and veneration.63 In the group’s view, these concepts and their associated feelings could be used as a way of rebuilding Chinese culture and human dignity after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution by upholding the possibility of a metaphysical distancing of Chinese art from the contingencies of everyday life (effectively reversing Mao’s belief that a truly revolutionary art should bring art and life more closely together).
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
e importance of the writings of Laozi to the group lay principally in their assertion of the importance of culture as a focus for individual improvement or self-elevation, a notion referred to in a Mandarin-speaking context as wenhua (literally, ‘improvement through writing’). is pillar of the Chinese literati tradition not only enabled members of the Northern Art Group to shore up the aristocratic/elitist view of cultural agency that they had taken from Nietzsche, it also further supported the reconnection of their work as artists to an extended Chinese cultural tradition in a way that flew very much in the face of the wholesale destruction of traditional Chinese culture that had lain at the centre of the Cultural Revolution. Writings on Buddhist thought had a similar effect by promoting among the group the lofty notion of a non-desiring relationship with the world. Alongside their thinking on the historical development of culture and artistic production, leading members of the Northern Art Group (principally Wang Guangyi and Shu Qun) began to develop an approach to painting that contrasted strongly with the aestheticism and emotional warmth of the institutionalized Chinese art of the time. is approach, which came to be known as Rational Painting, is ostensibly similar to that associated with paintings by artists belonging to the European and North American Surrealists in its use of strange dream-like imagery, simplified forms and flat, non-expressive ways of applying paint (Shu Qun’s paintings in particular draw heavily on the work
135 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
54 Wang Guangyi, Frozen North Pole, 1985, oil on canvas, 160 × 100 cm.
136 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
55 Wang Guangyi, Rational Painting – Mao Zedong, 1989, oil on canvas, 120 × 150 cm.
of Dalí) (illus. 55, 56, 57). The similarity of works by members of the Northern Art Group to those of the Surrealists is, however, a largely formalistic one that should not mislead the viewer into direct associations with the aims of the Surrealists and, in particular, their attempt to commingle reality and dreams as part of a revolutionary politics of Eros.64 e Surrealists, like other Western avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, sought to bring art and life more closely together, as a means of initiating a revolutionary reworking of the means-end rationality of the latter along the more playful lines of the former. By contrast, the Northern Art Group’s aim was to reassert the value of a traditionally lofty northern Chinese aesthetic as a way of rebuilding
56 Shu Qun, Absolute Principle, 1985–9, oil on canvas, 240 × 164 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
57 Shu Qun, Identity Voice – Rigorous Religious Dialogue, 1985, oil on canvas, 130 × 160 cm.
138 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
opposite: 58 Wang Guangyi, Red Rationalism, 1988, oil on canvas, 120 × 150 cm.
Chinese culture after the ravages wrought on it by the Cultural Revolution – a move that effectively reverses the aims of the early twentieth-century Western avant-gardes. Indeed, explicit within the stated aims of the Northern Art Group is a desire not only to uphold the emergence of a new combinatory Northern Culture but also, as part of that upholding, to bring about a revival of Chinese national-cultural identity. In adopting this position (which is congruent with wider and increasingly strident calls within Chinese society since the early 1980s for a renewal of national-cultural identity alongside social and economic reform), the Northern Art Group can, therefore, be understood to have promoted a nationalistic agenda strongly at variance with the tendencies of the Western politically left-leaning/revolutionary avant-gardes. As such, the aims of the group are very much open to interpretation as promoting distinctly authoritarian tendencies; a position almost certainly influenced by Chinese (mis-)interpretations of Nietzsche during the early twentieth century that also saw Nietzsche’s thought as the basis for a strengthened sense of modern Chinese national-cultural identity.65 In spite of the group’s strong assertions of collective identity and purpose, it would be a mistake to see the activities of the Northern Art Group as entirely coherent. As Ka Sang (b. 1961), one of the women members of the group, indicates, the group was in actuality a heterogeneous one, with some members pursuing artistic aims different from those involved in the production of Rational Painting. Moreover, as Ka also makes clear, the structure and actions of the Northern Art Group were informed strongly by the persistence of patriarchal attitudes within the prc during the 1980s, which served to marginalize the participation of women artists within the group.66 Towards the end of the 1980s, there was an increasingly pronounced shift in emphasis in relation to the work of Wang Guangyi away from the Northern Art Group’s early alignment with Confucian sublimity towards critical forms of representation similar to those associated with the Western avant-gardes and post-avant-gardes. Exemplary of this shift is Wang’s appropriation of iconic images, such as standard portraits of Mao and reproductions of classic Western paintings as part of his Red Rationalism and Black Rationalism series of paintings (illus. 58). In these paintings, Wang overlayed his chosen iconic images with grids and other diagrammatic symbols. This followed the example of Gombrich’s use of similar devices to illustrate the formal analysis of artworks, and drained the images in question of their
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
140 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
aesthetic /auratic impact. As a number of commentators including KöppelYang have argued, the distancing effect of this variation on Rational Painting has distinct similarities to the deconstructive outcomes of grafting and citation in the context of Western avant-garde art.67 As such, it can be understood to have presaged not only Wang’s highly prescient call to ‘Liquidate Humanist Enthusiasm’ at the second Huangshan Symposium on contemporary Chinese art in November 1988, but also the Political Pop paintings produced by the artist after the dissolution of the Northern Art Group in 1989.68 e Pond Association was formed in the southeastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, sometime between March and May 1986, by five artists who had recently graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts: Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi (b. 1962), Song Ling (b. 1962), Wang Qiang (b. 1957) and Bao Jianfei; and a self-taught writer and artist Cao Xuelei. Hangzhou is a historically important city in the southeastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, close to Shanghai, and was the capital of China during the Song dynasty. It is widely regarded as the birthplace of Chinese shan-shui painting and is well known for its picturesque landscape settings, such as those surrounding the city’s West Lake, which have inspired generations of Chinese painters and poets.69 Previously, the graduate members of the group had belonged to the Zhejiang Youth Creation Group, a short-lived collective that came together under the leadership of Zhang Peili to organize an exhibition of contemporary Chinese art titled 1985 New Space, which had opened in Hangzhou in December 1985. e New Space exhibition (which included some of the first installation works to be produced and exhibited within the prc) was a major influence on the development of contemporary Chinese art during the latter part of the 1980s, providing impetus and encouragement to the wider development of the ‘85 New Wave. Works included in 1985 New Space were described at the time as being characterized by a ‘grey humour’ (huise youmo) suggestive of an underlying discontent with the alienating consequences of the prc’s increasing urbanization as part of Deng’s reforms. Among the works on display were the paintings Midsummer Swimmers (1985) by Zhang Peili (illus. 59) and Haircut 3, Yet Another Bald Head (1985) by Geng Jianyi, whose geometric, non-gestural blocks of cool colour connote an environment empty of human feeling, and whose depiction of actions such as head shaving is indicative of an underlying rebelliousness; and the installation by Wang Qiang, titled e Start of the 2nd Movement of the 5th Symphony in Adagio (1985), featuring a headless and handless plaster figure set in a glass vitrine.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Following the 1985 New Space exhibition, Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, Song Ling, Wang Qiang and Bao Jianfei decided to build on the work of the Zhejiang Youth Creation Group by founding a new smaller group that they hoped would support them in the making and exhibiting of art outside the prc’s official Party system. is new group, which was eventually named the Pond Association, was, for the most part, little more than a talking shop or social club, whose members continued to produce artworks independently of one another. Nevertheless, much of the Pond Association’s reputation rests on three experimental artworks that were produced collectively by the group between June and November 1986. e first was a site-specific work, titled No. 1 – Yang Style Tai Chi Series, involving large-scale paper cut-outs of figures representing traditional tai chi poses, which were pasted along a wall opposite the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts on Nanshan Road in Hangzhou on 3 June 1986 (illus. 60–63). e second was a performance (often referred to as
141 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
59 Zhang Peili, Midsummer Swimmers, 1985, oil on canvas, 120 × 120 cm.
142 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Wrapping Up – King and Queen) in which Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi posed as living sculptures, tightly wrapped from head to foot in newspaper, at a private event, staged at or near an artist’s studio in Luoyang, Henan province, on 2 November 1986 (illus. 64). e third, another site-specific work known as No. 2 – Strollers in the Green Space, was made up of large paper cut-outs of running figures that were suspended from trees in a green space known as Wan song lin near Hangzhou’s West Lake on 4 November 1986 (illus. 65, 66). As a declaration distributed privately by the Pond Association in 1986 stated, the collective vision that lead to the production of these works was based on three interrelated beliefs: first, that artists should produce artworks in response to internal needs rather than a desire to fulfil existing social and/or ideological requirements; second, that the process of making an artwork is more important than its existence as a concrete outcome/artefact in the service of social and/or ideological requirements; and third, that artists should seek to make artworks that bring art and life together by immersing the artist in everyday social situations. Furthermore, during the mid-1980s, Geng and Zhang began to develop a profound scepticism with regard to the capacity of language to communicate authoritative meanings, which would go on to inform much of their work as
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
143 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
artists after the dissolution of the Pond Association in 1989. Traces of this scepticism can be discerned in relation to No. 1 – Yang Style Tai Chi Series, which is open to interpretation as a playfully deft satire of the use of dazibao. Against the background of these beliefs, works produced collectively by members of the Pond Association can therefore be understood to have a strong affinity with those produced historically by the Western avant-gardes. Both involve a resistance to artistic convention, an intention that art should engage as directly as possible with everyday life, and what might be interpreted as a critically deconstructive attitude towards the production of meaning. Unlike much of the work of the Western political avant-gardes, however, it is by no means clear to what extent that produced collectively by the Pond Association could be described as overtly political/revolutionary in intent. As published conversations with members of the group attest, while members of the Pond Association were sensitive to prevailing social and political issues within the prc and beyond, they did not choose to adopt an explicitly political stance in relation to the public staging of their collectively produced works.70 Nor, despite contemporaneous claims by the Dutch critic Hans van Dijk, who was living in Hangzhou at the time,71 did the group seek to engage in direct and/or violent confrontation with governmental authorities and established
60–63 Pond Association, No. 1 – Yang Style Tai Chi Series, 1986, site-specific action, dimensions variable.
144 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
64 Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi, Wrapping Up – King and Queen, 1986, performance, paper, string, human bodies.
institutions. is political reticence and avoidance of any direct/violent confrontation with authority may, of course, reflect continuing concerns within the group over the consequences of dissent within the politically suppressive context of the prc during the 1980s. However, it can also be interpreted as an oblique form of resistance to the still immanent and pervasively controlling presence of Maoist ideology during the decade following the adoption of Deng’s reforms. Doubts of this sort are less justifiable in relation to work produced individually by some members of the Pond Association after 1986. Since the mid-1980s, Geng and Zhang have drawn consistently on the example of the site-specific and performance experiments of the Pond Association to produce works that, while still understandably ambiguous in their significance, nevertheless have a discernibly critical relationship with society and politics. Consider here, for example, Zhang’s video work 30×30 (1988) as well as his more recent video installation A Gust of Wind (2008), which involves the simulated destruction of a well-appointed domestic interior by a violent storm (illus. 67). Both of these can be interpreted as signifying the persistent threat of disorder in relation to ideologically grounded assertions of stability and continuity.72 Although the work produced collectively by the Pond Association amounted to only two site-specific works and one performance work, it is important to note that members of the group established a critical profile within the prc initially because of paintings produced individually by Geng and Zhang during the mid-1980s. These included Zhang’s Midsummer Swimmers and Geng’s Haircut 3, Yet Another Bald Head, which were seen by
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
65, 66 Pond Association, No. 2 – Strollers in the Green Space, 1986, site-specific action, dimensions variable.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
148 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
previous page: 67 Zhang Peili, A Gust of Wind, 2008, multi-screen video installation, dimensions variable.
critics as part of the artistic tendency known as Rational Painting. ey were also known for their contribution to the staging of the 1985 New Space exhibition, which included Wang Qiang’s installation e Start of the Second Movement of the 5th Symphony. e key text in this regard is an essay by the critic Shi Jiu, titled ‘On New Space and the Pond Association’, which was published in Meishu sichao (e Trend of Art ought) in 1987.73 To some extent, the inclusion of paintings by Geng and Zhang alongside those of the Northern Art Group within the category of Rational Painting is a justifiable one, given that they both share in the use of simplified forms and non-expressive approaches to the application of paint. However, the underlying intention of rational paintings produced by Geng and Zhang and those produced by the Northern Art Group are very different. While the Northern Art Group sought, for the most part, to evoke a sublime art detached from everyday phenomena, Zhang and Geng’s work, though formally abstracted, depicts closely observed scenes from everyday urban life that nevertheless evoke a critical sense of alienation. Despite claims to the contrary by the originator Gao Minglu, the term Rational Painting should not, therefore, be seen as a coherent stylistic category but as one encompassing formal similarities and contrasting intentions. Moreover, care should be taken in describing the Northern Art Group and the Pond Association as both being rational in intent, given that the latter’s belief that art and life should be brought more closely together has a distinct affinity with the deconstructive intentions of the Western avant-gardes – which was very much absent as part of the early development of the Northern Art Group. e Pond Association’s particular sense of rationality is perhaps better interpreted as a state of cool, non-desiring objectivity arrived at (somewhat paradoxically, as the group’s declaration indicates) through what would be seen in Western terms as a decidedly non-rationalist or immersive blurring of subject–object boundaries. e Pond Association’s approach to the making of artworks can thus be understood to have a strong conceptual affinity with three aspects of traditional, non-rationalist Chinese cultural thought and practice. e first is the Buddhist notion that enlightenment (wu) can be achieved through nondesiring, meditative states; the second, traditional Chinese shan-shui painting, where the absence of any strict perspective geometry or unequivocal visual depth cues encourages a spatially, temporally and aesthetically indeterminate relationship between the viewer and the viewed (associated with the aesthetic
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
149 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
concept of i-ching).74 e third is the concept of ‘tracklessness’ (as expounded in chapter twenty-seven of the Daodejing), where ‘reality’ is viewed as an abstraction shuttling somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity – the limitless and the limited – and ‘knowledge’ as something that arises out of an active and constantly unfolding relationship between subjects and objects.75 All of this is commensurate with Chi she’s reported desire to create a style redolent of China’s historical Southern School of Chan Buddhism.76 As such, the Pond Association’s stated approach to the collective making of site-specific artworks can also be thought of as having an affinity with the sublime/immersive, cool/depthless spaces characteristic of Western postmodernism.77 However, there are significant grounds for caution in arriving at the view that there is an absolute correspondence between these historically and spatially differing cultural positions, given that the former may also have a relationship to traditional Chinese aesthetics.78 Another significant group exhibition associated with the ’85 New Wave is the First Experimental Exhibition of the Southern Artists Salon, which opened in the Student Activity Centre of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province on 3 September 1986 (illus. 68, 69). e Southern Artists Salon was established in 1986 by Chen Shaoxiong (b. 1962), Huang Xiaopeng (b. 1960), Liang Juhui (1959–2006), Lin Yilin (1964) and Wang Du (b. 1956),79 all of whom had recently graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, but the group who staged the exhibition disbanded the following year. e First Experimental Exhibition of the Southern Artists Salon was an interdisciplinary event intended to blur established boundaries between theatre, dance, sculpture and painting and, in doing so, give rise to an ‘entirely novel’ form of visual experience. While the First Experimental Exhibition of the Southern Artists Salon can be interpreted in the context of the ’85 New Wave as a ground-breaking attempt to foster increased dialogue between differing art forms and alternative modes of artistic practice, it is also reminiscent of multimedia events staged as part of the Cultural Revolution. A report on the exhibition was published in Zhongguo Meishu Bao (Fine Arts in China). One of the most significant instances of public performance art in the prc during the latter half of the 1980s was the M Group Performance Art Exhibition, which was staged at No. 2 Working People’s Cultural Palace in the Hongkou District of Shanghai on 21 December 1986, under the direction of Song Haidong (b. 1958). During the exhibition, the Shanghai-based M
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
68, 69 The Southern Artists Salon (Chen Shaoxiong, Huang Xiaopeng, Liang Juhui, Lin Yilin and Wang Du), performance at the First Experimental Exhibition of the Southern Artists Salon, student activity centre, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong province, 3 September 1986.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
151 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
Group, which included the artists Song Haidong, Qin Yifeng (b. 1961), Tang Guangming (b. 1966), Yang Dongbai (b. 1959), Yang Xu and Zhou Tiehai (b. 1966), presented a series of brief performances involving actual and/or simulated acts of sadomasochistic violence (illus. 70, 71). ese performances were witnessed by approximately 200 spectators comprised, for the most part, of members of Shanghai’s indigenous art community, alongside a handful of foreign observers. Works presented include Tang Guangming’s Ceremony, in which the artist was tied to wooden restraints and beaten with branches; and Zhou Tiehai and Yang Xu’s Sense of Violence, in which a near-naked Zhou was repeatedly stabbed with needles. e exhibition, which was intended to give expression to the ‘wounded spirit’ of the prc’s indigenous art world, not only looked back implicitly to public acts of violence during the Cultural Revolution, but also (unwittingly and presciently) forward, to similarly abject performance works staged by the East Village group and others during the 1990s (illus. 72). e Red Brigade (Hongse lu) was formed in 1987, under the leadership of the artist Ding Fang (b. 1956) (illus. 73). In 1986, Ding co-organized and participated in an exhibition of modern art at Jiangsu Art Museum in Nanjing,
70 M Group performance exhibition, 1986. Installation view, no. 2 Working People’s Cultural Palace, Hongkou District, Shanghai, 21 December 1986.
152 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
71 M Group and associates, Shanghai, 1986.
which attracted nationwide attention. Ding brought together other artists involved in the exhibition to form the Red Brigade. The group held its first exhibition, titled Vanguard, in 1987. e Red Brigade’s Manifesto, ‘Red Brigade Precept’, written by Ding in 1987, presents a profoundly tragic view of human history, not as a series of progressive leaps forward but as an accumulation of the ruins of grand schemes and visions.80 In the face of this tragic vision, Ding calls for the making of a sublime art through which individuals might connect with and support one another.
The Dissolution of the ’85 Movement Towards the end of the 1980s, the ’85 New Wave’s collective engagement with progressive reform became increasingly subject to criticism from within. As Wu Hung indicates, despite a desire among some of its adherents to develop a
72 Ding Yi, Qin Yifeng and Zhang Guoliang, untitled, 1986, performance, cloth, human bodies.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
73 Ding Fang, Meeting of Lonely Soul, 1991, oil on canvas, 80 × 117 cm.
154 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
unified avant-garde movement in support of progressive humanist reform (following the example of the ccp’s own use of campaigns and movements to bring the masses together behind its revolutionary policies since the 1950s) the ’85 New Wave was always little more than a loosely defined meeting place for disparate views and opinions.81 is inherent state of heterogeneity began to manifest itself strongly from 1988 onwards in two ways. First, statements were published denouncing the ’85 New Wave for its uncritical complicity with governmental policy and appropriation of outside cultural influences; and second, practical attempts were made by artists to develop ways of working that focused more on process and creativity than on collective sociopolitical engagement. Exemplary of the former are Jian Fangzhou’s (b. 1940) ‘Returning to Art Itself’ (1988), which upholds the progressive value of a non-utilitarian art, detached from any sociopolitical function; and Zhu Zude (b. 1949) and Liu Zhenggang’s ‘Purifying Artistic Language’ (1988), which calls for a considered bringing together of Western and Eastern cultural thought and practice appropriate to localized Chinese circumstances.82 An example of the latter is the work of the New Analyst Group (Xin jiexi xiaozu), which was formed by the artists Chen Shaoping, Gu Dexin and Wang Luyan (b. 1956) in 1987. e Group, which was initially known as the New Analyst Group before changing its name to the New Measurement Group (Xin Kedu xiaozu), adopted a collective-democratic approach that determined every aspect of its shared art-making activities. is approach enabled the group to maintain a radical view of the possibilities of art commensurate with artistic production during the Cultural Revolution while distancing itself from the continuing authoritarianism of the ccp. e group conducted work in various locations between 1987 and 1995, but its work was first exhibited publicly at the China/Avant-Garde exhibition in Beijing in 1989 (illus. 74, 75, 76). From 1990 to 1995, the group produced five documents titled Analyst I–V, which used quasi-mathematical forms of visual representation, such as graphs, diagrams and charts, to present objects, situations and actions as collections of measurable information. e documents produced by the Group were shown under relatively clandestine circumstances in the prc as well as openly outside China during the early 1990s. e New Measurement Group met for the final time in 1995, and at this meeting agreed to end its activities by destroying all of the documents and related drawings it had produced collectively since 1987. e position adopted by the New Analyst/Measurement Group is partially set out in Chen Shaoping’s article ‘Regarding “Analysis”’ (1989).83
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
74 New Analyst Group (Wang Luyan, Gu Dexin and Chen Shaoping), Analysis II, 1992, conceptual drawing on newsprint, dimensions unknown. 75 New Analyst Group (Wang Luyan, Gu Dexin and Chen Shaoping), Drawing of Display Plan, 1992, conceptual drawing on newsprint, dimensions unknown.
156 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
76 New Analyst Group (Wang Luyan, Gu Dexin and Chen Shaoping), c. 1995.
Similar process-based approaches to artmaking among members of the ’85 New Wave include those used by Huang Yongping to produce his ‘chance’ works and ‘non-expressive’ paintings of the mid-1980s; and by Zhang Peili as a basis for his Art Project No.2 (1987), which consists of a nineteen-page document setting out ‘rules and regulations’ for an artwork that was never intended to be ‘actually implemented as an event’.84 In capitalizing on the freedoms opened up by the ending of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, artists had developed a sophisticated interweaving of Chinese and non-Chinese cultural influences that presaged the written interventions of critics of the ’85 New Wave. Other significant markers of internal discontent with regard to the collective positioning of the ’85 New Wave include Geng Jianyi’s multiple depiction of disingenuous laughter in e Second State (1987–8) (illus. 77) – a prototype for the Cynical Realist paintings and sculptures of Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun and others produced in the prc during the early 1990s; and Wang Guangyi’s call to ‘Liquidate Humanist Enthusiasm’85 at the second Huangshan Symposium in November 1988 – a discursive prefiguring of the artist’s later contribution to Political Pop. This combined theoretical and practical departure from collectivist humanism was accompanied by renewed efforts to stage a major public exhibition representing the achievements of the ’85 New Wave. Calls to stage such an exhibition in 1987 were made at the Zhuhai Conference in 1986. However, work towards the exhibition was suspended because of the intervening campaign against capitalist liberalization by the government. Following the ending of the campaign, more ambitious plans were developed for an exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. However, views on the nature and purpose of the exhibition were significantly polarized in light of growing internal criticism within the ’85 movement. While some saw the exhibition as an important overview of the collective activities of the ’85 New Wave, others thought this approach was unduly art historical, and looked to use the exhibition as a platform for active criticism of the prc’s established system of artistic production. ere were also significant concerns with regard to a compromise reached between the exhibition’s organizers and the National Art Museum,
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
157 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
which prohibited the staging of any live performances. e complicity of China/Avant-Garde’s organisers with officials at the National Art Museum can, of course be, interpreted as part of the ’85 New Wave’s collective support of reform. However, as Wu Hung has indicated, it is also possible to draw parallels between the desire of some artists to use the exhibition as a platform for active criticism of the prc’s established system of artistic production, and the practice of douquan carried out by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, which involved the infiltration and taking over of official institutions. In spite of these concerns and differences of opinion, the planned survey exhibition of the work of the ’85 New Wave was staged at the National Art Museum in Beijing between 5 and 17 February 1989, under the curatorial direction of Gao Minglu. He was assisted by an organizing committee comprising Fan Di’an (b. 1955), Fei Dawei, Li Xianting and Zhou Yan and by curators at the Museum (illus. 78). The exhibition was titled Xiandai yishu dazhan (A Grand Exhibition of Modern Art) in Mandarin, but is referred to in English as China/Avant-Garde. It showcased 293 works by 186 artists, including Gao
77 Geng Jianyi, The Second State, 1987–8, oil on canvas, multiple panels, dimensions unknown.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
159 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
Qiang (b. 1962), Gao Zhen (b. 1956), Gu Wenda, Gu Xiong (b. 1953), Huang Yongping, Li Shan, Tang Song (b. 1960), Wang Deren (b. 1962), Wang Guangyi, Wei Guangqing, Wu Shanzhuan, Xiao Lu (b. 1962), Xu Bing, Yang Jun, Zhang Nian (b. 1964) and Zhang Peili. Artworks included in the exhibition were formally diverse; as well as paintings, sculptures and conceptual works there were also installations and records of performances (illus. 79). China/ Avant-Garde was also the first privately funded public exhibition to be staged in the prc since the early 1950s. During the exhibition’s run, a number of artists defied the agreed prohibition on live performances. e most controversial of these was carried out by the artists Tang Song and Xiao Lu, who fired a live gunshot into their
79 Yu Youhan, 1986–5, 1986, acrylic on canvas, 130 × 160 cm.
opposite: 78 Promotional poster for China/Avant-Garde, 1989.
160 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
80 Tang Song and Xiao Lu, Dialogue, 1989, performance, gunshot into installation. Installation view, China/Avant-Garde, National Art Museum of China, Beijing.
installation titled Dialogue (1989) on the opening day of the exhibition (illus. 80). is action resulted in the arrest of the artists by the Beijing Public Security Bureau and the closure of China/Avant-Garde only three hours after its opening. e exhibition reopened on 10 February, only to be closed down again on 14 February after several public institutions (including the municipal government, Beijing Public Security Bureau and China Art Gallery) received anonymous bomb threats. On 17 February the exhibition was closed for good, and a few months afterwards, all public activities related to the ’85 New Wave were suspended. This was a result of the conservative crackdown on society that followed the Tiananmen Square Massacre (illus. 81). The Tiananmen killings were a response on the part of the ccp to popular demonstrations staged in Tiananmen Square and other districts of Beijing during May and June 1989. By the late 1980s, Deng’s reforms had begun to gather pace, leading to growing public concern regarding inflation and competition for employment; alongside conspicuous corruption among government officials eager to take advantage of China’s increasing marketdriven wealth. Following the death of liberal reformer and deposed Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang (b. 1915) in April 1989, mass public gatherings began to take place in and around Tiananmen Square in protest at the alienating consequences of economic reform. e protests (which at one point drew over 500,000 people to Tiananmen and its surrounding areas)
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
161 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
involved both workers and students who together called for greater government accountability, freedom of public expression and the return of industry to the control of the masses. Similar, relatively peaceful protests also took place in Shanghai and Wuhan, while at the same time, there was rioting and looting in Xi’an and Changsha. At the end of May, as part of the protests in Tiananmen Square, students from the Central Academy of Fine Arts erected a makeshift statue of the ‘Goddess of Liberty’ in direct view of ccp headquarters. e protests in Beijing continued for around seven weeks. Initially, the ccp sought to placate protesters by negotiating with their leaders and agreeing to concessions. However, a hunger strike among students participating in the protests attracted widespread public sympathy and support for the protesters across the prc. Eventually Deng and other senior Party members, fearful of the consequences of growing public insurrection, made the decision to suppress the Beijing protests. Martial law was declared on 20 May. On the evening of 3 June, divisions of the People’s Liberation Army entered Beijing with orders to clear Tiananmen by the early morning of 4 June. In moving from the western
81 Protest at the closure of China/ Avant-Garde at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 1989.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
163 | M O D E R N (CO N T E M P O R A R Y ) C H I N E S E A R T
outskirts of Beijing, the pla encountered roadblocks swiftly constructed by locals to impede their progress. Frustrated pla divisions pushed on, using tanks and live fire to clear their way, killing an unknown number of civilians in the process. On reaching Tiananmen, the pla opened fire on a hard core of protesters who refused to leave the square in the face of overwhelming force. e exact scale of the massacre in and around Tiananmen is unknown but is likely to range somewhere between several hundreds and several thousands of people. Following the events of 4 June, conservative hardliners within the ccp seized control, moving quickly to round up and imprison leading protesters and their supporters and bring a swift end to other protests across mainland China. e ccp leadership also reinforced policing and internal security, expelling foreign journalists and establishing strict controls over domestic media coverage and public discussion of the protests. ese have remained in place right up to the present day. A renewed emphasis was placed on Party unity and ideological consensus over and above Deng’s agreed programme of reforms, leading to an abrupt slowing down of economic and political modernization that would not be reversed until Deng’s southern tour of China in 1992. Government officials sympathetic to the protests were side-lined. Against the background of similar protests in Europe (including the fall of the Berlin Wall), the Tiananmen killings were subject to widespread condemnation in Western liberal-democratic contexts. At almost the same time as the Tiananmen protests, contemporary Chinese art was shown for the first time in a major European museum as part of the international survey exhibition Magiciens de la Terre. e exhibition, which was curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, took place at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande Halle at Parc de la Villette, Paris, between 18 May and 14 August 1989. Magiciens de la Terre was the first international exhibition to present contemporary art from mainland China to a Western audience. e artists from mainland China who took part were Gu Dexin, Huang Yongping and Yang Jiechang. At Magiciens de la Terre, Huang exhibited a papier-mâché installation titled Reptiles (1989), made by washing Mandarin- and English-language books together in a washing machine (a work that reprised an earlier work produced by Huang in China, e History of Chinese Painting and the History of Modern Western Art Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes, 1989 (illus. 82). Gu exhibited a collection of deformed plastic objects, including perfume bottles donated by Chanel; and Yang applied ink to the same square of paper every day creating
opposite: 82 Huang Yongping, The History of Chinese Painting and the History of Modern Western Art Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes, 1987, paper pulp and wooden box, 80 × 50 × 50 cm.
164 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
opposite: 83 Sheng Qi, severed finger in protest at the Tiananmen Massacre of 4 June 1989.
the work One Hundred Layers of Ink (1989).86 e conservative crackdown that followed 4 June 1989 effectively outlawed the public exhibition of unofficial art in the prc, thereby bringing the humanist cultural movement associated with the ’85 New Wave to an end. Artistic responses to the events of 4 June 1989 were not entirely foreclosed, however. Sheng Qi (b. 1965), a graduate of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts in Beijing and founder of one of the prc’s first performance art groups, Concept 21st Century, cut off his little finger in protest at the Tiananmen Massacre (illus. 83).
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
3
CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART, 1990 –2001
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Contemporary Chinese Art after Tiananmen The consequences of the post-Tiananmen crackdown for the making and showing of contemporary (modern) art in the prc were far-reaching. Not only were artists prevented from making and showing works of contemporary art by official bans on all unauthorized public activities, they were also returned to a heightened state of uncertainty with regard to the potential longer-term consequences of their actions. As a result, artists found their activities constricted both by active political suppression (similar to that prevailing during the AntiSpiritual Pollution Campaign), and by a reinforcing of the restrictive climate of self-surveillance engendered by the ccp’s vague directives on cultural production after 1984. e relative freedoms enjoyed by the ’85 Movement had, for a time at least, come sharply to an end. For many artists, curators and critics in the prc, the restrictions placed on artistic activity in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre were simply unbearable. As a consequence, many either gave up involvement in the arts altogether or moved abroad, where they were able to work more freely. Artists who followed the latter course of action include Huang Yongping (who was in Paris for the opening of Magiciens de la Terre at the time of the Tiananmen Massacre and chose to remain there); Xu Bing (who made his home in New York City in 1991); and Sheng Qi (who emigrated to the uk leaving the finger he cut off as a symbolic protest against the Tiananmen killings interred secretly in a porcelain pot in Beijing). Huang Yongping’s decision to remain in Paris after Magiciens de la Terre (along with the curator Fei Dawei, who had assisted with the staging of the exhibition) formed the basis for an expatriate group of Chinese artists, curators and critics (including Hou Hanru) who were active internationally throughout the 1990s and beyond. ose artists, curators and critics who chose to leave the prc in the wake of Tiananmen followed a string of others who had already left during the 1980s, including Ai Weiwei (who moved to the u.s. in 1981), Chen Zhen (who
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
167 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
moved to France in 1986) and Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, who moved to Japan in 1987). In 1989, there was no indigenous market for contemporary art in the prc and links with the international art market were, at best, tentative. Therefore, as well as greater freedoms of personal expression, contemporary artists, critics and curators who left the prc to live and work abroad in the wake of the Tiananmen killings faced new opportunities and challenges in terms of making a living from their work. At least some proved very successful in this regard, exhibiting their work in high-profile international exhibitions and receiving international awards. Cai Guo-Qiang, for example, was awarded the International Golden Lion Prize at the 48th Venice Biennale and the accolade of a major mid-career retrospective, I Want to Believe, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2008. e exhibition eventually travelled to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing (2008) and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (2009). Others, however, such as Song Ling of the Pond Association (who emigrated to Australia before 19891) were, initially at least, forced to combine art-making with other business activities. Others still, gave up their involvement with the making and showing of art altogether. Alongside economic opportunities and challenges, artists, curators and critics who chose to leave the prc in the 1980s and early 1990s faced others related to their identity and the relationship of their work to cultural and political developments outside the prc. Many became increasingly engaged with the by then dominant postmodernist/postcolonialist discourses of the international art world. is resulted in the making of conspicuously hybrid, transnational artworks, involving deconstructive juxtapositions or attempted reconciliations of Western and Chinese cultural elements as means of addressing (among other things) global issues of economic and political inequality. Examples of these transnational artworks include Cai Guo-Qiang’s Extraterrestrials series (begun 1989), Gu Wenda’s Monuments of the United Nations series (1993–2004) and Xu Bing’s Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy (1994–6) (illus. 84 and 85; 86 and 87; 88). Further evidence of the opportunities and challenges facing expatriate Chinese artists, curators and critics with regard to questions of identity and social/political engagement during the 1990s can be found in numerous letters and published articles. Among them is a private letter written by Fei Dawei to Li Xianting in 1991 that was subsequently published in the prc in a collection
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
84 Cai Guo-Qiang, Extraterrestrials No. 10 – Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Metres, 1993, sitespecific action realized at the Gobi Desert, 27 February 1993. 85 Cai Guo-Qiang, Extraterrestrials No. 16 – The Earth Has Its Black Hole, 1994, site-specific action realized at Hiroshima Central Park near the ABomb Dome, 1 October 1994, realized at the Gobi Desert, 27 February 1993.
86 Gu Wenda, United Nations – China Monument: Temple of Heaven, 1997–8, site-specific installation: a temple of pseudoEnglish, Chinese, Hindi and Arabic script, human hair curtains collected from all over the world, 12 Ming-style TV chairs, 2 Mingstyle tables, l. 1,586 × w. 610 × h. 396 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
87 Gu Wenda, United Nations – Man & Space, 1999–2000, installation, national flags of the world made of mixed human hair collected from 22 countries, h. 800 × l. 8,000 cm. Installation view, Portrait of Times – 30 Years of Chinese Contemporary Art, Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum (Power Plant), 2013.
170 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
88 Xu Bing, An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy – Square Word Calligraphy Classroom, 1994–6, mixed media interactive installation: desks, chairs, copy and tracing books, brushes, ink, video and chalkboard. Installation view, Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1999.
of writings related to criticism of contemporary Chinese art under the title ‘Does a Culture in Exile Necessarily Wither? – A Letter to Li Xianting’ in 2003. In this letter, Fei addresses Li’s concern that art detached from its ‘cultural motherland’ will suffer an inevitable withering of creativity. Fei responds by arguing for a transnational contemporary Chinese art that is critically engaged not only with questions of cultural Chineseness but also the deconstruction of neo-colonialist/imperialist relations of dominance.2 Li was not alone in his nationalistic vision of the significance of contemporary Chinese art. In his article ‘Oliva is Not the Saviour of Chinese Art’ (1993), the Chinabased critic Wang Lin (b. 1942) argues vigorously that international curators such as Achille Bonita Oliva (b. 1939, director of the 45th Venice Biennale, which included the work of Chinese contemporary artists), should not be seen as authoritative arbiters of the significance of contemporary art from the prc. Rather, that significance should be mediated, he contends, by Chinese curators and critics who are ‘conversant’ with the context within which contemporary art from the prc is produced and received.3 Other significant letters and articles related to the work of expatriate contemporary Chinese artists, curators and critics during the 1990s include Gu Wenda’s ‘Face the New Millennium:
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
171 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
e Divine Comedy of Our Times; a esis on the United Nations Art Project and its Time and Environment’ (1995), Ai Weiwei’s ‘Ai Weiwei Dialogue with Zhuang Hui’ (1995), Cai Guo-Qiang’s ‘Wild Flights of Fancy’ (1998), Xu Bing’s ‘On Words’ (1999), and Hung Liu’s ‘About Resident Alien’ (2000).4 In spite of their widely felt impact, post-Tiananmen restrictions on the making and public showing of contemporary art in the prc were by no means absolute. Before leaving for New York, Xu Bing led the making of a highly ambitious site-specific work titled Ghost Pounding the Wall, whose intervention into public space marked what can be interpreted as the last significant public action of the ‘85 Movement (illus. 89). e work, which took place from 18 May to 10 June 1990, involved a collaboration between art students and local farmers. ey used a traditional frottage-like technique (the pounding of inksoaked pads on to paper) to make an immense 32 × 15 m, 29-part print of sections of the Great Wall at Jinshanling in Hebei province north of Beijing. As such, this multi-part print can be understood to serve as an indexical signifier not only of the Great Wall itself, but also the wall’s active transformation into a site-specific artwork. As such, it is also possible to interpret Ghost Pounding the Wall as a critical commentary on the ccp’s then-emerging use of iconic symbols of Chinese tradition and continuity as a means of glossing over the increasingly unsettling effects of Deng’s policy of Opening and Reform. is reading is encapsulated by Wu Hung’s description of Ghost Pounding the Wall as a ‘counter-monument’.5 The full force of the post-Tiananmen crackdown was felt between the second half of 1989 and the summer of 1992. In the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, conservative factions gained the upper hand within the ccp, significantly weakening Deng Xiaoping’s influence on events. In late 1989, Deng stepped down as Chairman of the ccp’s Central Military Commission, and in early 1992 signalled an end to his direct involvement in politics. Deng was, however, still widely regarded as the ‘paramount leader’ of the prc and exercised a significant degree of influence behind the scenes. Nevertheless, between the second half of 1989 and summer 1992 the progress of Deng’s programme of reforms was impeded to a considerable degree by active opposition from senior conservatives within in the ccp. In light of the events of 4 June 1989, they feared a return to the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (as well as, no doubt, the loss of their positions of power).
172 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
opposite: 89 Xu Bing, Ghosts Pounding the Wall, 1990–91, ink rubbings of the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall of China, rock, soil. Installation view, Three Installations by Xu Bing, Elvehjem Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin, 1991.
