Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
Gao Minglu
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
in association with China Art Foundation
London, England London, England
© 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. The publisher would like to thank the China Art Foundation for the generous gift which made this publication possible. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email
[email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Adobe Garamond Pro by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in China. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gao, Minglu. Total modernity and the avant-garde in twentieth-century Chinese art / Gao Minglu. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01494-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Art, Chinese—20th century—Themes, motives. 2. Art and society—China—History—20th century. I. Title. N7345.G29 2011 709.51'0904—dc22 2010018967
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Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction
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1
Part One: The Avant-Garde in the Past 1
Avant-Garde and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
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Academicism and the Amateur Avant-Garde in the Post-Cultural Revolution Period (1979–1984)
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Part Two: The ’85 Movement 3
The Map of the ’85 Avant-Garde Movement
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The “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition of 1989
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Metaphysical Modernity
101 141
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Rationalist Painting and Current of Life Painting 6
Chan Meets Dada
199
Merging Destruction and Tradition in the Avant-Garde Mentality 7
Metaphor over Meaning
219
Language Art and Gray Humor Part Three: The Post-’85 Avant-Garde 8
Kitsch and Complicity
255
The Case of Political Pop and Cynical Realism 9
Apartment Art
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Maximalism
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Conclusion
269 311
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Glossary of Key Chinese Terms in the Order in Which They Appear in the Text Notes
371
Index
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363
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Acknowledgments
To my wife, Sun Jing
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Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
The book is not a product of the academic library only but comes from my personal experience in both practical and academic life, in China and in the States, over the last three decades. I am very grateful to the people who have supported my work during this time. The book draws on my research work of the 1980s, including the book Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, coauthored by myself, Zhou Yan, Wang Xiaojian, Shu Qun, Wang Mingxian, and Tong Dian. I would like to take this opportunity to commemorate the collaboration of these colleagues, as noted in detail in the following chapters. The book also draws on my Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard University. I would very much like to thank the mentors who supported and advised my American academic life and studies. Among them, professors Julia F. Andrews, Wu Hung, and Norman Bryson have been especially supportive. It was Professor Andrews who first invited me to Ohio State University as a visiting scholar associated with the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China (a program sponsored by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences). Professor Wu Hung was my primary advisor when I came to the doctoral program at Harvard; when he left for the University of Chicago a year later, Professor Norman Bryson became my main advisor and thesis advisor. His kindness and his insights on Western theory have benefited my research very deeply. I’d also like to thank professors Cherie Wendelken and Eugene Wang, the other members of my dissertation committee at Harvard. I am not able to list all of the colleagues who have supported me in the past, but among them I particularly appreciate Vishakha Desai, former
Acknowledgments
director of the Asia Society Art Museum, Sandra H. Olsen, the director of the University of Buffalo Art Galleries, Wang Yudong, former director of the China Millennium Art Museum, Kirk Savage, the chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as all my colleagues at Pitt, in particular Terry Smith and Katheryn Linduff. I also owe thanks to Huang Bingyi, an artist and professor at the University of Buffalo, for her help on this project as well as her earlier contributions to Maximalism and The Wall. I am also indebted to previous editors, including Joseph Newland for his editing of my dissertation, Philip Tinari for work on Maximalism, and Sheri Lullo on the introduction of the present book. I offer special thanks and appreciation to Professor Megan McShane of Florida Gulf Coast University, my primary editor on this book, for her significant contribution to the project. Megan spent a month of intensive work with me and my assistant, not only carefully editing but also helping me to put in shape the “Rationale for the Organization of the Book” at the end of the introduction, as well as compiling the glossary of key Chinese terms for the book. I really appreciate Megan’s help and friendship, which made it possible to accomplish the project on time. My assistants helped me with many details. I particularly thank Wang Zhiliang and Zhou Wenji for their effort, as well as Jiang Ying and Wang Lingzheng for devoting their summer vacation to helping me prepare this book. At the MIT Press, this project was taken on by executive editor Roger Conover, who pushed me to revise and update the manuscript over the past three years. I appreciate Roger’s persistence, and the logistical support of Anar Badalov. I’d very much like
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to thank the editorial, design, and production team at the Press, including Matthew Abbate and Jessica Niles DeHoff for their hard work on the long process of editing the work, as well as Yasuyo Iguchi for her design talents. I really appreciate the strong support of the artists who have sent me firsthand materials from their work year by year through the last three decades. This has not only helped to establish my personal archive of Chinese contemporary art, but in particular has made this highly illustrated book possible. The images and materials from the book as well as from my archive bring many good memories of exciting communication between myself and the artists, either in person or by mail. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Pearl Lam, the chair of the China Art Foundation, and to Susan Hayden, and Philip Dodd, members of the board of the Foundation, for their friendship and their support of this project. Gao Minglu
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Acknowledgments
Introduction
For people from the West, it is very difficult to imagine that the meaning of modernity has been important for the Chinese, yet Chinese intellectuals have debated it, intensely, for more than a hundred years. Even at the dawn of the twenty-first century, amid rapid globalization, “modern” (xiandai) is still the preferred term, as is evident in phrases like “modern fashion” (xiandai shishang), “modern metropolis” (xiandai dushi), “modern style” (xiandai fengmao), and “modern design” (xiandai sheji). Of course, these designations all refer to the present moment of their utterance, and not to the modern era of Europe and the United States since the late eighteenth century, or to the time and taste of Western artistic modernism. Meanwhile, contemporary Chinese also very frequently use the term “contemporaneity” (dangdaixing) as a synonym for “modernity.” When we speak about Chinese contemporary art, the word “contemporary” refers to the past three decades of new artistic production, the years since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. When we speak of the “contemporaneity” of Chinese contemporary art, however, we are referring to the special markers that tie this art to the particular social and cultural environment of a specific period, or what modern Chinese call shidai jingshen, or “spirit of an epoch.” In the indigenous Chinese context, this “spirit of an epoch” has often been regarded as the equivalent of “modernity” (xiandaixing) in the narrative of modern Chinese history. This “modernity” should not be confused with “modernity” in the Euro-American sense of a marker of temporal logic (as part of a sequence from premodern to modern and then postmodern). Rather, it refers particularly to a specific time and a concrete space, and to the value choices of society
Introduction
at that time. This sense of the word had already emerged in the beginning of Chinese modern history, at the turn of the twentieth century. Since then, the consciousness of Chinese modernity has been determined by the condition of the nation. In my 1998 essay “Toward a Transnational Modernity,” I put it this way: “For the Chinese, modern has meant a new nation rather than a new epoch. Thus, Chinese modernity is a consciousness of both transcendent time and reconstructed space with a clear national, cultural and political territorial boundary.”1 In this introduction, I will first distinguish Chinese modernity from its Western referential origin, and argue that the fundamental characteristic of Chinese modernity can be interpreted as a permanent condition of contemporaneity, driven by a kind of empiricism, throughout modern Chinese history. In the second part, I will discuss how Chinese modernity has shaped the horizon of contemporary Chinese avant-garde art, locating it within a particular spatial perspective and experience. Throughout the discussion I will show that recognition of dislocation and displacement—in the sense of a merging of art and society by complex negotiations between various spaces—can be seen as an embodiment of the mixture of consciousness with imagination and cognition, as well as specific and concrete experiences of the avantgarde artists. This notion of “space” is essential for an understanding of Chinese modernity and the avantgarde in contemporary art. Total Modernity in the Form of a Trinity
How can we distinguish Chinese modernity from Western modernity, which has influenced Chinese art since the early twentieth century? The difficulty, in
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real cultural praxis, is that what we call the “essence” of Chinese modernity and the Western concept of modernity are, in fact, bound in a tension of acceptance and resistance, as well as a relation of dislocation. This difficulty, however, should not prevent us from searching for a closer narrative of Chinese modernity as differentiated from the Western concept. On the theoretical level, the best way to discover the “essence,” or an accurate narrative of Chinese modernity, is to compare what is considered as modernity in the Chinese context with the contemporary theory of Western modernity. As I understand it, there are two guiding principles in the Western theory of modernity. First, “modernity” is about a historical time and epoch, as Jürgen Habermas indicates.2 It divides human history into premodern, modern, and postmodern epochs. Concepts such as “traditional” and “modern” are discursive structures that originated in the West during its period of modernization, where they were associated with “backwardness” and “progress,” respectively. Using these categories, the history and art of Third World countries has been judged against the principle of Euro-American modernity and reduced to either old or new, past or future. As a result, negative judgments on modern and contemporary non-Western literature and art, based on this inequitable dichotomy, are ubiquitous in studies of these fields.3 The second principle is the theory of the two opposite modernities, which is based on a further dichotomy, that is, aesthetic modernity as set against the materialistic modernity of bourgeois society. This, too, is described by Habermas, and elaborated by Peter Bürger, Matei Calinescu, and other scholars.4 In Euro-American modern art history, aesthetic modernity often appears as a manifestation of the criticism of the materialized modernity of capitalist society. The critical tendency of aesthetic modernity, however, can either move toward a pure aestheticizing material culture—what one may call “autonomous aestheticism,” such as the formalism that the critic Clement Greenberg advocated—or it may move toward a critical, conceptualized material culture—what we may call “critical aestheticism,” as embodied in the legacy of Marcel Duchamp and the conceptual art of the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore,
2
Introduction
this split between two modernities is commonly recognized as a result of the original project of cultural modernization, which emerged during the French Enlightenment in the form of three autonomous spheres: science, morality, and art.5 These two principles have effectively shaped Western art history. They not only describe a logical progress of the historical line of Euro-American art history, but also fit the socioeconomic contexts of the transitional age from the early to the late modern period. The dichotomy-based theory of modernity in a capitalist culture has been adopted as an aesthetic foundation by revolutionary artists and critics during different periods: thus Baudelaire’s consciousness of modern life in romanticism; Adorno and Horkheimer’s theory of art’s negativity relative to an all-pervasive cultural industry; Greenberg’s aesthetic formalism; the counterinstitutional inquiry launched by conceptual art; the merging and confrontation of high and low culture in pop art; and the postmodernist theories of the cultural logic of late capitalist society advanced by Fredric Jameson and other scholars. The model of periodization natural to EuroAmerican modernity may not fit the experience of most non-Western countries, and in particular Third World societies, which lack a clear historical line of progression from premodern to modern and postmodern. On the contrary, Third World societies have been obliged to merge characteristics of all these periods, adopting them in hybrid forms, and often using incompatible elements at the same time. These processes may also have been experienced differently in different nations, and shaped according to local priorities. In some societies, such as in China, modernization has lasted for a century; in others, such as in Malaysia, the term applies to only a few decades. Third World countries, therefore, have experienced modernity more through changes in their social environments and political spaces than through more abstract notions of time and epoch. Although certain terms, such as “new” and “modern,” have repeatedly been used to discuss cultural phenomena in these regions, they tend to refer to the pursuit of a certain ideal environment within a Western referential model. In this situation, time and epoch are more flexible. In terms of the Euro-American epochal sequence, they can appear in reverse order. They are always ready to
be metaphorized along with the shaping of a specific social space at a particular time. After the Cultural Revolution, for instance, when Chinese city construction began to reach its first phase of modernization, debate in the architectural field was not about modernism, but rather about postmodernism. Since the 1990s, however, due above all to rapid urbanization, these debates have shifted their attention to theories and controversies about modernity and modernism. In the former case, in a society suddenly opened up to the influence of Western contemporary theory, postmodernity was considered mostly as a set of concepts that served as the first step in a search for modernity.6 In the latter case, modernity is being specified and merged into a true condition of Chinese urban construction in the current booming, globalized society.7 This sequence-reversed epochal terminology suggests that the consciousness of time in China might always have been determined by the experience of a specific physical space and social environment. It is this experience that has made the consciousness of modernity in China, and perhaps in other Third World countries as well, more specific, empiricist, heightened, and thus problematic compared to the Euro-American historical chronology outlined above. Rather than instituting a split between the different autonomous spheres—religion, politics, morality, and art—the mainstream of Chinese intellectual thinking in the modern and contemporary period tends to try to close the gap between different fields as well as between past and present. For instance, Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), an influential educator and philosopher of modern Chinese history, in his famous 1917 lecture “Replace Religion with Fine Art,” advocated that aesthetics and art practice were equal in social importance to religion and commitment to morality.8 Chinese modern and contemporary art is 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: a totality that can merge culture, aesthetics, and life as a whole. The consciousness of modernity in China, therefore, has long been framed within what I call
Introduction
the project of “total modernity.” This was, perhaps, best elaborated in the theory of Hu Shi, a leading figure of the New Cultural Movement of the early twentieth century, who transformed the principles of early-twentieth-century American pragmatism into the Chinese cultural context and combined them with traditional Confucian pragmatism. Influenced by Darwin’s theory of “the survival of the fittest,” Hu Shi once defined his new pragmatism as a principle of seeking truth in modern society. He noted, however, that “the truth is nothing more than a tool for dealing with the environment. As the environment changes, the truth changes with it. The real knowledge needed by humanity is not absolute principle and reason, but rather particular time, specific space, and the truth of mine.”9 We could legitimately take Hu’s notion of “particular time, specific space, and the truth of mine” as the principle of Chinese modernity in the form of a trinity, one that breaks down and transcends the dichotomy formation of Western modernity. This trinity, qua trinity, also subverts dichotomous thought patterns, such as subject versus object and time versus space, emphasizing instead a network of forever-changing relations between human subjectivity, living space, and experience. Furthermore, this trinity principle does not attempt to become a philosophical framework on a metaphysical level; rather, it is to be embodied in the experience of daily practice. That is to say, considered within the perspective of daily environment and a person’s choice of truth and value, time is always a particular moment (not a linear, historical construct), and space is always ongoing, mutable, and actual. This pragmatic principle of daily experience is well illustrated in a socialist extremity by Deng Xiaoping’s famous sayings, such as “Cross the river by jumping from stone to stone on the riverbed” (mozhe shitou guohe) and “White cat, black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat” (bamao heimao, zhuazhu haozi jiushi haomao). Both are metaphors of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which was the guiding principle of economic reform initiated in 1978. Perhaps these perceptions can also be seen as illustrations of Hu Shi’s trinity theory of modernity. This principle of modernity has been adopted in Chinese political and cultural projects throughout
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modern and contemporary history. Although history and art in China have changed rapidly since the early twentieth century, this heritage of pragmatism has consistently influenced contemporary Chinese art, including the avant-garde projects of the last three decades. It is this total modernity with its trinity principle that forms the foundation of the Chinese avantgarde aesthetic, an aesthetic that cannot be separated from the political sphere. The political sphere, likewise, cannot be split from the aesthetic. Avantgarde aesthetic and avant-garde ideology have been embodied by a total spatial experience in which the consciousness of time ultimately serves space. It is this total modernity that has established a permanent condition of “contemporaneity” as the Chinese model of “modernity.” By being overwhelmingly concerned with space and environment during the last three decades, Chinese contemporary art has truly evidenced the principle of total modernity. The consciousness of space in Chinese contemporary art, I have claimed, has been driven by a kind of empiricism embedded in the experience of location and dislocation and 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. In the second part of this introduction, I will develop my argument by discussing some specific art phenomena, such as the Chinese avant-garde, urban spectacle, maximalism—a kind of “abstract” art—and Chinese women’s art as examples of these changes. Avant-Garde Space
Although the avant-garde as an energizing force in Western art died during the 1970s, and the concept of avant-gardism fell into disrepute (not least among artists), it has subsequently flourished in China. This is one reason why the Chinese avant-garde needs to be discussed from the perspective of Chinese social and artistic space, where a specific, local avant-garde consciousness has been embodied, rather than from the viewpoint of the Western ideology of modernism and its material culture. It is the attempts by Chinese artists to close the gulf between art and real
4
Introduction
space, rather than merely represent consciousness in materialized aesthetic space (for example, in artworks), that establishes a fundamental difference between Chinese avant-garde activity and its EuroAmerican counterpart. In the past three decades, the space for Chinese avant-garde art has undergone a tremendous transformation.10 The initial loosening of ideological taboos at the end of the 1970s, the cultural expansion of the 1980s, and the economic and market globalization since the 1990s have all exerted influences on the space for Chinese avant-garde art. The “space” in question refers not only to exhibition space but also to the space for art production, including artists’ studios, as well as to conceptual space in the form of interaction among artists and between artists and their audiences. As such, the rapid economic and political changes in the last three decades saw a correspondingly rapid change in Chinese avant-garde space from the 1970s painting society (huahui), to the 1980s art group (qunti), to the 1990s artists’ village (huajiacun), and finally to the art district (yishuqu), which has emerged in big cities from late 1990s to the present. Moreover, the space of the Chinese avant-garde refers not only to the occupation of working spaces by artists, but also to the conceptual space delineated by the political, academic, and commercial systems. To examine the space for Chinese avant-garde art practice is to explore not only the avant-garde ideology, but also its aesthetic. For instance, during the Cultural Revolution, the No Name, a self-organized avant-garde group, went into self-exile from political life by portraying a utopian world in their landscape life drawings. Their impressionist/traditional literati style, in particular drawing on traditional landscape painting, combined with their claim of “art for art’s sake,” has apparently nothing to do with the aesthetic autonomy portrayed by the Western avant-garde as a mode of rebellion against bourgeois society. Rather, the existence of their “pure art” was in itself a political phenomenon during the Cultural Revolution.11 The other example is apartment art, which emerged in the first half of the 1990s and demonstrated an aesthetic of randomness and simplicity in the form of small-scale installations commonly made of domestic materials. This daily-
life, experiential art practice reveals an avant-garde ideology in its response to the particular social space of the early 1990s, when the avant-garde retreated from public space to domestic space under political pressure from the authorities, on the one hand, and political pop and cynical realism became popular in the international market and museum space, on the other. Therefore, the aesthetic of apartment art can be seen as a social critique against both the authorities and the corrupted avant-garde itself. The development of Chinese avant-garde art has been linked to the political climate from the very start. Art spaces were transformed into political realms, especially before the mid-1990s. Furthermore, avant-garde ideology has also led to confrontation in the public sphere. The avant-garde of the 1980s was equipped with many different resources, including Western modern and postmodern art movements such as Dada, surrealism, German expressionism, and pop, and mixed with traditional philosophy, such as Chan (Zen) Buddhism, as well as Mao’s revolutionary heritage, in particular proletarian antagonistic sentiment and utopianism. Needless to say, all of these resources carry strong iconoclastic attitudes toward the existing orthodoxy. In contrast, autonomous aesthetic tendencies, such as cubism, constructivism, fauvism, and American abstract expressionism, have rarely influenced Chinese contemporary art since the Chinese art world opened to the West in the late 1970s. Instead, Dadaism, surrealism, and pop, which embodied the other tendency of critical aestheticism in twentieth-century Western art, have profoundly influenced Chinese avant-garde art. The sphere of avant-garde art is impossible to nail down, drifting as it does between art space and sociopolitical space, the official and the unofficial, the aboveground and the underground. Art has always existed in opposition to and in negotiation with social space. As a result, avant-garde art has not always moved ahead, but has retreated as well. Many exhibitions or projects have begun only to be shut down in no time, or have caused political controversy, thus converting an art event into a political affair, an art space into a political space. Two such transformations took place at the Stars exhibition in 1979 and the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition in 1989.12
Introduction
Nevertheless, in China the avant-garde’s perception of and attitude toward the relationships between art and the exogenous social sphere have undergone different stages of change in the last two decades. In general, avant-garde artists began to move into the public sphere before the 1990s but drew back during the 1990s, especially in the early part of the decade. Since 2000, the division between art and political space has slowly blurred, except in the case of certain extremely sensitive political issues and performance art. Moreover, the art world has become more diversified: where once it included only state museums, academies, and journals, it now encompasses a range of national, private, commercial, and academic institutions. This has multiplied the possibilities for artists, but the borders have thus become more ambiguous and flexible. It is this complex double or multiple social system that makes it more difficult to make a judgment on what is a true Chinese avant-garde in the current China. Today the notion of “avant-garde” no longer relies on style or theme, nor on what one may claim in one’s content or images; rather a true avant-garde is an intellectual position from which one is able to comment independently, that serves neither the state nor the market. This might suggest the third space of Homi Bhabha’s cultural theory; but it is an avantgarde identity particular to Chinese globalizing society at the turn of the twenty-first century. It no longer follows the pattern that Peter Bürger and other scholars have pointed out, developing from a historical avant-garde (or radical avant-garde) to a neo avant-garde, with the neo-avant-garde abandoning the antagonism of the radical avant-garde and committing to a masquerade strategy, to playing the institution as social critique against capitalism. This principle, apparently, can’t serve the Chinese avantgarde context, in which to be avant-garde means neither to be radical nor compromised toward one’s system, but is about how to survive in between and still maintain intellectual and critical standards. Avant-Garde Aesthetics in the Chinese Context
Although the Chinese avant-garde has been profoundly characterized by social engagement, it cannot be regarded as a pure political avant-garde without its
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own aesthetic motivation, or as a secondary branch of a linear evolution of the Western avant-garde and contemporary art. On the contrary, the Chinese avantgarde in the last three decades has been engaged in a project of total modernity. Such a project was initiated in the early twentieth century and continues to bridge the gulf between art and society. The ideology and aesthetic of the Chinese avant-garde as a total project cannot be separated into the notions of an aesthetic avant-garde and a social (or political) avant-garde, as we find in the study of the Western avant-garde. It is the peculiar social and artistic context as well as the aesthetic resources that the Chinese avant-garde adopted that have framed the discourse. Some Western scholars consider the Western avant-garde to be the experiment of aesthetic modernity that resulted from artists seeing themselves as alienated. The theory of alienation in capitalist society—initiated by Marxists, and developed by existentialists—has frequently been applied by Western scholars to characterize modernist artists, especially avant-gardists, as a rebellious, decadent, and resistant minority set against a capitalist society. Renato Poggioli paid particular attention to Marx’s idea of alienation and considered “avant-gardism as ideology and as an aesthetic myth.”13 He traced the origin of the Western avant-garde to midnineteenth-century romanticism. Unlike Poggioli, Clement Greenberg saw the contribution of the twentieth-century avant-garde (with its innovation of a nonrepresentational linguistic system) as an outcome of the French Enlightenment, a human evolution in visual language. Another important contribution to the theory of the avant-garde was Bürger’s critique of aesthetic autonomy that tried to relocate the Western avant-garde within the historical development of institutions in capitalist society.14 Rather than considering the avant-garde an ideological force resulting from alienation, Bürger realized that the avant-garde was itself part of the institutional framework of capitalism, and that its revolutionary rule had been the critique of institutionality as such. The contribution of the avant-gardists, therefore, was to turn the critique of institutions, especially that of Art, into the primary content of their artworks. Furthermore, works of the avant-garde, such as Duchamp’s Fountain, cannot be
6
Introduction
regarded as objects representative of an outside world; they themselves are part of the institutionalized system. Bürger thus attempted to bridge the gap between aesthetic autonomy (aesthetic modernity) and capitalist society (social modernity) by bonding them together as a part of the institutional structure in capitalist societies. This theory of the institution, it seems to me, comes from the notion of the “social base” in Marx’s theory. There, the social base in most situations is held to determine the form of whatever superstructure is built on it. Although Bürger’s theory attempted to transcend the dichotomy of modernity and the avant-garde, his consideration of institutions as the social base was still confined within the framework of aesthetic modernity versus capitalist modernity. The relation between changing institutions and the avant-garde as discussed in his book was not, in fact, an engagement of the avant-gardists with the institutional system as it operated in real social space. Rather, the artists still operated within an aesthetic space. The real world remained what he called “the object of investigation.”15 The difference between Bürger and Poggioli is that the former took as his point of departure the latter’s elaboration of avantgarde ideology in order to develop a more refined discourse of the universal aestheticism of the critical avant-garde. This difference, however, does not conceal the fact that both Bürger’s and Poggioli’s stances were based on the dichotomous theory of modernity and the avant-garde, and that both theories set up critical aestheticism against social modernity in capitalist societies. It becomes unlikely, therefore, that either of these theories will work for the Chinese model of the avant-garde, because the Chinese institutional system has been constructed in a totally different way. In it, both socialist and capitalist forces are influential. In addition, there remain in Chinese society clear markers of cultural and political boundaries. This makes the living space of the avant-garde much more complex and multidimensional. It invites constant negotiation between avant-garde activities and the public sphere, often leading to confrontation and requiring a variety of strategies for actions in the public space, such as gestures of offense, followed by retreat and relocation.
We may consider the Chinese avant-garde movement of the 1980s and 1990s as a response to alienation, targeting not the vulgarity and philistinism of a consumer society, as did their Western counterparts, but rather the dominant, ideologically driven society as it became combined with the commercial imperatives. Chinese avantgarde artists have always embraced society when seeking individualism and creative freedom. There is no way for them to escape to an ivory tower; on the contrary, they must go onto the street and confront both the public and the authorities. By using the idea of “the shock of the new,” an effective tool of Western avant-garde art for attacking the banal, vulgar taste of the middle class, Chinese avantgardists also created some extremely violent works. They did so, however, not to attack the masses, but rather to provoke authority while trying to stimulate thought among the populace. One of the main features of the Chinese avant-garde of the 1980s was the shunning of traditional studio work by artists who were focused instead on social projects taking place in the public sphere, such as villages, factories, streets, and plazas. This was a result of their idealism in seeking to enlighten the masses, their enjoyment of being involved in a movement, and a sensibility growing out of Mao’s revolutionary legacy. However, this kind of idealism was partially determined by the social context of 1980s China, which lacked an art market, either local or international. Despite the significant differences between the Western avant-garde and the ’85 Movement in terms of their targets and their acceptance, we might still find many ideological similarities on the levels of abstract spirituality and basic attitudes of rebelliousness, as Poggioli described in his four-part typology of the Western avant-garde.16 Even when the Chinese avant-garde retreated from public spaces in the early 1990s, their activities still demonstrated a peculiar avant-garde spatial motivation, which turned out to be a broad social and public matter, rather than a spatial concern of private life. Facing difficulties after the Tian’anmen Square incident and during the booming commercial society of the early 1990s—such as lack of acceptance of the avantgarde by both official and commercial galleries in China, being ignored by the media, lack of attention
Introduction
from the organizers of some Chinese avant-garde exhibitions overseas, and a paucity of financial resources—conceptual artists have had to retreat to confined spaces. Many artists in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou have been forced to do their work at home; to employ inexpensive materials in small-scale works that can only be displayed in private spaces; and to communicate only with a small audience of artists and interested persons. I call this unique phenomenon apartment art (gongyu yishu), which has produced a number of unsellable and unexhibitable site-specific installations.17 Song Dong and his wife Yin Xiuzhen, for instance, are Beijing-based artists who lived in a room some ten meters square. Many of their projects were made in this small room, most of them sketched on paper. One of Song’s projects was to practice Chinese calligraphy every day on a chunk of ordinary stone or the surface of a table, using a traditional brush dipped in clear water rather than ink. After the water characters evaporated, he wrote again. Some works of apartment art are called proposal art (fangan yishu). For example, an outdoor work or a large-scale installation might be presented as illustrated sketches. These proposals remain on paper and are never turned into reality. This avant-garde practice attempts to formulate a distinctive personal discourse in a polymorphous, polycentric world. It is a resistance of all totalizing ideologies in order to be free from any particular one. Yet this resistance is also a way of cultivating a private, meditative world apart from the materialistic society that has emerged since the early 1990s. Apartment art is, therefore, engaged in responding to the double kitsch of Chinese society—the previous ideological kitsch as well as the later commercial kitsch. One may think that this retreat is similar to the attitude of Western modernism in the first half of the twentieth century in the terms of its isolation from outside society. The motivation of artists of apartment art, however, is to use the materials selected from the surroundings of their own daily lives in order to represent the true relationship between the avant-garde art space and the social space in general. In this way, their unsellable and unexhibitable works mirror the social environment and constitute a close investigation of the society. The works by the artists of apartment
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art are in this way the silent, personal materials that voice the condition of their “nonexistence” by way of self-dematerialization. In 1990, Wang Peng and Feng Mengbo had a joint exhibition in the art gallery at the affiliated middle school of the Central Academy of Fine Art. Immediately before the opening, Wang Peng constructed a brick wall that sealed off the door to the gallery. The wall was meant to symbolize the selfconfinement that separated the avant-garde from the official art system and market, a border behind which the artist had retreated. It is this consciousness of environmental intervention rather than mere exploration of language or concept that has driven the new art movements of the last three decades toward an avant-garde tendency. Recently, some Chinese curators have tended to use the term “experimental art” (shiyan yishu) rather than “avant-garde” (either qianwei or xianfeng) to define contemporary Chinese art. This move may avoid the out-of-fashion usage of “avant-garde,” or point to its dislocation in China today. Some may feel the term “avant-garde” to be too politically confrontational. Nevertheless, “experimental art,” like “avant-garde,” is itself a Western notion, widely adopted in the 1960s to refer to new art. I think the term “experimental art” cannot include most Chinese contemporary art phenomena of the last two decades, because, compared with “avant-garde,” it sounds too passive and lacking in motivation and direction. What is important is not the terminology of “experimentation,” but rather its goal and significance. Of course, meaningful “experimentation” cannot limit itself merely to form and language, but must have embedded within it a concrete critique, whether linguistic or social, especially at the present moment, when, under the onslaught of globalization and systematization, the direction of Chinese contemporary art’s experimentation is far from clear. In fact, the phrase “experimental art” was introduced in the early 1990s, appearing first in the Timeline of Chinese Experimental Art, edited by Feng Boyi and Qian Zhijian. Later, “avant-garde” and “experimental” art were used interchangeably by Chinese critics and curators in reference to new art. “Experimental” is a term that seems more moderate and palatable than “avant-garde,” while
8
Introduction
Figure 0.1 Wang Peng, The Wall: 93 Installations Exhibition, 1993.
still retaining the idea of seeking the new. Although it also has a sense of exploring boundaries and selfmarginalization, the exact aims of “experimentation” remain unstated and opportunistic, because, from the very beginning, experimentation has a subjective sense of indeterminacy, as everything hangs on the result of the experiment itself. Experimentation depends on the chance unification of subjective and objective conditions. For that reason, it is flexible. And perhaps for this same reason, it was fitted to China’s rapid and chaotic internationalization and reorientation to a market economy in the 1990s. Nonetheless, it is inappropriate to use the term “experimental art” in reference to the Chinese art of the late 1970s and 1980s. The term also seems less than perfectly suited to the “underground” phenomenon represented by apartment art during the early 1990s, and even less suited to the political pop, cynical realism, and New Generation painting schools, each of which had an obvious eye toward real life. On the other hand, “avant-garde” seems better suited to highlight the “contemporaneity” of contemporary Chinese art. As I mentioned above, contemporaneity is not a term referring to a specific time, but rather means the “spirit of the time.” Therefore, to be “avant-garde” is to make value choices, to adopt a specific critical direction. This critique integrates two inseparable tendencies: social critique and self-critique. Self-critique refers to the avantgarde’s disillusionment with its own conservatism and corruption, and with the lifelessness of artistic language and methodology. Thus “avant-garde” has a built-in sense of critique and protest. The various uses of the term “avant-garde” by Chinese artists over the last two decades have themselves already become a part of Chinese contemporary art history. Moreover, from the moment Chinese artists began using this term, its meaning was already different from the meaning derived from Euro-American modernism: the separation of aesthetics and politics implied by the Euro-American use of the term was replaced in China by a unity of the aesthetic and the social. The tag of “avant-garde” accurately described the position of Chinese artists in the social context of the 1980s and 1990s, when various post-isms (postsocialism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and postindustrialism) encountered
Introduction
one another in the same country, one that bore a long tradition. For the Chinese avant-garde, the “posts” mean nothing more than the end of the age, and therefore the task of the avant-garde still remains significant. Postmodernism in Chinese Context
When Greenberg identified both Stalin’s socialist realism and Hollywood commercial culture as “kitsch,” and Picasso and modernist art as avantgarde, his judgment was based on the pattern of elite versus popular, and avant-garde versus market. Despite this, he was slightly hesitant to name Picasso and other modernist masters “avant-gardists,” as there was always a danger of the avant-garde surrendering to the market. Postmodernism declines Greenberg’s doctrine of modernism. In assessing Chinese avant-garde and kitsch, however, there is, perhaps a dislocation between the Greenberg theory and postmodernist discourse. Political pop and the cynical realism of the 1990s are perfect examples. Stylistically, political pop and cynical realism are mixtures of Chinese socialist realism with American pop, similar in formulation to 1970s Russian sots art. Discursively, political pop and cynical realism are the products of internal political failure in Western postmodernist discourse. It was a short-lived avant-garde in its beginning, but soon became a deconstructive force that undermined everything, including Chinese intellectual discourse itself, which had been developed since the end of the Cultural Revolution with an independent, critical, idealist vision to search for Chinese modernity. Postmodernist discourse has dominated the most fashionable contemporary Chinese art in the market, galleries, and exhibitions in the West, as well as in the most popular gallery districts in China. As the revolutionary theoretical discourse in the West (at least in the 1980s), postmodernism and deconstruction have become, to a certain degree, corrupted forces inside of China. The voice of postmodernism against institutionalization has been prominent in the West since the 1970s, when, as I discussed in chapter 2 of The Wall, Chinese contemporary art reached the phase of what I call the “museum age,” during which art was institutionalized by both the market and the
9
previous official museum system. Furthermore, one of the faces of postmodernism, in particular the theory of material culture and popular culture, has come to join the current market and urban materialism. Therefore, the postmodernist discourse and deconstructionist theory that one may consider standards of Western intellectual perspective are questionable and problematic in current Chinese contemporary art discourse—both its art criticism and production. Furthermore, the dislocation and inversion of modernist-postmodernist discourse have also interfered with the narrative discourse of contemporary Chinese art. Deconstructionism and postmodernism combined with various local styles have infiltrated Chinese visual art, as is evident in popular photography, film, and soap operas. Pastiche and kitsch (yansu) have become part of the dominant stylistic tendencies in visual art, not as a way to allegorize the cheap taste of popular culture in a critical way, but to please the exotic eyes of foreign dealers. While the imported discourse of postmodernism has dominated the narrative of contemporary Chinese art, certain types of visual art (which from a Western modernist point of view can be identified as “apolitical” or “aesthetic” art) have long been ignored or overshadowed by the mainstream art world. For instance, there have been many artists who have devoted themselves to a kind of Chinese abstract art since the late 1970s. At first glance, one may label it as either the continuity of early-twentiethcentury Chinese modernism or as simply a copy of Western minimalism. After close study of this trend toward a “pure aesthetic,” I have found it to be a complex and ambiguous phenomenon that cannot simply be defined as a Western type of modernist aesthetic, because it neither pursues a modernist utopia within a two-dimensional composition, nor conceptually overwrites the material’s substance by insisting that “what you see is what you see,” as Frank Stella said. Instead, it reveals the artist’s personal state and everyday life in self-imposed exile.18 One of the movements of this type emerged in the early 1990s and actively continues to the present. It can be seen as a close counterpart to apartment art, with a similar personal focus and meditation against both the political and materialized public environment. I have
10
Introduction
named it maximalism and organized an exhibition that toured China and New York.19 The No Name group, an underground avant-garde group that dates back to the Cultural Revolution, also produced early examples of this type of art. These artists have been pursuing an ideal Chinese aestheticism in their impressionist/literati landscape paintings since the 1960s. The apolitical, “art for art’s sake” appearance of No Name’s works, however, was strikingly political under the domination of the Cultural Revolution’s propagandist art.20 This “art for art’s sake” appearance has been marginalized by the double eyes of the modernistpostmodernist discourse. Within modernism, one may see it as a purely aesthetic art, while from the postmodernist point of view it is an out-of-fashion modernist style. In this case, Chinese “aesthetic” art has always been positioned under the judgment of modernists (with an antithetical view of politics versus aesthetics) as an apolitical form considered insignificant in the current political circumstances in China, or under the judgment of postmodernists as insignificant “modern formalist play.” I by no means wish to state, however, that the executors of the discourse all come from the West. Chinese critics, curators, and artists have also been involved in the play of the dislocation of modernist-postmodernist discourse. Consequently, Chinese abstract art, experimental ink painting, and certain types of conceptual art, in particular some small-scale, unsellable, unexhibitable installation works, have been marginalized in both critical writing and the market. I would like to argue that it is this marginalized art that one may call contemporary Chinese “elite” art: art that has strived to maintain the independent stance of the intellectual in the currently institutionalized Chinese art world. Recently, there has been a growing interest in “aestheticism” in Beijing and Shanghai. Three major conferences with the topic of “Chinese aesthetic narrative” took place in 2006 and 2007.21 Several exhibitions and publications on the same topic (or Chinese abstract art) have also come out in the last two years, including the exhibition “Ruins: Tan Ping and Zhu Jinshi” at the Today Art Museum; “Home: Bingyi and Leihong Recent Works” at the Sanshang Art Center; and “Visible/Invisible” at the
Figure 0.2 Huang Bingyi, Thousand Li of Water and Mountains, 2008.
One Moon Gallery. More events associated with this topic will take place in the next few years. This trend demonstrates a new tendency to attempt to resolve individual meditation, traditional lyrical styles, modern abstraction, and conceptual art together in a new discourse. This attention may not only open a new page of contemporary art history, but also stir a critique of the current Chinese type of postmodernist discourse. This specific art tendency and this particular historical moment at the beginning of the twentyfirst century may demonstrate another move toward what one may call the “meditation on Chineseness.” It has been produced by the Chinese historical context as well as the international dialogue between East and West. In recent years, an ahistorical view has been applied, by some, to the study of Chinese contemporary art. This is another outcome of certain postmodernist theories, such as deconstructionism. To look at contemporary Chinese art from this point of view is to find that everything is contingent, transient, and lacks historical logic. In the Chinese context, however, the historical view has always been considered an important perspective in the creation of the art of the day. Moreover, the consciousness of modernity has always brought historical memory into what I call the ritualized space in which the contemporary and the past meet through certain ceremonial or monumental environments created by Chinese artists. This can
Introduction
be commonly found in the various contemporary art projects associated with historical architectural sites, such as the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, and Tian’anmen Square. It has been very common in the last three decades for contemporary Chinese artists to turn historical sites into a symbolic medium in order to express modern Chinese identity. In the beginning of the new transitional era, there was an evident impulse to use historical sites. For example, around 1979 these sites emerged in the process of criticizing and reflecting upon the Cultural Revolution. As pursuing social modernization became the driving ideological force in Chinese society, the ruins of the Old Summer Palace destroyed by the Western “Joint Army of the Eight Powers” suddenly became the favorite hangout for young artists and scholars. Mourning the Old Summer Palace did not necessarily mean a longing for the old; rather, it revealed the artists’ wish to excavate a new life for the nation and to achieve a Chinese modernity. The Old Summer Palace came to be a favorite topic among artists. For instance, Newly Born, an oil painting by Huang Rui, a member of the Stars group, strongly resonated with the public. Clearly, the meaning of his painting demonstrated a wish for the self-strengthening and rebirth of a China weakened by foreign invasion and civil turmoil (such as the Cultural Revolution). Kang Mu, Zhao Jianhai, and Sheng Qi conducted performances for the first time on the site of the Old Summer Palace in 1985,
11
Figure 0.3 Kang Mu, Zhao Jianhai, Sheng Qi, and others, Spring, 1985.
in which they bound up the old ruins. Their physical activities existed together with the historical existence of the edifice itself. Many performance works and earthworks have taken place on the Great Wall in the last two decades. In fact, the meaning of the Great Wall has repeatedly been reconstructed and reinterpreted throughout the twentieth century. Consequently, this reinterpretation itself has been formulated as an unending “discourse of the Great Wall.” It has become a process of shaping or reshaping the consciousness of Chinese identity. Almost all the performance pieces, earthworks, and installations of the Great Wall projects involved certain kinds of ceremonial form.22 Through these ritualized acts, environments, historical ruins, and stages all became part of the “ritual site.” The body of the artist became at once a symbol of the sacrificial in the past and of the living man mourning the sacrificial in the present. It is the contrast between historical memory and immediate feeling, the discrepancy between grand natural environment, historical background, and actual living situation, that causes disorder in the recognition of identities. Using a memorial
12
Introduction
ceremony, a completely unreal situation and ritual, the artist can turn his factual identity into an unreal but nevertheless idealized and mystic identity. For example, he could call up a spirit such as a witch, or “die” on the battlefield like an ancient warrior, or wander around like a ghost or spirit, as in the 1988 performance of the Beijing-based group 21st Century and in Zheng Lianjie’s earthworks and the performance called Big Explosion, which took place on the Great Wall in 1993. What the performance artist could become in the process of performing could be determined by his immediate spiritual purpose, by the sense of loss over his current identity, or by his longing for belonging (in class, national, community, and even sexual terms). Regardless of differences among the various projects associated with ritual form on the historical sites, they all demonstrated the application of historical myth as a force over certain modern myths. There have been a variety of modern myths in China: ideological, cultural, national, and even some relating to gender. Most artists took their performance pieces or earthworks to the Great Wall in order to make social critiques in response to national symbols
Figure 0.4 Zheng Lianjie, Big Explosion Series, 1993.
Introduction
13
and state ideologies. These performances included Xu Bing’s Ghosts Pounding the Wall (1991) and Cai Guoqiang’s Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Aliens No. 10 (1993). In contrast, He Chengyao, a Beijing-based woman artist, made her Wall performance very personal, bringing the site of the Wall into a gendered space in a very unusual way. On May 17, 2001, when the German artist H. A. Schult installed his one thousand “trash people” on the Great Wall at Jinshanling, displaying them like terra cotta soldiers, He Chengyao staged her performance Opening the Great Wall. She suddenly took off her red T-shirt, showing herself naked above the waist, a gesture that came from her mother’s extreme behavior during her insanity. In the 1960s, He’s parents were fired from their jobs because her mother had illegally become pregnant out of wedlock. Her mother subsequently suffered a mental breakdown. Day and night, stark naked, she ran shouting through the streets of her hometown.23 Whereas other artists took their performances or earthworks to the sites of the Great Wall to comment on national ideology, He reconstructed the living space of her childhood under the spatial pressure of both the Wall and the terra cotta soldiers, seeing them as symbols of a male-dominated patriarchal society.24 In this case, He undertook her ceremonial act of imitating the insanity of her mother in order to comment on the modern myth that has ruined Chinese women’s identities and lives. Zhan Wang’s 1997 earthwork Fixing the Golden Tooth for the Great Wall provides an interpretation of the “restoration” of the old Wall in response to current globalization. Restoration of the Wall might symbolize restoration of the nation, as Deng advocated. Zhan Wang’s restoration, however, is a mockery, because restoration of the nation, in the current Chinese modernization and globalization, remains mainly material rather than a restoration of the spirit. In this work, the artist used hand-welded steel sheets to make “golden bricks,” which he then used to “fix” the missing parapets in a section of the Wall located in a rural area of Beijing, west of Badaling. After climbing over two hills, the artist discovered a portion of the Wall where two parapets, spanning a distance of twenty meters, were missing. Careful calculation indicated that in order to fix this section, more than
14
Introduction
Figure 0.5 Cai Guoqiang, Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Aliens No. 10, 1993.
Figure 0.6 He Chengyao, Opening the Great Wall, 2001.
Figure 0.7 Zhan Wang, Fixing the Golden Tooth for the Great Wall, 1997.
two hundred and fifty bricks plus fifty half-bricks would be needed, which the artist and his production crew welded in his studio using wafer-thin stainless steel sheets sized to replicate the dimensions of the actual bricks already in the Wall. After these “bricks” were polished, they were then gilded with titanium so that they had the appearance of real gold. The phrase “golden teeth” refers to a traditional phrase in which a golden tooth signifies the wealth of an individual. To the artist, the new “bricks” suggest that ancient China, like contemporary China, was also subject to material desire. As Zhan states, “I merged these two symbolic things [stone and gold, real and unreal], and the question raised is related to the desires of the nation.”25 Since China is the most rapidly changing country in the world economy today, Chinese contemporary art, it seems, should also fit the contemporary theory of globalization. By this theory, one might idealistically claim that since the end of the Cold War the world has moved toward a transnational order that will break down any national and local boundaries. Anthony Giddens, an influential theorist of modernity, claims that one unique characteristic, already evident, is the tension between the “expansiveness” of globalization and the “privateness” resulting from the loss of individual identity. In other words, there exists an increasing interconnection between the two extremes of extensionality and intentionality, between
Introduction
globalizing influences and personal dispositions in the world of the twenty-first century.26 The history of the last fifteen years, however, may suggest a different direction. On one hand, the world economy has indeed come to be bound by globalization much more monolithically than ever before. On the other hand, the world has culturally and politically been divided even more widely by concerns of national identity and local economy. September 11, the war in Iraq, and the crisis of the Middle East seem to have validated Samuel P. Huntington’s anticipation of the religious conflict, or “the clash of civilizations,” between Christianity and Islam (later to be joined with Confucianism) in the twenty-first century.27 The dichotomous pattern of “expansiveness” versus “privateness” in the age of globalization, however much it may make sense in developed countries, may have been challenged when applied to the societies of the developing countries. In the Chinese context, for instance, the major confrontation has not been between the individual and the global, but more strikingly has involved much more complex relations and ongoing movement between locality and internationality, humanity and individuality, all in response to rapid environmental change. Changes in surrounding spaces and living spaces have most profoundly impacted Chinese daily life as well as Chinese art during the last decades.
15
Aesthetically, therefore, historical memory and reflection as a language discourse have been incorporated into the presentation of reality. The forms and images from an individual artwork cannot be seen as an absolute representation of a real social status—individual or collective. Although the dichotomy theory of transnational modernity may not be appropriate to the local context, this perspective has already become popular in narratives of Chinese contemporary art. For instance, there is a belief among some critics that the more “individual” traits a work shows, the truer it is to Chinese contemporary art. Many works, in particular photographs that depict Chinese family history and private life, have captured the attention of the international art world. But this critical stance overlooks the artwork’s connections to both history and the current environment. Many critics and art historians take the “individual” narratives that appear in the art of the 1990s as essentially different from the art that preceded it. Yet if we look closely, we see that what appear to be “individual” narratives are actually to a large extent variations on and continuations of the collective. Many of the works that display socalled “individual traits,” such as family pictures or photographs of personal life, are all nearly identical in subject matter, without much individual specificity except in the facial features. Most involve the period from the Cultural Revolution to the present, and are group narratives of the artist’s generation and his or her parents’ generation. For Chinese people, these stories are commonplace; they are attractive mostly to foreigners in the market and in international exhibitions for their exoticism. On the other hand, in this kind of transnational narrative, it is as if globalization has brought about a global notion of what constitutes individual identity. Accordingly, globalization threatens to turn Chinese artists into residents of a global village, in which they speak their most intimate secrets in a standardized, international language. This is particularly clear in the works of those who have engaged in frequent travels around the world. All the dichotomous patterns listed above may become problematic when applied to the topic of urbanization in Chinese contemporary art. Since the 1990s, many Chinese artists have enthusiastically committed themselves to the
16
Introduction
investigation of current globalization and urbanization. I would like to argue, however, that what the artists have demonstrated in their works cannot be seen purely as the portrayal of globalization and Chinese urbanization in the terms of the dichotomies of transnational theory. Rather, their work serves as a commentary on the impacts of globalization based on close observation of their surroundings, especially the transformational process from the agricultural to the urban. Their observations have drawn attention to the dislocation and displacement that signifies the complex relations among local, international, individual, family, female, male, and so forth. This dislocation is also a metaphor for the violent changes in the natural environment, and the disjuncture between material culture and the human spirit caused by rampant modernization. Consequently, reconstruction and the appropriation of architectural space, urban space, community space, private space, and public space have become the main subjects of contemporary Chinese artists. This not only expresses the estrangement in the current Chinese urban spectacle, but also, and more importantly, becomes a means of presenting the transformation of social class and identity in urban space in the form of a powerful imagery of locality and re-locality. By 2020, the population of migrant laborers in cities in China will reach three to five hundred million, a number unprecedented in human history. In comparison, immigrants from Ireland to the United States in the one hundred-plus years between the 1820s and the 1930s, totaled a mere four and a half million.28 Neither the needs of immigrants nor their impact on urban culture and the economy have been fully accounted for by China’s urban planners. The conceptual photography of Wang Jin, particularly the works 100% and 0%, offers a visual inquiry into this social problem. In 100%, several groups of migrant workers were asked to form a human wall, supporting a traffic overpass with their hands. In this image, their bodies are endowed with the power of steel and concrete. The workers represent the construction of the urban future, not only in terms of architecture but also of population. In 0%, the dirty feet of peasant workers sticking out of cement pipes provide a sharp contrast to the modern skyscrapers of Beijing. One represents disorder and filth, the other
Figure 0.8 Wang Jin, 100%, April 1999.
Figure 0.9 Wang Jin, 0%, July 2002.
Introduction
17
Figure 0.10 Zhang Dali, Dialogue with Demolition, 1995–2003.
rationality and grandeur. In this work, Wang Jin suggests that peasant workers are a force that is able to facilitate, as well as devastate, the urban future. The dislocation depicted in Song Dong’s work is a metaphor for the switch in the social positions of the construction workers and urbanites. Common to almost all of Song’s works is a deep involvement in the life of the alleys (hutong) of Beijing, where he lives. He is one of the few Beijing natives among contemporary Chinese artists. Song was also a participant in the apartment art movement of the early 1990s, when he was concerned with his own state of mind, his small living space, and his choice of media and materials. In his works after 2000, Song has been more concerned with class issues in the city, especially those concerning peasant workers, and has created a series of video, photograph, and installation/performance works called Together with Farmer Workers 2001–2005. Song regards farm workers as an emerging class, one that is, as he states, “a human symbol of a great agricultural country’s transformation into a new social form. I do not wish to pay tribute to them in my artworks and idealize them. Instead, I wish to represent this important human symbol by means of both viewing them [the migrant
18
Introduction
laborers] and looking at how they view us [so-called urbanites, especially so-called upper-class people].”29 In the photography exhibition “Humanism [renben] in China,” held in December 2003 in Guangzhou, Song exhibited urban landscapes photographed by forty peasant workers. Cameras were provided by the museum, and the workers were encouraged to take pictures freely. The artwork furthers the concept of “seeing and being seen” and transforms the “other” in the eyes of urbanites into a subject who observes the city. Through such a shift in subjectivity, self-centered urbanites see themselves and their environment in a new light. Zhang Dali is China’s first graffiti artist, as well as the first “ruins” artist. His graffiti consists mostly of self-portraits, which appear together with the tag “AK47.” This can be interpreted as referring to the devastation of human nature wrought by the violent disruption of urban construction. After making graffiti, Zhang documents the ruined walls, selfportraits, and symbols using video and photography. Each vista that he selects has a particular significance embedded within it. Often this is conveyed through comparison. For example, he juxtaposes demolished walls with the “permanent” landmark buildings of
Beijing, such as the corner towers of the Forbidden City; Stalinist buildings among the “10 Great Construction Projects” of 1959, such as the National Art Museum of China; or newer symbols, including the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai. Zhang claims the demolished walls as his own artworks, locating the walls in a larger urban landscape and creating a spectacle by contrasting urban ruins and skyscrapers. Zhang does not concentrate in his work on urban anthropology or the geographical issues of urban development. Instead, he concerns himself with human nature. His project title, Dialogue with Demolition (1995–2003), does not signify a dialogue between ruins and skyscrapers, or the new and the old, but between human and concrete, or between essential human nature and urban alienation. It is, in fact, an inner monologue: “Sometimes it’s impossible to think and to pass judgment on the things happening in our environment. These events influence our life, dim our sight, and corrupt our soul. In the new era, reality is hidden under a beautiful cloak. For a long time I have made every effort to keep myself awake in front of the beautiful flowers and the beautiful popular songs, in the presence of the deceitful shows. I prick my anaesthetized soul, trying with the eyes of my soul to see the reality behind the appearances.”30 If Zhang Dali uses his portrait to symbolize the triumph of the human spirit over the destruction of architecture, He Yunchang uses his own flesh to challenge mechanical power, seeing it as a metaphor of resistance to urban material culture. He has said, “My life is mine, and I can play with my body in whatever way I like. I have my choice at least on this point.”31 He commonly uses his body in a contest with concrete, a metaphor that displays his faith in humanism. In 2004, in an exhibition at the 798 Arts Centre in Beijing, he sealed himself in a room made of cement for twenty-four hours with only a small hole at the top for air. Nobody knew that he was inside until workers helped break the wall and let him out. In his work Diary on Shanghai Water, performed on November 3, 2000, he drew ten tons of water by bucket from the lower reaches of Suzhou Creek in Shanghai, then poured it into a boat and transported it four kilometers upriver, where he poured the water back into the river, allowing the water to flow back again.
Introduction
Figure 0.11 He Yunchang, Casting, 2004.
Figure 0.12 He Yunchang, Diary on Shanghai Water, 2000.
19
Some Chinese artists comment on urbanization by substituting a beautiful appearance or modernist aesthetic taste for a horrific industrial outcome. Many viewers of Xing Danwen’s series of photographs titled disCONNEXION (2002–2003) initially believed that they were seeing abstract forms, but in reality the photographs showed electronic trash, such as computer wires and plastic outlets. Millions of tons of such trash are transported from America, Japan, Korea, and other developed countries to the beaches of Fujian province in China, where they are melted down and recycled. Thousands of peasant workers come to the beaches for temporary jobs in spite of the dangerous pollutants created through this process. Xing Danwen does not use overtly critical language but rather beautified forms, or the illusion of beauty, to delay recognition of the ugly truth. Her most recent work, Urban Fiction, investigates the nature of urban modernity from yet another perspective. From the end of 2004 to early 2005, Xing visited numerous real estate sales agents in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai and photographed architectural models of housing complexes. From the photographs she made realistic urban scenes using digital technology. Each of these images appears to be an actual urban scene, to which she adds fragments of her real life or others’ lives, such as the image of a lonely woman drinking coffee on a balcony, or a pair of passionate lovers in a courtyard. These urban landscapes become fictions. Virtual space becomes a site for narrative. The fragmentation of space, and the insertion of characters into that space, brings these cold model vistas to life. In such constructed environments, an ugly housing development can be transformed into an apparently rosy utopia, or vice versa. Another interesting phenomenon in Chinese contemporary art is the use of modernism as a visual form to comment on the issue of urbanization. One of the methods used for this purpose is what I call “maximalism.” I coined this term not to characterize an art style or school, but to illuminate a particular artistic phenomenon, a kind of “Chinese abstract art” that a number of artists have created since the late 1980s.32 Since these artists are not interested in either producing Chinese exoticism or representing the appearance of the ongoing globalization of China, their works have been underrepresented both in
20
Introduction
Figure 0.13 Xing Danwen, Disconnection disCONNEXION, 2002–2003.
Figure 0.14 Xing Danwen, Urban Fiction No. 4, 2004–2005.
China and abroad. Maximalist artists use modernist modes, especially minimalist-like forms, to address a totally different purpose from minimalism in the West: they are antimodernist. Their practice of making artworks in a labor-intensive and timeconsuming way neither shares the utopian aims of early Western modernism, nor attempts to focus on the material or process itself as in later twentiethcentury modernism. What they wish to do is to unify the process of making art with daily life, in the manner of traditional Chan meditation. This is an effective response to the challenges of current Chinese modernity, rather than a purely artistic engagement with any form of modernism. The best example is Li Huasheng’s Diary, produced between 1999 and 2004. An ink painter well versed in traditional literati painting, in recent years Li has created many abstract paintings in ink and wash, in a style similar to minimalist painting.
Instead of applying light touches, or painting without any apparent control, the lines are “written” out, with considerable force focused on the tip of the brush, as if he were writing Chinese calligraphy, not for self-expression but instead as a meditative activity like those that might be performed by monks. The extremely abstract form that results has, however, nothing to do with the early European abstract art that presents a utopian world, the “material utopia.”33 Nor is it the same as the self-expression in traditional literati painting. Rather, it is a direct representation of the artist’s personal surroundings. During the period of its creation, Li was fighting with the Chengdu city government in Sichuan province for the preservation of his four-hundred-year-old house located in an old district and targeted by the new city construction plan. The district was finally leveled in 2005. Li’s house, however, as the only survivor has been preserved.
Figure 0.15 Li Huasheng, Grain Rain, 1997.
Introduction
21
Figure 0.16 Ding Fang, City Series: When Sound Fills Up the City Sky, 1998.
Figure 0.17 Wu Jian, Landscape, 2005.
The other approach within contemporary Chinese maximalism is the deliberate use of abstract form to portray urban landscape in a style either very much like traditional ink landscape painting, or in a manner similar to Western modernist abstract painting. For example, Ding Fang uses a combination of abstract expressionism and surrealism to make his commentary on current materialism and urbanization. Wu Jian’s elegant “abstract expressionist” oil painting is, in fact, a “life drawing” of a mountain of city trash. In the context of Chinese modernization, the artist relocates artistic modernism to undermine the meaning of modernity itself.
22
Introduction
The methodology of dislocation is, perhaps, most fully achieved by Huang Yongping in his work World Factory. A huge topographical map of China, measuring 36 feet by 26 feet and made of iron, stands on the floor. It declines from the west to the east, as does the actual topography of China. The surface of the map, however, consists not of mountain ranges, rivers, and plains, but rather of innumerable tiny iron factory models. The artist implies that we are now, and always have been, in a globalized situation: we should, perhaps, turn the phrase “Made in China” into “Made in the World.”34
Figure 0.18 Huang Yongping, World Factory, 2002.
Woman as City
Finally, I will discuss the important topic of Chinese women’s art by examining the relation between gendered space and urban space in the Chinese context of modernity. There are two tendencies in the study of Chinese women’s art. Some critics attempt to employ general feminist theory to analyze contemporary Chinese women’s art, treating it as a part of the international feminist community, one of the dominant postmodernist theories. Others see it as based purely on personal experience, their priority being to distinguish it from Chinese men’s art, which is understood by this group of critics to be predominantly a social and political discourse of the public sphere. Both of these approaches, I would argue, pay insufficient attention to the local context of Chinese women’s art.35 Rather than viewing Chinese women’s art solely as the art of a “minority,” or the product of unique individuals, or the result of feminist pursuits, we should read Chinese women’s art as a particular way of responding to Chinese modernity as a whole, and therefore take it together with men’s art. Chinese women’s art since the 1990s does not merely pursue a gendered space, but rather
Introduction
one that reflects the whole city as itself feminine. Its watchword might be, “Woman is the city.” Women’s art has been an indivisible part of the whole project of Chinese modernity throughout the twentieth century. In the 1920s, a great deal of literature, film, and painting emerged from the New Women’s Movement in China. These works were a rebellion against traditional Confucian ethics. At that time, the term “new woman” (xinnüxing) was synonymous with revolution, progress, and modernity as well as women’s liberty.36 In the 1980s, a decade marked by activism and enthusiasm for the pursuit of modernity and of ideological liberation, female artists became involved in the ’85 Movement. Their emergence, however, was not catalyzed by feminism. Rather, their concepts and ideals paralleled those of their male colleagues. Furthermore, their work appeared to take on what some consider stereotypically masculine qualities. A clear claim that Chinese women’s art was an independent art phenomenon did not come until the 1990s. At that time, Chinese women’s art grew out of the context of globalization and urbanization, and it was influenced by Western postmodern theory
23
and artistic approaches. Nevertheless, the central issues of Chinese women’s art are primarily those of housing, living quarters, marriage, children, and the harmonious cohabitation of couples—issues that arose in the face of the emergence of the urban middle class and the stresses triggered by this social transition. When the feminist movement emerged in the West in the 1970s, many Euro-American women had already gained economic independence and access to advanced education. The movement was mostly a political advance in the evolution of women’s social freedom and equality to men. Independence and individualism were the basic principles. Although the issue of gender equality entered into discussions of the social and public sphere in China as early as the end of the nineteenth century, it has been shaped by China’s status as a Third World country with profound traditions. In contemporary China, women have not gained independence, nor have Chinese men. Both face the same crisis as the Chinese people move into a process of reconfiguring social rank and class. Family, rather than the individual, is the unit that bears the main brunt of this transition. Gender unification rather than a gender split is what is most needed in this historical moment. On the other hand, the traditional philosophy of family and community has affected Chinese women’s art. While it is true that Chinese women have always formed an integral part of Chinese modernity, and that gender is tightly linked to modernity and nationality, what social progress there has been might, at best, be labeled “womanism” rather than feminism. “Womanism” is a term coined by the African American writer Alice Walker, with particular reference to the situation of the genders in the Third World.37 Its goal does not lie in the confrontation between male and female, but in the harmonious coexistence of humanity in general. Perhaps this is why many female artists working in China today favor the use of everyday household materials in their work, including thread, yarn, cotton, cloth, quilts, clothing and the like. These domestic materials may effectively demonstrate an individual woman’s particular emotions and interests. In general, however, their use shows the artists’ awareness of the intimacy of family relations. It is this particular intention that distinguishes Chinese women’s art from that of
24
Introduction
Western women artists who have made use of similar materials, traditionally linked to women’s crafts, to address a feminist intention. On the other hand, one should not overemphasize the personal secret of the artworks and thus fall into the trap of positing a “female personality,” one framed by male elite discourse since the beginning of modern history. Liao Wen, an active female critic of Chinese women’s art, argues that the kind of women’s art that heavily employed household materials indicated a unique, individual “woman’s voice” that differentiated their art from that of men in the 1990s. Yet the emergence of such art by women in the early 1990s paralleled the flourishing of apartment art at that moment, itself an artistic movement centered on the private sphere. In Beijing, apartment art was created in the residences of several artist couples, including Zhu Jinshi and Qin Yufen, Wang Gongxin and Lin Tianmiao, Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen, and Ai Weiwei and Lu Qing, among others. The women artists among them have since become some of the most significant contemporary Chinese artists. In this period, as I argued in Chinese Maximalism, it was not only women’s art that was process-oriented, concerned with labor, and displaying an intimacy with domestic materials—so, too, was artwork by men. Perhaps the only gender distinction that can be usefully made is that male and female artists generally worked with different kinds of domestic materials. Even so, their art style generally conformed to the overall movement of avant-garde art at the time. Female consciousness overlapped with or shared the contemporary consciousness of men within the same context, and vice versa. What is the social critique in Chinese women’s artwork? In other words, how can we see their works within the local context of Chinese modernity? The current boom of the beauty industry in Chinese urban culture is a new economy that sees women (women’s bodies, fashion, as well as women celebrities’ charming smiles) as subject matter for city people’s visual consumption. Many women artists imitate the visual strategies of this mass culture and utilize them as a new vocabulary in their own work. Chen Qiulin is an artist from Sichuan province who grew up in Wangzhou, a city subsequently buried by the rising water of the Yangzi River due to the construction of
Figure 0.19 Chen Qiulin, “. . . . . . ,“ 2001.
Figure 0.20 Chen Qiulin, I Exist, I Consume, and I Am Happy, 2003.
the Three Gorges Dam. Many of her works—in the forms of performance, video, and photography— were done in the town before it disappeared. In one of her performances, “. . . . . . ,” Chen is seen applying her makeup in a ruined, airy factory space instead of in private living quarters, while striking a provocative and enchanting pose. In another performance, I Exist, I Consume, and I Am Happy, eight men compete to pull the shopping cart in which Chen sits, applying makeup. The winner, who received the cake placed in the distance, was allowed to pretend to be Chen’s bridegroom. The performance is thus a metaphor not only for consumers of female beauty, but also for women as slaves to men who represent masculinity and consumer culture. Chen positions herself, however, in a more neutral way in order to transcend pure gender issues and to target the current
Introduction
“city image project” (chengshi xingxiang gongcheng) in general. In order to understand Chen’s neutral stance, we have to know the term fenzi, a term used by the people from the southwest region, such as Sichuan province, as well as in the northeast in Manchuria, to describe pretty women. It is a neutral or even complimentary word, accepted by both men and the women whom it describes. At the core of what can be called fenzi culture is sexual harmony rather than gender conflict and splitting. Its foundation is the relationship between the sexes in the folk culture
25
of these Chinese regions, rather than the feminist critique used by contemporary intellectuals. In her works, Chen Qiulin, herself a fenzi, attempts to use the metaphor of fenzi to comment on the idea of “woman as city,” rather than focus on a more confrontational feminist approach. During the last decade, stereotypically female descriptors such as “beautiful,” “lively,” and “stunning” have come to be used to describe urban centers in China. In the same way that masculinity was an expression of the cultural temperament of the 1980s, femininity has now come into fashion. Both are features of the larger culture, of movements in modernity related to the resurgence of Chinese nationalism. Since the end of the 1990s, however, a petit bourgeois lifestyle has become the cultural penchant of a new generation of urban young people. This generation has adopted as its style a strange femininity. One of its key traits is a mixture of romanticism and degeneration that makes it a fenzi culture. In my interpretation, highlighting this change is exactly the context as well as the content of Chen’s works. In China, as in other non-Western parts of the world, modernity in art always remains alternative and mutable. Indeed, there may never have been a steady, shared universal modernity. We need other criteria for reading Chinese modernity and avantgarde art. It may, in reality, have produced a new kind of visual space that merges aesthetic experiences, cognitive connections, and political interventions distinct from those familiar in the Euro-American world. Only by establishing these criteria can a genuinely non-Western, modern, and contemporary art come to being. Although contemporary art has rapidly changed in the last three decades, modernity in art in China throughout the twentieth century seems to remain steadily committed to the principle of transcending time and reconstructing space. In the following chapters, I will examine how Chinese artists engaged with this intrinsic, selfexperienced “total modernity,” which follows its own historical logic in responding to international contemporary art and intellectual influence since the end of the Cultural Revolution, as well as booming globalization, institutionalization, and a market economy since the 1990s. A reading of Chinese modernity and the avant-garde requires an
26
Introduction
understanding of its particular social and aesthetic context, on one hand, and the discovery of an invisible historical logic, on the other. This is by no means to deny the profound influence of Western modern and postmodern art. On the contrary, we consider the influence to come not only from without, but also, and perhaps even more effectively, from within. Only with this “inner experience” can a better theoretical interpretation and historical narrative of Chinese contemporary art come into being. Rationale for the Organization of the Book
In this book, I divide my discussion of modernity and the avant-garde, or the history of Chinese contemporary art, into three primary chronological divisions through which the above key issues are historicized and presented in context. In the first part I discuss “the avant-garde from the past,” which refers to the Chinese avant-garde in the early twentieth century and in the post-Cultural Revolution period. In the period from 1976–1984, the post-Cultural Revolution era or houwenge, contemporary art consisted mainly of works produced under the influence of two academic trends. One was the exploration of formal aesthetics or “abstract beauty”; the other was the tendency toward a critical realism represented by the “scar” and “rustic” painting movements which, however, soon lost their criticality by merging with more academic and commercial styles. At the same time, self-taught young art groups such as the Stars and No Name voiced their avantgarde stances while engaging with both social critique and aesthetic modernity. The second part of the book addresses the ’85 Movement, regarded as the first avant-garde movement in Chinese contemporary art. This movement, which began, flourished, and ended in the brief window between 1985 and 1989, parallels the thought pattern of the May Fourth Movement. For the first time, Chinese artists sought a modernity capable of transcending both traditional Chinese and modern Western art. The third part, treating the post-’85 or postTian’anmen avant-garde, examines how Chinese artists responded to the new political, economic, and global changes. Three primary approaches are explored: one
is the short-lived avant-garde, e.g., political pop and cynical realism; the second is apartment art; and the third is represented by maximalism. Extending the chronological framework, the period from 2000 to the present is what I am calling the “museum age.” This period is institutionally characterized by the emergence of official exhibitions of contemporary art, including the Shanghai Biennial, Guangzhou Triennial, Beijing Biennial, and the Chinese pavilion at the Venice Biennale, as well as the establishment of local art museums and organizations throughout the country. Museums have become the major arenas for Chinese contemporary art. Conceptually, owing to the museums’ international vision and practice, art in China has been thoroughly internationalized and diversified in terms of both its forms and display. As a result, however, its avant-garde nature has ended. The idealist avant-garde of the ’85 Movement faced a metamorphosis of itself in 1988, a year before the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition and the June Fourth Incident. This metamorphosis included the dissolution of most self-organized avant-garde groups in the second half of 1987 under the pressure of the Anti–Bourgeois Liberalism Campaign and the art market’s impact. A number of artists’ groups gave up their artistic careers and joined the business world at this time. Another symptom of this metamorphosis was a silent shift in philosophical ideas. There are several reasons for what we might call the silent change in tendency occurring in 1988. First, the renwen (humanist) groups seemed to tire of the enthusiastic embrace of humanism and began to move to an ambiguous and cynical iconography, which initiated the political pop movement. Meanwhile, the current of life movement also abandoned its enthusiasm for existentialism, characterized by a subconscious metaphor of individual feeling and forming a conscious symbolic language of social life. Mao Xuhui’s Patriarchy (1988) is an example of this direction. Second, the guannian (idea) group also made a change to a deconstructive direction. The most sensational event was Xu Bing’s A Book from the Sky (see figure 7.13), which was first displayed in the National Art Museum of China in 1988 in a two-man show along with Lu Shengzhong. Beginning in 1987,
Introduction
Xu quietly toiled at the phenomenal task of inventing over four thousand fake Chinese characters; then he used the Song-period method of woodblock printing to print the characters onto hand-bound books and long scrolls. In October 1988, he exhibited these objects at the National Art Museum in Beijing. At the time, Xu called this work A Mirror to Analyze the World—The Last Book of the End of the Century. The work had a major impact in Beijing and plunged both the intellectual and the art circles of the capital into a heated debate. One of the most surprising things about the reaction to A Book from the Sky is that it was so extreme across artistic ideologies, with strong divisions of opinion within both the conservative and the contemporary art camps. A conservative critic harshly criticized Xu’s work, defining it as a “book from the sky,” which in the Chinese context means a text that nobody can read. In fact, this is the reason why Xu changed the original name to A Book from the Sky. The overall feeling, however, was that Xu Bing’s work constituted a kind of eclecticism. Its calm, scholarly atmosphere and traditional appearance had the effect of pouring a bucket of cold water on the avant-garde camp’s overblown, passionate expressions of human emotion and their aggressive search for new forms. It also posed a kind of conundrum for Chinese avant-garde artists, who were both surprised and confused by the work. The avant-garde circle saw both deconstructive and constructive intentions in Xu Bing’s work. However, due to the tumultuous atmosphere of the times the work did not gain the serious consideration of the inner circle of the avantgarde until later. A Book from the Sky was exhibited again in 1989 at the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition at the National Art Museum in Beijing. Its impact was overshadowed when the exhibition was prematurely shut down due to an artist firing a gun as part of a performance art piece, effectively putting a damper on intellectual discussion. Two months later the mounting atmosphere of revolution exploded into student demonstrations at Tian’anmen Square, and the June Fourth Incident soon followed. Xu Bing left for the United States, bringing A Book from the Sky with him. The Chinese contemporary art world no longer had the opportunity to see his work. However, before Xu Bing moved to the States, Gu Wenda traveled to North America in 1987 as a
27
visiting artist, and Huang Yongping moved to Paris for a Chinese avant-garde exhibition which took place in France in 1989. In the early 1980s, Gu Wenda was the first Chinese artist to incorporate Western surrealism into Chinese ink painting. The result was a new movement of modern ink painting called universal current (yuzhouliu). In an interview from 1987 he ambitiously claimed that he wanted “to transcend the East and West” and find a new way in which he could define the general issues faced by all humanity.38 However, Gu’s period of rationalist painting soon came to an end, and he turned to creating provocative installations involved with his deconstructive calligraphy. The previous harmonious combination of calligraphy and landscape disappeared and was replaced by violent red, black, and nonsense characters in the style of a Cultural Revolution poster. During this period, when Gu sent a letter from his academy in Hangzhou to my unit in Beijing, he even changed my gender by addressing me as Ms. Gao (gao minglu nüshi) on the envelope, accompanied by a letter written in nonsense phrases made by randomly inserting sentence marks, parentheses, and commas throughout the words. In 1988, Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi, two leading figures of the Pool Society, also shifted their attention from their “gray humor” paintings to several guannian projects that mocked the rule and language of orthodoxy in a method of appropriation. Wang Luyan and his follower Gu Dexin founded a group called the New Mark Group (Xin kedu) in 1988, later changing the name to Analysis Group (Jiexi xiaozu) after Chen Shaoping enrolled in it. The philosophy of this group was to liquidate subjectivity and self-expression, which they viewed as a kind of romantic sentiment appreciated by the avant-garde in the creation of art. In rationalist painting, Meng Luding, who painted Adam and Eve in 1985, also published an article called “Chunhua de guocheng” (The process of having autonomy of language) proclaiming that contemporary art needed to make a departure from utopian enthusiasm and go back to painting itself, by focusing on the study of pure language.39 This article caused a heated debate among the artists and critics during this period.40 The most striking phenomenon is Wang Guangyi’s claim of abandoning the enthu-
28
Introduction
siasm of humanism. In the 1988 “Modern Art Conference,” the second important avant-garde conference after the 1986 “Zhuhai ’85 New Wave Large-Scale Slide Exhibition” (discussed in chapter 4), Wang pointed out that the coming commercial society would change the avant-garde’s mentality. Therefore, the next step for contemporary art would have to be to delete the ’85 Movement’s romanticism. Art is nothing but reproduction; the artist works for nothing but fame. In the same year, Wang painted Mao Zedong No. 1 (see figure 4.12), in which Mao’s official portraits were set underneath a grid. It can be seen as the first political pop work by this artist. Another phenomenon that indicated a nonidealist (or one may say deconstructive) orientation was the advent of new art students from the Central Academy of Fine Art who also made a departure from the idealism of the renwen. Liu Xiaodong and Fang Lijun (see figure 8.11), two of the new artists, began their cynical realist paintings in 1988, revolving around images of relatives or classmates from their personal circles and surroundings. These paintings were exhibited in the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition that took place in February 1989. Therefore, neither political pop nor cynical realism emerged in response to the June Fourth Incident of 1989; rather they were already in existence before then. This is due to a fixed inner logic of Chinese political, economic, and cultural structures. In 1987, economic reform surfaced at a choke point caused by governmental corruption, on the one hand, and resistance from conservatives in the party on the other. Calls for further political reform against corruption grew violent in tone among the Chinese commentaries and intellectual tracts that eventually initiated the June Fourth democratic demonstration. It was this reality that drove the attention of the avant-garde, inspiring them to make a departure from idealism and abstract meditation. This turn seems to make a lot of sense. In the long term of cultural modernity, however, Chinese art paid a price again for delaying the Enlightenment project of total modernity. They abandoned the project in order to serve the reality that was soon followed by both political suppression and the rising Chinese presence in the global market. The “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition, which took place only two months before the student demonstration of April,
Figure 0.21 Liu Xiaodong, Together, 1988.
was merely a cardiac tonic that tried to reinforce the avant-gardist renwen enthusiasm, pumping the heart and driving the body of the movement. The idealism, actually, already felt hollow at the start of these reformist times. The last scream was echoed in the performances that took place during the exhibition, a provocative extreme launched out of the hollow void, most notably with the gunshot of Xiao Lu. It is perhaps difficult to know which element to blame—the political change, the market environment, or the artists’ responsibility—for the Enlightenment project’s failing again. At least we can draw a picture of this shift. The dominant trend of painting of the ’85 Movement, namely the renwen, gave way to Chinese pop. This form of pop in general refers to almost all the painting in fashion in the
Introduction
1990s, favored by collectors, popular culture, and the market. Many of the members of the guannian group, including leading artists such as Huang Yongping, Gu Wenda, Xu Bing, and Wu Shanzhuan, moved to the West around 1989. On the other hand, the legacy of the guannian artists was transferred to a lowkey avant-garde, such as that of apartment art and maximalism, which I will discuss in the last chapters. This silent tendency witnessed a transition from the ideal avant-garde of the mid-1980s to a deconstructive post-’85 avant-garde, caused by the total cultural logic of the years around 1988. It is this avant-garde logic, rather than the later political event of June Fourth per se, that initiated the post-Tian’anmen avant-garde. In other words, the latter has to be seen as a continuity of the former, rather than a break with it.
29
Part One
The Avant-Garde in the Past
32
Chapter 1
1 Avant-Garde and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
The flourishing of avant-garde art in the 1980s did not happen by chance; it was rooted in an avantgarde mentality that originated in the early twentieth century. And the late-twentieth-century avantgarde movement can be considered, in my view, an incomplete project of the early twentieth century’s modern cultural program initiated or symbolized by the May Fourth Movement.1 It is also a descendant of Mao’s revolutionary art, continually carrying out within itself the prevailing utopian sentiments of Mao’s revolution, yet in an inverse perspective regarding Mao’s political ideology. Revolution, therefore, is regarded as a core factor of both modernity and the avant-garde in twentieth-century China. However, the revolution is not confined to the realm of political change; rather it should be considered part of a total modernity that in general can be named a “cultural revolution” (wenhua geming) or “cultural movement” (wenhua yundong). It seems that the cultural modernity project of the 1980s closely resembled both the process and the topics of the modern project from the turn of the twentieth century. Intellectuals from both the early twentieth century and the 1980s believed that cultural falseness and inauthenticity caused the backwardness present in society. Therefore, the greatest task and responsibility of the avant-garde was to enlighten the multitude with a modern cultural and philosophical thought system. This stemmed from the fact that the avant-garde, in both the early twentieth century and the 1980s, believed that the most effective way to rescue China from backwardness was to improve her culture. This fundamental belief in many ways was an outgrowth of the Confucian tradition that saw a merging of morality, politics, and art as the
Avant-Garde and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
fundamental goal of human life. The twentiethcentury Chinese avant-garde in art and literature is thus a part of the two major cultural movements of the 1920s and 1980s: first the May Fourth New Cultural Movement (wusi xinwenhua yundong), and second the “cultural fever” of the 1980s (bashiniandai wenhuare). Both involved extensive heated debates concerning the cultural confrontation between East and West (dongxi wenhua lunzhan). These debates are indispensable contextual references for any discussion of the Chinese avant-garde. The first debate, which scholars usually call “the cultural debates before and after the May Fourth Movement” (wusi qianhou de donxi wenhua lunzhan), took place between 1915 and 1927.2 The New Literature movement emerged in approximately the same period.3 However, the New Art movement appeared slightly later, between the late 1920s and the middle 1930s, preceding the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. The second debate took place in the middle of the 1980s, when a large number of Western works appeared in translation, most notably those of philosophy, history, aesthetics, and psychology. Numerous scholarly conferences were held, one after the other. Chinese scholars, both in China and abroad, involved themselves in the debate. At the same time, ancient Chinese philosophy, history, culture, and religion were reevaluated, criticized, or accepted according to contemporary standards. The discussion proceeded in three stages, as in the early twentieth century: first, analyses of similarities and differences between China and the West; second, comparisons of the respective merits and flaws of Chinese and Western culture; and third, discussions of the future of Chinese and Western culture. In the Chinese art
33
world, the struggle between antitraditionalism and traditionalism focused on the questions of whether or not tradition requires modernization, what relevance modernism has for contemporary art, and Chinese attitudes toward and evaluations of Western contemporary art. It was during this period that the ’85 Movement emerged. The ’85 art movement, commonly called the ’85 Movement (bawu yundong) or ’85 New Wave (bawu xinchao), was the first nationwide avant-garde movement. A few avant-garde events or groups, like the No Name and the Stars, had emerged in the post-Cultural Revolution period before the ’85 Movement. They were not, however, a nationwide phenomenon, but rare splits from the mainstream. The ’85 Movement emerged suddenly as the first contemporary art movement in China, consisting of about one hundred self-organized avant-garde groups from different provinces. The individual groups, however, knew little of one another until I gave a talk on “The ’85 Art Movement” (bawu meishu yundong) at a national conference held in Beijing in April 1986, effectively coining a new name for the movement. Then the movement spread even more widely to remote provinces, such as Inner Mongolia and Tibet. A full discussion of the ’85 Movement follows in chapter 3. The crucial fact that the meaning of the avantgarde in the Chinese context is tightly bound up with the concept of culture, rather than split or separated from politics and aesthetics, is further evidenced by the repetition of cultural debates and the linkage between the May Fourth Movement and the ’85 Movement. This is the reason that the Chinese avant-garde did not emerge immediately in the aftermath of major political events. Avant-garde art emerged almost a decade following the two revolutions, the New Cultural Movement after the demise of the last dynasty in 1911, and the ’85 Movement after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Both the New Cultural Movement and the ’85 Movement did not take place until the new consciousness of cultural change had had time to spread. For the Chinese avant-garde, the notion of culture (wenhua) is not something that is autonomous or isolated from politics and morality, as in the Western modern
34
Chapter 1
project; rather it is a synthesis of all three spheres. Furthermore, wenhua is a deep-rooted concept, coming from the idealism of Confucian tradition embodied in the literati’s awareness of social responsibility. “Cultural consciousness” (wenhua yishi),4 the “cultural avant-garde” (wenhua qianwei),5 and “self-conscious cultural ventures” (wenhua zijue)6 have continually played a role as the core precepts of the Chinese avant-garde mentality during the twentieth century. With this origin in mind, we may have a better understanding of why Mao named his tenyear political movement between 1966 and 1976 the Cultural Revolution. The establishment of systematic proletarian culture was the ultimate work in the project of Mao’s “continual revolution” (jixu geming). The primary goal of jixu geming was to launch a proletarian campaign in the new era against the revisionist (xiuzhengzhuyi) trend, a term that was first used in 1960 to target the Soviet Union. Later it was wielded against Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, and other leaders of the Communist Party of China, accused of being the Soviets’ followers and of taking a direction of peaceful evolutionary socialism in all areas, including the political, economic, and cultural, in the years from 1949 to 1966. Mao’s ambition was to completely liquidate any existing system—whether that of Western modern civilization or of the Soviet Union—within the socialist camp. Therefore, the Cultural Revolution was an inevitable revolutionary program to let the masses become “self-enlightened” (ziji jiaoyu ziji) and “self-emancipated” (ziji jiefang ziji). In Mao’s design, the Cultural Revolution went beyond a political campaign; it was rather a great revolution which deeply touched the human soul (chuji renmen linghun de dageming), one that attempted to accomplish “reform in education, literature, and art, as well as all superstructures that do not fit the socialist economic base, thus digging out the roots of revisionism.”7 In other words, “culture” (wenhua) in the proletarian Cultural Revolution was not confined to cultural areas in the sense of disciplines; rather it was a notion that referred to the whole superstructure. Furthermore, the method of the movement was to have all the proletarians enlightened and rebelling against the revisionist superstructure. It is a continuation of the program
of the May Fourth New Cultural Movement, as Mao said. But it gave the cultural mastery to the proletariat rather than the cultural elites. Historically, one can see how this cultural consciousness (wenhua yishi) was essential to the ultimate project of modernity at the outset of the modern history of China. As such, the May Fourth New Cultural Movement was a consequence of the failure of the earlier industrial and political modernization that had begun in the middle of nineteenth century. We can say that the search for modernity went through three phases following the end of the First Opium War in 1842. First was socalled industrialization. The humiliation of military defeats by the British in 1842 and 1860 and then by the French in 1885 stimulated the Qing government to pay attention for the first time to improving China’s military force and establishing military schools in order to compete with modern foreign military technology. In this stage, modernity meant reinforcing the military, which was equivalent to industrialization. However, the belief that a strong military could save China did not prove true, as it was buried by Japan in the defeat of 1895 and by Japan and Western allied powers in 1900. The consequences of defeat led to political reforms that aimed to change the corrupt political system. Inspired by the Japanese Meiji Restoration, and with the help and advice of intellectuals, Emperor Guangxu initiated the Hundred Days Reform of 1898 in order to improve the political system. The failure of the reform, however, again shocked Chinese intellectuals and caused them to reevaluate traditional culture. Ultimately, the prevailing perception was that cultural backwardness was China’s greatest weakness. The most effective way to wake China up and strengthen her system was to undertake a cultural revolution. The wenhua yishi of May Fourth is now generally understood not only as the day in 1919 when students in Beijing protested against the Chinese government’s self-compromising policies toward Japan, sparking a series of uprisings throughout the country, but also as a significant symbol of modernity, a modernity that transcended and unified the industrial and political realms with the new slogan “science and democracy.” It is the May Fourth legacy that has been considered as the model of the ultimate, total modernity.
Avant-Garde and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
Therefore, for all the Chinese vanguards of the twentieth century—political, scientific, cultural, and artistic—“May Fourth” is a romantic imaginary moment quintessential to Chinese modernity. This wenhua yishi, or concept of cultural modernity initiated during the May Fourth moment, was set aside and lay dormant at two periods during the twentieth century. One was during the Sino-Japanese War, from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s, and the other was during Mao’s rule, from 1949 to 1976. This is by no means to say that a cultural establishment program did not exist in Mao’s revolutionary project. On the contrary, Mao considered proletarian culture (mostly peasant culture) an ultimate feature of his total revolutionary project. In Mao’s total modernity, art was an ideological instrument and served the people. To serve meant not only to represent the people, but also to be owned by the people replete with their own revolutionary discourse. This ideological totality already departs from the May Fourth Movement’s cultural modernity because Mao positioned art as a reflection of life (mostly political), though he never attempted to make a split between art and life as in Western modernism. Therefore, we may consider two different tendencies in the total modernization of art in the twentieth century in China. One is the cultural modernity project that attempted to synthesize Western modernism and Chinese tradition (zhongxi hebi); the other is Mao’s legacy that was vastly influenced by Western representational theory through Marxist socialist theory in a pragmatic way. These two tendencies also appeared within the avant-garde throughout the twentieth century. The first can be seen in the cultural avant-garde initiated in the 1920s and 1930s, the New Art movement that favored the synthesis of Western modernism and traditional Chinese culture. This movement might seem to be an unqualified avant-garde in the purist sense of the European historical avant-garde.8 Mao’s proletarian avant-garde, on the other hand, is quite clearly closer to what the early-nineteenthcentury utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon declared “avant-garde.”9 However, Mao’s avant-garde never attempted to march in the “vanguard of all intellectual faculties”; rather, its purpose was to serve the ignorant multitude of humanity.
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The Merging of Avant-Garde Art and Revolution
During the 1930s, Mao’s revolutionary art merged with the early intellectual avant-garde, e.g., the Woodcut Movement and left-wing art, both of which developed out of the New Art movement and can be considered descendants of the May Fourth Movement. In this chapter, I shall discuss the different groups represented in early Chinese modern art, as well as the merging of the avant-garde and revolutionary art and theory in the 1930s. I will also discuss the art of Mao’s period, which is designed and framed, in many ways, very much as a revolutionary avant-garde with an ambiguous nature. One complex tendency is toward a complete and pragmatic break with any past, and the other is toward an extreme expansion of the social sphere in artistic terms. The first shares a common understanding with modernism, and the latter with postmodernism. In a very practical way, Mao’s revolutionary art went on a journey from Sovietization to nationalization. In the early phases of Mao’s art, Chinese avantgarde art merged with Mao’s revolutionary theory and artistic production, most notably in the late 1930s and the early 1940s. The merger came from the sympathy of the avant-garde for Mao’s revolutionary principles, combined with the influence of radical Marxism in the social revolution. Both were invariably present in the subject matter of the avant-garde artworks of the 1930s and 1940s. Although the relationship eventually turned sour, as the foundations were laid after 1949 for the totalitarian propagandist art of Mao’s era, the merger nonetheless demonstrates the different fate and project of the Chinese avant-garde compared to its Western counterpart. The English term “avant-garde” has been translated into Chinese either as xianfeng (usually used for literature) or as qianwei (usually used for fine art). The military term xianfeng, which refers to the position of a vanguard troop commander, had been used for a long time in classical Chinese culture.10 The term was not employed in a cultural or artistic sense in China until the 1930s, when some proletarian writers used this concept, directly translated from the Russian, to refer to Chinese revolutionary proletarian literature. One of the very radical magazines of the Left Wing Writers Association was named Xianfeng
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in 1932 in Shanghai. During the 1930s and again in the 1980s, however, alternative terms, such as “modern” (xiandai), “new wave” (xinchao), “novel” (xin), and even “revolutionary” (geming), were used to refer to avant-garde literature and art within a Chinese context.11 Therefore, although the term xianfeng may not have appeared before 1932, it does not mean that there was no such notion of an avantgarde movement and its associated theory and praxis. During the 1920s, the literary and artistic theories of the European avant-garde were introduced into China. Reports on avant-garde literary movements in Europe began to appear in Chinese magazines from 1921, and interest seems to have reached a peak in 1922–1923.12 For example, in the important Eastern Magazine (Dongfang zazhi), at least one article introducing Western modern and contemporary art and literature was published in nearly every issue, from the first issue of 1921 to the last issue of 1923.13 This trend was revived in the 1980s when Western works were again discussed and displayed in the periodicals.14 From “Revolution in Art” to “Revolutionary Art,” from “Art for the Life of the Masses” to “Mass Art”
A series of movements characterized by art revolutions (yishu geming) took place in the second decade of the century, following the establishment of the new Republic of China in 1911. These art and literature revolutions were advocated at first by several influential Chinese thinkers and philosophers, such as Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Lu Zheng, rather than by writers and artists.15 In 1918, Chen Duxiu (1880–1939), an influential Chinese intellectual and a leader of the New Cultural Movement who became the first chairman of the Communist Party of China in 1921, was more explicit in his call for a “revolution in literature” (wenxue geming) or a “revolution in art” (yishu geming). Here, the revolutionary change in art was to abandon the traditional style of ink painting known as “Four Masters” (Si Wang), and that of seventeenth-century traditional painting, and to find a Western modern form suitable to a future establishment of Chinese modern art. The primary imperative was that new Chinese art and literature be
as rationalized and modernized as science was.16 This scientific side in art was “the synthesis of the East and West” (zhongxi hebi), or as Liang Qichao (1873– 1929) wrote in his 1898 “Travels in Eleven European Countries”: “Now, at this historic moment, it is up to those who are up to the challenge to arise. They must begin a new era by combining Chinese and Western art.”17 The main goal of this revolution was to reevaluate tradition and pursue a new modern system of Chinese literature and art. Although there were many different concerns about and experiments with the modernization of art, the central intention of this revolution was to create “art for people’s life” (yishu wei rensheng). Although this movement was still intrinsically a manifesto born of elite culture, it shifted the direction from traditional, self-cultivated and self-entertaining literati art to an elite art for enlightening the masses. Eventually, because of the continuing influence of Marxism, the dynamic activity of the Left Wing Literature and Art Association in the early 1930s, and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, this “revolution in art” (yishu geming) then transformed into “revolutionary art” (geming de yishu), further manifested as “making art for the enlightenment of the masses” (yishu hua dazhong), and finally transformed into “popular art for and by the masses” (dazhonghua yishu).18 The art movement of the 1930s and 1940s saw the transition of this early modernity in art. There were, however, various approaches among the pioneers in the New Art movement in the early twentieth century. We may consider the different approaches from three different points of view. Paradoxically, however, we may find that all these revolutionary steps and approaches were in fact a transmutation of traditional Confucianism infused with modern Western thought. The first type of art practice reflected the theory of Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), an advocate of a total aestheticism, in which art is approached with a semireligious emotion. That is to say, art should function as a semireligion in a new modern society, rather than just please the eyes of a small circle. Cai, who was an influential educator and philosopher of modern Chinese history, held the positions of president of the National Educational Ministry and
Avant-Garde and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
of Peking University. He first coined the famous slogan “replace religion with aesthetic education” in 1917, two years before the May Fourth Movement.19 Instead of emphasizing art as an autonomous sphere in a program of rationalization (one of three divided spheres: science, morality, and art), which is the distinctive mark of capitalist society as described by Max Weber, Cai advocated the equal importance of aesthetic education and art practice, believing that their social commitment should match those of religion and morality. For Cai, art and aesthetic education would be of primary importance in the project of China’s modernization. This is nothing more than a modified modern version of Confucius’s claim that “literature and culture serve the universal law” (wen yi zai dao). Cai’s aestheticism thus can be seen as a return to Oriental humanism under the modern slogan “art for people’s life” (yishu wei rensheng). This motto expressed concern about the life and suffering of ordinary Chinese people. It was first used by Lin Fengmian (1900–1991), but his intention was applied in an abstract and metaphysical way. A French-trained artist and an admirer of Cai who was a similar leading artist of this type, Lin thought that art existed as an emotional universe and that the function of art should be the expression of a kind of religious emotion. He said, “Basically, art is the production of emotion,” and “All social questions should be the issue of human feeling.”20 His three paintings Humanism (Rendao) of 1923, Groping (Mosuo) of 1924, and Suffering (Tongku) of 1929 all accurately expressed the subject matter that concerned him in this period. His dark backgrounds, contorted nudes, and nonnarrative compositions conveyed an atmosphere of classic humanism embedded within modernist forms. Even some artists who devoted themselves to an extremely formalist kind of revolutionary art paid a lot of attention to the urban environment and daily life. The typical approach this generated in artistic terms was adopted by the Storm Society (Juelanshe), founded by Pang Xunqin (1906–1985) and Ni Yide (1902–1969) in 1930.21 In their 1932 “Manifesto of the Storm Society” (“Juelanshe xuanyan”), the artists proclaimed: “We want to express the spirit of a new epoch with revolutionary technique. … There
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Figure 1.1 Lin Fengmian, Suffering, 1929.
should be a kind of new trend in China’s art world in our century. Rising up with hurricane emotion and iron reason, we will create our own world in which lines and colors are interwoven together.”22 In Pang Xunqin’s work Untitled (1934), we see that he was influenced by Paris modernism, but in the textual description Pang describes his humanistic concerns: The canvas shows a cross section of a mechanical press. The face in the foreground is a robot; the one in the background is a Chinese woman in the countryside. The first symbolizes the industrial development of capitalist countries; the second symbolizes China’s backward agriculture. At upper left, three massive fingers push the press, representing imperialist invasion from abroad and reactionary politics and feudal thinking at home; these are the three major forces working to squeeze the Chinese people, and the forces that have put me at an impasse.23
Pang’s phrase “hurricane emotion and iron reason” is very similar to Lin Fengmian’s concept of zhongxi hebi, or the “synthesis of East and West.” But how? Lin attempted to merge modern feelings with Western technique. He said, “The composition of Western art forms intends to imitate objects. Therefore it often lacks emotion and turns itself into mechanism due to its advanced technique, and art becomes reproduction, like the classical art from the most recent centuries. The composition of Eastern art is not able to thoroughly express emotion, due
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to its disadvantage in technique caused by extreme subjectivity. The consequence is that [Eastern art] has lost any function and influence in modern society, as witness the current position of traditional Chinese ink painting.”24 Therefore, the goal of the synthetic theory is to combine modern Chinese emotion, a consideration of current society and people, with modern Western techniques. This zhongxi hebi is a common point of view for the first generation of artists in the early twentieth century, and it reveals a pursuit of a scientific revolution in art while ensuring that humanism remains. Similar approaches are also associated with some realistic art. The leading figure working in this typology was Xu Beihong. Perhaps Xu’s type of realism should not be considered a movement or even a group, because it never fully developed as a mature stylistic language, nor was it undertaken by many artists in this period. His endeavor to combine traditional ink painting and Western realistic technique, however, has profoundly influenced several generations in both education and artistic practice. Xu’s main methodological contribution was to bring realistic techniques and traditional aesthetics to bear on symbolic, often heroic subject matter: his realism did not serve for the representation of contemporary reality, but rather depicted ancient stories as metaphors for contemporary reality. This academic, idealistic, and symbolic “realism,” however, also came from the artist’s sympathy for human suffering. In The Foolish
Figure 1.2 Pang Xunqin, Untitled, 1934.
Figure 1.3 Xu Beihong, The Foolish Man Removing the Mountain, 1940.
Man Removing the Mountain, Xu used the folk story of a foolish man moving a mountain which blocks his view to symbolize an encouragement of the Chinese to victory over the Japanese during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Late in 1945, when Mao gave a talk during the Seventh National Conference of the Communist Party of China, he used the same story as an allegory for removing two “mountains,” one being imperialism, the other feudalism. The talk was later published as one of his most famous short essays, “The Foolish Man Removing the Mountain” (“Yugong yishan”).25 Thus Xu’s realism relied very much on morality and nationalism, particularly in the period during the 1930s when Japan invaded Manchuria. This humanist concern was further developed by the left-wing art movement, including the Woodcut Movement and the group known as Street Art (Shizi jietou yishu). Their position was very clear: artists are soldiers who represent the vanguard of society. The artists associated with left-wing writers consciously identified themselves as avant-garde. Lu Xun (1881–1936), one of the most influential writers and intellectuals in modern China, directed the new Woodcut Movement.26 The German expressionist painter Käthe Kollwitz, the Belgian painter Frans Masereel, and several Russian woodcut artists influenced the movement. Many of its artists and writers were involved in graphic art, including book cover design, illustrations, cartoons, caricatures, and New Year calendars. Through the media of popular culture, they criticized and allegorized the corruption
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of the government. Through close observation of urban life and the common people’s everyday lives, they drew highly critical pictures. The works of the Woodcut Movement reflected the artists’ strong emotional ties to the same humanistic concerns shared by the Rickshaw Driver’s School (Renlichefu pai) in the New Literature movement. Liang Shiqiu (b. 1902), a well-known literary critic of the 1930s, gave the group its name.27 From the 1920s to the late 1940s, the rickshaw was a popular mode of transport for the middle and upper classes in China. The rickshaw driver was typically from the lowest class of society and relied on his own sweat and brawn to earn a living. Liang used this image to describe the works of some writers and artists who illustrated the lives of the poorest people to show their sympathy for their fates. The proletarian sympathies of the Woodcut Movement are, to a certain degree, similar to those of Xu Beihong’s realism, for both ultimately consider art as a moral instrument. If we follow Weber’s concept of modernization with its split between morality, science, and art, we may categorize Xu and the Woodcut Movement as tending toward moral and social reform, whereas Lin Fengmian and his fellows, such as those in the Storm Society, exhibited a tendency toward scientific revolution in art motivated toward technical reform. There is, perhaps, also a third tendency, which consists of a group of traditional ink painters, such as Qi Baishi, Pan Tianshou, and Chen Shizeng, who viewed their art as a locus of tradition guided by a new aesthetic
Figure 1.4 Hu Yichuan, Go to the Front, 1933.
observation. Consequently, the Woodcut Movement and the left-wing artists distinguished themselves as the most radical avant-garde force in the conversion to Mao’s revolutionary art principles. Many artists from this group took a journey to Yan’an, the headquarters of the Communist Party after the Long March (1923–1924). It was at this time that the previous elite avant-garde turned into the proletarian avant-garde (wuchanjieji xianfengdui). Two primary aspects characterized the transition of the avant-garde. First, the identity of eliteintellectual artist had to be transformed into that of ordinary member of the masses; in other words, each individual had to leave behind the role of petit bourgeois (xiao zichan jieji) intellectual, and, as Mao said, become a proletarian revolutionary. Second, their idea of avant-garde art, which expresses a naive notion that they should take responsibility as individual prophets and saviors, transformed into the propagandist art of classic struggle and revolution. This resulted in the expulsion of any traces of their previous individuality. This formidable transition was both ideological and institutional. The same type of transition of the avant-garde may also be
found to have occurred in the case of the Russian avant-gardists of the early Soviet Union and also the Italian futurists in the period of Mussolini’s rise to power.28 However, the transition of the Chinese avant-garde of the 1930s and 1940s was far more smooth and rational than that of the Russian and Italian examples. There are two primary reasons why the Chinese transition was distinctive. First, before the avant-gardists went to Yan’an, they had already been inspired by, and interested in, Marx’s doctrine of the proletarian masses, although their concern with the proletariat was mostly based on naive bourgeoishumanist notions. Secondly, the motivation of the Chinese avant-garde was not to create a material utopia in their artworks, as Russian avant-gardists and Italian futurists did. Instead, they tended to express their misery about specific social problems in people’s lives.29 The transition of the avant-garde was successfully accomplished under Mao’s 1942 Great Rectification in Yan’an (Yan’an zhengfeng yundong). After the move to Yan’an, the previous avant-garde artists and writers had put forth claims to a degree of creative independence. This bourgeois stand prompted Mao
Early Avant-Garde (1920s–1940s) Revolution in Art
Mao’s Art (1940s–1970s) Yan’an Talk (1942)
Art for the Life of the Masses
Revolutionary Art Mass Art
Figure 1.5 The transition of the early Chinese avant-garde to Mao’s art.
Avant-Garde and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
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Zedong to launch the Rectification campaign. Mao directed artists and writers to toe the party line, to avoid “realism, sentimentalism, [and] satire,” to put politics before art always, and to respect only those writers and artists who put the interests of the masses first. The initial ambition of enlightening the masses with avant-gardist idealism was now retained and enforced. Mao, however, never forgave the avantgarde’s quest for independence, and consequently the officials of the previous avant-garde were the victims of accusations during the struggles of the Cultural Revolution. In the end, the avant-garde could not escape from the predicted and tragic fate that had accompanied it since its birth.30 The old avant-garde looked conservative, weak, and colorless, while their concept of the proletariat was completely swept away by a new revolutionary mass art known as Red Guard art, which was a sort of red pop (hongse bopu). Interestingly, when the ’85 Movement arose much later, some conservative critics immediately viewed it as another Red Guard movement because of its organizational structure, which consisted overwhelmingly of self-organized groups much like the “fighting crews” (zhandoudui) of the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. The artists of the ’85 Movement were the next generation after the Red Guards. Most of them were less than ten years old when the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976. From an ideological perspective, the artists of the ’85 Movement fought for individualism and the democratization of art, a continuation of the intellectual ideology initiated by the May Fourth generation in the early twentieth century. The orientation toward a total avant-gardism which drove the ’85 Movement, however, might share a common root not only with the idealism of the early Chinese avant-garde, but also with the utopian world of Mao’s revolutionary mass culture. The New Cultural Movement lasted for about three decades, from the first decade of the twentieth century into the early 1930s. The Sino-Japanese War halted this Chinese “modernist” movement, though the war also kept certain modern groups, in particular the Left, moving forward, reaching the phase of social realism as a major stylistic consequence of the war breaking out in 1937. Unsurprisingly, the early
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Chinese avant-gardists of the 1930s chose realism rather than modernism as their language. This came from the movement’s own logic: in the beginning of the revolution, the highest priority was to convert the cultural elite and intellectuals to sympathy with the proletarian class. The new popular identity formation necessitated a comprehensive language, not for the avant-gardists themselves but for the masses and the revolution. Mao’s Proletarian Avant-Garde
In many ways, the avant-garde of Saint-Simon’s conception may be considered a political avantgarde. It is alien, however, to the Western historical avant-garde. This political avant-garde became a legacy of Stalin’s art, from which Mao’s mass art was developed. In Clement Greenberg’s eyes, they were no more than political kitsch, similar to Hollywood’s commercial kitsch, reflecting the vulgar taste of the masses. The artists of the historical avant-garde, by contrast, he considered to have produced high art, as they committed themselves to the creation of revolutionary visual forms rather than being bodily involved in the social revolution. The abundance of avant-garde sentiment extolled by the postmodernists, and the accompanying return to political issues, by no means indicates that they intended to return to the “political” avant-garde as it was conceived by Saint-Simon. Rather, postmodernism continues a conceptualized aestheticism, a legacy from Duchamp, whose intention is to establish a new aesthetic discourse by deconstructing any existing discourse. This “revolution” (one may call it a neo-avant-garde) takes political and social issues as the objects of discursive critique, rather than viewing politics and society as the real arena and emphasizing lived experience. The political avant-garde of Mao’s revolution, however, saw society as its arena, as did the Chinese intellectual avant-gardes of the 1930s and 1980s. This does not mean that their themes and subject matter are entirely political. Rather a certain consciousness drives the Chinese cultural avant-garde in its constant march toward social space. It is this sentiment that imbues both the avant-garde and Mao’s artistic and visual celebrations of revolution. The former is an
Figure 1.6 Luo Gongliu, Chairman Mao Reporting on the Rectification in Yan’an, 1951.
intelligent mourning of the old system, the latter a glorification of the new proletarian class. The vanguard of the proletarian class was also called avantgarde (wuchan jieji xianfengdui), as Lenin explicitly named that which was oriented by a “revolutionary commitment,” in opposition to bourgeois culture; for Lenin, this vanguard was the Communist Party.31 This appears to be a slightly different concept from Saint-Simon’s political vanguard, which he defined as “the vanguard of all the intellectual faculties.”32 But the new avant-garde killed the old: Mao’s proletarian avant-garde project ended in the Cultural Revolution, with the members of the 1930s avantgarde undergoing harsh accusations and punishments at the hands of the zealous Red Guards, the former’s revolutionary sons or grandsons. Obviously, Mao’s “proletarian avant-garde” learned from the experiences of the Soviet Union. On the whole, Mao did not publicly discuss or make
Avant-Garde and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art
speeches on the subject of art. Instead, his views on art were largely expressed in terms of culture as a whole. It could also be said that he laid more emphasis on literature than on art, much like Lenin and Stalin.33 However, the “Speech on Literature and Art at the Symposium in Yan’an,” widely known as the Yan’an Talk,34 was undoubtedly the most concentrated and comprehensive expression of Mao’s thoughts on art. In this speech, Mao discussed class art and promulgated the idea of art as an integral part of the revolutionary machinery, an idea obviously derived from Lenin’s “Party Organization and Party Literature.” As Mao said in the Yan’an Talk, “Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.”35 Mao’s comments on learning from the ancients and foreigners was also similar to Lenin’s attitude toward traditional and bourgeois art. Mao’s remarks on the relationship
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between art and life also borrowed elements from Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky’s idea that “beauty is life.”36 It was especially in the Yan’an Talk that Mao first clearly pointed out that “we are advocates of socialist realism.” Previously, socialist realism had been formally established as a method of artistic creation at the Soviet Union Writers’ Representative Conference in 1934. It was through the Soviet Union that Mao brought the Westernization of art into China. It was unprecedented. Never before or since had any Western art theory played such a profound role in changing the Chinese mentality toward the making of art. Representation, or the reflection of life in the sense of socialist realism, had become a doctrine not only for official academic art, but also for certain forms of “realism” among the Chinese avant-garde. The byproduct of this representational doctrine (fanyinglun) is a cliché of philistine sociology that always threatens the revolutionary quality of the avant-garde and its methodological motivation for artistic creation. An extraordinary example of this is the short-lived and corrupted phenomenon of political pop and cynical realism. Thus Mao’s legacy set up a dilemma between the idealist “cultural avant-garde” and the radical, but corrupted, “social avant-garde.” The latter is the descendant of Mao’s proletarian avant-garde. Like Stalin’s theory, the core of Mao’s Yan’an Talk emphasized revolutionary mass art and asserted that art should serve the worker, the peasant, and the soldier. Compared with the mass art of the Soviet Union, however, Mao’s mass art achieved further development. In particular, the essence of art was more fiercely struck, making it more popular or “popped” on a national or even international level. Rather than transform the revolutionary masses, art should be received by them in a pop way; the artists themselves were to be reeducated by the proletarian masses, eventually creating proletarianized and popped artists. Therefore, the purpose of revolutionary art was not only to change the point of view or way of thinking and the representation of revolutionary reality, but also to convert the artists’ identities. This was a thorough transformation, a process by which an artist’s thoughts and emotions were to be merged with those of the masses. As Mao said,
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“If you want to merge with the masses, you have to make up your mind to undergo tortuous long-term temptation and endurance.”37 For Mao, furthermore, “popularization” or mass style (dazhonghua) meant that intellectuals needed to thoroughly abandon their bourgeois language and to adopt that of peasants and workers. Otherwise, their work was merely one of “popularlessness” or “small circles” (xiaozhonghua).38 Although the Soviet Union also stressed that art served the public, the main emphasis there was for the artists to transform the public through art, educating the masses and generating an appreciation of visual art. In fact, all members of the Artists Association of the former Soviet Union held high social status and were treated with great honor. None of them were asked to become laborers or farmers. Mao’s mass art, by comparison, is pure, transparent, and thorough— not only did art have to cater to, and be favored by, the masses, but artists also had to acknowledge that the masses were wiser than they were with regard to the standards and forms of art. For example, Gu Yuan, named “the great artist of the Communist Party” by Xu Beihong, once visited a shepherd boy in Yan’an to ask for his advice when painting a shepherd print. After the little shepherd boy said to Gu Yuan “no dog, no shepherd,” he felt both immediately enlightened and ashamed. He said, “This valuable advice could never be heard in the classroom of xiao luyi [Lu Xun Art School].” To participate in the masses’ daily lives was the best learning environment for shaping the art and thoughts of proletarian artists. After the Yan’an Talk was published in 1942, Mao’s slogan “Art shall serve the worker, the peasant, and the soldier” became the general guideline for creating art. Mao’s period in China went through a process of welcoming the avant-garde in the 1940s, educating the avant-garde in the 1950s and 1960s, and finally killing the avant-garde during the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. The first of these shifts occurred during the Yan’an period, with a shift from a “humanitarian avant-garde” art (bourgeois sympathy for the proletariat), which was an independent, individual, and modernist expressionist style, to a “proletarian avant-garde” embodied by a folk/realist style. This shift was accomplished in the late 1940s before the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The
second shift happened during the “Sovietization” period between 1950 and 1966. This was a shift from a propagandist art characterized by folk simplicity to an exhibitable propaganda art in a refined academic style. In the early 1950s, two phenomena—the New Year calendar movement (xinnianhua yundong) and the debates on the reformation of traditional ink painting—demonstrated a need for the renewal of nationalist identity when the nation was newly founded. Later, the model of Soviet socialist realism held sway until the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Mao carried out an extreme nationalism during this Sovietization period, however, which to a certain degree planted the seeds of antagonism against the older Soviet brother, before the cordial relationship broke up in the early 1960s. The third shift came during the period of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when the Red Guard violently launched the destruction of the Sovietinfluenced academic socialist realism. However, the academic realist style returned after 1972 with greater maturity and was featured as the penultimate example of Mao’s propagandist mass art. It is the art of the Cultural Revolution, in particular the Red Guard art, that defines the uniqueness of Mao’s art, which can be considered as a perfect synthesis of revolutionary and postmodernist art. During the first phase, the Yan’an period, artistic activities were in fact primarily geared toward the transformation of art, drastically remolding the thoughts of a group of radical left-wing artists who came from Shanghai and other large cities. They were regarded as treasonous toward their own bourgeois class, a revolutionary vanguard in wartime. At that time, the artists who rushed toward Yan’an considered Mao’s project a spiritual model for the future. Their radical thoughts and intellectual capacities were considered major resources for revolution. The priority of Mao’s strategy, therefore, was to remold the thoughts of these petit bourgeois artists to conform with his perspective on class struggle. On the other hand, he used a traditional folk art style (exemplified by woodcut prints) to replace their original resources of Western style. Almost all art that serves the national ideology has a close relationship with domestic avant-garde art at the early stages of revolution. However, such
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avant-garde art is very quickly abandoned, with artists looking back to tradition to create a kind of popular art that is more suitable for the masses. For example, several days after the successful revolution of October 1917, the Russian Central Executive Committee invited representatives of the intelligentsia to Smolny Palace to discuss possible future cooperation. Five well-known representatives from the intelligentsia and the art community attended the meeting, including the futurist Russian avant-garde art leader Vladimir Mayakovsky and artist Natan Altman. This happened because the new Soviet government saw avant-garde art as having a subversive sentiment against conservatism. As Greenberg said, those European avant-garde artists were born out of the original bourgeoisie, and represented unruly libertinism and dissatisfaction with their own class.39 Emotionally they tended to lean toward the Soviet point of view and even supported fascist Italy. Unsurprisingly, the new government in the Soviet Union tried to gain support from European radical intellectuals by adopting an intimate attitude toward avant-garde art. However, the abstract form of avant-garde art and its strong individualistic tendencies failed to accommodate the content and publicity that the new regime required. That this art was later rejected and criticized is not due to the reactionary nature of the artists, but rather to the excessive naivete and pureness of the art itself. By the early 1930s, the Soviet Union, as well as Germany and Italy, returned to traditional Western classical realism in art, while punishing the avant-gardists who did not support their regimes by instituting a harsh policy of suppression.40 A similar phenomenon occurred in China in 1930s and 1940s. Since the beginning of the century, the revolutionary spirit of art in China had gained even greater momentum than that in Europe. During the 1930s, the Chinese revolution in art had been tripartite, and we may divide it into modernists, realists, and leftists. The modernists were led by artists like Lin Fengmian, Pang Xunqin, and Wu Dayu, who had trained in Paris and whose style was closest to that of the European avant-garde art at that time. Considering the social and artistic context at that time in China, they would not be regarded as the most radical, i.e., the most avant-garde, although
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their style was the newest and their practice most closely related to the European aesthetic avantgarde. Their “aesthetic” was one that attempted to achieve a synthesis of traditional literati aesthetics and Western modernist form. This desire, in fact, has shaped one of the major trends in Chinese modern art that spread over the mainland in the 1930s and reemerged there in the last three decades. One can also see this synthesis in Taiwan during the 1950s and in Hong Kong in the 1960s. The realists were represented by Xu Beihong. The concept of realism was undoubtedly closely related to the role and significance of science in China after the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Xu’s legacy, which combines European realism with a heroic symbolism, consequently became the centerpiece of Mao’s artistic orthodoxy. This was true even though Xu did not play a key role in Mao’s revolutionary art due to his early death in 1954, and despite the overwhelming influence of Soviet art, rather than classical or modernist European art, in China at that time. Lin Fengmian’s modernism and Xu’s symbolic realism were still elite forms of art, but the art of the left wing shared more of a common outlook with Mao’s art project. The left-wingers were clearly influenced by Russia’s proletarian artistic thinking. They fiercely criticized the work of Lin Fengmian and other modernists as a type of decadent bourgeois and individualistic moaning. At the time, these radical youths came closest to representing the spirit of Yan’an, and Lu Xun had the largest appeal among them during the 1930s. Mao called Lu the “The Flag-Bearer of China’s New Cultural Movement” (xinwenhua yundong de qishou), and Mao’s attitude toward the leftists was indeed similar to that of the Soviet Union and Italian fascists toward avant-garde and futurist artists during the early days of their revolutions. However, even though the most radical left-wing artists had organized creative activities for the public (known as “Art for Life”) using woodcut prints under the guidance of Lu Xun, these activities were based on individualism, which had been popular since the May Fourth Movement. The leftists’ popular art still aimed only at “transforming the public,” and demonstrated at most only sympathy toward the proletariat and humanitarian sentiment criticizing social inequalities.