As a consequence of the renewed restrictions on artistic practice that ensued in the wake of Tiananmen, the humanist enthusiasm that had strongly informed the actions of the ‘85 New Wave gave way to widespread feelings of scepticism and cynicism. is shift in sensibilities was marked by the effective dissolution of the ‘85 Movement as a focus for collective action, as well as a change in terminology regarding the naming of contemporary art in the prc. As previously described, throughout the 1980s contemporary art in the prc was usually referred to not as dangdai (contemporary), but as xiandai (modern); hence, the Mandarin Chinese title of the China/Avant-Garde exhibition, Xiandai meishu dazhan (A Grand Exhibition of Modern Art). The term Zhongguo dangdai yishu only began to gain widespread currency in the prc during the early 1990s when, as Wu Hung has indicated, there was a move away from the collective sense of humanist optimism that had developed as part of the general ‘zeitgeist’ accompanying Deng’s programme of Opening and Reform. Instead, there was a proliferation of more individualistic antihumanist/sceptical attitudes arising as a result of the conservative crackdown that took place in the prc following the killings of 4 June at Tiananmen.6 As previously discussed, the shift from the use of the term Zhongguo xiandai yishu to that of Zhongguo dangdai yishu also marks the start of contemporary Chinese art’s synchronization with the concerns of the international art world. In particular, it marks the departure from modernist/avant-garde preoccupations with universalizing temporal/diachronic development in favour of postmodernist conceptions of spatial/synchronic difference, associated with the term ‘contemporaneity’. is apparently marked shift in outlook notwithstanding, it would, however, be a mistake to view the events of 4 June 1989 as a historical watershed, marking a decisive turning away from humanist thought among those involved in the making and showing of contemporary art in the prc. While there was a significant waning of humanist enthusiasm among those involved in the making and showing of contemporary art in the prc in the wake of the Tiananmen killings, it is by no means clear that this amounted to a straightforward substitution of humanist enthusiasm for anti-humanist cynicism. One of the consequences of the post-Tiananmen crackdown was a return to clandestine forms of art-making. is return included the movement known as Chinese Apartment Art (a term derived from the naming of a similar movement in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries in the 1970s and 1980s). It was characterized by ephemeral actions and detailed proposals,
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
174 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
90 Song Dong, A Kettle of Boiling Water, 1995, 12 black-and-white photographs of site-specific performance, 33.3 × 50 cm.
instead of the production of substantial object-based artworks, and by the staging of secretive small-scale exhibitions in domestic spaces. Examples of artworks produced and shown in this way include Song Dong’s (b. 1966) A Kettle of Boiling Water (1995), an action (recorded by photographs) in which Song fleetingly drew a line along a side street by pouring hot water from a kettle (illus. 90). By adopting such clandestine approaches, artists were not only able to avoid official censure, but also to create political distance between themselves and the authoritarianism of the ccp. As Gao Minglu indicates, clandestine artworks produced and shown in the prc in the early 1990s were often conceived of as a way of preserving ‘a specific measurement or other attribute’ in order ‘to approach the truth’,7 a stance exemplified most strongly by the work of the New Measurement Group. Although such actions are clearly born out of a pervasive scepticism regarding the intentions of the ccp, they can also be interpreted as an attempt to retain traces of the humanist outlook that had underscored the development of contemporary art in the prc throughout the late 1980s. It is also possible to make a connection between the return to clandestine forms of art-making in the prc during the early 1990s and critical positions historically adopted by China’s scholar-gentry/literati class in relation to
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
175 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
authority. As previously described, China’s scholar-gentry/literati were amateur (in the Western, eighteenth-century sense of the word) artist-intellectuals who acted as government officials throughout the time of dynastic rule in China. They took on the responsibility for maintaining social order/harmony in accordance with conceptions of filial piety set out in the writings of Confucius. is responsibility obliged members of the scholar-gentry/literati class to oppose inappropriate aspects of imperial policy as a matter of personal conscience. Direct criticism of imperial authority ran the risk of violent retribution or exile, so the opposition of China’s scholar-gentry/literati to imperial authority often took the form of a withdrawal from public life. e clandestine making and showing of contemporary art in the prc during the early 1990s can be interpreted as a similarly passive-negative critical action, and therefore one connected to indigenous modes of critical action and those developed internationally in relation to modernism and postmodernism. Clandestine approaches toward the making and showing of art were most prevalent in and around Beijing, where ccp authority was at its strongest and where the effects of the post-Tiananmen crackdown were most keenly felt. After the initial impact of the crackdown, activities related to the making and showing of contemporary art away from Beijing (particularly in developed urban areas along China’s southern and eastern seaboards) continued more or less unchanged. Among works of contemporary art produced and publicly exhibited away from Beijing during the early 1990s was Qiu Zhijie’s (b. 1969) performance series Copying the ‘Orchid Pavilion Preface’ a Thousand Times (1990–95), which took place in the city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province from June 1990 to 1995 (illus. 91, 92, 93). During this performance series, Qiu repeatedly copied out the ‘Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion, a famous classical text by the scholar-calligrapher Wang Xizhi (303–361), who is often referred to as the ‘Sage of Calligraphy’, 1,000 times on a single piece of rice paper with ink and brush. The initial 50 acts of copying were recorded on video. After only a few copies, the piece of paper was completely saturated with ink, making Wang’s copied text almost illegible. All that remained were palimpsest-like traces of individual Chinese characters, whose overall appearance was more reminiscent of an abstract painting than a literary text. is artwork (which is similar in form to that exhibited by Yang Jiechang at Magiciens de la Terre) represents a powerful and arguably deconstructivist challenge to traditional Chinese scholarly beliefs in the cultural significance of writing, as well as the transmissibility of cultural meaning
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
91, 92, 93 Qiu Zhijie, Copying Lanting Xu 1000 Times, 1992, calligraphy, ink on rice paper.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
178 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
94 Zhang Peili, Document on Hygiene No. 3, 1991, 3-channel video.
through copying. It also shifts emphasis away from conventional object-oriented approaches as a basis for art-making towards process instead.8 Another significant work of contemporary art produced and exhibited away from Beijing in the early 1990s was Zhang Peili’s Document on Hygiene No. 3, which was first shown at an exhibition in Shanghai in November 1991 named The Garage (illus. 94). e work is a single-channel video, showing the repeated washing of a live chicken with soap and water, and was made following the launch of a national government campaign in 1991 promoting the importance of personal cleanliness. Document on Hygiene No. 3 can be interpreted as an absurdist commentary on the repetitive nature and mesmerizingly coercive effects of government campaigns in the prc. It also enacts a deconstructive dislocation of form and meaning felt through persistent linguistic repetition. As previously indicated, the conservative crackdown that ensued in the wake of the Tiananmen killings effectively drew a line under the collective activities of many of the art groups that had come together during the 1980s as part of the ‘85 Movement. However, this did not amount to a comprehensive departure from collectivism and politicization among those involved in the making and showing of contemporary art in the prc.9 As well as the New Measurement Group, there were other groups that came together in the prc during the early 1990s to pursue shared visions of the politicized significance of contemporary art. Among them was the Big Tail Elephant Group (Daxiangwei gongzuozu), which, between 29 January and 2 April 1991, staged a group exhibition at Guangzhou No.1 Workers’ Palace in the southwestern Chinese city of Guangzhou, titled the Exhibition of the Big Tail Elephant Group. This was the first in what was to be an annual series of similar exhibitions. Although artists belonging to the Big
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
179 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
Tail Elephant Group (including Chen Shaoxiong, Liang Juhui and Lin Yilin) worked independently of one another, the group as a whole united around a collective interest in the use of art to intervene in public spaces, as well as shared concerns regarding the effects of Deng’s modernizing reforms on Chinese society. The first exhibition of the Big Tail Elephant Group in 1991 included an assemblage of brick, iron and wood by Lin Yilin, titled Standard Series of Ideal Residences (1991) (illus. 95); architectural installations by Liang Juhui made of bamboo sticks and mirrors; and a performance work by Chen Shaoxiong, Seven Days of Silence (1991), during which Chen painted curtains in the exhibition hall black over a period of seven days (illus. 96). Multimedia works by the group were presented in three subsequent exhibitions in 1992, 1993 and 1996. The work of the group can be interpreted as a critical response to the alienating effects of consumerism, entertainment and the increasing standardization of everyday life in the prc under Deng’s reforms. It can also be seen as a reflection, like the work of Zhang Peili, upon the social and economic disorder brought about by economic and political change.
95 Lin Yilin, Standard Series of Ideal Residences, 1991, installation, brick, iron, wood, dimensions variable. Installation view, Exhibition of the Big Tail Elephant Group, Guangzhou No.1 Workers’ Palace, Guangzhou, 29 January and 2 April 1991.
180 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
96 Chen Shaoxiong, Seven Days of Silence, 1991, installation, dimensions variable. Installation view, Exhibition of the Big Tail Elephant Group, Guangzhou No.1 Workers, Palace, Guangzhou, 29 January and 2 April 1991.
Another event that had a significant impact on the development of contemporary Chinese art during the early 1990s was the translation of a book by the art historian and critic Heiner Stachelhaus on the work of Joseph Beuys into Mandarin Chinese. e translation by the Taiwanese artist (and one-time student at the National Art Academy in Düsseldorf) Wu Mali (b. 1957) was first published in Taiwan in 1991, at a time when artists there were beginning to develop more socially engaged artistic practices in the wake of the lifting of martial law. Wu’s translation quickly became available in mainland China, where it was read by (and had a profound influence on the work of) numerous artists. After reading Wu’s translation, many artists in mainland China either began to explore the possibilities of techniques such as installation and performance for the first time or, if they had already done so, felt strongly encouraged to continue. In spring 1992, Deng Xiaoping made an extensive tour of southern China. During this tour, Deng visited the southern seaboard cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai, identifying them as leading centres for modernization and economic reform, while at the same time criticizing those opposed to reform. By doing this, Deng was able to generate crucial local support for his reforms supported by the slogan ‘To Get Rich is Glorious’. Initially, conservative elements in the ccp – including the then-president of the prc, Jiang Zemin (b. 1926) – sought to suppress media reports of Deng’s tour. Reports of the tour were nevertheless published in the Shanghai press,
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
181 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
garnering additional support for Deng among officials and the general populace of the prc outside southern China. Following the death of leading ccp elder and conservative Li Xiannian in June 1992, a power struggle ensued between conservative and progressive factions in the ccp. Deng seized on this moment of political uncertainty as an opportunity to reassert his authority over the ccp. Jiang Zemin eventually gave his public support to Deng’s reforms and the national media was allowed to report on Deng’s southern tour. Jiang’s support eventually led to the ccp’s adoption of a new platform calling for a ‘socialist market economy’ at the 14th Party Congress of the ccp in 1997. After the reassertion of Deng’s reformist agenda, there was a return to more liberal attitudes towards cultural production in the prc. At the forefront of this relaxation of restrictions on cultural activity was the staging of The First 1990s Biennial Art Fair in Guangzhou in October 1992. During the 1980s, contemporary art had remained very much outside the cultural mainstream in the prc, despite the efforts of leading figures in the ‘85 New Wave to align the Movement with official government reforms. e ‘85 New Wave was also a disparate movement without any clearly shared artistic/critical standards or a supporting commercial and educational infrastructure. After Deng’s tour, attempts were made throughout the 1990s to place contemporary art in the prc on a much more assured practical, intellectual and commercial footing. e First 1990s Biennial Art Fair (which included 400 works by 350 artists) was an early attempt to give shape to such a critical and commercial infrastructure in the prc.10 e staging of the Guangzhou Biennial was preceded by the founding of Art – Market (Yishu – Shichang) in 1991, a journal that aimed to establish a shared economic basis for the development of contemporary art in the prc. Also of importance at this time was the greater social mobility opened up across the prc by Deng’s reforms. e ‘85 New Wave had (because of continuing restrictions on social mobility within the prc during the 1980s) remained a movement of differing provincial perspectives and spheres of activity. With greater social mobility as part of economic and social reform during the 1990s, individuals involved in the making and showing of contemporary art began to gravitate towards major urban centres, where they were able to establish identities as professional artists, curators and critics for the first time. As a result, contemporary art in the prc became increasingly independent of state control, and was no longer divided comprehensively along regional lines.
In the wake of Deng’s southern tour, artists committed to making and showing contemporary art began to exhibit highly unconventional artworks in full public view. One of these was a work by Qiu Zhijie, titled On the New Life (or About a New Life), which was exhibited as the artist’s graduation piece at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou in the summer of 1992 (illus. 97, 98). Qiu’s degree was in printmaking, but he took advantage of increasingly liberal attitudes toward interdiciplinary working at the Zhejiang Academy to develop a more conceptually based form of artistic practice. On the New Life was exhibited in a disused warehouse and consisted of sixteen glass panels on to which were printed various texts and images. Viewers were able to walk around the panels contributing their constantly shifting reflections to the images on display. is installation was the beginning of a continuing interest on Qiu’s part in audience participation and interaction. Another, and perhaps more obviously critical, artwork presented publicly in the prc in 1992 was the action China Shanxi Taiyuan, 1992.12.3 (or Street Action: Crush Bicycles), which was staged outside the Youth Cultural Palace Taiyuan, Shanxi province, on 3 December 1992. The artists involved in the staging of this action, Song Yongping (b. 1961), Wang Yazhong (b. 1962) and Li Jianwei, assembled a collection of bicycles on a busy street which they first crushed using a bulldozer and then set alight. The resulting debris was then
182 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
97, 98 Qiu Zhijie, On the New Life, 1992, multimedia installation, silkscreen prints on 26 glass plates, dimensions variable. Installation view, China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
183 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
spray painted and re-presented as a sculpture, with the addition of the words ‘China Shanxi Taiyuan, 1992.12.3’ written next to it on the ground. The sculpture produced as an outcome of China Shanxi Taiyuan, 1992.12.3 was subsequently relocated to the entrance of the Taiyuan Steel Factory. ere is an inescapable resonance between China Shanxi Taiyuan, 1992.12.3 and the events of 4 June 1989, where People’s Liberation Army tanks rolled over numerous bicycles as part of the clearing of Tiananmen Square. It is also possible to interpret the bicycles in China Shanxi Taiyuan, 1992.12.3 as a general symbol of the Chinese people, most of whom in the early 1990s still used bicycles as their principal form of transport. By extension, the act of crushing the bicycles is a generalized allegory for political suppression. However, it is by no means clear that these are the work’s intended or immediately received meanings. For the majority of onlookers at the time, who would have been unfamiliar with the potential allegorical significances of contemporary art, China Shanxi Taiyuan, 1992.12.3 was almost certainly little more than a passing and relatively meaningless contribution to the wider urban spectacle that was beginning to emerge as a result of Deng’s modernizing reforms. Unconventional artworks exhibited publicly in the prc soon after Deng’s southern tour also include the performance Missing Person Announcement (or
184 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
99, 100 Zhu Fadong, Missing Person Announcement, 1993, performance, staged in Kunming, Yunnan province, on 3 January 1993.
Looking for a Missing Person) by Zhu Fadong (b. 1960) (illus. 99, 100). is performance, which was staged in Kunming in Yunnan province on 3 January 1993, involved the posting of flyers, including a photograph and description of Zhu, announcing him as a missing person. e multiple posting of the flyers
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
The Internationalization of Contemporary Chinese Art Alongside clandestine forms of conceptual, performance and site-specific art, the post-Tiananmen period, from 1989 to 1992, also saw the continuation of realist approaches to painting. While some paintings produced in the prc at the very beginning of the 1990s using realist techniques supplemented official academic-realist genres developed during the 1980s, others contributed to the emerging genres of Political Pop and Cynical Realism that would go on to have a significant impact internationally. e former included the work of a new generation of painters trained at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts that focused on relatively insignificant details of everyday life. The artist, curator and critic Yin Jinan (b. 1958) interpreted the quotidian superficiality of the paintings produced by this new generation as a critical departure from the conventions associated with academic socialist realism and its requirement that artists should give their work profound depth of meaning.11 Painting in the prc during the 1990s also included the persistence of abstraction, a significant exponent of which is the Shanghai-based painter Ding Yi (b. 1962). His geometric ‘cross’ paintings on printed fabrics draw directly on the example of the work of Western constructivists such as Piet Mondrian as well as Dadaist collage-montage (illus. 101, 102).12 As discussed earlier, Political Pop (which was strongly influenced by the work of Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton and other Western Pop artists) is characterized by what are, on the face of it, deconstructivist juxtapositions of images from the Maoist period with others taken from differing sources, including imagery associated with global capitalism. In the case of Wang Guangyi’s contributions to Political Pop, this juxtaposition is, while understandably oblique in tone, clearly intended to offer some sort of criticism of the alienating effects of the Cultural Revolution. In the case of Yu Youhan, however, the underlying intentions in making such works are, as the artist
185 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
attracted significant public attention and, as a result, that of the local police in Kunming. Again, this action would not have been considered as an artwork by most of those who witnessed it first-hand. It is, however, possible to interpret Missing Person Announcement from a knowing art world perspective as a commentary on both Zhu’s own personal sense of alienation and loss of identity as an economic migrant, and more generally that of millions of others in the prc felt as a result of the growing impact of Deng’s reforms.
186 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
101, 102 Ding Yi, Appearance of Crosses 92–15, 1992, oil on canvas, 140 × 160 cm.
himself attests, rather less clear-cut. is positioning is signified by the artist’s insistence that his Pop-like paintings be referred to as ‘Chinese Pop’ rather than ‘Political Pop’ (illus. 103).13 Moreover, while Wang Guangyi’s Great Criticism series of paintings (combining imagery associated with the Cultural Revolution with internationally recognized brand names and identities) is open to interpretation as a mutually deconstructive juxtaposition of differing ideological positions, it is by no means clear that the artist himself either understood or intended a critical outcome of this sort (illus. 104). If one looks closely at many of Wang’s Great Criticism paintings, there is a sophisticated combination of formal elements that strongly emphasize the flatness of the paintings. ese elements not only include extensive fields of unbroken colour, largescale typefaces and cartoon-like depictions of soldiers, workers and peasants, but
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
187 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
also the repetitive confetti-like use of sequences of numbers. As anyone familiar with contemporary urban life in China will immediately recognize, similar sequences of numbers giving contact phone numbers for various services are a commonplace addition to the walls of buildings, often overwriting murals promoting the ccp and its ideological agendas (illus. 105, 106). Wang’s incorporation of number sequences into his paintings not only works as an effective formal/decorative device (establishing the all-over flatness of the picture surface), but also allows the paintings as a whole to be read as murals in an urban setting. This second-order connotational significance therefore suggests that, while Wang’s paintings can be read as deconstructive critiques, they are also
overleaf: 103 Yu Youhan, The 50s, 1994, acrylic on canvas, 145 × 105 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
104 Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism – Coca-Cola, 1993, oil on canvas, 200 × 200 cm.
105 Official public information mural, Beijing, 2013.
190 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
106 Telephone numbers advertising personal services stencilled on a wall, Beijing, 2013.
rooted in the ‘reality’ of everyday Chinese urban life. To describe Wang’s Pop paintings simply as deconstructive is, therefore, to overlook their adherence to a durable tradition of realism in modern Chinese art. If one acknowledges this adherence, Wang’s combination of capitalist and revolutionary imagery begins to look less like a deconstructive combination of opposing
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
191 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
representations, and more like an attempt to objectively reflect the ideologically mixed reality of life in the prc after the establishing of Deng’s programme of Opening and Reform. A related reading of Wang’s Great Criticism series has been put forward by Huang Zhuan in his text ‘The Misread Great Criticism (Da pipan)’ (2008).14 While Huang does not refer explicitly to Wang’s Great Criticism series as an extension of the realist tradition in China, he does argue that the paintings occupy a ‘non-standpoint’ that relates objectively to both indigenous Chinese and external Westernized cultural, social and political perspectives. Other essays by Chinese critics on the subject of Political Pop include Gu Chengfeng’s (b. 1957) ‘Tendencies in Chinese Pop’ (1996).15 Paintings identified with the genre of Cynical Realism (depicting generic figures convulsed either by grimacing or disingenuous laughter) are also, as previously discussed, open to interpretation as allegorical-deconstructive attacks on established governmental authority. is view is strongly supported by Li Xianting’s essay ‘Apathy and Deconstruction in Post ’89 Art: Analysing the Trends of “Cynical Realism” and “Political Pop”’. Such paintings often present distinctly unrealistic juxtapositions of differing pictorial elements, which, Li argues, have their precedent in the ‘New Literati “Art Games”’ and ‘Absurd Trends’ of the ’85 New Wave.16 Consider here, for example, Yue Minjun’s, Liberty Leading the People (1995–6), which pastiches Eugène Delacroix’s painting of the same name to telling critical effect. However, it is also important to see Cynical Realism, like Political Pop, as an attempt to reflect the reality of Chinese life and, in particular, the marked shift in sensibilities away from humanist enthusiasm that took place in the wake of the Tiananmen killings. Equally, Cynical Realism can be interpreted (like the clandestine forms of conceptual, performance and sitespecific art staged in the prc in the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen) as an upholding of humanist values. If one looks towards Cynical Realist paintings by Chinese artists of the 1990s, such as Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang (b. 1958) and Liu Wei (b. 1972), there is (in spite of their serial presentation of images of inscrutably blank facial expressions and disingenuous grimacing and laughter) an implicit sense of the value of the individual and her/his ability to hold private thoughts and opinions beyond the reach of the state (illus. 107, 108). Political Pop and Cynical Realism were accompanied during the 1990s by the development of the sub-genre known a ‘Gaudy Pop’ (illus. 109, 110). is sub-genre, whose chief exponents include Feng Zhengjie (b. 1968) and the Luo
192 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
107 Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline – Big Family, 1995, oil on canvas, 179 × 229 cm.
Brothers – Luo Wei Dong (b. 1962), Luo Wei Guo (b. 1964) and Luo Wei Bing (b. 1972) – brings together diverse images culled from everyday life in the prc and elsewhere to produce highly decorative and often brightly coloured images. ey not only share formal aspects characteristic of both Cynical Realism and Political Pop but are also redolent of popular paintings and prints traditionally bought and exchanged in China as a way of conferring good fortune at Chinese New Year. Unlike traditional New Year paintings and prints, however, images associated with Gaudy Pop have discernibly critical-realist content. While its often riotous accumulation of disparate images can be understood as a representation of the increasingly exhilarating nature of modern urban life in the prc during the 1990s, Gaudy Pop also carries with it distinct connotations of confusion and alienation. Essays on the significance of Gaudy Pop include Liao Wen’s (b. 1961) ‘Living in Kitsch – e Critical “Irony” of Gaudy Art’ (1999).17
193 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
In addition to the emergence of inward-looking cynical and anti-humanist attitudes among contemporary artists within the prc during the early 1990s, there was also an increasingly outward-looking engagement with the international art world. Beginning with Magiciens de la Terre in 1989, works of contemporary art produced by artists from the prc became a regular feature of exhibitions worldwide, prompting a surge of interest in contemporary Chinese art on the international art market. As a result of this engagement with international curatorship and the international art market, makers of contemporary art in the prc became more closely involved with the theoretical concerns of internationalized postmodernism and issues related to postcolonialism in particular. However, unlike expatriate Chinese artists, those still living and working in the prc often rejected both in the face of a durable indigenous nationalism. The entry of contemporary Chinese art on to the international stage also opened up space for Chinese artists, curators and critics to act as mediators of the significance of that art in relation to non-Chinese audiences. Magiciens de la Terre was followed in 1993 by two highly influential survey exhibitions of contemporary art from the prc: China’s New Art Post-’89, organized by the Hanart TZ Gallery as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, and China Avant-Garde, staged at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, that first drew international attention to the genres of painting known as Political Pop and Cynical Realism. China’s New Art Post-’89 opened at Hong
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
108 Fang Lijun, 1998. 8. 15, 2007, silkscreen, 80 × 120 cm.
194 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
109 JI Wenyu, Chinese God of Fortune and KFC, 1996, oil on canvas, 89 × 116 cm.
Kong City Hall and the Hong Kong Arts Centre on 13 January 1993, before touring to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, the Melbourne Arts Festival, the Vancouver Art Gallery and five venues in the u.s., courtesy of the American Federation of Art in New York, up to the end of 1997. e exhibition, which was organized by (Johnson) Chang Tsong-zung (b. 1951), the Hong-Kong based director of the Hanart TZ Gallery, and Li Xianting, included work by the artists Ding Yi, Fang Lijun, Feng Mengbo, Geng Jianyi, Gu Dexin, Qiu Zhijie, Wang Jianwei (b. 1958), Wang Guangyi, Wu Shanzhuan, Yu Youhan, Zhang Peili and Zhang Xiaogang, among others. It was the first major survey exhibition to present developments in contemporary Chinese art to an international audience. e exhibition consisted of 150 works, many of which were paintings, although sculptures, mixed-media installations and video works were also included. While artworks exhibited at China’s New Art Post-’89
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
110 Pu Jie, Daughters, 1996, oil on canvas, 150 × 180 cm.
195 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
extended across a range of genres, those associated with Political Pop and Cynical Realism (terms coined by Li Xianting) attracted most attention among international critics and the international art market, not least because of their readily apparent political content. As previously discussed, China’s New Art Post-’89 was accompanied by the inclusion of works of contemporary art from the prc in the fringe section of the Venice Biennale in 1993. is groundbreaking inclusion was followed by the exhibition of works of contemporary art from the prc in the main section of the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995 as well as by the work of nineteen artists from the prc at the 48th Venice Biennale, dappertutto in 1999. is latter inclusion was widely criticized for focusing on state-educated artists who also
held contracts with commercial galleries, although the 1999 Venice Biennale also included work by Huang Yongping, who had been chosen to represent France. Among the artworks exhibited at the 48th Venice Biennale was a highly ambitious installation by Cai Guo-Qiang, titled Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard (1999), which was staged at the Giardini, the Arsenale and other venues in Venice throughout the duration of the Biennale between 12 June and 7 November 1999 (illus. 111, 112, 113). To produce the installation, Cai invited a number of artists, including Ai Weiwei, Chen Zhen and Zhang Huan (b. 1965), to assist in the recreation of groupings of figures from the highly acclaimed Maoist socialist-realist sculpture Rent Collection Courtyard, made originally by members of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1965. Rent Collection Courtyard (1965) consists of 114 life-size clay sculptures and 108 found objects, such as farm tools, brought together in seven separate tableaux over a space of 100 m, representing the exploitation of peasants through the collection of ever-increasing rents by private landlords in pre-revolutionary China. Rent Collection Courtyard, which continues to influence the production of official sculpture in the prc today, is one of the outstanding achievements
196 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
111, 112, 113 Cai Guo-Qiang, installation view of Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard at 48th Venice Biennale, 1999.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
198 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
of Maoist socialist realism detached from the contemporaneous interests of Western modernist art. In 1972, Harald Szeemann (1933–2005), then-director of the Kassel Documenta, invited the inclusion of Rent Collection Courtyard in that year’s exhibition; however, the work was not exhibited, almost certainly because of ideological misgivings on the part of a still strongly anti-imperialist ccp.18 Szeemann subsequently went on to curate the installation of Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard in 1999. Cai’s selective recreation, which won the prestigious Golden Lion Prize at Venice in 1999, quickly became a focus for controversy in the prc, where it was interpreted as an act of blatant plagiarism and an attack on the Chinese people.19 However, at least one commentator, Liu Xiaochun, gave qualified support to the work as a considered form of postDuchampian ‘quotation’.20 In May 2000, Cai and Szeemann were issued with a copyright infringement lawsuit by Luo Zhongli, president of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, although the case was ultimately dismissed. Much less controversial (and arguably more constructive as a focus for the internationalization of contemporary Chinese art in the 1990s) was the staging of the retrospective exhibition Inside Out: New Chinese Art, at the Museum of Modern Art and the Asia Society Galleries in San Francisco between 15 September 1998 and 3 January 1999. e exhibition, which was curated by Gao Minglu, surveyed the work of artists from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong (which had become a special administrative region of the prc after the end of British Rule in 1997). It also included work by mainland Chinese artists who had emigrated to the West in the 1980s and ’90s, produced during the preceding decade against the background of globalization and transnationalism. Although Inside Out: New Chinese Art sought to explore the rapidly changing relationship between contemporary Chinese art and global postmodernism, it also drew attention to issues specific to the production of contemporary art in Chinese cultural contexts. It demonstrated that a transnational contemporary Chinese art involved the transformation of both Western and Chinese cultural perspectives as a means of negotiating current and historical differences between the two. e exhibition was organized thematically to address specific attempts both locally and regionally to develop a contemporary sense of Chinese cultural identity in relation to the pressures of globalization.21 Another significant contribution to the internationalization of contemporary Chinese art during the late 1990s was the founding of the BizArt art centre in Shanghai (illus. 114). BizArt was established in September 1999 by the artist Xu Zhen (b. 1977) and the Italian-born poet and former student of Chinese
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
art, Davide Quadrio (b. 1970). It was intended as a self-supporting, non-profit organization providing space for the exhibition of non-traditional artworks (such as video performance and installation) and for the sharing of new practices and ideas. Between its founding and effective dissolution in 2010, BizArt collaborated closely with major cultural institutions outside the prc, helping to support significant interaction and exchange between Chinese and non-Chinese artists and institutions. The setting up of BizArt as a focus for innovation and transnational interaction and exchange was part of the wider construction of an indigenous internationalized infrastructure for the making, showing and selling of art that began to emerge in the prc from the mid-1990s. Among the major centres developed as part of this emerging infrastructure was the 798 Art Zone in Beijing. is was initiated in 1995 by members of the faculty of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, who began to rent recently decommissioned factory space at Dashanzi in the Chaoyang district of Beijing. rough the late 1990s, numerous artists and entrepreneurs established studios and gallery/exhibition spaces at 798, which rapidly became a focus for growing international and local interest in contemporary Chinese art.
199 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
114 Installation view of BizArt, Shanghai, 2001, showing a work by Yang Zhenzhong from the exhibition Mantic Ecstasy, April 2001.
Similar art zones sprang up in other cities in the prc in the 1990s and early 2000s. ese included Shanghai’s m50 art district, which was initiated by the setting up of artists’ studios in disused factory spaces at 50 Moganshan Road next to Suzhou Creek in Shanghai in 2000. It now houses major galleries such as ShanghArt and the Eastlink Gallery (illus. 115).22 e development of an internationalized infrastructure for the making, showing and selling of contemporary art in the prc throughout the 1990s provided a platform that opened up space for commercialization involving foreign galleries and auction houses (as well as points of entry into the indigenous contemporary Chinese art scene for non-Chinese collectors), and also opened up opportunities for Chinese artists and gallery owners to become significant players on the international art market. The setting up of art districts by entrepreneurial artists and gallery owners was accompanied by the establishment of the prc’s first recurring, officially supported exhibitions of contemporary art in the late 1990s. The longest established of these is the Shanghai Biennale, which was initiated in 1996 with the exhibition Open Space. After starting out as a platform for local, officially approved art with its first two exhibitions in 1996 and 1998, in 2000 under the curatorship of Hou Hanru the Biennale was transformed into a high-profile focus for the showing of contemporary art from around the world.23 e 2000 Shanghai Biennale was welcomed by some commentators
200 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
115 ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai, early 1990s, installation view featuring paintings by Zhou Tiehai.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Experimental Art and Social Transformation in the People’s Republic of China roughout the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century, indigenous mainland Chinese perspectives on the significance of contemporary Chinese art persisted in diverging, to a large extent, from those of the international art world. Contemporary Chinese art was viewed internationally in largely broad-brush terms as a variant of deconstructivist postmodernism. In the prc,
201 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
in the prc as a major step forward in terms of the officially supported showing of contemporary art along internationally established lines. Others, however, criticized the exhibition. Conservative elements, including the Beijing-based Chinese Artists Association, condemned the 2000 Biennale as a worrying departure from established socialist-nationalist principles. At the same time, independent artists, curators and critics saw the Biennale as a threat to the autonomy of experimental art.24 Another significant international exhibition of contemporary art in the prc in 2000 was the First Open Art Platform – International Performance Art Festival, held without official support at Sihedu Village near Beijing on 28 August of that year. e festival, which included performances by among others Cang Xin (b. 1967), Li Wei (b. 1968), Liu Jin (b. 1971) and Wang Chuyu (b. 1974), was staged in a relatively remote rural location to avoid negative attention from the authorities in Beijing. On the opening day, five performances took place including one by Liu Jin in which the artist bathed naked in Coca-Cola. Concerned locals contacted local police, who moved in to close down the festival, arresting two of its organizers, the artists Shu Yang (b. 1969) and Zhu Ming (b. 1972). e festival was restarted in a private home the next day, but since it had no official approval it was closed down once more and documents related to its staging were confiscated. The internationalization of contemporary Chinese art was further supported during the 1990s by the return of expatriate artists. Among them was Sheng Qi who, after returning to the prc in the late 1990s, sought to produce artworks addressing issues of international importance that he considered as having been overlooked by the Chinese government. On 1 December 1999, Sheng staged a performance at the entrance to the National Art Museum in Beijing where he pinned red ribbons signifying the international Aids awareness campaign on passers-by. This was the first performance work staged at the China Art Museum since China/Avant-Garde in 1989.
202 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
however, the perceived significance of contemporary Chinese art was (as that of modern Chinese art throughout the 1980s) more closely tied to localized social and political concerns, as well as an increasingly widespread desire among mainland Chinese artists (carried over from the 1980s) to experiment with what were still to them novel artistic styles and techniques. Experimental Chinese art of the 1990s and the early twenty-first century was characterized by an increasing synchronization with the formal diversity of international postmodernism, in addition to a more focused understanding among mainland Chinese artists, curators and critics (through reading translated texts and exposure to the international art world) of the deconstructive potential of contemporary artistic techniques. From as early as the late 1970s, there had been access in the prc to translations of structuralist and poststructuralist theoretical texts, alongside the publication of writing on, and representations of, modernist and postmodernist art. is experimental art was not, however, as Wu Hung has suggested, one in which formal experimentation and preoccupation with technique superseded political content.25 Rather, there was an increased and unresolved tension between differing extrinsic and indigenous politicized perspectives with respect to the making of contemporary Chinese art. On the one hand, artists, curators and critics involved in the making and showing of contemporary Chinese art felt the need to position their work (both for reasons of artistic credibility and commerciality) in relation to the established postmodernist-deconstructivist positions of the international art world, which at the time were increasingly focused on questions of identity and postcolonialist discourse. On the other, those same artists, curators and critics – and in particular those resident in the prc – also felt the need to address more localized political concerns. It is, therefore, possible to view contemporary Chinese art of the 1990s not just as one focused on issues of formal experimentation but also as a continuation of socially interventionist tendencies first explored by Chinese artists in the 1920s and 1930s; as well as aspects of the ‘pure’ model of cultural production established during the Cultural Revolution. e political concerns that confronted artists in the prc during the 1990s and early twenty-first century are, in broad terms, two-fold. First, by the mid1990s, Deng’s reforms had begun to have a significant and growing impact on society in the prc. Not only was there increasing industrialization and urbanization, but also growing population movements associated with economic
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
203 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
migration. A Chinese population that had previously been used to living in close, materially impoverished communities now found itself immersed in a modern, rapidly changing, market-oriented society that (for those living in urban areas at least) was both exhilarating and profoundly unsettling. Secondly, there was the heightening of long-held concerns about Westernized modernity effacing Chinese society and culture. In the face of these dual pressures, indigenous mainland Chinese politics (at both a national governmental and localized level) began to shuttle between an ever-quickening pursuit of the material benefits of modernity and a deepening sense of protectionism, both in terms of a resistant anti-Western nationalism and localized resistance to change. Contemporary Chinese art was both presented and interpreted outside the prc during the late 1980s and 1990s, contributing to the international debate associated with postmodernism and postcolonialism at exhibitions such as Magiciens de la Terre. However, for many contemporary Chinese artists and critics of the 1990s, postmodernism and postcolonialism presented themselves simply as new manifestations of Western cultural imperialism, aimed at undermining the particularity of China’s national cultural identity. In light of this, Chinese artists and critics sought to adopt a range of practical and theoretical strategies, with the intention of critically reworking and/or countering the influence of Westernized international postmodernism and postcolonialism. is wider shuttling between the pursuit of modernity and protectionism is very much evident in the making and showing of contemporary art in the prc during the 1990s and early twenty-first century. While contemporary art produced and shown in the prc at this time signifies a continuing desire for freedom of artistic self-expression exemplified by the activities of the Stars and the ’85 Movement (one which from the early 1990s also became strongly enmeshed with the possibility of material enrichment held out by the market), it also increasingly became a focus for inward- and outward-looking critical engagements with social and economic change. ese critical engagements with social and economic change manifested themselves in a number of ways. One was the establishment of artists’ communities and villages such as Beijing’s renowned East Village. While most artists in the prc no longer chose to orientate themselves with named groups and movements as they had in the 1980s, artists’ communities of the 1990s nevertheless provided a focus for collective support and the exchange of ideas and techniques in the face of continuing political authoritarianism in the prc.
204 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
116, 117 Zhang Huan, Sixty-Five Kilograms, 1994, performance.
e Beijing East Village was established in 1993 in a migrant workers’ village in the eastern part of Beijing by a group of artists looking for cheap and spacious accommodation away from the city centre and the more established art district of Yuanmingyuan. Residents of the Beijing East Village included Ma Liuming and Zhang Huan who, along with resident photographers, began to develop and document performance-based practices focused on questions of identity and abjection. ese performances included works by Zhang titled SixtyFive Kilograms (1994) and Twelve Square Metres (1994), the latter staged in a public toilet, where the artist sat for over an hour covered in honey and feeding flies (illus. 116, 117, 118).26 ey also include a work by Ma titled Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch 1 (1994) during which the artist sat naked sucking a plastic tube attached to his penis (illus. 119, 120).27 In 1994, Beijing East Village was famously visited by the artists Gilbert and George, who had been invited to stage an exhibition of their work in Beijing. Gilbert and George’s failure to respond to the work of the village’s residents provoked Ma into an impromptu performance involving the covering of his naked body in red paint as a signifier of abject selfsacrifice.28 As part of his approach to performance, Ma developed a conspicuously hybrid transgender persona, whom he named Fen-Ma Liuming.29 e Beijing East Village was closed down by local authorities only one year after it was established, following the arrest of the openly transgender Ma for cooking naked outdoors as part of his Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch series.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
207 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
Another notable performance in the prc in the 1990s was a work by Song Dong, entitled Breathing (1996) (illus. 121, 122). This performance took place at night in the winter, in Tiananmen Square and Houhai Park in Beijing. During the performance (documented in photographs taken by Song Dong’s wife and fellow artist Yi Xjuzhen), Song Dong lay down and breathed continuously on the ground for 40 minutes, producing a break in the frost layer that disappeared soon after the performance was over. e work had no audience other than a group of somewhat bemused policemen. Although the work is, in a sense, a clandestine one, it can nevertheless be interpreted as an active marking and therefore a reclaiming of politicized space as well as an interruption on the suppression of historical memory.30 Also important at this time in relation to questions of identity was the work of Chinese women artists. From a decidedly marginalized position within a still strongly patriarchal Chinese society, they began to produce work that provided an incisive critical foil to the repressive, homogenizing tendencies of the Chinese communist state, and its increasing entanglement with Western capitalism’s
119 Ma Liuming, Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch I, 1994, performance. 120 Ma Liuming, Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch II, 1994, performance.
opposite: 118 Zhang Huan, Twelve Square Metres, 1994, performance.