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Figure 1.7 Li Qun, Three Young Victims, 1935.
Figure 1.8 Li Qun, A Painting of Being Well Fed and Well Clothed, 1944.
Figure 1.9 Yan Han, Door Guardian, 1943.
For example, before they arrived in Yan’an, Hu YiChuan, Chen Tiegeng, Wo Zha, and other left-wing fine artists created their woodcut prints with topics related to “proletarian people,” although they were not necessarily proletarians themselves. Obviously this did not comply with the criteria of “revolutionary mass art” set forth in Mao’s Yan’an Talk, because Mao believed that beyond their proletarian subjects they still held bourgeois worldviews. On the other hand, while the Soviet Union and European fascists had their own classical and traditional realism as their authoritative style, for Mao there was almost no alternative official art form from Chinese culture’s own tradition for which to proclaim support. Therefore, Mao could not abandon the radical avant-garde art as quickly as the Soviets had. He had to transform, and take advantage of, the left-wing artists who came to the liberated areas. The literature and art rectification movement was launched in 1942. It aimed to change the artists’ ideologies, and to promote traditional folk art as a way
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of remolding their self-expressive styles and approach to art. It should be noted that this transformation was very effective. The promotion of the Yan’an woodcuts worked to increase the artists’ interest in folk prints, New Year calendars, and paper-cut forms. The left-wing wood sculptors switched from their original applications of the expressionist style used by Kollwitz in Germany, Masereel in Belgium, and Goncharova and Favorsky and others in the Soviet Union to a folk style of engraved lines. Relatively prominent works in this vein included those created by Li Qun, Luo Gongliu, Wang Shikuo, and Shi Lu. Some artists went so far as to directly substitute the traditional image of the door god with an image of revolutionary soldiers. Such celebratory and “love-to-see-and-hear” (xiwen lejian) styles served to popularize their art, but there was a loss of the bracing freedom and critical humanitarian spirit in the woodcut works that were produced during the left-wing era. The plainness of the Yan’an woodcuts, which used the natural style of rural areas, seeded a
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Figure 1.10 Door guardian: Dipamkara and Zhao Gongming. One of the traditional models of door guardian made in Zhuxianzhen, Henan province.
vulgarization of art that prospered later. In the Yan’an period, woodcuts applied the abstract language of the early avant-garde to an appreciation of the simplicity and sweetness of the masses that they represented, and an affinity with their perspective. This peasantderived taste was an important component of Mao’s propaganda with a strong nationalist appeal. After 1949, it became increasingly prominent and exaggerated. From the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Mao’s popular art developed from a low-level, immature stage toward a higherlevel, more-developed stage exemplifying an early academic style. This development was related to the Chinese artists’ learning from the Soviet artists. In the early 1950s, artists from the Soviet Union and China visited each other frequently to exchange ideas and exhibit their work. From 1953 to 1956, a total
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of twenty-six important Chinese artists studied at the Repin Academy of Art, and in 1955 the Soviet painter Makchmobk.M (1913–1993) visited Beijing and held a training class in the Chinese Central Academy of Fine Art, where some of China’s most promising artists studied during this period.41 However, the impact of artistic exchange between China and the Soviet Union was really embodied by works created after the late 1950s. During the 1950s, fine art still retained the elementary ingredients of the Yan’an era, while the party’s policy toward popular art was further emphasized. New Year paintings were greatly encouraged and developed on a large scale in order to eulogize Mao, the Communist Party, and the new life through which the working people would became masters of the country. The New Year paintings not only took rural folk form but also encompassed significant elements drawn from previous commercial art styles. Jin Meisheng, a New
Figure 1.11 Jin Meisheng, Vegetables Greening, Melon Fatting, and Yields Highly Increasing, 1956.
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Figure 1.12 Jin Meisheng, Fengtian Sun Tobacco Company Advertisement, circa 1930s.
Year calendar painter in 1930s Shanghai, painted socialist life using the same style, significantly influencing the New Year paintings. This kitsch style was necessary for both commercial culture and socialist popular culture. From the early 1950s, artists grappled with the problems of how to demonstrate the new life under the Communist Party and how to integrate a distinctly Chinese style with Western realism. Jiang Feng and others advocated transforming traditional Chinese painting through the integration of Western sketching and life drawing techniques. Although some artists who stuck to tradition opposed this idea, many Chinese traditional artists did join in making life drawings. A traditional style of landscape painting that manifested the “industrial landscape” (gongye shanshui) of socialist construction became very fashionable. The works of Li Keran, Fu Baoshi,
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Shi Lu, and other artists had far-reaching effects during this innovative era. For instance, in his ink painting titled Beyond the Great Wall (1954), Shi Lu used the railroad and an invisible oncoming train destroying the Great Wall as a metaphor for the effects of industrialization and socialist modernization on the new nation. The painting also involved another metaphor of the reunification in the form of a Mongolian family gazing at the coming train. Although the Great Wall was a symbol of the past, it was in transition to join the new. A parallel approach can be found in an early oil painting by Dong Xiwen, Spring Comes to Tibet, in which a group of Tibetan women watch the coming public bus that connects Tibetan and Han people. Like the railroad in Shi Lu’s painting, the bus was a symbol of modernization. Dong’s other important painting, The Founding Ceremony of the Nation, took as its
Figure 1.13 Shi Lu, Beyond The Great Wall, 1954. National Art Museum of China.
Figure 1.14 Dong Xiwen, Spring Comes to Tibet, 1954.
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Figure 1.15 Dong Xiwen, The Founding Ceremony of the Nation (original version), 1953.
Figure 1.16 Dong Xiwen, The Founding Ceremony of the Nation (1972 revised version), 1972.
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theme the moment at which the People’s Republic of China was founded. This painting later became a historical document bearing witness to political changes embodied in its iconological significance, as the artist revised it four times. Dong was ordered to remove and later reinsert certain high-ranking officials from the central government who were represented in the painting. The officials included such figures as Gao Gang and Rao Shushi, who was executed in the 1950s during a political campaign, and Liu Shaoqi, the chairman of the People’s Republic from 1959 to 1966 who died during the Cultural Revolution.42 Regardless of the political subject matter in this painting, the color, composition, and historical topic all reveal the pursuit of an original model of a nationalist style in the early 1950s. Even later, when the Soviet-influenced socialist realist style reached its peak, the art during the early period of the People’s Republic of China retained a strong tendency toward nationalism. In fact, the greatest influence on Chinese artists during the 1950s was not the socialist realism of the Soviet Union but the nineteenth-century Peredvizhniki (often called the Wanderers or the Itinerants), represented by IIya Repin (1844–1930) and Vasili Surikov (1848–1916). Of course, Chinese artists acquired the knowledge of this school through introductions given by the Soviet Union, which began
to advocate and pay attention to the Peredvizhniki at the beginning of the 1930s. There were several reasons why the Peredvizhniki affected Chinese artists so deeply. First, most Peredvizhniki painters came from the lower class, and so they were inclined to support the view that art should serve the people’s needs and align itself with their emotions and sentiments. This was in line with Mao’s mass revolution. Secondly, the painters of this school paid attention to national traditions in their choices of both artistic language and topic. Thirdly, in essence they belonged to the school of romantic painting, though for a long time Chinese artists misunderstood them to be part of critical realism. Unlike the previous generation of critical realist artists who specifically exposed the dark side of society and held an elite view of social inequality, the Wanderers expressed their own feelings in the paintings, affirming the multitudes’ hopes for the future by depicting their daily lives. Fourthly, their skillful academic techniques were admired and needed by Chinese artists.43 Prior to this time in China, classically trained academic artists such as Xu Beihong, Wu Zuoren, and others had studied in France, but they were quite few in number and did not have a major impact on art during this period. While artists did not have the opportunity to view European academicism directly, they could learn some aspects of it from the Wanderers. This
Figure 1.17 Ilya Repin, Barge Haulers on the Volga (The Volga Boatmen), 1870–1873.
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accumulation of academic skills, as well as a romantic approach, paved the way for the advancement and refinement of Mao’s art in the late 1950s and the first half of 1960s. At the time of the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in a burst of nationalism Mao brought forward the slogan “Combining revolutionary realism with revolutionary romanticism” to replace “Socialist realism.” This had two implications. First, it reflected Mao’s nationalist consciousness and his intention of distinguishing China from the Soviet Union. In fact, this tendency had previously been disclosed. For example, in 1956 Lu Dingyi, the head of the Propaganda Department, had stressed an opposition to national nihilism and wholesale Westernization, which, in the context of the 1950s, was a term used to warn artists not to unquestioningly follow the example set by the Soviet Union.44 Secondly, it reflected Mao’s more romantic and utopian approach to proletarian art, as differentiated from the art of any other national ideology. It is very clear that Mao’s ultimate and ideal model was an art that combined a nationalist style and a peasant’s taste against elite expressionism and academic style. However, art practice from the late 1950s to 1966 seemed oriented in opposition to Mao’s ideas, especially after the important political changes incurred when Mao resigned as national chairman and Liu Shaoqi, the number two figure in Mao’s government, took the position in 1959. The change was a result of the failure of Mao’s Great Leap Forward policy in 1958. In comparison with Mao’s radical revolutionary sentiment, Liu was more realistic, possessing a more constructive and professional approach to national affairs. Under Chairman Liu’s leadership, art moved toward a more academic socialist model. A number of the finest Maoist popular artworks created in this style appeared between 1958 and 1964, after several years of Sovietization. These works depicted romantic and symbolic themes with academic realist techniques. For example, works portraying the manifestation of heroism include Zhan Jianjun’s oil painting Five Warriors on Langya Mountain, Quan Shanshi’s Heroic and Indomitable, and Hou Yimin’s Liu Shaoqi on the Road to Anyuan. These works, by artists who were trained either in the Soviet Union or under
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Figure 1.18 Zhan Jianjun, Five Warriors on Langya Mountain, 1959.
Figure 1.19 Quan Shanshi, Heroic and Indomitable, 1961.
Figure 1.20 Hou Yimin, Liu Shaoqi on the Road to Anyuan, 1962.
Soviet artists in the 1950s, produced a number of what I call “academic socialist realist works” (xueyuan shehuizhuyi xianshizhuyi). Their styles were quite different from the simple narration of Yan’an woodcuts and the works sometimes called tu youhua (folk oil paintings) produced in the early 1950s by artists such as Dong Xiwen. The “folk oils,” however, continued to be made, commonly reflecting the people’s happy lives and usually focusing on peasant topics. The large clay sculpture Rental Collection Yard that appeared during this period also highlighted conflicts and performances in the class struggle drama, but it was cast with academic realistic techniques that had never been achieved before. Sun Zixi’s In Front of Tian’anmen is another such piece. Works with a
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monumental symbolic significance were gradually replacing plotted storylines. (This revolutionary romanticism was later replaced by the pop painting of the 1990s. In Wang Jinsong’s Take a Picture in Front of Tian’anmen, for example, the symbol of the fatherland with Mao’s official portrait on it, the Tian’anmen Gate in the socialist realist painting, turns to a tourist site for Chinese businessmen. The people in both paintings are smiling, but their mentality has changed sharply.) However, the literature and art rectification movement that began in 1963 appeared to interrupt this peak of “aesthetic socialist realism.” In terms of cultural ideology, this reflected the final confrontation between the concepts of Maoist mass art and 1930s left-wing literature and art. Within a period of just
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Figure 1.21 The large clay sculpture Rental Collection Yard, 1964.
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Figure 1.22 Sun Zixi, In Front of Tian’anmen, 1964.
Figure 1.23 Wang Jinsong, Take a Picture in Front of Tian’anmen, 1992.
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over ten years, from 1953 to 1964, Mao had launched several political and literary rectification movements to criticize and remove some intellectuals, including some well-known representatives of the 1930s leftwing literature and art. They were punished because, despite their efforts to accommodate Mao, these leftists could not leave out of account the “autonomy of art” and the construction of superior professional art, in contradiction to Mao’s theory that art would serve as a tool to reflect the thoughts of the masses. With extreme dissatisfaction, Mao finally launched the Cultural Revolution against Liu’s “capitalist headquarters” (zichanjieji silingbu) with the goal of “liquidating seventeen years [from 1949 to 1966]” (pipan shiqinian). Mao entirely negated the direction of the Cultural Ministry, as signaled by its new name, the Ministry of Bel-esprit and Beauty (Caizi jiaren bu), given by Mao himself. For more than twenty years, from the 1940s to 1960s, Mao had undertaken a campaign of rectification to reeducate the leftists, or the early avant-gardists, but it ended with frustration and disappointment. In 1966, he finally abandoned the then-avant-garde artists and their followers while launching a broader revolutionary proletarian cultural revolution. At this point, history returned to the original thesis of the “revolutionary masses” or “red pop” from the Yan’an Talk. The difference was that the proletarian masses were no longer the objects served by art; instead they became the masters of art. Workers and peasants could themselves be artists, as exemplified by Luda and Yangquan’s workers’ art and Huxian county peasants’ pictures. In giving the lower classes a right not only to appreciate art but also to have their own discourse in the creation and interpretation of art, Mao thus turned down any modern or postmodern theory of popular culture. This revolution was not a pure grassroots phenomenon, but rather a movement promoted by the authorities in the form of the Leading Group of the Cultural Revolution (Wenhua geming lingdao xiaozu). Of course, the glory of being a master was actually only the glory of serving as bricks and rocks for Mao’s utopian mansion. Jiang Qing tried to create an original form of Mao’s revolutionary mass art, and she therefore negated all traditions. Extreme
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pragmatism built on radical nihilism was one of the distinguishing characteristics of art during the Cultural Revolution. Although Jiang Qing opposed blindly worshiping foreign things, to some extent the form of paintings exhibited during the Cultural Revolution was more formally Westernized than in any previous era. The Real “Return of the Real”?
Visual art produced during the Cultural Revolution therefore completely negated the privileges of the elite and sent the privileged masters down. Art had maximized its social and political functions. Mass media were applied on the greatest scale, including the use of broadcasting, film, music, dance, bulletins, and cartoons; even medals, flags, and the big-character posters all heralded the new art of proletarian vanguard. Visual art produced during the Cultural Revolution was no longer only a single form of fine art classified in the conventional sense under different categories of media and concepts, but a comprehensive popular art that had never existed in the past. This was due to the fact that the art makers were total amateurs—students, peasants, and workers. The display spaces were on the streets and in other public spaces. This artwork is perhaps an extreme example of the site-specific, which is the most typical postmodern form in the West, exemplifying what art critic Hal Foster called the “return of the real”—real site, real moment, and real environment in daily life.45 Though Mao’s site specificity was political, conceptually there had never been such a popular art in the world before Mao. This was the case not only because the art of the Cultural Revolution revealed life during the Cultural Revolution as an integral whole, but also because the art involved the masses in its making. In this way, Mao’s art thoroughly transcended Soviet art, postmodernist art, and any commercial art in terms of the population of receivers, the scale of form, and the range of producers. Visual art of the Cultural Revolution era, therefore, was never confined within the specialist’s domain of individual art-making; rather, it was developed to the greatest extent in every corner of people’s daily lives. The effect of publicity produced
Figure 1.24 Li Fenglan (a peasant painter from Huxian county), Spring Hoeing, 1973.
Figure 1.25 Wang Yingchun, Digging the Mountain Endlessly, 1973.
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Figure 1.26 Anonymous, Take Brushes as Arms, photograph, 1966.
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Figure 1.27 Red Guards preparing to burn the EverlastingExemplary-Virtue Board of a Confucian temple, 1966.
Figure 1.28 Students mounting posters on the campus of Beijing University, 1966.
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through the use of medals, logos, posters, and performances during the Cultural Revolution could be compared to any commercial advertising in the United States. The visual impact and spiritual political propaganda effected by this artwork during the Cultural Revolution far surpassed the sensational way in which people in the contemporary Western world adore commercial media and stars. However, Maoist propaganda and commercial media were all wholesale products of the people, and as such represented the true reality of the revolutionary society. In comparison with commercial products, as well as with the conceptual work made by postmodernist artists, the so-called “true reality” in people’s eyes and minds in fact has ceased to exist, while mass media have become the “true reality” in a virtual and mechanical way, which in turn is creating, changing, and shaping our true reality. Visual art produced during the Cultural Revolution went far beyond the scope of socialist realism. It created the unique “red pop” campaign in China. Its extraordinary forms make it impossible to classify by any conventional artistic concepts. The features of “red pop” mentioned above are similar to the concepts of today’s postmodernist Western art, but the intrinsic difference is that Mao’s pop aimed to return art to the mass revolution, to life itself, whereas Western postmodernism attempts to address the issue of identity and political life by artistic representation. The “red pop” phenomenon was mostly concentrated during the earlier part of the Cultural Revolution, in the late 1960s. In the early 1970s, particularly after the commemorative exhibition “Thirty-Year Anniversary of the Yan’an Talk” in the National Art Museum of China in 1972, art returned to the earlier aesthetic socialist realist style with an overemphasis on state ideological art clichés such as the idolization of leaders, glorification of history, and the happy life. This is the ultimate destination of Mao’s revolutionary art, because it needs models and gods, which function as a visual Bible or Jing Tu Bian (a Paradise or Pure Land in the Buddhist world). Thus Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, launched a campaign to promote the arts of the Cultural Revolution with the principle of the creation of art as “Three Prominences” (San Tu Chu), “High, Great,
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and Full” (Gao Da Quan), and “Red, Light, Bright” (Hong Guang Liang). In this way, Mao’s mode of “combining revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism,” initiated in the 1950s, was moving in the direction of ultimate ideological symbolism. The previous core of the revolutionary proletarian avant-garde that used to attract the early leftists was completely lost. The complete course of Maoist popular art had finally reached its peak around the time of his death. Mao’s mass art developed pragmatically on the basis of the thorough nihilism that intended to destroy almost any tradition, whether Chinese or Western, with the exception of a few folk art forms, under the name and practice of modernity and revolution. For instance, the eight models of Beijing operas were called bage xiandai yangban xi, or “eight models of modern Beijing opera,” and a reformed Beijing opera was combined with a Western symphony. The revolutionary discourse of Mao’s art has continued to make an impact on the Chinese contemporary art of the last three decades; even though its revolutionary themes have vanished, its revolutionary ideology still remains in these avant-gardists’ mentalities. In the decade following the Cultural Revolution, all new art targeted Mao’s ideology and political art, but moved in different directions—social critique in academic realism, art for art’s sake, or directly demonstrating for freedom against authoritarian oppression. However, the art made during the postCultural Revolution period was still a byproduct of the Cultural Revolution, for it never was able to get far away from the political target, even when it pursued Western modernist forms or changed political subject matter in a neoacademic realistic style. The ’85 Movement, however, initiated a new avant-garde mentality, attempting to depart from Mao and return to the early avant-garde in the sense of positing an intellectual critique of society and pursuing cultural modernity. On the other hand, it also inherited Mao’s radicalism in the sense of breaking down boundaries between art and daily life and pursuing true involvement in daily life. It is this position that makes the Chinese avantgarde different from the Western avant-garde in a political sense. In his book The Return of the Real, Foster names two political avant-gardes in twentieth-
century Western art. The first took the position of resistance to art institutions, while the second attempted to imitate institutions with a methodology of cynicism, appropriation, and allegory. The first is modernist, or what is commonly called the historical avant-garde, and the latter is postmodernist, or neoavant-garde. In the Chinese context, however, “the political” means something entirely different, for “the political” is always present in daily life; therefore it is not necessary to consider whether an avantgarde is anti- or pro-institution, for the political is life itself and is also always being institutionalized. Consequently, the Chinese avant-garde needs to form a revolution within the institutional system rather than without. It is this mentality that framed both Mao’s revolutionary art and that of the cultural avant-garde in twentieth-century China. Is this a “real return of the real”? Or does it perhaps more precisely fit the original Saint-Simonian meaning of “avant-garde”?
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2 Academicism and the Amateur Avant-Garde in the Post-Cultural Revolution Period (1979–1984)
To a certain degree, it was Mao’s revolutionary pop art that halted the experimental practice of the cultural avant-garde of the early twentieth century. The total modernity and cultural avant-garde projects initiated by the May Fourth Movement were also exaggerated by Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The synthesis of religion, science, and art represented by the first generation of Chinese intellectuals and artists was replaced by Mao’s total revolution, which was oriented toward increased scrutiny and various kinds of cultural rectification. Mao’s ambitious and utopian project ended with his death in 1976. It was not until two years after that important moment, however, that the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution would allow any new activity to appear in the Chinese art world. A revival of the cultural avant-garde did not fully emerge until the mid-1980s. From a political point of view, public commissions generated around the end of the Cultural Revolution, in 1977 and 1978, continued the legacy of the Cultural Revolution and simply substituted the icons of China’s new leaders, such as Hua Guofeng, for those of the old. New Chinese art activities began to appear after several crucial changes in the Chinese political and cultural situation took place. In 1978, Beijing held a national congress to consider the mistakes made by Mao and the zealots of the Cultural Revolution. The policy of opening to the West followed, along with the slogan “Seek truth from facts” (Shishi qiushi). These circumstances encouraged people to express their long-suppressed desires to explore new art forms and to satisfy their demand for self-expression. In 1979, new art groups and painting trends began to emerge. Trends in art developed along with those in other areas of intellectual activity. Between 1978 and 1980,
newspapers and magazines published many articles based on interpretations of Deng Xiaoping’s slogan, “Practice is the only measure of truth” (Shijian shi jinayan zhenli de weiyi biaozhun). The idea that truth was no more than a hypervalidated practical reality caused Chinese people, who were disillusioned by the Cultural Revolution, to shift their values to pragmatism and individualism. Beginning in about 1981, philosophers began discussing questions of humanism and alienation.1 This discussion was initiated by renewed research on Karl Marx’s 1844 “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.” It used Marx’s theory, developed in his youth, criticizing alienation and emphasizing humanism, to indirectly criticize the suppression of human nature in Mao’s period, in particular during the Cultural Revolution. This discussion reached an important climax in 1983; the simultaneous philosophical debates promoted an awareness among Chinese people of the need to develop a modern and progressive society to accompany the planned economic development. These debates touched on human values, the humanist philosophical position, human dignity, human rights, and finally, human freedom. Conservatives within the Communist Party immediately counterattacked by initiating the political campaign against spiritual pollution (fan jingshen wuran) in 1983. In the art world, the first cultural rectification was launched to criticize selfexpression and the influence of modern, Western abstract art. Ultimately, 1984 was contemporary Chinese art’s most dismal time. The Sixth National Art Exhibition was very backward-looking, and there were no official activities of new art taking place except one avant-garde exhibition, held in Lanzhou, Gansu province. The campaign of suppression, along
with the conservative Sixth National Art Exhibition, however, eventually stimulated a new avant-garde. The greatest consequence of this historical moment was the emergence of the ’85 avant-garde movement (85 qianwei yundong). Therefore, we may call the art of the period from the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 to 1984 the post-Cultural Revolution (hou wenge) period. The new interest in humanism, or rendaozhuyi, reveals a pursuit of a kind of modern identity transcending class, such as those exemplified by workers, peasants, revolutionary inheritors, or the proletarian in general. Therefore, humanism in the particular Chinese context after the Cultural Revolution means declassification (qujiejihua). The “individual” not only refers to a particular individual, but more importantly can be abstractly defined as any ordinary, nonpoliticized Chinese person. And furthermore, this ideal nonpolitical Chinese person can be representative of truth, goodness, and beauty, i.e., what is conceived of as the true human nature uncorrupted by any political propaganda. Consequently, these ordinary, nonpoliticized people—equivalent to “nonpolluted human beings”—became the major subject matter in the art of academic realism in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the same academic circles, apart from this realistic academicism, there was also a large group of artists who favored abstract and decorative art in a stylistic sense. The apolitical for them was manifested in their chosen subjects, which included landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. There was also a circle that consisted of various self-organized art salons (huahui), outside the academy and official organizations. These huahui can be viewed as the “amateur avant-garde,” who pursued individual freedom in their private space in the form of salon gatherings while they made modern paintings and poetry. The first quality of these groups was the fact that they were all self-taught artists. The second quality was the lack of integration between their “art for art’s sake” attitudes and their political sentiments that sought for individual freedom. The limited political circumstances combined with the new cultural resources made this avant-garde practice merely skeletal; in other words, not yet a complete cultural avant-garde or total modernity project. The social critique embedded in the amateur avant-garde,
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however, was far more critical and radical than the critical themes promulgated by the academic realists, because the latter were framed by the general national policy reforms at this particular historical moment. “Scar” Art and Rustic Realism
Among the academics, realism was the dominant discourse of the post-Cultural Revolution period. This phenomenon can be understood as the continuity of the previous predilection for social realism when combined with a changing subject matter befitting the government’s policies of reform. Social realism, as previously stated, was also as the byproduct of the Soviet-influenced Chinese art education system. One of the most striking aspects of Chinese contemporary art of the last three decades has been the ceaseless development and evolution of the notion of realism, particularly in painting, photography, and film. In particular, it is the specificity of Chinese historical conditions that Westerners have a tendency to overlook, as the Chinese have absorbed, by osmosis, the entire history of the Western tradition of mimetic representation since the time of Plato. This perspective goes along with an ideological (as well as market) view which is in favor of a simple social narrative of the “current China.” Speaking from this perspective, China’s version of realism, especially in the last three decades, can be seen as a uniquely Chinese development that spontaneously emerged based on the nineteenthcentury tradition of social realism. Social realism, speaking broadly, has been seen as an international phenomenon, including movements such as the nineteenth-century Russian Peredvizhniki, the Mexican muralists of the 1930s, and American painters of the early twentieth century, such as the American Ashcan School. It differs from socialist realism in that it is not controlled by national ideologies, but rather represents the intellectual circle’s independent consideration and critique of social reality. Social realism often focuses on the life of the lower classes, but reflects it through the intellectuals’ essentialist and liberal democratic ideas of society, and the artists of the West who participated in this style were overwhelmingly from elite backgrounds replete with special privileges.
During the past twenty years in China, many different manifestations of the legacy of social realism have appeared, including “scar” painting, rustic realism, cynical realism, the “new generation,” and most recently urban realism, to name just a few. All of these realisms may partially fit the basic characteristics of that designation, such as a free and independent critical perspective or attention to ordinary people. Nonetheless, we have to be aware that there is always an ambiguity among these realisms in the Chinese context of the past three decades. On the one hand, the artists committed themselves to serving as a critical voice examining society, and on the other hand, they also continued in the tradition of Mao-era socialist realism, making their art easily corrupted and co-opted by market forces due to its popped, kitsch nature. For instance, the realism of the post-Cultural Revolution period reveals the intellectuals’ criticisms of the Cultural Revolution, but it never approaches an institutional (whether artistic or political) critique. Perhaps the best example of this inherent corruption is the phenomenon of cynical realism, for it attempts to launch a social critique while wholeheartedly embracing commercial opportunism.2 Consequently, the social critique present in China’s academic realism of the post-Cultural Revolution period remains a mere change in subject matter. Mao’s art only allowed three types of subject matter: images that glorified revolutionary history, images that glorified Mao’s leadership, and images that depicted the happy quotidian life of the proletariat, including workers, soldiers, and peasants. The socialist realism of the Mao period explicitly idealized a hypothetical “proletarian society” and attempted to create a propagandist framework advocating a socialist utopia. In contrast, the academic realism of the late 1970s carried different themes, such as the unhappy life of intellectuals, or tales of the Revolutionary leadership and history that were overshadowed or exaggerated during the Cultural Revolution. Images of important, newly prominent figures such as Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhou Enlai suddenly proliferated in realistic art during the post-Cultural Revolution period, particularly in the Sixth National Art Exhibition which was held in the National Art Museum of China in 1984. In comparison, there were surprisingly few images of Mao.3
Two types of academic realist art emerged: “scar art” (shanghen huihua), which emerged in 1979 and principally described the calamities and spiritual wounds caused by the Cultural Revolution, and “rustic realism” (xiangtu xieshi zhuyi), which sought to express a humanistic feeling by depicting ordinary shepherds and peasants.4 Artists of these two types were of the former Red Guard generation, some of whom had excelled at painting in the Cultural Revolution style.5 In late 1968, about two years after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, when they were teenagers, most of them were sent to the remote countryside for reeducation by peasants. When the art schools were reopened in 1979, many were selected and enrolled in art academies as new graduate students. The end of the Cultural Revolution completely destroyed their dreams of making a perfect world and dismantled their great loyalty to Mao. The scar artists endeavored to represent real scenes from the Cultural Revolution to stimulate people to recall their past suffering “in order to show the purity, loyalty, and love inherent in the tragedy of their generation. They wanted to represent the beautiful things that were coldly destroyed by the naked brutal reality.”6 They reexperienced the struggles with the zealous Red Guards and the downtrodden life of reeducated students through the creation of paintings illustrating the emotional wounds inflicted on the Chinese populace. Scar art attempted to liquidate the utopian passion of their generation as expressed during the Cultural Revolution. For example, the painting The Snow on a Certain Day of 1968 and the illustrations of the short story “Maple” depict tragic scenes of the battles between different Red Guard groups caused by different orientations toward Mao’s leadership during the first two years of the Cultural Revelation. These subjects could only be undertaken following the death of Mao, when the cult of his personality was being reexamined by Chinese intellectuals. Overwhelmingly, the subject matter of each painting is, in fact, autobiographical. These paintings represent the tragic fate of a generation that experienced a schizophrenic double allegiance, as they portrayed themselves both as heroes (for protecting Mao’s ideology) and as victims of that same ideology. The moment that marked the emergence of the scar art phenomenon was the
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exhibition organized to celebrate the founding of the People’s Republic of China, “Sichuansheng qingzhu guoqing cianshi zhounian zhanlan,” depicting thirty years in Sichuan province. It was held in the Sichuan Provincial Museum in Zhengdu city in October of 1979. In the exhibition, major artists of scar painting such as Cheng Conglin, Luo Zhongli, and Gao Xiaohua displayed their works, including Cheng Conglin’s The Snow on a Certain Day of 1968 (Yijiuliubanian moyuemore xue) and Gao Xiaohua’s Why? (Weishenme?). In The Snow on a Certain Day of 1968 it seems the author attempted to represent a monumental moment that took place on the street. A defeated Red Guard group led by a white-shirted female student, caught by the victors, are coming out from a building where a brutal battle has just taken place. On the two sides of the gate, all kinds of townsmen have come to look at the tragic scene, including a teacher of the Red Guards who was accused of being a counterrevolutionary and subjected to a punishment of sweeping the street every day. Both sides, however, are illustrated as heroic as well as victims. Liu Yulian, Chen Yiming, and Li Bin’s Maple paintings illustrate the story with that name, in which a couple of young lovers break up and become separated into two opposed Red Guard groups. In a battle, all her comrades have died and she is left standing on the roof of a building. She jumps down to her death; by
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Figure 2.1 Cheng Conglin, The Snow on a Certain Day of 1968, 1979.
Figure 2.2 Liu Yulian, Chen Yiming, and Li Bin, Maple No. 18, 1979.
Figure 2.3 Gao Xiaohua, Why?, 1978.
the end, her boyfriend is executed for a murder. Luo Zhongli’s Orphan depicts a child missing her father, who was persecuted to death by the Red Guard. Gao Xiaohua’s Why? illustrates several Red Guard students falling into a depressive and silent moment after a battle has ended; they are questioning the purpose of the battle, even the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Scar art was quickly followed in the early 1980s by a trend that has been labeled rustic realism (xiangtu xieshi zhuyi).7 These paintings depict ordinary citizens in a similarly realistic manner, particularly peasants, shepherds, and minority people. Most rustic realist artists had achieved recognition in the scar group. They shifted their attention from depicting their own experiences and observations during the Cultural Revolution to representing “the Other,” or China’s minority peoples, which number over
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fifty ethnic groups. These exotic peoples, distinctly different from the majority Han peoples, had been encountered by the artists during the years they had spent working in the countryside. Their unidealized, often rather melancholy view of these people may be linked with the concern for humanism that swept China’s intellectuals during this period. Like the scar artists, the rustic realist painters used their highly developed technical skills in the service of socially critical subject matter. For example, in the oil painting Father, by Luo Zhongli, the artist creates an ugly, hard image of an old man by using naturalistic colors and the techniques of photorealism. Every detail—a wrinkled and weatherbeaten face, a pair of hard-working hands, an old bowl used by preceding generations, the yellow sand in the water in the bowl—seems to tell a story, suggesting an old, poor peasant engaged in backbreaking work, ready to drink from a bowl of muddy water during a short break from his labors in a mountain village. The painter placed the peasant’s eyes just in line with the viewer’s, intensifying the vision of his monotonous and destitute life, repeated generation after generation, on the same piece of soil.8 In this case, what the rustic painter attempts to reveal is not a particular “father,” rather the state of humanity in general, in the form of a good and beautiful natural ideal. It is very abstract and transcends the subject’s class identity. The goal of the rustic realists was to express this humanistic ideal by freezing time (everything is old, original, and changeless) and eliminating social and historical evidence from the subject. However, they focused on specific details as examples to closely investigate the values of ordinary life, such as the father’s wrinkles and hands which suggest hard work and diligence. They are totally heroic, even numb, and have nothing to do with the greatness of the peasants seen in Cultural Revolution posters. This approach perhaps closely matched the government’s open policy at the time. Between 1978 and 1980, newspapers and magazines published many articles on Deng Xiaoping’s slogan “Practice is the only measure of truth” (Shijian shi jianyan zhenli de weiyi biaozhun). The idea that truth is not abstract, but rather what is experienced, observed, and measured in daily life, caused Chinese who
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Figure 2.4 Chen Danqing, Tibetan Series: Going to Town, 1980.
Figure 2.5 Luo Zhongli, Father, 1980.
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were disillusioned by the Cultural Revolution to shift their values to pragmatism and individual observations. Therefore, the desire to “seek truth” resulted not only in a change in subject matter from Mao’s revolutionary subjects to the nonrevolutionary daily life of the people, but also in a call for a “true” realistic method, which was very much influenced by the critical realism of the nineteenth-century Russian Peredvizhniki in scar art, as well as by photorealism and the work of Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), an American painter similar to the rustics.9 With the intention of “seeking truth,” the scar and rustic painters adopted a photorealist approach. In the illustrations based on the short story “Maple,” rather than portraying Jiang Qing (Mao’s wife) and Lin Biao (Mao’s “betrayer”) as deformed caricatures— the style favored by their contemporaries to criticize the Gang of Four (Sirenbang)—the artists simply copied news photographs of Jiang and Lin for their illustrations, without any defacement. This photorealist style immediately shocked the art world of 1979, as audiences were accustomed to a method of representation that either idealized or caricatured. This attempt at a neutral stance represents a very important step away from the previous socialist realism, at a time in Chinese art when the conventions and styles of Mao’s socialist realism were still very much in use. In 1978, innumerable caricatures of the Gang of Four and of Lin Biao had been created and were the only acceptable way to depict these subjects. The neutral depiction of Jiang Qing and Lin Biao in the “Maple” illustrations sparked a debate in the Chinese art world about the relationship between moral truth and the representation of physical appearance. The debate became so heated and widespread that authorities halted the distribution of the issue of the Journal of Illustration (Lianhuan huabao) that published the illustrations for “Maple.” Although the question seems quite simple and even naive, it was a step forward for the post-Cultural Revolution period.10 Furthermore, it was the first time that contemporary Chinese artists used a postmodern method to explore the ambiguous nature of reality. Although American photorealism influenced rustic painting in the early 1980s,11 there is a fundamental difference between these two phenomena. The former was part of postmodern artistic praxis since
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Figure 2.6 Liu Yulian, Chen Yiming, and Li Bin, Maple No. 1, 1979.
the 1970s, in which painters attended to details with photographic precision, hoping through such attention to achieve “distortion” and thus to reveal the constructed nature of reality. The rustic realist painters of China, on the other hand, used photorealist techniques in order to achieve honest observation and an expression of the truth of human life. Moreover, the realistic technique of rustic painting was derived from the socialist realist tradition. One of the fundamental techniques of the socialist realism of Mao’s era was the use of a staged or photographic
Figure 2.8 Li Jingyang, Revolutionary “Flag Bearer,” 1977.
Figure 2.7 Liu Yulian, Chen Yiming, and Li Bin, Maple No. 14, 1979.
Figure 2.9 Chen Maozhi, Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other (Ban jing ba liang), 1977.
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view to frame a glorious historical scene in order to communicate the outstanding successes of the ruling leaders and the happy, prosperous lives of the masses. This nearly photographic style was adopted in order to make the picture appear more real, and therefore more convincing, or “truthful,” to the masses. The best example is Sun Zixi’s 1959 oil painting In Front of Tian’anmen (see figure 1.22), in which the artist used a photographic style to represent a peasant family’s happy life. The painting, however, does not attempt to highlight the family, but rather the state, which is symbolized by the monumental Tian’anmen Square as well as by Mao’s portrait, centered above, and seemingly among, the family members. Mao, the painting suggests, is the true father of both the family and the nation. Compared with the nationalist-ideological “reality” expressed in In Front of Tian’anmen, Luo Zhongli’s Father expresses a critique independent
Figure 2.10 April 1979, the first exhibition of the April Photo Society, outside the Orchid Door of Zhongshan Park. Photograph provided by Li Xiaobin.
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of the intellectual class, and the photographic “reality” of Father is in line with the lived reality of the common people. Not surprisingly, in 1979 Luo’s painting moved many people, and some even suggested that it hang above the Tian’anmen gate in place of Mao’s portrait. The painting itself, however, contains a contradiction between its own status as moral monument and the real, quiet, and ordinary peasant that it depicts, inasmuch as the truly ordinary is, in fact, the opposite of the monumental. In other words, Father is not a portrait in the common sense of portraiture, because neither the artist nor the audience pays attention to the identity of the subject. It is not a portrait of an individual, but rather a portrait of a type of spirituality recognized by all the Chinese people in that particular period. In ancient China, the subjects of portraits were emperors, ancestors, and literati officials. The portraits were never intended to be shown in public, but rather circulated in private.
Therefore, even as the rustic realist painters appropriated the monumental style and photorealist techniques of the previous socialist realists, they also inadvertently introduced the postmodern device of contradiction, thus subverting the original monumentality. This legacy of antiportraiture, which was initiated by Luo’s Father, was later transformed into “big head” (dalian hua) painting, a major characteristic of the cynical realism of the 1990s (discussed in chapter 8). It is ironic that when the whole nation of China was asked to look forward, the rustic realist painters insisted on looking backward, downward, and inward through their images of rural misery, stark poverty, and the rudimentary world of backbreaking peasant toil so characteristic of rural China’s “primitive,” or at the very least marginal, regions. Simultaneously, in literature the “searching for roots” (xungen) school led to a preference for the rustic and rural in both subject matter and style.12 One of the most important facets of twentiethcentury Chinese culture was the look backward to traditional or native “roots” to explore certain widespread modern aesthetic values. This also reflects the vacillation of twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals between an all-embracing humanitarianism and narcissism; between social responsibility and elitist escapism; between the reality of those close to the soil and the representations of a constructed, imaginary utopia. In comparison with academic realism, the first self-organized photography organization in Beijing, known as the April Photo Society (Siyue yinghui), seems more critical of contemporary society and authority. Both take the ordinary as their subject matter, but the latter is truly critical and thus represents the true continuum of social realism. Founded in April 1979 by Li Xiaobin and Wang Zhiping, the April Photo Society was the first unofficial photography organization in China following the Cultural Revolution. Shortly after its founding, the April Photo Society held a photo exhibition entitled “Nature·Society·Man,” which showed pictures taken by its members documenting a Tian’anmen demonstration. This caused a great sensation and controversy at the time. Later on, in 1980 and 1981, this photo society held two other exhibitions.13
Li Xiaobin was not only the initiator of the April Photo Society, but is also considered one of the founders of the photodocumentary movement during the new era in China. He has reported on typical events of every era since 1975. A representative example is his The Person Who Appealed to the Central Authority (Shangfang zhe), a picture that could not be published until nine years after its making, when it was praised as the earliest and most representative work of documentary photography in China. According to Li Xiaobin, the picture was taken in November 1977, when he passed an old man on his way from the main entrance of the Forbidden City to Tian’anmen Square. Upon seeing him, Li said he “had an impulse, a very intense impulse. With heavily beating heart and shaking hands, he felt that he was obliged to take the picture. He must do it.”14 From 1976 to 1979, Li took a large number
Figure 2.11 Li Xiaobin, The Person Who Appealed to the Central Authority, 1977.
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Figure 2.12 Li Xiaobin, April Fifth Tian’anmen Demonstration, 1976.
of pictures recording numerous highly significant social and historical events, including the April Fifth Tian’anmen Demonstration, the accusation of the Gang of Four, the 1978 Democracy Wall phenomenon in Beijing’s Xidan district, the appeals of the very many city-bred yet reeducated youths who were returning to the cities, and finally the outdoor exhibition by the Stars. In the April Photo Society, the social critique was much more straightforward, liberal, and humanitarian than that of the scar and rustic movements. The style of rustic realism continued to develop during the 1980s. After the mid-1980s, however, it became an increasingly decorative form of exotic painting, and by the 1990s it was one of the most popular sources for commercial art. The rustic realist painters began by creating an imaginary utopian world on metaphorical earthly soil with strong socially critical implications. Yet eventually, to their detriment, these artists found escape in the exotic world of self-indulgence.
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Figure 2.13 Li Xiaobin, Democracy Wall, 1978.
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“Art for Beauty” in the New Academicism
Western-type art academies emerged in China in the early twentieth century. The National Beiping (as Beijing was then known) Art School, the first modern national art school, was founded in 1918; its director was Lin Fengmian, who, as mentioned above, was trained in Paris and was very interested in synthesizing Chinese traditional and Western modern art. The second national art school, the Hangzhou National Academy of Art (Hangzhou yizhuan), was established in 1928. Around the same time, many private art schools opened and departments of fine art were established in some normal colleges (shifan xuexiao, universities that train teachers). Many influential artists, such as Lin Fengmian, Liu Haisu,
Figure 2.14 Chen Junde, Snow Scenery in Fuxing Park, 1978.
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and Xu Beihong, were trained in Paris and then taught in art academies after they returned to China. The art educational system was strongly supported by Cai Yuanpei, the influential educator and philosopher of modern China’s history, who had taken a position as the first president of the National Educational Ministry of the Republic of China in 1911. Under his policy advocating the Westernization of education and his promotion of rationalist aestheticism with the phrase “Replace religion with aesthetic education” (Meiyu dai zongjiao), during the first half of the twentieth century many different art styles were practiced in the art academies, as determined by the different interests of the directors and teachers.15 Neoclassicism, French realism, impressionism, cubism, and futurism as well
as other styles influenced the academic painters. Among the various isms, French realism was advocated by Xu Beihong, and various modernist styles from impressionism to cubism were favored by Lin Fengmian, Liu Haisu, Pang Xunqin, and Ni Yide. Western styles were translated and integrated into the Chinese painters’ practices. Almost all the academic painters in the early twentieth century attempted to create a new Chinese modern art in which Western art forms could be combined with traditional aesthetic aspects, such as the themes and form of literati painting, all in the hopes that a new Chinese style would be perfectly realized. The national art schools, especially the Hangzhou National Academy of Art, cultivated a number of artists who then became the central members of the New Art movement in the 1930s. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Xu Beihong’s French realism immediately became the predominant academic visual language and the basis for the educational model, at least until the socialist realism of the Soviet Union began to dominate the Chinese art academies around the middle of 1950s, as discussed in the last chapter. The other Western modern styles, even those favored by influential Chinese modernists such as Lin Fengmian, were eliminated and outlawed until after the end of the Cultural Revolution. A new academicism (xinxueyuan zhuyi) emerged two years after the end of the Cultural Revolution. This new academicism might have had nothing to do with the issue of modernity at the moment immediately following the Cultural Revolution, except that the goal of its visual form was to reveal human perceptions and desires for beauty as these were articulated by the Beijing Oil Study Society (Beijing youhua yanjiuhui disanci zhanlan): “We will strive to create the new oil paintings expressing human feelings and the people’s love from multiple perspectives in a true democratic environment.”16 Its main elements can be summarized as: (1) apolitical themes; (2) an elegant, refined style; (3) a belief that the purpose of the creation of art is technical experimentation (chunhua yuyan); and (4) a rejection of any spiritual or conceptual emphasis.17 This trend of “art for art’s sake,” therefore, had already lost the energy required to pursue modernity
as did the first generation in the early twentieth century, though stylistically these artists still looked for a synthesis of East and West (zhongxi hebi). The new academicism marked a departure from any proactive cultural or social involvement. In 1979 and 1980, many “oil painting research groups” (youhua yanjiu hui) were devoted to the study of European painting traditions, and consequently they represented the peak of the new academicism.18 The leading painters of the trend were artists who had devoted themselves to socialist realist painting before. Among them, Jin Shangyi, who was born in 1934 and was the director of the Central Academy of Fine Art from 1985 to 2003, has been the most influential advocate of the new academicism and the leading figure of the Beijing Oil Study Society. The subject matter of his painting changed over time from Mao’s political topics to portraiture. Meanwhile, traditional-style Chinese painting was revitalized after the Cultural Revolution, undergoing aesthetic investigation and launching a similar new academic style against the propagandist ink painting of the Maoist era. Several important experimental exhibitions took place in Shanghai and Beijing, in which most of the works shown were landscapes, figures, and still lifes.19 In February 1979 a group of twelve artists aged 30 to 48, including Kong Boji and Chen Junde, organized an exhibition called the “Twelve-Person Show” (“Shierren huazhan”) at the Palace of Infants in Huangpu district. This was China’s first modernist show since the middle of the twentieth century. The works were influenced by impressionism and postimpressionism, which was considered radical in the post-Cultural Revolution context, although the subjects were traditional (birds, flowers, landscapes, etc.). The “New Spring Painting” exhibition (“Xinchun huahui zhanlan”), which opened in February 1979 at Sun Yat-sen Park in Beijing, was the first important group exhibition of its type in the city. The show featured some forty artists from different generations, including influential older artists such as Liu Haisu (1896–1997) and Wu Zuoren (1908–1995), all of whom advocated an apolitical approach to artmaking. Another significant moment in the development of the new academicism came in September 1979,
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when several murals were unveiled at the Beijing International Airport. Yuan Yunsheng’s WaterSplashing Festival: Ode to Life (Poshuijie: Shengming de Zange) included nude female figures, which triggered a serious controversy over nudity in public art.20 The subject is a romantic festival which takes place in the Dai minority area in Yunnan province. The artist was fascinated by the exotic life and vitality of the Dai people. The painting had nothing to do with politics. Because of strong criticism from some conservatives who considered the painting pornographic and demoralizing, the mural was boarded over in 1981. Yuan Yunsheng, the painter, therefore became not only the representative of what was then known as “aestheticism,” but also a martyr to the pursuit of beauty.21 The debate over academicism and individual style continued during this period. A typical manifesto of this new academicism is an article entitled “Abstract Aesthetic” (“Lun chouxiangmei”) by Wu Guanzhong (b. 1919), a French-trained painter of the older generation who argued against the dominant forms of realism in favor of “abstract beauty,” or “no subject, just form.”22 With his thought that abstract beauty was the presentation of real perceptions of noble human qualities, Wu Guanzhong clearly opposed Western modernism in the sense of its conceptual and philosophical approach. The quality of Western modern art was, in his words, also validated by its beauty. In addition, he believed that abstract beauty had existed in China since ancient times, in the elaborate literati landscape garden culture, calligraphy, the pursuit of pine tree form, and Qi Baishi’s paintings. As far as he was concerned, “somewhere between likeness and nonlikeness” is the right place for abstract beauty.23 With his idea of “abstract beauty,” Wu Guanzhong became a standard-bearer of aestheticism, and his thoughts encouraged the production of a large number of works featuring the pursuit of decorative art and stylization, including the point-line-surface ink paintings that he himself produced at the time. This apolitical, or “art for art’s sake,” attitude became the major official style apart from academic realism. Very interestingly, in the late 1970s and early 1980s Chinese artists, no matter whether
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Figure 2.15 Yuan Yunsheng, Water-Splashing Festival: Ode to Life, 1979.
Figure 2.16 Wu Guanzhong, Landscape, 1979.
underground or academic, were all fond of talking about the “abstract,” for it was synonymous with Western modernist art. In addition, in the eyes of the conservative official camp “abstract” was equivalent to the contemporary Western decadent school and liberalism. Modernism always bore the brunt in each official political campaign, while the term “abstract” in fact became a byword for illegal art. The illegitimacy of abstract art was even touched upon in a discussion of abstraction conducted in the magazine Art Monthly, and consequently the term “abstract” was deemed to be representative of decadent bourgeois ideas during the Anti–Spiritual Pollution Campaign carried out by the government in 1983.24 This fear of abstraction reached its apex when the ’85 Movement emerged, because the more radical artistic forms, such as performance art, began to be carried out and propagated by the new generation. In the middle of the 1980s, however, the new academic painting had lost its revolutionary impulse, and the painters shifted their attention to marketing and producing academic-kitsch works. Along with traditional ink painting, the New Academic painting
became the major genre propelling the Chinese art market. Because of its apolitical approach and marketability, the new academic painting also became a force in opposition to the avant-garde art that emerged in the mid-1980s, and thus we can say that it became nothing short of a pseudo-official art. In October 1984, under the influence of the Anti– Spiritual Pollution Campaign, the most influential official exhibition since the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Sixth National Art Exhibition (Diliujie quanguo meishu zuopin zhanlan), opened in eight cities, and “The Awarded Works of the Sixth National Art Exhibition” opened for viewing in the National Art Museum of China in Beijing from December 10, 1984 to January 10, 1985.25 The exhibition resurrected the political themes and propagandist art forms of the Cultural Revolution, and demonstrated that the new academicism carried the force of the dominant official art style in the Chinese art world. The retardataire content and style of the exhibition provoked a widespread backlash among artists, especially the young. This laid the groundwork for the emergence of the ’85 Movement.26
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The Amateur Avant-Garde
In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was an antiacademicism, or a kind of unofficial “art for art’s sake,” in addition to the one previously discussed in the academic camp. Compared with the academic one, this “pure art” was born of a rebellious conception built upon ideas of individual freedom and social democracy. The absence of an academic background enabled these amateur youths to express this idea of freedom within the idiom of modernist form regarded as novel at the time. They also exhibited a kind of romantic lament, because reality is tragic and always less than ideal. In fact, this self-organized huahui (or amateur) art, which emerged during the Cultural Revolution and reached its summit in the late 1970s, has never been considered a legitimate school, but instead a loose organization made up of salon-style gatherings, or life drawing teams, often associated with poetic activities. This typified the underground literary and artistic movements of the time, when there were a large number of young artists who despised the ideological art of the Revolution and passionately pursued modern art in Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities. Most of them were self-made intellectuals whose reading covered many of the Chinese classics as well as the Western literary canon.27 Besides literary works, they taught themselves painting techniques utilizing references from the impressionists and postimpressionists. In fact, modern movements spurring artistic activities, including new literature and poems, as well as the Democracy Wall phenomenon constituted a whole set of initiatives at the time. The year 1974 witnessed the climax of underground artistic movements in Beijing. Painters and poets, including Zhou Maiyou, Zhu Jinshi, Peng Gang, Xie Yali, Feng Guodong, Wang Choude, Ma Kelu, Tang Pinggang, Gu Cheng, Bei Dao, Chen Shaoping, and Zhong Ming, often gathered together. In addition, the Stars, who made a sensation at home and abroad in 1979, grew out of these underground artistic movements in the 1970s. These artists often exhibited their works on Democracy Wall. In Zhou Maiyou’s work Witness of the Years (1977), for example, the artist painted human eyes with the dates from the important
Figure 2.17 A group of Beijing intellectual youths, 1974. Photograph provided by Zhu Jinshi.
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Figure 2.18 Zhou Maiyou, Witness of the Years, 1977.
historical events of the twentieth century embedded within the iris. While Democracy Wall had a wider cultural and political significance, it had an important connection to artistic practice. In August 1978, the first edition of the magazine Chinese Youth, which resumed after the Cultural Revolution, was banned for carrying an article written by a participant in the April Fifth Movement. With the support of Hu Yaobang, the secretary general of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee at that time, the editorial office of Chinese Youth posted the edition on a wall in the Xidan district of Beijing in protest. Following this, quite a few so-called big-character posters were found on the wall, which was later dubbed Democracy Wall. At first, the posters on the wall were mainly concerned with unjust or false cases that had occurred during the Cultural Revolution. Then, gradually, posters appeared calling for the reassessment of Mao, his policies, and his thoughts, as well as openly demanding democracy, human rights, rule of law, and of course, free speech.
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Figure 2.19 Today, vol. 1, cover.
From the winter of 1978 to the spring of 1981, a total of more than fifty nonofficial magazines were published in Beijing, most of which could be categorized as political, like Exploration and Forum, together with some literary ones like Today and Soil. It was quite common for artists to offer illustrations to those magazines, through which amateur painters expressed their hopes of individual freedom and human liberation within the stylistic idiom of abstraction, creating a new aesthetic they based on formalist beauty. Childish as their “abstraction” was, these images were profound forays into modernity compared to those abstract paintings of the quasiofficial academic group mentioned above. Beijing was the geographical locus of this salon phenomenon, which fell into three loose groups: No Name, Stars, and the “loose wanderers.” The No Name Artists
The Yuyuantan Lake School, the predecessor of the No Name group, was the first group to staunchly uphold the principle of “art for art’s sake”; that is, they completely separated themselves from politics. In Chinese contemporary art history, the No Name group (Wuming huahui) has been overlooked as the first self-organized huahui during the Cultural Revolution.28 It began even earlier than the more widely known Stars group (Xingxing huahui), which
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Figure 2.20 Zhao Wenliang, Yang Yushu, and Shi Zhenyu (from left), sketching along the way, 1965. Photograph provided by Shi Zhenyu.
Figure 2.21 Zhao Wenliang, August 18, 1966.
emerged in 1979. Interestingly, No Name also had one of the longest life spans of any collective group, persisting for nearly half a century. The history of the No Name group can be traced back to 1959, when Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu met each other at the Xihua Fine Arts Institute. Xihua was one of the few private educational institutes in Mao’s era.29 Over the nearly 50 years since their initial encounter, they not only formed a remarkable bond that goes well beyond mere friendship, but Zhao and Yang also became the spiritual fathers of the No Name group. Along with Zhang Da’an and Shi Zhenyu, whom they met around 1962, they formed the nucleus of the nascent group. Their activities established the core philosophy of the No Name group and laid the groundwork for
its future direction. During the Cultural Revolution, they rejected the politics of the day and instead advocated “art for art’s sake.” For instance, on August 18, 1966, when Chairman Mao addressed the Red Guards in Tian’anmen Square, Zhao Wenliang, Yang Yushan, and Shi Zhenyu did not exactly throw themselves into the revolutionary frenzy. Rather, they decamped from the city center to the suburbs where they painted all day long. It was for this reason that Zhao Wenliang inscribed on the back of his painting “8-18”: “After this painting was completed, the bloody terror of 8-18 occurred. I stopped painting for 15 days. On October 21 [I] again took up the brush. This painting has lain dormant in my carrying case for nearly ten years now.”30
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Figure 2.22 Zhao Wenliang, August 18, words on the back.
Figure 2.23 Zheng Ziyan, Zhao Wenliang, Li Shan, and Ma Kelu (from left), making sketches concerning zi zhu yuan, 1974. Photograph provided by Zhao Wenliang.
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Figure 2.24 Tian’anmen, April 5, 1976. Photograph provided by Zhao Wenliang.
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After 1973, some talented young students returned from the countryside, where they had been sent by the government for “reeducation,” and soon joined Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu’s art circle. These young people included Zhang Wei, Li Shan, and Ma Kelu, among others. They formed a larger group that people would later call the Yuyuantan Lake School of painting (Yuyuantan huapai). Under the instruction of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, these young painters would often make time on weekends and holidays to go outside and paint from life in the plein air tradition. Many times the artists numbered some twenty or more. Significantly, in 1976, when the April Fifth event occurred, the No Name group was there in Tian’anmen Square. The event was initiated by the masses’ commemorative activities on the occasion of the death of Premier Zhou Enlai on April 5, a date when people traditionally commemorated their ancestors and celebrated the Qingming Festival. However, on this occasion, the event turned into a political demonstration against the Cultural Revolution and its leadership, the Gang of Four, as well as Mao himself. Some artists of the No Name group participated directly in the demonstrations, some fought with the police, and some busied themselves recording this historic political event, painting scenes of the demonstrations at the Monument to the People’s Heroes. Interestingly, they did not use standard methods to narrate the scene, but rather expressed these events in the form of landscapes. The same kind of representation of the Democracy Wall movement which took place in Beijing in 1978 can be seen in Ma Kelu’s painting Democracy Wall (1978), done in oil on paper. In the painting, smoke spreads everywhere from the big-character posters to suggest anger and provocative voices against authority. A man leaning on a walking stick hints at the leader of the Star group, Ma Desheng, as he takes in the demonstration on the street. No matter how much we might want to pass judgment on the impressionistic, quasi-traditional literati landscape painting of the No Name group, the phenomenon of the group is one of the indispensable parts of the art from the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. Without the presence of the underground art from this period, the narrative of the art history of
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Figure 2.25 Wei Hai, Zheng Ziyan, and Zhang Wei (from left) at Tian’anmen, April 5, 1976. Photograph provided by Zhao Wenliang.
Figure 2.26 Zheng Ziyan, In Memory, 1976.
Figure 2.27 Ma Kelu, Democracy Wall, 1978.
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the Cultural Revolution would be incomplete. The No Name group is also an important, but overlooked, phenomenon within the historical trajectory of Chinese modernity and the ensuing avant-garde of the twentieth century. Through their innocent landscapes, these artists expressed their sincere feelings about truth, beauty, and harmony under the circumstances of the dirty, oppressively politicized Cultural Revolution period. Furthermore, the choice of landscape and life drawing had everything to do with opposing the political trends of China in the 1960s and 1970s. This kind of art was considered “antirealist.” It was banned and criticized as a manifestation of bourgeois modernism. The choice to go to the suburbs to paint was made not because the artists found the location to have the most delightful subject matter, but because it brought the least amount of trouble and let the artists go about their work unwitnessed and unpunished. Moreover, it was some small comfort and mental support for the individual artists to be able to go out as a group and paint. Together they could experience a sense of freedom. In 1975, during the Cultural Revolution, the artists of the No Name organized an underground exhibition in Zhang Wei’s home in the apartment building called 203 Big Yard.31 It is important to keep in mind that this kind of “themeless” (or apolitical subject matter) painting—still life, portraiture, and landscape—only appeared in 1979, two years after the Cultural Revolution, at the “Twelve-Person Show” in Shanghai and the “New Spring Painting” exhibition in Beijing, when the government began to adopt an open policy. Still life was prohibited during the Cultural Revolution due to its bourgeois tendency. Any naturally beautiful scene, such as a woman and flowers, would be seen as a corrupted theme. As Mao said, “They love their battle array, not silks and satins” (Buai hongzhuang ai wuzhuang).32 The artists of the No Name, however, painted a numbers of still lifes of flowers. Among the artists, Li Shan was a still life specialist. Innocence and purity were symbols of beauty, not only for women but for all the Chinese who were looking for a peaceful life. Yang Yushu also painted a still life with plum blossoms, one of the four symbols of virtues in ancient literati painting, to symbolize encouragement against the cruelty of Mao’s
Figure 2.28 Li Shan, Water Lily, 1978.
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Cultural Revolution. The painting was done on the very day after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. After the devastation of the “harsh winter,” the flower was still alive. Therefore, the painting could be described as a self-portrait of the artist. After the Cultural Revolution, in 1979, with support from Liu Xun, an official leader from the Beijing Artists Association, No Name held its first official art exhibition in the Beihai district in Beijing. It was at this time that the name “No Name” first came into formal usage.33 Two months later, another avant-garde event, the Stars group’s first selforganized exhibition, took place, causing a public sensation which led to its being shut down by the police. Above all, seen from the perspective of the Chinese indigenous scene, the No Name group’s pursuit of “art for art’s sake” was almost unique in the second half of the twentieth century in China. The subjective value of the No Name group was individual and elite, and art was, for them, a quasireligious way of eliminating emotion and exiling the self from an idealess society. For nearly fifty years now, through every sort of political and economic vicissitude, the No Name group has been consistently overlooked. Never have they received official plaudits, nor have they achieved commercial success. Naturally they look upon the latter with undisguised diffidence, continuing to uphold their original belief in “art for art’s sake.” No wonder people have taken to calling them the contemporary version of Bo Yi and Shu Qi. Bo Yi and Shu Qi were brothers, as well as princes, during the Shang Dynasty (1766–1122 B.C.). Historical documents recorded that after the Zhou Dynasty (1121–221 B.C.) took over the empire from the Shang, the princes refused to eat Zhou’s rice and died on Shouyang mountain. The story can be seen as a metaphor. Comparing the artists to these brothers expresses Zhao and Yang’s refusal to prostrate themselves, either to the political powers of the time or the current materialism. A half-century of reclusive life has indeed enlightened Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, and they seem to have become modern self-cultivated literati, in a traditional moral sense. But when we consider the No Name as an important phenomenon of Chinese contemporary art, the tragic, anonymous fate of the
Figure 2.29 Yang Yushu, After Calamity, 1976.
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group becomes a significant oversight in Chinese arthistorical research. The continued anonymity of the No Name group cannot be considered an isolated incident; rather, it implicates, and perpetuates, the incomplete view in which we narrate the history of Chinese modern art. The Stars
The second major group, chronologically speaking, is the Stars, a painting group that advocated artistic intervention into society, even though they accomplished this with the artistic formalism characteristic of the philosophy inherent in “art for art’s sake.” The Stars (Xing xing) were the most controversial group during the post-Cultural Revolution period.34 They, too, were of the same Red Guard generation as the scar painters, but they were principally self-taught artists (i.e., not trained in the academy). The Stars were, in a popular sense, the first influential avant-garde group, challenging both aesthetic conventions and political authority. Their use of formerly banned Western styles, from postimpressionism to abstract expressionism, was an implicit criticism of the status quo. The group’s first exhibition, in September 1979, was a provocative display of about 140 works by twenty-three artists, hung without official permission on the fence outside the National Art Museum of China, Beijing. After the police disrupted the exhibition, the artists posted a notice on Democracy Wall and staged a protest march. The Stars were then granted their first formal exhibition (“Xing xing huazhan”), approved by the authorities, which was held in the Huafangzhai (the hall of painting boat) of Beihai Park, Beijing, in November of that same year. This time, 163 works by twenty-three artists were displayed.35 In March 1980, Meishu published an article about the Stars by Li Xianting which quoted Qu Leilei, a Stars painter, as advocating “art for the sake of self-expression” (ziwobiaoxian de yishu).36 The article prompted a debate about art’s function that continued for two years. The Stars held yet another exhibition, also with official approval, at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, in August 1980. Although the group’s primary intention was to criticize orthodoxy implicitly by emphasizing
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Figure 2.30 Scene of the Stars exhibition, 1979. From Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 17.
Figure 2.31 Scene of the Stars exhibition, 1979. Wang Keping’s wood sculpture is visible in the background. From Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 18.
Figure 2.32 Protest of the Stars group, 1979, Beijing (at front is Ma Desheng). From Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 27.
Figure 2.33 Protest of the Stars group, 1979, Beijing. From Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 28.
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Figure 2.34 Group photo of the Stars outside the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, where they held their second exhibition in 1980: Shi Jingsheng (first from left), Ma Desheng (second from left), Chen Fan (third from left), A Cheng (fourth from left), Li Yongcun (aka Bo Yun) (seventh from left), and Qu Leilei (seventh from right). From Gao et al., The ’85 Movement: The Enlightenment of the Chinese Avant-Garde, 49.
self-expression (ziwobiaoxian), this show became controversial for its overt political content. In particular, a sculpture by Wang Keping, Idol, turns Mao’s portrait into an image of Buddha, in order to hint at the personal worship that peaked during the Cultural Revolution. In another work, titled Silence, a man appears with his mouth blocked by a wooden stick to keep him from talking. All these images use metaphor to speak about the people’s desire for freedom and democracy and opposition to dictatorship. After the exhibition was criticized by the authorities, most of the Stars artists moved overseas. In 1989, on the tenth anniversary of the Stars’ debut, the major figure in the group, Ma
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Desheng, wrote, “Every artist is a star. Even great artists are stars from the cosmic point of view. Ten years ago we called our group the Stars in order to emphasize our individuality. This was directed at the drab uniformity of the Cultural Revolution.”37 Individuality and freedom are bound together with hope for the future and for a new modern nation, as suggested in Qu Leilei’s print Homeland, Homeland! No. 1. The different artists of the group held different ideas about art. Some favored abstract expressionism, some cubism, and others impressionism. Their socially critical tone, however, was similar to the search for previously proscribed individual freedom. In contrast with the No Name group, the Stars have been the best-known avant-garde group in
Figure 2.35 Wang Keping, Silence, 1979.
Figure 2.37 Qu Leilei, Homeland, Homeland! No. 1, 1979.
Figure 2.36 Wang Keping, Idol, 1980.
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the post-Cultural Revolution period, due to the sensational closing of their exhibition under political pressure. This can perhaps be considered parallel with the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition in 1989, which was shut down twice. Both drew a lot of attention from the public and the authorities. There is a tremendous discrepancy, however, between the two in terms of scale and the specific motivations of the artists from the two different periods. For instance, the avant-garde artists of the 1980s no longer concerned themselves too much with self-expression and intrinsic, individual values; rather, they followed a broad universal idealism. Nonetheless, the historical circumstances that transformed an artistic activity into a historical, political event remained the same. Both the Stars exhibition and the “China/AvantGarde” exhibition developed unpredictably; both were closed and became political events. In the case of “China/Avant-Garde,” the cause may not have been the exhibition itself but the performance that emerged suddenly from it, in particular the two gunshots by Xiao Lu (discussed in chapter 4). The unpredictable Stars show, however, had been secretly predicted by the artists involved. In the early summer of 1979, Huang Rui and Ma Desheng, the two organizers of the Stars group, submitted an application to the Beijing Artists Association. It was accepted by the chairman of the association, Liu Xun. Because of the full schedule of the association’s art gallery, Liu could only promise to have a Stars exhibition in the next year, 1980. The artists of the Stars could not wait, and finally decided to secretly open their exhibition in the public park near the National Art Museum of China without a note to Liu Xun. (Nonetheless Liu Xun welcomed the exhibition and was present in the park; in a photo from the event, Wang is showing his work to Liu.) However, nobody predicted the shutdown by the police, which turned the show into a political protest. Loose Wanderers
The last group can be defined as the “loose wanderers” (xiaoyao), which could be found in many cities during the late 1970s. In Beijing the group was led by Guan Wei, Guan Naixin, Song Hong, and others. Their view of art was located between that of the No
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Figure 2.38 Stars outdoor exhibition, 1979, with Qu Leilei (first from left), Liu Xun, chairman of the Beijing Artists Association (second from left), Li Shuang (third from left), Wang Keping (fifth from left). From Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 32.
Name and the Stars: they believed the principle of “art for art’s sake” was not so much about art itself, as the No Name group proposed, nor did they believe that should art be used as a political tool, as the Stars insisted; instead art should be viewed as part of our daily life. Their attitude might be summed up as “we are living in art.”38 Considering this, their art was very much like a kind of “loose wandering” (xiaoyao), with a kind of reclusive lifestyle as an essential feature of their outlook. The activities of this group included frequent mutual visits among artists, poets, musicians, and writers to generate salon discussions, poetry readings, life drawings, the singing of songs, and debates in philosophy.39 In fact, these kinds of avant-garde activities can be found in many cities in the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s, but thus far they have never been considered as a legitimate artistic movement, or a school with a true name. Therefore, I have given them the name “loose wanderers.”
If we see the entire amateur avant-garde art of the 1970s as part of China’s “modernity in art” campaign after the Cultural Revolution, we must also recognize “individuality” as its core and soul. Individual style and self-expression were the major pursuits. In the menglong shi, or misty poetry, by Bei Dao and Gu Cheng, and in the paintings by the Stars, this type of self-expression took the form of tender feelings and self-love of the petit bourgeois, but with strong anger at the authorities and deep sympathy for the multitude, which we can trace back to early-twentieth-century literature. What should be remembered is that this petit bourgeois taste was regarded as the true human spirit under the circumstances just after the Cultural Revolution. It was a sign of the revival of belief in the nobility of human nature—somewhat sentimental, melancholy, and exemplified by one’s lament over adversity and suffering. Although the social function of the huahui art in the 1970s was to call for freedom and to criticize the feudal concentration of power, this function still attached itself to a petit bourgeois aesthetic taste while embracing the concept of “art for art’s sake.” This could also explain why the Stars later became a political issue, though their paintings were basically made in pursuit of stylization, “formalist beauty,” and the expression of emotions, the only notable exceptions being a few wood carvings by Wang Keping whose provocative composition actually carried some political implications. Thus there seems to have been a dislocation in the aesthetic conceptions and social awareness of the 1970s underground groups, in the paintings of the Stars, the No Name, and misty poetry alike. However, as I have mentioned above, this dislocation was necessary at the time, and makes much more sense in the specific context. Because the aesthetic spirit of petit bourgeois art in the 1970s was explicitly rebelling against the Cultural Revolution, the petit bourgeois aesthetic ideas that originally concentrated on selfdirected and inward orientations could function as social critique. This is why these amateur avant-garde circles did not have a mature and consistent style, aesthetically speaking. Perhaps only the No Name had consistency in terms of artistic conception and expression. The amateur avant-garde artists were still hesitating as to
whether objects in artistic works should reflect more of the “self ” of the subject or more truthfully represent the outer visual reality. This hesitation could be seen in paintings by some members of the No Name and the Stars. Individual aesthetic choices were built on self-awareness, contrary to the “non-ego” philosophical approach advocated by the precepts of the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, self-aware aesthetics deemed “beauty” to be the final outcome of utopia, a harmonious integration of truthfulness, goodness, and beauty. Although rebellious in the sphere of social awareness, the avant-gardists of the 1970s still revered harmony, perfection, and unity and detested ugliness and disharmony. This kind of petit bourgeois aestheticism exactly matched the high-ranking family backgrounds of the artists. Most of the artists in the No Name group were born into sent-down intellectual families. Members of the Stars may have had a higher origin. Ai Weiwei’s father was Ai Qing (a renowned writer in China), and Wang Keping, Qu Leilei, and Bo Yun were all from families of high-ranking officials and revolutionary intellectuals. Although they were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, they were privileged culturally afterward. They were worlds apart from the pioneer youth who later rose up in the ’85 avantgarde movement. The latter were born in the 1960s, so they did not experience the Cultural Revolution as working artists; and they were commoners, and thus more rebellious in culture rather than merely in politics.
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Part Two
The ’85 Movement
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3 The Map of the ’85 Avant-Garde Movement
A renewal of official support for intellectual interchange with the West began in early 1985. The Anti–Spiritual Pollution Campaign ended and the government embarked on a series of liberal reforms. Released from the restraints of the previous three years, avant-gardism flourished across the arts—literature, dance, music, visual art, and film. This phenomenon would soon be known as the ’85 Movement, a name I first used in early 1986 during a lecture summarizing and introducing the movement to the nationwide art community. In February 1985, the Chinese Writers Association held its fourth conference in Beijing, denouncing conservatism and calling for freedom of expression (chuangzuo ziyou). A parallel development occurred in the visual arts with the widespread appearance of unofficial groups, largely cohering into a unified movement. This period was characterized by the most intense discussion of culture since the early twentieth century. Many works of Western philosophy, history, aesthetics, and psychology appeared in translation. Numerous scholarly conferences were held one after the other. Chinese scholars, both in China and abroad, involved themselves in the debate. At the same time, ancient Chinese philosophy, history, culture, and religion were reevaluated, criticized, or accepted according to contemporary standards. The discussion proceeded in three stages, as in the early twentieth century: first, there was an analysis of similarities and differences between China and the West (Zhongxi yitong); second, comparisons took place considering the respective merits and flaws of Chinese and Western culture (Zhongxi youlue); and third, discussions concerning the future of Chinese and Western culture (Zhongxi qushi) ensued.1 In the art world, the tension between traditionalism and
antitraditionalism was focused on whether or not tradition required modernization, on the definition of modernism in contemporary art, and above all on Chinese attitudes toward and evaluations of Western contemporary art.2 In this atmosphere, the artists eagerly sought information on Western modern art by any means, especially through publications and exhibitions. Most of their information came from articles translated from foreign languages or from writings by a few Chinese scholars who introduced Western modern art into Chinese magazines. Among the publications and exhibitions, the most important and influential was Herbert Read’s Concise History of Modern Painting, which was translated in 1983 into Chinese. In the early 1980s, the book was probably the only source for Chinese artists to learn about Western modern art directly from the West.3 The first influential Western art exhibition was a survey of Robert Rauschenberg’s work that opened in November 1985 at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, although some important foreign art exhibitions had taken place in Beijing starting in the late 1970s.4 Rauschenberg’s exhibit had a profound impact on artists of the ’85 Movement. This was the Chinese public’s first opportunity to see original works by a contemporary Western artist. In 1985 Rauschenberg delivered a lecture at the Central Academy of Graphic Art in Beijing and participated in a discussion with Beijing artists including Wang Luyan, Zhang Wei, Ma Kelu, and others who were members of the Stars and No Name, the groups that were not operating under official sanction.5 This newly charged intellectual environment was made more acute by the rather sudden appearance of a new avant-garde movement in early 1985. In 1985 and 1986, seventy-nine self-organized avant-garde
Figure 3.1 Exhibition in He Mole’s house in the Beijing diplomatic compound, 1985. Robert Rauschenberg and Wang Luyan are seen here talking in front of Wang Luyan’s work. Photograph provided by Zhang Wei.
art groups, including more than 2,250 of the nation’s young artists, emerged to organize exhibitions, to hold conferences, and to write manifestos and articles about their art. A total of 149 exhibitions were organized by the groups within the span of these two years.6 Avant-garde ideas and art groups were enthusiastically promoted in new magazines and newspapers such as Meishu sichao (Art trends), founded in January 1985; Zhongguo meishubao (Fine arts in China), begun in July 1985; and Huajia (Painters), first published in October 1985. Established journals such as Meishu (Art monthly), the most influential magazine in the contemporary Chinese art world, which had been published by the official Chinese Artists Association since 1952, also strongly supported the young art groups due to an open-minded policy and the young editorship. Jiangsu huakan (Jiangsu pictorial), a magazine traditionally focused on ink painting, also shifted attention to the ’85 Movement. Many of the publications’ editors were young critics who themselves were involved in the avant-garde.7 These journals reported the activities of the group movement. During 1985 and 1986, I myself traveled throughout China many times to visit various groups, and I collected significant documentary materials, such as manifestos, slides of the artists’ works, articles, and notes. In April 1986, I gave a talk entitled “Bawu meishu yundong” (The ’85 art movement) at that year’s National Oil Painting Conference (Quanguo youhua taolunhui) organized by the Chinese Artists Association; in it I discussed
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the art ideas and works of various groups and showed about three hundred slides to an audience consisting mostly of influential artists.8 My speech was the first announcement of the emergence of the ’85 Movement to the Chinese art world and public. Because it was presented at the first official meeting in the art world after the Anti–Spiritual Pollution Campaign was launched in 1983, and as such sent a sign of political relaxation and a policy of more openness, the publication of this text helped ease, to a certain degree, the suppression of some avant-garde groups by local officials. In Zhongguo meishubao, a special section for the avant-garde groups was created, called “Qingnian qunti zhuanlan” (Young artists’ groups), and it continually reported on and discussed the groups’ activities, ideas, and works.9 The academies also played a very important role in the avant-garde groups. In the post-Cultural Revolution period, the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art in Chongqing, Sichuan province, in southwest China, was the dominant educational center, as all of the most influential scar and rustic realist painters were alumni. The most influential academy for the generation of the ’85 Movement, however, was Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, about two hundred kilometers from Shanghai. This academy has been a leading art educational center since the first half of twentieth century. In the 1980s, Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art built on the modern art legacy initiated by Lin Fengmian by keeping a more open view toward
Figure 3.2 An overview of avant-garde activities throughout China, translated from Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 623. The chart was made by Tong Dian, one of the authors of that book.
Figure 3.3 The increasing numbers of avant-garde activities from 1977 to 1986; translated from Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 620. The chart was made by Tong Dian, one of the authors of the book.
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Figure 3.4 Zhongguo meishubao, no. 2 (August 3, 1985).
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Western modern art, on one hand, and paying equal attention to traditional Chinese culture and philosophy, such as Chan Buddhism, on the other.10 Young, academically trained artists began to play a leading role in the mid-1980s, in particular some graduates of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art: Wang Guangyi, Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, Huang Yongping, Gu Wenda, and Wu Shanzhuan were all leading figures in the ’85 Movement and all attended the Zhejiang Academy. The artists might not have learned much from the school’s teachers directly, because in China’s academies a realist style has always dominated, even after the Cultural Revolution. However, they learned from some young teachers and their classmates outside the classroom, and, most importantly, they were stimulated by the books imported from Euro-American circles in the early 1980s. When the international exhibition called the “Exhibition of International Art Publications” (“Guoji yishu shuzhan”) opened in the National History Museum in Beijing in 1982, Xiao Feng, then the director of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art, decided to buy all the publications from the exhibition. These rich resources, published in various languages, later greatly stimulated the ’85 Movement generation.11 The other source of stimulation came from the open educational environment fostered by the school’s general policies. For instance, the nature of the 1985 graduation exhibition of the Zhejiang Academy was quite different from those before and caused an intense controversy, because a number of the works shown were experimental, expressing many different individual conceptions and styles. In 1985 the school changed the rule that senior students must follow their instructor’s favored subject matter, style, and technique, and allowed the students to create a single work in any freely chosen style as their diploma work. Moreover, under the new policy, students could choose different conceptual or stylistic approaches that allowed the creation of multipart series. As one teacher said, “Under the party’s reform policy, we ask students to express their undistorted thinking and true feeling in boldly exploring their unique language in order to free their talents and individual insight.”12 The many controversial experimental works displayed in the class of 1985’s graduation exhibition caused a sensation in the Chinese art world, thereby
The Map of the ’85 Avant-Garde Movement
Figure 3.5 Zhang Qun and Meng Luding, In the New Era: Revelations of Adam and Eve, 1985.
encouraging a new generation of artists born in the 1960s, and trained after the Cultural Revolution, to adopt the new avant-garde orientation. Similar phenomena also took place in some other academies, especially in Sichuan, Beijing, and Guangzhou.13 In May 1985, the exhibition “Young Art of Progressive China” (“Qianjin zhong de Zhongguo qingnian meishu zuopin zhan”), held in the National Art Museum of China, brought together work from various academies, including those in Zhejiang, Beijing, and Sichuan. The most remarkable works in this show combined neorealism and Western surrealism, an approach typified, for instance, by a work executed by two senior students of the Central Academy in Beijing, Zhang Qun and Meng Luding, In the New Era: Revelations of Adam and Eve (Zaixinshidai—yadang he xiawa de qishi).14
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Compared to the Stars group and scar painters of the generation of the Red Guards, the new generation of artists was able to take its consciousness of spiritual liberation in wider cultural and political directions. Zhang Qun and Meng Luding’s above-mentioned painting represented the early ’85 Movement’s consciousness of its own role in the project of enlightenment, even if it was a rather premature and naive piece of work inspired by surrealism. In this painting, a young woman bursts out of a wall from a glass frame, holding an apple, a biblical symbol of original sin. A young man sits waiting. The naked bodies on either side symbolize Adam and Eve. Behind them, there are the two open doors of the Forbidden City; underneath their feet are images from the Dunhuang Caves, symbolizing tradition. The tensions between the inside and outside of the frame, inside and outside of the wall, and inside and outside of the gates symbolize the fact that the new generation of avant-garde artists was broadening its consciousness of space from political ideology to the pursuit of individual freedom, and breaking free from all sorts of confinements, including political and authoritative ones. The piece also caused an intense debate among the members of the Prize Committee of the exhibition.15 The artists of the ’85 Movement, however, rebelled against the academies that spawned them, as the artists embraced a social direction that was boldly articulated in opposition to individual style and selfindulgence as pursued by the new academics and the amateur avant-garde of the Red Guard generation. Geographically, most art groups were located on the east coast and in central China, especially in the cities of Beijing or Shanghai and in Jiangsu, Hubei, and Zhejiang provinces, where there are large concentrations of population. Throughout modern Chinese history these areas have been more advanced in education and more industrialized. Most of the groups were in favor of a conceptual approach, regardless of the kind of media they employed. In contrast, art groups located in the northwest and southwest, areas still home to a traditional agricultural lifestyle and most of the minorities in China, were interested in frankly and militantly expressing their intuitive feelings and favored primitive themes. Very frequently, artists there deployed images of minority people and an abstract expressionist style.
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(North and South) East Coast
Along the east coast, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, and Nanjing were the centers of the nationwide avantgarde movement. Among the avant-garde groups located in the east, however, one of the most influential groups of the ’85 Movement, the Northern Art Group (Beifangqunti), was not located in those centers but rather was founded in March 1985 in Harbin, Heilongjiang province (the area formerly known as Manchuria). The group promoted a “civilization of the north,” which its artists believed would surpass both Western and traditional Chinese civilizations. Emulating surrealism, their paintings often featured barren landscape elements and abstract forms suggested by the glacial terrain of northern China to express their concepts of what they called lixing huihua or rationalist painting. The artists Wang Guangyi, Shu Qun, and Ren Jian were the most influential and played a leading role in the ’85 Movement. As mentioned before, Hangzhou, in Zhejiang province, played a very important role in the ’85 Movement due to the importance of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art. Members of the Hangzhoubased self-organized group called the Pool Society (Chishe), including Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, and Wang Qiang, were notable for their biting sense of humor and absurdist spirit. Their works featured “gray humor” (huise youmo) paintings, performance works, and conceptual art (see chapter 6). Their practice, begun in the mid-’80s, influenced the artists of the ’90s. In January 1986, the “’86 Last Exhibition, No. 1” (“’86 zuihou huazhan yi hao”) opened at the Zhejiang Art Gallery. Organized by seven young artists of the Zhejiang Academy, including Gu Wenda and Song Baoguo, it featured readymade objects and performance works. The show was closed by authorities three hours after its opening because of the sexual content of some of the works. Three months later, Wu Shanzhuan and fellow artists in Hangzhou held two private exhibitions of installations entitled 70% Red, 25% Black, and 5% White (Hong 50%, hei 25%, bai 5%) and Red Humor: Big Poster (Hongce youmo: dazibao), which began their practice of language art (see chapter 7). In comparison with other areas, Shanghai was a uniquely modern cultural center and home to some
Figure 3.6 Avant-garde activities (mainly exhibitions and conferences) in the provinces from 1977 to 1986; translated from Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 625. The chart was made by Tong Dian, one of the authors of the book.
Figure 3.7 A party of the 777 Group, including Shu Qun, Ren Jian, Zhang Shuguang, Lu Ying, and Zhang Qianti, 1984.
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early modern art groups, such as the Storm Society (Juelanshe), which emerged in the 1930s. In the ’85 Movement, Shanghai’s avant-garde practice was also distinctive. There were not as many art groups as in the other big cities in the east. Rather, Shanghai artists practiced their art more individually and seldom founded lasting groups sharing a similar style and concept. The only exception was the M Art Group (M qunti) led by Song Haidong, yet another Zhejiang Academy graduate, who created performance and conceptual art for about a year (see chapter 6). However, in Shanghai during the mid-1980s, various exhibitions and activities provided numerous opportunities for young artists to communicate with one another.16 Many experimental group shows in 1985 and 1986 rebelled against authority and conservatism.17 Among these group shows, “Convex/Concave” (“Aotuzhan”) was one of the most provocative avantgarde events in Shanghai, with an impact similar to
Figure 3.8 Wang Qiang, Adagio in the Opening of Second Movement, Symphony No. 5, 1985. In the background is the exhibition “’85 New Space” (“Bawu xinkongjian”).
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that of the militant performance of the M Art Group show. The gallery space of “Convex/Concave” was decorated with the forms of the Chinese characters aotu (convex/concave), and most works in the show were installations, sculptures, and mural paintings. Various readymade objects and strange signs were mixed together, to demonstrate that they were artworks by Shanghai bohemians with an unconventional attitude. As Li Shan said, “Tradition has suppressed us and made it hard to breathe. We need something like this show to mock reality.”18 The show caused a sensation in Shanghai and many university students visited it, discussing and debating while in the gallery. A report by Li Jian published in the most important Shanghai newspaper, Xinmin wanbao, was titled “The Incomprehensible Convex/Concave Exhibition” (“Buke siyi de aotuzhan”). The reporter described a bohemian-type art that was extremely similar to that of the East Village in Manhattan.19
Figure 3.9 Group photo of the cast of Hamlet in Heaven. From right to left: Zhu Wei, Hua Dong, Sun Baoguo, Yang Min, Lu Zuogeng (original name Lu Yongqiang), and Wang Danshan, 1986. Figure 3.10 Members of the “86 Last Exhibition, No. 1” in the collective creation Hamlet in Heaven (stage photo no. 5), 1986.
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Figure 3.11 The poster for “Convex/Concave.”
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Figure 3.12 Li Shan, The Waking Dream, 1984.
Beijing is a national political and cultural center. It also played a very important role in disseminating information on the ’85 Movement nationwide, because many critics, and a number of magazines, are located there. Beijing is also the most sensitive place politically, which makes avant-garde practice and challenges to authority or censorship more controversial there than anywhere else in the country. For instance, two influential national art journals, Meishu and Zhongguo meishubao, were targeted in every political campaign of the ’80s. In Beijing, it is also very easy to make an art event into some kind of political event. The best example of this was the 1989 “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, which was closed by the authorities twice because of performances connected with it. It seems, however, that the young artist groups in Beijing of the mid-1980s were still influenced by the new academicism, mainly emanating from the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Art. They were not as vital
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and antagonistic as most of the avant-garde groups in other cities and provinces. One reason might be that the groups in Beijing were organized more or less officially or pseudo-officially. For instance, the biggest and most powerful young artists’ group was the Beijing Youth Painting Society (Beijing qingnian huahui), which was officially organized by the Beijing Communist Youth Community (Gongqingtuan Beijingshi weiyuanhui). It was founded at the time of its first exhibition opening on May 16, 1986. That was the year during the 1980s when China was most open politically, and the Beijing Youth Painting Society organized a number of experimental exhibitions. Perhaps the most radical art group in Beijing was the group of artists from the Central Academy of Fine Art who organized the “November Exhibition” (“Shiyiyue huazhan”) held at the Forbidden City.20 The twenty artists in this group show later formed the Beijing Youth Painting Society under the government’s auspices.
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Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, was another important base for avant-garde practice in the ’85 Movement. Among its groups was the Red Journey, established in 1987 and led by Ding Fang (see chapter 5), who was a typical rationalist painter devoted to quasi-religious themes of sacrifice. The group consisted of the principle organizers of the 1985 “Jiangsu Art Week Modern Art Festival” (“Jiangsu qingnian yishu zhou: Daxing yishuzhan”), an influential exhibition covering all the arts.21 The New Barbarianism (Xin yexing zhuyi) group emphasized and pursued primitivism and individual freedom in its art, opposing the approach of the Red Journey’s rationalist painting.22 The group movement in Nanjing peaked in 1986 with an openair exhibition called “To Bring into the Light” (“Shai taiyang”) that took place in Xuanwu Lake Park (Xuanwuhu gongyuan) from September 1 to October 5. About one thousand artists participated, displaying about seven hundred works on the grounds. The goal of this self-organized activity was to eliminate any institutional barriers confining young artists. It also allegorized the illness of the contemporary Chinese art world, and prescribed as a treatment the taking of healthy sunlight.23 Nanjing was also the place that cultivated a new Chinese ink painting movement, called new literati painting (xinwenrenhua). This grew out of the city’s long tradition of literati painting and the presence of an influential modern ink painting school in the city.24 In 1985, critic Li Xiaoshan’s article “The End and Death of Chinese Painting” shocked adherents of tradition across the nation.25 New literati painting quickly became known nationwide after the artists had an exhibition in the National Art Museum of China in Beijing in July 1987. Outside of Nanjing, in Xuzhou city in Jiangsu province, the “Xuzhou Modern Art Exhibition” (“Xuzhou xiandai yishuzhan”) was an extremely violent exhibition organized by several avant-garde groups, including the Sunday Painting Society (Xingqitian huahui), the Rhinoceros Painting Society (Xiniu huahui), the Red, Yellow, Blue Painting Society (Hong, huang, lan huahui), and the BlackWhite Creative Society (Heibai chuangzaoshe). The aggressive and provocative works in the show drew criticism that derided the artists as “animals,” “ugly
Figure 3.13 Ma Lu, Dream Is Just Dream, 1985.
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Figure 3.14 “Jiangsu Art Week Modern Art Festival,” October 1985.
Figure 3.15 A photograph of “To Bring into the Light,” Nanjing, 1986.
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and wild,” “psychotic with bipolar disorder,” and so on.26 In the manifesto of the exhibition, the artists wrote, “We were told one morning that God is dead. Various icons have been marked with a ‘cross’ in blood-red color. How can we rescue our restless souls? There are two Chinese characters for ‘destroy’ written on the unsteady banner of the show. While we are relentlessly pushed by some incomprehensible desire to go forward, we are seeking a new God, in order to touch her beautiful face—and then open fire to kill her.”27 The ’85 Movement continued to spread, peaking in 1986 with the emergence of a number of conceptual or anti-art (fanyishu) groups in eastern China. The conceptualists challenged not only propagandist art and the new academicist styles, but the idealism of their avant-garde colleagues as well. Their principal goal was to eradicate utopianism, subjectivity, and the artist’s hand. Their primary media were language and readymade objects. Their conceptual sources were Dada and Chan (Zen) Buddhism, the latter of which, like Dada, attempts to break free of any doctrine or authority. A number of the leading artists of these groups graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art. The most extreme philosophical and conceptual art project was by the Xiamen Dadaists, a group based in Xiamen city, Fujian province, and led by Huang Yongping. Huang had already begun his conceptual art practice in 1983, when he studied at the Zhejiang Academy. The establishment of Xiamen Dada in 1986 coincides with the creation of its manifesto, which was written by Huang and entitled “Xiamen Dada: A Kind of Postmodernism?” (“Xiamen Dada: Yizhong houxiandai?”). In it, Huang advocates the synthesis of Dadaism and Chan Buddhism (see chapter 6).28 In Fujian province, there were several avantgarde groups in Fuzhou, the provincial capital, and Quanzhou, a famous ancient Chinese seaport. In Quanzhou, the most influential group was BYY. This name comes from the three initial letters of the pinyin romanization of bu yi yang (difference), demonstrating the group’s antagonistic attitude. The group consisted of thirteen artists, including Cai Guoqiang, now based in New York and well known internationally. The group had two shows.
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Figure 3.16 “The Xuzhou Modern Art Exhibition,” 1986.
Figure 3.17 Rhinoceros Painting Society, ’87 Body Art, 1987.
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Figure 3.18 Catalogue of the “Xiamen Dada Modern Art Exhibition” with Huang Yongping’s manifesto, October 1986.
Figure 3.19 The cover of the exhibition catalogue for “BYY Group,” 1986.
Figure 3.20 Chen Lide, Injured Buddha, 1987.
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The second, called the “Quanzhou Modern Art Exhibition” (“Quanzhou xiandai yishuzhan”), included eighty-eight works, most of which were randomly selected readymade objects from daily life. The objective of the show was to eliminate the taste of intellectual aristocrats (guizu qixi).29 In Guangdong province, on the south coast of China, avant-garde groups took an antagonistic attitude in their conceptual art projects, too. The “Shenzhen Zero Exhibition” (“Shenzhen lingzhan”), so named because it had zero funding and no institutional framework, was up for only two days on the streets of Shenzhen, a Special Economic Zone near Hong Kong. Twenty-five artists from across the nation displayed their works, a number of which were readymade objects, on the street.30 In Guangzhou, the Southern Artists Salon (Nanfang yishujia shalong), founded by Wang Du, Lin Yilin, and others, organized the First Experimental Exhibition (Diyici shiyanzhan), a mixture of performance, painting, and music.31 Even in the city of Tiantsin, which is on the east coast a hundred kilometers from Beijing and is frequently called a “cultural desert,” about ten groups of young artists emerged in 1985, and their exhibitions and activities received unprecedented public attention. Central China
Characteristic of the avant-garde art groups in this area were extremely large group exhibitions with participation by large numbers of artists. Often the primary goal of the exhibitions was not pure artmaking, but art-making as part of a larger social and political program: to break down barriers, conventions, and suppression by the authorities. This situation might have owed in part to the cultural fact that central China is the birthplace of Chinese traditional culture and has many important archaeological sites, a legacy that might contribute to a resistance to modern culture. Therefore, the avantgarde strove to bring fresh air into the art world, yet avant-garde artists also had to negotiate with the local government. Most avant-garde groups presenting in this area in the 1980s got their activities approved by the local governments from the beginning, although
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later they were frequently strongly criticized by conservatives who had initially supported them. For instance, the Three Step Studio (Sanbu huashi) was established by Wang Yazhong and Song Yongping in Shanxi province in January 1985. The group’s name has two meanings: the beginning stage of an activity, like the “one, two, three” that may begin a physical exercise; and a small studio only three steps across. Their first exhibition opened in Taiyuan City Workers’ Palace (Taiyuan gongren wenhua gong), Shanxi province, and featured installations constructed from ordinary tools used by peasants along with many readymade objects. The exhibition was sanctioned by officials in Shanxi, especially by Li Qun, a well-known left-wing woodcut artist who had been active during the 1940s in Yan’an and now served as the chairman of Shanxi Artists Association; he even wrote a preface for the first modern exhibition in the area. Just before the opening, however, the exhibition was halted by the local government. The Three Step Studio organized a second exhibition in November 1986. Many ceramic sculptures were displayed, and a number of performances took place in the show. When Meishu published an article by Song Yongping and his brother Song Yonghong describing their performance called Experience on a Certain Day in 1986 (Yijiuliubanian mori de tiyan), however, Li Qun sent a letter to the editor of Meishu, strongly criticizing the magazine for its support of this sort of “Western bourgeois decadent art.”32 The most active groups in central China were in Hubei and Hunan provinces, the birthplace of the Chu culture (from the eighth to the third centuries BCE). In the mid-1980s, the two official art organizations, the Artists Associations of Hubei and Hunan, seemed more open than those of the other provinces in the area. For instance, in early 1986, the Hubei Artists Association, led by Zhou Shaohua, a painter who had been a teenage soldier of the Red Army when the Communists came to power in 1949, decided to organize a large “Festival of Youth Art in Hubei” (“Hubei qingnian meishu jie”) to enliven the conservative Hubei art world by encouraging young artists to organize and fund their own exhibitions in the festival.33 In August, a number of critics including myself, Zhu Qingsheng, Zhou Yan, and Wang Xiaojian were invited by the Hunan
Figure 3.21 The poster for the “Shenzhen Zero Exhibition,” 1986.
Figure 3.22 Southern Artists Salon, the scene of the First Experimental Exhibition, 1986.
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Figure 3.23 The first exhibition of the Three Step Studio, 1985.
Figure 3.24 Wang Jiping, Flags, 1985.
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Figure 3.25 Song Yonghong, Experience on a Certain Day in 1986, 1986.
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and Hubei Artists Associations to give lectures in Changsha, the capital of Hunan, and Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, to introduce the artworks of groups in the ’85 Movement—which astonished the young artists of Hubei. In November of 1986, the largest exhibitions of the ’85 Movement opened under the title “Festival of Youth Art in Hubei” in ten cities in Hubei province, including Wuhan, Huangshi, Xianggan, Yichang, and Shashi. About fifty groups participated and some two thousand works were displayed at twenty-eight exhibition sites. A striking characteristic of the works was a trend toward fusing vernacular culture, including ancient sources of Chu culture, and contemporary styles.34 The young artist groups and their exhibitions dominated the contemporary art world in Hunan. About ten groups were organized in 1985 and 1986. The best known was the Zero Art Group (Ling yishu jituan), which included sixteen artists with the average age of 25. The first exhibition organized by the group took place in Changsha from December 25, 1985, to January 5, 1986. What does the “Zero” mean? The answer can be found in the manifesto of the group, written by Luo Mingjun: “Zero is a symbol of our group. Zero makes us think about the sun, the origin of the world, and our ancient splendid tradition. Our consciousness emerges from ground Zero, where the future meets and crosses the past, and expands infinitely forward. Zero is also the perpetually moving wheel of our age taking us toward the future.”35 The artists of the group deployed various modern forms such as surrealism, expressionism, cubism, photorealism, pop art, happenings, and so on. Most of the works in the exhibition were of a pop type, combining readymade objects and happenings. For instance, in the small yard between the second and third galleries, the artists left the tables, chairs, wine bottles, and debris of an opening party as a work called Zhoumo (Weekend).36 In November 1986, the young critics Deng Pingxiang and Li Luming organized an exhibition called the “United Exhibition of All Groups of Hunan Young Artists,” sponsored by the Hunan Artists Association and Hunan Young Artists Association. The exhibition took place in the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.37 The
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eighty-three works exhibited were in various media ranging from ink paintings to installations. The goal of the exhibition was to show that the ’85 Movement was too bohemian and revolutionary; the artworks sent a message that the organizers and artists sought a return to academicism and the traditional aestheticism of a more genteel and elegant style or taste. This orientation of the show was criticized by many young critics for its nostalgia, rustic exoticism, and a lack of socially critical concern. Conversely, it was praised by many middle-aged master academic painters because of its pure artistic approach and distance from political critique.38 The exhibition featured a new tendency among young Hunan artists to use an older approach to modern art, one that had been adopted by many early Chinese modernists of the 1930s: a modernism with Chinese characteristics. This approach was not, however, characteristic of most avant-garde groups of central China. In Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Anhui, and Jiangsi provinces, a number of avant-garde groups and their exhibitions of the mid-1980s had a sudden impact in the art world. The “Henan First Oil Painting Exhibition” (“Henan diyijie youhuazhan”) of 1985 marked the first step of Henan painters toward a visual revolution. On May 4, 1986, Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, first felt the impact of modern art when the “Zhengzhou First Youth Art Exhibition” (“Zhengzhou shoujie qingnian meizhan”) opened in the Henan Provincial Agricultural Gallery. A total of 124 artists contributed 221 works, and about 4,700 people visited the show. The exhibition was mounted by the self-organized City Artists Association and approved by the Zhengzhou Youth Committee. Many works featured a sort of cynical attitude and allegorized the reality of suffering using various modern painting styles, such as surrealism, cubism, and expressionism. The show caused an intense controversy, as the following analysis of the audience’s comments shows:39
Figure 3.26 The invitation letter for Tribe· Works Exhibition of Tribe·Tribe, 1986.
Figure 3.27 Huang Yali, Sublime and Contemplation Series (7 pieces), 1986.
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Figure 3.28 Luo Mingjun, I, 1985.
Figure 3.29 Zero Art Group, Weekend, 1985.
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Audience
Percent of total
Comments
Workers
12%
Critical of the show as hard to understand, liked realistic style
Peasants
3%
Cursing and abuse
Officials
8%
Silence, incomprehensible, interested in the organizational form
Soldiers
2%
In favor of realistic style, resistant to abstract style
Students
17%
Supported and encouraged experimental work with content of social critique, hoped more exhibitions of this type could happen and more communication would take place between artists and young people
Professional artists
10%
Supported, but thought that the works lacked sophistication, thoughtfulness, and individuality and were just copies of Western art
Amateurs
26%
Fascinated, wrote debates and jokes
High school Students
6%
Confused, commented sincerely with positive views
Others
8.5%
Incomprehensible, too abstract, but liked the experimental orientation of the show
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These percentages, in fact, were very similar on average to all the polls responding to avant-garde events of the ’85 Movement. In Longyang, Henan province, one of the most famous ancient Chinese capital cities, avant-garde practice also assailed the conservative cultural atmosphere. The most extreme avantgarde exhibition, which combined performance, happenings, installation, and mixed-media objects, was “Luoyang Modern Art Field” (“Luoyang qingnian yishuchang”), held by eighteen young artists in January of 1987. Unique to the rationale of this exhibition was the concept of chang or “field.” An article written by participants Hou Zhen and Zuo Xiaofeng demonstrated that the idea of yishuchang, or “art field,” is different from that of the environmental art or land art of the West, as well as from that favored by some Chinese architects for their specific space designs. Yishuchang, basically, is a term similar to a traditional philosophical concept, Dao or “principle,” which is anywhere and nowhere. Accordingly, their yishuchang was characterized by the pursuit of a traditional nationalist spirit (minzu jingshen), and their Dada-like artworks were similar to those of Huang Yongping’s Xiamen Dada in proposing a way of transformation between Chan Buddhism or Daoism and Dadaism.40 The Henan artists thought, however, that the practice of Xiamen Dada was still rationalistic. What the artists of yishuchang sought was complete randomness and a true irrationality that was a primitive impulse and provocation.41 Thus their works, such as photographs, readymade objects, performance, and various cynical-realist-style paintings, were placed in a mess in a gallery without any orientation. Thirty-seven artists made the space totally disordered and chaotic. Many conservative critics and artists were incensed by the show and wrote a letter to the city government accusing the exhibition of running wild and making society unstable. The result was the closure of the show two weeks before the originally scheduled date. The authorities impounded the exhibition site for investigation and ordered the artists to submit all relevant materials, including their documentary pictures and writings. A month later, the city government held a meeting to criticize the yishuchang. However, because the scholars and critics who had
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been asked to come to the meeting did not attend, the meeting was canceled. The artists, therefore, were not punished, and their ten-thousand-word-long defense, which expressed the artists’ sincere concern about art and their responsibility for Chinese culture, turned out to be unnecessary.42 The shutting down of the show, in fact, had been anticipated by the artists before it opened. The text of the exhibition catalogue included a mourning poem for the exhibition: “As an exhibition, it will be closed, but as art it will not be concluded.”43 In the other provinces of central China, such as Shandong, Anhui, Hebei, and Jiangxi, there were also many avant-garde activities in the mid-1980s. In November 1985, the “Shangdong Art, Photography, Calligraphy, and Seal Cutting Exhibition of the International Youth Year” (“Guoji qingniannian Shandong qingnian meishu, sheying, shufa, zhuanke yishu fengxianzhan”) opened in the Shangdong Industrial Exhibition Gallery (Shandong gongye zhanlanguan). It was organized by the Shandong Youth Association (Shandong qingnian lianhehui) and included 3,250 works. About twenty thousand people visited the show. The main goal of the endeavor was to create a healthy climate for modern art: “The exhibition will be open to different forms and ideas, and will therefore not show prices or masters in order to encourage the exploration of new modern art ideas and forms.”44 Many provocative works caused controversy. Two of the artists who participated in the exhibition, Dong Chao and Li Han, organized an avant-garde group called the Black Union of Southwest Lu (Luxinan heise lianmeng) in Heze, Shandong province, in November 1985. They proclaimed that their artistic ideas were influenced by the philosophies of Nietzsche, Freud, and Sartre, and refused to accept any so-called “culture.” The only thing they admired was the earth and its freshness, and they said, “We glorify life. We know nothing about how to create art, but follow our own intuition.”45 The first collective work by the group was a performance project called Painting Frame Series (Huakuan xilie), which involved the artist Li Han going through holes cut in three framed canvases. One of the most famous mountains in China is Mount Huang (Huangshan), located in Anhui province. The mountain has attracted and nursed Figure 3.30 Li Han, Painting Frame Series, 1985. 126
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Figure 3.31 Wang Huanqing, A Story of the “Twelfth Lunar Month,” 1986.
many generations of traditional ink painters and painting schools. In contemporary Chinese art, Mount Huang has again played an important role for a new art movement. In April 1985, the “National Oil Painting Conference” (“Quanguo youhua taolunhui”) was held in Jing county, located at the foot of Mount Huang. The fact that the meeting was even held demonstrated the breaking down of political obstacles in the search for new art ideas after the retardataire Sixth National Art Exhibition of 1984. Although most participants were middle-aged academic painters, its atmosphere sent a message of freedom to artists nationwide. In August 1988, an avant-garde conference called “’88 Chinese Modern Art Conference” (“’88 Zhongguo xiandai yishu yantaohui”) was held at Mount Huang, at which about one hundred artists gathered to prepare for the
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“China/Avant-Garde” exhibition of 1989. In 1986, “The First Anhui Oil Painting Exhibition” (“Diyijie Anhui youhuazhan”), an experimental show, took place in Hefei, Anhui province, and involved all of the active young artists in the area. In Jiangxi province, the “Jiangxi Second Youth Art Exhibition” (“Jiangxi dierjie qingnian meizhan”) opened in October 1985. Although organized by the official Jiangxi Provincial Cultural Department and Jiangxi Artists Association, the exhibition featured a transition from post-Cultural Revolution art to that of an avant-garde. Many works were influenced by the art groups of the east coast, taking conceptual approaches and using various media. In Hebei, three young artists—Duang Xiucang, Qiao Xiaogang, and Wang Huanqing—organized a group called the Rice and Sheep Painting Society (Miyang huahui) in
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resistance to traditional literati culture. They called for a return to primitive and folk art traditions while searching for the root of the “wild freedom” (yexing de ziyou) of humankind.46 Their first show, entitled “New Works of the Rice and Sheep Painting Society” (“Miyang huahui xinzuozhan”), opened in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, in January 1986; it comprised 180 oils, ink paintings, papercuts, woodcuts, and sculptures by the three artists. Southwest and Northwest
In the ’85 Movement, southwest China was one of the most active areas, parallel to the avant-garde art of the east coast. One of the groups founded there, the Southwest Art Group (Xinan yishu qunti), has been one of the most influential groups in the nation. More importantly, unlike most other avantgarde groups, most of which disappeared in the late 1980s, the Southwest Art Group has maintained its group connection until the present day. The artists of the group who played very important roles in the ’80s, including Mao Xuhui, Zhang Xiaogang, and Ye Yongqing, were also involved in the new avant-garde art movements of the ’90s, such as cynical realism, and became leading artists. The most active part of southwest China was Sichuan province, where scar painting appeared in 1979, and many avant-garde art groups were organized across the province, in big and small cities such as Chongqing, Chengdu, and Fuling, in the mid-’80s. In the remote provinces of southwest China where the largest concentrations of minorities live, such as Yunnan, Guizhou, Guanxi, and even Tibet, some avant-garde group and exhibitions also emerged. After the initiation of scar painting and rustic realism, the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art continued to play an important role in the ’85 Movement. In 1985 and 1986, three self-organized student exhibitions (zixuan huazhan), supported by the teachers of the school, were held in the academy. The students were excited, saying, “Freedom is coming!”47 Three influential exhibitions were organized by three different avant-garde groups. The first was the China Anonymous Painting Society (Zhongguo
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wumingshi huahui), founded in Chongqing, Sichuan province, in 1982 by Yan Xiaohua (b. 1962) and Zhao Runsheng (b. 1966); it included many young amateur artists from around the country. Like a guerrilla force capable of fighting anywhere, the group held exhibitions and various activities from Sichuan to Beijing.48 Their first nationwide exhibition, the “First National Exhibition of the China Anonymous Painting Society Group” (“Shoujie Zhongguo wumingshi huahui de quanguo meizhan”), opened in Nanquan Park Gallery in Chongqing in October 1985. There was no dominant or hegemonic orientation among the works displayed, but rather a common thread of seeking free experimentation: “To pursue freedom is absolutely the first priority for our artists. The refusal of any doctrines and criteria is our principle. What we admire is that art is complete irrational action,” wrote the artists in the exhibition catalogue.49 Another amateur artist group existed in Fuling, Sichuan province, where it organized a show called the “First Perspective Painting Exhibition” (“Shoujie shiye huazhan”), bringing a fresh breath of modern art to the public.50 The largest unofficial exhibition in Sichuan province in the ’80s was the “Sichuan Youth Red, Yellow, Blue Painting Exhibition” (“Sichuan qingnian hong, huang, lan huihua zhan”) organized and financed by seventy young artists. It took place in the biggest gallery in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, from June 21 to July 6, 1986. The show resulted the founding of the group Sichuan Youth Red, Yellow, Blue Painting Society on December 7, 1986. In Guangxi, a province of the minority people known as the Zhuang, there was also an avant-garde exhibition called the “Yitai Painting Exhibition” (“Yitai huazhan”), which took place at the Open Air Theater in Nanning (Nanning qiyi lutain juchang) on April 27, 1986. The unprecedented exhibition attracted an audience of about forty thousand and was said to be the most spectacular event ever held in the area.51 In April 1986, a Tibetan avant-garde group led by Li Yanping exhibited in the Beijing People’s Cultural Palace (Laodong renmin wenhuagong). The five artists of the group had lived in Tibet for about ten years, and displayed works that combined modern abstract styles and Tibetan Buddhist images and themes.
Figure 3.32 Li Yanping, An Image for Tibet, No. 3, 1986.
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Northwest China, compared with the east coast, is a remote and undeveloped region including several of the provinces where minorities have autonomous areas, such as Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia, where various nomads have traditionally lived, and other provinces including Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai. In the middle ’80s, avant-garde groups spontaneously emerged in every province of northwest China. In Inner Mongolia, a private businessman financed and sponsored an avant-garde exhibition called the “Exhibition of Young Artists of Western Inner Mongolia” (“Neimenggu xibu qingnian meizhan”), which opened in Baotou, the biggest city in western Inner Mongolia, in April 1986.52 In July 1986, in Chifeng, a small city in eastern Inner Mongolia, ten young artists founded a selforganized group and held an exhibition entitled “Modern Art Exhibition” (“Xiandai yishu zhan”), bringing the ’85 Movement to this marginal area. The reception of the exhibition was similar to that met by other such occurrences in the ’85 Movement: unprecedented audience numbers, intense debates, and overwhelming comments.53 In Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province, after a four-year silence in the art world caused by the authorities’ shutting down in 1981 of the “Xi’an First Modern Art Exhibition,” which was organized by nine students of Xi’an Academy of Fine Art and seven students of Xi’an College of Foreign Languages, a new wave of avant-garde art suddenly flourished in 1985. In October, ten young artists organized an exhibition called the “Exhibition of Vitality” (“Shengsheng huazhan”), in which they displayed about one hundred pieces of modern-type sculpture and painting. The exhibition, like the most avant-garde group exhibitions everywhere in the ’85 Movement, emphasized the response from the audience. Yijianben or “comments notebooks” were put in the exhibition space. The artists demonstrated their aspiration for freedom in the catalogue preface: “For art, there is no rule, no criteria, no example, no model, no success, no master, no perfection, no long life. For us, art is thought, emotion, ego, pain, lonely, scream, disorder, psychotic and limitless suffering. The law of art is revolution.”54 In November 1986 the “Haowangjiao Modern Art Exhibition”
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(“Haowangjiao xiandai yishuzhan”) was organized by fifteen young teachers of Xi’an Academy of Fine Art, and included eighty works. In December 1986, two more experimental shows opened in Xi’an, including “Modern Art Design” (“Xiandai sheji”) and the “Wandering Exhibition of Modern Art” (“Xiandai yishu xunhuizhan”). About twenty artists founded a group called the Qingqing Society (Qingqing she) in Qinghai province on October 12, 1986, and held a self-financed exhibition in Qinghai Provincial Gallery. The artists said, “Even in a marginal area like Qinghai, we can also experience the impact of the ’85 Movement. Although our works may not be able to catch up with the mainstream of the movement, what we want is to release our restless voices.”55 In northwest China, the most active avant-garde activities were in Gansu province, and the avant-garde artists of Gansu should be proud that one of the earliest avantgarde exhibitions in the ’85 Movement took place in Lanzhou, the provincial capital. Avant-garde experimental art practices can be traced back to the late 1970s, just after the end of the Cultural Revolution, when a few amateur artists were involved in exploring modern individual styles. Their effort initiated the later avant-garde movement of Lanzhou. In 1981, several artists, including Cao Yong and Cheng Li, organized a modern art exhibition entitled “Innovative Painting Exhibition” (“Chuangxin huazhan”), which opened in Wuquan Mountain Park (Wuquanshan gongyuan) in April 1981. Having absorbed various Western modern art forms, the artworks of the show featured “art for art’s sake” and expressed the artists’ goal of breaking out of the old ideological barriers. Between 1981 and 1984, self-organized group shows were strictly prohibited nationwide, and experimental art could be only executed underground, at home. For instance, in autumn 1982, Cao Yong and Cheng Li held solo shows at their homes and secretly invited a small circle of writers and artists to visit. In 1983, when Cao Yong, Cheng Li, Liu Zhenggang, and other artists were disappointed by the conservative organizational approach of the Sixth National Art Exhibition, they did not apply to participate in the exhibition, but decided instead to organize an opposition exhibition in Gansu at the
Figure 3.33 The comments notebooks from the “Xi’an First Modern Art Exhibition,” 1981.
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same time. Unfortunately, it did not take place due to the political campaign against “spiritual pollution.” After the national exhibition closed in late 1984, the artists started to set up their exhibition in a very secret way and for a very short time—one day and two nights. On December 20, the exhibition, entitled “Research, Discovery, Expression” (“Tansuo, faxian, biaoxian”), opened in the Lanzhou Workers’ Cultural Palace to show the works of five artists led by Cao Yong. The exhibition caused a sensation and a controversy. Because of its provocative tone and the overwhelming reaction from the public, it was said to be another Stars exhibition in Gansu, and was called even more radical than the Stars activities in Beijing in 1979, which turned out to be among the most important political events in the contemporary Chinese art world.56 This exhibition inspired many young artists to want to join the five-man group, and the group was enlarged to fifteen. In August 1985, seventy-nine works by the fifteen artists were displayed in another avant-garde exhibition called “85.8 New Art” (“85.8 xinyishuzhan”) in Lanzhou.57 The approach of the avant-garde art of this group was very similar to that of the other current of life artists (discussed in chapter 5), who advocated an anti-urban pastoralism or regionalism, along with the exploration of individual desire, which, they argued, had been suppressed by collectivist rationalization. Among them, Cao Yong was one of the most extreme. His collage work entitled The Face of Modern Tragedy No. 1 (Xiandai beiju de tushi No. 1) is a good example. A huge monster, with the body of a cat, a pair of ox horns, an evil mouth, a pair of glasses, and smoke coming from its nose and anus, flies in the sky. To its tail is tied a slogan, “In the daytime, under the moonlight, I start my journey from Freud’s house,” below which there are many classical and modern buildings mixed in disorder to symbolize a “global village.” In The Face of Modern Tragedy No. 2, a monster lies on a land consisting of many naked female bodies, and in its mouth are crowded many dressed female figures, some Western, such as the Mona Lisa and Marilyn Monroe, in addition to many familiar faces of Chinese women. In his works, Cao Yong attacked the alienation stemming from both authoritarianism and modernization.