208 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
121, 122 Song Dong, Breathing, 1996, 2 photographs of site-specific performance, 100 × 130 cm.
connective economic narrative. Examples of works produced by women artists in the prc at this time include installations by Lin Tianmiao (b. 1961). Contemporaneous writings relating to the development of art by women in the prc during the 1990s include Xu Hong’s ‘Walking Out of the Abyss: My Feminist Critique’ (1994), Yin Xiuzhen’s (b. 1963) ‘Clothes Chest’ (1995), ‘Toward a Female Initiative’ by Tao Yonghai (1996) and Lin Tianmiao, ‘Wrapping and Severing’ (1997).31 Alongside works related to identity, the body and performance, experimental art of the 1990s and early 2000s in the prc can be further divided into two overlapping categories: lens-based works (involving video and photography); and installations, site-specific works and performances (involving direct interventions into public space). A key event relating to the development of the former is the exhibition Image and Phenomena, staged at the China Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou in 1996. e exhibition, which was organized by Qiu Zhijie and Wu Meichun, included work by, among others, Geng Jianyi, Zhang Peili and Wang Gongxin (b. 1960). It was the first major exhibition of video art to be held in the
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
209 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
prc. Since the making in 1988 of the prc’s first work of video art, 30x30 by Zhang Peili, numerous other artists had begun to experiment with the medium. However, before Image and Phenomena there had been few opportunities to exhibit such work in public. Image and Phenomena was a highly influential exhibition that resulted in solo exhibitions of video work by Wang Gongxin, Song Dong and Qiu Zhijie. Two publications related to the exhibition, ‘Documents of Video Art’ and ‘Art and Historical Consciousness’, impacted strongly on the future development of video art in the prc.32 ere are numerous examples of installations, site-specific works and performances in the prc during the 1990s and early 2000s, many of which sought to engage with the increased commerciality/consumerism and transformation of urban space brought about by Deng’s reforms. Among the earliest of such works is the New History Group’s (Xinlishi xiaozu) planned performance event New History 1993: Mass Consumption. e New History Group formed in May 1992 and included the artists Liang Xiaochuan, Ren Jian, Ye Shuanggui (b. 1964), Yu Hong (b. 1957), Zhang Sanxi (b. 1953) and Zhou Xiping
210 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
(b. 1953). ey envisaged New History 1993: Mass Consumption as a multimedia event involving music performances, a fashion show and a sale of artefacts, set to take place at a McDonald’s restaurant in Wangfujing in Beijing on 23 April 1993. Among the artefacts intended for sale were 10,000 pairs of jeans designed by Ren, emblazoned with flags from around the world. e event was cancelled on the evening before its opening by the Beijing Public Security Bureau. Supported by the controversy surrounding the event, Ren was nevertheless able to sell his jeans, which became a must-have fashion item in Beijing. e staging of artworks in commercial spaces, such as restaurants and shopping malls, became an increasingly common feature of urban life in the prc during the 1990s and early 2000s. It ushered in a significant blurring of the boundary between high art and commerce that may be interpreted either as an incisive act of deconstruction or as a sell-out to encroaching capitalism. It is important to note, however, that the embracing of commerce in the prc has been a significant way for artists to distance themselves from the pervasive politicization of life associated with the Maoist period and (in spite of the materialist nature of Deng’s reforms) the continuing authoritarianism of the ccp. Other artworks staged in commercial spaces during this period include the event Supermarket: Art for Sale, which was staged briefly at a shopping centre on Huaihai Road in Shanghai in April 1999 before being closed down on the grounds that it included a supposedly pornographic video work by Xu Zhen. e exhibition Food as Art took place at the elite Club Vogue Bar in the Sanlitun District of Beijing on 17 February 2000 and included five installations and two performances thematically related to food and wider issues of consumption. ese included Sun Yuan (b. 1972) and Peng Yu’s (b. 1974) Soul Killing (2000), which involved the shorn body of a dog stuck with burning incense sticks being roasted under a spotlight until the resulting stench became unbearable (illus. 123). e exhibition Home? Contemporary Art Proposals became a major and unexpected draw for shoppers as well as Shanghai’s artconsuming public, when it was staged at the Star-Moon Home Furnishing Centre on Macao Road in Shanghai between 8 and 12 April 2000. Alongside excursions into commercial space, experimental art in the prc in the 1990s and early 2000s also sought to engage directly with sites of urban transformation. Among such interventions are a series of site-specific works by the artist Zhang Dali (b. 1963) carried out in urban spaces earmarked for demolition in advance of urban redevelopment. Following the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 1989, Dali left the prc for Italy, where he produced
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
211 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
commercially successful paintings in a self-consciously orientalized style. On his return to the prc in 1995, Dali changed artistic direction by producing a series of site-specific graffiti works. ese involved the signature use of a selfportrait image of a bald head in profile, either spray-painted on to or cut out of the walls of buildings, sometimes accompanied by the written tag ‘ak-47’ (illus. 124). As Wu Hung makes clear, by intervening in derelict urban spaces in this way, Zhang can not only be understood to have reclaimed those spaces temporarily from their involvement in China’s precipitous programme of urban modernization, but also to have drawn attention to ‘certain contrasts between different political identities and social spaces’ – that is to say, between a positive, government-supported vision of progressive social change, and a more negative public sense of the ruination of China’s established urban spaces and their associated communities.33 Moreover, as Wu has also argued, in doing so Zhang may be understood to have constructed an identity for himself ‘as a “local artist” opposed to globalization and commercialization’ that contrasts strongly with his ‘other identity as an “international artist” working for a global audience’.34 As such, Zhang’s interventionist strategy is, concludes Wu, open to interpretation as a pervasively deconstructive one that suspends the authority of indigenous Chinese and international postmodernism conceptions of sociocultural progress, while at the same time forging micro-narratives that emphasize artists’ ‘individual responses to common social problems’.35 Primary documents related to Zhang’s urban interventionist work of the 1990s include Jian Tao’s ‘Report on Zhang Dali’s Dialogue (Duihua)’ (1998) and a conversation between Gou Hongbing and Zhang Dali titled ‘Dialogue on Dialogue’ (2000).36 Primary documents related to other works of social interventionist art by mainland Chinese artists in the 1990s and early 2000s include Huang Yan’s ‘“Changchun, China”: A Report on a Performance of Making Rubbings from Buildings Slated for Demolition’ (1994); Zhan Wang’s ‘’94 Action Plan for Debris Salvage Schemes for Implementation and Results’ (1994) and ‘New Map of Beijing: Today and Tomorrow’s Capital – Rockery Remolding Plan’ (1995); ‘One Hour Game (Youxi Yi Xiaoshi)’ by Liang Juhui (1996–7).37 By the latter half of the 1990s, the conditions of cultural production and reception in the prc had changed out of all recognition, compared to those prevailing at the end of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1984. Not only were artists able to produce conspicuously non-realist works using a wide range of techniques away from any direct form of state control, they were
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
opposite: 123 Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Soul Killing, 2000, installation, convex lens, 500-W signal lamp, dog bought from market, 770 × 200 × 130 cm.
124 Zhang Dali, Dialogue and Demolition 1998. 1. 21, 1998, C-print.
213 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
also able to develop their practice both in relation to the international art world/market and a growing commercial and museum infrastructure in the prc. Given the continuing tendency of authorities to ban or close down public showings of contemporary art throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s, it is possible to see the shift in the conditions of cultural production in the prc during that period as the outcome of an epic struggle. is struggle was between the repressive apparatuses of the Chinese state, and cultural producers bent on the opening up and maintenance of space for freedom of artistic expression and criticism of authority. ere were certainly significant restrictions on the use of art as a focus for public criticism of government authority in the prc during the 1980s and 1990s that more critically inclined artists constantly sought to subvert (albeit for the most part in understandably allegorical and/or clandestine ways). However, the change in the conditions of cultural production in the prc between the mid-1980s and the late 1990s had (like that which took place in the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution) not come about principally
214 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
through the agency of dissenting artists. Rather, the ground for that change had already been cleared by a combination of Deng’s economic and social reforms (which allowed for individual entrepreneurship and the commercialization of cultural production) and an accompanying governmental disinterest in culture as a serious focus for reform. For the most part, artists, curators and critics intent on the making, showing and selling of a contemporary Chinese art in the prc simply took the opportunity to occupy and, where they could, expand that ground. Moreover, at least some of those artists, curators and critics continued to hold out the ’85 New Wave’s hope for some sort of official rapprochement between contemporary art and the Chinese state. Closures of public exhibitions of contemporary art in the prc after the post-Tiananmen crackdown did not take place routinely as a means of controlling political dissent. Few, if any, of those involved in the making and showing of contemporary art in the prc in the 1990s and early 2000s set out to openly transgress the limits of governmental authority, for fear of the consequences of doing so. Outside the prc, artists, curators and critics involved in the making and showing of contemporary Chinese art were free to promote and exploit their perceived status as political dissidents, but within the prc, their concerns lay mostly with the pursuit of formal/technical experimentation (partly in an attempt to synchronize with the international art world/market) and relatively oblique forms of localized social/political intervention. Moreover, the informed audience for contemporary art in the prc was still miniscule. Consequently, most of those who witnessed public exhibitions of contemporary art in the prc in the 1990s and early 2000s saw them as curiosities amidst an ever-shifting spectacle of modernity, rather than as manifestations of high culture and/or as platforms for political criticism. Public showings of contemporary art did remain a sensitive issue, but not because of any serious fear that they might act as a focus for criticism of governmental authority. Instead it was because of their potential to threaten public order by drawing large crowds and, in doing so, expose a still largely culturally conservative Chinese public to non-Chinese cultural values. Indeed, the closing down of exhibitions in the prc is still, more often than not, the result of local government officials wishing to be perceived by their superiors as being in full control of public order, rather than any centrally organized, precisely targeted form of political censorship. Nevertheless, attempts to stage public exhibitions of experimental art in the prc during the late 1990s and early 2000s were subject to continual derailment by authority.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
215 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
Among the exhibitions affected by this discursive web of constraints on the public showing of contemporary art in the prc during the late 1990s was the First Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art. is was initially scheduled to be staged at the National Art Museum and the Capital Normal University Art Gallery in Beijing between 31 December 1996 and 3 January 1997. e exhibition was envisaged by its organizers in Beijing, Huang Zhuan and Yin Shuangxi (b. 1954), as a commercially sponsored platform for serious critical reflection on the development of experimental art in the prc. The opening of the exhibition was pre-empted by detailed proposals drawn up by Huang for the development of a more open and democratic arts infrastructure. Perhaps unsurprisingly (given that the notion of democratic reform pointed beyond the political limits on cultural production laid down by the ccp), the First Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art was cancelled abruptly the day before its intended opening. The authorities in Beijing justified their actions by insisting that commercial exhibitions of major public standing should first have full approval of the Ministry of Culture. e hopes of those involved in the making and showing of experimental art in the prc for governmental acceptance of the seriousness of their activities were dashed. A revised version of the exhibition, minus a number of its more extreme installation and multimedia works, opened at the Hong Kong Arts Centre on 22 April 1997. In the face of governmental controls on high-profile public exhibitions of experimental art, those involved in the making and showing of contemporary art in the prc looked continually towards alternative means. Among public showings of experimental art staged outside the official system in the prc in the late 1990s is Wildlife, a year-long experimental art project conducted entirely in unconventional ‘non-exhibition’ spaces. e project, which started on Jingzhe day (one of the 24 divisions in China’s traditional calendar, marking the ending of winter hibernation for animals), took place in various everyday rural and urban locations across the prc, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Luoyang, Yangjiang and Haikou, between 5 March 1997 and 5 March 1998. It involved a collaboration between 27 artists, among them Ma Liuming, Guo Shirui (b. 1952) and Song Dong. The intention of the project was to develop a (somewhat Lautréamont-esque) framework for the showing of art as a series of ‘chance encounters’, away from the restrictions imposed by established cultural institutions. In doing so, the intention was to break down (in typically avant-garde fashion) the boundary between art and
216 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
the public. Works staged as part of the project include Zhang Huan’s Fishpond (1997; illus. 125). The extent to which the project was able to engender genuine interest in, and understanding of, experimental art among a largely non-specialist audience in the prc remains unclear. As with most public showings of contemporary art in the prc in the 1990s, it is likely to have been seen by most as little more than a passing curiosity. Another public showing of experimental art outside conventional exhibition spaces was Trace of Existence: A Private Showing of Contemporary Chinese Art ’98, a ‘closed’ one-day event staged in an abandoned factory space, the Art Now Studio in Yaojiayuan Village in the Chaoyang district of Beijing on 2 January 1998. e exhibition was organized by Feng Boyi (b. 1960) and Cai Qing (b. 1960) and included works by Cai Qing, Gu Dexin, Lin Tianmiao, Qiu Zhijie, Song Dong, Wang Gongxin, Wang Jianwei, Yin Xiuzhen, Zhan Wang (b. 1962), Zhang Defeng (b. 1961) and Zhang Yonghe (b. 1956). Among the works exhibited was one by Gu Dexin titled 1998.01.02 (1998) that consisted of a table covered with 100 kg of pigs’ brains. Some 300 people, mostly from within the Chinese experimental art community, attended the event. e decision of the exhibition’s organisers to stage a closed event in a remote location in order to avoid censure by government officials represents a return to the clandestine approaches to the making and showing of contemporary art in the prc initiated by the post-Tiananmen crackdown. However, it is also important to note that the decision to stage a closed event of this sort may also have been made knowingly in relation to the details of Deng’s reforms which, in principle at least, allow for freedom of debate among intellectuals and experimental practice as long as public order and the authority of the ccp is maintained. Since the show was only open to a limited specialist audience, and since none of the works included openly challenged governmental authority, any threat to its staging was ultimately not inscribed precisely in law but was instead a matter of bureaucratic interpretation as well as an associated fear of loss of face with regard to the maintenance of public order. e staging of Trace of Existence was, therefore (like the Stars’s first outdoor exhibition before it) not as direct a challenge to authority as it might first appear. e importance of ‘publicness’ as a pivotal issue in relation to the showing of experimental art in the prc in the 1990s is strongly underlined by events surrounding the planned staging of the exhibition It’s Me! An Aspect of the Development of Chinese Contemporary Art in the 1990s. This exhibition,
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
217 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
which was organized by Leng Lin (b. 1965) and included works by Ma Liuming, Zhou Tiehai, Qiu Zhijie, Fang Lijun and Yue Minjun, was due to take place between 21 and 24 November 1998 at the Main Ritual Hall in the former Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing. In organizing the exhibition, Leng worked diligently to satisfy all of the official requirements placed on public exhibitions of art by the Beijing authorities. However, the formally challenging nature of many of the artworks combined with the highly charged sacred symbolic standing of the former Imperial Ancestral Temple eventually prompted government officials to cancel the exhibition on the eve of its planned opening. Works brought together for It’s Me! included a site-specific multimedia installation by Song Dong, titled Father and Son at the Ancestral Temple (1998), which explored issues of place, identity and memory. Song’s installation was subsequently staged as part of the exhibition Cancelled: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China, curated by Wu Hung at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago in 2001. This exhibition sought to present an analysis of the sociopolitical circumstances surrounding the cancellation of It’s Me! and other experimental
125 Zhang Huan, To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond, 1997, performance, Beijing.
218 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
art exhibitions in the prc during the 1990s. While the cancellation of It’s Me! may be interpreted (with some justification) as yet another instance of overweening bureaucratic control, it is also important to recognize the increasing acceptance of religious practice and an associated return to traditional values as part of the climate of reform in the prc in the 1990s. e decision to cancel the exhibition is, therefore, likely to have involved a bureaucratic concern for conservative public opinion as well as for the maintenance of public order. e least likely reason for the cancellation of the exhibition is that it was perceived to contain artworks presenting a direct challenge to governmental authority. Two other significant showcases for experimental art in the prc in the late 1990s were the related exhibitions Innovations Part i & Part ii and Departing from China: An Exhibition of Chinese New Art. Innovations Parts i and ii were co-organized by Ai Weiwei (who had by then returned to the prc), the Dutch curator Hans van Dijk, and the art collector Frank Uytterhaegen (b. 1954) as part of the establishment of the China Art Archives and Warehouse, an archive and venue dedicated to experimental Chinese art. The first of the two exhibitions was held between 27 February and 21 March 1999, and included works by Ai Weiwei, Hong Lei (b. 1960), Wang Xingwei (b. 1969), Xie Nanxing (b. 1970), Ding Yi, Zheng Guogu (b. 1970) and Zhang Haier (b. 1957). e second, which included works by Gu Dexin, Lu Qing (b. 1964) and Sui Jianguo (b. 1956), took place between 24 April and 2 June 1999. e China Art Archives and Warehouse was initially situated in Longgua Village, but after disputes with local police (who almost certainly objected to its presence as an unusual and potentially disruptive addition to an otherwise quiet rural setting rather than its significance as a focus for political dissent) in 2001 the warehouse was moved to Caochangdi, a cosmopolitan art district in northeast Beijing. During the late 1990s, Ai Weiwei also published three books in conjunction with Zeng Xiaojun: e Black Cover Book (1994), e White Cover Book (1995) and e Grey Cover Book (1997), which contained information about contemporary art produced by artists from the prc as well as interviews with non-Chinese artists. ree thousand copies of these books were distributed unofficially across the prc, providing a shared sense of community and consciousness among Chinese artists largely absent since the ending of the ’85 Movement. China: An Exhibition of Chinese New Art was scheduled to take place at the Design Museum, Beijing, between 24 April and 4 May 1999. e exhibition, which was organized by Zhang Zhaohui (b. 1965) and due to include works
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
219 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
by 21 artists including Sheng Qi and Zhang Dali, was cancelled on 22 April by the local fire department. e exact reasons for the cancellation are unclear, but the combination of a high-profile venue and works that addressed local Chinese perspectives on issues related to identity, power and globalization through unconventional artistic means such as video and performance is likely to have prompted bureaucratic concerns. Equally, however, the show’s incorporation of unconventional artworks may simply have been seen as a fire risk by bureaucrats charged with the protection of public safety. Notwithstanding the uncertainties surrounding the cancellation of exhibitions of experimental art, at the very end of the 1990s, experimental artworks that presented a significant and unmistakable challenge to established public mores began to appear in the prc. e common denominator among these works was their abject presentation of animal and human body parts, or actual/simulated acts of violence against animal and human bodies. Such works presented a challenge to widely held conservative views within Chinese society that art should serve as a source of pleasurable aesthetic feeling and, as such, make a constructive contribution to social progress and well-being. ey also challenged long-standing Chinese and Western Judaeo-Christian embargos on all acts of sacrificial violence that had become increasingly ingrained in the public psyche as part of the development of modernity in the prc. The first major showcase for artworks of this sort was a group show held in the basement of the Association of Chinese Literature in Beijing under the title Persistent Deviation/Corruptionists. e exhibition, which was curated by Xu Ruotao (b. 1968) and Xu Yihui (b. 1964), presented works by 23 artists including Xu Ruotao, Xu Yihui, Gu Dexin and Zhang Dali, as well as a performance by the rock band Ziyue. e English-language title Persistent Deviation/Corruptionists refers to the curators’ request that participants in the exhibition should deviate from established social convention and any conformity to a single, generalizing theme or topic by freely exploring their personal ‘obsessions’. Gu Dexin responded by partly reprising the work he had shown at Trace of Existence in the form of another titled 1998.11.07 (1998), which this time involved the covering of the floor space allocated to the artist with sheep brains. The exhibition opened on 7 November 1998 but closed abruptly the following day. Again, the exact reasons for the closure are unclear, but it seems likely that it was the result of a dispute among the organizers rather than the result of any direct intervention by local government authorities.
220 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
126 Sun Yuan, Honey, 1999, installation, bed, old man’s face, foetus, ice, 200 × 300 × 150 cm. Installation view, Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion (or Distorted Bodies and Delusion), basement of Shaoyaoju Building 202 in the Peony residential district of Beijing, 9–10 January 1999.
In spite of its fleeting presence, the format of Persistent Deviation/ Corruptionists became the template for a series of other exhibitions and events involving abject displays and acts of actual/simulated bodily violence. e first of these to have been staged is Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion (or Distorted Bodies and Delusion), which took place in the basement of Shaoyaoju Building 202 in the Peony residential district of Beijing from 9 to 10 January 1999. e exhibition was organized by Wu Meichun and Qiu Zhijie and included works by Qiu Zhijie, Sun Yuan and Yang Fudong, among others. Works included addressed the general themes of bodily difference and delusional attitudes towards the body. Most did so through the by then relatively conventional forms of oil painting, photography, video and site-specific installation. Others, however, included animal and human body parts and corpses. Among them was Sun Yuan’s installation Honey (1999), which consisted of a human foetus positioned next to the face of an adult male corpse buried in a large bed of ice. Sun’s use of actual human corpses is an intensely transgressive
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
221 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T, 1 9 9 0 – 2 0 0 1
one from the point of view of both mainstream Western and Chinese moral values (illus. 126).38 However, it is important to note that the use of human and animal bodies and body parts in artworks was not illegal in the prc at the time in question. Sun’s work, and that of others making similar use of human and animal bodies and body parts in the prc at the end of the 1990s, was not therefore a transgression of localized legal boundaries but only of moral boundaries and associated cultural taboos (illus. 127). Understandably, these works have not been recreated in Western neoliberal democratic contexts. Such works can therefore be interpreted not only as a challenge to local Chinese cultural norms but also as an effective deconstruction of the supposedly illimitable work of the Western avant-gardes and post-avant-gardes. It is also possible to view such works in the context of China’s own particular historical mediation of sacrificial violence as an attempt to seize control of unifying acts of ritualistic sacrifice away from a corrupt and ineffective imperial authority.39 Links between the making of experimental art in the prc during the 1990s and traditional Chinese cultural thought and practice are often unclear or have
127 Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Aquatic Wall, 1998, multimedia installation, marine animals embedded in specially constructed wall, 700 × 300 × 100 cm. Installation view, Tongdao Gallery, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, 1998.
222 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
opposite: 128 Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Linked Bodies, 2000, performance, medical samples, 200 cc blood, dimensions variable.
been underplayed, not least because of a widespread anti-orientalizing desire among Chinese artists, curators and critics for that art to be seen as both contemporary and cosmopolitan. Nevertheless, it is possible to make a convincing case for the persistence of such links, albeit under shifting material and political conditions, given the durability of ambient cultural discourses and a wider return to traditional concerns in the prc in the 1990s. Another artwork involving violence against the body was a performance by He Yunchang (b. 1967) titled Talking with Water (or Dialogue with Water), which was staged at the Liang River in Kunming, sometime in February 1999. As part of this performance, the artist arranged for a butcher to make deep cuts into both of his arms. He was then suspended upside-down from a large crane over the Liang River from which position he proceeded to stab at the river with a sword for 30 minutes, symbolically dividing the river and the blood that was flowing into it from the cuts in his arms. ere was no invited audience for the performance, but a photographic document was subsequently included in the exhibition Fuck Off – Uncooperative Stance in 2000. e significance of the work is open to varied readings. However, it can be interpreted as a sacrificial-moralistic act of bodily resistance both to the overwhelming power of nature and, by extension, centralized political authority (albeit an ultimately futile one). e year 2000 saw two further exhibitions involving the presentation of works of art comprising body parts and bodily violence. e first of these was Infatuated with Injury: Open Studio Exhibition No. 2 (or Indulge in Pain), which opened for only a few hours (as a way of avoiding police intervention) at the Research Institute of Sculpture in Beijing on 22 April 2000. Infatuated with Injury included works by the artists Peng Yu, Qin Ga (b. 1971), Sun Yuan, Xiao Yu (b. 1965), Zhang Shengquan (1955–2000) and Zhu Yu (b. 1970), otherwise known after their participation in Post-Sense Sensibility as the Dead Body Group (Shiti Xiaozu). Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s joint work in the exhibition, Linked Bodies (2000), involved a blood transfusion apparently connecting the artists to the dead corpses of conjoined twins (illus. 128). Reactions to the exhibition were understandably mixed. However, the exhibition’s organizer, Li Xianting, defended the works on display as a justifiable expansion of the limits of artistic expression. e second of the exhibitions in question is the now internationally notorious Fuck Off – Uncooperative Stance (whose title in Mandarin Chinese, Buhezuo fangshi, can be translated literally as ‘Ways of Non-Cooperation’). is was staged at the Eastlink Gallery and a disused warehouse at 1133 West
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
224 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Suzhou River Road in 2000. e exhibition showcased the work of 46 artists including Ai Weiwei, Ding Yi, Gu Dexin, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Fuck Off ran alongside the ird Shanghai Biennale curated by Hou Hanru, and was intended by its organizers (Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi) as a critical response to perceptions among the prc’s experimental art community of the Biennale’s complicity with official art circles. e international notoriety of Fuck Off is largely based on the exhibition’s catalogue, which included graphic photographic representations of some of the most challenging works presented in the prc at the end of the 1990s. It is by no means clear, however, which, if any, of these works was actually shown at Fuck Off. e exhibition’s reputation as a platform for daring acts of transgression is, therefore, highly questionable. It is likely that Fuck Off was little more than a safely mediated repetition of previous, far more challenging events.40 Such uncertainties notwithstanding, the preface to the exhibition’s catalogue presents a stated resistance on the part of its curators to all forms of controlling discourse, both Chinese and Western.41 In April 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Culture responded to the glut of abject displays and bodily acts presented as art in the prc at the end of the 1990s by promulgating a directive on its ‘Resolution to Cease All Performances and Bloody, Brutal Displays of Obscenity in the Name of Art’.42 is directive, which was the first significant ccp directive on the making and showing of art since the early 1980s, threatened serious punishments for those who transgressed its limits. A bureaucratic line was, therefore, effectively drawn under the more extreme outcomes of artistic experimentation in the prc at the end of the twentieth century; albeit one that operated in a largely retrospective symbolic manner, since by 2001 artists in the prc had themselves as a matter of artistic self-reflexivity already begun to look beyond those extreme outcomes.
CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART, 2002–2013
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Contemporary Chinese Art on the Global Stage Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were major changes in relation to the economic and political outlook of the prc. Following a regional economic downturn in east and southeast Asia in 1997, at the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s the prc’s economy began to boom, with annual growth rates in gross domestic product (gdp) of around 10 per cent. Political conditions also became more liberal, both in terms of domestic socioeconomic governance and international collaboration. Between the death of Deng Xiaoping in February 1997 and the handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese control in July of the same year, there was a short-lived period of intensified liberalization in mainland China sometimes referred to as the second Beijing Spring. During this period, the China Democracy Party was established and officially registered by some local authorities in the prc. The prc also became a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In summer 2000, the prc reached a bilateral trade agreement with the European Union as well as other global trading partners as part of protracted negotiations relating to the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (wto). Multilateral negotiations on the prc’s full membership of the wto were concluded in September 2001, and the prc became a full member on 11 December that year, after sixteen years of negotiation (the longest in the wto’s history). Although some exporters, including many in the u.s., continued to have concerns about fair access to markets in mainland China (because of restrictive unilateral trade policies and export limits), the prc’s bilateral trade nevertheless increased substantially throughout the first decade of the twentyfirst century, exceeding u.s.$2.4 trillion by the end of 2008. Following the ccp’s ird Plenum in October 2003, plans were unveiled for legislation that would address the question of private property rights and the development of a domestic social-economic policy. Included in these plans were proposals aimed at protecting certain aspects of private ownership (since 1949 all
4
226 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
opposite: 129, 130 Yang Fudong, No Snow on the Broken Bridge, 2006, 8channel video installation, 35-mm black-and-white film, 11 minutes.
overleaf: 131, 132 Yang Fudong, East of Que Village, 2007, 6-screen video installation, 35-mm black-and-white film, 20 minutes 50 seconds.
property, including land, has ultimately been under state ownership in the prc); further developing the prc’s industrial and communications infrastructure; redistributing national income more evenly between urban and rural regions; and tackling growing unemployment while at the same time protecting the environment against the effects of rapid industrialization and urbanization. e National People’s Congress of the ccp approved these measures in March 2004. Between 1990 and 2004, the prc’s economy grew on average at an annual rate of 10 per cent, the highest in the world at that time. In 2007, the prc overtook Germany to become the world’s third largest economy in terms of gdp. By 2005, the prc’s annual growth rate was in the region of 10.4 per cent, and in 2010 the prc’s total trade exceeded u.s.$2.97 trillion, making it the second biggest trading nation after the u.s. In response to the global financial crisis of 2008–9, the prc began to place even greater emphasis on the development of its infrastructure. e accelerated development of the prc’s infrastructure since the early 2000s has not only included manufacturing, finance and communications, but also the art market and creative industries sector. After Deng’s southern tour, there was (as previously described) significant growth in the commercial art sector in mainland China, with numerous galleries, auction houses and art districts (including Beijing’s 798 and Shanghai’s m50) emerging in major urban centres throughout the prc. One of the consequences of this growth was a major and increasingly large injection of international capital into the indigenous Chinese art market. From the late 1990s until the global financial crisis of 2008–9, this significantly enriched individual artists and gallery owners besides supporting the production of ever more ambitious artworks both in terms of scale and technical sophistication. Among the artists leading the production of these increasingly ambitious artworks is the Shanghai-based photographer, film-maker and installation artist Yang Fudong. Since the late 1990s he has produced a series of ever more complex film and video works that use single- and multi-screen film, video and digital reproduction technologies to present highly aestheticized (and often heavily allegorized) images, redolent of European and American art cinema of the midto late twentieth century. Works produced by Yang since 2002 include the film series Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest (2003–7) and the multi-channel video installation No Snow on the Broken Bridge (2006) (illus. 129 and 130). Both of these, along with other more recent works by Yang, can be interpreted as
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
133 Qiu Zhijie and Lu Jie, Long March Project – A Walking Visual Display, 2002, group performance in multiple locations across the prc.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
134 Qiu Zhijie and Xu Zhen, Long March Project, 2007, performance in multiple locations across new York city.
229 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
attempts to engage with and mediate the complex and conspicuously hybridized nature of contemporary Chinese society and culture (illus. 131, 132).1 Other highly ambitious artworks produced by artists from the prc since the early 2000s include Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie’s Long March Project – A Walking Visual Display (2002). is was a series of performances and sitespecific displays staged at twelve-mile intervals along the historic route of the pla’s strategically daring retreat from the military forces of the Kuomintang of 1934 to 1936, known as the Long March (illus. 133). Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie’s work (which was staged with the collaboration of participants from outside the prc) aimed to explore issues of historical memory and revolutionary consciousness by intervening in local spaces along the route of the pla’s historic march. In doing so, they also aimed to open up new perspectives on China’s political, social, cultural and economic history. As such, the work can be understood to bear witness to the continuing
135 Liu Xiaodong, Out of Beichuan, 2010, oil on canvas, 300 × 400 cm.
230 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
136 Liu Xiaodong working on Out of Beichuan, 2010.
importance of revolutionary discourse on the development of contemporary society in the prc (illus. 134). roughout the 1980s, the numbers of individuals involved in the making and showing of contemporary art in the prc was relatively small, numbering perhaps in the hundreds rather than the thousands – this was a vanishingly small number in a country with a population of over 1 billion. By the 2000s this number had grown significantly, as a result of the production of several cohorts of graduates by the prc’s rapidly modernizing art academies and the increasingly attractive status of contemporary art as a socially progressive and potentially lucrative career option. e consequent increase in the production of artworks was also great, providing an ever-increasing flow of commodities to fuel the continuing expansion of the prc’s indigenous arts infrastructure, as well as trade in contemporary Chinese art on the international art market. A comprehensive survey of contemporary artworks produced by artists from the prc since 2002 is beyond the scope of this present text. There are, however, innumerable catalogues and survey publications to which interested readers might turn that provide detailed descriptions of individual artworks and their makers. is includes the yearbooks of Chinese art produced by the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and Karen Smith’s recently established As Seen series of annual surveys of significant exhibitions in the prc.2 In general terms, the production of contemporary art in the prc after 2002 continues the formal diversity of the preceding decade, as well as the differences between formalist/detached, interventionist and oppositional approaches toward wider social, economic and political conditions. This includes the strong persistence of realist approaches, albeit ones with the disjunctive tendencies of international modernist and postmodernist art (illus. 135, 136, 137). e most significant innovation in relation to the actual production of contemporary art by artists from the prc has been, as elsewhere, the use of new digital computer-based technologies, examples of which include the previously discussed work of Feng Mengbo (illus. 138, 139). Another significant development (to be discussed in more detail below) is the waning of any obvious critical intent or content following the Ministry of Culture directive on the exhibition of works involving pornography or extreme acts of violence in the name of art in 2001. e increasingly large injection of international capital into the prc’s indigenous art market throughout most of the 1990s and 2000s was matched by an exponential growth in prices of works of contemporary Chinese art on
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
137 installation view, Li songsong – We have Betrayed the revolution, pace Gallery, London, 2013.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
235 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
the international art market. A painting by Zhang Xiaogang, for example, which sold for u.s.$76,000 in 2003, sold for u.s.$2.3 million in 2006, and then again for u.s.$9.5 million on its resale in 2007 (illus. 140). By 2007, this exponential growth in prices had placed 35 contemporary artworks by living artists from the prc in the top 100 of the international Art Price Index.3 During the same period, prices for works of contemporary Chinese art on the prc’s domestic art market were, at their highest, close to those paid internationally. After 2008, international investment into the prc’s indigenous art market cooled as a result of the international banking crisis. Prices for works of contemporary art from the prc also decreased significantly, in some cases by over a third, and works by major artists from the prc went unsold at auction. Nevertheless, in 2010, ArtPrice (the French-based source of ‘econometric data’ for the international art world) reported that the prc had become the leading art market worldwide, buoyed up by the increased spending of Chinese
140 Zhang Xiaogang, Green Wall – About Sleep, 2008, oil on canvas, 250 × 300 cm.
opposite: 138 Feng mengbo, My Private Museum – Birds, 2012, photograph, 100 × 200 cm. 139 Feng mengbo, My Private Museum – Panda, 2012, photograph, 100 × 175cm.
236 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
collectors both at home and abroad on works of Western and Chinese art. Some commentators have questioned the underlying strength and sustainability of the recent contemporary Chinese art boom by citing a lack of commitment among Chinese collectors to Chinese and Western art as anything other than an investment commodity, as well as the questionable quality of contemporary Chinese art as a focus for free critical expression.4 Nevertheless, there is, at the time of writing, a continuing international interest in contemporary Chinese art alongside a growing one in the prc that is likely to uphold its value in the market place for the foreseeable future. Another salient aspect of the development of the prc’s creative infrastructure during the early 2000s was the proliferation of numerous public art museums and recurring exhibitions dedicated to the showing of contemporary art. Major public museums that became a focus for the showing of contemporary art in the prc in the early 2000s include the Shanghai Art Museum, the Guangdong Museum of Art and the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen. While these public museums remain subject to close governmental scrutiny as a consequence of their official status, since the early 2000s they have nevertheless been allowed to stage numerous shows of contemporary art that would have been unacceptable to the authorities in the prc in the 1990s. Among these are major retrospectives of the work of the exiled artists Huang Yongping and Chen Zhen at the Shanghai Art Museum (illus. 141, 142).5 e growth of the infrastructure for contemporary art in the prc has been matched by developments internationally, including the establishment of a China pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Among the recurring exhibitions of contemporary art to have become established in the prc since the early 2000s is the Guangzhou Triennial, which has been staged at the Guangdong Art Museum in the southwestern Chinese city of Guangzhou since 2002. The first Guangzhou Triennial in 2002, Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990–2000), can be perceived as important not only because of its standing as the first major international exhibition of contemporary art to be held outside Beijing and Shanghai, but also due to its being the first major retrospective of experimental Chinese art to be held in the prc. e exhibition, which was curated by Wu Hung with the assistance of Feng Boyi and Wang Huangsheng (b. 1956), represents a significant step forward in terms of the scholarly presentation of contemporary Chinese art in the prc. Its substantial catalogue comprised several essays that together present an assertively detailed view of the critical
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
237 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
significance of experimental art in the prc, along with related exhibitions and writings.6 As such, Reinterpretation can be viewed as a critical rejoinder to the durable and highly generalizing international view of contemporary Chinese art as a focus for oppositional dissidence and postcolonialist resistance first established by exhibitions outside the prc in the early 1990s. Other recurring exhibitions of contemporary art established in the prc in the early 2000s include the Chengdu Biennale and the Guiyang Biennale (Guiyang Art Biennale Exhibit) in Guizhou. While some of these recurring exhibitions, for example, the Guangzhou Triennial, are state-sponsored, others are supported entirely by private finance or a mixture of private and state sponsorship in a manner similar to that used to support public exhibitions of contemporary art in Western liberal-democratic contexts, such as the uk and Germany. In all cases, however, the controlling hand of the state ultimately remains ever-present. Reinterpretation is one of a number of exhibitions staged by Chinese curators since 2002 that seeks to present a searching, art-historical understanding of the development of contemporary Chinese art. Other important examples include Gao Minglu’s e Wall: Reshaping Chinese Contemporary Art, which was initially staged at the Millennium Art Museum in Beijing in 2005 before travelling to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the University at Buffalo Art Galleries in New York state in 2005–6. e same period has also seen a number of substantial published writings that seek to present a searching, art-historical understanding of the development of contemporary Chinese art. is includes Gao Minglu’s book e Wall: Reshaping Chinese Contemporary Art, accompanying the exhibition of the same name, and Lü Peng’s epic text A History of Art in 20th-century China.7 In most cases, the accounts of the development of contemporary Chinese art put forward by these exhibitions and published writings proceed from an explicit or implicit resistance to non-Chinese perspectives. Most also rely heavily on largely un-reflexive forms of historical narration, of a sort long since questioned by Western scholars; and/or exhaustive but critically unmediated accumulations of documentary evidence. Other attempts to establish a more substantial base for the art-historical analysis of contemporary Chinese art include the setting up of the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong in 2000. Alongside the proliferation of public art museums and recurring exhibitions in the prc, since the early 2000s there has also been a significant growth in nongovernmentally supported public art museums. Among these public museums
overleaf: 141 chen Zhen, Daily Incantations, 1996, mixed media installation, wood, metal, chamber pots, electrical appliances, televisions, radios, electrical cable, 230 × 700 × 365 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
240 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
are the Today Art Museum in Beijing’s Chaoyang district (the first not-forprofit, non-governmentally supported art museum in the prc, established in 2002); the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in the Pudong district of Shanghai (established in 2005); and the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing’s 798 art district (established in 2007). Since their opening, all of these museums have staged major exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art, including a highly ambitious retrospective of the work of the ’85 New Wave curated by Fei Dawei. ’85 New Wave: e Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art opened at the Ullens Centre in 2007 (illus. 143).8 e establishment of non-governmentally supported public art museums in the prc since 2002 has not only assisted in raising the profile of contemporary Chinese art on the international stage, but also the value of contemporary Chinese art on the international art market. At
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
241 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
the same time, it has also served as a stimulus for growing indigenous public interest in contemporary art, not least among younger generations. e proliferation of non-governmentally supported public art museums since 2002 has been accompanied by the increasing commercialization of art districts in the prc. Many of these, including Beijing’s 798, have seen a displacement of idealistic artists and curators (who sought to combine avantgarde notions of social intervention with financial entrepreneurship during the 1990s) by others focused more narrowly on the commercial potential of contemporary Chinese art. Alongside the narrowing effects of increasing commercialization, art districts and private art galleries in the prc are also subject to continuing governmental surveillance. is is conducted by plainclothes officials and individuals working for galleries in the pay of government
142 chen Zhen, Le Sommeil Profond – The Deep Sleep Series, 1992, mixed media, five works, each 130 × 60 × 25 cm.