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Figure 3.34 Yang Shufeng, Game, 1986.
Figure 3.35 “Research, Discovery, Expression,” in Lanzhou, “Media Report on Five-Youth Art Exhibition,” 1985.
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Figure 3.36 Cao Yong, The Face of Modern Tragedy No. 1, 1985.
Figure 3.37 Cao Yong, The Face of Modern Tragedy No. 2, 1985.
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The Purpose, Function, and Features of the Groups
Why did the artists of the ’85 Movement like to organize groups rather than play a role as individual artists? The groups had two primary functions. The first was defensive. The dangers facing a solitary artist creating avant-garde art, and thus attacking society, or even criticizing the art establishment are obvious. In the face of past governmental suppression, the artists saw the need to form a stronger united force. For example, when criticism or castigation was addressed to a group, the group naturally felt an obligation to protect every member and not to let an individual artist bear his or her hardship alone. For this reason, most controversial artistic activity since the late 1970s has been conducted by groups. The two exhibitions of the Stars group in 1979 and 1980 were strongly criticized by the government, but no individual artist was singled out for particularly strict punishment. The “Ten-Man Exhibition” of 1983, held in Shanghai, was closed by the government after three days and criticized in Jie fang ribao (Liberation daily), but none of the artists was individually punished. The exhibition in Hangzhou entitled the “’86 Last Exhibition” held by six artists
of the Zhejiang Academy, was closed by the Zhejiang provincial propaganda bureau three hours after it opened. Although the exhibition received intense criticism, none of the artists was punished.58 A second function of such groups was that an artist could find individual value from participating in his or her group.59 Usually one thinks of groups as suppressing the identity of the individual, but in the special circumstances of China during the 1980s they provided individuals with opportunities to vent what would otherwise have been suppressed. Because members of a group felt less concern for their reputation than each might alone, the structure permitted them to overcome their artistic and social inhibitions. The group became more powerful than the individual. Moreover, members came to believe that they could collectively overcome failure. Perhaps more significantly, the risks of failure were lessened, for the group sheltered its members from a sense of individual responsibility for a negative result. In the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition of 1989, for example, many performance artists attacked society with a vehement stance otherwise impossible for an artist acting as an individual. They knew that the organizers of the exhibition, not the artists themselves, would be
Figure 3.38 The artists and members of the organizational commitee for the “China/ Avant-Garde exhibition during a gathering on the day after the exhibition was shut down, National Art Museum of China, February 6, 1989. Photo provided by Zhou Yan.
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held responsible in any punitive governmental response. On February 13, 1989, the National Art Museum of China assessed the organizational committee of the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition an official penalty of a fine of two thousand yuan and issued a ban on holding any exhibitions in the National Art Museum within the next two years. And for myself, the organizer and principle curator of the exhibition, my punishment was to be dismissed from my job and forced to study Marxism at home for two years without the possibility of lectures, publications, travel, or curatorial work due to my devotion to the exhibition and support of the avant-garde movement. Even though some avant-garde exhibitions were closed by the authorities within a few hours of opening, the group identity gave avant-garde artists the visibility they sought. For example, the first show of the Three Step Studio in Taiyuan, Shanxi, originally scheduled to last for two weeks, was open for only one day. Nevertheless, when I published some exhibited works in my capacity as the sympathetic editor of Meishu, they attained a legitimacy that could not be withdrawn, even after the official provincial art association accused Meishu of supporting bourgeois liberalism.60 A third important element was economic. Because the avant-garde groups were organized by the artists themselves, not by the government, and had no commercial foundation, they bore the burden of renting exhibition space, purchasing materials, and paying for transportation. A group was better able to raise such funds than an individual. The most important activity of the avant-garde groups was organizing exhibitions. The significance of this function cannot be overestimated, because it was almost impossible for a young artist working through official channels to have a solo exhibition in China. Among the groups, the Southwest Art Group made a successful effort to organize a series of group exhibitions, proving that a well-functioning group, rather than an individual, can make such events happen. Many similar examples can be found for the latter half of the 1980s. An important factor in the failure of leftist authorities to suppress the young artists, of course, was the changed political situation of the period and the relatively open attitudes of many members of the art establishment concerning
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creative freedom. However, the group identity helped, as well, by giving the artists the confidence to persist in the face of obstacles and giving them better visibility among critics and sympathetic cultural leaders. The artist initiatives of the ’85 Movement were normally not called “painting societies” (huahui) but rather “groups” (qunti), as they were movements under the banner of the larger avant-garde art movement. The function of a qunti is very much like a zhandou dui or “a vanguard troop,” as the Red Guards named themselves during the Cultural Revolution. The ’85 Movement’s activism, antagonism, and radical concepts rendered it incompatible with traditional concepts of art, often resulting in criticism and suppression. It was therefore a collective effort consciously trying to gain autonomy, not the continuation of a classical group or a particular school. The groups’ collective revolutionary approach, similar to that of “battle squads,” was shaped by specific circumstances. The collective could empower its members with courage, or inspire risk-taking and attempts at resistance, because the collective would assume ultimate responsibility. When someone had to be punished for the group’s activities, it was usually the organizing “work unit” or its leader that was implicated, not the individuals in the group. When a group came under tremendous pressure from the outside, the freedom of individuals would not be sacrificed. Instead, the collective helped to release the psychological oppression of the individuals. Conceptually speaking, individuals were thus able to come forward with more radical ideas.61 It was precisely the collective nature of the ’85 Movement that strengthened its anticonservative and antiauthoritarian power.62 At the same time, innumerable conferences and cultural debates were held on and off university campuses during the period of the “cultural fever” (wenhuare) in the mid-1980s. Influenced and informed by the cultural fever, many self-organized groups of young artists emerged during the middle of the 1980s. Members of the groups of the ’85 Movement consisted of poets, musicians, and philosophers in addition to artists. The exchange between artists and the rest of the intellectual world, both international and within China, changed the
Figure 3.39 A group photo of artists attending the “Xuzhou Modern Art Exhibition” in 1986: from left to right, Ma Bosheng, Xu Yongsheng, Wu Pingren, Yang Yingsheng, Gao Tianmin, Qu Yan, and Shi Dihua.
identity of the avant-gardist from that of an artist to that of a “cultural soldier” with interests in broader cultural and political issues. This broadening of focus served as the foundation for the “anti-art” projects of the avant-garde ’85 Movement in terms of merging culture and art as one, in contrast to the previous new academicism and amateur avant-garde. While the ’85 Movement was commonly criticized for its rough and unrefined style, the artists should not be thought of as a stylistic school, but rather as a philosophical and cultural movement as a whole. I first coined the term ’85 Movement in the mid1980s. A few years later, at Harvard, I read Renato Poggioli’s fascinating book The Theory of the AvantGarde. I realized that his understanding of the idea of a “movement” was quite similar to my own. In the section entitled “The Concept of a Movement,” he describes a distinction between the notion of a movement and a school: “We call the old-fashioned regroupings ‘schools,’ we call the modern ones ‘movements.’” This is because “the school notion presupposes a master and a method, the criterion of tradition and the principle of authority,” and “the school is inconceivable outside the humanistic ideal, the idea of culture as a thesaurus.” The movement, instead, “conceives of culture not as increment but as creation—or as a center of activity and energy.”63 Therefore, virtually all of the usual manifestations of modern art, and more specifically avant-garde art, are
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to be identified with the concept of a movement rather than a school. For instance, we never refer to Dada as a school; rather we refer to the Dada movement, the surrealist movement, and so on. “A movement,” Poggioli writes, “is constituted primarily to obtain a positive result, for a concrete end. The ultimate hope, naturally, is the success of the specific movement or, on a higher, broader level, the affirmation of the avant-garde spirit in all cultural fields.”64 It sacrifices itself in order to break with conventions and move a culture forward. This definition can also be applied perfectly to the idealism of the ’85 Movement. Peter G. Christensen summarizes the four characteristics of a movement in Poggioli’s sense: (1) activism: self-promotion of a movement out of “sheer joy of dynamism, a taste for action, a sportive enthusiasm, and the emotional fascination of adventure”; (2) antagonism: a spirit of hostility toward something already in existence; (3) nihilism: a kind of “transcendental antagonism,” which “finds joy not merely in the celebration of movement, but even more in the act of beating down barriers, seizing obstacles, destroying whatever stands in its way”; (4) agonism: a kind of “transcendental activism” in which a movement “welcomes and accepts its own self-ruin as an obscure or unknown sacrifice to the success of future movements.”65 Some of the theories of the avant-garde by Western scholars may inspire us to think further
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about the nature and function of the group movement of Chinese avant-garde. Some Western scholars consider the Western avant-garde an experiment of aesthetic modernity based on the feelings of the artist as the personification of alienation. This theory of alienation in capitalist society was initiated by Marxists and developed by existentialists, and has frequently been applied by Western scholars to characterize the modernists, especially the avantgardists, as a rebellious, decadent, and resistant minority set against the rest of the capitalist society. Among such studies, Renato Poggioli pays particular attention to Marx’s idea of alienation and variously considers “avant-gardism as ideology and as an aesthetic myth.”66 One may consider the ’85 avantgarde movement as an alien force, targeting not vulgarity and philistinism in a consumer society, as did its Western counterparts, but rather a totalized society with its tradition and ideology. However, the notion of alienation is perhaps not the precise term to apply to the Chinese avant-garde. On the contrary, it cannot be stated strongly enough that Chinese avant-garde artists always embrace society while seeking individualism and creative freedom; they have a fascination with being united with their own target. There is no way for them to escape to an ivory tower; on the contrary, they must go onto the street and confront the public and authority. They themselves are part of the institution. If they are alienated, they alienated themselves, because they are in a system that includes them. Despite the significant differences between the Western avant-garde and the ’85 Movement in terms of their differing targets and levels of acceptance, we may still find many mental or ideological similarities on the levels of abstract spirituality and basic attitudes of rebelliousness. From this point of view, Poggioli’s four-part typology of the avantgarde may also fit the ’85 Movement. One of the features of the ’85 Movement was the shunning of traditional studio work by the artists, who were focused instead on social projects taking place in the public sphere, such as villages, factories, streets, and plazas. For most of them, the artwork was never considered for its commercial or even artistic value. It was a spiritual vehicle to involve the public and society. This was not only due to their idealism, their
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hopes for enlightening the masses, the enjoyment of being involved in a movement, and their sensibilities growing out of Mao’s revolutionary legacy, but also because of the complete absence of an art market, either local or international, in the middle ’80s in China. This feature may be related to a tendency of activism, one of Poggioli’s four elements. Antagonism is Poggioli’s second characteristic of the avant-garde. According to Poggioli, in the West, antagonism is characterized by the alienation of the free creative artist from the public and from tradition, and is socially expressed in eccentric dandyism, ivory tower bohemianism, or hooliganism. One may consider that the ’85 Movement was an antitraditional movement. Its antagonistic attitude to tradition, however, was expressed in a very ambivalent way, for though the artists criticized traditional elegant forms, such as late literati art, they also respected a certain antagonistic spirit derived from traditions such as Chan Buddhism. The movement also made a departure from the socialist realist tradition. The artists’ criticism of the latter, however, was very hesitant. Certain revolutionary strategies, such as those of the propagandist teams who frequently visited villages and factories during the Cultural Revolution, were sometimes still a part of the dream of the avant-garde. In China during the 1980s, the major audience for Chinese avant-garde art was composed of intellectuals and university students, rather than the middle class with which the Western bohemians or hooligans were confronted. For the Chinese intellectual public it is not even necessary to comprehend any one particular work in its entirety, for all that need be grasped is the function of avant-garde art as a whole in the reform and total modernity project.67 In order to grasp the essence of the avant-garde, it is necessary to understand its cultural presuppositions, which include the revolutionary values of social criticism and the cultural value of antagonism. It was very important for the Chinese avant-garde movement’s survival that a context of intellectual culture in the 1980s existed. According to Poggioli, the third aspect of the avant-garde is nihilism, or an action that drives it beyond self-control. An aesthetic enthusiasm for seeking a surrealistic future, embraced by the
Chinese avant-garde in the 1980s, was perhaps partly inspired by surrealism and Dadaism, movements that exemplified nihilism very strongly according to Poggioli. In fact, nihilism relates to the second characteristic of the avant-garde, antagonism, defined by Poggioli as a kind of “transcendental activism” in which a movement “welcomes and accepts its own self-ruin as an obscure or unknown sacrifice to the success of future movements.” Most artists of the ’85 Movement, especially the rationalist painters, believed that they bore the responsibility to make sacrifices for the nation’s future, and yet they themselves suffered the life of a transitional generation. On December 2, 1985, for instance, the Pool Society’s “’85 New Space” exhibition opened in Hangzhou in Zhejing province. An article published in Meishu, “Yongganzhe de xisheng” (The sacrifice of the brave), described the intention of the artists. They thought that it was impossible under the circumstances in China for their generation to surpass the achievements of their own tradition or the peak of modern Western culture; it might need several generations. They thought of themselves as being like the foundation on which the next generation would build to go on to reach the summit of the future.68 The “Art Field” exhibition, held by the Luoyang Modern Art Study Group, was closed a day after its opening, fulfilling the group’s expectation of suppression stated in the preface to the exhibition catalogue with a tragic tone: “As an exhibition, it will be closed, but as art it will not be concluded.”69 In early 1988, most groups of the ’85 Movement simultaneously disbanded. This was not mainly due to the political pressure of the Anti–Bourgeois Liberalism Campaign begun in early 1987, but was effected instead by a growing market society, a result of the economic reform encouraged by Deng Xiaoping since the early 1980s, which put a pressure even stronger than political pressure on the idealism of the avant-gardists. They needed to find a means of survival beside the creation of art, which apparently was the primary function and purpose of the groups. No matter which perspective it is viewed from, the ’85 Movement in general cannot be named as an art school or a period trend. Rather it was the birth of Chinese contemporary art and the foundation of all
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Chinese contemporary art of the last two decades. It is from this movement forward that many historical events, important artists, particular philosophies, and their ensuing heritage have developed.
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4 The “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition of 1989
From February 5 to 19, 1989, the “China/AvantGarde” exhibition took place in the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. This was just two months before the beginning of the Tian’anmen Square student democratic movement, and four months before the governmental shutdown of the movement on June 4, 1989. As the principal curator of the exhibition, I was involved in the entire three-year preparatory process, including garnering sponsorship, negotiating with officials, fundraising, and chairing the organizational committee, among other duties.1 In recent years, I have done a number of projects in China, including organizing the twentiethanniversary show commemorating the original 1989 “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition. These past years have witnessed a rebirth of idealism with a new critical approach engaged in both social and aesthetic arenas. This rebirth of idealism was the primary impetus driving me and my team to undertake the organization of the anniversary show commemorating the original historical events. I scheduled the 2009 show and events to take place on the same day in February as the original “China/Avant-Garde” opening. However, the police gave notice of cancellation to us in person, just the night before the opening day of the anniversary events. This closing actually repeated the events that happened twenty years ago with the original “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition. This reminds all Chinese artists and intellectuals that the growth of industrial modernity has not resulted in much change within the Chinese political system. Chinese modernity has a long way to go in terms of reform and democracy. With frustration and anger, I made a declaration of protest to the public on February 5, 2009,
at 3:00 p.m. outside the National Agricultural Exhibition Center (Quanguo nongye zhanlanguan), the designated time and place for the opening of the events and exhibition. Many artists who had participated in the 1989 “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition were available on the scheduled opening day, and they attended my declaration. The complete words of the declaration were as follows: A Declaration of Protest
Late at night on February 4, 2009, the Public Security Bureau of Chaoyang District in Beijing notified the Organizing Committee of the Twentieth Anniversary of the “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition that the commemorative event, which was to be held at the Beijing National Agricultural Exhibition Center on February 5, at 3 p.m., must be canceled. No legal basis for the provision was provided. As the head of the Organizational Committee of the “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition in 1989, and the Chief Consultant and Curator of the current commemorative events, I would like to lodge a strong protest to the Public Security Bureau of Chaoyang District in Beijing. These commemorative events are legitimate cultural practices, conducted within the bounds of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. The Organizer and the working team have committed tremendous time, resources, and energy to launch these events. Members from the art and cultural communities as well as the general public are ready to participate. Without any prior consultation and communication, the Public Security Bureau of Chaoyang District arbitrarily issued an order to forbid our events—such action is an utter violation of the constitution and a blatant transgression of our civil rights. I am deeply indignant at such enforcement and would reserve my right to take further legal actions. Gao Minglu, Early morning of February 5, 2009
Figure 4.1 Gao Minglu, principal curator of the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, addressing the public after the police closure because of the gunshots, February 5, 1989. Photograph provided by A Zhen.
Figure 4.2 Gao Minglu, the principal curator, reading his declaration, “Protest,” in front of the public in the plaza of the National Agricultural Exhibition Center, February 5, 2009. Photograph provided by Yang Zhilin.
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The cancellation brought the enthusiasm of 1989 back to the artists, along with cause for reflection upon China’s current art scene and its methods and theories. What we most miss from the days of the 1989 “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition is the belief that art is made not only for the art community itself, nor for the market and biennial exhibitions, but rather for a broader social purpose, and that it should be exhibited in a public environment, accessible by all. Artistic practice means creating something more significant than just an art object. Above all, it is a means of enlightenment. This is the legacy of the 1989 “China/Avant-Garde” show. However, there is still a certain amount of confusion about the original exhibition, as only a few people, and then only rarely, can get firsthand information about it. First, it was not merely an exhibition in an interior gallery space that was twice shut down by the officials (as most people know). It had a difficult curatorial history and it turned into a great social space mirroring the politics, economy, and culture of the period. Although the exhibition involved the efforts of many artists, critics, and scholars, I am the only one who went through every stage from the beginning to the end and had contact with all the various circles of society with whom we engaged, such as officials, police, businessmen, leaders of state-owned enterprises, intellectuals, dissidents, writers, artists, and critics. The exhibition can be seen as a total durational event on a stage enacting a play of social happenings. Second, the 1989 “China/AvantGarde” show’s sensational results overshadowed its historical and aesthetic details, such as its curatorial approach and its display methodology and structure, among other things. Few people know how many artists and works were included in the show, and many are confused as to how many times it was shut down. Some say three times, some one time. Finally, people may appreciate only its social significance but easily overlook its conceptual side. Almost none of the artworks were paid adequate attention and received critical discussion, with the exception of a few performance works, which may have been overpoliticized under the particular circumstance of late 1989. Even the most sensational two gunshots by Xiao Lu were not analyzed nor understood properly, due to the media attention surrounding
The “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition of 1989
Figure 4.3 The original copy of the declaration.
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their public effect. Xiao Lu’s two gunshots were not only significant actions in the public sphere, but also enactments of the ambiguity between a female individual’s experience and the public interpretation thereof. It was this dislocation between public and private that made her gunshots and installation the most controversial artwork in the exhibition. Her conceptual framework and approach involved the old generation of socialist realism, her emotional state, and her attitude toward the environment of urban modernity. The interpretation of her work, however, still remains incomplete, as it has hitherto been based on a superficial, dichotomy-ridden perspective (national versus personal, political versus artistic). An Aborted Exhibition Plan in 1987
The flourishing ’85 Movement impacted the conservative status quo and brought fresh air into the contemporary Chinese art world. Some openminded, middle-aged academic painters organized an official meeting called the National Oil Painting Conference, which took place in Beijing in April 1986. Major academic painters from across the nation participated. More significantly, considering the open policy and my suggestion, the organizers also invited some leading artists of the avant-garde groups, such as Shu Qun, Zhang Peili, Li Shan, and others, to join the meeting and have a dialogue with the academic painters. I was invited to give a lecture at the conference, and I spoke on “The ’85 Art Movement” (“Bawu meishu yundong”), giving a general view of the groups and discussing their art ideas, activities, and artworks; about 300 slides were shown. The lecture, and especially the showing of the slides, was a convenient and effective means to give an overview of the ’85 Movement. Furthermore, it inspired the participating avant-garde artists. During the meeting, I discussed with Shu Qun, Zhang Peili, and Li Shan the possibility of having a nationwide slide show in Guangdong. The idea for the “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition was initiated, then a public announcement was made during the Zhuhai Conference from August 15 to 19, 1986. At the time, Wang Guangyi, the leading figure of the Northern Art Group and rationalist painting, had just moved to Zhuhai Academy of Painting (Zhuhai
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huayuan), an institution located in the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone. As it was a new territory and a new school, it was ambitious and motivated to host a national event to expand its profile. Wang Guangyi and Shu Qun came to Beijing to see me and we made a plan for the conference. I finally convinced the Zhuhai Academy of Painting, with the publisher and organizers of Zhongguo meishubao in Beijing as cosponsors, to organize the slide exhibition.2 In August 1986, the first large-scale semiofficial conference of the ’85 art movement, entitled the “Zhuhai ’85 New Wave Large-Scale Slide Exhibition” (“Zhuhai bawu meishu sichao daxing huandengzhan”), was held in Zhuhai. Representatives from avant-garde groups and critics from all over China attended the event. The organizing committee of the exhibition, led by myself, received about 1,200 slides sent by groups from across the nation. From these, 342 works from 31 groups were selected and displayed in the show.3 The most important outcome of the meeting was the decision to organize a large-scale exhibition of Chinese avant-garde art. After the Zhuhai conference, I began to try to convince an influential official institution to be a sponsor for organizing an avant-garde exhibition. In China during the 1980s, no exhibition, whether a group show or solo show, could be held without an official unit as a sponsor. No official units, however, wanted to take the risk and be a sponsor for the exhibition. Even the respected Chinese art journal Zhongguo meishubao, which had originally promised to do so, gave up due to political pressure. After failing to find an official sponsor, I, along with some art critics, in particular Zhu Qingsheng, a young teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Art, and Liu Xiaochun, the chief editor of Zhongguo meishubao, became aware that we needed to found our own organizations. After some preparatory work in November, the Chinese Modern Art Research Society (Zhongguo xiandaiyishu yanjiuhui), a selforganized association of about thirty critics from all over the nation, was founded in Beijing, in part as a planning mechanism for an avant-garde exhibition.4 Helped by the Beijing Young Painters Society, I worked out an exhibition space and signed a contract with the National Agricultural Exhibition Center on January 7, 1987. The exhibition was planned to
open on July 15, 1987.5 The reasons for choosing the National Agricultural Exhibition Center as the site were, first, that the Ministry of Culture could not control it, and second, that it had an open-minded vice-director, Wei Tongxian, who had graduated from the Central Academy of Graphic Art in Beijing in the 1960s and who supported the avant-garde exhibition. Furthermore, it had great gallery space and the building itself had been named one of the Ten Great Constructions (Shida jianzhu) during the Soviet-influenced period of the 1950s. With this news, I sent a letter to the representatives of the avant-garde groups nationwide to invite them to come to Beijing for a meeting.6 On March 25 and 26, 1987, the first exhibition planning meeting was held in Beijing, and about twenty artists from some of the major avant-garde groups gathered there.7 Lacking a secure meeting place, the meeting site was moved from place to place, even meeting once, during the winter, in a cluttered courtyard used primarily for storage. This was done largely as a result of the Anti–Bourgeois Liberalism Campaign, a hardline political movement being conducted at the time. Student demonstrations were staged in a number of Chinese cities in late 1986. Authorities responded with a campaign against “bourgeois liberalism,” targeting all new political and cultural thought. The campaign continued through mid-1988, significantly hampering the activities of the avant-garde. Facing political pressure, however, all the artists and critics who joined the meeting decided the exhibition would still be opened in the middle of July, in the National Agricultural Exhibition Center, under the title of the “Academic Exchange Exhibition for Nationwide Young Artists” (“Gedi qingnian meishujia xueshu jiaoliuzhan”).8 The title avoided radical terms like “avant-garde,” “modern,” and so on, which would have been insulting and a red flag to political officials. On April 4, 1987, the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued an official document prohibiting any professional associations from holding scholarly activities with a national scope. In response, the Chinese Artists Association, an official organization under the Communist Party, immediately contacted me, making a clear statement and issuing an order to cease preparing the avant-garde exhibition for the
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Figure 4.4 A meeting during the “Zhuhai ’85 New Wave Large-Scale Slide Exhibition and Conference.” From the left are Li Shan, Fei Dawei, Gao Minglu (speaking), Liu Xiaochun, Zhu Qingsheng, Peng De, and Pi Daojian.
Figure 4.5 National Agricultural Exhibition Center, Beijing.
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Figure 4.6 The original copy of the letter from Gao Minglu inviting artists from around the nation to come to Beijing for the preparatory meeting for the exhibition.
Figure 4.7 Group photo taken in the yard of the Beijing Youth League after the preparation meeting for the “Academic Exchange Exhibition for Nationwide Young Artists” in the National Agricultural Exhibition Center, March 26, 1987. (The author is sixth from left in the front row.)
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National Agricultural Exhibition Center and to break up the Chinese Modern Art Research Society. The result was that the first attempt to hold the exhibition was aborted, although most of the preparatory work had already been completed. My Negotiation with the National Art Museum of China and Various Officials
In early 1988, the political situation eased. I started again to prepare for the avant-garde exhibition. At that time, when the possibility of having the exhibition in another space in Beijing such as the National Cultural Hall (Minzu wenhua gong) also failed, I decided to try for the National Art Museum of China because of its important position and symbolic role, although I knew it would be extremely difficult to get. It is the only national art gallery that shows contemporary art in the official academic sense, and it is directed by the Ministry of Culture. It was built in 1958, the year before the ten-year celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It is one of the so-called Beijing Ten Great Constructions finished at that time. Each Great Construction is a specific symbol of greatness.9 For that reason, the National Art Museum is a symbol of the highest authority, and is nationally important in the Chinese art world. All important official art exhibitions are held there, such as all sessions of the National Art Exhibitions, which are held by the Chinese Artists Association and the Ministry of Culture every five years, and some commemorative exhibitions, such as the Exhibition for the Celebration of the Establishment of the People’s Republic of China, held in the twentieth, thirtieth, and fortieth anniversary years. Once an individual artist has a show in the National Art Museum, it means that his or her art position has been established and accepted by the official apparatus, the nation’s highest art authority. For this reason alone, it was very important for the avant-garde to use and modify the symbolic image of the National Art Museum, putting a heretical show in the sacred art palace that it had never been able to enter. For the first time, intensive critical activity would be engaging with the National Art Museum, exemplifying the suppressed, skeptical identity of the avant-garde. This would bring about the double
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result of challenging authority by a very aggressive means and giving a boost to the development of the avant-garde movement, if it received the expected public attention. In order to gain the use of the National Art Museum, however, I had to find a legal sponsor, because the National Art Museum does not accept shows lacking official units as sponsors. Because no official units in the art world wanted to take the risk due to the conservative atmosphere at the moment, I shifted my attention outside the field of art for sponsorship. With the help of my colleagues, in particular Liu Dong, an influential young scholar, and Shu Qun, artist and writer and one of the authors of Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, the avant-garde exhibition proposal was immediately supported by three major official units led by some influential liberal intellectuals in China, including the editorial committee of Culture: China and the World Series (Wenhua: Zhongguo yu shijie), led by Gan Yang; SDX Joint Publishing Company (Sanlian shudian), directed by Shen Changwen; and the Chinese Aesthetic Study Society (Zhonghua quanguo meixue xuehui), chaired by Ru Xin. With a proposal stamped with the seals of three famous units in hand, I submitted an application letter and gave a slide presentation to the directors of the National Art Museum in April 1988. Soon after, I received a refusal stating that the National Art Museum could not handle the political and artistic orientation of the exhibition. In the summer of 1988, the Anti–Bourgeois Liberalism Campaign seemed almost over. Therefore, the organizational work of the exhibition gained support from four more official units, including Meishu, Zhongguo meishubao, the Beijing Graphic Art Company (Beijing gongyi meishu zonggongsi), and China City Environment (Zhongguo shirongbao), as co-organizing sponsors. Support also came from some influential artists of the older generation, such as Wu Zuoren, Liu Kaiqu, Jin Shangyi, and Zhan Jianjun. Carrying the proposal sealed by a total of seven legitimate official units, I applied to the National Art Museum again in September 1988. With no solid reason to refuse, the National Art Museum was forced to accept the proposal, but it established the one condition that I had to get permission from
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the Chinese Artists Association, the most legitimate official body in the Chinese art world. Although some small group shows had appeared in the National Art Museum after the Cultural Revolution, including the Stars in 1980, the “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition was to be the first nationalscope unofficial exhibition in China since 1949.10 The most controversial point was that it was a show of artwork done in Western modern and postmodern styles. These art styles and schools have always been considered heretical by the government. Therefore, the exhibition faced the censorship of both the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party and the museums of the Ministry of Culture. The Communist Party’s organization within the art world is the Chinese Artists Association, which is directed by the party’s Propaganda Department. The museums, such as the Imperial Palace Museum and the National Art Museum, are directed by the Ministry of Culture, a large governmental department. Generally, though, the Communist Party has more authority than any other government agencies. Therefore, sometimes the Party will cancel an exhibition plan although the museum may have already accepted the proposal. Furthermore, the possibility of having an avantgarde exhibition accepted by both the Party and the government was dependent on the occurrence of an opportune moment when the government relaxed its control on art policy, comparatively speaking. I submitted the same proposal to the Department of the Secretary, the leading group within the Chinese Artists Association, and gave a presentation to three high-ranking officials, Ge Weimo, Kan Fenggang, and Dong Xaioming. Dong was the youngest official among them and was supportive on the matter. With Dong’s help, the officials set up a meeting with me. After a three-hour meeting, the Department of the Secretary of the Chinese Artists Association finally granted permission and signed, sealing the proposal, after I agreed to accept the conditions given by the officials.11 The Department of the Secretary demanded that three types of artworks not be allowed in the exhibition: those that were opposed to the Communist Party and the Four Fundamental Principles (Sixiang jiben yuanze), those that included pornographic images (interpreted as any display of sexuality), and those that were xingwei yishu, literally
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“behavior art,” or action/performance art.12 The first two restrictions were abstract and symbolic, not substantial, but it was difficult for me to accept the third one. In the ’85 Movement, performance art was extremely important as a mode of directly venting individual free thought and long-suppressed intuitive feeling. The reason for this prohibition was the fact that performances commonly and unpredictably took place in public spaces. To the authorities it would seem easy for a performance to be transformed into a political event, such as a demonstration. In order to achieve the goal that the avant-garde exhibition should take place in the National Art Museum, I made a compromise and accepted these conditions, but insisted on having performance art present in the form of documentaries. This time the officials made a compromise as well and signed the proposal under the seals of the sponsors, saying in essence: We hereby agree that Art Monthly [the official journal of Chinese Artists Association] be involved as the sponsor of “China Modern Art Exhibition,” and we expect sufficient support from the National Art Museum.13 Since it had the approval of the Chinese Artists Association, the National Art Museum was forced to accept the exhibition plan, but deliberately chose for it an unpopular date: the period of Chinese New Year. The opening day would be the eve of the Chinese New Year, when the Chinese people are usually at family gatherings rather than joining in any public activity. Nonetheless, there was no choice for me: the only way was to accept the harsh terms. On September 17, 1988, I organized a meeting at which all the sponsors and their representatives formed the Chinese Modern Art Exhibition Organizational Committee (Zhongguo xiandai yishuzhan choubei weiyuanhui). The committee consisted of fourteen members who were active scholars and art critics in the Chinese contemporary cultural world. I was the head of the committee (choubei weiyuanhui fuzeren), or principal curator. At the time, in 1988, there was no such term such as cehuaren or “curator” in the Chinese art world. The fuzeren, or “head” of the organizational committee, was equivalent to the principal curator in today’s international manner; and the organizational committee was similar to today’s
Figure 4.8 The proposal for the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, with official signature and sponsors’ seals.
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curatorial team. Among the committee members, Li Xianting, the editor of Zhongguo meishubao, was in charge of exhibition space design (zhanting sheji), and Zhou Yan, a teacher from the Central Academy of Fine Art, was in charge of scholarly activities, such as conference and catalogue. Fan Di’an, Wang Mingxian, Tang Qingnian, Fei Dawei, and Hou Hanru all were young critics who were taking various roles on the team. On the same day, the committee released a public announcement with information on the founding of the committee and details about the show, which was later published in Zhongguo meishubao as the following: Preparation Notice for “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition, No. 1 1. It has been decided that a China Art Show will be held from February 7 to 20 at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. 2. The “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition will exhibit for the first time featured artworks made with modern concepts and in the modern spirit to the art world in both China and internationally, as well as to
the general public. The show will also reflect the art movement and avant-garde explorations in the past few years that are being debated and evaluated in art circles, and the value and significance of modern art in the development of Chinese culture. As a highpowered exchange and research event in the field of modern art, the show will boost the development of art pluralism in the Chinese art world. 3. The sponsors of the exhibition are: the Editorial Board of Culture: China and the World Series, the All-China Aesthetic Association, Meishu, Zhongguo meishubao, Reading Magazine (Dushu), and Modern Art Salon. Preparation work, which has been approved by the Chinese Artists Association and the National Art Museum of China, will be assumed by the Organizational Committee of the exhibition. 4. The exhibition will collect works nationwide. All entries must demonstrate the established artistic concept of the artist bearing his/her individual character, modernity and novel visual form. Those who want to participate must submit photos, slides, a design plan, titles, sizes of their works, plus their installation requirements and résumés to the Organizational Committee for appraisal no later than
Figure 4.9 “Preparation Notice for ‘China/AvantGarde’ Exhibition, No. 1,” published in Zhongguo meishubao (right column), October 31, 1988.
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February 1. (Slides must be able to go through plate making and will not be returned. The width of single pieces cannot exceed 2 meters. Send all materials to Ms. Qin Wenna, Qianhai Xijie 17, China Academy of Arts, Fine Art in China, Beijing, 100009, China.) 5. The Appraisal Committee will, apart from the members of the Preparatory Committee, also be composed of officials, experts, and scholars. 6. The advisers of the show are: Ru Xin, Li Zehou, Liu Kaiqu, Wu Zuoren, Shen Changwen, Shao Dazhen, Tang Kemei, Jin Shangyi, and Ge Weimo. 7. Members of the Organizational Committee are: Gan Yang, Zhang Yaojun, Liu Dong, Liu Xiaochun, Zhang Zuying, Li Xianting, Gao Minglu, Tang Qingfeng, Yang Lihua, Zhou Yan, Fan Di’an, Wang Mingxian, Kong Changan, and Fei Dawei. 8. The Head of the Organizational Committee is: Gao Minglu. 9. Academic activities and promotions in various forms will be held in the course of the show. Awards will be granted to the entries. Organizational Committee of China/Avant-Garde, October 1988.14 The Difficulties of Fundraising
It seemed to me that the problem of the budget was even more difficult than that of political censorship. The “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition was an unprecedented event in Chinese contemporary art history. It was distinct from the normal exhibitions held in the National Art Museum of China in terms of both its political sensibility and its financial sources. Although it was lucky to be accepted, due to the temporary easing of the political situation, this did not mean that any corresponding financial support would come from the National Art Museum and the government. All museums in China are governmentally controlled cultural enterprises, and until the late 1980s the majority of art exhibitions held in museums such as the National Art Museum of China had been financed either by the central government or by local governments and organizational units. Before the late 1980s, the financial resources for most exhibitions held in the National Art Museum of
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China (and other museums) could come from three sources. One source was an official organizing unit that had enough money to budget for the exhibition. Another option was a budget that was planned and supported by the central government, especially for important official exhibitions. For example, in 1984, the Ministry of Culture allocated 900,000 yuan (then about $300,000) for the Sixth National Art Exhibition, which opened in the National Art Museum of China (and seven other sites in different cities) in September 1984. Thirdly, if the organizing units did not have sufficient funds provided by their local government, they would try to obtain money from other official units, such as governmentcontrolled factories or companies that had achieved higher fiduciary success and had excess profits.15 Because of the transition from a planned national economy to a market-based one, the traditional system of official patronage has changed since the mid-1980s. For instance, under a national law, most of the profits earned by a governmental enterprise must be submitted to the government at the end of the year. Under the new marketing system, some national enterprises may use part of their profits to finance certain cultural enterprises, so that they can benefit from the cultural programs, such as through free advertising on television, in art galleries, on invitations, and in catalogues. More importantly, however, such financial support might effectively boost the mutual private relationship (guanxi) between the leadership of the enterprise and the exhibition organizers. Furthermore, most of the time an intermediary, perhaps the decision-maker on the patron’s side, would take a percentage of the total financed amount (10–30 percent). This phenomenon did not appear until the late 1980s. Although the central Chinese government tried hard to prohibit the corrupt phenomenon of zanzhu or “donations,” it was unsuccessful due to the limitation of the governmental system itself. In the past two decades many rich private enterprises have appeared in China, and a few of them have become patrons supporting unofficial cultural programs, such as exhibitions, to demonstrate their pure enthusiasm for promoting new culture and art. One of the reasons for this system might be the different Chinese tax system: in the West the corporations and
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private businesses who financially support a cultural program can get the benefits of a tax deduction, but in China there are no such benefits for Chinese private corporations. They decide to devote their own resources simply to support cultural enterprises. Obviously, it was impossible for “China/AvantGarde” to get financial support from the government, and the six sponsors were themselves struggling and could only provide moral support. Thus, raising money turned out to be a tough challenge for the organizers of the avant-garde exhibition, for whom it was a totally unprecedented experience. After the exhibit site was confirmed, the organizational committee of the “China/AvantGarde” exhibition immediately wrote an open letter to the public seeking support. It was drafted by Fan Di’an, who was in charge of issuing documents and dealing with public affairs. I then shifted my concentration to fundraising, the most difficult work at the moment, after the other curatorial difficulties were overcome and the artworks were collected. I traveled to Shanghai and Nanjing in south China, Harbin in northeast China, Wuhan in central China, and Tianjin, my hometown in north China, to raise money. At first, one of the largest national corporations, the Panda Electronic Industry Corporation in Nanjing (Nanjing xongmao dianzi gongsi), agreed to donate 200,000 yuan (at that point about $40,000), with the stipulation that the exhibition must provide the corporation with advertisements in the space of the exhibition, in newspapers, and on television, as well as contribute a number of the artworks from the exhibition to the corporation. Unfortunately, two months after the start of negotiations, just as the president of the company was about to sign the contract, he changed his mind and withdrew the company’s support without any explanation. All of this transpired a mere two months before the exhibition was to open. At that moment, the committee had received only 2,500 yuan, which was less than 2 percent of the entire budgetary projection of at least 150,000 yuan ($30,000). The fundraising requests of the organizational committee were refused by almost everyone, which was profoundly frustrating. On one hand, the political pressure and lack of financial resources endured by the avant-
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garde exhibition were mainly due to the political sentiments against avant-garde art. On the other hand, since traditional and academic art has been the dominant art style in China since the 1980s, it was not surprising that the avant-garde was an incomprehensible art form for the public. Therefore, both the exhibition’s political risk and its lack of promised commercial benefits discouraged potential financial supporters. Facing these enormous difficulties, I was forced to seek other means of raising funds. Together with a friend, Wang Mingxian, who was also a member of the committee, I described our troubles to some friends in the cultural world and to all avant-garde artists, asking for their assistance. Then Zhang Kangkang, one of the most famous novelists in China, who had been sent to Heilongjiang province as a reeducated student during the Cultural Revolution, published an article expressing her sympathies with the committee. She appealed to her readers, and especially to Feng Jicai, a popular novelist based in Tianjin, to support the avant-garde exhibition.16 At the time, Feng Jicai was the chairman of the Tianjin Writers and Artists Association, and he strongly supported modern experimental art; an immediate response garnered some funds for the exhibition from factories and the magazine Free Discussion on Literature (Wenxue ziyoutan) in Tianjin. I twice made round trips between Beijing and Tianjin on the same day in order to have enough materials to convince Feng. This moved him. With Feng’s help, I received 20,000 yuan and brought it back to Beijing. This money suddenly made the avant-garde exhibition viable, though it was far from an adequate amount. Several artists also managed to convince their businessmen friends to donate. The effect was that various factories and companies contributed, in total, 40,000 yuan (about $10,000). Among the artists, some took on labor in exchange for contributions, and some even donated their own works, or gave works from their collections of traditional paintings, to the contributors. Moreover, along with their entries to the exhibition, every artist who participated in the show voluntarily gave 100 yuan, about the amount of a month’s salary, to the committee. Thus 186 artists contributed 18,600 yuan (about $4,000).
Figure 4.10 The original copy of the expenditure budget of the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition (English version).
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The most moving story of the fundraising was that of a private businessman called Song Wei, who ran the Great Wall Fast Food Company (Beijing changcheng kuaican) and contributed 27,000 yuan to the exhibition. His ambition was to build the first private art museum in China, to be named the Great Wall Art Museum (Changcheng yishu bowuguan). After the avant-garde exhibition closed, he collected about fifty major works from the exhibition directly from the artists. He thus turned out to be the first major private collector of Chinese avant-garde art, before it had gotten any attention in the international market. Unfortunately, he soon gave up this significant work, as various factors (such as financial difficulties during the June Fourth Tian’anmen incident, family situation, and physical problems) forced him to gave up collecting entirely.17 Song Wei’s retreat was both symbolic and realistic. It revealed both the lack of financial ability and diminished interest from private rich people in China. On the other hand, although the Chinese avant-garde art of the 1980s should be recognized as an international phenomenon, directly influenced by Western modernism and postmodernism through translations and foreign exhibitions, without foreign market and institutional connections it was domestic in economic terms. It was not until the end of the Cold War, in particular after the mid-1990s, that international collectors and the international art market came to China. Before that, attention came not from professional international art collectors and museums, but mainly from amateur, personally interested investors, for instance ambassadors in Beijing such as Uli Sigg, writers, or non-mainstream gallery owners. By the time “China/Avant-Garde” opened, only a few foreigners had bought Chinese avant-garde works. The Tokyo Modern Art Gallery collected six pieces during the exhibition, which initiated foreign interest in collecting this type of work. Regrettably, by the time of the exhibition opening in February 1989, I had raised only 118,600 yuan (about $23,000). The original goal was to raise at least 150,000 yuan (about $30,000), and the sufficient amount would have been about 220,000 yuan (about $44,000). That amount included the fee for the use of the gallery space (more than
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50,000 yuan), shipping fees, fees for space design, advertising fees, conference fees, the catalogue fee, and so on. Although the amount we had collected was still not the total amount we had hoped for, the exhibition could be opened. I was forced to cut some of the original budget, and failed to have an ideal catalogue published for the exhibition. We were only able to produce a small publication, with my preface on the opening page followed by a catalogue, a total of 46 pages.18 Two Closures and a “Small Tian’anmen Square”
While working to overcome the political and economic difficulties associated with the show, the committee had shipped the 300 exhibition pieces from provinces all around the country to Beijing. Under the censorship laws, the committee was required to get official approval of all the works from the authorities. On February 4, 1989, the day before the opening of the exhibition, the officials of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party, the Ministry of Culture, the Chinese Artists Association, and the National Art Museum of China came to the exhibition galleries to examine and officially approve the avant-garde exhibition for the public opening. In order to get strong support, the committee also invited some influential older artists and art historians from the Central Academy of Fine Art to join in the inspection. A number of the works were criticized by the censorship group because of their political and sexual content. After a heated dispute between the censorship group, the members of the committee, and academic experts, most of these controversial works were kept in, but three pieces were pulled. Among the works denied by the committee, but finally kept in, the most controversial one was Wang Guangyi’s Mao Zedong No. 1, which the censors accused of putting Mao into a jail. The work was allowed to remain after the artist wrote an inscription explaining what he intended to tell the audience. After the censorship meeting on February 4, 1989, Wang Guangyi and I discussed the inscription and decided to write a note beside the painting which said that Mao was one of the most influential political figures in Chinese modern history; we should evaluate his historical role using
Figure 4.11 The small catalogue of the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition and the preface by Gao Minglu.
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Figure 4.12 Wang Guangyi, Mao Zedong No. 1, 1988.
rational analysis and logical thinking, which were represented in the work by the grid drawn on the surface of Mao’s official portrait. The “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition opened on February 5, 1989. The works in the exhibition were distributed over six gallery spaces that occupied three floors, and included 297 pieces in various media including painting, sculpture, photographs, video, and installations. This day was a mammoth festival for every avant-garde artist. Five enormous black banners were extended on the ground in the square in front of the National Art Museum marked with
the exhibition title and logo, which was designed by Yang Zhilin and based on the public traffic sign indicating “No U-Turn.” According to the original design, the five banners were to be hung from the roof of the exterior of the museum facing the square. This plan was rejected by the director of the National Art Museum, but the artists solved the problem by laying them out on the ground. The exhibition’s opening ceremony was shrouded by a nervous and solemn atmosphere, as if something was bound to happen. After I gave a speech celebrating this important historical event, the birth of the first
Figure 4.13 The National Art Museum of China, Beijing, with the poster of 156
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the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition designed by Yang Zhilin.
Figure 4.14 The site of the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, the square in the yard of National Art Museum of China, February 5, 1989. Photograph by A Zhen.
Figure 4.15 Gao Minglu giving the opening speech in the interior reception hall at the National Art Museum of China, February 5, 1989.
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avant-garde exhibition in contemporary Chinese art history, the public entered the galleries. They were immediately met not only with the provocative installations and paintings, but also with several surprising performances, true happenings. Wu Shanzhuan began his performance Big Business (Dashengyi) in the gallery of the first floor. Wu had brought 300 kilograms of fresh shrimp from a fishing village in Zoushan, Zhejing province, where he worked as an art teacher for mass cultural education. He wrote the price of the shrimp on a blackboard and began selling them. The first buyer was Liu Kaiqu, the honorary director of the National Art Museum and one of the most influential sculptors in China. This work demonstrated Wu’s idea that modern art in modern society is just a big business, which was a thesis he had presented in an avantgarde conference held in Huangshan city, Anhui province, in 1988. He explained his performance after the shutdown of the show by the authorities, saying, “The National Art Museum is not only a place to display artwork, but it also can be a black market [heishi]. For the Chinese New Year, I have brought first-quality shrimp suitable for export from my home village in celebration of the holiday and to enrich people’s spiritual and material life in our capital. The unit price: 9.5 yuan. Place of display: National Art Museum. Urgent for buying.”19 Another performance artist whose work was not otherwise represented in the show, named Zhang Nian, sat in the corner of the gallery on the second floor hatching eggs. In his manifesto, which hung across his chest, he wrote: “During the incubation period, I will not discuss theoretical questions with anyone, to avoid harming the younger generation.” The artist Li Shan, one of the most important painters of the rationalist painting group, seated himself at his installation and began washing his feet in a basin decorated with many portraits of US President Reagan. This cynical behavior was undoubtedly a kind of blasphemy against the sacred art palace—the National Art Museum of former days. An hour after the opening, Wang Deren threw more than seven thousand condoms onto all the works on all three floors of the building, to demonstrate his hegemonic power over all the works displayed in the exhibition. In other words, he attempted to use condoms to unify all the works.20
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Figure 4.16 Wu Shanzhuan, Big Business: Selling Shrimp, 1989.
Three hours after the opening of the exhibition, Xiao Lu, a young woman artist from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art, fired two gunshots, which shocked the National Art Museum. Xiao Lu suddenly pulled out a gun and fired two shots at her installation, Dialogue; or more precisely, at a mirror between two telephone booths in which stood full-length pictures of a male and a female student talking to each other on the phone. The president of the Beijing Public Security Bureau, who was on the spot, immediately seized Tang Song, a friend of Xiao, who was standing near the installation, and ordered me to close the exhibition. The reason given was that the scene of the gunshot had to be preserved intact in order to trace the cause of the incident. (Actually the Public Security Bureau had long been suspicious of the organizational work of the exhibition. There were at least ten plainclothes public security persons in the galleries.) Immediately after the shooting, several police cars fully loaded with armed personnel arrived in the square in front of the National Art Museum. The police rudely ordered that the gallery be shut down for three days. Public news from both inside and outside of China reported on this event. In China there is a law that prohibits citizens and resident foreigners from owning guns; the only exceptions are for soldiers and police personnel, who have permits. The Beijing Public Security Bureau stated that both Xiao Lu and Tang Song had violated this law and had to be detained. At four o’clock in the afternoon, encouraged by her uncle, Xiao Lu surrendered herself to the authorities. After being detained for two and a half days, both people were released because there was no evidence that the two artists had plotted a murder. However, because of the
Figure 4.17 Zhang Nian, Hatching Eggs, 1989.
Figure 4.18 Li Shan, Goodbye, 1989.
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Figure 4.19 Xiao Lu, Dialogue, 1989.
Figure 4.20 Police cars entering the square of the National Art Museum of China after the gunshot at the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, February 5, 1989. Photograph by A Zhen.
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Figure 4.21 The New York Times article reporting on the closure.
shooting and other events, the exhibition was forced to close for three days. The government authorities still believed that this incident held political meaning, and most of the foreign news media reported it as a political event. According to the claims of the two artists, their shooting was nothing more than a celebration of finishing the installation work, no matter what the public thought about it. After the two artists were released; they gave me a declaration in person, asking me to make a public announcement on their behalf. The declaration is as follows: As parties to the shooting incident on the day of the opening of the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, we consider it a purely artistic incident. We consider that in art, there may be artists with different understandings of society, but as artists we are not interested in politics. We are interested in the values of art as such, and in its social value, and in using the right form with which to create, in order to carry out the process of deepening that understanding. Xiao Lu, Tang Song21
The “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition of 1989
Although Xiao Lu was named as the author of the installation, and she was also the person who opened fire, the media and art circles widely took both Xiao Lu and Tang Song to be the initiators and performers of the two gunshots because Tang was the first one arrested. There was even a rumor that Tang came from a military family background and had lent the gun to Xiao, until Xiao declared that the gun she used was in fact borrowed from Li Songsong, a teenage friend of hers, who did have a military family background. No one doubted the coauthorship of the two gunshots until, fifteen years later, Xiao Lu openly declared that she was the only author of the gunshot as well as of the installation. The gunshots were part of the installation as a whole. Xiao was silent about her work and never mentioned the question of authorship until the end of her fifteenyear relationship with Tang Song in 2004. The declaration of her solo authorship of the Dialogue and the gunshots began with five letters Xiao wrote me in the period between February 4,
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Figure 4.22 Xiao Lu, Fifteen Shots—From 1989 to 2003, 2003.
2004, and March 23, 2004. After I received the letters I responded to her in a letter encouraging her to claim her authorship, because, first, it was her right to declare the truth, and second, it was very important, not only for the generation of the “China/AvantGarde” exhibition but also for the younger generation, to rediscover the complex context of this historical event made by a particular female individual.22 The ambiguity that disturbed Xiao Lu’s emotions eventually broke out fifteen years after her two gunshots in the National Art Museum of China. In another performance work, she made fifteen gunshots on photos with her own image as a metaphor for her hidden anger at herself. Although the fifteen shots were made in 2003, the title of the work is Fifteen Shots—From 1989 to 2003. The shots in 2003 were a bitter memory as well as a farewell to the past. The two shots of 1989 were aimed at a mirror; those of 2003 at the photos. Fifteen years ago, the sound shocked the gallery, Beijing, even the world; this time only herself, because she made the shots at a firearms instructional club, the only place where Chinese are allowed to open fire. Why did Xiao Lu sit in silence for fifteen years? There definitely was a personal emotional reason at the beginning, as she and Tang Song immediately fell in love when both were arrested. There was also a reason that was a crucial cause of the performance itself. Xiao Lu’s gunshots were not, as people commonly said, merely a violent gesture against authority; this is too simple and superficial an interpretation. In her recent biography, she explains that as a teenage girl she had been raped by an older socialist realist artist, who was also her godfather.23 The anger this caused might well bring her to a totally rebellious orientation including an embrace of avant-garde art, and thus a departure from the
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path of her parents, who were also Soviet-trained socialist realist painters. One may then understand the gunshots by Xiao Lu as a paradoxical, ambiguous act. On one hand, this was a demonstration against her revolutionary bloodline, congruent with the youthful zeitgeist that was running in public and political networks at the particular moment before the June Fourth Movement. On the other hand, it was also a violent declaration of self-protection, in opposition to the common conception of females as powerless. Anger was everything at the moment for her, because she could not tell the public the nature of her distress. The only way of venting was to open fire on the artwork Dialogue, which she had made for her graduation.24 This dislocated, or ambiguous, relationship between private and public, avant-garde and revolutionary, in the sense of Xiao Lu’s personal background and experience, as well as of female discourse and the national (and the avant-garde) ideological discourse, made her Dialogue with the two gunshots the most sophisticated and controversial work in the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, as well as in Chinese contemporary art history.25 In another controversy, the East German Embassy accused the exhibition of violating that country’s sovereignty, because of Song Haidong’s small installation work in which the artist put a “wall” on edge between East and West Germany on a globe. I was informed by an official of the Chinese Artists Association that the embassy had asked that the piece be removed from the exhibition. The artist then removed the work, which was immediately collected by the Tokyo Modern Art Gallery. Ironically, the removal might be seen as a foreshadowing of the coming down of the Berlin Wall, which occurred not long thereafter.
All of this performance art reflected, from different angles, the artists’ opinions about art and society. Their work provoked a great deal of controversy, which was intentionally manipulated by their secretly planned happenings. None of the performances had been announced to the National Art Museum, and some not even to the curator and organizational committee, before the opening of the exhibition.26 After the exhibition had been closed four days, it opened again on February 10, 1989. However, the Public Security Bureau forced me to hire twenty security personnel to enforce the prohibition on performance art. I had to accept this and pay their salaries to the Public Security Bureau in order to keep the exhibition open. The run of the avant-garde exhibition was not as peaceful as the National Art Museum of China and the Public Security Bureau had expected. On February 12, after the reopening of the exhibition, the museum, the Public Security Bureau, and the Beijing city government separately received three anonymous letters with the same content, which was made up of clipped and pasted newspaper characters. It said, “You must close the ‘China/Avant-Garde’ exhibition immediately, otherwise we will set off bombs in three places in the National Art Museum of China.”27 The Beijing Public Security Bureau and the National Art Museum nervously discussed ways to deal with the threat. They informed me of the situation, showing me the letters and forcing me to make an immediate determination about whether the exhibition should close or remain open. Meanwhile, the Public Security Bureau pointed out that if I agreed to keep the exhibition open, I would have to answer for any explosion. I refused to take responsibility for the bombs, and also refused to close the show; I maintained that the Beijing Public Security Bureau, not the committee, had the true duty to avert any explosion. At night, however, the Beijing Public Security Bureau and the National Art Museum received a command from the president of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party and the president of the Ministry of Culture: the exhibition must close for two days while the Beijing Public Security Bureau searched for bombs in the gallery.
The “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition of 1989
Figure 4.23 Song Haidong, The Earth from the Aliens’ Point of View, 1989.
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The public and artists were excited by the second shutdown and celebrated by any means, because the shutdowns might have been seen as a symbol of the avant-garde’s provocative and aggressive ideology. Someone even made a public commemorative envelope for the second closure, helping people remember the dates (which appear on the bottom left). The Beijing Public Security Bureau used armed police and various other means, from modern technical equipment to search dogs, to search for the bombs in all corners of the National Art Museum of China over the two days of the closure. Predictably, however, there were no bombs in the gallery. Was it a joke? Of course, it was possible that the letter was a real threat, but it was also possible that it was another performance, like Xiao’s two gunshots. It was not known who sent the letters until 1995, when the Zhejiang Public Security Bureau detained an artist named Liu Anping, from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art, for creating the anonymous letter as a performance. After the exhibition opened again on February 17, the atmosphere was even tenser and much more sensitive than before. The viewers were required to leave their bags at a place indicated in the square in front of the gallery before they were allowed to enter. There were more guards watching for bombers. The art exhibition seemed to become a dangerous battlefield in which any unpredictable incident might occur at any time. The “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition closed on February 19. It had only remained open, in total, for eight days and two hours. The original plan was for the show to last fifteen days. The National Art Museum of China and the official authorities accused the sponsors, rather than the artists, of having violated the stipulations that the Chinese Artists Association had imposed on the exhibition. Hence, the National Art Museum of China made a decision that each of the seven sponsors of the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition should be fined 2,000 yuan, and none would be allowed to hold any shows in the National Art Museum of China for the next two years. The complete notice from the National Art Museum of China is as follows:
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Figure 4.24 The “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition was closed down for two days. Figure 4.25 Closing Down Twice, commemorative envelope made by Zhang Riyao, a postal designer. On the bottom left are marked the dates of the two closing periods.
Notification of Fines Imposed on the Sponsors of the “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition for Agreement Violation and Shooting-Induced Suspension of Show The “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, which opened on the morning of February 5 at our gallery, has violated the exhibition agreement and the rules of the National Art Museum of China. On more than one occasion, black cloths bearing the show signs were spread on the square in front of the venue, and award plaques bearing the words Jintian xiawu tingshui [No water this afternoon] and framed with red silk were hung on public toilets. At one point, three persons covered with white cloths came out of the exhibition hall. On the east hall of the first floor, some persons were selling fish and shrimp; or washing their feet and throwing condoms or coins. On the second floor was somebody who was hatching eggs.
The officials of our gallery informed the director of the organizational committee and the representative of the sponsoring units and demanded that these violations of the exhibition agreement be remedied, but to no avail. As a result, the plaques had to be taken down from the toilets by the officials of our gallery. Then around 11 a.m., a shooting occurred on the east hall of the first floor which resulted in the closing down of the exhibition and suspension of ticket sales by the Public Security Bureau. The sponsoring units of “China/Avant-Garde” should be held primarily responsible for the above-mentioned incidents. The occurrences were not only a violation of the exhibition agreement, but also disturbed the normal work of other shows and caused great damage to the reputation of the National Art Museum of China. Because of this, we have decided to fine the violators—the organizational committee—2,000
The “China/Avant-Garde” Exhibition of 1989
yuan and ban the seven sponsoring units of “China/ Avant-Garde” from holding any exhibitions at the National Art Museum of China in the next two years. A copy of this notification will be sent to the following sponsoring units of the “China/AvantGarde” exhibition: Meishu, Culture: China and the World Series, All-China Aesthetic Association, Zhongguo meishubao, Reading Magazine, Beijing Arts and Crafts Corporation, and China City Environment. Cc: Art Bureau of the Ministry of Culture Chinese Artists Association The National Art Museum of China February 13, 1989
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Perhaps there was an understandable ambivalence among the government officials. Because the avant-garde exhibition was the first large-scale and completely Westernized exhibition held in China after the opening to the West, the Chinese government probably wanted to use the show as a symbol of its cultural policy of increasing openness. This allowed the avant-garde artists to use this opportunity to achieve their own goals. Ann Scott Tyson, a staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor who was at the opening of “China/Avant-Garde,” wrote: “The outrageous stunt revealed how China’s avant-garde artists are brashly taking advantage of the opportunity provided by eased state censorship in a bid to spark greater public attention for their highly unorthodox art.”28 Two months after the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, the Beijing student demonstrations broke out. Following the government’s crackdown on the democratic movement on June 4, 1989, the “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition was repeatedly attacked as an important manifestation of the evils of bourgeois liberalism. Moreover, the exhibition was later referred to in print by some hard-liners as a small Tian’anmen Square of the art world, partly because Xiao Lu’s gunshots can be seen symbolically as the first gunfire of the June Fourth students’ insurrection (baoluan).29 As the organizer of the exhibition, I inevitably also got punished by the government. After the June 4 incidents, I was informed by the authorities that I needed to study Marxism at home, and I was prohibited from editing, publishing, lecturing, and traveling outside Beijing. A year later, I got an invitation letter from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Ohio State University. After about six months of waiting for approval from the authorities, I finally received a passport issued by the authorities and was able to go to the United States as a visiting scholar in October 1991.30 One may ask why the 1989 exhibition used “China/ Avant-Garde” as its English title while the original Chinese title, “Zhongguo xiandai yishuzhan,” literally means “ Chinese Modern Art Exhibition.” In Western art history, “avant-garde” and “modernism” went side by side, they were almost the same thing, although in the postmodern period there was a
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contrasting “neo-avant-garde.” But in the Chinese context of the late 1980s, qianwei (avant-garde) seemed more radical and broader than xiandai (modern art). Therefore, when I discussed the English title of the exhibition with some critics, such Zhou Yan, the editor of the exhibition catalogue, and Hou Hanru, the catalogue’s translator, we all agreed that “avant-garde” made more sense than “modern” as a translation of the original Chinese title. We also had a feeling that although “modern” in the Chinese context means “new,” in the West it might be a term out of fashion, even suggesting a period style. The term “avant-garde,” however, is more contemporary, ongoing, and not confined to a style. It particularly fit the art of the ’85 Movement in the second half of the 1980s. In fact, it was not until the lead-up to the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition that Chinese artists and critics of the ’85 Movement began widely and formally to use the term “avant-garde” to define the new art. The most commonly used term in the 1970s and earlier 1980s had been “modern” (xiandai), but sometime around 1986 or 1987 some critics, artists, and writers began to use the term “avant-garde” (qianwei, usually in visual art, or xianfeng, commonly in literature) to name the new art and new literature. Some guannian art groups, such as Xiamen Dada in Fujian, the M Group in Shanghai, and the Southern Artists Salon in Guangzhou, claimed that they were pursuing a “surpassing avant-garde” (chao qianwei). Therefore, they declared that their ideas tended toward “postmodernism” or the “contemporary” (see chapter 6). Generally speaking, then, before the “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition, “modern,” “avant-garde,” “postmodern,” and “contemporary” had all been used by the artists of the ’85 Movement. After the 1989 exhibition, however, “modern art” (xiandai yishu) was no longer used to define any new art phenomenon in the Chinese art world, and “avant-garde” became the term most frequently used, especially in the first half of the 1990s, both domestically and internationally. Since the later 1990s, “contemporary art” (dangdai yishu) has become the most popular term. .
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5 Metaphysical Modernity Rationalist Painting and Current of Life Painting
The art groups described in this chapter are grouped together by the belief that artwork should evoke “the spirit of humanism” (renwen jingshen) or “humanism and rationalism” (renwen lixing). Although, since the Renaissance, humanism in the West has been differentiated from the modern idea of individualism, in China after the Cultural Revolution the term “humanism” (rendaozhuyi) indicated the search for individual freedom in conjunction with a fraternity searching for what is most noble in the human condition. Additionally, Chinese humanist ideas strongly opposed the division of people into different classes. As discussed in chapter 2, the scar (shanghen) and rustic painters presented this humanism in their art either by showing the emotional wounds inflicted on the Chinese populace or by depicting the poor, innocent peasants and pastoralists in the countryside. Simultaneously in literature, a “searching for roots” (xungen) movement arose containing two conflicting camps, those of “native soil writing” and “urban literature.” As rustic realist painting and the scar group addressed scenes from the Cultural Revolution, the tendency to examine the customs and mores of local regions, known as xungen fiction, first appeared. It was a modest reaction against the increasingly formulaic scar literature (shanghen wenxue) of the late 1970s and early ’80s. Scar literature openly deplored the national chaos and individual suffering of the Cultural Revolution. However, the generation of the ’85 Movement immediately launched another campaign of humanism (renwen jingshen). It was a significant departure from the earlier one launched by the postCultural Revolution generation, because the 1980s generation, in general, was pursuing an idealistic future characterized by cultural modernity, no longer
looking backward to traditional or native roots to explore certain historical values of humanity. For them, humanity itself represented the nexus of the issue of modernity, transcending the struggles of the painful past and personal experience. In this sense, the ’85 Movement departed from the “realistic” restrictions of the post-Cultural Revolution generation, who mostly targeted the Cultural Revolution period. Further, they returned to the May Fourth heritage of seeking cultural enlightenment and total modernity. As described in my 1986 speech delineating the ’85 Movement’s characteristics: “In the art world, a movement emerged that embraced all the issues of the May Fourth Movement and revived the core spirit of the cultural movements begun in the early twentieth century. It is part of the cultural debates and is the cultural fever of the year.”1 Transitional Avant-Gardes Look toward the Ideal Future
In the mid-1980s, after China suddenly opened to the rest of the world, many intellectuals and a new generation of artists who had received academic training thrived with a strong dose of Western modern and contemporary influence. The humanism embraced by the artists of the ’85 Movement reflected a desire to transcend both Mao’s ideology of “proletarian people” and the complaints of the “wounded people” espoused by the Red Guard generation, especially the artists of the Stars group and of scar painting. On the contrary, the artists of the ’85 Movement identified themselves as “universalists,” which in this specific moment revealed the core of Chinese modernity, a modernity ready to embrace all advances from different ages and civilizations and to go beyond the reality of existing
civilizations. “Humanism,” in this context, was an idealistic hope of producing a spiritual order in which a new future would be built; it also implicated an ambiguous modern Chinese nationalism in its strident search for a specifically Chinese modernity. At the same time, this humanism continued the post-Cultural Revolution period’s tendency to desire more personal freedom after several decades of selfless devotion to Mao’s revolution, during which humanism was criticized as bourgeois.2 The humanism of the ’85 Movement is a rationalist rather than empirical notion. It is this rationalism that distinguishes the ’85 Movement’s “humanism” (renwen) from the previous postrevolutionary “humanism” (rendao). Of the two, renwen is broader and goes beyond political and Marxist narratives. If renwen mostly refers to the idealism, liberty, and freedom of an individual intellectual, the rationalist quality indicates a desire to awake from a black ideological midnight. I first used the notion of “rationalism” (lixingzhuyi) and “rationalist painting” to summarize and analyze the new art’s philosophical tendencies following the post-Cultural Revolution generation. In “The Recent Developing Trends of Oil Painting” (“Jinnian youhua fazhan de liupai”), I used lixingzhuyi or “rationalism” to define the social skepticism and criticality of the Stars group, saying that rationalism was equivalent to moral functionalism (daode gongneng zhuyi) in art, as revealed in the Stars’ manifesto. However, I also indicated that the Stars’ art language, in itself, was insufficient to bear the entire burden of a muchneeded moral philosophical function.3 In another essay titled “About Rationalist Painting” (“Guanyu lixing huihua”), I first defined rationalism by delineating three tendencies: (1) a spirit that transcends concrete phenomenological reality while pursuing a permanent, ideal order in the form of truth seeking; (2) a cultural reflection and critique; (3) a desire for freedom and self-determination. These three perspectives cover the different approaches of rationalist painting exemplifying the most powerful and fulfilled “humanism” in the ’85 Movement.4 Rationalist painting, which included many groups of artists living in cities on the east coast of China, used cool, solemn, and sometimes grim forms to convey a philosophical and semireligious feeling.
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The major artists of the rationalist painting group included the Northern Art Group (Beifang qunti) in Harbin, Heilongjiang province; the Pool Society (Chishe) in Hangzhou; the Red Journey (Hongselü) in Nanjing; and some artists in Shanghai. The broader phenomenon called current of life painting (shengming zhiliu) consisted of many groups of artists in western China, including the Southwest Art Group (Xinan yishu qunti) led by Mao Xuhui, Zhang Xiaogang, and Pan Dehai, as well as the Three Step Studio in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, led by Song Yongping and others. This trend addressed the significance of humanism in the breakdown of a collective rationalization that had suppressed individual consciousness and desires. Interested in foreign philosophy, psychology, and literature, these painters’ approach and philosophy were very much like the “current of life” expressed as élan vital by Henri Bergson. Therefore, we use this notion to describe the natural disposition of life that embraces violence, irrationality, and intuitive action presented in the art of this period. Although rationalist painting was more rational and current of life painting more expressive and emotional, they shared a common interest in determining the intrinsic substance of human nature, on a level that transcended individual experience. Their surrealist-inspired images had nothing to do with disenchantment with reality; quite the opposite, as their humanist impulses come from their pursuit of real truth (the true aim of Western surrealist philosophy, as it developed immediately following World War I). When Mao’s utopia crumbled, the people’s majestic dreams and idolatrous enthusiasm were also destroyed. Immediately, however, another kind of utopia was promoted by a new generation of artists born in the 1960s who matured in the middle 1980s. Even in its anti-utopian stance, that is to say, this artistic avant-garde aimed to replace Mao’s utopia with another utopian project of cultural modernity. This modernity would be determined in an idealistic way when the art project of the ’85 Movement committed to close involvement in social and cultural practice. The vision of the total modernity project, however, was oriented toward a perfect future, rather than toward a radical reform
of the contemporary social environment. It is this motivation that made the art praxis of China in the 1980s a transcendent avant-garde. Moreover, there was a further entanglement with the narratives of modernity from the May Fourth Movement, characterized by a passionate quest for a society of committed intellectuals evolving out of principles born in the Confucian period. Though they considered themselves a transitional generation, most artists of the ’85 Movement believed they bore the responsibility for the nation’s future and were enthusiastically willing to make sacrifices to bring about social reform.5 Among all of the artists who participated in this driving project of Chinese modernity, rationalist painting groups were the most influential. The social and cultural changes of the 1980s led the artists of the ’85 Movement to express “humanistic enthusiasm” in their art, and to promote themselves as thinkers. Even though they were influenced by surrealism, we cannot define their paintings as “surrealist” in the sense commonly used by many critics, because the specific historical circumstances were quite different. The Western surrealists employed a dialectical juxtaposition of real and unreal to reveal the hypothetical utopian state of subjective freedom even while they existed in a state of objective unfreedom. Accordingly, surrealism, like modernism in general, was reduced by Adorno and others to an artistic strategy of protest against capitalist society characterized by a failed methodology of resistance.6 The unreal or dream scenes in the works of surrealism convey an irrational critique of the idealistic, progressive capitalist social modernity that had caused unprecedented human disasters, including the world war. This reversal between real and unreal, ideal and nonideal, cannot be found in the rationalist painting of China, for the latter conveys an integrative pursuit of the ideal in a harmonious but “transrealistic” scene. The comparison with Western surrealism ultimately fails to explicate the important phenomena of the Chinese avant-garde.7 Rationalist painting sought to unify painting praxis and reality, but with a metaphorical, not surrealist, approach to the pursuit of subjective freedom. The project of the Chinese avant-garde, at
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this moment, was neither dialectic nor a negation; rather it was a representation of a realm transcending (not resisting) reality, a mental realm of meditation and philosophical enlightenment that involved both the surrealist and the social realist style. However, because of their rationalist and philosophical characteristics, I coined the term rationalist painting (lixing huihua) to define these works. Among the representatives of the rationalists, the Northern Art Group was the most prominent, including the major artists Wang Guangyi, Shu Qun, Ren Jian, and Liu Yian. Promoting a “civilization of the north,” they made the rather extreme claim that the culture of the temperate zone was dying and had to be replaced by a new culture from the northern climates. They subscribed to a long-held belief that a masculine strength inherent in northern Chinese culture was opposed to the comparative weakness of both Chinese traditional culture (which they associated with southern China), namely the literati culture that began in the fourteenth century, and modern Western civilization. Apparently, their theory concerning the “civilization of the north” reflected a desire to strengthen nationalism and simultaneously create a new modern society at the important moment when China opened to the world. Deriving their style from images of surrealism, the artists sought an imagery that would express the strength and the silent, pure atmosphere of the frigid zone.8 This pursuit of a quasi-religious purification reflects the artists’ dream of founding a rational social order for China’s future. However, importantly, they would build this future on the ruined foundation of contemporary culture. The image of Christianity became a metaphor for a new order of civilization more progressive than any previous. For instance, in his Absolute Principle of 1985, Shu Qun subordinated Christian iconography within a rationalistic grid, representing an order the artist considered capable of creating a sublime realm with which to purify reality. In the beginning, the artists of the group demonstrated that their art creation was based not a study of art but rather of culture. As they proclaimed in their manifesto:
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Figure 5.1 Shu Qun, Absolute Principle, 1985.
First of all, we would like to declare to the public that the “result” displayed in front of you is not the fruit of “creation.” Like other behaviors of mankind, it is only one of many behaviors, except that the aim of this one is to establish a world with a new worldview. In this “world,” all the old traditions of mankind will be gone and a new, strong, eternal and immortal “world” will be born instead. We set forth the following requirements for our own paintings: our paintings are not art! Instead, they are only a means to express our way of thinking, constituting a part of our total thinking. We are firmly opposed to the so-called pure painting language and the cliché of making full of use of the property of painting materials in terms of the “autonomic” principle of painting. It is because we believe that to judge whether a collection of art has value or not depends primarily on whether it demonstrates genuine reason or the
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force of wisdom of mankind, and exhibits the noble qualities and sublime aspirations of human beings. It is our opinion that Eastern and Western cultures have disintegrated and been replaced by a newborn culture—the civilization of the north. (This does not mean that the local cultures of northern Europe or northern Asia will dominate world civilization, but it is a symbolic concept based on the fact that in the whole cultural history of the East, Eastern cultures are constantly moving toward the north.) The culture of mankind, from its inception, has possessed a deeprooted tendency to move gradually toward the frigid zone. This north-moving tendency shows that the inner force within mankind flows externally toward a direction full of conflicts. This manifests the inner spirit of human beings.9
Because of their dedication to cultural study, the artists of the Northern Art Group wrote a number of interdisciplinary essays on art, culture, and philosophy in the years 1985 and 1986.10 These proclaim that the artist should act as a cultural soldier fighting for the future of a healthy society. On September 9, 1985, the Northern Art Group held a conference entitled “The Penetration and Outlook of Northern Art,” which was supported by the Artists Association of Heilongjiang province. The group attempted to found a theoretical magazine, though it failed due to many difficulties. The theory and concepts of the Northern Art Group immediately spread to nationwide avant-garde circles, however. After they were noted by some important young editors, the activities of the Northern Art Group were extensively reported in journals and newspapers, receiving both affirmation and criticism. The approach of the Northern Art Group was the most philosophical among the rationalist painting groups, and it drew a lot of attention from critics and philosophers. In 1987, when the group held a conference in Changchun, the former Manchurian capital, to discuss rationalist painting, a number of critics and philosophers, including myself, participated. Within the ’85 Movement, conceptual art groups such as Xiamen Dada and artists of the current of life groups strongly criticized the Northern Art Group as being typical of rationalist painting, with a conceptual orientation of rationalization and constructive principles which, others believed, might easily lead to a suppression of individual feeling and desire.11 For these other groups, the most important goal was to destroy any cultural doctrine, rather than construct a new civilization. Another similar rationalist painting group was the Red Journey group located in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. The leading artists were Ding Fang, Yang Zhilin, and Xu Lei. Ding Fang was another of the most influential artists of the rationalist painting of the 1980s. Ding was born in Wugong, Shaanxi province, in northwest China, in 1956, moving south to Nanjing when he was a teenager. From 1978 to 1986 he studied as an undergraduate and then graduate student at the Nanjing Academy of Arts. After he graduated in 1983, he taught at the same school until he moved to Beijing to pursue a career as an independent artist in 1986.
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Figure 5.2 The rationalist painting conference, Changchun, February 1987.
Along with Yang Zhilin and Xu Lei, Ding Fang was one of the major organizers of, and a participant in, the 1985 “Jiangsu Art Week Modern Art Festival” (“Jiangsu qingnian yishu zhou: Daxing yishuzhan”), the first influential exhibition covering all the experimental arts there. In 1986, after Ding returned from seeing the Zhuhai slide exhibition of the ’85 Movement, he and another seven artists, including Yang Zhilin, a teacher at Nanjing Normal University (who would design the logo of the “China/AvantGarde” exhibition of 1989), Xu Lei, Shen Qin, Zhai Xiaogang, Guan Ce, Cao Xiaodong, and Xu Yihui, decided to organize a new group named the Red Journey. (Red symbolizes life, so that Red Journey is the journey or process of life.) Principles published later in the brigade’s manifesto show that their central concern was how to find and express their tragic feelings as they pursued a sublime and mystical artistic expression. They wrote, “We will build a common substance through our honest sacrifice. We are looking for a new life created from the depth of our hearts. We will touch the sublime when we sail toward the Faramita [bian, heaven]. We will be called by a holy command when our spirit meets the eternity.”12
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Figure 5.3 Red Journey, outdoor gathering and exhibition, City Wall, Zhongshan Gate, 1986.
The other renwen jingshen direction, the current of life, tended to address questions about the nature of life in order to explore humanitarian values. The primary difference between their artistic goals and those of the rationalists was that the current of life painters expressed their opinions about the nature of life by venting their own individual emotions or expressing their own life situations. While the rationalist painters looked forward to a purified utopian world in the future, current of life painters looked the other way, backward and inward, through images of distorted bodies or of people living a simple life. Different artistic groups within this trend had different ideas about both the nature of life and the nature of art. Some groups emphasized that life is instinctual, while some emphasized the idea that life is a process of accommodation. Usually, their process of artistic expression started as a venting of individual emotions, but it then evolved to express social meaning as well. After expressing their individual feelings, these artists sometimes found that their problems stemmed from society. They were mainly influenced by existentialism, expressionism, and the writings of Freud. Their individualism contained the elements of a strong collective imbued with social concerns.
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The Southwest Art Group was perhaps the most influential and typical group in the current of life trend, both in its idea and practice, just as the Northern Art Group was within the rationalist trend. Although the name of the group was geographical, this by no means implied that all its artists were from southwest China. They were, in fact, from various provinces, including Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, which are all in southwest China, as well as Shandong and Jiangsu provinces and the city of Shanghai on the east coast. Using “Southwest” in the name indicated two things. First, the major artists, such as Mao Xuhui, Zhang Xiaogang, Pan Dehai, and Ye Yongqing, were from the southwest, where they initiated the first exhibition of the group. Second, the geographical association indicated various cultural and aesthetic traits, such as simplicity, “primitivism,” and a naive style. Like the artists of the Northern Art Group, those of the Southwest Art Group held many meetings and wrote a number of articles in addition to creating their artworks.13 In summary, the current of life artists, especially those in the Southwest Art Group, had two major concerns. They shared a basic philosophy with rationalist painting, but also significantly distinguished themselves from rationalist painting. According to the current of life painting philosophy, art was not an act of materialization. Instead, it was a channel for the soul of mankind. Therefore, there were no such things as art criteria or standard art forms, as all of this came from the current feelings of human beings. For instance, Zhang Xaiogang believed that art was equal to love and was made of all kinds of dreams, whereas Pan Dehai was overwhelmed by a mammoth sense of the universe, believing in the idea of a superhuman. Mao Xuhui loathed beauty, praising truth instead as the primary force, especially the cruel inner reality of a tumultuous soul.14 For the artists of the Southwest Art Group, art, precisely speaking, was something rooted not in an abstract human being, but rather in a specific person. Their art and lives were to be resolved as a whole, and thus art epitomized a grand soul (dalinghun). Activism was foregrounded. Though this was a feature of all the avant-garde groups of the ’85 Movement, the practice of the current of life artists
was particularly characterized by activism, and action was the highest objective of their art. In the preface to the brochure for the “Third Exhibition of New Specific Images” (“Xin juxiang disanjie zhan”) of the Southwest Art Group, the artists wrote, “You will not be able to act, if you are not aware that the first priority of human life is action.”15 With this consciousness of activism, the artists devoted and even exhausted themselves in the quest to overcome any political barriers or economic difficulties. When postmodernism reached its peak in the Euro-American art world, and idealism and modernism had been undermined by various deconstructive methods, the Chinese art world of the 1980s, notably the rationalist painting and current of life schools, moved in a totally different direction. Although there was considerable disagreement between rationalist painting and the current of life tendency, as well as some conceptualist groups, such as Xiamen Dada, the main purpose of the avantgarde groups was to question orthodox ideology. This questioning was not meant in the way of destruction or deconstruction, as in the case of Mao’s Red Guard. Instead, there was a demand for the reconstruction of the cultural spirit in the 1980s, geared toward reform and modernity. The “humanism” of the ’85 Movement, therefore, drove the avant-garde toward devotion to rediscovering human nature without expressing a destructive attitude. Perhaps the Cultural Revolution destroyed too much, and the post-Cultural Revolution generation had complained too much. It therefore followed that this was a time to reconstruct. All Western influence, no matter whether modernist or postmodernist, could serve in this project. Thus, the ’85 Movement, in particular all the renwen groups, was an idealistic, total modernity project. For them, art was not merely material production, but rather a program for reestablishing culture following a period of great destruction and trauma. Metaphor One: The Thinker and the Apple
Rationalist painting often used the compositional model of a man thinking. The “thinkers” in the rationalist paintings were the artists themselves, without any concrete, individualized facial features;
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they were universal figures representing the ’85 generation. At the beginning of the ’85 Movement, these “thinker” subjects appeared quite often, sometimes along with images of apples, or with a book (or something like a paper text) or sometimes a cup of water on a table. Stylistically, they combined realism and surrealism. For a generation that read philosophy and contemplated abstract and metaphysical ideas, these images were essential metaphors. The apple was a metaphor of knowledge and enlightenment, while the book and the water were metaphors for the resources of knowledge and thinking. This typology first emerged with the new academic generation, in particular in the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing and the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou, during the first half of 1985. It spread with the emergence of rationalist painting in the avant-garde groups nationwide. In early 1985, a group of recent art school graduates executed several works on the theme of awakening from the Dark Ages. One example was Zhang Qun and Meng Luding’s In the New Era: Revelations of Adam and Eve (see figure 3.5), which was displayed in the 1985 International Youth Art Exhibition in Beijing, where it sparked a controversy over its subject matter, as well as for its depiction of nudity. The artists used the biblical story of Adam and Eve tasting the forbidden fruit as a metaphor for China’s youth, who had already begun to awaken. The young woman holding an apple broke out of the picture’s frame, and the young man awaited a taste of the apple. The palace door behind the nude figures, as well as the mountain with the Dunhuang Buddhist caves in the background, suggested the opportunities open to the new generation. In an article entitled “Awakening in the New Era,” the artists advocated a reevaluation of the past, and of reality, in the context of the “new era” of opening and reform.16 Rather than retreating to the outdated countryside and taking the world of “the other” as a theme, as the rustic painters did, the artists of the ’85 Movement chose to directly comment on Chinese modernity. The new generation positioned themselves to face society directly with a metaphor involving more self-consciousness, urban environments, and the metaphysical state of their
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Figure 5.4 Li Guijun, Studio, 1985.
own generation. In Li Guijun’s Studio, the painter on the left seems to think rather than paint, while the young painter on the right is reading a book and the young woman in the middle is listening. The atmosphere in the studio seems to have nothing to do with art, rather philosophy, and the artists are concerned with meditation rather than painting. There was a historical, religious, and cultural dislocation present in their approach. For instance, in Christian iconography the apple is a symbol of original sin. In 1980s China, it was a symbol of enlightenment. Many artworks also used the cross, the symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, to imply a new intellectual spirit. The painting was a space in which the birth of Christianity, Renaissance humanism, and current Chinese modernity were all conflated in an integrative, metaphorical composition. For the Chinese avant-garde, it was a historical space, framed by “a particular time, a specific space and choice.”17 A number of artworks with similar themes were made at this time by new academic students. For example, a younger artist from Hunan province, Yuan Qingyi, created an oil painting, The Spring Is Coming (Chuntian laile), in which a young man gazes back to his table on which an apple and a book are laid. We cannot see his face; the back view of a thinker was very commonly used in paintings during this period. The anonymous, faceless angle served to make the figure a symbol for everyman, even when depicted with a typical realistic technique. Although, in the
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painting, we are not able to see his emotional state or read his facial expressions, we can imagine a positive attitude by considering the pose. In this instance, looking back is a specifically Chinese futurist vision, not a backward gesture, because the book and the apple are metaphors for the future and the spring. In his essay “I and ‘I’ and … ,” Yuan Qingyi explained this “self-portrait”: “I first enter into abstract thought, and from there I find a quiet attitude. If the artist stands in the position of the Dao, he can expand people’s thoughts from tiny details into the entire universe.” Thus, the space of the canvas is not a place for living but rather an unlimited space for thought. Yuan also believed there were things in common between traditional Daoist philosophy and Sartre’s existentialism.18 By comparing this work with a 1980 oil painting with a similar title, Spring Has Come (Chunfeng yijing suxing) by He Duoling, a scar painter, we may find the crucial difference between these two narratives about the “coming spring.” In He Duoling’s painting, a village girl sits in a field facing the viewer with a sorrowful, emotional expression. Here too the “spring” is a suggestion of the future, but the girl is representative of the passive, wounded Chinese people who need the revitalizing spring to rescue them from the dormant past (and the current status quo). In Yuan’s painting, the younger man is a master; he is in charge of his fate and thinking about, as well as being involved with, the generative energy of the coming spring.
Figure 5.5 Yuan Qingyi, The Spring Is Coming, 1985.
Figure 5.6 He Duoling, Spring Has Come, 1981.
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Figure 5.7 Geng Jianyi, Two People under the Lamplight, 1985.
Geng Jianyi, an oil painting student from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art who later became one of the leading figures of the Pool Society, gave one of his paintings the title Two People under the Lamplight. In this work, a young man holding a newspaper and a young woman are seated facing the viewer, with a cup on the table; there are no features to indicate any expression of individual emotion, nor is there any gender differentiation, with the exception of the hair. They are just modern young people without even any indication of their nationality. In this sense, they may be considered thinkers and universalists, typologically speaking. Some have tended to define this as a surrealist painting. It has a realistic theme with a spontaneous composition in which the scene takes place, although it is very unspecific about the location and time. Light seems also to be used as a metaphor (of enlightenment, or thought possibilities), rather than a realistically portrayed artificial light in an interior space. It is this stylistic approach with certain unreal elements that makes it difficult to define as either illusionistic or representational in style. This is a fundamental feature of rationalist painting. It may come from the traditional aesthetic phrase, “the
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approach is in between likeness and unlikeness” (miao zai si yu busi zhijian). Zuo Zhengyao, a rationalist painter from Hubei province, also presented the “thinker/apple” typological metaphor in his contemporaneous painting Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Wife (Laozi Zhuangzi he qizi). In the painting, Laozi and Zhuangzi, the ancient philosophical founders of Daoism, are seated in a garden-like place along with a woman, who is holding an apple. They are all facing us, but all wear a similar expression. This is another story that took place in an Oriental Garden of Eden. According to the artist, the three different gestures of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and the wife present different philosophies about the apple. Zhuangzi says, “If the apple matures, it will fall down itself.” Therefore he is waiting without doing anything. Laozi says, “Let me have my plate and knife ready.” Therefore he is holding them in his hand. Qizi (the wife), an Oriental version of Eve who is also a philosopher (as we can tell from the character zi in her name), says nothing, but randomly picks an apple from the tree and eats it. Qizi is a stand-in for the young generation, whose attitude of activism defies any doctrine or rules.19
Figure 5.8 Zuo Zhengyao, Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Wife, 1985.
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Figure 5.9 Wang Guangyi, The Frozen North Pole: No. 30, 1985.
Wang Guangyi, in his Frozen North Pole series (1985), also made use of this “thinker/apple” model. In one painting, two people, again with no gender indicated, are seated in front of a table with some small fruits (possibly apple) on it, while the background is the frozen North Pole. The painter attempts to freeze everything except spirituality, thinking, and meditation.
Figure 5.10 Gu Wenda, Self-Portrait with a Window Behind, 1985.
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Gu Wenda, another leading figure in rationalist painting, made Self-Portrait with a Window Behind in 1985. Here the artist’s self-portrait is rendered in a repetitive format, seated rigidly in a gesture of meditation while his hand holds an apple. Interestingly, most of the “thinker/apple” paintings were made in 1985, without any evidence to show an exchange of ideas, or indeed any
Figure 5.11 Zhang Jianjun, Human Beings and Their Clock, 1985–1986.
communication between the painters. In this kind of realist-surrealist painting, each artist represented him or herself as thinker, philosopher, or cultural mediator. The spaces in which they stand, or more commonly sit, are very similar in the use of lighting sources such as lamps, windows, the sun, or in some cases a clock. The locations vary from an empty room to an open landscape, a purist garden, or even somewhere outside the human world, as in the heavenly scene depicted in Zhang Jianjun’s Human Beings and Their Clock. The ultimate purpose of these paintings is the glorification of the new man who grandly carries out the goals of a new, enthusiastic humanism. After the Frozen North Pole series of 1985, Wang Guangyi created his Postclassical Series of 1987, in which he employed and modified religious or grand-manner themes from classical Western paintings. In The Death of Marat, 1987, Wang abstracted the figure of
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the martyred French revolutionary leader and thinker Jean-Paul Marat from Jacques-Louis David’s iconic 1793 painting. He doubled it in a symmetrically opposed composition painted in a muted palette of grays. This rationalization of sacrifice as an instrument of a more perfect spirituality uses art like religion to depict a purified ideal Chinese spirit and a healthy, noble life. For Wang, the tragedy of Marat is an example of spiritual transcendence: “This series of paintings, called Postclassicism, are the best works of my mature period. Their significance and cultural value is that they exhibit the idea that the aim and spiritual significance possessed by life is higher than life itself, upon which lie all the lofty qualities of man.”20 The tragedy of Marat, for Wang, is also the glorification of a noble spirit, a necessary qualification for entry into the period’s “thought” culture. In the same essay, he poignantly asked, “What is a noble
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Figure 5.12 Wang Guangyi, The Death of Marat, 1987.
spirit? It is a special conviction held by a man about his position in the universe, the only compelling force for the revival of the whole culture.”21 Metaphor Two: “Frozen Land,” “Primeval Land,” and “Yellow Earth”
This sort of “thinker’s” subjectivity was taken to such extremes in the middle of the 1980s that human subjects became inadequate to it. Only the language of metaphor and meditative forms could represent this extremely inflated subjectivity. Therefore, rationalist and current of life painters sought the grand partners of the earth and the universe as foci for their elite meditations, and we can see everywhere in their writings such terms as “universe,” “earth,” “nature,” “eternity,” “solemnity,” and “the sublime.” On the rational level of the Dao, the natural landscape and the human figure confront each other. This makes us think of the world of ancient Chinese landscape painting, especially the great painters of the Northern Song, who worked in what scholars call the monumental style. With the exception of Gu Wenda, Ren Jian, and a few other ink painters who committed themselves to reconstructing a kind of new monumental ink painting (what I call universal current or yuzhouliu), most rationalist painters rarely used traditional landscape techniques.22
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The pursuit of this visual language led to two special characteristics. One is the complete elimination of the specificity of the individual (body, gender, emotion, psychology). The other is the strengthening and emphasizing of universal human characteristics, until the human figure becomes robotically uniform. For example, in Cheng Xiaoyu’s painting The East, even the most fleeting moments in human existence have been made abstract. Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi painted what seem to be
Figure 5.13 Cheng Xiaoyu, The East, 1985.
Figure 5.14 Geng Jianyi, Haircut, No. 4—Fashion and Style in the Summer of 1985, 1985.
aliens or extraterrestrials. In the context of 1980s rationalist painting, nearly all human forms reside in abstract scenes and spaces that lack distinguishing characteristics. Characters are often inserted into “universal” scenes without any concrete backgrounds. The background is often empty, and the colors are often blue or otherwise cold, to hint at the presence of a higher-level reality. The earth and sky become the background for the characters in these paintings. The earth, particularly high plateaus, often gives a sense of life, and this sense of life is but a projection of the artist’s ideals.
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Works in this category include Wang Guangyi’s Frozen North Pole series, Ren Jian’s Primeval Chaos, Ding Fang’s Yellow Earth series, and Gu Wenda’s as well as other ink painters’ universal stream paintings. As discussed earlier, the Northern Art Group, represented by Shu Qun, Wang Guangyi, and Ren Jian, used the frigid temperatures of Manchuria as both a background for their paintings and a projection of their spirits. They all lived in northern China, and they sought a theoretical foundation for their region’s culture. Wang Guangyi intended his 1985 Frozen North Pole series to signify “a kind of beauty of sublime reason which contains [a] constant, harmonious feeling of humanity,” noting that “here, both creator and the created are moved by the
Figure 5.15 Wang Guangyi, Frozen North Pole, 1985.
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atmosphere of the sublime and by dignity, rather than by common aesthetic and visual pleasure.”23 In these paintings, orderly, identical figures face the future and are only seen from behind. The background resembles the frozen land and mountains of the Arctic. He wrote about this concept in one of his essays: I am very sensitive to the first signs of the ups and downs of a culture, for my life began in the cold and pure land of the north. The tragic scene generated by the solid image of the northern land, a pure spiritual land, made me spiritually feel the restlessness and horror of life in front of the hostile and cold nature. Therefore, I instinctively transformed my restlessness and confusion to a surrealistic state that transcended myself.
Figure 5.16 Ren Jian, Primeval Chaos (detail), 1986–1987.
If the creativity of mankind can be deemed to be the manifestation of an individual’s reaction to the changes of the universe, the art forms created by an individual’s freedom shall possess a perception of spiritual transcendence. Behind these forms is hidden the prototype of life’s tension, which is totally different from the aesthetic concept of “the pleasure of representation.” This life tension develops along an upward, spiritual path, constituting the whole chain of humanity’s culture. The prophetic art forms created by some noble healthy persons can undoubtedly serve as examples of the development of a culture of human beings. My own art forms can, without any doubt, also serve as examples. The solid, Polar Region in the north, one of my early art forms, expresses a bright yet serious rationality of life’s expansion.24
The land and earth in Ren Jian’s paintings are even more mysterious and monumental than in Wang Guangyi’s work. Ren Jian devoted himself to exploring and presenting Eastern mysteries, and created abstract forms or images based on traditional Chinese concepts about the beginnings of the human world. A series of paintings dating from 1985 to 1987 gave form to his philosophical reconfiguration of the universe. He
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created various symbols and signs with references from the Book of Changes (Yi jing), a Daoist text, making a thirty-meter-long painting in 1986–1987 in the form of a traditional ink-and-wash hand scroll. The painting, entitled Primeval Chaos, used imaginary images to describe the origins of life in a primordial era.25 This primordial universe, however, has nothing to do with archaeological study, nor is it a mythical narrative in a visual form; rather it is a metaphor employed to transcend the existing aesthetic pleasure of the “representation of reality” (fanying xianshi). For Ren Jian, to imagine a primeval land through a peculiar, or specific, visual form is a systematic attempt to liquidate the cliché of realism and representational theory. In this, rationalist painting seems to share something with Western modernism at the turn of the twentieth century. The difference is that the Chinese style never goes to extremes, but always stays in between pure abstraction and mimicry. Similar to Ren Jian were the Shanghai painters Li Shan, Yu Youhan, Chen Zhen, Zhang Jianjun, and others. The difference is that the Shanghai painters portrayed the primeval land in a more symbolic form by visualizing Oriental philosophy about the beginning of the universe. Chen Zhen
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Figure 5.17 Chen Zhen, A Painting about Mind Moving, 1984.
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Figure 5.18 Li Shan, Expanding Series, No. 1, 1984.
Figure 5.19 Yu Youhan, Circle Series, 1984.
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Figure 5.20 Gu Wenda, Mythos of Lost, 1985.
was a painter who was extremely interested in both Chinese and Western philosophy and wanted to demonstrate his interpretation of the structure of the universe, including extraterrestrials. He used dots to combine qi or “energy” and divinatory symbols to suggest certain motions in what he called the “stream of qi” (qiliutu). Chen moved to Paris in 1986, and soon he gave up this Oriental philosophical dream and shifted to an interest in postmodernism and the issue of cultural identity.26 Li Shan was also interested in the Oriental mysteries and a certain pseudo-abstract style. The circles in Li Shan and Yu Youhan’s paintings, however, have nothing to do with modernist geometry, though the philosophical code reminds us of modernism. The soft, reserved round shapes, and the ink paintings of lines and dots, all suggest an Oriental spontaneity and a hint of human life and the body. These Shanghai painters all sought to use the mysterious universe of ancient Eastern philosophy to rid culture of the previous philistine tendency of socialist representation. Consequently, abstract symbols thoroughly obscured human forms in their works, as the human form—most notably that of
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Mao—had been the basis for all propagandistic representation in the past. Physical landscapes were ultimately aimed at presenting metaphysical ends, replete with the internal realities of these Chinese new “humanist” thinkers. In the middle of the 1980s, otherworldly scenes also became important material for avant-garde inkand-wash painting. This tendency made a departure from both traditional landscape painting and the revolutionary representational landscape. A number of painters were involved in the ink movement. In Zhejiang province, Gu Wenda became the primary representative of an avant-garde ink-and-wash painting movement called scholarly painting (xuezhe huihua), which addressed painting as a scholarly study. The painting’s subject matter commonly involved characters, land, and a hint of the human body, joined together in a harmonious composition suggesting an otherworldly or surreal place. But Gu’s form of otherworldly landscape was rather a representation of the human spirit (see chapter 7); here the land serves li, or principle, and idea. He believed that the paintings of the Northern Song Dynasty were the most valuable, virile, and sublime.27
Figure 5.21 Ding Fang, Drawing of a Landscape, 1984.
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Figure 5.22 Ding Fang, The Summons and Birth, 1988.
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On the other hand, he thought the literati painting style, which followed the Northern Song, was weak and powerless. This criticism of the literati painting of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties can be traced back to the early twentieth century, when Chinese reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao launched the art movement called the “revolution in art.”28 Ding Fang was another important rationalist painter of the 1980s. If we say that the earthly and otherworldly landscapes discussed above were similar inasmuch as they explored purely spiritual questions, Ding Fang’s landscapes were more concrete, showing the soul and flesh of a nation, as well as a portrait of the identity of Chinese intellectuals in the 1980s. Ding Fang was born in Wugong, Shaanxi province, in northwestern China, in 1956. He and seven other artists, including Yang Zhilin, a teacher and his colleague at Nanjing Normal University, Xu Lei, Shen Qin, Zhai Xiaogang, Guan Ce, Cao Xiaodong, and Xu Yihui, decided to organize a new group named the Red Journey.29 Ding Fang’s first artistic endeavors took place between 1982 and 1985, when he worked with rustic realist painting. His rustic painting, however, did not exoticize the lives of ordinary people. Instead, Ding sought to explore the rational structure of nature through images of the constant stillness of the land and depictions of the cycle of human life. In these paintings the land seems covered not by soil, but rather by solid metal. In 1985, Ding Fang abandoned rustic themes. He returned to the Yellow Plateau in his home province, and while there he shifted his attention away from capturing the essence of the land and the lives of the people who live on it. Instead, Ding sought a symbolic mode of expression that would strengthen national culture. His representative works of this stage are the paintings entitled the Castle Series (1985). They depict the land of the Yellow Plateau turned to ruined castles and combined with parts of the Great Wall and villages. Ding Fang describes his pursuits of this period by saying, “I have been looking for a spirit hidden in the northern world.” Elsewhere he said, “What I am striving for is an unsophisticated, realistic style which aims to express the spirit of the north by a simple and solid
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artistic language. These realist techniques are forceful even if regarded as outdated. But I still insist that the silent greatness inherent in the northern lands is the foundation for this art to enter into the future culture of mankind.”30 In these works, Ding created monumental compositions by combining intricate brushstrokes with a giant landscape. This leads us to think of the twelfth-century art historian Mi Fu’s (1052–1107) appraisal of the tenth-century painter Fan Kuan. Commenting on Fan’s brushstrokes, Mi said Fan “used a great deal of ink and did not distinguish between rocks and earth [tushi bufen]. No one in the present dynasty surpassed him. His mountain streams spring from the depths of nowhere; his waters seem to have a voice of their own.”31 The surface of the earth in Ding’s paintings is the skin of the national soul, like that of the German artist Anselm Kiefer, who has committed himself to painting the national soul of the former West Germany. Like Wang Guangyi’s, Ding Fang’s new works of 1987 and 1988 had an extremely romantic tendency. He used bright colors and exaggerated emotions to emphasize a quasi-religious approach. The titles of works in this series include: The Summons and Birth, Will and Sacrifice, The Enlightenment of the Original Spirit (Yuanchuang jingshen de qishi), Self-Transcendence, and The Power of Tragedy. In The Summons and Birth, the artist transformed the land and city that he had drawn before into a godlike face that shines on and summons humans. The dominant color is gold, symbolizing divine light.32 Metaphor Three: Wild Earth and Minority Body as Eternal
The current of life artists from western China sought a different way to represent the grandeur of human life by employing a metaphor of their individual experiences of nature, land, and native people, rather than attempting to transcend reality as the rationalist painters had. Therefore, the metaphorical language of “land” for the artists of the current of life movement was not the Northern Art Group’s “frozen land,” the Shanghai painters’ primeval symbols, nor Ding Fang’s “yellow earth,” but rather the virginal “wild soil” (retu) of southwest China. Wild in this case meant original, simple, and uncivilized. Although the frozen land is also original and simple, it was
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civilized in the metaphorical sense as interpreted by the rationalist painters. This is partially because of the geographical location of Yunnan province in the southwest, where minorities still live in the old agricultural lifestyle. One may define this approach as another form of rustic art. In fact, there was a connection between the Southwest Art Group and rustic painting. First, Zhang Xiaogang and Ye Yongqing, two of the major members of the group, were the classmates of Luo Zhongli, Cheng Conglin, and He Duoling, who were the leading scar and rustic artists of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In fact, Zhang Xiaogang was involved in rustic painting in the later 1970s, but his painting did not get as much attention as that of his classmates from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art. It was very natural for Zhang and Ye to carry on with a similar rustic mentality in the practice of the Southwest Art Group. Second, Zhang, Ye, and Mao Xuhui were all born in Kunming, Yunnan province; they shared a similar regional interest in portraying their own land and people. The rustic interest of the Southwest Art Group in the middle of the 1980s, however, was quite different from that of the rustic painting initiated in Sichuan in the late 1970s. The latter used the rustic life as a “true life” to comment on the previous political life and to address humanism, departing from Mao’s political and class struggle. The former, however, attempted to infuse their “neo-rusticism” with a much wilder and abstract appearance in order to perform a metaphorical and philosophical meditation on what it means to be human. This quality, above all, distinguished the approach of the Southwest Art Group from that of the rationalist painters. Furthermore, the former respected and believed in concrete individual experiences and intuition, at the expense of rational thought. This by no means suggests that the current of life and rationalist painting had no common philosophical interests. On the contrary, both proclaimed the possibility of transcending individual and phenomenological life, and both pursued a grand soul (dalinghun). Therefore, both made a clear departure from the political life of the post-Cultural Revolution period, and both employed their land as a metaphor in the philosophy of total cultural modernity.
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This approach involved a kind of meditation, the meditation that dug deep into individual souls rather than observing irrelevant social phenomena. In the mid-1980s, Mao Xuhui’s art began with an extremely wild and concrete personal focus. He worked at a store, producing marketing advertisement boards, and read novels by Franz Kafka. He was bored with life, his spirits remaining low even when he got back to his living quarters. There, he would stand by his window watching the road lamps and pedestrians. If this could not disperse his loneliness, he would depict his ennui on canvas, painting restlessness, love, dilapidated life, and the feeling of falling. He became extremely interested in pure instinct. In about 1985 he wrote, “When I put into the magic bucket of artistic form the things in life that disturb people, that are irrational, that are disorderly, that have a strong presence even though they are indefinable, then I feel delight … driven by primitive impulse and desire, I have to break out of my inner world by blowing off my head, my soul, and all my secrets with a completely vented open mind. After harshly beating all the monsters on a gallows, I then cheerfully leave.”33 In this period, Mao Xuhui painted the Guishan Series (Guishan xilie). Guishan is an area where many minorities have lived since prehistoric times. Sheep, land, trees, and minority people were the major images in his compositions. Often, the people hold tree branches or other agricultural symbols in their hands. In Guishan Series: Encounter on Red Soil, a couple gaze at each other in silence. The tree branch the man offers the woman is a symbol of the love that comes from the land and is at the root of all human beings. Like Mao and Pan Dehai, Zhang Xiaogang resorted to drink as a result of his disappointment with life. This influenced his art: the major themes of his work during the mid-1980s were focused on death and dreams. His drinking sprees eventually led to stomach troubles that caused him to be hospitalized. At the hospital, he was confined to a white bed in a white room and had to take white tablets every day. During that period, he produced a series of disquieting sketches. The images were no longer of grasslands, but rather of monster after monster, interspersed with falling bedsheets chased by menaced souls. At that time he wrote, “Mankind’s
Figure 5.23 Mao Xuhui, Guishan Series: Encounter on Red Soil, 1985.
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love has been divided into two parts. The first half enjoy their colorful daily life, while the other half move toward death driven by a self-propelling force.”34 For Zhang, dreams—especially the nightmares he experienced in the hospital—were the moments in which he experienced enlightenment, mentally floating between death and life.35 Zhang Xiaogang, like Mao Xuhui, abandoned the tendency toward self-indulgent expression in order to focus on reality. He attacked the human distortions that society caused by glorifying the pastoral, simple life. In Eternal Life, painted in 1988, a ceremonial image of minority people surrounded by animals and wigwams depicts a celebration of “wildness.” This ritualistic, ageless life became the major theme of Zhang’s paintings during the late 1980s. A similar ceremony was captured in another painting, Yin Yang Cycle, which portrayed a couple who share the same lower extremity kneeling in prayer. This is reminiscent of the ancient god and goddess, Fu Xi and Nu Wa, whose joined lower body was that of a snake. The painting symbolizes the noble purity of rustic life, which the artist, considering himself a modern man, identified as the true and original human consciousness.
Figure 5.24 Zhang Xiaogang, Eternal Life, 1988.
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This kind of imagery, often based on experiences in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, or other remote areas, appeared frequently in the 1980s. For instance, Su Xinping, a painter from Inner Mongolia and a young teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Art in late 1980s, frequently painted Mongolian people sleeping, drinking, and walking under a magic shadow, which was a metaphor for the psychological impact of modernity in general. Some of these works undoubtedly implied a conflict between the idealized “primitive life” and modern civilization. This conflict was basic to the psychology of the artists, and is particularly acute in contemporary urban China. On the one hand, the artists wished to oppose modern society for its suppression of human nature, thus their praise for the pure and simple life; on the other hand, they believed the people who lived this “primitive life” in remote areas lacked the ability to change modern society. The praise of “primitivism,” pastoralism, and naturalism in the works of the artists of the Southwest Art Group, called nature consciousness (ziran yishi), was not an exotic or irrelevant subject matter to them but rather a supplement to urban modernization.36
Figure 5.25 Zhang Xiaogang, Yin Yang Cycle, 1988.
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Figure 5.26 Su Xinping, Wait, 1989.
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By 1988, a “socio-capitalist” society had begun to develop in China, and intellectuals were becoming fatigued from dreaming of an ideal future. The artists of the Northern Art Group, such as Shu Qun and Ren Jian, abandoned their earlier idealism. Like many of their fellow artist-intellectuals, they moved away from grand themes to undertake specific analyses of the social environment. By 1988, Wang Guangyi shifted his attention away from idealism and grand themes as well, to initiate a more specific investigation of reality. The earliest hint of this shift is seen in his 1987 Red Reason and Black Reason series, in which red-and-black grids imply a poptype approach, or cut-and-paste method, instead of a representational and utopian approach. He started to criticize “the modern myth” (xiandai shenhua), which may refer both to Mao’s revolutionary period and to the later avant-garde iconoclastic utopias. In stark contrast to his earlier humanist tendencies, he proclaimed that we had to “liquidate the enthusiasm of humanism” (qingli renwen reqing) and that art was created only to achieve stardom in media society and the market.37 He called art a strategy (youxi), and Andy Warhol’s pop, as well as the hypercritical pop of the British circle around Richard Hamilton, became his models. Wang created a series of portraits of Mao Zedong; in February 1989, just four months before the Tian’anmen incident, he caused a sensation by exhibiting Mao Zedong No. 1 in the “China/AvantGarde” exhibition (see figure 4.12). In this work, a grid was superimposed on an official portrait of Mao: the revolutionary leader and the utopia he stood for were imprisoned within the measurable confines of an analytic frame. Wang’s technique harks back to the large-scale propagandist technique of employing a grid to enlarge and transfer a small-scale mock-up to a monumentally large portrait or propagandistic mural. This work might have been created with a critical intent rather than an overt commercial goal. Generally speaking, before the Tian’anmen democracy demonstrations of 1989, the avantgardists of the ’85 Movement had not yet become involved in the commercial marketing of art due to the lack of international outlets and institutional attention.
Metaphysical Modernity
In his Absolute Principle of 1985, Shu Qun made use of the cross, the Christian symbol for representing a new order and idealism. In the late 1980s, however, he turned away from this vision and created a different version of Absolute Principle. In this version, he added three additional panels to the original painting, so that the Christian iconography and the grid progressively vanish. This series was displayed in 1989 in the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition. The fadeout mirrors the demise of the intellectuals’ idealism about the total modernity project. Meanwhile, Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi also shifted their attention from rationalist painting to conceptual art. In 1988, the transitional nature of deconstructivist theory began to permeate the artistic milieu’s mentality. This shift occurred an entire year before the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition and the events of June 4. The consequent loss of idealism and disillusionment occurred significantly before the June 4 incident. It was in the early 1990s, though, that this mentality reached its apex and political pop and cynical realism became a major trend.38 I will discuss this avant-garde transition issue in chapter 7.