242 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
agencies. Governmental controls on the work of private galleries in the prc are both vague and mobile. As a consequence, government agencies have significant scope in interpreting the actions of private galleries. Galleries that are perceived to have transgressed governmental limits on their actions are subject to highly intrusive sanctions, including the summary closing down of exhibitions, seizure of published materials and the arbitrary administration of already ill-defined bureaucratic process.9 The early 2000s saw the return of numerous artists to the prc who had previously left the country to live and work abroad, including some invited to do so by the Chinese government. is latter grouping includes Xu Bing (who was appointed Vice-President of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in March 2008), and Cai Guo-Chiang (appointed director of the China pavilion at Venice in 2005). Artists returning to the prc since 2002 have almost certainly been drawn back to the country of their birth not only by the ccp’s apparently increasingly liberal stance towards the making and showing of contemporary art, and the material advantages now afforded by modern urbanized life in the prc (including relatively cheap labour); but also by disillusionment with an intensely competitive and often morally vacuous international art world. As has already been suggested in relation to indigenous art-historical analyses of the development of contemporary Chinese art, one of the defining characteristics of the growing internationalization of contemporary Chinese art since 2002 has been a heightened tension between the effects of synchronization with the expectations of the international art world, and an indigenous desire to uphold the specificity of the relationship between contemporary Chinese art and the localized conditions of its production and reception in the prc. is tension was strongly prefigured by internal debates among Chinese scholars that ran throughout the mid-to-late 1990s, regarding the international reception of contemporary Chinese art (and, in particular, the international art world’s identification of contemporary Chinese art with the deconstructivist outlook of international postmodernism). This debate culminated in two conferences held in 1998: one staged in Shanxi by the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and the other accompanying the Asia-Pacific Contemporary Art Exhibition in Fuzhou. Together, they can be understood to mark the emergence of a strongly internalized vision of the development of contemporary art in the prc. As Yiyang Shao observed, at these conferences:
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
ere was, in short, an appropriation of the critical attitudes characteristic of international postmodernism turned not to a generalized deconstruction of colonialist-imperialist relations of dominance, but crucially to an assertion of the necessity of a close-up/granular view of the critical significance of contemporary Chinese art. At the same time in the 1990s, there was an increasingly widespread disquiet in the prc with regard to the encroachment of outside cultural influences more generally on indigenous perceptions of cultural identity. e prc’s increasing openness to the global economy during the 1990s had brought with it an ever more conspicuous entanglement with Western and other outside cultural attitudes and practices (as amply demonstrated by the proliferation of commercial art galleries and international biennials and triennials in mainland China). roughout the same period, there was also a growing sense of indigenous social, economic and cultural confidence. is manifested itself both through a significant reinforcing of public antipathy towards aspects of Westernized culture (which the ccp has constantly sought
243 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
A number of Chinese critics refused to accept the position assigned to their country as part of Western-dominated global discourse through an attempt to regain their lost subjectivity. ey advocated the idea of a Chinese version of modernity by creating a new sense of national cultural identity. ey also demanded a return of their legitimate rights as self-defined historical subjects, capable of developing their own narrative of modernity relating their own experience and mapping out their own future. is vision recognized the importance of cultural difference. At the same time, it also emphasized dialectics rather than absolute difference between the two poles, and hence went beyond confrontational logic of the self versus the other, and beyond the desire to assert its own subject position as an overpowering one. While May Fourth intellectuals during the early twentieth century could only conceive of and emulate a single Eurocentric mode of modernity, a number of Chinese art critics during the 1990s became conscious of the historical nature and cultural origins of modernity. ey began to locate modernity within a global context. e absolute nature of Western modernity was de-constructed, and the myth became a reality defined in the mundane day to day process of Chinese modernization.10
244 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
143 installation view, ’85 new Wave: the Birth of contemporary chinese art, Ullens centre for contemporary art, Beijing, 2007–8.
to manage because of its tendency towards extreme nationalism) and an officially sanctioned return to traditional Chinese cultural values as a way of supporting social cohesion and harmony. is return to traditional cultural values in the prc during the 1990s (which amounted to an almost diametric reversal of the ideological outlook of the Cultural Revolution) was highly selective. At its core was a reinterpretation of Confucian values of familial piety, self-sacrifice and social harmony that not only played towards a still ingrained conservatism within mainland Chinese society, but that also served to gloss over the pronounced social differences and uncertainties brought about by Deng’s programme of Opening and Reform. As Wang Meqin makes clear, this return to tradition also had a profound influence on an indigenous understanding of the significance of contemporary Chinese art: e revival of centuries-old Confucianism and the search for the authentic Chinese spirit are trends that were seen as complementary to
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
By the late 1990s, there was, therefore, within the indigenous art world of the prc a pronounced divergence of views regarding the intellectual position from which resistance to international Westernized cultural influence might be launched. On the one hand there were those who sought to resist international Westernized cultural influence on its own terms first, by recognizing contemporary Chinese art’s deconstruction of the dominance of postmodernist Western culture, and then by asserting the relative specificity of the conditions of cultural production in the prc. On the other hand, there were those who took the more conventional position of upholding a more or less straightforward opposition between Chinese cultural values and those of the international art world. Moreover, while many of the former continued to align themselves with the ‘unofficial’ stance of the ’85 New Wave, the latter occupied intellectual ground clearly also favoured by official government ideology. On the face of it, from an inward-looking, Westernized perspective, the former of these two positions (advocating a deconstructivist turn towards a granular view of the significance of contemporary) would appear to be by far the most acceptable both intellectually and ethically. However, before rushing to such a conclusion it is important to recognize tensions between an ostensible desire on the part of Chinese intellectuals to embrace deconstructivist counter-authoritarian thinking, and the pervasive influence of two limiting factors on cultural discourse within the prc: the continuing strength of governmental restrictions on freedom of expression; and the persistence of a deeply ingrained anti-Westernism. Among the manifestations of this tension is the ird Guangzhou Triennial, Farewell to Post-colonialism, which was
245 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
the huge efforts mobilized to meet the standards for entering into the wto and to be the host of the Olympic Games in 2008. In this context, nationalism is seen as a particular way to circumscribe and practice globalization, while globalization is used to evoke and manipulate the sentiment of nationalism. e two terms have been promoted equally by the Chinese government in post-Deng Chinese society. Their connection is only one aspect of the complexity of today’s economic, social, and cultural conditions within China. Cultural nationalism, like marketization and globalization, has played an important role in the overall transformation of the Chinese art world. Essentially, it brings unofficial contemporary art into the scope of official art while challenging the definition of the art establishment in China.11
246 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
held at the Guangdong Museum of Art between 6 September and 16 November 2008. By 2008, the Guangzhou Triennial had established an international reputation as one of Asia’s leading recurring contemporary art exhibitions through its staging of two highly ambitious survey shows: Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art, 1990–2002; and Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization (2005). Both exhibitions presented curatorial visions implicitly critical of Westernized artistic, curatorial and art-historical thinking. As its title indicates, Farewell to Post-Colonialism was intended as a focus for debate relating to the possibility of a departure from the (by then well-established) use of the international survey show as a public platform for postcolonialist criticism. According to statements issued collectively by Sarat Maharaj, (Johnson) Chang Tsong-Zung and Gao Shiming (the transnational curatorial team responsible for the staging of Farewell to Post-Colonialism),12 there were two pressing reasons for joining this debate. First, postcolonialism can, like the politics of identity in general, be understood to have undermined the radicalism of its own critical positioning by supporting the establishment of an ‘institutionalised pluralistic landscape’, associated with the emergence of political correctness. In Maharaj, Chang and Gao’s view, the establishment of this landscape has ushered in strongly normative-managerialist ways of thinking on issues of diversity and multiculturalism. ey believe that this has not only hindered artistic creativity, but also the development of fresh theoretical perspectives on the production and showing of art.13 The second reason given by Maharaj, Chang and Gao was that the establishment of these normative/managerialist ways of thinking has resulted in an unduly simplistic (indeed, ‘false’) dialectical understanding of East-West relations of dominance, or a ‘tyranny of the Other’. As they would have it, this simplistic dialectical understanding of cultural difference has (in guiding the construction of the self as a subject solely in relation to ‘the Other’) obscured a necessary understanding that ‘alien existence’ is not simply a matter of ‘living among “the Other”’ but is also the ‘“diverse existence” found within every corporeal being . . . the living experimentation that is taking place in each body, and . . . forays into foreign territories within ourselves’.14 On the basis of this two-part analysis, Maharaj, Chang and Gao then go on to argue that, in order to maintain the radical edge of international curatorial practice, it has become necessary to reinstate a more complex de-institutionalized
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
247 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
understanding of difference, plus an ‘ethics of difference’ within ‘the framework of difference in cultural production’. Moreover, they argue that it is also necessary to support the development of a ‘post-West society’, involving a global network of reciprocal (interactive/non-hierarchical) relationships between North, South, East and West set alongside a renewal of artistic creativity, particularly with regard to the immanence of the new media landscape and the unfolding of ‘hyperreality’.15 As Maharaj, Chang and Gao are at pains to make clear, this call for a departure from the established conventions of the international survey show should, however, not be thought of (in spite of the ostensible significance of the title Farewell to Post-colonialism) as an outright ‘denial of the importance and rewards’ of postcolonialism as an ‘intellectual tradition’. An outright denial of this sort would, they argue, be entirely insupportable since ‘in the real world, the political conditions criticized by postcolonialism have not receded, but are in many ways even further entrenched under the machinery of globalization.’16 Instead, it should be understood to signal not only the need for a departure from the established conventions of postcolonialist curatorial practice, but also a return to an earlier more radical poststructuralist conception of identity. In other words, it should be a ‘goodbye’ that is, at the same time, a wish that postcolonialism as a critical discourse might continue to ‘fare well’.17 As a number of commentators have indicated, the extent to which Maharaj, Chang and Gao were able to bring about a departure from the now well- established format of the international survey show through the staging of Farewell to Post-colonialism is very much open to question. As Charles Labelle, writing in a review of Farewell to Post-colonialism, indicates, in terms of its final presentation, the exhibition was very much like any other museumbased international survey show of contemporary art. It involved the bringing together of a large and technically diverse array of artworks displayed within a series of now standard ‘white cube’ and ‘black box’ gallery spaces.18 What is more, many of the artworks included in the exhibition had clearly been produced in close, almost illustrative, conformity with the now heavily scripted expectations of established postcolonialist curatorial discourse otherwise criticized by Maharaj, Chang and Gao. Consider, for example, Maria ereza Alves’s work, Wake in Guangzhou: e History of the Earth, which presented seed dispersal in nature as what might be seen as a generalizing metaphor for social mobility within Guangzhou, but without any searching critical engagement with, or impact upon, actual social praxis.19
248 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Furthermore, Farewell to Post-colonialism can be seen to have shared in a tendency exhibited by other more recent international survey shows (for example, the Biennale of Sydney in 2006) towards an overcrowding of artworks, similar to that historically associated with European salon exhibitions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a result, visitors to Farewell to Post-colonialism were confronted by an overwhelming superfluity (overdetermination) of meaning that arguably veered more towards a grandiloquent assertion of phallogocentric plenitude than a performative enactment of openended diversity. Notwithstanding these problematic adherences to the established conventions of the international postcolonialist survey show, the staging of Farewell to Post-colonialism can be understood to have broken new ground in two significant ways. First was the decision on the part of the show’s curators to hold a series of seven discussions between artists, curators and scholars in the prc, titled ‘Forums in Motion’. ese were staged to ‘clarify issues hindering artistic exploration, and to expose new conditions that are gradually becoming central concerns of the cultural world’. They went some way towards addressing perennial curatorial concerns as to whether or not artworks included in international survey shows should respond to the authority of an organizing theme, or whether the organizing theme should itself reflect an approach and/or set of characteristics shared by a show’s chosen artworks. Secondly, was the use of curatorial sub-themes as an organizational framework. ese included ‘Middle East Channel’, curated by Khaled Ramadan; ‘East-South: Out of Sight’, curated by Sopawan Boonnimitra; ‘Now in Coming’, curated by Guo Xiaoyan and Cui Qiao; ‘Tea Pavilion’, curated by Dorothee Albrecht; ‘Mornings in Mexicos’, curated by Steven Lam and Tamar Guimarães; ‘Mapping Currents for the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial’, curated by Stina Edblom and Asia Art Archive; and ‘Organising Mutation’, curated by Leung Chi-wo and Tobias Berger. ese sub-themes provided an appropriately multifaceted structure for the presentation of artworks that (in some cases, at least) pointed beyond any simplistic dialectical reading of West–East relations of dominance by presenting enunciation of the postcolonized self through the language of postcolonized others. Consider here, for example, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s video Old Land – New Waters, which engages with post-conflict Vietnamese culture through multicultural indigenous perspectives. In an essay included in the catalogue accompanying Farewell to Postcolonialism, entitled ‘Observations and Presentiments “After Post-Colonialism”’,
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
249 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
Gao Shiming sets out his personal vision of the exhibition’s critical significance.20 Gao begins with a series of observations and assertions that can be seen as entirely congruent with the intellectual stance set out in the joint curatorial statement issued by Maharaj, Chang and Gao in support of the staging of the exhibition. Gao begins by registering the fact that within the prc there is continuing resistance to a performative understanding of cultural signification. As Gao makes clear, this ‘“Western” perspective’ is widely perceived to be a neo-imperialistic attack on the essential integrity of Chinese culture and the Chinese nation state.21 Gao then goes on to argue that we should look beyond the falsity of China’s prevailing national-cultural essentialism and an ‘anxiety of return’ felt in relation to the pervasively dislocating effects of globalized modernity. Instead, he argues that we should look towards the acceptance of a rather more complex and unsettling view of the construction of cultural identity as something without clearly defined origins or destinations.22 Gao furthers this line of argument by stating that the construction of cultural identity is not simply a matter of theory; it is lived out in practice as part of persistent displacements of meaning brought about by the interface between the phenomenological experience of material reality and the virtual world of new communications technologies.23 Gao does not stop there, however. He goes on to supplement his initial series of observations and assertions by forwarding three related lines of argument that would seem to go some way beyond the collective vision mapped out by Maharaj, Chang and Gao in relation to the staging of Farewell to Post-colonialism. e first of these is that uncertainty not only stretches to our understanding of cultural identity, but also to contemporary politics. It is no longer clear, he argues, exactly where, in any context, the division between a polarized politics of the left and right (and, therefore, between ‘freedom or autarchy’) actually lies. In support of this line of argument, Gao cites what he sees as the transformation of communism to radical racism, in the context of Serbia’s programme of ethnic cleansing during the 1990s.24 e second of Gao’s lines of argument is that we should, on the basis of prevailing political uncertainty, resist the institutionalization of restrictive forms of political correctness and the polarized politicization of artistic and curatorial practice that has ensued as a result of the influence of postcolonialist discourse. Gao’s third line of argument is that the international survey show provides a highly apposite platform for the promotion of a newly depoliticized
250 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
(that is to say, a non-politically polarized) vision of cultural identity. It has the capacity to act as a site for the interactive gathering ‘beyond national frameworks’ of the ‘territories of the world’ as well as ‘different versions of “international”’ as ‘manifestations of desire’.25 The position set out by Gao is, undeniably, an intellectually consistent one, insofar as it can be understood to critically undercut the persistence of a simplistic, dialectical West–East view of relations of cultural dominance. Gao extends a deconstructive critique of authority to both China’s indigenous authoritarian nationalism and the paradoxical standing of institutionalized postcolonialist discourse as a universal focus for cultural criticism. e difficulty with Gao’s argument, however, is that by framing global politics as much of a muchness in support of this double-edged critique, he would appear to have left little or no room for engagement with the particular circumstances in which actual relations of dominance take place (or, indeed, the possibility of any granular distinction between differing political systems). Gao’s upholding of a rigorously depoliticized view of identity as a critical resistance to authority can thus be seen to point rather worryingly to a radically deterritorialized set of circumstances wherein no further evaluative critique of political difference is deemed to be either possible or necessary. It is possible to go further in this regard by drawing attention to the way in which Gao’s vision of an effectively featureless global political landscape can be understood to gloss over the particularity of the localized political conditions in relation to which Farewell to Post-colonialism (and many of its associated Forums in Motion) were staged within the prc. In the prc there are numerous legal statutes that expressly forbid any public speech or action that might be perceived to undermine the integrity of the Chinese nation state and/or the authoritative standing of the ccp. Among the subjects that have effectively been placed off limits by these legal restrictions is any public questioning of majority Han Chinese rule over minority ethnic groups, such as those in Tibet and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in the West of China. While the ccp claims Beijing’s sovereignty over such groups, others (including many among the minority groups themselves) view that claim, and the accompanying state violence used as an assertion of its political authority (for example, the suppression of the Tibetan uprising of 2008 and the Uighur uprising of 2009), as naked manifestations of colonialist-imperial rule. What is more, these restrictions also foreclose any negative discussion of the prc’s growing political and
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Contemporary Chinese Art and Contemporaneity Since the early 2000s, cultural and artistic theory has become increasingly enmeshed with critical discourses relating to the concept of contemporaneity. These discourses have emerged as part of a continuing internationalized critique of the underlying intellectual assumptions of Western modernism; namely, an orientalizing Western belief in the universal applicability of the values of Western modernity (principally, the valorization of a secular-scientific rationalist world view); and in the moral authority of Western modernism as a necessary and progressive negation of the supposedly backward-looking irrationalism of pre-modernist traditions and non-Western ‘otherness’. As such, these discourses persist in upholding the now well-established postmodernist view, as set out in the writings of Homi K. Bhabha, that there is no single totalizing meta-discourse that might be used to represent modernity.27
251 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
economic involvement with Africa as a means of acquiring raw materials for China’s prodigious programme of modernization. Despite Beijing’s continuing protestations to the contrary, this is very much open to interpretation as a form of neocolonialist/imperialist enterprise. As events taking place within public spaces in the prc, neither the exhibition Farewell to Post-colonialism, nor any of its accompanying Forums in Motion were therefore able to pay any direct attention to questions of what might be perceived of as China’s own internal and external colonialist/ imperialist tendencies.26 As a result, it is possible to see the stated curatorial aims of Farewell to Post-colonialism as having been severely compromised by an unspoken (and unspeakable) subjection to localized restrictions on freedom of speech. is prevented any possible searching critique of authority beyond a simplistic dialectical understanding of East-West relations of dominance. Set against this background, Gao’s position, and that of his curatorial collaborators, is one that can be seen to double-back on itself not only by blanking out, but also by effectively becoming complicit with localized political authority. When seen from this perspective, Gao’s deconstruction of political value begins to look more like a confused generalization than an incisive critical intervention. What is more, it also allows for the title Farewell to Post-colonialism to be reinterpreted beyond the stated intentions of Maharaj, Chang and Gao as an outright and (within the prc) politically acceptable rejection of Westernized influence.
Instead, there are differing, non-synchronous representations of modernity (some ‘central’ and some ‘peripheral’), each with its own socioculturally inflected vision of the trajectory and significance of historical events. Arguably, the most searching text on the subject of contemporaneity published to date is an edited collection of essays entitled Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity. is collection (which was published in 2008 following a symposium on the subject of contemporaneity at the University of Pittsburgh in 2004) contains a number of essays that seek to address conditions of modernity that differ from (but nevertheless continue to relate to) those associated with Western(ized) modernism and postmodernism. Among those essays are two that attempt to rethink the historical development of contemporary Chinese art specifically in relation to prevailing conditions of modernity in the prc. e first is by Wu Hung and is entitled ‘A Case of Being “Contemporary”: Conditions, Spheres and Narratives of Contemporary Chinese Art’; the second is by Gao Minglu, titled ‘“Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truth”: Total Modernity in Chinese Contemporary Art’. As Terry Smith, one of the editors of Antinomies of Art and Culture, indicates in the book’s introduction, contemporaneity can be understood to consist precisely in the acceleration, ubiquity and constancy of radical disjunctures of perception, of mismatching ways of seeing and valuing the same world, in the actual coincidence of asynchronous temporalities, in the jostling contingency of various cultural and social multiplicities, all thrown together in ways that highlight the fast-growing inequalities within and between them.28
252 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Moreover, as Smith goes on to assert, under such conditions: No longer does it feel like ‘our time,’ because ‘our’ cannot stretch to encompass its contrariness. Nor, indeed, is it ‘a time,’ because if the modern was inclined above all to define itself as a period, and sort the past into periods, in contemporary conditions periodization is impossible.29 On the face of it, contemporaneity (as described by Smith) would, therefore, appear to be little more than a rehashing of an established postcolonialist vision of the fragmented and shifting nature of cultural identity and its attendant perspectives on the world. However, unlike postcolonialism (with its pervasively
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
253 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
deconstructivist invocations of third space and cultural hybridity) discourses associated with the concept of contemporaneity have not – in spite of a continuing adherence to postmodernist-deconstructivist theory on the part of some of its leading advocates, including Smith30 – sought to represent the current experience of (post)modernity as a universally uncertain one. Instead, discourses related to the concept of contemporaneity have rigorously pursued the notion that modernity can be represented differently in relation to differing geographically located social, economic and cultural circumstances. ey have extended critical legitimacy to local, spatially delineated experiences of modernity that not only diverge in their particular social, cultural, political and economic outlooks from those associated with Western modernism, but that also, in some cases, explicitly resist the universal applicability of established postmodernist-deconstructivist theory and practice. Consider here, for example, the essays ‘e Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art in a State of Permanent Transition’ and ‘Aftermath: Value and Violence in Contemporary South African Art’, by Okwui Enwezor and Colin Richards respectively, which are included in Antinomies of Art and Culture. They both point towards and support an active resistance among non-Western artists to the imposition of Western modernist and postmodernist interpretative perspectives. As an intellectual framework for interpreting the experience and representation of modernity, the concept of contemporaneity can thus be understood to have overwritten an established postmodernist critique of the totalizing perspectives of Western modernism. Contemporaneity frames postmodernist-deconstructivist uncertainty – a pervasive doubt regarding all metaphysical conceptions of absolute totality and difference (that is, JeanFrançois Lyotard’s seminal conception of the ‘postmodern sublime’31) – not as a universal condition of present (post)modernity but, instead, as only one possible (and contestable) reading of the experience of modernity, among others. inking associated with the concept of contemporaneity can thus be understood to have added significantly to an existing postmodernist problematization of Western modernism’s Baudelairean vision of the experience of modernity as a series of successive and fleeting ‘just nows’. It upholds experiences and representations of modernity without the unfolding of dominant modernist/ postmodernist discourses in the West. As Smith has argued in respect of contemporaneity: ‘there is no longer any overarching explanatory totality that
254 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
accurately accumulates and convincingly accounts for these proliferating differences. e particular, it seems, is now general, and, perhaps, forever shall be.’32 is perspective not only upholds an established postmodernist suspension of the apparent overcoming of Western modernism by postmodernism (something to which, as Jean-François Lyotard has pointed out, the paradox of the prefix ‘post’ in relation to the use of the term ‘post-modernism’ performatively bears witness33) but, in addition, the legitimacy of localized conceptions of time that are radically different from the rationalist-sequential conception of the ‘just now’ (the sense of being of the moment) that has prevailed historically as part of modernism in the West. In the case of Western(ized) postmodernism, this non-sequential conception of time is strongly evinced, as Fredric Jameson makes clear, by postmodernist works of art, such as Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes series (1980). They can be understood to foreclose any established modernist sense of spatial, expressive or historical depth while remaining open (in spite of their resistance to any satisfactory completion of ‘the hermeneutic gesture’) to any number of contextualizing associations, including, as Jameson himself suggests in the particular case of Diamond Dust Shoes, the horrors of Auschwitz.34 It is also evinced, in the case of non-Western(ized) forms of art contemporaneous with Western(ized) postmodernism, by the persistence of traditional aesthetic conceptions of space–time in which past, present and future are seen in some sense as endlessly concurrent. For example, as Mazhar Hussain and Robert Wilkinson have indicated, the classical Indian poetic conception of dhvani and the classical Chinese literary paring of ‘latent’ (yin) and ‘out-standing’ (hsiu) both conceive of the experience of the work of art as one that ‘resonates endlessly in the imagination’ and ‘whose significance is unfathomable’.35 Anyone familiar with Chinese discourses on the subject of modernity since the emergence of the May Fourth and New Culture movements during the early twentieth century will readily attest that, within a Chinese sociocultural context, arguments for the validity/legitimacy of specifically Chinese experiences and representations of modernity are nothing new. Partly because of a persistent sense of the historical particularity of Chinese cultural identity, and partly because of a desire to resist a straightforward assimilation of Western modernity (for fear of what the historian David Clarke has referred to as a ‘felt deracination’36), Chinese artists and intellectuals have argued consistently for a localized Chinese sense of modernity,
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
255 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
consonant with the distinctive horizons and developmental trajectory of Chinese history. Consider here, for example, the Chinese critic Fou Lei’s valorization of the work of the painter Huang Binhong during the early part of the twentieth century. As Claire Roberts indicates, this involves a belief on Fou’s part that Western modernism’s tendency towards subjectivist abstraction had been foreshadowed by traditional Chinese painting and that Huang’s work is an exemplary modern-day manifestation of traditional Chinese painting, more than equal to that of Western modernists such as Paul Cézanne.37 It is, therefore, unsurprising to find Chinese writers associated with the theorization and historicization of contemporary Chinese art (such as Wu and Gao) contributing strongly to emerging debates on the subject of contemporaneity. ey write in relation to indigenous Chinese cultural perspectives that have sought continually to legitimize conceptualizations of modernity that differ from those associated with modernism and modernity in the West. In his essay in Antinomies of Art and Culture, Wu Hung sets out a vision of the development of contemporary art that is largely congruent with that established in the prc in the late 1990s. It accepts the deconstructive positioning of contemporary Chinese art in relation to East–West relations of dominance while at the same time advocating a granular understanding of the particular conditions of artistic production and reception in the prc. As such, his view is therefore one readily encompassed by contemporaneity’s deconstructive extension of postcolonialist notions of cultural disjuncture and asynchrony. Gao Minglu’s essay, however, advocates a position that ultimately contests the ubiquity of contemporaneity’s underlying deconstructive precepts. In his essay, ‘“Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truth”: Total Modernity in Chinese Contemporary Art’, Gao Minglu begins by stating that within China since the early twentieth century, modernity has meant (as previously discussed here with reference to the use of the term dangdaixing) ‘a new nation rather than a new epoch’ and that, as a consequence, ‘Chinese modernity’ is a ‘consciousness of both transcendent time and reconstructed space with a clear national cultural and political territorial boundary’.38 Gao then proceeds on the basis of this opening assertion to argue that China’s geographically bounded conceptualization of modernity is markedly different from that associated with the development of modernist and postmodernist art in Europe and North America.
256 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
As Gao would have it, the Western (that is to say, European and North American) conception of cultural modernity is based on two guiding principles set out in the writings of the critical theorist (and critic of postmodernism) Jürgen Habermas. First, human history can be articulated according to a sequential unfolding of pre-modern, modern and postmodern epochs, and each of these epochs constitutes an advance on that or those that came before it. Second, modernity can be divided (in light of the European Enlightenment’s instituting of science, morality and art as autonomous spheres of human activity) into the materialistic modernity of bourgeois capitalist society on the one hand, and an aesthetic modernity critical of materialistic modernity on the other.39 Gao also asserts that, within the context of Western modernity, aesthetic modernity has itself taken two distinct forms. The first is an autonomous (socially disengaged) aesthetic, often identified with the writings of Clement Greenberg and modernist abstraction. e second is a critical (socially engaged) aesthetic, embodied by the work of Marcel Duchamp and Western postmodernist conceptualism of the 1970s and 1980s. According to Gao, these sequential articulations and categorical divisions have effectively shaped Western art history by framing the historical development of modernist and postmodernist art in the West as ‘a logical process’ coinciding with the ‘socioeconomic contexts of the transitional age from the early to late modern period’ (in other words, the transition from modernity to postmodernity).40 In Gao’s view, a Chinese conceptualization of modernity differs from that associated with the development of modernist and postmodernist art in Europe and North America in three significant ways. First, Gao argues that, while China has been obliged to assimilate values and practices associated with the Western conception of modernity (thereby binding Western and Chinese conceptions of modernity ‘in a relationship of inseparability’), the bringing together of Western values and practices with local Chinese priorities and points of view has involved a departure from any ‘clear historical line of progression from premodern to modern then postmodern’. This has taken place as a result of the merging of ‘characteristics of all these periods . . . in hybrid forms . . . often using incompatible elements at the same time’.41 What is more, argues Gao, this departure has led in some instances to an apparent reversal (when seen from a Western(ized) perspective) of the order of the ‘Euro-American epochal sequence’.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Chinese modern and contemporary art [has been] fundamentally concerned with how to integrate art and social projects, and how to fuse the benefits of a modern environment with a deeper understanding of current living space, in order to create a totality.43 For Gao, in the West the opposite is the case, with both modernist and postmodernist art having maintained a persistent sense of critical difference from society. Gao then goes on to argue that the Chinese conception of modernity also differs from that of the West because it has (since the very beginnings of China’s entry into modernity during the early twentieth century) involved the combining of certain non-absolutist/relativist aspects of Western modernity (including social Darwinism and North American pragmatism) with the pragmatism of traditional Chinese Confucianism. Here Gao refers to a localized view of Chinese modernity put forward by Hu Shi, a leading figure in China’s New Culture movement of the early twentieth century, whom Gao quotes as saying: e truth is nothing more than a tool for dealing with the environment. As the environment changes the truth changes with it. e real knowledge
257 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
A key example of this, argues Gao, is the widespread debating of postmodernist architectural theories within the prc during the 1980s and 1990s, in advance of a move towards an engagement with modernist theories and controversies in more recent years. Postmodernity was being ‘considered mostly as a set of concepts which served as the first step in a search for modernity’, and modernity was ‘being specified and merged into a true condition of Chinese urban construction in the current booming, globalized society’.42 Gao then goes on to argue that ‘the mainstream of Chinese intellectual thinking in the modern and contemporary periods’ contrasts with a Western conceptualization of modernity by trying continually ‘to close the gap between different fields as well as between past and present’. In support of his argument, he makes reference to the lecture given by the influential philosopher of modern Chinese history, Cai Yuanpei, in 1917, in which Cai asserts that ‘aesthetics and art practice [are] equal in social importance to religion and commitment to morality.’ As a consequence of this persistent desire to close gaps between different fields, Gao argues,
258 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
needed by humanity is not absolute principle and reason, but rather particular time, specific space, my truth.44 As a consequence of this combining of Western and Chinese pragmatic outlooks, contends Gao, the Chinese conception of modernity has diverged from the sequential logic of Western modernity (with its categorical division between materialistic modernity and aesthetic modernity). It has continually subverted ‘dichotomous thought patterns such as subject versus object, and time versus space’, and this subversion has placed modern Chinese art of the last 90 years or so in an invariably close relationship to the material conditions of its immediate production and reception. It has also allowed for the continuation of a specifically Chinese view of history as a decidedly non-linear ‘network of forever changing relations among human subjectivity, living space and experience’ whose space is ‘always ongoing, mutable, and actual’. As Gao sees it, this ‘pragmatic principle of daily experience’ relates both to the early twentieth-century thinking of Hu Shi and to famous sayings attributed to Deng Xiaoping, such as ‘Cross the river by jumping from stone to stone on the riverbed’, and ‘White cat, black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat’. Gao contends that these are ‘metaphors of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”’ as the ‘guiding principle of economic reform initiated [within the prc] in 1978’.45 In Gao’s view, the upholding of a specifically Chinese pragmatic conception of modernity has resulted in the establishing of a ‘permanent condition of “contemporaneity” as the Chinese model of “modernity”’, which Gao refers to as ‘total modernity’. Further, it has resulted in contemporary Chinese art ‘being overwhelmingly concerned with space and environment during the last three decades’.46 Gao elaborates on this point by making two further assertions. First: ‘the nature of “contemporaneity” in the twenty-first century, worldwide, is also more about space than time, because it has been shaped during the last two decades by globalization and postcolonial cultural theory.’ Second, the consciousness of space in Chinese contemporary art . . . has been driven by a kind of empiricism embedded in the experiences of location and dislocation, the placement and displacement of various spatial references, rather than simply by dichotomies such as internal versus external, local versus international, import versus export, and so forth.47
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
144 concept 21st century (Zhao Jianhai [pop Zhao], sheng Qi, Zheng Yuke, Kang mu, Xi Jianjun), Line, 1987, group performance at the Great Wall of china with sheng Qi and Zheng Yuke.
259 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
Gao’s assertion that the Chinese conception of modernity has been a chronically pragmatic one suggests an affinity with the anti-foundationalism of Western postmodernism – that is to say, the tendency, as part of postmodernist thought and practice, to deconstruct categorical conceptual differences and their associated value structures (for example postcolonialism’s critical problematization of East–West relations of dominance as part of the unfolding project of Western(ized) modernity). Gao is, however, at pains to dismiss the possibility of such a connection on the grounds that deconstructivism’s vision of everything as ‘contingent, transient, and [lacking] in historical logic’ is very much at odds with a durable Chinese belief in the importance of establishing a ‘historical view’, where the past and the present can be seen to meet constantly in the creation of new cultural perspectives. According to Gao, this specifically Chinese bringing together of past and present into a combinatory historical point of view is evinced by a tendency among contemporary Chinese artists of the last three decades to ‘turn historical sites into a symbolic medium to express modern Chinese identity’. He suggests that key examples of this include Kang Mu, Zhao Jianhai and Sheng Qi’s staging of a performance at the Summer Palace in Beijing in 1985 (illus. 144); and Zheng Lianjie’s (b. 1962) performance on the Great Wall, Binding The Lost Soul, in 1993 (illus. 145, 146).48 On the basis of this assessment of the differences between Chinese and Western conceptions of modernity, Gao then proceeds to develop an extended analysis of contemporary Chinese art involving readings of a formally diverse range of artworks considered in relation to the reshaping of urban space that has taken place as a consequence of Deng’s reforms.49 Gao’s stated purpose in presenting this detailed analysis is to show how contemporary Chinese artists make use of techniques characteristic of Western modernism and postmodernism as a way of engaging closely with issues specific to localized Chinese contexts. In so doing, they undermine the postmodernist notion of an increasingly
145 Zheng Lianjie, Binding the Lost Soul – Memory Loss, 1993, group performance in four parts at the Great Wall of china.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
146 Zheng Lianjie, Binding the Lost Soul –Huge Explosion, 1993, group performance in four parts at the Great Wall of china.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
261 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
non-specific transnationalism as part of the development of contemporary culture. Artworks cited by Gao include Zhang Dali’s graffiti work, SelfPortrait, Jinmao Tower, Shanghai (1995–2003), which Gao interprets, in somewhat humanistic terms (and in contrast to a rather more decontructivist reading of Zhang’s work by Wu Hung in his essay in Antinomies of Art and Culture), as a bodily resistance to the effects of encroaching modernization (illus. 147). Also cited by Gao are ‘Maximalist’ abstract paintings by Xing Danwen and Li Huasheng which, Gao argues, make use of ‘modernist modes, especially Minimalist-like forms . . . to unify the process of making art with daily life, in the manner of traditional Chan meditation’.50 Gao then adds to this extended analysis by presenting a separate discussion of contemporary Chinese art produced by women artists, focusing in particular on a performance work by Chen Qiulin (b. 1975) entitled I Exist, I Consume and I Am Happy (2003) (illus. 148). Here Gao argues that established Western feminist discourse (with its tendency, as he sees it, to frame Chinese women’s art either ‘as part of the international feminist community’ or as one ‘based on
147 Zhang Dali, Demolition 1998. 12. 5, 1998, c-print.
overleaf: 148 chen Qiulin, I Exist, I Consume and I Am Happy, 2003, mixed media group performance, shopping cart, wedding dress, cream cake, eight dog collars.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
264 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
purely personal experience’ differing from that which informs Chinese men’s art) pays ‘insufficiently close attention to the local context of Chinese women’s art’.51 In Gao’s view, Chinese women’s art cannot be distinguished categorically from that of Chinese men for two reasons. First, neither Chinese men nor Chinese women have gained independence as autonomous subjects, presumably as a consequence of the continuing patriarchal authoritarianism of the ccp (although Gao does not explicitly say so). Second, both ‘face the same crisis as the Chinese people move into a process of reconfiguring social rank and class’, presumably as a consequence of the unsettling social effects of Deng’s reforms (although, again, he does not explicitly say so), with ‘family, rather than the individual’ bearing the ‘main brunt of this transition’. is leads Gao to argue that ‘gender unification rather than gender split is what is most needed in this historical moment’, as part of a wider goal within developing countries of arriving at the ‘sexual harmony rather than gender conflict and splitting’ associated with Alice Walker’s use of the term ‘Womanism’. Gao then seeks to bolster this line of argument by asserting that the use of ‘everyday household materials including thread, yarn, cotton, cloth, quilts [and] clothing’ by Chinese women artists ‘may effectively demonstrate an individual woman’s particular emotions and interests’ as well as ‘an awareness of the intimacy of family relations’.52 Gao concludes by repeating his initial assertion of the spatially defined separateness of Chinese cultural modernity, stating that, ‘modernity in art in China throughout the twentieth century seems to remain steadily committed to the principle of transcending time and reconstructing space’ and that it is ‘this intrinsic, self-defined, “total modernity”, following its own historical logic, that has, I believe, established the permanent condition of contemporaneity in Chinese contemporary art’.53 Gao’s assessment of the differences between Western and Chinese conceptions of modernity, and between international postmodernist art and contemporary Chinese art is, to some extent, persuasive. rough his assessment, Gao draws our attention to undeniable differences in the perceived significance and stylistic/formal development of Western(ized) modernist/postmodernist art and contemporary Chinese art that have come about as a result of their respective interrelationships with very different social, cultural, economic and political settings. As Gao indicates, while contemporary Chinese art is perceived within a Western(ized) international context to be a variant of transnational deconstructivist postmodernism, within the prc it is widely thought of (as
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
265 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
previously discussed in the introduction to this book) as an expression of a spatially defined modern national-cultural Chinese identity, with its own particular sequential development and relationship to society. What is more, this identity (with its pragmatic, non-absolutist sense of spatial and temporal difference) has been strongly informed not only by the influence of Western relativist thought but also by the persistence of traditional Chinese thought (not least that associated historically with Daoism and Confucianism). What is less convincing, however, is Gao’s claim that these differences in cultural outlook and influence mark out the Chinese conception of modernity as categorically different from that of the West. One notable feature of the argument set out by Gao in ‘“Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truth”’ is the absence of any detailed critical assessment of the relationship between Western modernism and postmodernism. Crucially, Gao overlooks the ways in which postmodernist thought and practice can be understood to have deconstructed modernist assumptions of categorical spatial difference and sequential historical development. Consider, for example, works of postmodernist art, such as Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes series, which can be understood to stand in an uncertain (resistant/complicit) position in relation to mainstream society while at the same time suspending any sense that they can be located categorically within an unfolding sequence of historical epochs. As a consequence, Gao makes the mistake of upholding (as his main point of critical reference) a staunchly modernist view of the historical relationship between art and modernity. is view, while still residually influential on Western(ized) thought and practice, is now widely seen in an international context to have been overwritten by an immanent postmodernist sense of historical uncertainty and discontinuity. Gao’s assertion that the pragmatic relativism of the Chinese conceptualization of modernity contrasts strongly with the continuing absolutism of a Western(ized) conceptualization of modernity is, therefore, very much open to question. It is also possible to question Gao’s view of deconstruction as a profoundly ahistorical form of analysis. As the literary critic Terry Eagleton has indicated, while deconstruction can be used somewhat absurdly to ‘deny the existence of relatively determinate truths, meanings, identities, intentions, [and] historical continuities’, it also has the potential to act as a ‘political’ means of dismantling ‘the logic by which a particular system of thought, and behind that a whole system of political structures and social institutions, maintains its force’. It thereby reveals how presently signified meanings operate as ‘effects of a wider
266 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
and deeper history – of language, of the unconscious, of social institutions and practices’.54 In other words, it is possible to think of deconstruction not just as a means of persistently negating the significance of established historical narratives, but also of developing counter-narratives that pay close analytical attention to the unfolding complexity and mutability of historical meanings. Gao’s assertion, therefore, that deconstruction diverges from a durable Chinese belief in the importance of taking a ‘historical view’ does appear to be somewhat misplaced. is is particularly true when considered in relation to his stated view that the Chinese-pragmatic conceptualization of modernity has not only tended towards a continual subverting of dichotomous thought patterns, but also a view of historical truth as something that is always provisional and open to revision. is position has a distinct and undeniable affinity with a deconstructivist view of history. In addition, it is by no means clear that the prevailing Chinese conception of modernity is as non-absolutist as Gao would have us believe. While art history writing within China since antiquity has exhibited a continuing indebtedness to the relativism of traditional Chinese Daoist and Confucian thought, it has also been informed by a persistent tendency towards the precise classification of historical objects of study and to view history (according to dynastic succession) as a sequential unfolding of distinct periods and epochs. is classificatory and sequential view of history is not only found in the work of classical Chinese art historians such as Xie He (best known for his work e Record of the Classification of Old Painters); it also features strongly in the work of modern Chinese art historians and theorists. Indeed, historical sequence and classification are very much to the fore in Gao’s own writing. His monumental survey e Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art seeks to frame the development of contemporary Chinese art over the last three decades in terms of a sequential unfolding of avant-garde, experimental and museum-based forms; and to classify that sequential development according to a series of categories, including social realism, conceptual art, performance art and women’s art. What is more, while Gao argues that the Chinese pragmatic conception of modernity continually seeks to subvert categorical difference and sequential order (especially regarding what he sees as the absolutism of a Western conceptualization of modernity), the overall trajectory of his argument moves constantly towards the identification of historical totalities. These are the integration of art and social projects, the ‘total modernity’ of contemporary Chinese art as an expression of a spatially
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
267 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
defined national-cultural Chinese identity; and the harmonization of male and female cultural perspectives. It is, therefore, possible to question Gao’s assertion that the Chinese conception of modernity is definitively pragmatic/non-absolutist in its outlook. Added to this, it is also possible to question Gao’s assertion that there should be little or no distinction made between Chinese women’s art and that of Chinese men. is position is very much open to criticism as Gao can be seen to impose a reading that is wholly insensitive to the persistence of a historically ingrained patriarchal order within the prc. Despite ccp protestations to the contrary, men remain very much in a position of social dominance over women – a key manifestation of which is the undeniable domination of art historical/ critical discourse by male writers within the prc. Gao’s assertion of gender equality within the prc can, therefore, be understood to mask male–female relations of dominance rather than pointing in the direction of their dissolution. Pragmatic, non-absolutist ways of thinking have persisted not only as part of Chinese modernity, but throughout Chinese history. What is more, these ways of thinking have tended towards the promotion of harmonious reciprocation between otherwise differing states of being. Exemplary of this tendency is the non-rationalist dialectical concept of yin and yang, which has persistently informed the development of the Chinese intellectual tradition. According to the concept of yin-yang, seemingly opposing forces in nature are in actuality both interconnected and interdependent. Consequently, all oppositions can be seen as relative as well as open to the possibility of harmonious reciprocation. Examples of Chinese thought that have been influenced by the concept of yin-yang include a traditional Daoist-Confucian desire to live in close accordance with nature and the Confucian vision of a harmonious, hierarchically ordered society. From the point of view of established Chinese discourse, Gao’s assertion that the Chinese conception of modernity has supported a close reciprocal interaction between art and society therefore presents itself almost automatically as a positive one. From a Western(ized) discursive perspective strongly informed by postmodernist scepticism, however, assertions of this kind invite a rather more critical reception.55 Seen from a critical postmodernist point of view, Gao’s claim that the Chinese conception of modernity has supported a totalizing engagement between contemporary Chinese art and Chinese society can be interpreted as a highly questionable attempt to establish cultural difference at the expense of the glossing over of pronounced tensions that clearly exist between contemporary
268 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Chinese art and the prc’s prevailing sociopolitical order. is includes, among other things, the persistence of strong governmental controls on freedom of public expression that severely curtail the critical agency of all contemporary Chinese artists; and (as previously discussed) the persistence of a patriarchal order that continues to overwrite the identities and experiences of Chinese women artists. Although Gao may not have intended it, he can, therefore, be understood to have effectively aligned himself (as is the case with other Chinese writers who uphold essential differences between Chinese and Western art) with the dialectical authoritarianism of the ccp. Since 2002, the effective complicity of some Chinese commentators with the dialectical authoritarianism of the ccp has been matched with what would appear to be a significant waning of the critical impact of contemporary Chinese art, particularly within the context of the prc. Since the late 1980s, contemporary Chinese art has gained an increasingly high profile within the international art world. is profile has accrued for four substantive reasons. First, is the sometimes highly innovative way in which producers of contemporary Chinese art have sought to combine/hybridize attitudes, techniques and imagery appropriated from Western modernism and internationalized postmodernism with autochthonous Chinese cultural thought and practice. e second reason is the equally innovative way in which certain producers of contemporary Chinese art have used the combining/hybridizing of differing cultural forms and techniques to stage what can be interpreted as a critically ‘deconstructive’ undermining of conventional social, political and cultural values both within and outside China. ird is the continuing prevalence of conventional modes of artistic production, such as painting on canvas, printmaking and cast sculpture, which readily satisfy the international art market’s continuing preference for artworks that are portable, conspicuously crafted and auratically unique. Last is the large-scale displacement of Chinese artists and intellectuals which took place at the end of the 1980s and the subsequent formation of an extended transnational network of culturally informed individuals, groups and institutions supportive of the production and reception of contemporary Chinese art on an international stage. In recent years, however, despite this potent mix of formal innovation, recognizable ‘deconstructive’ critical content, market friendliness and actively supported transnationalism, significant doubts have been raised in some quarters regarding the continuing quality and criticality of contemporary Chinese art. While a significant amount of the contemporary Chinese art of the 1980s and 1990s (including the internationally acclaimed Political Pop of
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
269 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
Wang Guangyi, the Cynical Realism of Fang Lijun and Yue Minjun and the neo-Dadaism of Huang Yongping) is characterized strongly by a combination of conspicuous technical/formal accomplishment and discernible counterauthoritarian critical content, that is not so much the case in contemporary Chinese art produced since the turn of the millennium. While at least some (though by no means all) of that more recent art remains of a highly polished technical standard (for example, the epic cinematic installations of Yang Fudong), readily identifiable critical content is, in most cases, at something of a premium. Exemplary of this tendency is the work of young contemporary Chinese artists such as the Shanghai-based team of photographers Birdhead, made up of Song Tao (b. 1977) and Ji Weiyu (b. 1980); the video installation and electronic music collaborators Song Tao and B6; and the Beijing-based painter/collagist Song Kun (b. 1977) (illus. 149–154). These artists appear to pursue a self-conscious eschewal of any direct form of criticality in favour of more oblique/poetic forms of aesthetic expression and/or the narrowly focused representation of localized circumstances, experiences and identities. eir forms of expression and representation speak to a resistance to the universalizing tendencies of Western modernism/orientalism, but can also be seen to severely compromise the possibility of any readily cognizable critical significance. e question then arises as to why this apparent waning of criticality has come about. e first thing to say, perhaps, is that waning of this sort has not been confined simply to contemporary Chinese art. In recent years there has been increasing evidence (particularly in the context of international survey shows) that artists have, to varying degrees, become dissatisfied with the now-institutionalized modes of criticality associated with internationalized postmodernist artistic production (that is, deconstructivism and its associated variants, such as postcolonialist, ‘third space’ criticism). In the case of some contemporary artists, this sense of dissatisfaction is undoubtedly symptomatic of a continuing belief in the importance of critical self-reflexivity, and an associated drive to find new, non-institutionalized forms of artistic-critical expression (as witnessed in relation to the staging of the third Guangzhou Triennial, Farewell to Post-Colonialism). For others, however, there appears to have been a less considered shift towards an engagement with a non-critical aesthetic. is has been all too easily arrived at by the use of modern digital/photographic technologies, especially in combination with the liminal white cube, black box and post-industrial, cathedral-like spaces of the contemporary art museum/exhibition space. e
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
271 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
virulently deconstructive counter aestheticism of the post-Duchampian conceptuality of the late twentieth century has fallen very much out of favour and fashion; and has been replaced by often highly aestheticized and technologically orientated art that persistently suggests meaning but without any significant elucidation, critical or otherwise. While it should be acknowledged that ‘relational art’ of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries involving direct interventions into society beyond the limits of the museum and gallery space is often actively critical in its intent, as Claire Bishop has observed, that art’s lack of any clear distance between itself and its objects of critique significantly qualifies its standing as an effective locus of criticality. Equally one might also observe that Bishop’s own conception of a renewed form of artistic antagonism as a critical foil to the perceived failings of relational art is itself a questionable one given the inevitable complicity of art with the workings of the market on an international stage.56 However, to ascribe the apparent waning of criticality in relation to contemporary Chinese art simply to the shifting sensibilities/formalities of a
150 Birdhead, Welcome to the World of Birdhead 2011 – For Passion, 2010, c-print, 47.5 × 57 cm.
opposite: 149 Birdhead, Suitcase-1, 2005, mixed media assemblage, suitcase with approximately 30 framed photographs, 30 × 70 × 45 cm, each photograph 31 × 21 cm.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
151, 152, 153 song Kun, It’s My Life, 2006, installation comprising 365 separate paintings, oil on canvas, dimensions variable.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
273 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
wider internationalized contemporary art world would be a mistake. In the context of early twenty-first-century China, other (arguably more telling) factors are very much in play. Perhaps the most significant and far-reaching of these are continuing social taboos, in addition to discursive and legal restrictions within China on any form of public expression that directly undermines the authority/integrity of the Chinese nation state. While there are growing signs of the emergence of a civil society within China (not least in relation to the country’s burgeoning blogosphere and nascent critical press), there is still a widespread aversion to public forms of critical enunciation. is persists both because of the abiding authoritarianism of China’s now highly nationalistic Communist-socialist government, and because of the state-supported return within mainstream Chinese society of recent years to a traditional Chinese Confucian belief in the importance of filial piety and
274 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
deference to hierarchical order. is combination of political authoritarianism and traditional belief serves to stymie not only public criticality in general, but also specifically embodied manifestations of that criticality, such as acts of resistance to the durable patriarchy of Chinese society performed by Chinese women artists. Powerfully enmeshed with this combination of authoritarianism and tradition, there are also major infrastructural/institutional blocks to artistic criticality in China. Anyone familiar with the art world in China knows that official government support for contemporary art is directed, for the most part, to politically conservative forms of academic history and genre painting, as well as to variations on traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, otherwise known as guo hua (national art). In addition, galleries in the private sector are also subject to specifically directed legal and quasi-legal constraints on the exhibiting of art that can be interpreted as being openly critical of the authority and/or the integrity of the Chinese nation state. What is more, while there is growing interest within China among government officials in the economic potential of the creative industries (drawing heavily on the example set by New Labour in the uk during the 1990s) and while this has led to the emergence of numerous creative hubs and gallery spaces throughout China in recent years, there is an accompanying, publicly stated official repudiation of any form of creative activity that might undermine mainstream Chinese cultural values. Alongside these cultural and governmental constraints, there is also the absence of any formal teaching within China’s art academies that draws attention to the critical potential of artistic production. Unlike art academies in Europe and North America, within Chinese art academies there is an insufficiently supported knowledge base about the critical potential of artistic production. In addition, there are powerful institutional limits on critical thought and action (strongly enforced by the presence of Party officials at departmental and school level), which constrain pedagogical activity to strictly formalistic teaching of craft technique and art historical ‘fact’. As a consequence, not only is the embracing of criticality left to the development of artists after leaving the confines of the Academy, it is also not entirely clear that, once on the outside, contemporary Chinese artists are always fully aware of the critical potential of the techniques that they deploy in the making of their work. Admittedly, continuing governmental constraints on freedom of critical thought and action within the prc make artists who live and work there highly reticent about discussing the critical function of their work in public. However,
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
275 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
the widespread failure of many of those artists to enter into such discussions is almost certainly also due to a lack of relevant professional knowledge. e underlying reasons for these differences between the institutional landscapes of China and the West are, of course, not too far to seek. Although it would be invidious to oversimplify in this regard, China is (in spite of over a century of, often turbulent, modernization) still highly resistant to many of the basic tenets of Western secular-scientific modernism. Western society and culture can be said to have been given definition in large part by the critical rationalism that first emerged there during the eighteenth century as part of the European Enlightenment. is would later underpin the progressive Western modernism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the more self-reflexive aspects of internationalized postmodernism. However, those attitudes have tended to merge strongly (as part of the Chinese experience of modernity) with traditionalist/ternary thinking and practices markedly incommensurate with Western Enlightenment thought and practice, not least because of persistent indigenous fears of cultural deracination within China. Exemplary of this is the aforementioned resurgence within China of a traditional Confucian deference to familial and governmental authority, and a durable faith in tradition (rather than in science) as a basis for the establishment of lasting social structures and cultural values. is is particularly true with regard to the persistence of practices and values associated with traditional Chinese medicine. As a result, progressive modernization within China is now heavily tempered by structures and attitudes that work against notions of critical reflection and that have been knowingly promoted by central government in Beijing specifically to safeguard against the previous excesses of a century of revolutionary upheaval within China. ere has, of course, been a tendency in some quarters to view China as a prime candidate for political and social liberalization as a consequence of the country’s precipitous economic and social modernization in recent years. It is demonstrably the case that ideological and social restrictions on freedom of speech and action have been greatly reduced within China over the last three decades as part of the adoption of Deng Xiaoping’s programme of Opening and Reform. However, they have been subject to intermittent retightening, not least as a result of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaigns of the 1980s and the pervasive political conservatism felt within China during the early 1990s. It is also possible to see a hardening of the core limits on freedom of expression within China over the last decade not simply (as in the past)
276 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
154 song Kun, It’s My Life, 2006, installation comprising 365 separate paintings, oil on canvas, dimensions variable. installation view, it’s my Life, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, 2006.
through sharp governmental directives, but more tellingly through the subtle imposition of ill-defined discursive limits. is includes those associated with government-supported Confucianism and an increasingly widespread panopticism, both of which have engendered an increasingly heightened state of self-discipline/control within the Chinese populace. As a consequence, it is possible to see the assertion of a conspicuously (as well as culturally consistent) non-rationalist ‘double way’ within Chinese public life on the question of criticality. is points, on the one hand, in the direction of an increasing liberalization of Chinese society and culture at an everyday level and, on the other, towards the prospect of ever-tighter restrictions on public criticism of the country’s officially sanctioned (inescapably ‘non-enlightened’) core values. From a Western(ized) perspective, the confirmation of this double developmental way within Chinese public life may seem both remote and ineffectual, held at a distance from the ‘safe’ Western(ized) liberal-democratic homelands by a still durable, post-Enlightenment desire to uphold the importance of criticality within the public sphere. However, this is almost certainly an illusion that serves to obscure the West’s own internalized historical double-standards regarding freedom of criticality (as revealed by the critical practices of deconstruction), and the increasingly pervasive influence of Chinese thought and action on the world stage. e latter has come about expressly as a consequence of China’s entry into global modernity.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Even after Deng’s southern tour, contemporary art in the prc continued to occupy a position of relative estrangement from mainstream politics throughout the 1990s. Although some artists, curators and critics sought to extend the humanist project of the ’85 New Wave by establishing some sort of rapprochement between contemporary art and governmental policy, most contemporary art remained outside the economic and political interests of the ccp. The high-water mark of contemporary art’s estrangement from mainstream politics was congruent with the extreme forms of body art developed in the prc in the late 1990s, which eventually led to the Ministry of Culture Notice outlawing pornography and extreme forms of bodily violence in the name of art in 2001. With the staging of the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, however, a new situation began to emerge which saw increasing governmental interest in contemporary art as a progressive manifestation of Chinese modernity both internationally and within the prc. e ccp’s interest in contemporary art as a progressive manifestation of Chinese modernity took two forms. In the 1990s and early 2000s, a growing awareness among government officials of contemporary Chinese art’s prodigious economic and cultural successes in the international art world led to a revised outlook on its relationship with governmental reforms; one that also led to a transformation in attitudes towards the political management of contemporary art.57 In a speech given on the occasion of the Seventh National Congress of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles (cflac) on 18 December 2001, President Jiang Zemin gave a brief summary of the ccp’s emerging view of culture as part of the prc’s involvement in international competition. In his speech, Jiang argued that it was important for developing countries, such as the prc, ‘to preserve and develop the excellent traditions of their native national cultures’ and to ‘promote national spirit, actively absorb the fine cultural fruits from other nations, and push the update of native culture’. ese views are redolent not only of passages in Mao’s Yan’an talks of 1942, but also of the distancing from Soviet influence which took place in the prc in the late 1950s.58 Jiang then went on to argue that Striving to construct our advanced culture and to make it appeal strongly to people nationwide even worldwide is an equally important strategic task for us to realize as part of socialist modernization; as is
277 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
The Political Recuperation of Contemporary Chinese Art
278 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
the endeavor to develop advanced productivity as part of the enlisting of China as one of the developed countries. Only when we construct an advanced socialist culture that is national, scientific and public and that is facing modernization, facing the world, and facing the future, can we meet our people’s increasing demand for spiritual and cultural life, uplift their standards of ethical morality and science and culture, and give correct direction and powerful intelligent support to economic development and advanced productivity.59 Jiang had previously delivered similar remarks on various occasions before his speech at cflac’s National Congress in 2001, repeatedly emphasizing the strategic significance of culture as part of a competitive global environment. Jiang’s remarks also build on (and perhaps borrow from) official debates on the significance of Chinese culture in the 1990s, including discussions of the significance of contemporary Chinese art. In response to Jiang’s vision, ccp officials began to develop new ways of promoting Chinese culture both as an expression of modern indigenous identity and as a focus for the exercising of influence abroad. is amounted to a major shift in outlook away from the ccp’s prior concentration on economic and social reform towards a structural coordination of socioeconomic and cultural interests in support of China’s continuing modernization. As early as 1998, the prc’s Ministry of Culture had established a bureau charged with developing policies in relation to the cultural industries. is was followed by the acceptance of a proposal at the Fifth Plenum of the 15th ccp Central Committee in October 2000 that set out a far-reaching policy for reforming cultural production and administration in the prc and that repeatedly used the term ‘cultural industry’. e proposal advocated the progressive focusing of cultural industry policy, a strengthening of the construction and administration of the market place for cultural products, and a ‘centrally driven development of the cultural industries’.60 is proposal was further supported by the official report of the ccp’s 16th National Congress in 2002, which stated that ‘In the current market economy, developing cultural industries is a very important way to achieve socialist cultural prosperity and to meet the spiritual and cultural needs of the people.61 e development of an official policy on the cultural industries in the prc was accompanied by that of another on the prc’s use of cultural diplomacy. In 2000, Jiang Zemin asserted publicly that the ccp should be
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
279 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
the leading force of Chinese culture, stating that the prc should aim to be a powerful nation not only politically and economically, but also culturally.62 Jiang argued that in order to achieve this position of economic, political and cultural power, the prc should engage with cultural developments on the international stage and in doing so promote Chinese culture abroad. At a meeting with Chinese ambassadors in 2004, Hu Jintao (b. 1942), then General-Secretary of the ccp Central Committee, stressed the importance of economic and cultural diplomacy to the prc’s future development, and of putting the ccp’s strategy of cultural diplomacy into practice.63 At the 17th National Congress of the ccp in 2007, Hu further asserted the importance of the prc’s international diplomacy by calling for improvements in the country’s use of soft power.64 During a speech at the Sixth Plenum of the 17th Central Committee of the ccp on 18 October 2011, Hu went still further by arguing that the prc’s cultural industries had been greatly enhanced by the process of social and economic reform, and that they were a crucial aspect of the prc’s projection of soft power on the international stage. Political conditions were, therefore, set for the recuperation of a hitherto overlooked and relatively autonomous sphere of contemporary artistic production in the prc, to further the ideological interests of the ccp both in terms of indigenous economic and cultural development and the international projection of diplomatic influence. e co-opting of contemporary Chinese art to the political interests of the ccp since the early 2000s has taken a number of forms. In recent years, Chinese higher education institutions involved in the teaching of art and design have become increasingly subject to calls from the ccp to strengthen the prc’s creative industries sector. In response, many of those institutions have embraced modern modes of cultural production, including the use of new digital and computer-based technologies which are taught alongside more established modern and traditional approaches. ere have also been significant exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art at major national institutions, including a substantial survey exhibition of work by young artists from the prc at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, titled e First “cafam” Future Exhibition – Sub-Phenomena: Report on the State of Chinese Young Art Nomination in 2012.65 In addition, there have been a number of governmentally supported exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art outside the prc. e two earliest of these exhibitions were Living in Time, staged at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in 2001, and Alors la Chine?, staged at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2003. ey also include a
280 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
digitally mediated (and, in international circles, critically dismissed) exhibition of the work of the celebrated guo hua painter Pan Gongkai in the China pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011 as well as an equally critically dismissed presentation of digital artworks in the China pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013 curated by Wang Chunchen. In 2012, the Shanghai Biennale (which has always been staged with the close involvement of the prc’s official cultural bureaucracy) engaged in an ostensibly ambitious move to modernize itself. It became the focus for the establishment of a major museum of contemporary art in a refurbished power station on the derelict 2010 Expo ground in Shanghai, and also extended its scope to include a series of international pavilions.66 However, poor organization and continuing governmental restrictions on the content and critical positioning of the show resulted in the withdrawal of some of the Biennale’s international participants, including the artist Yuri Albert. Mainstream governmental acceptance of contemporary art in the prc since the early 2000s may appear as evidence of increasing cultural liberalization. It may also be viewed as the emergence of contemporary art in the prc itself, as a legitimized focus for critique. Neither is unequivocally the case. Recent acceptance of the value of contemporary art by the Chinese state is fundamentally enmeshed with the ccp’s continuing commitment to economic and political reform, as well as the projection of Chinese power internationally. Contemporary art in China may have been held at arm’s length from centralized power throughout much of the 1990s in the wake of Tiananmen, but the 2000s have seen its progressive institutionalization. Although political conditions in the prc differ markedly from those during the Maoist period (and in particular during the Cultural Revolution), the persistent desire of the prc to control culture in the service of its strategic aims should not be underestimated. ose involved with the making and showing of contemporary art in the prc have now effectively seen a realization of the ’85 New Wave’s desire to close the gap between cultural production and political and economic reform. Absent from that relationship, however, is any accepted social-critical function for contemporary art. In effect, the reconciliation of contemporary art to political power in the prc since the 2000s is little more than a modern variation on the vision of art set out by Mao in his Yan’an talks of 1942. For evidence of the still restrictive relationship between centralized authority and contemporary art in the prc, one need look no further than events surrounding the recent detention of the artist Ai Weiwei. In recent
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
281 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
years, Ai Weiwei has become a familiar media presence outside the prc. Interminable online rants; scathing public attacks on officialdom; headlinegrabbing exhibitions and artworks; a series of alleged police beatings; an apparently life-threatening hospitalization; and a bbc documentary by Alan Yentob, Ai Weiwei: Without Fear or Favour (2010) have secured his place not only as an international media commentator (of first choice on the subject of contemporary art in China) but also as a spectacular personification of resistance to Chinese authoritarianism. No television, radio or newspaper coverage of contemporary Chinese art outside China would be complete without at least a passing reference to Ai as China’s best-known, and perhaps most significant, living dissident artist. On 3 April 2011 Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing airport as he was about to depart for Hong Kong. On 6 April, Chinese state media reported that Ai had been arrested on the grounds that his ‘departure procedures were incomplete’. One day later, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying that the artist had been placed under investigation for alleged economic crimes. Most outside commentators agree that Ai was arrested as a result of his open defiance of state power against a background of governmental fears that the spirit of the Arab Spring was about to spread eastwards to the prc (as signalled by the prc’s own abortive ‘Jasmine Revolution’ of February 2011). For over a year after his release from detention on 22 June 2011 (purportedly on grounds of good behaviour, chronic ill-health and a freely given confession of guilt with regard to the non-payment of taxes), Ai persistently declined to take part in structured media interviews, citing the strict conditions of his bail. Instead, he chose to issue brief statements on Twitter and via the internet in support of friends, relatives and employees and two Chinese human rights activists, Wang Lihong and Ran Yunfei, who were also detained around the time of his own arrest in April 2011. More recently, after the settling of his case and his release from house arrest, Ai has spoken out more freely, including through his participation in a cinematic portrait of the artist as an unreconstructed non-conformist by director Alison Klayman, titled Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012). Nevertheless, the overall force of Ai’s open criticism of the ccp has been significantly reduced. During the time of his detention and afterwards, much was said in support of Ai from the relative safety of liberal-democratic spaces outside the prc. High-profile figures in the uk, including the artists Anish Kapoor and Anthony Gormley, have been publicly outspoken in criticizing Ai’s detention
282 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
and, in doing so, have condemned the actions of the Chinese authorities in no uncertain terms as ‘barbaric’. For anyone committed to open criticism within the public sphere as a means of checking political power, this condemnation is one that, at the very least, demands a basic degree of solidarity. ere are, however, significant dangers in the upholding of Ai as our sole representative/mediator of artistic resistance to authority within the prc. While Ai’s bluntly confrontational (and often bombastic) stance can be readily digested within Western liberal-democratic contexts (where Romantic notions of heroic dissent in the face of overwhelming power still persist), it is by no means representative of the critical positioning of most other Chinese artists. Ai may have situated himself admirably behind enlightened Westernized humanist ideals of freedom and openness, but the sheer bluntness and reductive simplicity of his critical approach to authority have effectively foreclosed a more searching discussion of contemporary art within China, as well as the complex web of localized cultural, social, political and economic forces that surround its production and reception. Within China, there are a great number of contemporary artists who have brought together Chinese and non-Chinese cultural influences simply in pursuit of commercial success. There are also a very few who, like Ai, have adopted an openly hostile approach towards authority. And there are still many others who, as this book attests, have sought to develop sophisticated, hybrid, visual languages capable of sustaining rather more subtle and oblique forms of critical reflection and expression. As part of China’s scholarly academic traditions, there is a long-established understanding that art has the potential to go beyond the merely formalistic to offer meaningful, moral–social commentary and spiritual enlightenment. In accordance with that tradition, artistic criticism of authority within China has tended towards the poetic and allegorical, and the exercising of symbolic forms of withdrawal. This lack of open/direct criticism of authority is not entirely a matter of pragmatism in the face of continuing imperial authoritarianism. It is also considered a marker of civilization. For the civilized Chinese artist who wishes to rise above the vulgarities of power, poetic and allegorical forms of criticism not only resist easy definition, they are also assumed to have the force of an unstoppable spontaneity, commensurate with the way of nature. is is metaphorized in the Daoist classic the Daodejing (the Laozi), by observations of the longterm destructive action of water on stone.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
283 | co n t e m p o r a r Y c h i n e s e a r t, 2 0 0 2 – 2 0 1 3
From a high-minded, Westernized, post-Enlightenment perspective, all of this presents itself as unutterably weak, complicit and, perhaps, selforientalizing. However, China is not the West. ere is little prospect of a shift any time soon (if indeed ever) towards the kinds of publicness and criticality now established in Western liberal-democratic contexts. Nevertheless, for those with the patience to see, there are localized forms of resistance. While easily overlooked from a Westernized point of view, these will continue to act obliquely and perhaps tellingly over time on authority within China, as part of a wider climate of diversification and change. In spite of its liberalizing social and economic reforms of the last three decades, China remains a place of often breathtaking political brutality. Open challenges to the authority of the ccp (and to anything that might be perceived to undermine the integrity of the Chinese nation state) are, as they were throughout the Maoist period, simply beyond the political pale. e consequences of transgression (extra-judicial harassment of self and family, detention, exile and even summary execution) persist in being both real and pernicious. However, with the increasingly precipitous unfolding of post-socialist modernity within China since the late 1970s, limits on freedom of action and expression have become ever more mobile and ill-defined. As a result, panoptical self-surveillance and self-discipline (alongside spectacular demonstrations of state power and growing material wealth) are now the combined bulwarks of China’s prevailing sociopolitical order. Direct use of state violence is deemed necessary only in relation to extreme or recidivist dissidence. Ai continues to remind us of these thoroughly nasty and objectionable facts not only through his various acts of open resistance to authority in the past, but also in the position of politically instigated constraint that he now finds himself in. Ai’s constant baiting of authority and refusal to bow to intimidation has resulted in a Kafkaesque backlash, the mere prospect of which would terrorize most of us into lasting and abject silence. Direct confrontation of authority in the prc is (as Ai has found out to his cost) a high-risk strategy, subject to the persistent possibility of recuperative action. By adhering to its rationalizing strictures, Ai has found himself caught up in a labyrinthine web of double binds that powerfully restricts his ability to act as a convincing critical/moral agent. Nevertheless, for his defiance in the face of power, Ai deserves our continuing attention and respect. It is high time, however, that our attention also extends to other artists living and working in the prc.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
GLOSSARY OF CHINESE NAMES
Ai Weiwei 艾未未 (b. 1957) Bao Jianfei 包剑斐 Bei Dao 北岛 (b. 1949) Bo Yun 薄云 (b. 1948) Cai Guo-Qiang 蔡国强 (b. 1957) Cai Qing 蔡青 (b. 1960) Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940) Cang Xin 苍鑫 (b. 1967) Cao Xuelei 曹学雷 Chang Tsong-zung (Johnson) 张颂仁 (b. 1951) Chen Danqing 陈丹青 (b. 1953) Chen Qiulin 陈秋林 (b. 1975) Chen Shaoping 陈少平 (b. 1947) Chen Shaoxiong 陈劭雄 (b. 1962) Chen Yansheng 陈延生 Chen Zhen 陈箴 (1955–2000) Cheng Conglin 程丛林 (b. 1954) Chiang Kai-shek 蒋介石 (1887–1975) Confucius 孔夫子 (Kong Fuzi) (551–479 bce) Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 (1904–1997) Ding Fang 丁方 (b. 1956) Ding Yi 丁乙 (b. 1962) Fan Di’an 范迪安 (b. 1955) Feng Boyi 冯博一 (b. 1960) Feng Mengbo 冯梦波 (b. 1966) Feng Zhengjie 俸振杰 (b. 1968) Fu Baoshi 傅抱石 (1904–1965) Fu Lei 傅雷 (1908–1966) Gan Shaocheng 甘少成 Gao Jianfu 高剑父 (1975–1951) Gao Minglu 高名潞 (b. 1949) Gao Qiang 高强 (b. 1962) Gao Shiming高士明 Gao Zhen 高兟 (b. 1956) Geng Jianyi 耿建翌 (b. 1962) Gu Chengfeng 顾丞峰 (b. 1957)
Gu Dexin 顾德新 (b. 1962) Gu Wenda 谷文达 (b. 1955) Gu Xiong 顾雄 (b. 1953) Guo Shirui 郭世锐 (b. 1952) He Baoshen 何宝森 (b. 1938) He Duoling 何多苓 (b. 1948) He Yunchang 何云昌 (b. 1967) Hong Lei 洪磊 (b. 1960) Hou Hanru 侯瀚如 (b. 1963) Hu Jintao 胡锦涛 (b. 1942) Hu Yaobang 胡耀邦 (b. 1915) Hua Guofeng 华国锋 (1921–2008) Huang Binhong 黄宾虹 (1865–1955) Huang Jian 黄坚 (b. 1961) Huang Rui 黄锐 (b. 1952) Huang Xiaopeng 黄小鹏 (b. 1960) Huang Xinbo 黄新波 (1915–1980) Huang Yongping 黄永砯 (b. 1954) Huang Zhuan 黄专 (b. 1958) Ji Weiyu 季炜煜 (b. 1980) Jian Fangzhou 贾方舟 (b. 1940 ) Jiang Feng 江丰 (b. 1910) Jiang Qing 江青 (aka Madam Mao) (1914–1991) Jiang Zemin 江泽民 (b. 1926) Jiang Zhaoke 蒋兆和 (1904–1986) Jiao Yaoming 焦耀明 (b. 1957) Kang Mu 康木 Kang Wanhua 康万华 (b. 1944) Kang Youwei 康有为 (1838–1927) Kwok Mang-ho 郭孟浩 (b. 1947) Lei Feng 雷锋 (1940–1962?) Leng Lin 冷林 (b. 1965) Li Jianwei 李建伟 (b. 1979) Li Keran 李可染 (1907–1989) Li Shan 李山 (b. 1946) Li Shuang 李爽 (b. 1957)
286 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Li Wei 李伟 (b. 1968) Li Xiannian 李先念 (1909–1992) Li Xianting 栗宪庭 (b. 1949) Li Xu 李旭 Li Yuan-Chia 李元佳 (1929–1994) Liang Juhui 梁矩辉 (1959–2006) Liang Xiaochuan 梁小川 Liao Wen 廖雯’s (b. 1961) Lin Biao 林彪 (1907–1971) Lin Fengmian 林风眠 (1900–1991) Lin Jiahua 林嘉华 (b. 1953) Lin Tianmiao 林天苗 (b. 1961) Lin Yilin 林一林 (b. 1964) Liu Jin 刘瑾 (b. 1971) Liu Qing 刘青 (b. 1948) Liu Shaohui 刘绍荟 (b. 1940) Liu Wei 刘韡 (b. 1972) Liu Xun 刘迅 (b. 1923) Liu Yan 刘彦 (b. 1960) Liu Yuanyuan刘媛媛 Liu Zhenggang 刘正刚 Lü Haizhou 吕海舟 Lü Peng 吕澎 (b. 1956) Lu Qing 路青 (b. 1964) Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881–1936) Lu Yinghua (Carol) 卢迎华 (b. 1977) Luo Brothers: Luo Wei Dong 罗卫东 (b. 1962), Luo Wei Guo 罗卫国 (b. 1964) and Luo Wei Bing 罗卫兵 (b. 1972) Luo Xianyue 骆献跃 (b. 1960) Luo Zhongli 罗中立 (b. 1948) Ma Desheng 马德升 (b. 1952) Ma Liuming 马六明 (b. 1969) Mang Ke 芒克 (b. 1951) Mao Lizi 毛栗子 (b. 1950) Mao Zedong 毛泽东 (1893–1976) Meng Luding 孟禄丁 (b. 1962) Ni Haifeng 倪海峰 (b. 1964) Ni Yide 倪贻德 (1902–1969) Pan Gongkai 潘公凯 (b. 1947) Pan Tianshou 潘天寿 (1897–1971) Pan Yuliang 潘玉良 (1899–1977) Pang Xunqin 庞熏琹 (1906–1985) Peng Yu 彭禹 (b. 1974) Puyi 溥仪 (1906–1967) Qi Baishi 齐白石 (1864–1967)
Qianlong Emperor 乾隆皇帝 (Qianlong huangdi) (r. 1735–99) Qin Ga 琴嘎 (b. 1971) Qin Yifeng 秦一峰 (b. 1961) Qiu Zhijie 邱志杰 (b. 1969) Qu Leilei 曲磊磊 (b. 1951) Ren Jian 任戬 (b. 1955) Sanyu (Chang Yu) 常玉 (1901–1966) Sheng Qi 盛奇 (b. 1965) Shi Zhenyu石振宇 (b. 1946) Shu Qun 舒群 (b. 1958) Shu Yang 舒阳 (b. 1969) Song Chenghua 宋澄华 Song Dong宋冬(b. 1966) Song Haidong 宋海冬 (b. 1958) Song Kun宋琨 (b. 1977) Song Ling 宋陵 (b. 1962) Song Tao宋涛 (b. 1977) Song Yongping 宋永平 (b. 1961) Sui Jianguo 隋建国 (b. 1956) Sun Yat-sen 孙逸仙 (1866–1925) Sun Yuan 孙原 (b. 1972) Tang Guangming 汤光明 (b. 1966) Tang Song 唐宋 (b. 1960) Wang Chuyu 王楚禹 (b. 1974) Wang Deren 王德仁 (b. 1962) Wang Du 王度 (b. 1956) Wang Gongxin 王功新 (b. 1960) Wang Hongwen 王洪文 (1935–1992) Wang Huangsheng 王璜生 (b. 1956) Wang Jianwei 汪建伟 (b. 1958) Wang Keping 王克平 (b. 1949) Wang Lin 王林 (b. 1942) Wang Luyan王鲁炎 (b. 1956) Wang Qiang 王强 (b. 1957) Wang Xiaojian 王小箭 (b. 1965) Wang Xingwei 王兴伟 (b. 1969) Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (303–361) Wang Yazhong 王亚中 (b. 1962) Wei Guangqing 魏光庆 (b. 1963) Wei Jingsheng 魏京生 (b. 1950) Wu Guanzhong 吴冠中 (1919–2010) Wu Hung 巫鸿 Wu Mali 吴玛琍 (b. 1957) Wu Meichun 吴美纯 Wu Shanzhuan 吴山专 (b. 1960)
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Zhang Yonghe 张永和 (b. 1956) Zhang Zhaohui 张朝晖 (b. 1965) Zhao Jianhai 赵建海 Zhao Wenliang 赵文量 (b. 1937) Zhao Wuji 赵无极 (1921–2013) Zheng Bo 郑波 (b. 1974) Zheng Guogu 郑国谷 (b. 1970) Zheng Lianjie 郑连杰 (b. 1962) Zhenming Zhai 翟振明 (b. 1957) Zhong Ahcheng 钟阿城 (b. 1949) Zhou Enlai 周恩来 (1898–1976) Zhou Tiehai 周铁海 (b. 1966) Zhou Xiping 周细平 (b. 1953) Zhou Yan 周彦 (b. 1954) Zhu Fadong 朱发东 (b. 1960) Zhu Ming 朱冥 (b. 1972) Zhu Yu 朱昱 (b. 1970) Zhu Zude 朱祖德 (b. 1949) Zhuangzi 庄子 (c. 4th century bce)
287 | G LO S S A R Y O F C H I N E S E N A M E S
Xiao Lu 肖鲁 (b. 1962) Xiao Yu 萧昱 (b. 1965) Xie He 谢赫 (c. 500–535) Xie Nanxing 谢南星 (b. 1970) Xu Beihong 徐悲鸿 (1895–1953) Xu Bing 徐冰 (b. 1955) Xu Chengdou 许成斗 (d. 1999) Xu Ruotao 徐若涛 (b. 1968) Xu Wenli 徐文立 (b. 1943) Xu Yihui 徐一晖 (b. 1964) Xu Zhen 徐震 (b. 1977) Yan Li 李岩 (b. 1948) Yang Dongbai 杨冬白 (b. 1959) Yang Fudong 杨福东 (b. 1971) Yang Jiechang 杨诘苍 (b. 1956) Yang Jun 杨君 (b. 1942) Yang Xu 杨旭 Yang Yiping 杨益平 (b. 1947) Yang Yushu杨雨澍 (b. 1944) Yao Wenyuan 姚文元 (1931–2005) Ye Shuanggui 叶双贵 (b. 1964) Yi Dan 易丹 (b. 1960) Yin Guangzhong 尹光中 (b. 1942) Yin Jinan 尹吉男 (b. 1958) Yin Shuangxi 殷双喜 (b. 1954) Yin Xiuzhen 尹秀珍 (b. 1963) Yiyang Shao 邵亦杨 Yu Hong 余虹 (b. 1957) Yu Xiaogang 余晓刚 (b. 1958) Yu Youhan 余友涵 (b. 1943) Yuan Qingyi 袁庆一 (b. 1960) Yuan Yuansheng 袁运生 (b. 1937) Zhan Wang 展望 (b. 1962) Zhang Chunqiao 张春桥 (1917–2005) Zhang Da’an 张达安 (b. 1941) Zhang Dali 张大力 (b. 1963) Zhang Defeng 张德峰 (b. 1961) Zhang Haier 张海儿 (b. 1957) Zhang Haizhou 张海舟 (b. 1959) Zhang Huan 张洹 (b. 1965) Zhang Nian 张念 (b. 1964) Zhang Peili 张培力 (b. 1957) Zhang Qun 张群 (b. 1960) Zhang Sanxi 张三夕 (b. 1953) Zhang Shengquan 张盛泉 (1955–2000) Zhang Xiaogang 张晓刚 (b. 1958)
REFERENCES
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Introduction 1 Such thinking draws on Michel Foucault’s seminal conception of discourse as that which both limits and enables social activity and interaction and which cannot therefore be divorced from the state as a focus for relations of power and authority. For an overview of Foucault’s thought, see Michel Foucault, e Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought, ed. Paul Rabinow (London, 1991). 2 See, for example, Zhang Xueying, ‘irty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art’, China Today, April (2008), pp. 4–6. 3 Norman Bryson, ‘e Post-Ideological Avantgarde’, Inside/Out: New Chinese Art, ed. Minglu Gao (Berkeley and Los Angeles, ca, and London, 1998), pp. 57–8. 4 Since the late eighteenth century, Western postEnlightenment modernity has persistently upheld aesthetic feeling as a crucial site of critical mediation between the spheres of instrumental and moral reasoning, albeit from often radically differing and constantly shifting political perspectives. For a concise account of these differing perspectives, see Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Socialism and the Avant-garde, 1870–1914’, in Hobsbawm, Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz (London, 2010), pp. 171–86. 5 Franziska Koch, ‘“China” on Display for European Audiences?: e Making of an Early Travelling Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Art – China Avantgarde (Berlin/1993)’, Transcultural Studies, ii (2011), p. 99. 6 See Gregory L. Ulmer, ‘e Object of PostCriticism’, in Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (London, 1985). Also see Craig Owens, ‘e Allegorical Impulse: Towards a eory of
7
8
9
10 11
Postmodernism’, Part 1, October, xii (Spring 1980), pp. 67–86, and ‘e Allegorical Impulse: Towards a eory of Postmodernism’, Part 2, October, xiii (Summer 1980), pp. 58–80. Magiciens de la Terre was curated by Jean-Hubert Martin in the wake of the infamous Primitivism in the 20th Century: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (moma) in New York City (1984–1985), as a critical rejoinder to the then prevailing ethnocentricity of Western curatorial practice. See, for example, Charles Merewether, ed., Zones of Contact: 2006 Biennale of Sydney, exh. cat. (Sydney, 2006); and see Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 1985), and Homi K. Bhabha, e Location of Culture (London, 1994). Alex Farquharson, Promotional Leaflet, April–June 2011, Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham, 2011), n.p. Hou Hanru, Selected Texts, ed. Yu Hsaio-Hwei (Hong Kong, 2002), pp. 54–63. See China Avant-Garde: Counter-currents in Art and Culture, exh. cat., Berlin Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Oxford, 1994); also see Andreas Schmid, ‘e Dawn of Chinese Contemporary Art in the West: A Look Back at the Making of the Exhibition “China Avant-Garde” 1993’, in Negotiating Difference: Contemporary Chinese Art in the Global Context, ed. Birgit Hopfener, Franziska Koch, Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch and Juliane Noth (Weimar, 2012), pp. 283–97. China’s New Art Post-’89 subsequently toured to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. China’s New Art Post’89 and China Avant-Garde included works outside the so-called genres of ‘Political Pop’ and ‘Cynical Realism’. However, as part of the exhibitions in
13
14
15 16
17
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
18
19
20
21 22
23 24
25
26 27
28 29
30 31 32 33
of Changing’, Randian, www.randian-online.com, 8 November 2012. Wu, ‘A Case of Being “Contemporary”, p. 292. Gao Minglu, ‘“Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truth”: Total Modernity in Chinese Contemporary Art’, in Antinomies of Art and Culture, ed. Smith, Enwezor and Condee, p. 134. Minglu, ‘“Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truth”’, pp. 133–4. Shao Yiyang, ‘e International Identity of Chinese Art: eoretical Debates on Chinese Contemporary Art in the 1990s’, in Contemporary Chinese Art and Film: eory Applied and Resisted, ed. Jason Kuo (Washington, dc, 2013), pp. 49–64. Li Xu, ‘Chinese Contemporary Art that has Transcended its Identity’, in Beyond Boundaries, ed. Lee, Handel et al., exh. cat., Shanghai Gallery of Art (2003), pp. 65–73. Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, pp. 20–21. Li, ‘Chinese Contemporary Art that has Transcended its Identity’, p. 71. For further indications of the existence of nationalist exceptionalist attitudes in the prc, see omas Eller, ‘e Elysée Treaty and Curatorial strategies of Reconciliation’, Randian, www.randian-online.com, 19 June 2013. See for example Smith, Enwezor and Condee, eds, Antinomies of Art and Culture. Wu, ‘A Case of Being “Contemporary”, pp. 290–306; Gao, ‘“Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truth”’, pp. 133–64. Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, pp. 35–7. Wu, Contemporary Chinese Art, p. 276. See, for example, Wang Chunchen, Art Intervenes in Society: A New Artistic Relationship (Beijing, 2010). See Rachel Marsden, ‘Carol Yinghua Lu and Liu Ding . . .’, in Rachel Marsden’s Words, www.rachelmarsdenwords.wordpress.com, 4 December 2012; Jörg Huber and Zhao Chuan, eds, e Body at Stake: Experiments in Chinese Contemporary Art and eatre (Bielefeld, 2013); also see Jörg Huber and Zhao Chuan, eds, A New oughtfulness in Contemporary China: Critical Voices in Art and Aesthetics (Bielefeld, 2012), and Zheng Bo, ‘e Pursuit of Publicness’, in Negotiating Difference, ed. Hopfener, Koch, LeeKalisch and Noth, pp. 157–70.