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6 Chan Meets Dada Merging Destruction and Tradition in the Avant-Garde Mentality
Guannian Gengxin: Revolution in Ideas
The Chinese term guannian means “idea.” Around late 1984 and early 1985, guannian gengxin became the most popular notion among the avantgardists and the younger generation. It even had an impact on the circle of middle-aged academic artists. Guannian gengxin literally means to have a “revolution in ideas.” After the Open Door policy and new painting trends emerged in the prior several years, the change of ideas became a fundamental issue in the development of Chinese contemporary art, as opposed to the mere substitution of themes or style. But what is guannian in the particular Chinese context? It first refers to a desire for further cultural exchange between China and the West. With a strong voice advocating greater openness and freedom in the creation of art, it became a common point of view in the literary and art worlds during the middle of the 1980s.1 It entailed a pursuit of revolutionary ideas in the creation of art, rather than emphasizing material production. In this context, “ideas” are not concepts in the sense of Western conceptual art; rather it is concerned with promoting an avant-garde cultural revolution, often highly critical, in art. Apart from the influential trend of a specifically Chinese form of humanism (renwen), discussed in the previous chapter, this avant-garde of ideas became the most radical art propagated by the ’85 Movement. It first emerged in the middle of the 1980s, in tandem with the renwen tendencies of the ’85 Movement. In my historic essay defining the ’85 Movement, I divided the avant-garde groups into three elements. The first two were the previously discussed rationalist painting and current of life tendencies, which passionately engaged in “enthusiastic humanism”
(renwen jingshen). The third element manifested as what I called a “revolution of ideas imbued with activism” (guannian gengxin yu xingwei zhuyi).2 The phenomenon of a revolution in ideas in the ’85 Movement was inspired by Western contemporary art, including conceptual art, the name given to a North American and British art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. However, as usual in the Chinese context, the purpose and the revolutionary logic are different from the Euro-American if one examines the comparative situations with any specificity. The term “conceptual art” was translated into Chinese in two ways in the 1980s: “idea art” (guannian yishu) and “concept art” (gainian yishu). Guannian carries with it a much broader set of connotations than gainian. The former refers to the general meaning of mind-based or thought-based practice in a particular context, while the latter has a narrower definition of a specific notion. Chinese conceptual art is more accurately defined as idea art (guannian yishu), because the artists working in this vein were committed to examining broad cultural and social issues, rather than focusing on the internal concerns of art itself, as was the case in the first phase of Western conceptual art practiced during the late 1960s. For instance, the Art and Language group attempted to probe the relationship between words, objects, and images while studying the signification theories of French theorists such as Saussure, or later of Wittgenstein. In Chinese art, there has never been a theory that attempts to divide words from images, or study them separately. Due to the integral nature of calligraphic history, and the essential allegorical, metaphorical, and poetic coupling of words and images in the history of Chinese art, there is no Western historical relationship that can
accommodate this equivalency. In some Chinese idea art, such as that of Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, or Wu Shanzhuan, images and words are resolved into one holistic concept. This is partially because the Chinese language is itself based on pictographic images, with no separation between word and image. I will discuss this issue in the next chapter. It is also important to note that, unlike its Western counterpart, idea art in China did not develop from a logical or historical progression of aesthetic avant-gardism. Never has there existed in China a sphere of aesthetic autonomy as described by Peter Bürger and other Western theorists of the avant-garde. The European and North American conceptual art of the late 1960s and early 1970s was, in this respect, a new movement that furthered the modernist project by questioning the role of art as an instrument of representation while challenging the institutional apparatus, ultimately leading to what some postmodern theorists would call the dematerialization of art in the 1980s. What was essential to the Euro-North American experience, and perfectly epitomized by the stance of Marcel Duchamp, was the critical examination of art institutions and the complicated quest for autonomy inherent in the Western avant-garde tradition.3 As the father of Western conceptual art, “Duchamp did not hail ‘Anti-Art’ like the Berlin Dadaists, but rather a subtly complex form of ‘Non-art.’”4 Nonetheless, the conceptual art that emerged in the later 1960s in North America and Britain seemed to continue the search for aesthetic autonomy in a failed avant-garde tradition. Non-art still respects the line of art history; anti-art (in the sense of inclusion and synthesis, rather than exclusion and split), however, to which I rather refer the Chinese avant-garde, attempts to modify the relationship between art and the total social and cultural system in which it exists. In positioning itself as an anti-art project, the ’85 Movement, and especially idea art, adopted the same foundation as Mao’s Red Guard art during the Cultural Revolution. On the other hand, the revolution in ideas also continued the total modernity project from the early twentieth century’s revolution in art, as discussed in chapter 1. The difference between Mao’s anti-art and the earlier intended revolution in art was that the former was populist,
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whereas the latter was still based on an intellectual, or elite, model. The anti-art methodology of Chinese idea art, therefore, was not a logical, conceptual development of art from within, but a response to the external forces of both the social and the artistic environment. In the 1980s, Chinese idea art played a role similar to that of Dada; that is to say, it was a vehicle for challenging social and aesthetic conventions. The anti-art project of the 1980s was initiated by Huang Yongping in conjunction with the Xiamen Dada group, and further developed by Gu Wenda, Wu Shanzhuan, and Xu Bing, among others. This group of artists of the 1980s also embraced traditional philosophy, in particular Chan Buddhism, which encourages an ironic sensibility and a refusal to privilege any one doctrine over another in the search for truth. The third arsenal of influences for Chinese idea art’s attack on the status quo was Mao’s revolutionary art, especially its nihilistic and destructive philosophy, which one may be able to find in aspects of the work of Huang Yongping, Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, and a number of others. In the approach they pioneered, the Chinese language and its characters became the major sources of Chinese idea art. Unlike the idea artists of the 1980s, who committed themselves to a philosophical elaboration of Chan principles in art, the artists of the 1990s had little interest in philosophical and linguistic elaborations of an anti-art project. Instead, they freely selected and transformed quotidian objects in their surroundings. They continued the anti-art tradition of the 1980s, making some unmarketable (and impossible-to-display) works of art in their apartments, or on the streets, in response to both the harsh political environment and ever more widespread consumerism. The anti-art sentiment of the early 1990s was even more extreme than that of earlier times, marked as it was by the dramatic dematerialization and deinstitutionalization of the projects. The artists began to share, however, some common interests and targets with their Western counterparts, due to the rising prominence of the transnational art market forces of the 1990s. This anti-art project could also be seen as a critique of Chinese idea art that both comments on and encourages a closer investigation of the moral
condition of the avant-garde itself. In the 1980s, the idea artists were critical of the romanticism and utopianism of their avant-garde colleagues, like those involved in the new Chinese humanism (renwen), such as the rationalist and current of life painters. The difference between renwen and guannian was that while the renwen artists advocated ideas when making artworks, the idea in their specific humanist practice was materialized. From a methodological perspective, “ideas” for the renwen artists were more or less equivalent to themes; although renwen artists proclaimed that their art went beyond art, their art fundamentally existed as a reflection of thought. In other words, renwen artworks contained materialized ideas based in moral or philosophical tendencies. The guannian artists of the ’85 Movement, on the other hand, were concerned with the function of art, and sought to answer defining questions such as: What is art? What is contemporary art in the changing context from modernism to postmodernism? What is the relationship between social life and art-making? What is the relationship between the writing of art history, artworks, and the social system? In other words, the Chinese idea art project during the 1980s (as well as 1990s) was about social power and discourses related to art. The renwen painters strove to replace Mao’s previous representational art, including its byproducts (e.g., scar and rustic painting). This replacement and criticism did not engage the methodological aspects of art but rather its moral aspects. The guannian artists, however, wanted to completely undermine any kind of representation, including that of the previous renwen art. Therefore, the Chinese idea artists of the 1980s positioned themselves as investigators of the corruption of their avant-garde colleagues; and yet again, as the social critics of Chinese modernity. The apartment artists of the early 1990s, and the artists of Chinese maximalism which peaked in the mid-1990s, engaged in a project of a different kind of dematerialization, which can be defined as materialization involved in daily experience, using inexpensive materials, proposals on paper, and repetitious, time-consuming labor to make their small-scale installations in various private spaces. Artworks of this kind served to distance the artists
Chan Meets Dada
from material desires and the social corruption that affected the avant-garde circles of the 1990s. The revolution in ideas exemplified by Chinese guannian art had several demonstrative features. One was the blurring of boundaries between social life and art within a Chinese context. Recall that intellectual life was one of the most important driving forces of Chinese social reform during the 1980s, as discussed in chapter 3. Both Chan tradition and Mao’s legacy existed as referential models for this revolution in ideas. The exploration of the division between art and life is one of the most important legacies of Western conceptual art since Duchamp. Chinese avant-garde artists of this period disdained only presenting the notion, and consequent materialization, of the idea into artwork. Instead, they attempted to turn ideas or concepts into holistic entities through their enthusiastic activism. In many ways, they succeeded and were able to make art a social event of daily life. The second important feature of Chinese guannian art was the search for contextualization, which resulted in a rejection of arbitrary readings of the work of art while critically assessing the power of authorship embedded in the cult of the artist. Within this context, Chinese conceptual art approached anti-conceptual art through an examination of the individual’s experience, involving a kind of meditation. Ultimately, it was not the concept of art but the process of making the art that defined this conceptual turn. One may follow this line of development from Xu Bing’s word works, such as A Book from the Sky and Ghosts Pounding the Wall, to the forms that we call maximalism. Finally, it is very important to note that the Chinese idea art project represented a paradoxical negotiation between a perceptual aesthetic and its complete destruction. Again, unlike most of their Western counterparts, Chinese avant-garde artists never attempted to relinquish or diminish the power of the visual. On the contrary, the Chinese deployed visual power to enhance the conceptual meaning of their works. The best example of this sort is Xu Bing’s Book from the Sky of 1986–1987 (see chapter 7 for a full discussion). This attempt at balance between the visual and the conceptual was characteristic of all the guannian artworks, and it had its roots in traditional Chinese aesthetic theory, which discouraged extremes
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of any type in art practice. This negotiation had two functions. One was to go beyond the traditional idea of art representation and reach the realm of a totalizing cultural sphere. Second, the negotiation between the visual and the conceptual is the foundation of Chinese language, which played an important role in shaping ideological orthodoxy throughout Chinese history. Needless to say, traditional calligraphy and script became one of the major weapons for the guannian. By employing the Chinese language, the guannian project involved both a reconstruction and a simultaneous deconstruction of Chinese heritage, as it established a critical contemporary transformative methodology and denuded calligraphy of its didactic institutional function. In this chapter, I will discuss the guannian projects from 1985 to 1989 that established a foundation for the next generation to follow. In the following chapters, I will move to the guannian projects in alternative spaces, including the apartment art (gongyu yishu) and maximalism (jiduo zhuyi) of the 1990s. The guannian project of the 1980s consisted of three different aspects: (1) a Chan-Dada-oriented direction, which was mainly practiced by the Xiamen Dada group led by Huang Yongping; (2) the practice of language art, adopted by Wu Shanzhuan, Xu Bing, and Gu Wenda; and (3) the activities that attempted to cross the boundary between art and daily life. The last approach was spread mostly in the 1990s, in maximalism and apartment art. Many artists and groups of the 1980s were involved with various visual languages. For instance, consider the tactile art (chujue yishu, discussed in chapter 7) created by Wang Luyan, Chen Shaoping, and Gu Dexin in Beijing; some art projects generated by the Pool Society in Hangzhou and the M Group in Shanghai; and some pop art and performance art by the groups from Fujian, Shanxi, Guangzhou, Hubei, and Hunan provinces. No matter how different the projects were, the main purpose of guannian art from this period was to make a revolutionary break from the old concepts of art. They sought not only to go beyond the long-dominant forms of socialist realism, but also to break with all the new trends in art that had emerged after the Cultural Revolution, including the humanism (renwen) of the ’85 Movement.
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For example, in 1986 Huang Yongping published an article entitled “Xiamen Dada—A Kind of Postmodernism,” in which he directly challenged the “lofty spirituality” and “rationalism” of the Northern Art Group.5 Artists such as Xu Bing and Wu Shanzhuan carried out the greatest subversive attacks on utopian tendencies. The revolution of ideas in the ’85 Movement evolved into an anti-art project that emerged from the philosophical level. Here, anti-art meant rebelling against old art, the hypocrisy of art, and totalitarian and institutional art. Anti-Art
Huang Yongping can be considered the pioneer of Chinese idea art, when viewed in terms of almost every characteristic of Chinese guannian art discussed above.6 Born in 1954, Huang Yongping graduated from the Department of Oil Painting at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou in 1982. He then worked for seven years as a secondary school teacher, after which he left China for France. The key tenets of Huang’s philosophy are: (1) art is not significant in and of itself, at least insofar as it expresses a person’s individuality; (2) it is only when something can bring about change in specific contexts that this thing can be called art; (3) moreover, one must completely demolish the notion of art and destroy any doctrine or system that has prescribed goals for art. Huang’s anti-art project sought to demolish not only the material form, function, and system of art, but also the game of art itself. It is important to note that although his antiart project was influenced by Dadaism, its theoretical basis was in traditional philosophy, in particular the theory of nothingness or wu. Although Huang rarely commented on contemporary Chinese art before he left for Paris, almost every step of his strategy was targeted at a fashionable contemporary trend in art. In 1983, he devoted himself to a project with the eventual goal of eliminating self-expression from the art-making process. Huang was working in opposition to aestheticism, which was fashionable among academic painters in China in the late 1970s and early 1980s who valued self-expression and individual style.7 Like Duchamp, Huang asserted that industrial mass
production was far more truthful and powerful than any subjective art with a unique, individual style. He created a series of paintings using a spray gun and lacquer rather than a brush and oil paint, and titled the works Paint [Spray] Gun Series. All of his “paintings” were similarly associated with the industrial equipment that he used to create them, such as Pipe with T Shape (Dingzixing guandao). The unsentimental titles and images tend, as Huang said, to “demolish any trace of a human’s individual style with unique strokes.”8 Also in 1983, Huang Yongping and fellow artists organized an exhibition called the “FiveMan Exhibition” (“Wuren huazhan”) in which they displayed various readymade works. As they demonstrated, “the show attempts to question the illusion of representation in art and its associated criteria, and the experimental works of the show
are presented as a bridge to link daily life and art together.”9 When the ’85 Movement emerged, Huang decided that rather than express social meanings in artworks as the humanists did, he wanted to challenge the idea of originality in the work of art. Considering the work of art to be meaningless and believing that artists should not subjectively incorporate meaning into their work, he sought a completely random approach, one based on the concept of nothingness (wu). At this time, he made a series of works titled Nonexpressive Painting: Roulette Wheel Series (Feibiaoda de huihua: Zhuanpan xilie) in which the “paintings” (he refuses to see them as paintings) were made according to the instructions of a spinning wheel, incorporating chance, or castings from the Yi jing or Book of Changes, an ancient Daoist volume.
Figure 6.1 Huang Yongping, Nonexpressive Painting: Roulette Wheel Series, 1985.
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According to Huang, the goal was “to extend art creation into a simplified nonformalist, nonbaroque, nonsymbolic, nonexpressive, nonskillful, and nonunique condition.”10 The final form of the “painting” was, for Huang, not important; what was important for him was how the result was generated. In the Roulette Wheel Series, Huang made objects according to a strict set of procedures he determined for himself, which led to a very impersonal work of art. The procedures included several steps: 1.
Create a turntable demarcated into eight sections, with marks of eight divinations from the Yi jing.
2.
Mark on the canvas eight identical sections.
3.
Assign a certain code to each color. For example, green (ink) was Number 4, red (oil) was Number 12, blue (acrylic) was Number 20, and paint thinner was Number 11. The assignment of codes to these colors was purely random. There were a total of twenty-five codes.
4.
5.
6.
Create dice with codes that corresponded to the colors. For example, color Number 1 corresponded to Number 1 on the dice. Each die would be used only once in sixty-four throws. Spin the turntable sixty-four times to determine the position of colors on the canvas, with the random stopping of the turntable determining the matching selection. Fill out a form with the two codes (position and color) and place the colors on the canvas in the positions marked on the form. Then the painting is completed.
After Huang Yongping finished four canvases of this sort of “painting,” he gave up. He thought the process was too boring. On the other hand, he avoided creating any kind of “authentic” method, as many of his friends suggested he might do after hundreds of pieces were done. His main goal was to criticize and distrust any aesthetic connotations. He wanted to leave this incomplete project behind. He also strongly asserted that using the roulette wheel in this artwork was different from gambling, because he did not intend or desire any result, whereas the gambler does. Thus Huang made a machine (the roulette wheel) into a person (an artist), at the same time as making a person (himself ) into a machine.11
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Ironically, viewers always seem to seek the expression of a certain aesthetic taste, like that of a Pollocklike abstract expressionism, in these “paintings” of Huang’s. Paradoxically, his substantial verbal descriptions and the irrational action behind his project did not overcome the effective surface of the “paintings,” i.e., their style and forms. Huang further developed this idea of randomness from the Roulette Wheel Series in a work he created for the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition in 1989. This time, however, he left the mechanics to the audience, after creating certain roles and questions. The work included six small turntables, each made of wood and with a plastic carrying case, inside of which there was a photocopied set of instructions indicating how to use the turntable to create artwork. The instructions were as follows: 1.
To move or not to move = to create or not to create (two choices)
2.
Where to begin? (Determine the location [on the painting]): 1–360 degrees
3.
When to begin? 1–24 hours
4.
What material to select? 1–64 [choices]
5.
How to create? (Random numbers [on the wheel])
6.
To compare [the painting] with which [masterpiece]? Select from Edward Lucie-Smith, Art Today: From Abstract Expressionism to Surrealism (Oxford: Phaidon). Total illustrations: 392
At the same time, Huang also created a big turntable on which he marked 384 (a number also from the Yi jing) different choices and possibilities for art-making, which he randomly selected from dictionaries, texts on art history, books on the history of ideas, and so on. This repetitious and time-consuming process of art-making and demolishing of the artist’s arbitrary subjectivity, initiated by Huang and the idea art of the ’85 Movement, spread in the 1990s in the form of maximalism. In 1986, Huang Yongping produced a number of works and writings engaging another anti-art project, which was manifested in his provocative essay “Xiamen Dada—A Kind of Postmodernism?” (“Xiamen Dada—yizhong houxiandai?”).12 His philosophy, combining Dada and Chan Buddhism,
Figure 6.2 Huang Yongping, Roulette with Six Plates, 1989.
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was summarized in the essay, in which he asserted that, “in their degree of spirituality, Chan Buddhism is Dada, and Dada is Chan.” The iconoclastic theories of the seventh-century Chan master known as the sixth patriarch, Hui Neng (638–713), inspired many artists from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art, such as Wu Shanzhuan, Gu Wenda, Song Haidong, and Huang Yongping, partially due to the great fascination with and study of Chan Buddhism in the academy in the early and mid1980s. Following this Chan theory, Huang Yongping rebelled, using the concept of destruction; for Huang, there was a nexus of distinction and affinity between Chan Buddhism and postmodernism due to their insight, simplicity, and extremely skeptical attitudes. Embracing these extreme attitudes eventually culminated in several events, including the “Xiamen Dada Modern Art Exhibition.” After the exhibition, Huang Yongping had his fellow artists burn all the works they had shown. A similar event, called Artworks Become Trash, 8:30 p.m.–10:00 p.m., November 9, 1987 (Zuopin laji chuli, 8:30 p.m.–10 p.m. 11/9/1987), took place at a garbage dumpster in Xiamen. Huang Yongping and his cohorts threw more than ten of their paintings into the garbage dumpster and let the garbage truck take them away at the regularly scheduled time. On December 1, 1987, Huang created one of his most cynical conceptual works by placing two books in a washing machine. The books were A History of Chinese Painting by Wang Bomin, recognized as one of the most authoritative texts on Chinese art history, and A Concise History of Modern Painting by Herbert Read. Read’s was the first book of its kind to be translated into Chinese, and it was the most influential English text on modern Western art in the China of the mid-1980s.13 Huang offered a cynical interpretation of this work: “In China, regarding the two cultures of East and West, traditional and modern, it is constantly being discussed which is right, which is wrong, and how to blend the two. In my opinion, placing these two texts in the washing machine for two minutes symbolizes this situation well and solves the problem much more effectively and appropriately than those debates lasting a hundred years.”14 This work, which eventually consisted of a pile of paper pulp, was first displayed in the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition in Beijing in 1989.
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Figure 6.3 Huang Yongping and Xiamen Dada burning all their works after an exhibition, 1986.
Figure 6.4 Huang Yongping, Artworks Become Trash, 8:30 p.m.–10:00 p.m., November 9, 1987, 1987.
The Significance of Nothingness
Figure 6.5 Huang Yongping, History of Chinese Art and a Concise History of Modern Painting in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes, 1987.
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For the artists of the ’85 Movement, life was a universal and abstract concept, which was more highly valued than a specific and personal experience of daily life. They emphasized cultural and philosophical concepts in an effort to impact the viewer’s understanding of the environment, whether natural, urban, or social. Many art groups of the ’85 Movement took their “cultural activities” (wenhua huodong) into the public sphere. For instance, Song Yongping and his fellow artists twice took their “countryside cultural activities” into Shanxi province, in 1986 and 1987. A similar activity, which they called sunbathing (shaitaiyang), also took place in Najing Xuanwu Park in 1986. The concept of life in Huang Yongping’s idea art practice, however, was more philosophically influenced by the tradition of nothingness (wu), which has also been translated as “inaction.” In Huang’s practice, this wu can be understood as “do nothing in art making.” Huang combined Dada with Chinese aesthetics by employing traditional Chan and Daoist philosophy in the creation of his works. Xiamen Dada organized an exhibition titled “An Event Taking Place in the Art Gallery of Fujian Province” (“Fasheng zai Fujian meishuguan nei de shijian zhanlan”), which took place on December 16, 1986. The artists did not install works of art in the gallery. Instead, they gathered materials such as big iron grates, wooden panels, a handcart, concrete, fans, damaged sofas, and couches or chairs from the yard of the Art Gallery of Fujian Province in Fuzhou city. Then they moved them into the gallery space. One hour after the exhibition opened, the artists were given notice that the exhibition had to be shut down immediately for “a certain unknown reason.” The result did not disappoint Huang Yongping. He was actually pleased with the closure, because the act resulted in nothingness. Just as the artists brought nothing with them, they also left with nothing. For the Xiamen Dadaists, the exhibition only proved that it was the museum system that determined the fate of the artwork.15 The event dealt with the meaninglessness of the art object and the art-making process. Here, Huang shifted his attention from investigating the meaning of the art object to questioning the whole art system and art institutions.
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Figure 6.6 Lin Jiahua, Ren Yueming, Huang Yongming, and Yu Xiaogang setting up “An Event Taking Place in the Art Gallery of Fujian Province,” 1986.
Figure 6.7 “An Event Taking Place in the Art Gallery of Fujian Province,” 1986.
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This became the next project in his career, which was marked by a futile exploration determined to negate art history and art institutions. An example of this was his Pulling the National Art Museum of China Away, which was a proposal for the “China/AvantGarde” exhibition. Huang’s goal was to involve the National Art Museum of China in his work, and to take the symbol of the nation’s official art, namely the building of the National Art Museum of China, as the object of his attack.16 The plan was very provocative, and the proposed symbolic action of pulling the National Art Museum of China away was an extremely political statement. Unsurprisingly, the proposal was rejected by the museum. The artist’s substitute work in the exhibition was a long rope suspended from the third floor to the first floor, running along galleries to stairs. Not one visitor paid attention to the rope, though occasionally it tangled and twined around their feet. This revealed Huang’s idea of randomness again, as well as his interest in creating a chance relationship with people’s lives.
Figure 6.8 Chen Chengzong, Jiao Yueming, Lin Jiahua, Linchun, Huang Yongpan, Wu Yiming, and Huang Yongping, Proposal for Pulling the National Art Museum of China Away, 1989.
Figure 6.9 Huang Yongping’s rope project in the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition.
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In 1987, Huang Yongping and his colleagues undertook many important projects in Xiamen, most of which were discussed in Huang’s “Thinking, Making, and Projects in 1987” (“Baqinian de sikao, zhizuo de huodong”).17 After the abrupt closure in 1986 of the exhibition “An Event Taking Place in the Art Gallery of Fujian Province,” it became extremely difficult for Huang and the Xiamen Dada group to find museum or gallery space. In early 1987, Xiamen Dada began a new project investigating the possibility of making art in alternative spaces, addressing the public at large rather than accommodating the museum’s audience. They planned to have their version of process art take place in various public spaces: a garbage dump, a slaughterhouse, a public toilet (the only place without a street number in Chinese cities), a hospital, a road, a bus station, a shopping mall, or a ruined building, all places that were “anywhere and nowhere.”18 Furthermore, the artists themselves used only their concepts and the public space for the creation of their art. This process, called wuzhong shengyou, involved no art materials, art institutions, or art audiences. The method of wuzhong shengyou was this: 1.
If you do not remove any objects from a place, the objects themselves automatically become artwork.
2.
Remove some of the objects from a place, and the remaining objects become artwork.
3.
The objects and the people exposed at a site together become artwork.
Huang’s Environmental Works, dating from April 1987, were also associated with the idea of wuzhong shengyou. Huang began several works in his quest to find a greater creative power, delving into areas such as time, air (including pollution), or the unknowing involvement of the public, in order to completely demolish any artistic intention or motivation. But therein rests the impossibility of success, due to the well-established intentional fallacy of both interpreting these works and executing them. On April 20, 1987, Huang made a wooden box that contained a long scroll of blank paper, 110 by 100 centimeters in size, which he pulled partly out of the box and then connected to an easel. He made a mark and wrote the date on the paper every time he pulled out more paper from the box. He repeated
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Figure 6.10 Huang Yongping, No Move Needed, the Objects Themselves Automatically Become Artworks, 1987.
Figure 6.11 Huang Yongping, Need to Move, Add, or Remove Objects to Make Artworks, 1987.
Figure 6.12 Huang Yongping, Rearrange the Objects to Make Artworks, 1987.
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Figure 6.13 Huang Yongping, Dust, 1987.
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the process for a period of two years.19 Sunlight and pollution caused the paper to become dirty, and it yellowed because of its acidic base. Huang titled the completed work Dust. Huang also made a work titled The Kitchen. Between April 18, 1987, and December 8, 1987, he hung a canvas above the stove in his kitchen, where it was exposed to cooking smoke, dirt, and dust. In addition, from December 16, 1987, to January 25, 1988, he left a 122-by-240-centimeter piece of canvas on the floor in a classroom of the high school where he was an art teacher. During their drawing class, the students would drop pencil shavings and other debris on the canvas to “create” a painting. Figure 6.14
Art Merging with Life
Huang Yongping, The Kitchen, April 18–December 18, 1987.
Figure 6.15 Huang Yongping, Sharpening Pencils, December 16, 1987–January 25, 1988.
Chan Meets Dada
Apart from Xiamen Dada, the most radical art of the time was that which promoted the idea of activism. The art taking place early in the movement, in the middle of the 1980s, especially attempted to break free from old ideas of art by incorporating certain philosophical and artistic approaches. For artists so engaged, performance was the best means to promote a true connection between people, life, and art. A prime example was the performance by the Southern Artists Salon in 1986. When the ’85 Movement began, some young artists who lived in Guangzhou in the southern province of Guangdong, such as Wang Du and Lin Yilin, became concerned with the perception that Guangzhou was a “cultural desert.”20 To change this misconception, they founded the Southern Artists Salon (Nanfang yishujia shalong) on May 14, 1986. They were a mixed group of artists from different fields, such as fine art, architecture, philosophy, literature, music, dance, and film. The major ideas of the group were articulated by Wang Du in his speech at the founding ceremony. Wang criticized both Chinese tradition and Western modernism. He proclaimed that the boundaries between the new and old, and the East and the West, should be eliminated through a new attitude of cultural pluralism and diversity. The concept of the Southern Artists Salon, as Wang indicated, was contemporaneity or dangdai zhuyi, a phrase whose meaning is close to postmodernism.21 In order to express this concept, the artists planned
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to create a sort of “environmental art” (huanjing yishu) to destroy the boundaries of different art forms and eliminate obstacles between artists, artworks, and their audiences. They contributed their blood in blood drives, attracting financial support. These actions enlisted many supporters and enabled them to eventually make their exhibition plans a reality. On September 3, 1986, the Southern Artists Salon held a performance event called the First Experimental Exhibition in a stadium at Guangzhou Zhongshan University, also known as Sun Yat-Sen University. It took place twice. The artists stated, “At first glance, when the audience entered the exhibition hall, they felt that they were being surrounded by a peculiar environment in which human beings were being purified by a sublime spirit.”22 The exhibition space was covered by two colors—black and white. On one side were some balls formed in strange shapes protruding from a black wall, and on the other there were some panels. Some were painted with human upper parts and others with human lower parts, to attract the audience to stand behind “incomplete human bodies.” At the center of the stadium, there were ten movable boxes on which, or surrounding which, were ten female figures resembling moving plaster statues. Some were lying down, some knelt on the ground or followed music; all were illuminated by light projections. “The people involved in the performance, and the audience outside the stage, were encouraged to experience a spiritual encounter at a specific moment, going beyond previous artistic fantasies characterized by bland imagination and illusion.”23 In the middle of the 1980s, when some antiart activities, such as the practice of Xiamen Dada, attacked the institutional framework of art production, some anti-artists rejected the institutional framework altogether. Song Yongping and other artists of the Three Step Studio had a cultural activity project in July of 1986 that they called The Country Project (Xiangcun jihua). They took their sculptures and paintings to remote villages in an attempt to communicate with illiterate peasants while living and eating together with them. Resisting the elitism of professional bourgeois artists tied to academic institutions, Song and his comrades acted out the drama of the “reeducated students” of Mao’s Cultural
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Revolution, when elite cultural producers were forced to learn to work for the people as they were educated in popular culture by the people. Their motto, “Serve the People,” endorsed by Mao, demonstrated the paradox of populism in contemporary Chinese society. Since an art that served the people was not a reality even in Mao’s period, The Country Project represented an attempt at a purified process of art production, this time with neither propagandist nor commercial aims. From another perspective, these kinds of social actions popularized in the ’85 Movement reflected the antagonism some artists felt in response to the booming urban commercial culture. Thus, the artists involved referred to their works as “village cultural projects” (xiangcun wenhua huodong). The activism of the M Art Group (M yishu qunti) was another project of anti-artists condemning elitism. The M Art Group was founded in October 1986 by Song Haidong, who was born in Shanghai in 1958 and trained in the Sculpture Department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art, starting in 1985. He went on to teach at the Shanghai Art College with other Shanghai artists. The “M” of M Art Group is the first letter of “man,” “montage,” and “morphist.” Here, “man” refers to the artists’ male gender, since all the artists from the group were men, while “montage” symbolized the artists’ incorporation of different elements, and “morphist” was a metaphor for their changing sensibility in art.24 In their manifesto, they proclaimed that the M Group recognized the fact that many people still admired what the M Group considered bogus artists protected by old value systems and their associated crude, hollow works. Therefore, they advocated that artists walk out of their studios, plunge into real life, and impart the truth to the people at large. The manifesto also criticized the extreme views held by modernists, who demonstrated a totally different form of individuality that caused alienation and disorder and fostered a wild rhythm of life inherent to industrialized societies. The M Group’s attitude of nothingness, which runs counter to industrialized and capitalist human culture, was intended to disrupt people’s normal breathing patterns and heartbeat, depriving them of their confidence in material existence. The M Group held fast to the tenet that
Figure 6.16 The scene of First Experimental Exhibition by the Southern Artists Salon, 1986.
Figure 6.17 Song Yongping, Wang Jiping, and others, The Country Project, 1986.
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artists should respect man and life, for life itself is art. They believed that artists should regard themselves first of all as common people in society. In their creative process, the M Group attempted to break with the man-made, traditional definitions of time and space designated by such terms as “modern,” “Oriental,” “Western,” “music,” “drama,” “film,” and “painting.” These categories reinforced barriers. The works of the M Group would borrow actions and events from common, daily life.25 On December 21, 1986, a series of visual lectures by the M Art Group took place in the Theater of the Shanghai Workers’ Cultural Palace (Shanghai gongren wenhuagong). Sixteen members of the group successively got on the stage, enacting a silent performance, and an audience of about two hundred people, including young poets, university students, and journalists, was invited to join in for the duration of one and a half hours. There was no logical sequence between the individual sections. All
Figure 6.18 Members of the M Art Group with their manifesto, 1986.
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sections emphasized the connection between life and art, as they aimed to break down, by various means, separations derived from old art ideas and forms. There was, however, a lot of suffering and violence in the performance. For example, in Ceremony (Yishi), a naked artist, Tang Guangming, was forced into a wooden restraint by two followers, then beaten with willow branches while clamped with instruments of torture until he collapsed onto the stage. In Violence (Baoligan), Zhou Tiehai stood naked while two other artists punished him by pricking his back with needles. Such works were all violent, masochistic, and sadistic in one way or another. Any sort of wrapping, binding, hanging, or beating that one can imagine took place. Although the action militantly expressed the artists’ rebellion against the restraints of conventional art ideas, this sort of wild, violent behavior, usually enacted upon the artists’ own bodies, revealed, intentionally or not, the sorrows
Figure 6.19 Tang Guangming, Ceremony, 1986.
Figure 6.20 Zhou Tiehai and Yang Xu, Violence, 1986.
and disturbances hidden in the artists’ souls as they found themselves straddling cultural epochs and influences while trying to forge a new way. The revolution in ideas of the ’85 Movement was an important part of the overall project of the cultural avant-garde. This revolution intended two things. One was to take the most destructive and radical avant-garde concept from Dadaism as a model to destroy the conventional notion of art in the Chinese context, in order to merge with the international contemporary art world. The other affected the cultural avant-garde. Artists such as Huang Yongping, also devoted to traditional philosophy, saw the revolution in ideas as a model that could go beyond art per se into a broader world context. Huang’s practice in the 1980s was one of the most philosophical approaches of the ideological revolution. Among those who experienced a similar destructive/constructive mentality, he was the most interested in how to break down the boundary between life and art. In the next chapter, I will discuss some art projects that are more focused on either linguistic reconstruction or ambiguous imagery play.
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7 Metaphor over Meaning Language Art and Gray Humor
Language, including both its writing and meaning, was investigated by a number of artists in the ’85 Movement, most notably Wu Shanzhuan, Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, and the New Mark Group (Xin kedu). They are also part of “idea art” (guannian yishu). Rather than making a revolution in ideas to challenge the old ideas of what constitutes art, as Huang Yongping and others did, the artists discussed in this chapter directly used “ideas”—Chinese characters, which in Chinese linguistic tradition combined both conceptual and pictorial elements—to make their own idea artworks, which did not attempt to give a clear concept or meaning to the audience (nor to themselves, I believe), but rather to create a visual space in which looking, reading, and reinterpretation might be involved as an unseparated metaphorical complex, which could go beyond linguistic meaning or meaninglessness. Xu Bing began his magnum opus A Book from the Sky in 1987, while he was a teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing. Wu Shanzhuan was another artist who used Chinese characters as his basic material, but he paid more attention to randomly collecting the language of mass culture. Wu appropriated Mao’s linguistic culture, which was developed for proselytizing during the Cultural Revolution, as well as that of contemporary consumer culture, in order to create a kind of new hybrid, thereby generating both nonsensical and plurisensical language. By juxtaposing these contradictory fragments of language in his art—fragments that are omnipresent in Chinese mass culture—he sought to eliminate the illusion of authorship and expose irreconcilable tendencies in the intended function of the language of mass culture.
Xu Bing took another approach, never providing any complete text, meaningful sentence, or even legible character for his audience. His Book from the Sky is an ocean of meaningless and fictitious “characters” that he painstakingly invented. The significant meaning of the work was in its traditional literati form. The fact that the characters were incapable of conveying any meaning whatsoever was cleverly hidden, confounding the viewer’s expectations derived from the literati form’s hallowed tradition of conveying meaning. Xu manipulates to an extreme this version of an elite myth so as to utterly undermine the myth itself. The approaches and methodologies of both Wu and Xu were apparently inspired by traditional language and philosophy. Their works made sense by means of the transformation of tradition into the contemporary context according to the artists’ interests. From the perspective of Chinese etymology, the works of Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, and Wu Shanzhuan completely transformed the traditional metonymic functions, or indicatives (zhishi), that were highly coded attributes of Chinese characters as laid out in the traditional “six functions” theory (liu shu) of Chinese writing. These artists’ strategies changed the characters into purely pictographic (xiangxing) elements.1 Wu Shanzhuan’s Red Humor Series: The Recontextualization of Political and Consumerist Mass Language
Born in 1960 and trained in the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art, Wu Shanzhuan began his Cultural Revolution-inspired pop art practice in 1986, at the same time as the emergence of the ’85 Movement.
Figure 7.1 Wu Shanzhuan, Red, Black, White—Cash, 1986.
Figure 7.2 Wu Shanzhuan, Red Humor Series: Red Seals, 1987.
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His Red Humor series, begun in 1986, might be seen as a precursor of the political pop that flourished in the early 1990s. A pronounced pop art affinity has always been strong in Wu’s art, beginning with his Red Humor installations in Zhejiang in 1986 and 1987. The Red Humor series consisted of four parts: Red Characters: Big-Character Posters (Chizi: dazibao), Red Seals (Hongyin), Windy Red Flags (Hongqi piaopiao), and Big Business (Dashengyi). Wu Shanzhuan often used readymade objects in his work, or simulated the appearance of objects from daily life. Wu prefaced his Red Humor group with his 1986 work 70% Red, 25% Black, and 5% White, a collaborative project installed in an old temple. The exhibition combined neatly printed phrases and slogans from advertisements, newspapers, classical poetry, Chinese religion, politics, and the discourse of daily life in startling ways. One painting took the form of a sign saying “Cabbage, three cents a catty.” Another had the words “Garbage, garbage, garbage” written in such a way as to resemble a pile, on top of which perched the word “Nirvana.” The ratio of colors specified in the title, however, immediately evoked the tensions of Chinese political confrontations, particularly those of the Cultural Revolution, with red representing good Communists, black representing enemies of the people, and white representing the nonaligned. Red Characters: Big-Character Posters, a major work installed the following year in the artist’s studio, resembled a chaotic scene, once again from the Cultural Revolution. He used the easily recognizable format of wall posters from the Cultural Revolution, but drew messages from the surrounding environment to convey the multiple dimensions of contemporary political, social, and economic information. The messages included political slogans like those from the Maoist period, including “Exercise for strength in the class struggle,” as well as price notices, advertisements, newspaper titles, commonly used phrases, classical poems, Buddhist texts, traffic signs, weather forecasts, and announcements such as “Comrade Wang, I am back.” Lines of ancient poetry and the title of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper also appear in the work. On the floor he wrote four Chinese characters: wurenshuodo, meaning “nobody can interpret them.”
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Figure 7.3 Wu Shanzhuan and others, 70% Red, 25% Black, and 5% White, 1986.
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Figure 7.4 Wu Shanzhuan, Red Characters: Big-Character Posters, 1986.
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The phrases in Red Characters: Big-Character Posters can be translated into English as follows: To pay fine 5 yen / do you want to know how tall your child will be / wonton soup, steamed turtle fish / lottery saving / welcome / 45928 / seat for disabled and aged / wet paint / the movement of birth control / asking for divorce / 24 pieces / we are parasites / winning a prize from the national committee of economics / watch shore ahead / parents: newborn children during 1982–1983 / paint service / box for complaints / it is selfish / umbrellas for sale / healing / recipe / kindergarten this way / a broken wheel / selling stone poles / official study in the afternoon / dogs / shift to another line / Comrade Wang: I am back / propaganda letter #87 / to struggle with selfishness and to criticize revisionism / The Last Supper / public toilet / serve the people / good treatment of skin disease / address for red star hotel / comrades: if you cross the street during the red light, you will be fined / baptisms / specialist in tooth treatment / today no water / boat timetables / garbage 3 cents a pound / today it is raining / the loves of the world stars / pissing forbidden / menu for today’s special / pill for fatty / looking for missing person: Wu Shanzhuan, male, around 74 meters tall, long dark hair, wearing glasses, slightly dizzy … / one hand carrying reformation, the other carrying economy / important / intensive / pill for party / exercise in strengths for class struggle / dating for marriage / modern poetry movement / Gone with Wind / down with / “for season red” tampons / superstitions / stop the endless rain / to create a new style / all rights reserved / nirvana / garbage / seeking some erotic writing / turn left, there you are / long life / famous foreign nude paintings / five moon. …2
When he made the big-character signs, quite a number of additional objects were also produced including buckets, hospital bottles, and rice bowls, among other things, all of which were covered with red paint and words. At the time Wu Shanzhuan was making the Red Characters: Big-Character Posters, he also collected many plastic characters. Some were displayed in a transparent box with an electric light inside; some were three-dimensional, others twodimensional. The phrases and characters listed above were all found prominently posted on the street, showing the tumult of desires in Chinese society. In the
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installation, most of the writing was done by Wu Shanzhuan’s friends, including officers, workers, politicians, gamblers, actors, actresses, businessmen, and fishermen whom Wu Shanzhuan invited to be involved in the selection and writing of the phrases.3 Red Characters: Big-Character Posters took its form from the “red ocean” (hong haiyang) of the Cultural Revolution, consisting of posters, flags, red books, and the image of the red sun which symbolized Mao, but it was filled with characters found in daily life at home and on the streets. Creating both lexical and symbolic confusion, this “mistake” produced an absurd image of a particular reality, exposing a cultural deficiency if one were to consider Mao’s failed utopian project. Red Characters: Big-Character Posters conveyed to the audience a deep sense that Chinese society was already far away from the Cultural Revolution. Wu represented various categories of discourse in conjunction with their contradicting polar opposites, such as serious and ironic, grand and trivial, religious and secular, revolutionary and capitalist, all of which were devoid of the artist’s own voice, with the exception of his act of choice. In his theoretical writings of the time, Wu expressed greater interest in the sounds and outward forms of Chinese characters than in their function as language.4 Yet, because of the rich eclecticism of the popular language he adopted, the viewer naturally associated the images with many aspects of his or her own experience. Each phrase meant something different depending upon its social, cultural, or political context. Two phrases Wu frequently met on the street, “You will be fined for crossing the street during a red light” (chuang hongdeng fakuan) and “Today no water” (jintian tingshui), inspired him to use “red humor” (hongse youmo) as the major category for all of his individual works. For Wu, the two phrases mentioned above belong to a “red humor” category of symbolic meaning derived from personal experience. Once, when a red light was on, Wu saw nobody on the street: the red light was then a signifier that was sent into a void of reception, negating both its function and meaningfulness. Another time, when Wu was washing his hands, he saw the announcement “Today no water” written by the Local Residential Committee (Jumin weiyuan hui) hanging on the wall. Again, the announcement was meaningless, because there was, indeed, water.
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The two phrases, and what they signified, were at odds with the real contexts in which they operated, and thus they made nonsense coexist with a visible reality.5 This prompted Wu to think further about the Chinese character chi, which encompasses two different meanings: both “red” (hong) and “empty” (kui kong). The meanings of chi, thus, are paradoxical and contradictory. On one hand, chi (red) represents a specific visible color which ultimately cannot be disassociated from its revolutionary identification in modern Chinese history (in phrases such as Red China, Red Guard, and so on), and the other chi (empty) indicates meaninglessness.6 It is just such a paradox, surrounding the complexity and ambiguity of the Chinese signifiers for the color red, that made Wu Shanzhuan’s installation and performance works (embodied by Red Humor) formidable in their layers of multiple meanings. Furthermore, the reception of these works was extremely complex, given the local, national, and global audiences’ propensity to bring their own meanings to the work. Above all, Wu provided diverse channels for understanding the cultural implications of text, delivered in a compelling visual form. In his 1986 essay entitled “The Birth of Red Characters” (“Chizi de dansheng”), Wu first analyzed the two different meanings of chi as described above, and then discussed his approach to the installation Red Characters: Big-Character Posters.7 Wu wrote: I think that chizi, namely meaningless characters manifested in original, beautiful outward forms, make much more sense than what we call wenzi [language]. In modern art history, we no longer purely paint, because the concept of art has totally changed with modern art history. Currently in China, many artists devote themselves to conceptual art or to rationalist painting, a sort of scholarly painting formed in between a realistic and surrealistic style. This direction, however, will truly make art meaningless [quikong] or empty, and art will lose what it used to be. Art finally becomes something cynical and meaningless, like the phrase “You will be fined for crossing the street during a red light.” I am interested in telling a story of this “red humor” to people by presenting it in an extreme visual form which is my work Red Characters: BigCharacter Posters. The effect is extremely unpredictable and magnificent. Red Characters: Big-Character Posters is an investigation into the true human condition.8
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Most installations from Wu’s Red Humor series created a political atmosphere without stipulating any concrete political content. The result could be a mockery of society, of politics, and perhaps even of artists themselves. Going one step further, one could say that Wu’s games with the visual language of Chinese politics reduced the deadly phenomenon of the Chinese political movement to nothing more than red humor. Wu, however, tended to investigate the meaning of authorship by denying any incorporation of his own in the meaning of his works. He believed that the Chinese characters themselves were a sufficient form of visual art, requiring no further manipulation. Not only were the characters perfect in form but also, more important, they were completely filled with historical and cultural meaning, so they become independent of man’s subjective meaning. Wu believed that by making choices, artists could select the meaning of language, but they had no ability to give it meaning. With this philosophy in mind, he chose to imitate linguistic forms rather than invent them, by juxtaposing randomly selected phrases and characters in unusual or startling ways. This gave his work an ironic quality. He made no lofty conceptual claims for his installations and performances, or for any of his art. Yet as one talks to Wu, reads his writing, and experiences his work, his humorous and seemingly unsystematic comments begin to make sense. Wu’s use of simple aphoristic statements and obvious images could be seen as part of an ironic strategy that pushed the viewer to a nonlinear, slightly fragmented, almost intuitive chain of responses that continued well after leaving the space. He asked the viewer to experience a series of interlinking meanings rather than to directly read any one of them. Serious forms from the Cultural Revolution, such as bigcharacter posters with the red, black, and white colors of traditional China, were diluted by the humorous phrases he used. Wu’s Chan Buddhist-like quick wit plunged the viewer into an oddly compelling reality. In 1987 he finished two other sections of the Red Humor Series, Red Seals and Windy Red Flags. The Red Seals consisted of two different types of seals: big, fake, nonsensical official seals fabricated by Wu, as well as some individual, private seals modeled after actual personal seals of the artist’s friends, classmates, and relatives. The pseudo-official seals created by
Figure 7.5 Wu Shanzhuan, Red Humor Series, Red Seals, 1987.
Wu, such as “Committee of Workers for Painting Characters” (Chizi gongzuo zhe xiehui) and “Red Character Revolutionary Committee” (Chizi gongzuo zhe weiyuanhui), were painted on one-meter-square pieces of rice paper and hung on the wall along with some red flags and nonsense characters. The forms of these signifiers were familiar to the Chinese, recalling the red ocean of the Cultural Revolution. The official seal has been very important in modern Chinese history. Any official document must bear the stamp of a seal to show its verification by an official unit. An individual’s personal seal, long employed in tradition, remains the most important identification for Chinese individuals, even in contemporary society. Red Seals thus generated ambiguous and multifaceted meanings when the official and personal, the public and private, the fake and the real were juxtaposed. The tradition underwent a transformation. The performance and installation project Windy Red Flags included many small-scale revolutionary objects. For instance, as part of a performance, Wu
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made a “correct” mark and the two characters yiyue, or “I have reviewed,” on an official announcement. In another performance, Wu masqueraded as a new member of the Communist Party in a mock oathtaking ceremony under a red flag. He stood against a wall on which some fake political slogans were written and upon which he had hung many nonsense characters. In another performance, Wu presented himself as the chairman of a political meeting speaking to the public. Once, he even performed as a counterrevolutionary “criminal,” also known as an ox ghost or snake demon (niugui sheshen), being criticized and punished by Red Guards. Thinking of the meaning of the red characters, or chizi, Wu Shanzhuan developed his ideas concerning the definition of art and the relationship between the artwork and the artist. He compared the relationship between the artist and his work to that between the soil and the plant. The earth is necessary to the growth of the plant, but the soil does not determine the species of the plant; evolution has already made that selection. Similarly, according to Wu, the artist
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Figure 7.6 Wu Shanzhuan, Red Humor Series, Windy Red Flags—I Have Reviewed, 1987.
Figure 7.7 Wu Shanzhuan, Red Humor Series, Windy Red Flags—Oath, 1987.
Figure 7.8 Wu Shanzhuan, Red Humor Series, Windy Red Flags—Violent Criticism, 1987.
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cannot determine the result of his work. From this point of view, Wu concluded that the art of the Cultural Revolution was different from the politics of the Cultural Revolution. The former was like a plant, and the latter would be the soil.9 For Wu, the artist’s intentions, or methods of working, were far less important than the work itself. “In the end,” he wrote in 1985, “the artwork uses a concrete person (the artist) as a means. The concrete person will die, but the work may continue to exist.”10 Thus, Wu claimed that the artist should not function as the dominant factor of art production. He or she is no more than an object like any art object, i.e., a material. Wu’s use of the concept of material and object greatly undermined the idealism and subjectivity initiated by previous utopian artists. His Red Humor, filled with various discourses, was a distracted scene of chaotic signifiers made uniform through the use of the color red. There was a shift in Wu’s approach to art, from the purely conceptual to the realistic, in late 1988 and early 1989, when the economic boom reached China. In an article, Wu said, “We should no longer pay attention to the question of what is art by concentrating on the art object; instead we should investigate the social structure and art environment where artworks are located.” He used the term dashengyi, “big business,” to define the new art phenomenon emerging at that time in China. “To visit an art museum is the same as eating breakfast in a restaurant. … I will return the salt to the ocean and bring it back to those to whom it belongs.”11 Noting the impact of commercialism on the Chinese art world of the late 1980s, Wu Shanzhuan pointed out that art activity is a big business at the 1988 Chinese Modern Art Convention (1988 dangdai yishu yantaohui) in Tunxi, Anhui province. In the paper he presented at this meeting, Wu said, 1987 was the year when shengyi [business] was truly and completely accepted by the Chinese masses. Although some Chinese intellectuals tried to escape from this commercialism, dashengyi has become an affair of all Chinese citizens, and for the first time an overwhelming materialism has been tied to the idealistic Chinese intellectuals and business. Soon after, business became unified with art institutions,
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scholarship, and political authority. Now business has become a nationalistic affair and recording machine of the successful stories of politics, scholars, monks, popular stars, lawyers, and artists. … Business art [shengyi yishu] has lowered art down to a “business icon” [shengyi ouxiang ] easily recognized by the masses.12
Based on these ideas, Wu created a performance called Dashengyi for the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in February 1989. It was his first work to completely replace linguistic practice and an overtly political art form with that of daily commerce. The piece involved him carrying 30 kilograms of live shrimp from Zhoushan, the island where he lived, to Beijing, where he sold them at the exhibition’s opening. After the opening, and with the enforcement of the official prohibition against performances, he marked his shrimp stand “temporarily closed today for stocktaking” (jinri panhuo, zhanting yingye). His typically terse explanation was that art was big business. In a statement on Dashengyi, he proclaimed that selling shrimp was a rebellion against the National Art Museum, an official court of opinion that judged art. It was also a criticism of art critics who turned “artworks” into anything that fit their interpretation.13
Figure 7.9 Wu Shanzhuan, Dashengyi—Selling Shrimp, 1989.
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A Metaphor of Meaninglessness in Xu Bing’s Art
Xu Bing was born in 1955 in Chongqing, Sichuan province. Well established as a woodcut artist in the early 1980s, Xu devoted himself to creating a number of woodcut prints that might be considered the most impressive “rustic realist” images of printmaking in China. In 1982, he finished his work for his MFA degree by creating a series of woodcut prints depicting the common life of village peasants. The prints were based on sketches made during the period he spent as a “reeducated student” from 1973 to 1977, during the Cultural Revolution.14 By the middle of the 1980s, Xu had gradually abandoned this thematic concern and begun to explore the unique nature of printed language. In the first half of the 1980s, he received several important national prizes because of his excellent technique and the academic approach of his printmaking. For instance, in the Sixth National Art Exhibition (1984), his woodcut print Flower and Pencil was awarded a silver medal. Beginning in the middle 1980s, Xu began to think about how to make printmaking more conceptually sophisticated. In June 1986, Xu Bing and his colleagues Chen Jinrong, Chen Qiang, and Zhang Jun rolled a big wheel painted with different colors along a long roll of rice paper to make a print work.15 In the same year, Xu created a five-scroll print entitled Five Series of Repetitions, in which he depicted ponds of tadpoles as well as fields of vegetables and grains in a conceptual way. In the work, Xu raised questions about the reproductive nature of
Figure 7.10 Xu Bing, Five Series of Repetitions, 1986.
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printmaking. He carved a woodblock and then imprinted a long scroll with a sequence of images. In the final composition, a set of images progresses from solid black through successive carvings to solid white, as more and more of the wood is whittled away. Thus, Xu literally dematerialized the object, deconstructing representation as he simultaneously created and destroyed the artwork.16 Obviously, the subject matter in the prints was no longer the central concern as it had been in his early works; instead, methodology became the major concern. In his article “The Exploration and Rethinking of the Repetition of Painting” (“Dui fushuxing huihua de xintansuo yu zairenshi”), Xu Bing addresses four major points he raised in the project. First, its distinct visual form and goals depart from that of conventional printmaking, because Five Series of Repetitions was printed in an edition of only one unique copy, the original and final. Both the block of wood and the scrolls are the complete work as a whole, as the making of the work destroyed the possibility of its reproduction. Second, it records every remaining detail of the carving process. Third, it reconstructs the relationship between the artwork and audience. Fourth, it presents both the process of the creation and the artist’s thoughts.17 This approach, very importantly, initiated the methods adopted in his two subsequent works A Book from the Sky and Ghosts Pounding the Wall. Xu Bing’s first major installation piece of this type is A Book from the Sky, on which he began work in 1986. It was created from numerous hand scrolls
Figure 7.11 Xu Bing, working on A Book from the Sky, 1987.
about five hundred feet long, with printed texts that resemble traditional monumental painting styles. There also are boxed sets of books that are bound in blue paper covers and strongly resemble traditional Chinese books. The work was first exhibited in 1988 at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, and subsequently shown in a number of venues in Asia and the West. What was extraordinary was the fact that the thousands of Chinese characters printed on the books and papers were invented by Xu himself. The piece was the product of three years of intensive labor. Xu hand-carved over two thousand pieces of wooden type to print what look like Chinese characters in the Song Dynasty style. None of Xu’s characters can be recognized or pronounced. However, since the characters were invented by the artist, composed of rearranged elements from real Chinese characters in the Song Dynasty style, they are still inviting enough to attract the audience to attempt to read or decipher them. When Xu created the two thousand nonsense characters, he knew that in reality there are two thousand characters that make sense. The paradoxical interaction between the work’s superficial, textual meaninglessness and the diverse cultural understandings of the readers makes the piece unpredictable.18 Xu Bing’s artworks might be seen as another kind of destruction of traditional culture. The desire for destruction apparently relates to the anti-
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Figure 7.12 Xu Bing, blocks made for A Book from the Sky, 1987–1991.
Figure 7.13 Xu Bing, A Book from the Sky, 1989.
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ideological stance of the generation of artists of the ’85 Movement, who were tired of the previous Maoist utopia and its state-dominant ideology. Xu’s approach, however, was not to erase writing and the texts themselves, but rather to create many fake characters and a nonsensical text with a significantly monumental, legitimate, and classical form in a deconstructive way. On the other hand, through his complete avoidance of legibility in the text, Xu somehow removed all semantic significance from the splendid monument, a myth and symbol of authority. The space created in Xu Bing’s work related to a traditional Chinese philosophical idea of “emptiness” (xu) or “nothingness” (wu), a crucial concept in Chan Buddhism and Daoism. In Chan thought, the moment of the realization of “emptiness” is the moment in a person’s experience when the mind is opened to discover a richer realm of truth, namely enlightenment.19 Xu Bing’s approach to meaninglessness in his art was apparently influenced by the concepts of xu and wu. He wrote in a short article: For more than a year I ceaselessly invented, carved, and printed a set of twelve volumes of “Nonsense Writing” (A Book from the Sky) which no one in this world can understand. The unbelievable amount of work threw its audience into confusion. One of my painter friends once told me about a “crazy” guy in his home village, who always went out to collect waste paper at a certain hour, washing these papers in a river, carefully mounting them piece by piece, and then storing them under his bed after they had become dry and flat. I thought quite a long time about this person’s behavior. Finally I realized that it was a kind of “Qigong”—a kind of cultivation of the Dao. It was indeed a very powerful kind of “Qigong.” [It exemplifies] an Eastern way of achieving true knowledge—obtaining sudden enlightenment and correspondence with Nature by endlessly experiencing a fixed point. … Nowadays the art world has become an arena. What do I want from it? Handing one’s work to society is just like driving animals into a slaughterhouse. The work no longer belongs to me; it has become the property of all the people who have touched it. It is now concrete and filthy. I hope to depart from it, looking for something different in a quiet place.20
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While the Chinese conceptualists, such as Xu Bing, Wu Shanzhuan, and Huang Yongping, used ideas from traditional Chan Buddhism as a foundation of their contemporary art approach, and saw Dadaism as a borrowed model of destruction, the concepts used by these artists differ. For instance, the difference between Xu Bing and Huang Yongping parallels that between the Northern and Southern schools of Chan Buddhism. Xu’s long period of labor to create an empty space of meaning may be compared to the Northern School of Chan, which emphasized gradual enlightenment. The Southern School’s emphasis on sudden enlightenment is more like what we find in Huang Yongping’s concept of Dada-like destruction and Wu Shanzhuan’s natural and spontaneous juxtapositions. All of them, however, share the common idea of wu, or nonbeing and nothingness, based in traditional Daoist philosophy. And this concept of wu, as used by the artists, was not for the pure enjoyment of a traditional philosophical game; rather it was for a deep expression of their feelings about contemporary reality. Xu Bing’s second major installation was his Ghosts Pounding the Wall, a three-story-high ink rubbing taken from a section of the Great Wall. As displayed in the Elvehjem Museum at the University of Wisconsin in late 1991, the work involved massive black-and-white scrolls hung from ceiling to floor across the building’s central court. At the lower end was a mound of dirt that looked like a tomb, pinning the scrolls to the floor.21 Xu Bing and his crew labored in the Badaling Mountains in a rural area near Beijing for twenty-four days in 1990 to make impressions of the surface of the Great Wall, using a technique traditionally employed for reproducing fine carvings of calligraphy. Over the course of several months, the ink-smudged sheets of Chinese paper were reassembled and mounted. For Xu, the expenditure of utmost effort was necessary to create an imposing psychological and physical space similar to the space of the Great Wall itself. Yet the piled earth of the tomb at the foot of Xu’s paper Great Wall is an obvious symbol of death. The confrontation between the splendid, if ghostly, paper representation of the Great Wall and the nihilistic physical presence of the earthen grave mound raises doubts about the purpose of human effort, not only questioning the
Figure 7.14
Figure 7.15
Xu Bing, Ghosts Pounding the Wall, 1990–1991.
In 1990, Xu Bing and his crew spent twenty-four days making ink impressions of the Great Wall for Ghosts Pounding the Wall.
artist’s replication of the rough and inelegant surface of the Great Wall, but more generally questioning all human effort, including the labor required for the construction of the original Great Wall. In the twentieth century, the powerful image of the Great Wall has become a symbol of the greatness of China, as it is one of the largest man-made constructions in the world and the product of two thousand years of labor. During the Anti-Japanese War, it was also a symbol of national salvation and defense against the invasion of the Japanese. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the image of the Great Wall, along with certain industrial landscapes, symbolized a reunified, newborn modern state. Recall that Shi Lu’s 1954 painting Changcheng wai, or Beyond the Great Wall (see figure 1.13), for instance, pictures the happiness of the Mongolian minority people in the unity of the new modern China,
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while exemplifying the enjoyment of modernization as symbolized by a railroad reaching the outside of the Great Wall. The area beyond the Great Wall was traditionally a contested space between the Han people and the northern nomads. But now the Han and the barbarians are unified. Since the Cultural Revolution, avant-garde artists have used the image, and even the sites, of the Great Wall to further their new project of Chinese modernity by ambivalently using this symbol of nationalism. Thus, the Wall has become an ambiguous social force and powerful symbol of a nation that needs modern strength, on one hand, and a conservative state-ideological power on the other. The Wall no longer exists as an eternal symbol of greatness; on the contrary, it is now seen as weak and dubious under the impact of Western modernization and the control of its own totalizing power. The skepticism adopted by the avant-garde
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and reflected in the Great Wall project can be found in many performance works and conceptual art projects dealing with the Wall. For instance, in a performance by a group of artists called Concept 21 Group, the artists masqueraded as wounded people who were helpless against the powerful symbol of the Great Wall. Xu Bing may have been conveying a similar message in his installation. Scholarly research suggests that the Wall actually was built over a much shorter period than popularly thought and that it was strategically useless as a defensive border in its own day.22 In his simulation of the Great Wall, Xu Bing embodies the meaninglessness of its construction through his own exhausting activity of pounding the wall with inkdrenched wads of cloth. Even the title Ghosts Pounding the Wall conveys the meaninglessness of human effort, relating as it does to a popular Chinese folktale in which a traveler, lost in the middle of the night, keeps walking in circles as if ghosts had built a wall around him to prevent him from continuing in his chosen direction. In spite of its purported meaninglessness,
Figure 7.16 Chinese soldiers guarding the Great Wall, 1933.