289 | R E F E R E N C E S
12
question works belonging to those genres received most of the media attention and support from the market. See, for example, Martina Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare: e Chinese Avant-garde, 1979–1989 – A Semiotic Analysis (Hong Kong, 2003) pp. 154–8. Li Xianting, ‘Apathy and Deconstruction in Post ’89 Art: Analysing the Trends of “Cynical Realism” and “Political Pop”’, in Wu Hung, ed., with Peggy Wang, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (New York, 2010), pp. 157–66. For a collection of online writings by Ai Weiwei, see Ai Weiwei, Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews and Digital Rants, 2006–2009, trans. Lee Ambrozy (Cambridge, ma, and London, 2011); for a selective overview of Ai’s work as an artist during the 1990s and early 2000s, see Yap Chin-Chin, et al., Ai Weiwei, Works: Beijing 1993–2003 (Hong Kong, 2003). Tong Dian, China! New Art and Artists (Atglen, pa, 2005), pp. 22–4. See, for example, Britta Erickson, e Art of Xu Bing: Words without Meaning, Meaning without Words (Washington, dc, 2001), and Melissa Chiu, Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China (Milan, 2006), pp. 55–113. See, for example, Hans Belting, Peter Weibel and Andrea Bundesieg, eds, Contemporary Art and the Museum: A Global Perspective (Ostfildern, 2007). Wu Hung, ‘A Case of Being “Contemporary”: Conditions Spheres and Narratives of Contemporary Chinese Art’, in Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, ed. Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor and Nancu Condee (Durham, nc, and London, 2008), pp. 290–306. For a critical overview of Badiou’s thought, which was initially influenced by Maoist thinking, see A. J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens, eds, Alain Badiou: Key Concepts (Durham, 2010); for Žižek see for example Slavoj Žižek, e Year of Dreaming Dangerously (London, 2012); on Jacques Rancière, see for example his Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, trans. Steven Corcoran (London, 2010). Iona Whittaker, e Unfinished Collection (Beijing, 2012), pp. 30–31. See also Iona Whittaker, ‘e Art
290 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
34 Wang Hui and Chen Yangu, Wenhua yu Gonggongxing [Culture and Publicness] (Beijing, 1998). 35 ese include Claire Bishop’s conception of an ‘antagonistic aesthetics’, which refers to notions of radical democracy first put forward by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in the 1980s, as well as the related concepts of ‘dialogical aesthetics’ (Grant Kester) and art as social practice (Charles Esche and Will Bradley). See Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London, 1985); Claire Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October, cx (2004), pp. 51–79; and Will Bradley and Charles Esche, Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader (London, 2007). 36 Craig Clunas, Art in China, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2009), p. 235. 37 See Paul Gladston, ‘Problematizing Contemporaneity: Towards a Polylogue between International Postmodernist and Chinese Contemporary Art eories’, Culture and Dialogue, ii/1 (2012), pp. 53–80. 38 Jacques Derrida, Glas, trans. John P. Leavey Jr and Richard Rand (Lincoln, ne, 1986). 39 John Roberts, Art has No History!: Making and Unmaking of Modern Art (London, 1994). 40 Derrida’s conception of ‘trace-structure’ conceives of language as a network of unfolding acts of signification in which every sign within a given language system constantly differs from, and defers to, all others within that system. As a consequence, each new linguistic element within a given language system can be understood to carry with it and to deconstructively recontextualize/re-motivate the traces of those which came before it, as well as providing a context of deconstructive linguistic traces for those still to come. See Jacques Derrida, ‘Différance’, in Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (London and New York, 1982), pp. 3–27. 41 Gao Minglu, Total Modernity and the Avant-garde in Twentieth-century Chinese Art (Cambridge, ma, 2011); Melissa Chiu, Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China (Milan, 2006); Wu Hung, ed., with Peggy Wang, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (New York, 2010).
42 Sus van Elzen, Dragon and Rose Garden: Art and Power in China (originally titled De Draak en de Rozentuin) (Beijing, 2009). 43 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley, ca,1995); Julia F. Andrews and Shen Kuiyi, e Art of Modern China (Berkeley, ca, 2012).
1 Chinese Art in Context 1 e Silk Road was initiated in 114 bce by the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). e terms ‘Silk Road’ and ‘Silk Route’ (Seidenstrasse and Seidenstrassen) were first coined by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in the nineteenth century; see Shen Fuwei, Cultural Flow between China and Outside World throughout History (Beijing, 2009). 2 See Marco Polo, e Travels of Marco Polo (Ware, 1997), and Michael Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, 2nd revd edn (Berkeley, ca, 1997), p. 41. 3 Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, p. 43. 4 Ibid., p. 91. 5 See, for example, William Chambers’s Pagoda at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (built 1761), a design that bears only a superficial resemblance to actual Chinese architectural forms. It has been suggested that Chambers’s design may have been based on a reproduction of a porcelain object from China published in a European source. See Ray Desmond, e History of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London, 1995), p. 51. On Meissen see Hugo Moreley-Fletcher, Meissen (London, 1971). 6 Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, pp. 89, 93. 7 For a detailed discussion of Chinese cultural influences on European literature and garden design during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Adrian Hsia, ed., e Vision of China in the English Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Hong Kong, 1998). 8 David E. Mungello, ‘Leibniz’s Interpretation of Neo-Confucianism’, Philosophy, East and West, xxi/1 (1971), pp. 3–22.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
24 Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, p. 258. 25 Ibid., pp. 244–8. 26 See Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art (London, 1963), pp. 59–64, and André Breton, ‘e Exquisite Corpse’, in Surrealism, ed. Patrick Waldberg (London and New York, 1965), pp. 93–5; also Nadia Choucha, Surrealism and the Occult (Oxford, 1991), p. 39, and Antonin Artaud, ‘Address to the Dalai Lama’, in Surrealism, ed. Waldberg, p. 59. 27 For further discussion of the historical development of the concept of yin and yang, see Zhang Dainan, Key Concepts in Chinese Philosophy (Beijing, New Haven, ct, and London, 2002), pp. 83–94. 28 See William A. Camfield, ‘Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917’, in Marcel Duchamp: Artist of the Century, ed. Rudolf E. Kuenzli and Francis M. Naumann (Cambridge, ma, and London, 1989), pp. 64–94. 29 D. T. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (London and New York, 2002). 30 Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, p. 253. 31 Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound’s Chinese Friends: Stories in Letters, ed. Qian Zhaoming (Oxford, 2008). 32 Judith Magee, Images of Nature: Chinese Art and the Reeves Collection (London, 2011). 33 Michael Sullivan, Art and Artists of Twentiethcentury China (Berkeley, ca, 1996), p. 27. 34 Ibid., p. 28. 35 Ibid., pp. 6–8. 36 Ibid., pp. 24–5. 37 Lynn Pan, Shanghai Style: Art and Design between the Wars (Hong Kong, 2008), pp. 48–9. 38 Shen, Cultural Flow, pp. 361–5. 39 Sullivan, Art and Artists, p. 30. 40 Ibid., p. 29. 41 Pan, Shanghai Style, pp. 53–4. 42 Sullivan, Art and Artists, p. 32. 43 Pan, Shanghai Style, p. 50. 44 Wang Yao-t’ing, Looking at Chinese Painting: A Comprehensive Guide to the Philosophy, Technique and History of Chinese Painting (Tokyo, 1995), pp. 23–6.
291 | R E F E R E N C E S
9 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ‘Zur allgemeinen Charakteristik’, trans. Artur Buchenau, in Leibniz, Hauptschriften zur Grundlegung der Philosophie, Philosophische Werke Band 1 (Hamburg, 1966). 10 Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, p. 110. 11 Craig Clunas, Art in China, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2009), pp. 129–30. 12 Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, p. 46. 13 Clunas, Art in China, pp. 129–30. 14 Chinese-style names, sometimes referred to as courtesy names, take two forms: zi and hao. Zi are given names traditionally assigned to men after the age of twenty as a symbol of adulthood and respect. Style names known as hao are pseudonyms often adopted by artists and scholars as a sign of their status and individuality. e use of style names declined significantly in China after the initiation of the May Fourth Movement in 1919. See also Clunas, Art in China, pp. 78–80. 15 Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, p. 68. 16 Ibid., p. 80. 17 Ibid., p. 83. 18 See Lionel Lambourne, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings between Japan and the West (London, 2005). 19 See Stephen Calloway and Lynn Frederick Orr, eds, e Cult of Beauty: e Aesthetic Movement, 1868–1900 (London, 2011). 20 Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, pp. 241–3. 21 Peter R. Sedgwick, Nietzsche: e Key Concepts (London, 2009), p. 26; Katrin Froese, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Daoist ought: Crossing Paths Inbetween (New York, 2006). 22 Sullivan, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, p. 263. 23 Peter-Cornell Richter, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz (Munich, London and New York, 2001), pp. 40–42; on the abstractionists: Hwa Young Caruso, ‘Asian Aesthetic Influences on American Artists: Guggenheim Museum Exhibition’, International Journal of Multicultural Education, xi (2009).
292 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
45 Sullivan, Art and Artists, p. 32. 46 See Ralph Crozier, ‘Post-Impressionists in Pre-war Shanghai: e Juelanshe (Storm Society) and the Fate of Modernism in Republican China’, in Modern Art in Africa, Asia and Latin America: An Introduction to Global Modernisms, ed. Elaine O’Brien, Evelyn Nicodemus, Melissa Chiu, Benjamin Genocchio, Mary K. Coffey and Roberto Tojado (Chichester, 2013), pp. 254–71. 47 Pan, Shanghai Style, pp. 67–9. 48 Gao Minglu, e Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, ny, and the Today Art Museum, Beijing (2005), p. 46. 49 See Claire Roberts, Friendship in Art: Fou Lei and Huang Binhong (Hong Kong, 2010). 50 Eugene Y. Wang, ‘Sketch Conceptualism as Modernist Contingency’, in Modern Art in Africa, Asia and Latin America, ed. O’Brien, Nicodemus, Chiu, Genocchio, Coffey and Tojado, pp. 230–53. 51 Britta Erickson, On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West (Hong Kong, 2005), p. 11. 52 See Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Ken Lum and Zheng Shengtian, eds, Shanghai Modern, 1919–1945 (Ostfildern, 2004). 53 Gao, e Wall, p. 47. 54 Colin Mackerras, China in Transformation, 1900–1949, 2nd edn (London, 2008), pp. 5–9. 55 Frank Dikötter, e Age of Openness: China Before Mao (Hong Kong, 2008). 56 See Tang Xiaobing, Origins of the Chinese Avantgarde: e Modern Woodcut Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles, ca, 2008). 57 Wang Chunchen, Art Intervenes in Society: A New Artistic Relationship (Beijing, 2010), p. 16. 58 Sullivan, Art and Artists, p. 62. 59 Ibid., pp. 91–101. 60 Mackerras, China in Transformation, p. 67. 61 Ibid., pp. 149–50. 62 Sullivan, Art and Artists, p. 131. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., p. 132. 65 Mackerras, China in Transformation, p. 149. 66 Ibid., p. 150.
67 For a detailed discussion of the development of sculpture in the prc during the Maoist period, see Sullivan, Art and Artists, pp. 159–69. 68 See Hu Wugong, Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography (Guangzhou, 2003). 69 e term shui-mo refers broadly to the traditional Chinese technique of ink-and-brush painting on paper. It is also used to refer more specifically to forms of Chinese ink-and-brush painting that make use of colour as well as Chinese ink-and-brush painting involving the depiction of human figures. 70 Clunas, Art in China, p. 215. 71 Tong Dian, China! New Art and Artists (Atglen, pa, 2005), p. 14. 72 Sullivan, Art and Artists, pp. 147–50. 73 Tang Xiaobing, ‘e Anxiety of Everyday Life in Post-Revolutionary China’, in e Everyday Life Reader, ed. Ben Highmore (London, 2002), pp. 125–35. 74 David Clarke, ‘Revolutions in Vision: Chinese Art and the Experience of Modernity’, in e Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture, ed. Kam Louie (Cambridge, 2008), p. 287. 75 Ibid. 76 Wu Hung, ed., with Peggy Wang, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (New York, 2010), p. 5; also see Gao Minglu, e No Name: A History of a Self-Exiled Avant-garde (Guangxi, 2007). 77 Paul Gladston, Contemporary Art in Shanghai: Conversations with Seven Chinese Artists (Hong Kong, 2011), pp. 29–30. 78 Lang Shuhan, ‘Made in Prison: Interview with Kang Wanhua’, trans. Fei Wu, Randian, www.randian-online.com, 26 January 2013. 79 Jonathan Spence, e Search for Modern China, 2nd edn (New York, 1999), p. 575. 80 omas J. Berghuis, Performance Art in China (Hong Kong, 2006), p. 41. 81 Sullivan, Art and Artists, p. 151. 82 Erickson, On the Edge, p. 13. 83 Wu, Contemporary Chinese Art, p. 6 n. 2. 84 For a detailed discussion of art in Taiwan since 1949, see Sullivan, Art and Artists, pp. 178–90; also see Felix Schoeber, ‘Re-writing Art in Taiwan: Secularism, Universalism, Globalization, or Modernity and the Aesthetic Object’, in Re-writing
88 89
90
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
91
92 93 94 95 96
97 Gregory L. Ulmer, ‘e Object of Post-Criticism’, in Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (London, 1985), pp. 83–110. 98 Ibid., pp. 99–107. 99 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, md, and London, 1976), pp. 74–93. 100 See for example Fu Xiaodong, ‘Introduction’, in New Vista: e Phenomenon of Post-Tradition in Contemporary Art, exh. cat., Alexander Ochs Galleries, Berlin and Beijing (2007), n.p. 101 See for example Rey Chow, ‘Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: A Response to the “Postmodern” Condition’, in omas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (London, 1993), pp. 471–89. On the postmodern Sublime see Jean-François Lyotard, e Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester, 1984), pp. 71–82.
2 Modern (Contemporary) Chinese Art, 1976–1989 1 Martina Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare: e Chinese Avant-Garde, 1979–1989 – A Semiotic Analysis (Hong Kong, 2003) p. 59. 2 Ibid., p. 76. 3 Ibid., pp. 45–7. 4 Ibid. 5 Wu Guanzhong, ‘Huihua de xingshi mei’ [绘画的 形式美, ‘On the Beauty of Form in Painting’/ ‘Formalist Aesthetics in Painting’], Meishu zazhi [ 美术杂志, Art], v (1979), pp. 33–5; ‘Guanya chouxiang mei’ [关于抽象美, ‘Concerning the Beauty of the Abstract’], Meishu zazhi [美术杂志, Art], x (1980), pp. 37–9; ‘Neirong jueding xingshi’ [ 内容决定形式, ‘Form is Decided by Content’], Meishu zazhi [美术杂志, Art], iii (1981), pp. 52–4; for an English translation of Wu’s essay ‘Formalist Aesthetics in Painting’ see Wu Hung, ed., with Peggy Wang, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (New York, 2010), pp. 14–17. 6 Liu Shaohui, ‘Emotion, Individuality, Formalist Aesthetics’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 17–18. 7 Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, p. 94.
293 | R E F E R E N C E S
85 86 87
Culture in Taiwan, ed. Shih Fang-long, Stuart ompson and Paul-François Tremlett (London, 2009), pp. 154–81; and Tung Wei-Hsiu, ‘“e Return of the Real”: Art and Identity in Taiwan’s Public Sphere’, Journal of Visual Art Practice, xi/2–3 (2012), pp. 157–72. Sullivan, Art and Artists, pp. 191–200. Ibid., pp. 203–11. Alexandra Chang, Envisioning Diaspora: Asian American Visual Arts Collectives, from Godzilla, Godzookie to the Barnstormers (Beijing and Shanghai, 2008). F. T. Marinetti, e Founding and Manifesto of Futurism [1909] (London, 1973), p. 22. Yves Klein was an expert in Judo and had an interest in Zen Buddhist aesthetics; see omas McEvilley, ‘Yves Klein: Conquistador of the Void’, in Yves Klein, 1928–1962: A Retrospective, ed. Dominique Bozo et al. (New York, 1982), pp. 19–87; indicative of Beuys’s interests in Asian art is his long-time friendship with the Korean-born Fluxus member Nam June Paik, whom he first met in 1962; see Mark Rosenthal, ed., Joseph Beuys: Actions, Vitrines, Environments (Houston and London, 2005), p. 157. Brandon Taylor, Art Today (London, 2005), pp. 11–12; for an English translation of the Gutai Manifesto, see Alex Danchev, ed., 100 Artists’ Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists (London, 2011), pp. 331–6. Julia Kristeva, About Chinese Women, trans. Anita Barrows (London, 1977); texts contained in About Chinese Women were first published in French in Julia Kristeva, Des Chinoises (Paris, 1974), a collection of notes and impressions on Kristeva’s visit to China between April and May 1974. Toril Moi, ed., e Kristeva Reader (Oxford, 1986), pp. 5–7. See Anne Herschberg-Pierrot, ed., Roland Barthes, Travels in China (Cambridge, 2012). See, for example, Hwa, ‘Asian Aesthetic Influences on American Artists’. See Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (London and New York, 1982), pp. 3–27. See Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London, 1991), pp. 1–66.
294 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., pp. 88–90. 10 On ‘Scar Art’ see Chen Yiming, Liu Yulian and Li Bin, ‘Some oughts on Creating the Picture Story Book Maple (Feng)’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 19–21; and Deng Pinxiang, ‘Man’s Rational Mediation: A Brief Discussion of Cheng Conglin’s ematic Oil Paintings’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 22–3. On ‘Rural Realism’, see Luo Zhongli, ‘A Letter from the Artist of Father (Fuqin)’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 23–5; and Chen Danqing, ‘My Seven Paintings’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 25–9. On ‘Melancholy Youth Painting’ see Wang Chuan, ‘Expecting Her to Walk on the Main Road’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 29–30. 11 See Ruan Xudong, ‘“Contemplative Painting” in China and Andrew Wyeth’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 30–33. 12 See Wang Zhiping, ‘Preface to the First Nature, Society and Man Exhibition’ (Ziran, Sheihui, Ren), in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 7; on the No Name Group see Wu, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art, p. 5. 13 Hou Hanru, On the Mid-ground: Hou Hanru, Selected Texts, ed. Yu Hsaio-Hwei (Hong Kong, 2002), p. 75. 14 Huang Rui sat for the first university entrance exams after the ending of the Cultural Revolution in 1977. His application to enter the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing was turned down. 15 omas J. Berghuis, Performance Art in China (Hong Kong, 2006), p. 42. 16 Zhu Zhu, ‘Origin Point: e Star Star Group’, in Origin Point, ed. Zhu Zhu (Hong Kong, 2007), p. 22. 17 Xu Wenli and Liu Qing, ‘A Letter to the People’ (Dui ren minde yifeng xin), in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 8. 18 Ibid., pp. 8–9. 19 Zhu, ‘Origin Point’, p. 25. 20 Berghuis, Performance Art in China, p. 46. 21 Britta Erickson, On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West (Hong Kong, 2005), p. 16. 22 Zhu, ‘Origin Point’, pp. 25–6. 23 Xu and Liu, ‘A Letter to the People’, p. 10.
24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
32 33
34 35 36
37 38 39
40 41
42
43
Berghuis, Performance Art in China, pp. 45–6. Ibid., p. 226. See, for example, Erickson, On the Edge, p. 16. Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, p. 194. See Berghuis, Performance Art in China, pp. 40–41. Minglu Gao, e Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, ny, and the Today Art Museum, Beijing (2005), p. 64. Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, pp. 124–30. Li Xianting, ‘Guanyu Xingxing meizhan’ [关于星星 美展, ‘About the Stars Art Exhibition’], Meishu zazhi [美术杂志, Art], cxlvii/3 (1980), pp. 8–9. Paul Gladston, ‘Avant-garde’ Art Groups in China, 1979–1989 (Bristol and Chicago, 2013), pp. 39–81. Lü Peng and Yi Dan, Zhongguo xiandai yishu shi, 1979–1989 [中国现代艺术史 1979–1989, A History of Modern Chinese Art, 1979–1989] (Changsha, 1991), pp. 2–4. Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, pp. 20–25, and Hou, On the Mid-ground, p. 75. Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, pp. 55–6. Zhu Ye, ‘Beijing eorists’ Reactions to the Art of Robert Rauschenberg’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 42–5. Gao, e Wall, pp. 92–103. Ibid., p. 93. Paul Gladston, ‘Low Resolution: Towards an Uncertain Reading of the Art of Zhang Peili’, in Zhang Peili: Certain Pleasures, ed. Robin Peckham and Venus Lau (Shanghai, 2011), pp. 36–42. Hou, On the Mid-ground, p. 62. See Paul Gladston, ‘Chan-Da-da(o)-De-construction or, e Cultural (Il)Logic of Contemporary Chinese “Avant-garde” Art’, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, vii/4 (2008), pp. 63–9. Huang Yongping, ‘Xiamen Dada – yizhong hou xiandai?’ [厦门达达 – 一种后现代?, ‘Xiamen Dada – A Kind of Post-Modernism?’], Zhonguo meishu bao [中国美术报, Fine Arts in China], xlvi (1986), p. 1; and ‘Wanquan kong de nengzhi’ [完全 空的能指, ‘A Completely Empty Signifier’], Meishu zazhi [美术杂志, Art], iii (1989), pp. 30–32 and 72. For a more detailed discussion of attempts to reconcile Western(ized) modernity with aspects of
45 46 47
48 49 50 51
52 53
54 55
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
56
57 58
59
60
61
62 63
64
also derive from writings by Tzara. In his ‘lecture on Dada’ Tzara states that ‘Dada isn’t at all modern, it’s rather a return to a quasi-Buddhist religion of indifference.’ Ibid., p. 108. Gladston, ‘Avant-garde’ Art Groups in China, 1979–1989. Huang Yongping, ‘Introduction to the Events Exhibition that Took Place at the Exhibition Hall of the Fujian Art Museum’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 96. Shu Qun, ‘Beifang yishu qunti de jingshen’ [北方艺 术团体的精神, ‘e Spirit of the Northern Art Group’], Zhonguo meishu bao [中国美术报, Fine Arts in China], xviii (1985), p. 1. For an English translation of Shu’s ‘e Spirit of the Northern Art Group’, see ’85 New-Wave, ed. Fei, p. 31; Shu Qun, ‘Wei “Beifang yishu qunti” chanshi’ [为北方艺术群 体阐释, ‘An Explanation of the Northern Art Group’], Meishu sichao [美术思潮, e Trend of Art ought], i (1987), pp. 36–9; for an English translation of ‘An Explanation of the Northern Art Group’, see Wu, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art, pp. 79–82. Wang Guangyi, ‘Women – “’85 meishu yundong” de canyuzhe’ [我们 – 85美术运动的参与者, ‘We – Participants of the “’85 Art Movement”], Zhongguo meishu bao [中国美术报, Fine Arts in China], xxxvi (1986), p. 1; for an English translation of ‘We – Participants of the “’85 Art Movement”’, see Wu, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art, pp. 78–9. Gombrich appropriated the term ‘paradigm shift’ from omas Kuhn’s e Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962) to describe abrupt, non-evolutionary changes in Western scientific thinking; see Ernst H. Gombrich, ‘A Plea for Pluralism’, in Gombrich, Ideals and Idols: Essays on Values in History and in Art (London, 1979), pp. 184–8. Confucius, e Analects, viii. Liu Yuanyuan, ‘Kongzi de “da” he “zhunagmei” yu xifang “chonggao” meixue de yitong’ [孔子的“大” 和“壮美”与西方“崇高”美学的异同, ‘e Differences and Similarities between Confucian “Giant” and “Magnificence” and the Western “Sublime”’], Lilun jianshe [理论建设, eory Research], ix (2006), pp. 69–70. Alyce Mahon, Surrealism and the Politics of Eros,
295 | R E F E R E N C E S
44
China’s established cultural traditions, as part of the development of modern art in China during the early twentieth century, see Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, ‘Shanghai Modern’, in Shanghai Modern: 1919–1945, ed. Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Ken Lum and Zhang Shengtian (Munich, 2004), pp. 18–72. David Clarke, ‘Revolutions in Vision: Chinese Art and the Experience of Modernity’, in e Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture, ed. Kam Louie (Cambridge, 2008), p. 274. Nadia Choucha, Surrealism and the Occult (Oxford, 1991), p. 39. Michael Sullivan, Modern Chinese Art: e Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection (Oxford, 2001). Gao Minglu, e ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, vols i and ii (Guanxi, 2007), back cover notes. Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, pp. 58–9. Ibid., pp. 35–7. Peter Bürger, eory of the Avant-garde (Manchester, 1984). Paul Gladston, ‘Answering the Question: What is the Chinese Avant-garde – Zhai Zhenming in Conversation with Paul Gladston’, Randian, www.randian-online.com, 1 September 2011. Wu, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art, pp. 51 and 99. Paul Gladston, Contemporary Art in Shanghai: Conversations with Seven Chinese Artists (Hong Kong, 2011), p. 32. Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, pp. 152–61. Huang Yongping, ‘Statement on Burning’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 95–6. Ibid., p. 95. For an alternative English translation of Huang’s ‘Statement on the Burning’ see Fei Dawei, ed., ’85 New-Wave: e Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2007), p. 35. Xiamen Dada’s use of the phrase ‘Dada is dead’ almost certainly derives from early twentieth-century European Dadaist Tristan Tzara’s ‘Dada Manifesto: On Feeble and Bitter Love’, in which Tzara states: ‘Dada is against the future. Dada is dead. Dada is absurd. Long live Dada.’ See Tristan Tzara, Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries, trans. Barbara Wright [1924 and 1963] (Richmond, va, 2013), p. 45. Huang Yongping’s assertion that Dada is a modern renaissance of Chan Buddhism may well
296 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
1938–1968 (London, 2005). 65 Shen Fuwei, Cultural Flow between China and Outside World throughout History (Beijing, 2009), pp. 363–5. 66 Gladston, ‘Avant-garde’ Art Groups in China, 1979–1989, pp. 111–15. 67 Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, pp. 157–8. 68 For an English-language translation of Wang Guangyi’s paper ‘On Liquidating Humanist Enthusiasm’, see Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, p. 203. 69 Marcella Beccaria, ‘Yang Fudong: e Foreigner and the Search for Poetic Truth’, in Yang Fudong, ed. Marcella Beccaria et al. (Milan, 2005), p. 18. 70 Gladston, Avant Garde Art Groups in China, 1979–1989, pp. 121–57. 71 Berghuis, Performance Art in China, p. 50. 72 Gladston, ‘Low Resolution’, pp. 36–42. 73 Shi Jiu, ‘Gunyu xin kongjian he “Chi she”’ [关于新 空间和”池社, ‘On New Space and the Pond Association’], Meishu sichao [美术思潮, e Trend of Art ought], i (1987), pp. 16–21; for an English translation of Shi’s ‘On New Space and the Pond Association’, see Wu, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art, pp. 83–9. 74 François Jullien, In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese ought and Aesthetics (New York, 2004), pp. 35–9. 75 Herbert Mainusch, ‘e Importance of Chinese Philosophy for Western Aesthetics’, in e Pursuit of Comparative Aesthetics: An Interface between the East and West, ed. Mazhar Hussain and Robert Wilkinson (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 141–2. 76 Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, p. 61. 77 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London, 1991), pp. 38–45. 78 Gladston, ‘Chan-Da-da(o)-De-construction’, pp. 63–9. 79 See Wang Du, ‘Towards a Physical State of Contemporary Art Itself’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 97. 80 Ding Fang, ‘Red Brigade Precept’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 94–5. 81 Wu, Contemporary Chinese Art, p. 99. 82 Ibid., pp. 100–01 and 101–3. 83 See Chen Shaoping, ‘Regarding Analysis’, in
Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 106. 84 Wu, Contemporary Chinese Art, pp. 103–5 and 112–13. 85 Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, p. 152. 86 Jean-Hubert Martin, ed., Magiciens de la Terre, exh. cat., Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1989).
3 Contemporary Chinese Art, 1990–2001 1 Paul Gladston, ‘Song Ling in Conversation with Paul Gladston’, Yishu, vii/6 (2008), pp. 50–60. 2 Fei Dawei, ‘Does a Culture in Exile Necessarily Wither? A Letter to Li Xianting’, in Wu Hung, ed., with Peggy Wang, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (New York, 2010), pp. 252–4. 3 Wang Lin, ‘Oliva is Not the Saviour of Chinese Art’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 366–8. 4 See Wu, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art, pp. 248–70. 5 Wu Hung, Making History: Wu Hung on Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2008), p. 18. 6 Ibid., pp. 12–16. 7 Gao Minglu, e Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, ny, and the Today Art Museum, Beijing (2005), p. 74. 8 See Qiu Zhijie, ‘e Boundary of Freedom: A Personal Statement on Assignment No.1 (Zuoye yihao)’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 198–9. 9 Wu, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art, pp. 184–5. 10 Ibid., pp. 298–9. 11 Yin Jinan, ‘New Generation and Close-up Artists’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 155–7. 12 See Jonathan Watkins, et al., Ding Yi, exh. cat., Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2005). 13 Paul Gladston, Contemporary Art in Shanghai (Hong Kong, 2011), pp. 26–39. 14 Huang Zhuan, ‘e Misread Great Criticism (Da Pipan)’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 167–71. 15 Gu Chengfeng, ‘Tendencies in Chinese Pop’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 171–9. 16 Li Xianting, ‘Apathy and Deconstruction in Post ’89 Art: Analysing the Trends of “Cynical Realism” and “Political Pop”’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 154.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
31 32
33
34 35 36
37
38
39
40
41
China, and Gao Ling, ‘A Survey of Contemporary Chinese Performance Art’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 179–84. Wu, Contemporary Chinese Art, pp. 193–8. For documents related to the development of video and photography in the prc in the 1990s and early 2000s, see Wu, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art, pp. 219–48. Wu Hung, ‘A Case of Being “Contemporary”: Conditions Spheres and Narratives of Contemporary Chinese Art’, in Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, ed. Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor and Nancy Condee (Durham, nc, and London, 2008), p. 302. Ibid., pp. 302–3. Ibid., p. 303. Jian Tao, ‘Report on Zhang Dali’s Dialogue (Duihua)’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 209–12; Gou Hongbing and Zhang Dali, ‘Dialogue on Dialogue’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 212. Huang Yan, ‘“Changchun, China”: A Report on a Performance of Making Rubbings from Buildings Slated for Demolition’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 205–6; Zhan Wang, ‘’94 Action Plan for Debris Salvage Schemes for Implementation and Results’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 206–7; Zhan Wang, ‘New Map of Beijing: Today and Tomorrow’s Capital – Rockery Remolding Plan’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 207–8; and Liang Juhui, ‘One Hour Game (Youxi Yi Xiaoshi)’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 208. Qiu Zhijie and Wu Meichun, ‘Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 271–3. Paul Gladston, ‘Bloody Animals!: Reinterpreting Acts of Violence against Animals as Part of Contemporary Chinese Artistic Practice’, in Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Taboo, Bodies and Identity, ed. Lili Hernández and Sabine Krajewski (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009), pp. 92–104. Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi, eds, Fuck Off [Buhezuo fangshi, 不合作方式], exh. cat., Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai (2000). Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi, ‘Preface to Fuck Off’
297 | R E F E R E N C E S
17 Liao Wen, ‘Living in Kitsch: e Critical “Irony” of Gaudy Art’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 199–205. 18 Britta Erickson, ‘e Rent Collection Courtyard Copyright Breached Overseas: Sichuan Fine Arts Institute Sues Venice Biennale’, in Chinese Art at the Crossroads: Between Past and Future, Between East and West, ed. Wu Hung (Hong Kong, 2001), pp. 52–5. 19 Dao Zi, ‘e Reproduction of Rent Collection Courtyard and Postmodernism’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 371–6. 20 Liu Xiaochun, ‘Quoting Does not Equal Plagiarism’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 377–8. 21 See Gao Minglu, Inside Out: New Chinese Art (Berkeley, ca, 1998). 22 See Lorenz Helbling, ed., ShanghArt 2005, promotional booklet, ShanghArt Gallery (Shanghai, 2005). 23 Hou Hanru et al., Shanghai Biennale 2000, exh. cat., Shanghai Art Museum (2000). 24 See Zhang Qing, ‘Transcending Left and Right: e Shanghai Biennale Amid Transition’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 347–51; Zhu Qingsheng, ‘China’s First Legitimate Modern Art Exhibition: e 2000 Shanghai Biennale’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 351–3; and Wang Naming, ‘e Shanghai Art Museum Should Not Become a Market Stall in China for Western Hegemony: A Paper Delivered at the 2000 Shanghai Biennale’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 253–4. 25 Wu, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art, p. 184. 26 Zhang Huan, ‘A Personal Account of 65 Kg’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 185–7; Zhang Huan, ‘12 Square Metres (12 Pinfang Mi)’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, p. 214. 27 Ma Liuming, ‘Four Notes’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 187–8. 28 omas J. Berghuis, Performance Art in China (Hong Kong, 2006), p. 103. 29 Julia Colman et al., Ma Liuming, exh. cat., Chinese Contemporary, London (2000). 30 For further discussion of performance art in the prc in the 1990s, see Berghuis, Performance Art in
(Buhezuo Fangshi)’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 354–5. 42 Chinese Ministry of Culture, ‘Ministry of Culture Notice’, in Contemporary Chinese Art, ed. Wu, pp. 376–7.
298 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
4 Contemporary Chinese Art, 2002–2013 1 ‘Yang Fudong: No Snow on the Broken Bridge’, press release, ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai (2007). 2 Karen Smith, As Seen 2011: Notable Artworks by Chinese Artists (Beijing, 2012). 3 Wu Hung, ed., with Peggy Wang, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (New York, 2010), pp. 398–9. 4 Abigail R. Esman, ‘ink China is the Future? ink Again’, Forbes Magazine www.forbes.com, 1 December 2012. 5 Li Lei, Chen Zhen (Shanghai, 2006). 6 Wu Hung, ed., Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990–2000) (Guangzhou, 2002). 7 See Gao Minglu, e Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, ny, and the Today Art Museum, Beijing (2005); Lü Peng, A History of Art in 20th-century China (Milan, 2010). 8 Fei Dawei, ed., ’85 New-Wave: e Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2007). 9 Rebecca Catching, ‘e New Face of Censorship: State Control of the Visual Arts in Shanghai, 2008–2011’, Journal of Visual Art Practice, xi/2–3 (2012), pp. 231–49. 10 See Shao Yiyang, ‘e International Identity of Chinese Art: eoretical Debates on Chinese Contemporary Art in the 1990s’, in Contemporary Chinese Art and Film: eory Applied and Resisted, ed. Jason Kuo (Washington, dc, 2013), pp. 49–64. 11 Wang Meiqin, ‘e Art World of Post-Deng China: Market, Globalization, and Cultural Nationalism’, in Contemporary Chinese Art and Film, ed. Kuo, pp. 25–48. 12 (Johnson) Chang Tsong-Zung is the Hong Kong-based director of the Hanart TZ Gallery and curator of the influential 1993 exhibition China’s New Art Post-1989. Gao Shiming is
13
14 15 16 17 18
19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28
Associate Professor of Art History and Head of the Centre for Visual Cultural Research at the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. Sarat Maharaj is the London-based academic and curator best known for his scholarly writings on Marcel Duchamp, Richard Hamilton and James Joyce, as well as his role as a co-curator of Documenta xi in 2003. Sarat Maharaj, Chang Tsong-Zung and Gao Shiming, eds, Farewell to Post-Colonialism: e ird Guangzhou Triennial (Guangzhou, 2008), p. 2. Ibid., pp. 18–19. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid. Ibid. Charles Labelle, ‘A Review of the ird Guangzhou Triennial’, Blouin Artinfo, www.artinfo.com, 7 October 2009. Maharaj, Chang and Gao, eds, Farewell to Post-Colonialism, pp. 168–9. Gao Shiming, ‘Observations and Presentiments “After Post-Colonialism”’, in Farewell to Post-Colonialism, ed., Maharaj, Chang and Gao, pp. 34–43. Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., pp. 36–7. Ibid., pp. 37–8. Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., p. 41. As an invited speaker at the Forum in Motion (staged as part of the closing of the ird Guangzhou Triennial in 2008) the present author signalled in advance a desire to discuss the prc’s own present-day involvement in colonialism/ imperialism. e session of the forum concerned was closed to the public and conducted in English (a common way of circumventing legal restrictions on public expression within the prc). ere was also no actual discussion of the topic concerned other than points made in a paper given by the present author. See Homi K. Bhabha, e Location of Culture (London, 1994). Terry Smith, ‘Introduction: e Contemporaneity Question’, in Antinomies of Art and Culture:
32 33 34 35
36
37
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
38
39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54
55 Donald Wesling, ‘Methodological Implications of the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida for Comparative Literature: e Opposition East–West and Several Other Observations’, in Chinese-Western Comparative Literature eory and Strategy, ed. John J. Deeney (Hong Kong, 1980), pp. 79–111. 56 Claire Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October, cx (2004), pp. 51–79. 57 See Wang Meiqin, ‘e Art World of Post-Deng China: Market, Globalization, and Cultural Nationalism’, in Contemporary Chinese Art and Film, ed. Kuo, pp. 25–48. 58 Jiang Zemin, ‘Zai Zhongguo Wenlian Diqici Quanguo Daibiao Dahui, Zhougguo Zuoxie Diliuci Quanguo Daibiao Dahui shang de Jianghua’ (speech given at the Seventh National Congress of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and at the Sixth National Congress of the Chinese Writers Association), People, www.people.com.cn, 18 Dec 2001. 59 Ibid. 60 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2001–2002 Nian Zhongguo Wenhua Chanye Lanpishu Zongbaogao [e General Blue-book Report on yhe Chinese Culture Industry, 2001–2002] (Beijing, 2006). 61 Jiang Zemin, ‘Quanmian Jianshe Xiaokang Shehui, Kaichuang Zhongguo Tese Shehuizhuyi Shiye Xinjumian’ [‘To Construct a Well-to-do Society in Full Scale, to Unitiate a New Phase of Chinese Characteristic Socialist Undertaking’], Xinhua, http://news.xinhuanet.com, 8 Nov 2002. 62 Xinhua News Agency, ‘How was the Important Idea of ree Representatives Proposed?’, People, www.people.com, 10 July 2001. 63 ‘e 10th Meeting for Ambassadors was Held in Beijing on 30 August 2004’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, www.fmprc.gov.cn, April 2011. 64 Xinhua News Agency, 24 October 2007, www.news.xinhuanet.com, 2 April 2011. 65 Xu Bing, e First ‘cafam’ Future Exhibition – Sub-Phenomena: Report on the State of Chinese Young Art Nomination (Beijing, 2012). 66 Qiu Zhijie et al., Reactivation: Shanghai Biennale 2012, exh. cat., Shanghai Power Station of Art (2000).
299 | R E F E R E N C E S
29 30 31
Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, ed. Smith et al. (Durham, nc, and London, 2008), pp. 8–9. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. Jean-François Lyotard, e Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester, 1984), pp. 71–82. Smith, ‘Introduction: e Contemporaneity Question’, p. 9. Lyotard, e Postmodern Condition, pp. 71–82. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London, 1991), pp. 8–10. Mazhar Hussain and Robert Wilkinson, ‘Introduction’, e Pursuit of Comparative Aesthetics: An Interface between East and West, ed. Mazhar Hussain and Robert Wilkinson (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 5–7. David Clarke, ‘Revolutions in Vision: Chinese Art and the Experience of Modernity’, in e Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture, ed. Kam Louie (Cambridge, 2008), p. 274. Claire Roberts, Friendship in Art: Fou Lei and Huang Binhong (Hong Kong, 2010), pp. 86–8, 118, 195 and 201. Gao Minglu, ‘“Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truth”: Total Modernity in Chinese Contemporary Art’, in Antinomies of Art and Culture, ed. Smith et al., p. 134. Ibid., pp. 134–5. Ibid., p. 135. Ibid., pp. 134–5. Ibid., p. 136. Ibid. Ibid., p. 137. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 137–8. Ibid., p. 145. Ibid., pp. 148–58. Ibid., pp. 152–3. Ibid., p. 158. Ibid., p. 159. Ibid., p. 162. Terry Eagleton, Literary eory: An Introduction (Oxford, 1983), p. 148.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
English-language Sources Ai Weiwei, Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews and Digital Rants, 2006–2009, trans. Lee Amrozy (Cambridge, ma, and London, 2011) Andrews, Julia, and Shen Kuiyi, e Art of Modern China (Berkeley, ca, 2012) Beccaria, Marcella, ed., Yang Fudong (Milan, 2005) Berghuis, omas J., Performance Art in China (Hong Kong, 2006) —, and Eduardo Welsh, Go China!: e Chinese Avantgarde (Amsterdam, 2008) Chang, Alexandra, Envisioning Diaspora: Asian American Visual Arts Collectives, from Godzilla, Godzookie to the Barnstormers (Beijing and Shanghai, 2008) China Avant-garde: Counter-currents in Art and Culture, exh. cat., Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (Oxford, 1994) Chiu, Melissa, Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China (Milan, 2006) Chow, Rey, ‘Rereading Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: A Response to the “Postmodern” Condition’, in Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. omas Docherty (London, 1993), pp. 471–89 Clarke, David, ‘Revolutions in Vision: Chinese Art and the Experience of Modernity’, in e Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture, ed. Kam Louie (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 272–96 Clunas, Craig, Art in China, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2009) Colman, Julia, et al., Ma Liuming, exh. cat., Chinese Contemporary, London (2000) Crozier, Ralph, ‘Post-Impressionists in Pre-war Shanghai: e Juelanshe (Storm Society) and the Fate of Modernism in Republican China’, in Modern Art in Africa, Asia and Latin America: An Introduction to Global Modernisms, ed. Elaine O’Brien, Evelyn Nicodemus, Melissa Chiu, Benjamin Genocchio,
Mary K. Coffey and Roberto Tojado (Chichester, 2013), pp. 254–71 Danzker, Jo-Anne Birnie, Ken Lum and Shengtian Zheng, eds, Shanghai Modern, 1919–1945 (Ostfildern, 2004) Dikötter, Frank, e Age of Openness: China Before Mao (Hong Kong, 2008) Elzen, Sus van, Dragon and Rose Garden: Art and Power in China (De Draak en de Rozentuin) (Beijing, 2009) Erickson, Britta, On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West (Hong Kong, 2005) —, e Art of Xu Bing: Words without Meaning, Meaning without Words (Washington, dc, 2001) Feng Boyi and Qiu Zhijie, e Monk and the Demon: Contemporary Chinese Art (Milan, 2004) Fok, Silvia, Life and Death: Art and the Body in Contemporary China (Bristol, 2013) Fu Xiaodong, ed., New Vista: e Phenomenon of Posttradition in Contemporary Art, exh. cat., Alexander Ochs Galleries, Berlin and Beijing (2007) Gao Minglu, Inside Out: New Chinese Art (Berkeley, ca, 1998) —, Total Modernity and the Avant-garde in Twentiethcentury Chinese Art (Cambridge, ma, 2011) Gladston, Paul, Contemporary Art in Shanghai: Conversations with Seven Chinese Artists (Hong Kong, 2011) —, ‘Avant-garde’ Art Groups in China, 1979–1989 (Bristol and Chicago, 2013) —, and Katie Hill, eds, Journal of Visual Art Practice, xi/2–3, Special Edition: Contemporary Chinese Art and Criticality (2012) Groom, Simon, and Karen Smith, eds, e Real ing: Contemporary Art from China (Liverpool, 2007) Hopfener, Birgit, Franziska Koch, Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Knight, Reckoning with the Past: Contemporary Chinese Painting, exh. cat., Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (1996) Pan, Lynn, Shanghai Style: Art and Design between the Wars (Hong Kong, 2008) Roberts, Claire, Friendship in Art: Fou Lei and Huang Binhong (Hong Kong, 2010) Rosenthal, Stephanie, ed., Art of Change: New Directions from China, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London (2012) Schoeber, Felix, ‘Re-writing Art in Taiwan: Secularism, Universalism, Globalization, or Modernity and the Aesthetic Object’, in Re-writing Culture in Taiwan, ed. Shih Fang-long, Stuart ompson and PaulFrançois Tremlett (London, 2009), pp. 154–81 Shen Fuwei, Cultural Flow between China and Outside World throughout History (Beijing, 2009) Silbergeld, Jerome, and Dora C. Y. Ching, eds, ARTiculations: Undefining Chinese Contemporary Art (Cambridge, ma, 2010) Smith, Karen, Nine Lives: e Birth of the Avant-garde in New China (Beijing, 2008) —, As Seen 2011: Notable Artworks by Chinese Artists (Beijing, 2012) Smith, Terry, Okwui Enwezor and Nancy Condee, eds, Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity (Durham, nc, and London, 2009) Sullivan, Michael, Art and Artists of Twentieth-century China (Berkeley, ca, 1996) —, e Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, 2nd revd edn (Berkeley, ca, 1997) —, Modern Chinese Art: e Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection, exh. cat., Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2001) —, Modern Chinese Artists: A Biographical Dictionary (Berkeley, ca, 2006) Tang Xiaobing, ‘e Anxiety of Everyday Life in PostRevolutionary China’, in e Everyday Life Reader, ed. Ben Highmore (London, 2002), pp. 125–35 —, Origins of the Chinese Avant-garde: e Modern Woodcut Movement (Berkeley, ca, 2008) Tong Dian, China! New Art and Artists (Atglen, pa, 2005) Tsao Hsingyuan and Roger T. Ames, Xu Bing and Contemporary Chinese Art: Cultural and
301 | S E L E C T B I B L I O G R A P H Y
and Juliane Noth, eds, Negotiating Difference: Contemporary Chinese Art in the Global Context (Weimar, 2012) Hou Hanru and Yu Hsaio-Hwei, eds, On the Mid-ground: Hou Hanru, Selected Texts (Hong Kong, 2002) Huang Wenya and Cui Kaixuan, 798: Inside China’s Art Zone (Beijing, 2010) Huber, Jörg, and Zhao Chuan, eds, A New oughtfulness in Contemporary China: Critical Voices in Art and Aesthetics (Bielefeld, 2012) —, and Zhao Chuan, eds, e Body at Stake: Experiments in Chinese Contemporary Art and eatre (Bielefeld, 2013) Hussain, Mazhar, and Robert Wilkinson, eds, e Pursuit of Comparative Aesthetics: An Interface between the East and West (Aldershot, 2006) Hwa, Young Caruso, ‘Asian Aesthetic Influences on American Artists: Guggenheim Museum Exhibition’, International Journal of Multicultural Education, xi/1 (2009) Jiang Jiehong, Burden or Legacy: From the Chinese Cultural Revolution to Contemporary Art (Hong Kong, 2007) Jullien, François, In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese ought and Aesthetics (New York, 2004) Koch, Franziska, ‘“China” on Display for European Audiences?: e Making of an Early Travelling Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Art – China Avantgarde (Berlin/1993)’, Transcultural Studies, ii (2011), pp. 66–139 Köppel-Yang, Martina, Semiotic Warfare: e Chinese Avant-garde, 1979–1989, A Semiotic Analysis (Hong Kong, 2003) Kuo, Jason, ed., Contemporary Chinese Art and Film: eory Applied and Resisted (Washington, dc, 2013) Li Lei, Chen Zhen, exh. cat., Shanghai Museum of Art (Shanghai, 2006) Lü Peng, A History of Art in 20th-century China (Milan, 2010) —, A Pocket History of 20th-century Chinese Art (Milan, 2011) Mackerras, Colin, China in Transformation, 1900–1949, 2nd edn (London, 2008) Martin, Jean-Hubert, Magiciens de la Terre, exh. cat., Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1989) Murray, Graeme, Chang Tsong-Zung and Juliet
302 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Philosophical Reflections (New York, 2011) Vine, Richard, New China – New Art (Munich, 2011) Wang, Eugene Y., ‘Sketch Conceptualism as Modernist Contingency’, in Modern Art in Africa, Asia and Latin America: An Introduction to Global Modernisms, ed. Elaine O’Brien, Evelyn Nicodemus, Melissa Chiu, Benjamin Genocchio, Mary K. Coffey and Roberto Tojado (Chichester, 2013), pp. 230–53 Wang Yao-t’ing, Looking at Chinese Painting: A Comprehensive Guide to the Philosophy, Technique and History of Chinese Painting (Tokyo, 1995) Watkins, Jonathan, ed., Ding Yi, exh. cat., Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2005) Whittaker, Iona, e Unfinished Collection (Beijing, 2012) Wu Hung, ed., A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture (London, 2012) —, Chinese Art at the Crossroads: Between Past and Future, Between East and West (Hong Kong, 2002) —, Displacement: e ree Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art (Chicago, 2008) —, Exhibiting Experimental Art in China (Chicago, 2001) —, Making History: Wu Hung on Contemporary Chinese Art (Beijing, 2008) —, Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century, 2nd revised edn (Chicago, 2006) —, Wu Hung on Contemporary Chinese Artists (Hong Kong, 2010) —, with Peggy Wang, eds, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents (New York, 2010) Yap Chin-Chin, et al., Ai Weiwei, Works: Beijing, 1993–2003 (Hong Kong, 2003) Zhang Dainan, Key Concepts in Chinese Philosophy (Beijing, New Haven, ct, and London, 2002)
Chinese-language Sources Gao Minglu, ’85 Meishu yundong: 80 niandai de renwen qianwei [’85美术运动：80年代的人文前卫, ’85 Art Movement, vol. I: e Enlightenment of Chinese Avant-garde] (Guanxi, 2007) —, ’85 Meishu yundong: lishi ziliao huibian [’85美术运 动：历史资料汇编, ’85 Art Movement, vol. ii: An
Anthology of Historical Sources] (Guanxi, 2007) Li Xianting, ‘Guanyu Xingxing meizhan’ [关于星星美 展, ‘About the Stars Art Exhibition’], Meishu zazhi [美术杂志, Art], cxlvii/3 (1980), pp. 8–9 Liu Yuanyuan, ‘Kongzi de “da” he “zhunagmei” yu xifang “chonggao” meixue de yitong’ [孔子的“大”和 “壮美”与西方“崇高”美学的异同, ‘e Differences and Similarities between Confucian “Giant” and “Magnificence” and the Western “Sublime”’], Lilun jianshe [理论建设, eory Research], iv (2006), pp. 69–70 Lü Peng and Yi Dan, Zhongguo xiandai yishu shi, 1979–1989 [中国现代艺术史 1979–1989, A History of Modern Chinese Art, 1979–1989] (Changsha, 1991) Shi Jiu, ‘Gunyu xin kongjian he “Chi she”’ [关于新空间 和“池社”, ‘On New Space and the Pond Association’], Meishu sichao [美术思潮, e Trend of Art ought], i (1987), pp. 16–21 Shu Qun, ‘Beifang yishu qunti de jingshen’ [北方艺术 团体的精神, ‘e Spirit of the Northern Art Group’], Zhonguo meishu bao [中国美术报, Fine Arts in China], xviii (1985), p. 1 —, ‘Wei “Beifang yishu qunti” chanshi’ [为北方艺术群 体阐释, ‘An Explanation of the Northern Art Group’], Meishu sichao [美术思潮, e Trend of Art ought], i (1987), pp. 36–9 Wang Guangyi, ‘Women – “’85 meishu yundong” de canyuzhe’ [我们 – 85美术运动的参与者, ‘We – Participants of the “’85 Art Movement”], Zhongguo meishu bao [中国美术报, Fine Arts in China], xxxvi (September 1986), p. 1 Wang Hui and Chen Yangu, Wenhua yu Gonggongxing [文化与公共性, Culture and Publicness] (Beijing, 1998) Wu Guanzhong, ‘Huihua de xingshi mei’ [绘画的形式 美, ‘On the Beauty of Form in Painting/ Formalist Aesthetics in Painting’], Meishu zazhi [美术杂志, Art], 5 (1979), pp. 33–5 —, ‘Guanya chouxiang mei’ [关于抽象美, ‘Concerning the Beauty of the Abstract’], Meishu zazhi [美术杂 志, Art], x (1980), pp. 37–9 —, ‘Neirong jueding xingshi’ [内容决定形式, ‘Form is Decided by Content’], Meishu zazhi [美术杂志, Art], iii (1981), pp. 52–4
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Ai Weiwei and Feng Boyi, eds, Fuck Off [Buhezuo fangshi, 不合作方式], exh. cat., Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai (2000) Fei Dawei, ed., ’85 New-Wave: e Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art [’85 Xinchao: Zhongguo diyici dangdai yishu yundong, ’85新潮：中国第一次当 代艺术运动] (Beijing, 2007) Gao Minglu, e Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art [Qiang: Zhongguo dangdai yishu de lishi yu bianjie, 墙：中国当代艺术的历史与边界], exh. cat., Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, ny, and the Today Art Museum, Beijing (2005) —, e No Name: A History of a Self-exiled Avant-garde [Wuming: yige beiju qianwei de lishi, 无名：一个 悲剧前卫的历史] (Guangxi, 2007) Handel, Lee, ed., Beyond Boundaries: Shanghai Gallery of Art 04–05 [Chaoyue jiexian: hushen hualang 04–05, 超越界线：沪申画廊04–05], exh. cat., Shanghai Gallery of Art (2003) Hu Wugong, ed., Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography [Zhongguo renben: jishi zai dangdai, 中囯人本：纪实在当 代], exh. cat., Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou, 2003) Hou Hanru, ed., Shanghai Biennale 2000 [2000 Shanghai shuangnianzhan, 2000上海双年展], exh. cat., Shanghai Art Museum (2000) Maharaj, Sarat, Chang Tsong-Zung and Gao Shiming, Farewell to Post-colonialism: e ird Guangzhou Triennial [Disanjie guangzhou sannianzhan: yu houzhimin shuo zaijian, 第三届广州三年展：与 后殖民说再见], exh. cat., Guangdong Museum of Art (2008) Peckham, Robin, and Lau, Venus, eds, Zhang Peili: Certain Pleasures [Zhang Peili: queqie de kuaigan, 张培力：确切的快感], exh. cat., Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2011) Qiu Zhijie et al., Reactivation: Shanghai Biennale 2012 [Chongxin fadian: dijiujie shanghai shuangnianzhan, 重新发电：第九届上海双年展], exh. cat., Shanghai Power Station of Art (2012) Szeemann, Harald, Chinese Artists, Texts and Interviews: Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA), 1998–2002 [Zhongguo dangdai yishu fangtanlu:
zhongguo dangdai yishu jiang 1998–2002, 中国当 代艺术访谈录：中国当代艺术奖 1998–2002] (Hong Kong, 2002) —, Chinese Artists: Texts and Interviews: Chinese Contemporary Art Awards 2004 [Zhongguo dangdai yishu fangtanlu: zhongguo dangdai yishu jiang 2004, 中国当代艺术访谈录：中国当代艺术奖2004] (Hong Kong, 2004) Wang Chunchen, Art Intervenes in Society: A New Artistic Relationship [Yishu jieru shehui: yizhong xin yishu guanxi, 艺术介入社会：一种新艺术关 系] (Beijing, 2010) Wu Hung, ed., Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990–2000) [Chongxin jiedu: zhongguo shiyan yishu shinian 1990–2000, 重 新解读：中国实验艺术十年1990–2000] (Guangzhou, 2002) Zhu Zhu, ed., Origin Point [Yuandian: ‘xingxing huahui’ huiguzhan, 原点：‘星星画会’回顾展] (Hong Kong, 2007)
303 | S E L E C T B I B L I O G R A P H Y
Bilingual English–Chinese Sources
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
I would like to thank all of the artists, curators, academics and critics who assisted with the research for this book. Particular thanks are due to Professor Jason Kuo of the University of Maryland, Professor Gao Minglu of the University of Pittsburgh, the artist Wang Guangyi and Lorenz Helbling of the ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai, for their strong support and encouragement. Thanks are also due to all of the artists and institutions who generously contributed illustrations to this book as well as to Vivian Constantinopoulos and the editorial team at Reaktion for their patience and professionalism. I would also like to thank my PhD students Meng Jing and Yao Yung-Wen for their assistance in checking the accuracy of my initial manuscript and for identifying additional references. I am particularly indebted to YungWen for providing references related to government policy on creative industries and cultural diplomacy in the prc. I am also grateful to the University of Nottingham for providing a period of study leave in support of this project. My utmost love and thanks go to my wife Lynne and daughter Alicia for their continuing support and understanding – this book is dedicated to them.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Asia Art Archive: 45, 64; BizArt, Shanghai: 114; Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing: 43, 59, 67, 94, 151, 152, 153, 154; Courtesy Cai Guo-Qiang Studio: 84 (Masanobu Moriyama), 85 (Kunio Oshima), 111, 112, 113 (Elio Montanari); Chen Qiulin: 148; Chen Shaoxiong: 96; © 2014 adac – Chen Zhen, courtesy of the de Sarthe Gallery: 141, 142; Ding Yi: 72; © Fang Lijun, courtesy of the Eli Klein Fine Art: 108; Feng Mengbo: 17, 18, 138, 139; Galerie Magda Danysz, Paris: 35, 36; Wenda Gu Studio: 13, 86, 87; Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong: 6, 10, 11, 73, 74, 75; Jerry Hu: 26, 27; Huang Rui Studio: 38, 39; Huang Yongping: 5, 44, 82; Ka Sang: 51, 52, 53; Kwok Mang-ho: 33; Lin Yilin: 95; Lisson Gallery, London: 135, 136; National Art Museum, China: 21, 30, 31, 32, 40, 78, 80, 81; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham: 3, 4; M Group: 70, 71; Ma Liuming: 119, 120; Pace Gallery, Beijing: 12, 90, 107, 121, 122, 140; Pace Gallery, London: 137; Qiu Zhijie Studio: 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 133, 134; Andreas Schmid: 7; ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai: 9, 19, 20, 24, 25, 46, 77, 79, 101, 102, 103, 109, 110, 115, 129, 130, 131, 132, 149, 150; Sheng Qi: 83; Shu Qun: 50, 56, 57; Song Ling: 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66; The Southern Artists Salon (Chen Shaoxiong, Huang Xiaopeng, Liang Juhui, Lin Yilin and Wang Du): 68, 69; Sun Yuan and Peng Yu Studio: 123, 126, 127, 128; Tung Wei-Hsiu: 28, 29; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing: 22, 23, 76, 143; Wang Guangyi Studio: 8, 54, 55, 58, 104; Xu Bing Studio: 14, 88, 89; Yan Li: 34, 37; Yang Jeichang: 1, 2; Yao Yung-Wen: 15, 16; Yu Xiaogang: 47, 48, 49; Zhang Huan Studio: 116, 117, 118, 125; Zhao Jianhai: 144; Zheng Bo: 105, 106; © Zhang Dali, courtesy of the Eli Klein Fine Art: 147; Zheng Lianjie: 145, 146; Zhu Fadong: 99, 100.
INDEX
Illustration numerals are in italics.
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
’85 New Wave 107–11, 116–18, 122, 123, 124, 130, 140, 149, 152, 154, 156, 157, 160, 164, 172, 181, 191, 214, 245, 277, 280 ’85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art (exhibition) 240, 143 abjection 151, 204, 219, 220, 224, 283 Absurd Trends 191 Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art 215 aesthetic movement 45 Ai, Weiwei 9, 20, 31, 93, 98, 166, 280–81 ‘Ai Weiwei Dialogue with Zhuang Hui’ 171 Black Cover Book, White Cover Book and Grey Cover Book 218 Fuck Off (exhibition) 224 Innovations Parts i and ii (exhibitions) 218 Never Sorry (documentary) 281 Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard 196 Albert, Yuri 280 Albrecht, Dorothee 248 All China Federation of Literary and Art Circles 63 Alors la Chine? (exhibition) 279 Alves, Maria Thereza 247 American Federation of Art, New York 194 American Pragmatism 52, 257 Andrews, Julia F. 39 Painters and Politics in the People’s
Republic of China, 1949–1979 38 The Art of Modern China 38 anti-art 125 anti-humanist cynicism 172 Anti-spiritual Pollution Campaign 104, 105, 106, 107, 121, 156, 166, 211, 275 Antonioni, Michelangelo Chung Kuo, Cina 79 anxiety of return 249 Apartment Art 172 April 5th Forum 96 April Photography Society 93 Arab Spring 281 art districts 200, 241 798, Beijing 226, 240, 241 Caochangdi 218 M50, Shanghai 34, 200 Yuanmingyuan 204 Art Now Studio 216 ArtPrice 235 Asia Art Archive 237, 248 Asia Society Galleries, San Francisco 198 Asia-Pacific Contemporary Art Exhibition 27, 242 Association of Chinese Artists 59, 64 Association of Chinese Literature 219 audience engagement 32 autarchy 249 authoritarianism 10, 20, 154, 174, 203, 210, 264, 268, 273, 274, 281 critique of 34 imperial 282 autonomous aesthetic 121 autonomy artistic 120 critical 10 of experimental art 201
avant-garde(s) 7, 15, 29, 38, 59, 76, 120–24, 154, 172, 215, 266 American artistic 81 art groups 121 art in the People’s Republic of China 106 art scene in the United States 48 China Avant-garde (exhibition) 193 China/Avant-garde (exhibition) 108, 154–72, 201 collage–montage and automatist techniques 111 early 59 European 48, 78 neo 109, 117 North American 62 politicized 74, 143 post- 138, 221 revolutionary 138 sinophiles 48 tactics 124 techniques 48 Western 74, 78, 82, 115, 120, 136, 138, 140, 143, 148, 221 Western historical 31, 120, 121 Xiamen Dada 105 Badiou, Alain 24 Balthus 108 Bao, Jianfei 140 Barnstormers, the (art group) 75 Barthes, Roland 79 Baudelairean 253 Bauhaus 47 Bei, Dao 95, 97 Beijing Municipal Artists Association 96 Beijing Municipal Committee 96, 97
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Cadres (ganbu) 99 Cage, John 48, 78, 111, 115 Imaginary Landscape No.4 48 Music of Changes 48 use of collage-montage techniques 82 Cai, Guo-Qiang 167, 196 Extraterrestrials series 167, 84, 85 International Golden Lion Prize, Venice 167 ‘Wild Flights of Fancy’ 171 Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard 196, 111, 112, 113 Cai, Qing 216 Cai, Yuanpei 55, 57, 61, 257 calculus ratiocinator 43 Calligraphy 8, 20, 46, 167, 274 Four Arts 53 Sage of 175 Cang, Xin 201 campaign against bourgeois liberalism 104 campaign against capitalist liberalization 156 Camus, Albert The Myth of Sisyphus 110 Cancelled: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China (exhibition) 217 Canton (Guangdong) 42, 44, 49, 54 Cao, Xuelei 140 Capital Normal University Art Gallery, Beijing 215 capitalism encroaching 210 global(ized) 10, 185 Western 207 capitalist roaders 70 Cartoon Association 60 Castells, Manuel 24 castigation (pipan) 107 Castiglione, Giuseppe (Lang Shining) 44 Chengdu Biennale 237 Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing 27, 161, 185, 199, 242 Central Committee of the Communist Party of China 83, 279 Third Plenum of the 11th 7, 85, 88 Fifth Plenum of the 15th 278 Sixth Plenum of the 17th 279 Centre Georges Pompidou 163, 279
Cézanne Paul 58, 255 Chambers, Sir William 43 chance encounters 215 Chang, Tsong-zung (Johnson) 194, 246 characteristica universalis (universal character) 43, 82 cheap labour 242 Cheng, Conglin 90 Snow on a Certain Day of a Certain Month, 1968 32 Chen, Danqing 91 Chen, Qiulin 261 I Exist, I Consume and I Am Happy 148 Chen, Shaoping 154 Chen, Shaoxiong 149, 179 Seven Days of Silence 96 Chen, Shun-Chu Discovering Hai-an Road 29 Chen, Yansheng 93 Chen, Zhen 110, 167, 196, 236 Daily Incantations 141 Le Sommeil Profond – The Deep Sleep Series 142 Chiang, Kai-shek 61, 75 chiaroscuro 44 China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou 208 China Art Archives and Warehouse 218 China/Avant-garde 78 Beijing (exhibition) 108, 154–60, 172, 201, 81 Berlin (exhibition) 15, 193 China Democracy Party 84, 226 China League of Left-Wing Writers 60 China pavilion (Venice Biennale) 236, 242 China: An Exhibition of Chinese New Art 218 China’s New Art Post-’89 (exhibition) 20, 193–194, 195 Chinese Artists Association 63, 88, 98, 201 Chinese Communist Party (ccp) 7, 26, 28, 29, 31, 52, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 98, 99, 104, 105, 106, 107, 121, 122, 130, 154, 160, 161, 163, 166, 171, 174, 175, 180, 181, 187, 198, 210,
307 | I N D E X
Beijing Municipal Government 95, 96 Beijing Public Security Bureau 160, 210 Beijing Spring (first) 84–5, 86, 87, 99 second 226 Bellefroid, Emmanuel 94 Berger, Tobias 248 Berlin Wall 163 Beuys, Joseph 78, 115 book by Heiner Stachelhaus 180 Beyond Boundaries (exhibition) 28 Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization (exhibition) 246 Bhabha, Homi K. 12, 251 Biennale of Sydney 248 Biennial Art Fair, Guangzhou 181 Biennial Exhibition of the Northern Art Group 130 Big Tail Elephant Group (Daxiangwei gongzuozu) 178–9 Birdhead (Song Tao and Ji Weiyu) 269 Suitcase-1 149 Welcome to the World of Birdhead 2011 – For Passion 150 Bizart 198–9, 114 black box (gallery space) 247, 269 Blaine, Julian 94 Blogosphere 273 Bo, Yun 93 bodily resistance 222, 261 Boonnimitra, Sopawan 248 Bryson, Norman 9 Buddhism Chan 47, 48, 115, 116 Nietzsche 45 Southern School of Chan 149 Zen 48 Buddhist 48 aesthetics 47, 48 belief in nirvana 125 Chan 83 classic, the Compendium of Five Lamps 116 cultural influences 124 enlightenment (wu) 148 thought 134, 135 Burning Event (Xiamen Dada) 124–5 ‘Statement on Burning’ 124 Byars, James Lee 79
308 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
215, 216, 224, 225, 226, 242, 244, 250, 264, 267, 268, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 283 Chinese Communist Party Congress 84 Chinese Democracy Movement 84, 85, 94 Chinese Ministry of Culture 224 Chinese Modern Art 58, 118 Zhongguo xiandai yishu (Chinese Modern Art) 26, 107 Chinese modern woodcut print movement 60 Chinese Pop 186, 191 Chineseness 8, 34, 170 Chinoiserie 42, 46, 117 Chiu, Melissa 38 Civil Government 63 civil society 32, 273 Clarke, David 116, 254 Close, Chuck 91 Clunas, Craig 34 collage-montage 11, 59, 78, 81, 82, 109, 111, 185 collective spiritual transcendence 66 colonialism 46, 50 postcolonialism 193, 203, 246, 247, 252, 259 communal identification 32 Concept 21st Century 164, 144 conceptualism 78, 256 ‘sketch conceptualism’ 58 Confucian belief 53, 273 Daoist- 43, 267 Deference 275 neo- 8 notion of da 134 scholar 55 sublimity 138 texts 53 thought 42, 134, 266 traditions 52, 53 values 51, 224 vision 267 Confucianism 51, 70, 224, 257, 265, 276 Confucius (Kong Fuzi) 51, 134 writings of 175 Congress of Chinese Writers and Artists Fourth 87, 88
All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles 63, 227 Constant, Benjamin 45 contemporary art in China 8, 38, 280, 281 Contemporaneity 28, 172, 251, 252, 253, 255, 258, 264 Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity (book) 252 dandaixing 27 Corvino, Jean de Monte 41 Cosmopolitan(ism) 12, 50, 59, 222 art district 218 counter-deconstructivist 29 counter-monument 171 counter-narratives 266 Cousin, Victor 45 creative industries 29, 31, 274 sector 226, 279 critical press 273 critical-realist content 192 Cui, Qiao 248 cultural confidence 243 cultural diplomacy 29, 31, 278, 279 cultural enlightenment 89 cultural hubs 34 cultural hybridity 12, 27, 253 cultural industries 278, 279 cultural production 7, 31, 71, 74, 211, 247, 278, 280 conditions of 213, 245 commercialization of 214 liberal attitudes towards 181 modern modes of 279 political limits on 215 ‘pure model’ of 118, 202 state-controlled system of 130 vague directives on 166 cultural resistance 20 Cultural Revolution, the 37, 39, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69–74, 79, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 98, 99, 100, 101, 104, 107, 117, 118, 121, 122, 123, 134, 135, 138, 149, 151, 154, 157, 171, 185, 186, 202, 213, 244, 280 modernizing ‘cultural revolution’ initiated by the May Fourth Movement 107
cultural taboos 221 Cynical Realism (Wanshi xianshi zhuyi) 15–16, 20, 185, 191, 192, 193, 195, 269 ‘Apathy and Deconstruction in Post ’89 Art: Analysing the Trends of “Cynical Realism” and“Political Pop”’ 20 da (magnificence/sublimity) 134 Dada(ists) 47, 48, 57, 76, 115, 116, 117, 125 collage-montage 185 ‘Dada is Dead!’ 124–5 legacy of 79 neo-Dadaist 78 neo-Dadaism 269 spirit 115 Western 115, 124 Dalí, Salvador 105, 109 dangdaixing (contemporaneity) 27, 255 danwei (work unit) 66, 67, 105 Daodejing 45, 149, 282 Daoism 47, 51, 265 Dashanzi 199 dazibao (big character posters) 71, 74, 86, 143 dazibao-like assemblages 117 Dead Body Group (Shiti Xiaozu) 222 deconstruction 11, 15, 24, 80, 82, 210, 221, 251, 265, 266 critical practices of 276 of colonialist-imperialist relations of dominance 24, 28, 170, 243 of the dominance of postmodernist Western culture 245 theory and practice of 80, 81, 82 Delacroix, Eugène 191 delayed action 122 democratic arts infrastructure 215 Chinese state 84 collective-democratic 154 culture 62 liberal–democratic 75, 76, 163, 237, 276, 281, 282, 283 neoliberal/democratic 10, 11, 16, 20, 221 reform 59, 215
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
discursive formations 11, 39, 40 dissident(s) 24, 214 Documenta 198 domestic social-economic policy 224 Dongcheng Public Security Bureau 94 double way 276 Dow, Arthur Wesley 46 Down to the Countryside movement (Shang shan xia xiang yundong) 72 Duchamp, Marcel 48, 78, 82, 256 post-Duchampian conceptuality 271 post-Duchampian ‘quotation’ 198 douquan (infiltration) 157 Dutch East India Company 41 Eagleton, Terry 265 East Village (art community) 151, 203, 204 Eastlink Gallery 200, 222 East–West relations of dominance 246, 251, 255, 259 econometric data 235 economic migrant 185 narrative 208 Edblom, Stina 248 Eighteen Art Society 60 elite cultural groups 32 Enlai, Zhou 83, 96 ethics of difference 246 Euro-American epochal sequence 256 European hallucination 82 European Union 225 Events (exhibition) 124, 125 exceptionalism 34, 36 Exhibition of Five Guizhou Youths 94 experimental art 93, 141, 201, 202, 208, 210, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 221, 237 and social transformation 201 Cancelled: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China (exhibition 2001) 217 community 224 Experimental Painting Exhibition: the Stage 1983 105 Fang, Lijun 156, 191, 194, 217, 269 Series II, No. 1 10
Series II, No. 7 11 1998. 8. 15 108 Fan, Di’an 157 Farewell to Post-Colonialism (exhibition) 245–51 Farquharson, Alex 12 feminist discourse 261 Feng, Boyi 216, 224, 236 Feng, Mengbo 32, 194, 230 Q4U 17, 18 My Private Museum – Birds 138 My Private Museum – Panda 139 Feng, Zhengjie 191 Fenollosa, Ernest F. 46, 49 Fifth Modernization 85 Fifth Moon Group 75 First Open Art Platform – International Performance Arts Festival 201 Forums in Motion 248, 250, 251 Foucault, Michel 36, 37, 108 Four Arts 53, 58 Four Modernizations 85, 86 Four Olds (si jiu) 70 French Symbolists 45 frottage 171 Fu, Baoshi 67 Fu, Lei 58 Fuck Off – Uncooperative Stance (Buhezuo fangshi) (exhibition) 222, 224 Fujian Art Museum 125 Gabo, Naum 47 Gan, Shaocheng 93 Gang of Four 70–71, 74, 83, 84, 101 Gao, Qiang 158–159 Gao, Minglu 27, 57, 109, 120, 130, 157, 174 Inside Out: New Chinese Art (exhibition) 198 ‘“Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truth”: Total Modernity in Chinese Contemporary Art’ 28–9, 252, 255 Rational Painting 148 The Wall: Reshaping Chinese Contemporary Art (book) 38, 237 The Wall: Reshaping Chinese Contemporary Art (exhibition) 237
309 | I N D E X
Democracy Wall 86–7, 94, 96, 97, 99, 104 Democracy Wall Movement 74, 99 Deng, Xiaoping 7, 84, 85, 119, 171, 225, 258 Policy of ‘Opening and Reform’ (Gaige Kaifang) 7, 119, 275 Southern Tour 180 Departing from China: an Exhibition of Chinese New Art (1999) 218 depoliticized space 121 vision 249 deracination 116, 254, 275 Deren, Maya 48 Derrida, Jacques 36, 37, 79, 80–82, 108 Design Museum, Beijing 218 de-territorialization 25 différance 36, 80, 82,115 digital networking technologies 25 Dikotter, Frank 59 Ding, Fang Meeting of Lonely Soul 73 Ding, Yi 185, 194, 218, 224 untitled 72 Appearance of Crosses 92–15 101, 102 discourse(s) 32, 36, 39, 40, 76, 224, 251, 253 Chinese 254, 267 cultural 222, 245 critical 24, 32, 247, 251, 267 curatorial 247 dominant 36, 40 economic 10 exclusory 9 feminist 261 global 243 limiting effects of 36 outside China 40 political 10 postcolonialist 15, 167, 202, 249, 250 postmodernist 253 poststructuralist 34 public 9, 10 revolutionary 230 socialist-realist 99 socio-political 38
310 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Total Modernity and the Avantgarde in Twentieth-century Chinese Art 38 Gao, Shiming 246 ‘Observations and Presentiments “After Post–Colonialism”’ 249–51 Gao, Zhen 159 Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri 49 Gaudy Pop 191–2 Gautier, Théophile 45 Geist (spirit) 134 gender unification 264 Geng, Jianyi 140, 141, 142, 156, 194, 208 Wrapping Up – King and Queen 64 The Second State 77 Gilbert and George 204 global politics 250 globalization 12, 24, 25, 34, 198, 211, 219, 245, 247, 258 globalized capitalism 10 Godard, Jean-Luc 78 Goddess of Liberty 161 Godzilla (art group) 75 Godzookie (art group) 75 Gohl, Jacob 43 Gombrich, Ernst 134, 138 gong-bi 54, 65 gonggongxing (publicness) 32 Gormley, Anthony 281 Gou, Hongbing ‘Dialogue on Dialogue’ 211 governmental disinterest 214 graffiti 211, 261 Great Leap Forward 65, 66–7, 70 Great Wall 94 Binding The Lost Soul (performance) 259 Ghost Pounding the Wall (sitespecific artwork) 171 Greenberg, Clement 256 grey humour (huise youmo) 140 Gu, Chengfeng ‘Tendencies in Chinese Pop’ 191 Gu, Dexin 216, 218 1998. 01. 02 (artwork) 216 1998. 11. 07 (artwork) 219 China’s New Art Post- ’89 (exhibition) 194 Fuck Off (exhibition) 224
Magiciens de la Terre (exhibition) 11, 163 New Analyst Group 154 Persistent Deviation/Corruptionists (exhibition) 219 Works (exhibition 1986) 110 Gu, Wenda (Wenda Gu) China/Avant-garde (exhibition) 159 Equality from Paradise (Refound Oedipus Complex #7) 6 ‘Face the New Millennium: the Divine Comedy of Our Times; a Thesis on the United Nations Art Project and its Time and Environment’ 170–71 Monuments of the United Nations series 167, 86, 87 Mythos of Last Dynasties – Form #c: Pseudo–seal Scripture in Calligraphy Copybook Format 20, 13 Gu, Xiong 159 Guangdong Museum of Art 236, 246 Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts 149 Guangzhou Triennial 236, 237, 246, 269 Guimaraes, Tamar 248 Guiyang Biennale 237 guo hua (national art) 34, 50, 54, 57, 58, 59, 64, 75, 118, 274, 280 Guo, Xiaoyan 248 Gutai group 78 Habermas, Jürgen 256 Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 279 Hamilton, Richard 185 Han Chinese rule 250 Han Dynasty 51 Hanart TZ Gallery 15, 193, 194 Haus der Kulturen der Welt 15, 193 He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen 236 He, Baoshen 93 He, Duoling 91 He, Yunchang Talking with Water 222 Hegel, G.W.F. 134 hermeneutic gesture 254 historical memory 207, 229 Holocaust 28
homophobia 9 Hong Kong Arts Festival 15, 193 Hong, Lei 218 Hou, Hanru 111, 166, Third Shanghai Biennale 200 Houhai Park 207 Hsiu (manifest) 254 Hu, Chi Chung Painting #6767 26 Painting #6754 27 Hu, Shi 257, 258 Hu, Yaobang 160 Hua, Guofeng 7, 85 Huafang Studio 96, 98 Huang, Binhong 58, 255 Huang, Jian 118 Huang, Rui 93, 94, 97, 100, 101 Outside the Gate 38 Seamstresses in a Street Production Unit 39 Huang, Xinbo 62 Huang, Yan ‘“Changchun, China”: A Report on a Performance of Making Rubbings from Buildings Slated for Demolition’ 211 Huang, Yongping 12, 156, 166, 236, 269 The Bat Project iv 5 ‘A Completely Empty Signifier’ 115–16 Big Roulette 111, 44 China/Avant-garde (exhibition) 159, 163 The History of Chinese Painting . . . 82 Non-Expressive Painting 111 Magiciens de la Terre (exhibition) 11 Marché de Punya 3, 4 A Modern Art Exhibition of Five Artists 105 Small Portable Roulette 111 Venice Biennale 196 Xiamen Dada 124–5 ‘Xiamen Dada – A Kind of Postmodernism?’ 115–16 Huang, Zhuan 130 First Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art 215
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
I Ching (Zhouyi or Book of Changes) 15, 42, 47, 48 i-ching (idea-realm) 56, 58, 110, 149 Image and Phenomena (exhibition) 208, 209 Imperial Ancestral Temple, Beijing 217 imperial authority 175, 221 indigenous nationalism 193 industrialization 29, 202, 226 Infatuated with Injury: Open Studio Exhibition No.2 (Indulge in Pain) (exhibition) 222 ingrained conservatism 244 ink-and-brush painting 8, 41, 46, 48, 71, 110, 118, 293 Innovations Part i and Part ii (exhibition) 218 Inside Out: New Chinese Art (exhibition) 198 internal debates 242 International Art Price Index 235 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 84, 225 International Golden Lion Prize, Venice Biennale 167, 198 international survey show 246–9, 269 internationalization 26, 185, 198, 201, 242 investment commodity 236 isolationism 46, 49
It’s Me! An Aspect of the Development of Chinese Contemporary Art in the 1990s (exhibition) 216 Itten, Johannes 47 Jameson, Fredric 80, 254 Japonsime 46 Jasmine Revolution 281 Jesuit(s) 43, 44, 54 Jian, Fangzhou ‘Returning to Art Itself’ 154 Jian, Tao ‘Report on Zhang Dali’s Dialogue (Duihua)’ 211 Jiang, Feng 89, 98 Jiang, Qing (Madam Mao) 70 Jiang, Zemin 180, 181, 277, 278 Jiang, Zhaoke 56 Jiangsu Art Museum 151 Jiangsu huakan (Jiangsu Pictorial) magazine 108, 134 Jilin Art academy 130, 132 Jingzhe day 215 Jintian (Today) magazine 85, 95 Jl, Wenyu Chinese God of Fortune and KFC 109 Johns, Jasper 78 Jones, Kim 79 Ka, Sang 138 Boating on Songhua River 53 Kafkaesque 283 Kandinsky, Wassily 47, 56 Kang, Youwei Travels in Eleven European Countries 50 Kang, Mu 259 Kang, Wanhua 68 Kapoor, Anish 281 Klayman, Alison Never Sorry (documentary) 281 Klee, Paul 47 Klein, Yves 78 Koch, Franziska 10 Kollwitz, Käthe 56, 101 Köppel-Yang, Martina 29, 38, 120 Kristeva, Julia 79 Kuhn, Thomas paradigm shift 134 Kuomintang (kmt) 61, 62, 229
Kwok, Mang-ho 94–5 Plastic Bag Happenings in China – Tiananmen Square 33 Labelle, Charles 247 Lam, Steven 248 Laozi 134, 135 League of Left-Wing Artists 60 League of Left-Wing Playwrights 60 Lei, Feng 65 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 42–3, 82 Leng, Lin 217 Leung, Chi-wo 248 Levy, Dominique and Sylvain 25 Lewis, Wyndham 49 Li, Hua Roar, China! 21 Li, Huasheng Maximalist painting 261 Li, Jianwei Street Action: Crush Bicycles 182 Li, Keran 71 Li, Shan 110, 159 Li, Shuang 93 Li, Songsong We Have Betrayed the Revolution (installation) 137 Li, Wei First Open Art Platform 201 Li, Xianting 100, 130, 157, 167, 170, 191, 194, 195, 222 ‘Apathy and Deconstruction in Post ’89 Art: Analysing the Trends of “Cynical Realism” and “Political Pop”’ 20 Li, Xu 28 Li, Yuan-Chia 75 Liang, Juhui Big Tail Elephant Group 179 ‘One Hour Game’ 211 Southern Artists Salon 149–150 Liao, Wen ‘Living in Kitsch – The Critical “Irony” of Gaudy Art’ 192 liberalization 16, 84, 85, 225, 276, 280 capitalist 156 cultural 99 of culture 7 of society 9
311 | I N D E X
‘The Misread Great Criticism (Da pipan)’ 191 Huangshan Symposium first 108, 130 second 108, 110, 111, 130, 140, 156 Hulsenbeck, Richard China frisst Menschen (China Eats People) 48 humanism 156 humanist enthusiasm (rewen reqing) 89, 107, 172 Liquidate Humanist Enthusiasm 140, 156 hundred schools of thought 86 Hussain, Mazhar 254 hyperreality 247
312 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
political and social 275 progressive 98, 12 Liberate Your Thinking and Search for the Truth in the Facts directive 85, 86 Lin, Biao 70 Lin, Fengmian 57, 64, 67 Lin, Jiahua 105, 124, 125 Projection Performance 47, 48 Lin, Tianmiao 208, 216 Lin, Yilin 149, 150 Standard Series of Ideal Residences 179, 95 Lingnan School 58 literati (shi dafu) 8, 50, 53, 64, 102, 174–5 modern 54 New Literati ‘Art Games’ 191 painting 58 tradition 135 Liu Song Dynasty 58 Liu, Wei 191 Liu, Jin First Open art Platform 201 Liu, Qing 94, 96, 97 Liu, Shaohui 89 Liu, Xiaochun 198 Liu, Xiaodong Out of Beichuan 135, 136 Liu, Xun 96 Liu, Yan 130, 131 Liu, Yuanyuan 134 Liu, Zhenggang ‘Purifying Artistic Language’ 154 Living in Time (exhibition) 279 Long March 229 Long March Project 229 Lu, Jie 229 Long March Project – A Walking Visual Display 133 Lü, Peng 107, 237 A History of Art in TwentiethCentury China 37 Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts 62 Lu, Xun 60, 62 Lü, Haizhou 118 Lu, Qing 218 Luo Brothers (Luo Wei Dong, Luo Wei Guo and Luo Wei Bing) 191–2
Luo, Xianyue 118 Luo, Zhongli 90, 91, 198 Father 31 Lyotard, Jean-François 253, 254 M Group 124, 149, 151, 70, 71 Ma, Desheng 93, 100, 101 Ma, Liuming 110, 204, 215, 217 Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch i 119 Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch ii 120 Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the Earth) exhibition 11, 12, 15, 163, 166, 175, 193, 203 Magritte, René 109 Maharaj, Sarat 246, 247, 249, 251 Mang, Ke 95, 97 Mao, Lizi 93 Maoism 79 Mao, Zedong 7, 9, 37, 62, 67, 83, 84 Little Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong) 70 mass-produced images of 71, 122 Marden, Brice 47, 82 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso 76 martial law 75 161, 180 Martin, Agnes 47 Martin, Jean-Hubert 163 Marxism-Leninism 28 Maximalist painting 261 May Fourth Movement 52, 58, 61, 63, 9, 107 Meishu zazhi (Art) magazine 89, 108 Meishu magazine 101 Meishu Sichao (Art Trends) magazine 106 148 Meissen (porcelain) 42 Melancholy Youth Painting (Contemplative Painting) 91, 109 Melbourne Arts Festival 194 Meng, Luding 105, 106, 109 Michaux, Henri 48 Ming Dynasty 43 Minh-ha, Trinh T. 248 Ministry of Culture 31, 63, 215, 224, 230, 277, 278 Missionaries 42 misty poetry (Menglong shi) 85 Modern Art Exhibition of Five Artists 105, 106, 124
modernism 80, 175, 254, 255 American 59, 117 artistic 59, 82 European 56, 57 Formalist 60 high 11, 76, 78, 79 /orientalism 269 /postmodernism 117 secular-scientific 275 in Taiwan 75 Western 56, 57, 58, 59, 117, 251, 252, 253, 254, 259, 265, 268, 275 modernists 46, 47, 49, 59, 255 Chinese 57, 58, 101 modernist 27, 58, 59, 67, 76, 81, 88, 254 abstraction 48, 49, 256 /abstractionist 47 approaches 57, 60, 75 art 11, 37, 47, (in China) 53, 58, 105, 108, 109, 111, 198, 202, 230, 255, 256, 257 artists 49 assumptions 265 /avant-garde 172 conceptions 172 -formalist 104 formalist–modernist 56, 57 forms of artistic practice 75 hope 25 idiom 58 interpretative perspectives 253 painting 110 /postmodernist 34, 253, 264 -positivist 36 -realist 91 sensibilities 79 styles 59 tendencies 62 theories and controversies 257 view 265 writers 49 modernity 9, 27, 28, 31, 32, 53, 111, 116, 203, 243, 251, 253, 255, 256, 257 259, 264, 265, 266 aesthetic 258 Chinese 59, 243, 254, 255, 258, 266, 267, 275, 277 conditions of 252 cultural 256
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Nabis, the 45 National Art Academy, Dusseldorf 180 National Art Museum of China, Beijing 60, 91, 93, 94, 96, 99, 100, 105, 108, 156, 157, 161, 167, 215, 279 National Congress of Literature and Art Workers 63 National Exhibition of Young Art 91 National Fine Art Exhibition 10 nationalism 32, 59, 193, 245 anti-Western 203 authoritarian 250 extreme 244 Native Soil Art 91 neo-colonialist 170 neoliberal neoliberal/democratic 10, 11, 16, 20, 32, 221 neo-millenarian 25 New Analyst Group 124, 154, 74, 75, 76 New China 7, 9 New Culture Movement (Xin Wenhau Yundong) 52–4, 67 New History Group New History 1993: Mass Consumption 209 New Ink Painting 118–19 New labour 274 New Left (in the prc) 32 New Life Movement 61 New Measurement Group 124 New Youth (La Jeunesse) 52
Ni, Haifeng 118 Ni, Yide 56, 57, 64 Nietzsche, Friedrich 45, 53, 82, 134, 135, 138 nirvana (Buddhism) 116, 125 Nixon, Richard 79 No Name Group (Wuming huahui) 68, 93 Noh theatre 49 non-rationalism 82 non-standpoint 191 Northern Art Group 124, 130–40, 148, 50, 51, 52 Northern Culture 131, 134, 138 Northern Expedition 61 O’Keeffe, Georgia 46 Oil Painting Research Association 87, 94 Okakura, Kakuzo The Book of Tea 47 Oliva, Achille Bonita 170 One Hundred Flowers Bloom 86, 88, 89 Open Space (exhibition) 200 Opening and Reform 7, 26, 29, 85, 98, 99, 104, 122, 131, 171, 172, 191, 244, 275 Opium Wars (Anglo-Chinese Wars) 51, 125 orientalism 269 Painting Exhibition of the Twelve 87 Pan, Gongkai 29, 280 Snow Melting in Lotus (installation) 15, 16 Pan, Tianshou 71 Pang, Xunqin 56, 57, 64 Panopticism 276 paradigm shift (Thomas Kuhn) 131, 134 paramount leader 85, 171 Pater, Walter 45 patriarchy 9, 274 Peacock Room 45 People’s Republic of China (prc) 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 20, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104,
105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 130, 131, 138, 141, 143, 144, 149, 151, 154, 156, 157, 159, 161, 164, 165, 167, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 229, 230, 235, 236, 237, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 255, 257, 258, 264, 267, 268, 274, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283 Peking 43, 50 Peng, Yu Aquatic Wall 127 Fuck Off (exhibition) 224 Infatuated with Injury (exhibition) 222 Linked Bodies 222, 128 Soul Killing 210, 123 People’s Liberation Army (pla) 61, 62, 65, 69, 70, 72, 161, 163, 183, 229 Persistent Deviation/Corruptionists (exhibition) 219–220 Picasso, Pablo 56, 101, 108 political content 87, 104, 195, 202 correctness 246, 249 criticism 214 subjectivity 32 Political Pop (Zhengzhi bopu) 15, 16, 20, 122–3, 140, 156, 185, 186, 191, 192, 193, 195, 268 Politics of Eros 136 politics of identity 246 Pollock, Jackson 48 Polo, Marco 41 Pond Association (Chi She) 124, 140–49, 167 No. 1 – Yang Style Tai Chi Series 60, 61, 62, 63 No. 2 – Strollers in the Green Space 65, 66 1985 New Space (exhibition) 140 Pop Art 185 American 78
313 | I N D E X
Eurocentric 243 experience of 253 global(ized) 249, 276 materialistic 256 post-socialist 283 representations of 252, 254 total modernity 264, 266 Western(ized) 50, 52, 203, 251, 254, 257, 258 Mondrian, Piet 185 Morning Flower Society 60 Multiculturalism 10, 246 Munch, Edvard 108 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 194 Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco 198
314 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
pornography 31, 230, 277 postcolonialism 193, 203, 246, 247, 248, 252, 259 post-imperial China 9 nation state 26 post-Maoist 9, 25, 26, 89, 107, 109 post-Meiji Japan 50, 51 postmodernism 34, 79, 80, 115, 116, 124, 175, 203, 254, 256 artistic 82, 115 deconstructivist 111, 201, 264 global 198 international 11, 20, 24, 193, 202, 211, 242, 243, 259, 268, 275 Western 117, 149, 252, 254, 255, 265 postmodernist(s) 24, 28, 31, 34, 82, 265 architectural theories 257 art 11, 31, 108, 109, 111, 124, 202, 230, 254, 255, 256, 257, 264, 265 artistic production 269 artists 115 conceptualism 256 critique 253 -deconstructivist 202, 253 interpretative perspectives 253 modes 261 notion 259 /postcolonialist 39, 167 problematization 253 reading 11 scepticism 267 sensibilities 79 shift 79 suspension 254 theory and practice 36 thought and practice 259, 265 view 251, 267 Western culture 245 poststructuralism 34, 79 Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion (exhibition) 220, 222 post-West society 247 Pound, Ezra 49 power-knowledge 37 pre-modernist 251 private property rights 225
Progressive Young Chinese Artists Exhibition 105 proletarian culture 64 Pu, Jie Daughters 110 public antipathy 243 public art 8, 29 institutions 75 museums 236, 237, 240, 241 public art museums 236, 237, 240, 241 public criticism 67, 85, 86, 87, 104, 121, 213, 276 public criticism (piping) 107 public discourse 9, 10 public order 95, 96, 214, 216, 218 publicness 32, 216, 283 pure model (of cultural production) 71, 118, 202 Puyi (emperor) 50 Qi, Baishi 59, 64 Qianlong Emperor 44 qianwei (avant–garde) 29, 120–21, 124 Qin Dynasty 51, 86 Qin, Ga Infatuated with Injury (exhibition) 222 Qin, Yifeng M Group 151 untitled 72 Qing Dynasty 53 Qiu, Zhijie 194, 217 ‘Art and Historical Consciousness’ 209 Copying the ‘Orchid Pavilion Preface’ 175, 91, 92, 93 ‘Documents of Video Art’ 209 Image and Phenomena (exhibition) 208 Long March Project 229, 133, 134 On the New Life 182, 97, 98 Post-Sense Sensibility (exhibition) 220 Trace of Existence (exhibition) 216 Qu, Leilei 93, 100, 101 Quadrio, Davide 199 BizArt 198 radical democracy 32 radical racism 249
Ramadan, Khaled 248 Ran, Yunfei 281 Rancière, Jacques 24 rapprochement 214, 277 Rational Painting 135, 138, 140, 148 Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange Project 108 Rauschenberg, Robert 78, 108–9, 115 realism 42, 57, 110 academic 91, 105 formalist 118 tradition of 190 Western 55, 56, 59 reconstructed space 27, 255 recuperation 31, 277, 279 Red Brigade 124, 151–2 Red Guards (Hongwei bing) 69–72, 74, 107, 117, 118, 157 Red Humour 117–118, 124, 130 Red Light, Bright 66 Reeves, John 49 Reeves, John Russell 49 Reinhardt, Ad 47 Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art, 1990–2002 (exhibition) 236, 246 relational art 271 relativism 266 intellectual 45 pragmatic 265 Ren, Jian Northern Art Group 130 New History 1993: Mass Consumption (exhibition) 209 Research Institute of Sculpture, Beijing 222 Resolution to Cease All Performances and Bloody, Brutal Displays of Obscenity in the Name of Art (Chinese Ministry of Culture directive) 224 Revolutionary Alliance 55 revolutionary consciousness 229 revolutionary machine 63 Ricci, Matteo 43–4 Roberts, Claire 255 Roberts, John 36 Rural Art Movement 66 Rural Realism (Native Soil Art) 91, 131
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
site-specific (artworks) 110, 141, 142, 144, 149, 171, 185, 208, 209, 210, 211, 217, 220 Six Announcements 56 Smart Museum of Art, Chicago 217 social Darwinism 257 democracy 61 harmony 244 mobility 181, 247 praxis 10, 120, 247 social progress 10, 31, 219 revolutionary 9 modernizing 102 socialist market economy 181 socialist realism 65, 66, 67, 68, 75, 87, 89, 93, 94, 104, 107, 109, 117, 120, 131, 185, 198 soft power 31, 279 soldiers, workers and peasants 66, 186 Song Dynasty 8, 50, 140 Song, Chenghua 118 Song, Dong 209, 215, 216 Breathing 121, 122 A Kettle of Boiling Water 174, 90 Breathing 207 Father and Son at the Ancestral Temple 217 Song, Haidong M Group 149, 151 Song, Kun 269 It’s My Life (installation) 151, 152, 153, 154 Song, Ling 167 Pond Association 140, 141 Song, Yongping Street Action: Crush Bicycles 182 Soulages, Pierre 48 Southern Artists Salon 124 First Experimental Exhibition 149, 68, 69 Soviet Union 63, 66, 118, 172 Spring and Autumn Period 51 Stachelhaus, Heiner 180 Staff, Donald 108 Stars (Xingxing) 93–105, 107, 203, 216 state control 67, 106, 130, 181, 211 State Council 63 Stieglitz, Alfred 47
Storm Society (Juelanshe) 56–7, 64 Su Chen, Chun-Wuei 108 sublime 82, 134, 148, 149, 152 postmodern 253 Sui Dynasty 53 Sui, Jianguo 218 Sullivan, Michael 38, 39, 47, 48 Summer Palace 94, 259 Sun, Yat-sen 50, 55, 61 Sun, Yuan Aquatic Wall 127 Fuck Off (exhibition) 224 Honey 220, 126 Infatuated with Injury (exhibition) 222 Linked Bodies 222, 128 Soul Killing 210, 123 Surrealism 47, 79 surveillance 241 Suzuki, D.T. 48 Synchronization 26, 31, 172, 202, 242 Szeemann, Harald Rent Collection Courtyard 198 Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard 198 taijitu (yin-yang symbol) 48 Tang Dynasty 49, Tang, Guangming M Group 151 Tang, Song 159 Dialogue (The Gunshot Event) 80 Tangshan earthquake 83 Tel Quel 79 ternary thinking 275 The Garage (exhibition) 178 The Wall: Reshaping Chinese Contemporary Art (exhibition) 38, 237 third space 253, 269 Three Prominences (santuchu) 66 Tiananmen 160, 161, 163, 166, 172, 280 aftermath of 191 killings 16, 32, 37, 160, 163, 166, 167, 172, 178, 191 post-Tiananmen crackdown 24, 166, 171, 172, 175, 214, 216 post-Tiananmen period 185 post-Tiananmen restrictions 171
315 | I N D E X
Said, Edward 12 Sāo Paulo Biennial 12 Scar Art 91 Scar Literature 91 scholar-gentry 8, 9, 43, 50, 52, 53, 58, 61, 102, 104, 109, 174–5 self-surveillance 121, 166, 283 sent-down youth 91 Shanghai (art colleges) Oil Painting Institute 54 Painting and Art Institute 54 Sino-Western Drawing and Painting School 54 Shanghai Art Museum 236 Shanghai Biennale 34, 200, 224, 277, 280 Shanghai eArts Festival 32 Shanghai Gallery of Art 28 Shanghai May Third Cartoon Society 60 ShanghArt Gallery 200, 115 shan-shui (ink-and-brush painting) 54, 58, 140, 148 Sheeler, Charles 46, 47 Shen, Kuiyi The Art of Modern China 38 Sheng Qi 83 Shi, Jiu ‘On New Space and the Pond Association’ 148 Shi, Zhenyu 67 shidai jingshen (spirit of an epoch) 27 Shu, Qun Absolute Principle 56 ‘An Explanation of the Northern Art Group’ 132 Northern Art Group 130–36 Rational Painting 135 Rigorous Religious Dialogue 57 ‘The Spirit of the Northern Art Group’ 132 Shu, Yang First Open Art Platform 201 shui-mo (ink and was painting) 54, 58, 65 Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts 90 Sichuan School 90–91, 131 Silk Road 41 Sino-Japanese War first 51 second 50, 61
protests 163 Square 83, 94, 96, 160, 161, 183, 207 Square massacre 26, 37, 119, 160, 164, 166, 171, 210 Times Art Society 60 ‘To Get Rich is Glorious’ (Deng Xiaoping) 180 Tobey, Mark 47, 49 Today Art Museum, Beijing 240 Total modernity 29, 252, 255, 258, 264, 266 Trace of Existence: a Private Showing of Contemporary Chinese Art ’98 216, 219 tracklessness 149 transcendent time 27, 255 transformation of urban space 209 transgender 204 transnational networks 24 transnationalism 12, 198, 261, 268 Trans-realism 109 Treaty of Versailles 52 Tushan-wan Arts and Crafts Centre 54 Twitter 281 Two Hundreds directive 85, 86
316 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Übermensch 134 Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing 240 Ulmer, Gregory L. 81, 82 urbanization 29, 131, 140, 202, 226 Utrillo, Maurice 68 Uytterhaegan, Frank 218 vague directives 88, 166 van Dijk, Hans 143, 218 van Dijk, Jan 24 van Elzen, Sus 38 van Gogh, Vincent 68 van Rijn, Rembrandt 42 Vancouver Art Gallery 194 Vanguard (exhibition) 152 vanguard status 29 Venice Biennale 12, 29, 195, 196, 236, 280 48th Venice Biennale 167, 195 46th Venice Biennale 195 45th Venice Biennale 170 Viola, Bill 79, 82
violence sacrificial 219, 221 sadomasochistic 151 Vlaminck, Maurice 56 Von Sandrart, Joachim Teutsche Akademie 42 Waley, Arthur 49 Walker, Alice 264 wan shang (play appreciation) 110 Wang, Chunchen 280 Wang, Chuyu First Open Art Platform (exhibition) 201 Wang, Deren 159 Wang, Eugene Y. 58 Wang, Gongxin Image and Phenomena (exhibition) 208, 209 Trace of Existence (exhibition) 216 Wang, Guangyi 117, 122, 194 China/Avant-garde (exhibition) 159 Frozen North Pole 54 Great Criticism 186, 8, 104 ‘Liquidate Humanist Enthusiasm’ 156 Northern Art Group 130–38 Political Pop 185, 269 Rational Painting 135, 55 Red Rationalism and Black Rationalism 138, 58 ‘We – Participants of the “’85 Art Movement”’ 132 Wang, Huangsheng 236 Wang, Jianwei 194, 216 P. 194 Wang, Keping, 99, 101 Breathing 100 Idol 100, 35 Long, Long Life! 100 Silence 100, 36 Stars (xingxing) 93–8 Wang, Lihong 281 Wang, Lin ‘Oliva is Not the Saviour of Chinese Art’ 170 Wang, Luyan New Analyst Group 154 Wang, Meqin 244
Wang, Qiang Pond Association 140–149 The Start of the 2nd Movement of the 5th Symphony 140, 148 Wang, Xiaojian 130 Wang, Xingwei 218 Wang, Yazhong 182 waning of criticality 269, 271 Warhol, Andy 79, 185 Diamond Dust Shoes 254, 265 Warring States Period 86 Wei, Guangqing China/Avant-garde (exhibition) 159 Suicide Project 110, 41, 42 Wei, Jingsheng 87 wenhua (self-cultivation) 53, 135 Westernized culture 243 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill 45 white cube 247, 269 White Terror 75 Whittaker, Iona 25 Wilkinson, Robert 254 Wolff, Christian 48 Wolff, Kurt 48 world spirit 55 World Trade Organization (wto) 37, 225, 245 wounded spirit 151 Wu, Guanzhong ‘On the Beauty of Form in Painting’ 89 Wu, Hung 24, 26, 37, 152, 157, 171, 172, 202, 211 ‘A Case of Being “Contemporary”: Conditions Spheres and Narratives of Contemporary Chinese Art’ 28, 252, 255, 261 Cancelled: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China (exhibition) 217 Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents 38 Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art 38 Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (exhibition) 236 Wu, Mali 180 The Road is Carved by Man 28
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
xi hua (modernist art) 57, 58 Xiamen Dada 105, 115–116, 124, 130 Burning Event 124–5 Events (exhibition) 124–5 Xiamen Dada Modern Art Exhibition 124 xiandaixing (modernity) 27 Xiao, Lu 159 Dialogue (The Gunshot Event) 159–60, 80 Xiao, Yu Infatuated with Injury (exhibition) 222 Xie, He The Record of the Classification of Old Painters 54–5, 266 Xie, Nanxing 218 xieyi (sketch conceptualism) 58 Xing, Danwen Maximalist painting 261 xingxiang siwei (image-thinking) 89 Xinhai Revolution 50 Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region 250 Xu, Bing 166, 242 A Book From the Sky (initially titled A Mirror to Analyse the World – Fin de Siècle Book) 20, 14 China/ Avant-garde (exhibition) 159 Ghosts Pounding the Wall 171, 89 Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy 167, 88 ‘On Words’ 171 Xu, Beihong 56 Xu, Hong ‘Walking Out of the Abyss: My Feminist Critique’ 208 Xu, Ruotao Persistent Deviation/Corruptionists (exhibition) 219 Xu, Wenli 94, 96, 97
Xu, Yihui Persistent Deviation/Corruptionists (exhibition) 219 Xu, Zhen BizArt 198, 134 Yan, Li 93, 98, 100 Home 37 Yan’an Rectification Movement 63 Yan’an Talks on Literature and the Arts 63 Yang, Dongbai M Group 151 Yang, Fudong 34, 226, 269 Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest Part 1 19 Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest Part 2 20 No Snow on the Broken Bridge 129, 130 East of Que Village 131, 132 Post-Sense Sensibility (exhibition) 220 Yang, Jiechang One Hundred Layers of Ink – Voyage en Mexique 2 Magiciens de la Terre (exhibition) 11, 163, 175, 1 Yang, Jun China/Avant-garde (exhibition) 159 Yang, Xu M Group 151 Sense of Violence 151 Yang, Yiping 93 Yang, Yushu 67 Yangwu movement 51 Yao, Wenyuan 70 Ye, Shuanggui The New History Group 209 Yeats, William Butler 49 Yentob, Alan Ai Weiwei: Without Fear or Favour 281 Yi (Daoist concept of ‘One’) 110 Yi, Dan 107 Yin, Xiuzhen ‘Clothes Chest’208 Trace of Existence (exhibition) 216 yin (latent) 254 Yin, Guangzhong 254
Yin, Jinan 185 yin-yang 111, 115, 267 Yishu-shichang (Art-Market) magazine 181 Yiyang, Shao 242 Youth Information Communication Centre of Northern Art 130 Yu, Hong The New History Group 209 Yu, Youhan 68, 110, 117, 122–3, 185, 194 Golden Time 9 untitled 24, 25 The World is Yours 46 1986–5 79 The 50s 103 Yuan, Qingyi The Spring is Coming 109 Yuan, Yuansheng The Water Splashing Festival 90, 30 Yue, Minjun 156, 191, 217, 269 untitled 12 yundong (movement) 29, 122 Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai 240 Zhai, Zhenming 120 Zhan, Wang 216 ‘’94 Action Plan for Debris Salvage Schemes for Implementation and Results’ 211 Zhang, Chunqiao 70 Zhang, Da’an 67 Zhang, Dali 210, 219 Demolition 147 Dialogue and Demolition 124 ‘Dialogue on Dialogue’ 211 Self-Portrait, Jinmao Tower, Shanghai 261 Zhang, Defeng Trace of Existence (exhibition) 216 Zhang, Guoliang untitled 72 Zhang, Haier 218 Zhang, Haizhou 118 Zhang, Huan 204 Sixty-Five Kilograms 116, 117 Twelve Square Metres 118 To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond 125
317 | I N D E X
Wu, Shanzhuan 117, 194 China/Avant–garde (exhibition) 159 Red Humour No.1: This Afternoon No Water 117, 45 Wyeth, Andrew 91
318 | CO N T E M P O R A R Y C H I N E S E A R T
Copyright © 2014. Reaktion Books, Limited. All rights reserved.
Zhang, Nian China/Avant-garde (exhibition) 159 Zhang, Peili 179, 194, 209, 30 x 30 111, 43 A Gust of Wind 144, 67 Art Project No.2 156 China/Avant-garde (exhibition) 159 Document on Hygiene No. 3 178, 94 Image and Phenomena (exhibition) 208 Midsummer Swimmers 59 Pond Association 140–42 Wrapping Up – King and Queen 64 Zhang, Qun In the New Era: Enlightenment of Adam and Eve 105, 109 Zhang, Sanxi The New History Group 209 Zhang, Shengquan Infatuated with Injury (exhibition) 222 Zhang, Xiaogang 191, 194, 235 Bloodline – Big Family 107 Green Wall – About Sleep 140 Zhang, Yonghe Trace of Existence (exhibition) 216 Zhang, Zhaohui 218 Zhao, Jianhai 299 Zhao, Wenliang 67 untitled 22 Untitled 23 Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts 140, 141, 182 Zhejiang Youth Creation Group 140, 141 Zheng, Bo 32 Zheng, Guogu 218 Zheng, Lianjie Binding the Lost Soul 259, 145, 146 zhengzhi xing (politics) 32 Zhong, Ahcheng 93 Zhongguo dangdai yishu (Chinese contemporary art) 7, 26, 27, 29, 31, 120, 172 Zhongguo meishu bao (Fine Arts in China) magazine 108, 109, 115, 132, 134, 149 Zhongguo xiandai yishu (Chinese modern art) 26, 29, 107, 120
Zhou, Tiehai 151, 217, 115 Sense of Violence 151 Zhou, Xiping The New History Group 209 Zhou, Yan China/Avantgarde (exhibition) 157 Northern Art Group 130 Zhu, Fadong Looking for a Missing Person 184, 99, 100 Zhu, Ming First Open Art Platform 201 Zhu, Yu Dead Body Group 222 Post-Sense Sensibility (exhibition) 222 Zhu, Zude ‘Purifying Artistic Language’154 Zhuangzi 115 Zhuhai Conference 108, 156 Ziyue (rock band) 219 Žižek, Slavoj 24 Zoroastrianism 47