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however, the work echoes with meanings related to China’s politics and social reality. The artist seems to mock himself and the futility of his own exertions; he is unable, even with extraordinary effort, to do anything about his own circumstances and environment, like his ancestors confined by the barrier of the real wall or the traveler surrounded by an imaginary one. On the other hand, Xu’s work could also be considered a strong criticism of the conservative authority in contemporary Chinese society. Xu noted that Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), a Chinese scholar, described the Great Wall as the product of conservative minds, intent on the impossible goal of closing China off from the rest of the world as if in a giant garden: although the wall was strong and was guarded by a powerful military, the nature of humankind rendered its purpose futile. The meaninglessness of the Great Wall here evokes cultural confrontations of various kinds: between the real creative power of China’s ancient people and its simulation by the contemporary artist; or between China’s heritage of national greatness and its current reality.
Figure 7.17 Concept 21 Group, Saving People from Death, one series of performances on the Great Wall, 1988.
Gu Wenda’s The Pseudo-Characters, 1984–1986
Gu Wenda has also been involved in an art- and language-based project since the mid-1980s. Gu was born in 1955 in Shanghai, and trained in the Department of Chinese Painting of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in the early 1980s. Between 1982 and 1985, Gu, who has great technical facility in traditional Chinese painting, tried to use modern Western forms, especially that of surrealism, to remold traditional Chinese painting. Although he himself has largely abandoned traditional painting since, this phase of his career did influence a generation of younger artists, creating a new school of ink painting referred to as “universal current” (yuzhouliu). Gu’s ink painting style has been recognized as a sort of “new scholarly painting” (xin xuezhe huihua). However, after this phase, he applied his efforts to installation and conceptual art. Unlike Wu Shanzhuan, who used language to investigate the meaning of authorship, and Xu Bing, who devoted himself to revealing a meaningless
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language world by creating a monument of nonsense, Gu Wenda’s language project aimed to destroy the underlying structure of the Chinese system of building characters while maintaining its calligraphic style, thus creating a conflict between concept and aesthetic pleasure. This conflict expressed Gu’s skepticism about human rational capability. He turned traditional archetypal calligraphy on its head, using upside-down, reversed, incorrectly written, and restructured characters on huge sheets of Chinese paper. His 1984–1986 series The Pseudo-Characters used splashed ink on rice paper. The strategy of Gu’s destruction was to write calligraphy by imitating the style of classic masters, using nonsense (or wrongsense) characters. Once, he invited three women and three men to write the same Chinese character (jing, or “still”) using an incorrect structure of the elements and their different individual styles. Then, like a traditional calligraphy teacher, Gu made red marks, using a circle to mark a correction and a cross to indicate a mistake. In 1987, even in writings such as letters to friends and essays published in magazines,
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Gu deliberately punctuated texts at random, consciously departing from conventional literary practices.23 Gu’s skepticism about language and his conceptual process encompassing the essence of the nature of things had a special resonance in Chinese culture, because the written language is ideographic rather than alphabetic. Therefore, the Chinese language is imbued with far greater metaphysical meaning than Western written languages. With The Pseudo-Characters, Gu sought to destroy the system of syntax and grammar that carried so many aesthetic and cultural connotations for so many millennia in traditional Chinese society.
Figure 7.18 Gu Wenda, A World in Calm Observation 2, 1985.
The New Mark Group and Its Tactile Art
Yet another way to undermine the significance of concepts, language, and authorship was adopted by the New Mark Group, which consisted of three artists—Wang Luyan, Chen Shaoping, and Gu Dexin—who worked on the New Analysis project for eight years, from 1987 to 1995. Decrying the individualism of contemporary art, they sought to expunge subjectivity by creating a rationalized discipline to order the artist’s mind. The group developed a set of rules agreed upon by all three artists before they began to make objects. Their first group project was Tactile Art (Chujue yishu) of 1988, which was a series of diagrams variously showing temperatures, the sizes of spaces, and the categories of human feelings. The viewer is meant to examine and judge the data presented in the diagrams. What the artists of the group sought to achieve in the Tactile Art project was to liquidate rationality directed by language, which can only handle certain kinds of concepts. Although Tactile Art still used these concepts, as Chinese characters and numbers appeared in the diagrams, their function was to awaken the sleeping tactile sense and liberate it from various constraints, such as goals and concepts, in order to endow the tactile sense with new significance. The characters and numbers indicating temperatures and feelings in the diagrams, such as shiwai ershiliu du (exterior 26 degrees) and shou wo shou (hand in hand), “are not about themes, descriptions, happiness, sadness, anger, or pleasure; neither are they about truth itself, nor rhyming schemes,
Figure 7.19 Gu Wenda, Pseudo-Characters Series—Silence, 1986.
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Figure 7.20 The New Mark Group (Wang Luyan, Chen Shaoping, Gu Dexin), Tactile Art, 1988.
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phonetics, forms, expressions, rhythm, intuitions, illusions, consciousness, or unconsciousness. Rather, they are a pure, delicate, and thorough contact between human body and outside world.”24 This presented an extremely closed, individual experience with maximum freedom. There was no need to communicate and exchange meaning, wherein lies the project’s essential significance. According to Wang Luyan, tactile art was not something used by the artists to show off, but was the fastest, most direct approach that could arouse a universal reaction from all people. The artists are no different from people at large; they no longer influence or torment the public with extremely narrow terms, like art that seeks a unique individual character. In the conclusion of the group’s manifesto, Wang Luyan wrote, “They and others exist together in a tranquil and pure space of tactile art with no explanations, understanding, exploration, or communication. Those vulgar and meaningless phenomena, such as condescending artists making indiscreet remarks, creating a man-made gap, are gone. There is no incomprehensibility, no liking and disliking. What the artists and common people get is maximum freedom and relaxation, which can be easily obtained by relaxing yourself. Through the boundless space of tactile art, artists and people in general alike will own a free and new kingdom.”25 Gray Humor and the Pool Society
In 1985, an important avant-garde group led by Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi was established in Hangzhou, one of the most important ancient capital cities in China. The city was located on the shore of West Lake (Xihu), one of the most famous traditional landscape sites in China. In the early twentieth century, the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art, under its former name of Hangzhou National Academy of Art (Hangzhou guoli yizhuan), played an important role in the modern Chinese art movements of the early twentieth century. Some leading Chinese artists of that movement, such as Lin Fengmian, the first director of Hangzhou National Academy of Art, were ambitious to found a new modern Chinese art system by combining traditional art with Western modern art, and this concept influenced many generations
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of Chinese artists in the twentieth century. Some artists involved in the left-wing woodcut movement of the 1930s, such as Hu Yichuan and Jiang Feng, were trained in the Hangzhou National Academy of Art and later participated in the Anti-Japanese War and in Mao’s revolution at his famous communist base in Yan’an during the 1930s and 1940s. Almost forty years later, a new generation of avant-garde artists trained at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art took another step toward a revolution in art when they played leading roles in the ’85 Movement. Huang Yongping, Gu Wenda, Wu Shanzhuan, Wang Guangyi, Zhang Peili, and Geng Jianyi, whom I have mentioned above, all graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art and founded some of the most influential avant-garde groups, such as Huang Yongping’s Xiamen Dada and Wang Guangyi’s Northern Art Group. Two of the leading artists of the ’85 Movement, Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi, devoted themselves to a Hangzhou-based avant-garde movement from the middle of the 1980s into the 1990s. They created numerous artworks in various media including painting, installation, performance, and conceptual art. Regardless of the specific significance of using different media, the group of artists around them, called the Pool Society (Chishe), was characterized by two major points. First, they opposed the notion that art should function to bring happiness and pleasure to the public; instead, they employed different painting styles, materials, and rules to try to find any means of making the audience uneasy. Geng Jianyi said, “Basically, we are opposed to the simple American-style happiness which seems to be a beautiful state, a state changing from life to death, thus a state of escapism. If we create a form which brings about sleepiness in the audience, that would be a debacle for us.”26 Second, they recognized that most people were accustomed to emotionless behavior, preferring a life without vitality and fresh air, while categorizing all existing art forms into a set pattern of knowledge. Therefore, what the Pool Society did was to create conceptual traps that would imitate what they considered insensitive reality by exploiting certain numb images and boring rules, all in order to stimulate people to engage with their art. They played this serious game with materials and
language to closely investigate the difference between human contact and isolation, as well as to expose the human condition from a demystification viewpoint. Soon after he graduated from the Zhejiang Academy in 1984, Zhang Peili and his fellow young artists Zha Li, Bao Jianfei, Song Ling, Wang Qiang, and Xu Jin founded a group called the Youth Creative Society (Qinnian chuangzao she). Demonstrating an admiration for modern ideas and rationalist language oriented toward anti-expressionism, the Youth Creative Society’s first group exhibition was entitled “’85 New Space” (“Bawu xinkongjian”). It opened in the Gallery of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art on December 2, 1985. Twelve artists, including Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi, participated in this show, which featured fifty-three examples of “gray humor” paintings. Zhang Peili was born 1957 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. He has taught in the Hangzhou School of Graphic Art since 1984. In the 1985 exhibition he displayed four oil paintings on two different topics: music and swimming. In his Please Enjoy Jazz (Qing xinshang jueshiyue), a drummer standing stiffly and a rigidly sitting trumpeter exist in a triangular composition, without sentimentality, in a dark gray, empty, and unspecific background. Similar in style, Swimming (Yongzhe) and Summer Swimming (Zhongxia de yongzhe) transform a familiar urban space into an inanimate cosmosplanet space where people live indifferently as if they were mechanomorphic human beings. Geng Jianyi was born in Zhengzhou, Henan province, in 1962. He graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in 1985 and has taught in the Zhejiang Silk College. In the “’85 New Space” show, Geng Jianyi’s The First Haircut in the Summer of 1985 (Yijiu bawunian xiaji de diyige guangtou) presented a person getting a haircut in a cosmic space, instead of in a barbershop. We may characterize this group of paintings as “gray humor” (huise youmo), as they are definitively marked by a cynical tone. Reacting to an inevitable, but unfamiliar, urban modernization and the consequent alienation among people, and between society and the individual, this trend formulated human figures of various classifications while
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generalizing them with indifference and numbness. These paintings presented a neutralizing attitude and a new realistic technique that duplicated the referent, not to represent but rather to project it into a decontexualized frozen moment in time. Then the real, or original, referents become slightly surreal and a distance is created between artist, image, and audience. The artists attempted to shock the public through cynical and insensitive images that allegorized reality. In a statement, Zhang Peili said, “I refuse to give the audience any comfortable means of appreciation or aesthetic pleasure in my work. The images in my paintings are lashing people with a heavy whip in order to wake up their numb minds and insensitive condition.”27 After a number of intense discussions, Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, Song Ling, Bao Jianfei, Wang Qiang, and Wang Ying founded an artists’ group called the Pool Society on May 27, 1986. They felt the need to find a new way to continue their explorations after the accomplishments of the “’85 New Space” exhibition. In their announcement of the founding of the Pool Society, they said, “We seek to ultimately express our ideas. We attempt to have a pure experience in searching for an intuitive condition. We will formulate our practice in any useful way, whether traditional or contemporary, unique or common. We are concerned that the process of the practice involve everybody’s interest, regardless of the specific material goal of artistic creation.”28 The name Pool is a metaphor of a condition of enlightenment, a situation of intermixture. The following is excerpted from the manifesto of the Pool Society: Art is a pool. Our survival relies on carbohydrates. What we are doing is not what we want to do, but what we must do. Our bodies are completely dusty. Can people benefit from art activity? Is artwork for appreciation and visual pleasure? We pursue a proper purification.
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Figure 7.21 Zhang Peili, Please Enjoy Jazz, 1985.
Figure 7.22 Zhang Peili, Swimming, 1985.
Figure 7.23 Geng Jianyi, The First Haircut in the Summer of 1985, 1985.
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Figure 7.24 Pool Society, The Travelers in a Green Space No. 2, 1986.
Figure 7.25 Geng Jianyi and Song Ling, King and Queen No. 3, 1986.
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Our thinking is stream-of-consciousness and irrational. We strive to catch up with our intuitive energy. The alienation of art is rational, mechanical, and reproduction is determined by certain pragmatic goals. We intend to reach the sublime moment when we are tired but excited. It is important to get into fusion. Has anybody ever experienced a sort of rational impulse?
Around the same time, the Pool Society artists did two performances. One was called King and Queen No. 3 (Guowang he wanghou disanhao), in which the artists Geng Jianyi and Song Ling were wrapped with newspaper while sitting on a similar newspaper-wrapped branch. The “king” and “queen” assumed many different positions, while gesturing as if they were mechanomorphic persons made of newspaper. The other performance was called Baptism No. 4 (Xili disihao). Song Ling entered a wooden box, and other artists put newspapers in it until Song was completely buried by the papers.33
The moment of fusion makes you thrilled, and a wakening moment enlightens you. We admire connotations on a “high level,” and pay great attention to them. The result is less important. The plan will come to fruition, if there is a seed. Truth cannot be verbalized.29
The first group activity of the Pool Society took place from 9:00 a.m. on June 1 to 4:00 p.m. on June 2, 1986, in Hangzhou. The project was called Yang’s Taiqi Series No. 1 (Yang-Style Taiqi), with twelve individual pieces, each of which were three meters high, consisting of diagrams in the form of paper cuts representing the twelve different programs of the Yang style of the martial art taiqi (tai chi). The panels were posted on a wall on Nianshan Road, located on the shore of West Lake. The artists of the Pool Society were very excited about this nonprofit, purely spiritual activity. Zhang Peili said, “It was not a novel gaming activity, nor a well-designed experimental art project; it was an honest and natural dialogue between the artists and the people walking on the street.”30 According to Geng Jianyi, however, the work was not created just for the enjoyment and happiness of artists and audience. Rather, they attempted to create something strong and obviously strange enough to stimulate the audience.31 Five months later, a similar project, entitled The Travelers in a Green Space No. 2 (Luse kongjian zhong de xingzhe, dierhao) was completed by the group. Nine paper-cut diagrams of Yang-style art were hung on the trees in some woods near West Lake.32
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Figure 7.26 Song Ling, Baptism No. 4, 1986.
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Metaphorical Abuse in the Reception of Art: Works by Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi in the Late 1980s
From 1987 to 1989, Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi created a number of paintings, installations, and conceptual proposals. Most notably, Zhang painted a series of oil paintings called the X? Series (X? xilie). The primary images in the paintings are clinical chairs and gloves. Before he started to paint, he wrote down a series of steps in order, which he intended to strictly follow. He duplicated photographs of hospitallike clinical chairs and surgical gloves in about one hundred large oil paintings in which numbers marked on the canvas point to different parts of the subject, all of which related to a methodical set of paint-bynumbers instructions. Zhang then published these instructions in an article that also laid down strict conditions for the display and viewing of the X? Series. For instance, only visitors taller than 4'3"and shorter than 5'8" were to be admitted to the exhibition. People wearing colors from the red and yellow color family as well as lovers and couples were not allowed to visit
Figure 7.27 Zhang Peili, X? Series, 1986.
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it. The visitors had to follow a set route through the exhibition, and discussion was prohibited.34 Zhang’s work commonly dealt with states of helplessness and pain, using forms derived from the world of clinical medical apparatuses as the leitmotif. In this series, his punitive attitude toward the viewers was believed to be a reaction to previous public apathy expressed during his earlier public art projects. In 1988, Zhang Peili created a performance/ object work entitled A Report on the Hepatitis Infection in 1988 (Guanyu yijiubabanian jiagan chuanran de baogao). An installation of the same title made of glass, surgical gloves, lacquer, and plaster powder was displayed in the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition in 1989. In his childhood, Zhang had experienced a prolonged illness, and during that time he was touched only by people wearing surgical gloves. Gloves became an obsessive lexical maker of traumatic memory for him. They signified a point of contact that was simultaneously a point of isolation. During the hepatitis epidemic of 1988, Zhang sent a series of anonymous parcels containing surgical
Figure 7.28 Zhang Peili, A Report on the Hepatitis Infection in 1988, 1988. Figure 7.30 Zhang Peili, Brown Book #1, 1988.
Figure 7.29 Zhang Peili, A Report on the Hepatitis Infection in 1988, detail, 1988.
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rubber gloves, or parts of gloves, to important figures in the Chinese art world. The last consignment included a letter informing them that the parcels had nothing to do with their moral behavior, but that they must not try to contact the other recipients or the sender.35 This installation/performance project was called Brown Book #1 (Hepishu yihao). After late 1988, Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi started to pay more attention to real communication, but in a very cynical and allegorical way. Zhang spelled out his approach in the following statement: “The undertaking of an extreme anti-art project, extending the grounds of artistic language and expanding media, seems to offer numerous possibilities: but in actuality, what we really can select and make use of for our own purposes is limited. In the end, economy and sparseness of language [are] a virtue.”36 All of Zhang’s projects dramatize this communicational reality. From 1987 to 1988, he began to construct harsh, and extremely rigid, rules governing the exhibition and viewing of his artworks. After Brown Book #1, Zhang created a similar project called Art Plan #2 (Yishujihua erhao). Also dating from 1987, it was a twenty-page list of instructions. According to Zhang, this instructional plan concerned talking and peeping. The whole plan included eight parts: 1. Talking, peeping, the right of talking and the right of peeping. 2. The nature, rights, duties and number of talkers, peepers, and
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Figure 7.31 Zhang Peili, Art Plan #2, 1987.
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Figure 7.32 Geng Jianyi, Second State, 1987.
supervisors. 3. Procedures to select talkers, peepers, and supervisors. 4. A description of the talking room and the peeping room. 5. A description of the talking procedure. 6. Rules for talking and peeping. 7. Prohibitions. 8. Directions. In each part of the plan, Zhang specified in minute and tedious detail the conditions under which people should be admitted to an art exhibition. For instance, visitors must again be taller than 4'3" and shorter than 5'8"; they should not speak, and they were required to follow a marked route with mathematical precision. Elsewhere, in 1987, Geng Jianyi painted a set of large oils entitled Second State. Each painting portrayed the face of his colleague Song Baoguo, another leading avant-garde artist and a teacher at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art. The paintings show a huge, robotic face that seems to be grimacing, but actually is an overemphasized and exaggerated image of Song’s visage in different moments of laughing. The complete hysteria presented by the paintings is caused, not by an excessive or uncontrollable emotion, such as fear or panic, but rather by a rational, controlled, and highly cynical attitude. Geng Jianyi painted this series in many different formats. He composed different works with various numbers of panels; the largest consists of four panels. The viewer may think that the paintings focus on embarrassing situations of everyday life, or the portrayal of alienation and the hypocrisy of human relationships. The approach of Geng Jianyi was “the principle of attack,” targeting accepted
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norms of behavior and everyday rules.37 In Geng’s own statement written on August 20, 1987, when he and two other artists of the Pool Society, Zhang Peili and Song Ling, all began new painting series, he raised four major points to explain the paintings: 1. Principle of thriftiness in using color Years of research on color has distanced us from the intoxication of color, and we no longer care about psychological pleasures. In creating a series of works, the Pool Society confines its use of colors to three kinds, rendering paintings virtually in monochrome by careful manipulation of them. We have a theoretical backing for insisting upon this approach, i.e., drawing the audience’s attention to monochrome form that belongs to a spiritual sphere. We have always believed in our ability to catch the function of solid and stable forms. This does not mean that the Pool Society ignores colors. All of us used to employ a myriad of colors to express the shapes of feelings and wonderful rhythms to make the audience relaxed and joyful. It is only because we no longer need a sense of flowing. To be exact, the Pool Society in choosing this direction (very decisively) has made a sacrifice, running counter to the principle of sensual pleasure held by most people. We hope to use our principle of thriftiness to appeal to the audience on the metaphysical plane. 2. Directness Aside from presenting a strong sense of scale, it creates, most importantly, nearsightedness in the audience [jinshiyan de guanzhong]. When people discern all the details within the prescribed
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focal distance (or they are too nearsighted to see anything), they are forced into reactions that do not come out in a natural way. We are fully aware of wrong judgments resulting from the fact that audience members tend to fill gaps by subconsciously utilizing their past life and aesthetic experiences. It is not our intention to satisfy some in the audience who tend to regard themselves as experts and are interested in continuing to increase their knowledge. There used to be a lukewarm, ambiguous relationship between artworks and audiences, which enhanced the desire to acquire knowledge and other unhealthy habits of the audience. What we want to promote is a direct relationship with the audience, which can serve to eliminate the possibility of misunderstanding. The reaction on the part of the audience can only be genuine in this relationship, coming from their gut instincts rather than from knowledge. 3. Without comment Of all the approaches, the creative process of the Pool Society is the simplest and best-knit. First of all, various images are created out of medical instruments, expressive tools, and species of life. The images are then made permanent by a camera before being enlarged in scale and their gaps filled with coordinates. Efforts are made to avoid any “traffic accident” whenever the brush is applied and during the connecting process, so that the paintings look very objective, without the vitality of life. It is presenting only an investigative report that contains nothing but facts. We are only concerned with its authenticity and exactness. 4. Repetitious function What makes X.?, Second State, and Meaningless Choice [Wuyiyi de xuanze] markedly different from customary paintings on canvas? No component painting in any of these series is valid as an independent entity. They have to be connected with the others to form a unified whole. As a result, repetition is inevitable. Any form will repeat its past manifestations in a slightly different manner; this is similar to the forms common in religious rituals. We believe this is also a pure art approach. Let us look at the repetitious effect of various religious rites. Ranging from similar attire, behaviors, or banners to the repetitious ringing of bells, speaking of slogans, nonstop singing of hymns, and dancing, the rites have made countless souls excited by their infiltrating power. They cause a spontaneous conditioned reflex; yet they also bring people back to their past, mysterious experiences. We are also considering what effects the repetition employed by the Pool Society can have on us.
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Zhang Peili’s X.? Series is to be composed of 144 single paintings (and include the spatial effect of the room in which they are hung); only six of them have been accomplished to date. Three components of Meaningless Choice by Song Ling, Ox, Sheep, and Dog, have been finished. Similarly, only four paintings (a parallel group) in the Second State by Geng Jianyi have been finished.38
In 1987 and 1988, Geng Jianyi also created several game-based works, to structure an alternative relationship between the people who were involved as audience and those involved as part of Geng’s work, mostly the viewer and the viewed. One of these, from 1987, is called Tap Water Factory: A Mutually Voyeuristic Installation. In a classroom, Geng built a walled space with frames around cuts in the walls, and invited the audience to participate as both the viewers and those who are viewed. Those people looking in from outside were identified as the audience, who looked upon an exhibition with many subjects derived from the idea of Hell framed in the Western classical manner. The people looking out from inside were framed as individual portraits and thus became part of the “paintings.” The title implied that the flow between insiders and outsiders might be a metaphor of the cycle of water moving in a water work. And the changing position of each person from outsider to insider demonstrated an alternative space, where the subject-object relationship, encompassed by traditional modes of spectatorship, was questioned. In 1988, as the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition was being organized for the National Art Museum of China, Geng co-opted curatorial authority from the organizing committee by sending invitations to some one hundred artists, requesting biographical information and deliberately misrepresenting himself as an organizer of the show. Most artists filled out the forms, either honestly or cynically, and returned them. Geng then exhibited them as a conceptual artwork entitled Investigative Forms (Diao chabiao) at a well-attended art conference (which included many of the artists duped by Geng’s game). He thereby allowed the public, rather than a panel of judges, to determine the merits of each entry. Some of the artists, such as Huang Yongping and Wu Shanzhuan, gave cynical responses, as seen in the translations of their completed information forms.
Figure 7.33 Song Ling, Meaningless Choice No. 1, 1987.
Figure 7.34 Geng Jianyi, Tap Water Factory: A Mutually Voyeuristic Installation, 1987.
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In the early 1990s, Geng Jianyi’s investigation of the relationships between artworks, artists, and the public in conventional exhibition spaces changed direction as the Chinese social structure was changing. He began to pay attention to broader and more complicated relationships, not only between people and art objects but also between people and the social system, as those relationships were manifested in art institutions. A newly cynical approach might be indicated in a statement Geng wrote in 1991: I used to think that a completed artwork was like the completed act of taking a piss: when it’s finished it’s finished—you don’t go carrying the contents of the chamber pot around with you. But now things are different, you can’t just take a piss whenever you like anymore and be done with it. There are special bathrooms, akin to museums and art galleries, who want to expose you in your most basic acts. And doesn’t everybody now accept this situation as normal? The people going in for a look are all very interested, comparing who is big and who is small. How is it that I was born in this age of institutions? And how is it that I want to be proclaimed the champ? It’s really a shame.39
This shift, from the conceptual focus of his early work of the ’80s to the investigation of alienation produced by materialism among metropolitan people, can be found in many of Geng’s performance/installation projects of the 1990s. For instance, in 1994, his Reasonable Relationship was done in connection with a group project, November 26 as a Reason (Shiyi yue ershiliu ri zuowei liyou), which required that the participants create a work dealing with the events taking place on that specific day. Reasonable Relationship is a record of a performance process, in which Geng hired a woman he met on the streets of Hangzhou, his hometown, to “observe the streets of Shanghai.” He signed a contract with her detailing her duties and salary. The woman was to report the things she saw, and the people she communicated with, by submitting physical evidence such as photos, tickets, receipts, and the like. Through the work, Geng wanted to reveal the reality of people’s urban lives, which could only be demonstrated by material evidence: he believed that people could not communicate with each other in a nonutilitarian way except through contract.40
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Figure 7.35 Geng Jianyi, Investigative Forms—Huang Yongping, 1988.
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Figure 7.36 Geng Jianyi, Hiring Contract in Reasonable Relationship, 1994.
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Part Three
The Post-’85 Avant-Garde
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8 Kitsch and Complicity The Case of Political Pop and Cynical Realism
From Rationalist Painting to Political Pop
The avant-garde myths of the rationalist painters of the 1980s were demystified by political pop. Most of the artists of this group, in fact, had been rationalist painters during the years of the ’85 Movement.1 The extreme frustration and disillusionment of the 1980s avant-garde finally culminated society-wide during the events of June 4, influenced by the booming economy and the malaise that followed a half-century of utopian idealism. This created a new direction for the avant-garde of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and with it the investigation of globalization. However, this was achieved not through the use of the realistic style of the 1970s or 1980s, but rather through a style that directly mimicked socialist realism. Since the early 1990s, official policy and mass urban culture had blended with commercial society as a result of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. Without a viewership or official support, the notion of an avant-garde enlightenment became meaningless. Many avant-garde artists of the 1980s therefore shifted from expressing humanist sentiment to representing this newly inverted social structure. The phenomenon of “political pop” emerged along with other art movements in 1985. If we consider cynicism to be the aesthetic tactic of political pop, then the phenomenon could even be traced back to the cartoon illustrations for “Maple” in the late 1970s (see figures 2.6 and 2.7). At that time, the critical reflection directed toward the Gang of Four, the Lin Biao clique, and the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution had reached a climax. However, the author of “Maple” did not caricature the images of Jiang Qing and Lin Biao in the manner of fashionable cartoons; instead, he created
completely positive images of people who carefully held the Red Book (Quotations from Chairman Mao) in their hands, which stirred up a great deal of agitation at the time. Here, the author intended to reproduce the “real appearance” that people were familiar with, by representing it with a “neutral” and even “positive” attitude, precisely in order to deconstruct it. Generally speaking, cynicism employs a neutral method of imitation, reappearance, and duplication to create a scenario, and then connects it to a completely different context in order to create the effect of fakeness, or perhaps even a masquerade, achieving the humorous effect of being perhaps rather prudish. This technique could also be seen in the sculpture Idol made by Wang Keping, who was a member of the Stars group. Wang combined Buddha’s merciful appearance with the image of Chairman Mao with a military cap on his head, to achieve the effect of clearing up the authenticity of Mao’s affability. Of course, the authors of the “Maple” illustrations and Idol used cynicism to criticize, express, and expose truths as well as the essence of reality, unlike political pop afterward, where the intention was a form of cynicism. Most of the pop art in the ’85 Movement had the same cynical characteristics. However, this cynicism focused not only on politics but also on cultural tradition and aesthetics. For example, in the 1986 painting David and Venus, Mao Xuhui put David and Venus together, dressed in jeans. It is very difficult to judge whether the cynicism is directed at the lofty, classical aesthetics of heroism or is a form of self-mockery, chastising the hippie trendiness in modern society. Other works also carried such allegorical meanings, such as the Injured Buddha
by Chen Lide (see figure 3.20). A similar form of “cynicism” was reflected in the paintings made of finished, readymade products in 1987. In any event, the ’85 Movement’s version of cynicism touched upon history, culture, society, and politics, while at the same time it related to the aesthetic delight that criticized traditions while transforming and discovering new artistic techniques. The true beginning of political pop, however, is often traced to 1988, when some of the rationalist painters, such as Wang Guangyi, Shu Qun, and Ren Jian of the Northern Art Group, and Yu Youhan and Li Shan of Shanghai, turned to pop, thereby starting some deep reflection of monumentalism and idealism, both of which were styles of rationalist painting. In 1988, Wang Guangyi’s artistic practice marked the beginning of political pop, as it would come to be known. In 1988 Wang Guangyi suddenly shifted to a cut-and-paste method. In his theoretical comments, he started to criticize “the modern myth” (xiandai shenhua), which may refer to both Mao’s revolutionary ideals and the utopian leanings of avant-garde art. Wang proclaimed that we had to “liquidate humanist sentiment” (qingli renwen reqing); he first made this statement in 1988, at the Contemporary Art Conference (1988 xiandai yishu yantaohui) which I convened and organized in Tunxi city.2 He began to proclaim that art was created only to achieve stardom in the media and the market.3 Wang called art merely a game of strategy, and Andy Warhol’s pop became his model. In fact, in later 1987, he had already produced a number of paintings designed to modify classic Western paintings with grids on the surface, making them look like industrial, mass-produced commodities. He also painted a series he called the Mass-Produced Nativity, perhaps to mock his earlier serious work and uphold his new declared intention to “liquidate humanist sentiment.” In 1988, Wang created a series of portraits of Mao Zedong, sparking a controversy by exhibiting Mao Zedong No. 1 (see figure 4.12) in the historic “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition in February 1989. In Mao Zedong No. 1, a grid is superimposed on an official portrait of Mao: the revolutionary leader and the utopia he stood for are imprisoned within the measurable confines of an analytic frame, just as the
Figure 8.1 Mao Xuhui, David and Venus, 1986.
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painting itself was required by the authorities to be supplemented by an explanatory text.4 The squares might also be explained as markers of the process by which many of Mao’s portraits were fabricated. A small work would have a grid superimposed in order to enlarge it square by square to a monumental size. Regardless of the meaning, this work encountered harsh criticism. Yet Wang Guangyi had a critical and conceptual purpose rather than an overt commercial goal. Generally speaking, the avant-gardists of the ’85 Movement had not yet been involved in a commercial market, as no such thing existed in China at the time. The methods of political pop can be described in two different ways. First, they marked the juxtaposition of socialist realist iconography and symbols with another, contradictory discursive system. For instance, in 1991 Wang Guangyi began his Great Castigation series of oil paintings, which combined both political and commercial imagery. These works appropriated the heroic characters of workers, peasants, and soldiers from Cultural Revolution propaganda posters, juxtaposing them with the corporate logos of companies such as CocaCola, Marlboro, and Kodak. The paintings were meant to show that though the two systems, political and commercial, are not united, the principal goal of each is to convince the population of the authenticity and singularity of its products, whether these are political ideologies or manufactured commodities. The artist believed that the mass-media enterprise overwhelmed the population with propagandist images, whether in Mao’s previous art campaign or the current ubiquitous corporate advertisements and entertainment symbols. Apparently, for Wang Guangyi, this leveled the differences between Mao’s mass culture and American Hollywood-type consumerist imagery. In contrast, Yu Youhan’s work used folk forms to paint Mao Zedong into photographs with the masses, with the addition of numerous flower blossoms. Yu’s work conformed to Mao’s statement that art should be “pleasant to hear and to look at” (xiwen lejian); this statement can be used to describe the aim of both socialist realism and Chinese folk art, which reveals both of them to be kitsch. A similar example is Liu Dahong’s Door Guardians, in which
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Figure 8.2 Wang Guangyi, Mass-Produced Nativity, 1989.
Figure 8.3 Wang Guangyi, Red Reason—Revision of the Idol, 1987.
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Figure 8.4 Wang Guangyi, Great Castigation Series: Marlboro, 1992.
Figure 8.5 Yu Youhan, Mao Zedong, Double Shadows, Tian’anmen, 1992.
Figure 8.6 Liu Dahong, Door Guardians, 1991.
Figure 8.7 Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, The Origins of Socialist Realism, 1982–1983.
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Figure 8.8 Liu Dahong, Four Seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, 1991.
the artist replaced the faces of the guardian figures of ancient folk culture with portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, turning these four great Western Marxists into protectors of the homes of Chinese peasants. Such an approach, combining both local mythological iconography and social realist myth, can be traced back to the tradition of sots art, an art movement that emerged in the Soviet Union in the 1970s (discussed further below). The second methodological maneuver of political pop was to reconstruct the revolutionary history employed by socialist realism. At that time, using the old rhetorical devices of the revolutionary
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tradition and restructuring them had the effect of mocking that tradition, or mocking rhetoric itself. The best example is Liu Dahong’s Four Seasons, which depicts the evolution and history of Chinese communist society. It is, in fact, a play on the ancient folklore of peasant uprisings discussed in the Ming Dynasty vernacular novel. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter become metaphors of the history of Mao’s revolution, as well as the peasant uprising, from beginning to end. This kind of painting can easily be recognized as political and historical, but it may not be defined as pop, even though Liu Dahong used the forms of folk New Year’s paintings.
Political pop had already exhausted itself around the late 1990s because it relied on socialist realism in order to exist, even as it sought to critique and deconstruct it. On the other hand, almost all the artists from the political pop movement carry a strong neonationalist tendency. Besides Yu Youhan’s endorsement of Mao’s view that art be “pleasant to hear and to look at,” Wang Ziwei thought that Mao himself was concerned for, and communicated compassionately with, the masses; while Wang Guangyi worshipped the power of print because we are living in an age of mechanical reproduction.5
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Although political pop allegorized the Mao myth and Mao’s utopia, the artists by no means criticized the discourse of power in Mao’s communist ideology and propagandist art, as many Western critics have pointed out. Rather, they still worshipped and desired to gain this power. From an ideological perspective, political pop was a bastardized continuation of the “red humor” of the avant-garde before the Tian’anmen incident. But it neutralized its direct criticism of reality by taking its strategy of imitating both propagandist and consumerist discourse while exhibiting an ambivalence toward the increasing nationalism among Chinese intellectuals in the 1990s.
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Figure 8.9 Wang Guangyi, Great Castigation Series: Coca-Cola, 1991.
Figure 8.10 Alexander Kosolapov, Symbols of the Century, 1982.
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The ideological nature of political pop was similar to that of sots art, a Soviet avant-garde art movement in Moscow in the 1970s. (In Russian, the informal word “sots” is derived from “socialist.”) It was based on Soviet mass-cultural imagery, and was a Soviet variation of American pop art that delighted in the spectacle of antagonistic semiotic and artistic systems confronting each other. For example, Alexander Kosolapov’s poster Symbols of the Century is a collage of Lenin’s profile and the Coca-Cola logo, which is similar to Wang Guangyi’s Great Castigation: CocaCola. Coke’s reassuring slogan, “It’s the Real Thing,” and the portrait of Lenin, in Kosolapov’s poster, became interchangeable mass-cultural, consumable products.6 Sots art and political pop shared a similar ideological content based in the power of nationalist, or at the very least ideological, power. As Boris Groys put it: In the [case of the] Soviet politician aspiring to transform the world, or at least the country, on the basis of a unitary artistic plan, the artist inevitably recognizes his alter ego, inevitably discovers his complicity with that which oppresses and negates him, and finds that his own inspiration and the callousness of power share some common roots. Sots artists and writers, therefore, by no means refuse to recognize the identity of artistic intent and the will to power at the source of their art. On the contrary, they make this identity the central object of artistic reflection, demonstrating hidden kinship where one would like to see only morally comforting contrast.7
Political pop attracted much more international, institutional, and marketing attention than sots art, because it emerged while the communist world was declining and the Cold War was ending. This may also be due to the fact that China has since become a major transnational art market. Whereas the sots artists immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s and found only small commercial success there, none of the successful political pop artists have left China. On the contrary, the majority of the Chinese political pop artists have become part of an upper middle class in the changing Chinese economy. They no longer strive to produce a confrontation with authority and the public, as their predecessors did; they have changed from elite, or even amateur, avant-gardists to professional, careerist artists. Sots art was not a commercial, impersonal
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art that responded to, and simultaneously strove to manipulate, spontaneous consumer demand. But the nationalism and materialism of political pop, based on transnational political and economic circumstances, shared common roots with government policies, and it was an art that undoubtedly occupied a position of complicity.8 The aesthetic allegory of both propagandist art and consumerist mass culture that functioned in political pop led me to label it “double kitsch.” The political pop artists were producers, and their trademark works were very real commodities. In other words, they themselves became the purveyors of “double kitsch.” Consequently, and paradoxically, the presence of political pop, when marketed as avant-garde in the international exhibitions and markets overseas, might reflect an absence of the avant-garde inside China.9 Thus, what the Chinese avant-garde represents is questionable from a global perspective. Cynical Realism
Cynical realism (wanshi xianshi zhuyi) emerged simultaneously with, and shared the critical perspective of, political pop. Cynical realism was initiated by the New Generation (Xinsheng dai), and the phrase was used to name the exhibition held in the National History Museum in Beijing in July 1991. The major new realistic painters, such as Liu Xiaodong, Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, Song Yonghong, and Yang Jinsong, participated in this exhibition. The exhibition has been widely recognized as the beginning of the trend of new realistic painting of the early 1990s, marking a departure from the grand themes of the ’85 Movement to the trivial and personal subject matter of the early 1990s. Rather than using the traditions of socialist realism, these artists focused on themselves and their circle of friends and colleagues. Several artists who began to paint in the late eighties and early nineties exhibited a free-floating cynicism unrelated to any dogma and uncommitted to any one belief system; they approached the existential situation with a sense of humor.10 This trait can be seen in the painting of Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, Yang Shaobing, and Yue Minjun, who all now live in the artists’ village at
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Songzhuang. In Sichuan and Chongqing there were also a number of artists, such as Zhang Xiaogang, the brothers Guo Jin and Guo Wei, and Xin Haizhou, who can be included in this group. Compared to the works of Beijing artists like Fang Lijun and Liu Wei, their works were less cynical and more illusive. Their figurative works were commonly self-portraits, or portraits of family members, relatives, or close friends, and the compositional purpose was symbolic rather than narrative. These painters usually turned their focus almost entirely to an individual face with slightly exaggerated facial features. This kind of face, however, tired the public when the artists repeatedly produced it for the market from the late 1990s. Consequently, the cynical realist style has received a negative nickname, dalian hua or “big head” painting, in recent years. The leading figure in the group was Fang Lijun, who graduated from the Central Academy in 1989, the year of the June 4 Tian’anmen incident. Fang has repeatedly painted stereotypical bald Chinese men with small eyes and stupid smiles. Although these men appeared in his drawings as early as 1988, those earlier figures retained the likeness of rural villagers, in that the relationships among the figures seemed predictable, and the walls and dwellings in the background hinted at the lives of those characters. Beginning with the oil paintings of the early 1990s, however, there was a shift in composition as well as emotional expression. In those paintings, besides the blue sky, long a staple of Mao-era socialist realist painting, there was no specific or concrete background. The rows upon rows of “typical Chinese people” appearing on the canvases seemed as if they could be the image of the artist himself. This could be an artist’s gesture of indifference, self-mockery, and powerlessness, like the figures called pizi or “riffraff” by Wang Shuo, a popular novelist of the early 1990s. The yearning and laughter of these characters resonates with Geng Jianyi’s 1987 Second State (see figure 7.32). Geng’s portrait did not focus on the “mood” of the characters, however. It dealt rather with the distance, and even misreading, between the audience and the image, and therefore challenged the idea of “representation.”11 In comparison with the New Generation painters, who were commonly interested in urban life, Fang
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Figure 8.11 Fang Lijun, Sketch No. 2, 1988.
Figure 8.12 Fang Lijun, Oil Painting No. 2, 1992.
Figure 8.13 Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline: Big Family No. 2, 1995.
Figure 8.14 Liu Wei, The New Generation, 1992.
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Lijun and the cynical realists seemed to share a certain pastoralism, not only because the figures in their paintings look like peasants, but also because most of these painters were raised in the countryside. At the end of the twentieth century, Chinese artists and intellectuals no longer put themselves in a position of vacillation, in the awkward place between modernity and utopian, naive native ideas. Rather, they simply gave up any attempt at an all-embracing humanitarianism or imaginary utopia and opted for elite escapism and self-indulgence, explaining this as resistance to the dominant authority. Thus, we can trace a rustic thread through the art of the last twenty-five years, beginning with the rustic realism of the late 1970s, continued in current of life painting, and ending in cynical realism. “Rustic” can be seen as an instantiation of antitraditional, antimainstream, antimodern ways of thinking. Interestingly, in the eyes of these artists, the typological terms and theories behind “urban” and “modern” were other ways of saying “authority.” It was logical enough that in the early 1990s, some current of life artists of the ’85 Movement joined up with the cynical realists. At that time, artists such as Zhang Xiaogang and Mao Xuhui shifted their attention from the native land to their own surroundings. Zhang Xiaogang’s slick-surfaced Bloodline: Big Family No. 2 portrays a perfect, modern family with a single child. The child’s male genitals are proudly exposed, announcing the parents’ good fortune at having produced the preferred gender. However, the apparel, facial features, and gazes of the mother, father, and son reflect almost no differences in gender or even age. Zhang showed the paradox of inner emptiness in the face of the pursuit of individualism in a late-twentieth-century society that increasingly valued commodities. Cynical realism used the distortion of realistic details, particularly those of human figures, to represent the fundamental absurdity of reality. These painters’ representational methods were based in the symbolism represented by distortion, and were not straight narrations of absurd realities. Like Fang Lijun, Liu Wei always composed his paintings in a nonnarrative way, usually with two or three figures. He concentrated on deformed and distorted facial features. The cynical style of figurative painting first
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initiated by Liu Wei and Fang Lijun soon influenced a number of artists, in particular those from Sichuan and Chongqing. Some painters went so far as to focus only on the faces or even eyes of their sitters. In the paintings of Zeng Hao, we see another method of distortion. Zeng was a classmate of Liu Wei. In his paintings, all traces of specific settings have been removed from the composition, leaving only the family and its furniture. These furnishings are then randomly placed all over the canvas without any unifying relationship. Antinarration was a basic typology of cynical realism, a style based on the use of realistic techniques to form symbolic compositions. For this reason, it tended more toward expressionism and symbolism than straight realism.
Figure 8.15 Zeng Hao, Thursday Afternoon, 1995.
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9 Apartment Art
From the early 1990s, apart from political pop and cynical realism, both short-lived and more sensationalist than avant-garde, there was also a low-key avant-garde that involved a retreat from the public sphere. It came in two types, apartment art and maximalism, which shared a common philosophy and strategy in the practice of contemporary art. Neither apartment art nor maximalism suddenly emerged in the 1990s; both can be traced back to the ’70s and ’80s. It was in the 1990s, however, that the two types of the low-key avant-garde began to map the large ground of the neo-Chinese guannian (idea) art. Some of the artists of these two trends were old guannian artists, such as Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, and Wang Luyan, but most of them, like Song Dong, Wang Jin, and Zhuang Huan, belonged to the younger generation. The neo-guannian art of Chinese avant-garde artists had been forced to abandon the avant-garde myth, the innocence, and even the naiveté that had been adopted by the ’85 Movement. They were no longer interested in “revolution in art.” Instead, apartment art and maximalism pragmatically addressed changing close relationships between themselves and their environment. The media and language used by the new generation, however, were derived from their close investigation of their surroundings. The guannian artists of the 1980s elaborated their concepts of an anti-art project by focusing on the revolution in ideas itself, such as in Huang Yongping’s randomness, Wu Shanzhuan’s chizi, Xu Bing’s labor-intensive work, and the New Mark Group’s tactile art. The expectation of these artists was that their ideas would be understood by the audience or viewers, and that the objects created were simply byproducts. This communication on
the conceptual level gives us a better sense of the intellectual life of the 1980s. The art of the 1980s can be partially understood as part of a project of dematerializing art-making. On the other hand, the apartment art and maximalism of the 1990s had moved on toward a totally different approach to materialization, not in the sense of commodity exchange but of the communicated relations between artists and things, which valued the subject matter over the concept or idea. Subjects were often taken from daily life. The discovery of a new idea or concept remained secondary to the work of engaging a new cailiao, or substance. The post-’85 avant-garde became disenchanted by the endless game of the abstract logical elaboration of the “revolution in ideas.” For them, the idea of something original did not come from thinking but from touching daily materials, which made it possible for them to make art in a strictly controlled environment. Apartment art and maximalism focused on the observable and tangible. Furthermore, the physical context, the location and relocation of an object, became an important part of their conception. To explore the significance of a specific object in a specific environmental context, rather than its significance in relation to artistic historical and aesthetic references, was the fundamental approach of apartment art and maximalism in the early 1990s. The idea of location and replacement also differentiated them from Western conceptual art. Apartment Art: Shelter of a Dream
“Apartment art” (gongyu yishu) is a term I coined to summarize a very important phenomenon in
Chinese contemporary art of the past three or four decades.1 “Apartment,” or gongyu in Chinese, literally means “government-owned residential complex,” or simply “public house.” It was true that all the residential spaces, whether apartment buildings or courtyards, were physically as well as symbolically “public space” from Mao’s period to the middle 1990s, when residential housing began to be commercialized. From the 1970s to the 1990s, a number of Chinese artists pursued their own private work space within the public residential complexes. Therefore, apartment art, as a mode of existence of underground, experimental, and avant-garde art, shows the distinct social space of contemporary art in China. In the context of Chinese contemporary art, apartment art is one of the most important ways in which avant-garde artists have committed themselves to the creation of critical and radical contemporary artworks throughout the last three decades. Rather than as an ordinary alternative space for exhibitions, “apartment” must be thought of as a way of surviving for avant-garde art. It is a historical phenomenon, and its development itself is a history of Chinese avant-garde art. For instance, we can draw a line that begins with 1970s amateur avant-garde activity, moving to some self-organized groups in the second half of the 1980s, then finally to the 1990s peak of apartment art. A few years after I coined the term, I found that there was also an “apartment art” in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. There are many similarities in terms of certain ideological confrontations. The fundamental difference, however, is that the Soviet movement was about creating an alternative space; its art materials and content all related to contemporary public (political) issues. The Chinese movement, however, involved personal and family materials and individual meditation. Its political and public implications were carried by its “totality,” its space of daily life and neighborhood surroundings, the artists’ (many times a couple’s) personal daily life, represented by a number of personal items. The space of Chinese apartment art was both personal and social. Its sponsorship came only from itself, not from any official institution or gallery space. It was a completely independent, spontaneous form of art activity. Apartment art therefore has also
Figure 9.1 Wu Shaoxiang, Untitled, 1986.
Figure 9.2 Sui Jianguo, The Earth Painting, 1992–1994.
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been defined as a unique social space that functioned as studio, salon, and exhibition space. In the 1970s, some young artists, distant from official political art, had periodically gathered together and exhibited works of a modern art style in their personal “strongholds”—family apartments. This was an activity of the No Name group, for example. After the Cultural Revolution, from the late 1970s to the middle 1980s, modern art started to enter into official art galleries. However, some works of radical or avant-garde styles still could not be exhibited openly. Therefore, some young artists continued to exhibit their works in apartments, especially works in abstract and expressionist forms. During this period, on the one hand, apartment art adopted a gesture of academic and political noncooperation; on the other hand, it continued to explore the modern artistic approach of “art for art’s sake.” As discussed in chapter 2, apartment art had had very close interactive relations with the amateur movement among the youth of the late 1970s, which explored poems, photography, and so on. At the same time, they actively took part in political activities such as the “Democracy Wall” in Xidan. The early 1980s saw a political clampdown with the campaign called Anti–Spiritual Pollution, which mostly targeted Western modernism and abstract art. Apartments thus became a shelter for abstract art. Group shows and gatherings took place in artists’ homes, or quite often in foreign friends’ apartments, which were supposed to be safer than those of Chinese artists during this period.2 In this stage, apartment art activity was perhaps the first channel for civilian cultural exchange. For instance, Zhang Wei and Li Shan, artists, frequently hosted gatherings and shows in their home. Guests included many Western friends, including Mr. and Mrs. Hans Müller (Swiss ambassador and art collector), Bernardo Bertolucci (an Italian director), Franco Giovale (a producer), Ulrike Koch (now a German director of documentaries), Michael Murray (a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Vassar College in the United States), Jochen Note, Dieter Honisch (director of the New National Gallery in Berlin, Germany), and so on. One of the most sensational events involved a visit by Robert Rauschenberg, which reveals a
Figure 9.3 Xinming Hutong, Zhang Wei, and Zhu Jinshi in Unit 1, Room 15, in Building No. 1, in 1982. Photograph provided by Li Shan.
Figure 9.4 Xinming Hutong, Franco Giovale’s mother, Franco Giovale, Zhang Wei, and Li Shan in Unit 1, Room 15, in Building No. 1, in 1983. Photograph provided by Li Shan.
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phenomenon of contextual misunderstanding in China in this period. At the end of 1985, the famous pop artist came to China and held largescale exhibitions in Beijing and Lhasa. This was one of the most astonishing events in contemporary Chinese art history, and his exhibitions profoundly influenced the ’85 Movement in many aspects. In the exhibition hall, a video kept screening which narrated that Rauschenberg had won prizes and undertaken artistic creations in various countries, as well as showing his representative works from different periods. This information in company with his gigantic collages had a tremendous impact on Chinese audiences, promoting a flourishing of pop in Chinese art circles. Rauschenberg’s radical contemporary art form, however, was difficult for officials to accept, even though the exhibit was arranged through official channels. The Chinese Artists Association, the top official authority in the Chinese art world, hosted his visit, but Meishu, the official journal of the Chinese Artists Association, only published a short paragraph about the exhibition after it had already taken place.3 During his exhibition in Beijing, Rauschenberg visited a group show organized by American journalist He Mole in his home in the diplomatic compound in Beijing. It featured abstract artworks by seven artists from the amateur avant-garde (Zhang Wei, Zhu Jinshi, Ma Kelu, Wang Luyan, Qin Yufen, Gu Dexin, and Feng Guodong), and was therefore named the “Seven-Man Exhibition.”4 On the opening day of the apartment show, Rauschenberg refused the invitation of the Chinese Artists Association to visit the China Central Academy of Fine Art; instead he came to the apartment art exhibition. He appreciated some works from the show, especially Wang Luyan’s prints. But, in general, he considered these abstract paintings outof-date. This made the dialogue between the Chinese avant-garde and Rauschenberg awkward. Then, when Rauschenberg discussed his solo exhibition in Beijing with the Chinese artists, the response was not very positive. Suddenly, the conversation became tit-for-tat, and tensions built up.5 Brought up in a closed environment, these young artists possessed completely different backgrounds and artistic ideas from those of Rauschenberg; while he judged the
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Figure 9.5 Robert Rauschenberg visiting an apartment art exhibition, 1985.
apartment abstract art as out of fashion, the Chinese artists considered it to be very radical. This difference of context reveals the interesting dislocation of modernity in the global sense. In the late 1980s, avant-garde art in China made a strong impact on public space, and apartment art was no longer considered the main mode of artistic creation, exhibition, and communication. Various self-organized avant-garde groups emerged nationwide around the mid-1980s and took up the salon typology of the apartment of the 1970s. The avant-garde groups of the ’85 Movement no longer name themselves huahui, or “painting societies,” as had the groups of the 1970s, but rather qunti (collective bodies), and they assumed more of the functions of a direct challenge to society. Most other avant-garde groups had already become dissatisfied with exhibiting their art concepts and works in private spaces, so they moved into public art galleries. The typical example is the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition of 1989, which attempted to educate a public audience with various types of contemporary artworks spread over all three floors in the National Art Museum of China. However, some artists continued to stay on the outside, especially those who lived in marginal areas. For example, in Datong, Shanxi province, the artists led by Zhang Shengquan continued to create art and hold small exhibitions in personal spaces. In Beijing, Wang Luyan and Gu Dexin organized the New Mark Group (which became the Analysis Group after Chen Shaoping joined). They held activities at home, and communicated with other artists and critics. In the late 1980s, the artists of apartment art not only surpassed the early salon (huahui) and modernist painting styles, and thereby entered into a new phase of guannian art, but also intended their artworks as a response to mainstream avant-garde art. In other words, the apartment art of this period shared a similar public interest with the avant-garde groups of that time. Artistically, from 1988 Zhang Shengquan in Datong began to use his own body as the major language in his performance art, which can be seen as the initiation of a strain of performance art by Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, and others from the Beijing East Village of the early 1990s (a nickname for an artists’ district in Dashanzi, an eastern suburb of
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Beijing, alluding to New York’s East Village). Zhang Shengquan’s is an extreme example of apartment art. In 1992, he began the work of deconstructing his own self, first by refusing contact with anyone, even his family. He isolated himself in his room and only communicated with two close friends, Ren Xiaoying and Zhu Yanguang. Sometimes they displayed their works in the family courtyard.6 Zhang wrote his notes on philosophy, life, and art as well as numerous poems in the remote northwestern town. Since nobody could understand him, the only thing he felt he could do was to continue with his meditation and suffering. He finally committed suicide on January 1, 2000, in his home, giving up his life to make his last work of performance art. He left a sentence on the wall of his room, which read: “The last question remains to art, namely whether an artist should remain alive, especially when he uses art to serve himself [weiziji suoyong]. With this situation, art therefore remains meaningless.” He thus believed that “once we understand the boundary between the two worlds, reality and art, we can make art totally isolated from the human world. I believe there is a spiritual entity beyond my vision and physical body. I can reach it by incorporating it into my artwork.”7 Zhang’s suicide resembled a religious desire to transcend the individual body, to reach the other world. Sadly, this powerful behavior is quickly buried by society’s materialist desires. Wang Luyan’s New Mark Group could also be considered as the inception of Beijing apartment art in the late 1980s, in the terms of the self-criticism of the avant-garde mainstream, which I discussed in chapter 8. In the 1990s, apartment art emerged under intensive political oppression. These artists could not gain support from official public spaces, so they were forced to retreat to their personal spaces. On the other hand, Chinese avant-garde art moved toward international recognition, receiving attention from the European and American markets and media, which focused on political pop and cynical realism. From the background of post-Cold War international politics and the subsequent appearance of a global market ecology, this short-lived avantgarde soon abandoned its critical tone and rapidly
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Figure 9.6 Zhang Shengquan, sketch for Sweeping the Floor, 1996.
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Figure 9.7 Zhang Shengquan with his friend Zhu Yanguang and others on the site of the home exhibition, 1987.
Figure 9.8 The New Mark Group (Wang Luyan, Chen Shaoping, and Gu Dexin) in 1990.
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turned toward vulgarism and opportunism—making speculative mass productions between political kitsch and commercial kitsch. Through the silent act of retreating from both public and market space to private surroundings, the apartment art of the 1990s, on the contrary, created unexhibitable and unsellable small-scale installation or fang an (project-on-paper) works. In its silence, apartment art in the 1990s thus became not only an antagonist action against society, but an internal critic of avant-garde art itself, protecting it from corrosion and corruption. In this sense, 1990s apartment art ultimately is not about home or apartment, but rather a critique of social spaces and art institutions. From the late 1990s, the emergence of flocks of art districts and galleries ended apartment art. Both the marginal critical gestures and the deliberately inconspicuous anti-kitsch forms became meaningless when engulfed by ubiquitous auctions, markets, and exhibitions. Subsequently, avant-garde art also ceased. Artists’ Villages: Pop and Performance Art
In the early 1990s, as avant-garde art was denied access to official exhibition space and was disregarded by mass culture, it was forced to retreat. Some participants moved together to artists’ villages and some began to make apartment art, which developed from the guannian art of the ’85 Movement. Unlike the artist collectives involved in the ’85 Movement, avant-garde artists from this period, whether by their own choice or not, showed no interest in public engagement or understanding. Their audiences were typically composed of members of the avant-garde art circle, and at times the shows were only attended by a few photographers. Meanwhile, the sudden increase in invitations to participate in overseas exhibitions and the absence of opportunities in China pushed the artists to let go of their desire to win over the public. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the yishucun or artists’ village, also called a huajiacun or painters’ village, became a gathering place. (The two names were both widely used, with no significant difference, though huajiacun is more common especially for those from outside the art world.) Located in the area between city and suburb known as chengxiang jiehe
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bu, its cheap rent and relatively free environment began to attract artists, who were nicknamed mangliu (jobless migrants). In the beginning, namely in the 1980s, these were mostly self-educated, but later those who had graduated from art academies joined the villages as well. They chose to make a living as independent artists outside of the system in order to maintain their independent thinking, and also because of their lack of interest in the public responsibility of art. They were professional artists. After June 4, 1989, the political and economic climate prompted the abrupt growth of this “jobless migrant” phenomenon. From 1990, some avantgarde artists, such as Ding Fang, Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Yang Shaobin, and Xu Yihui, most of whom were active in the cynical realist group, along with some poets, started to settle in artists’ villages, mostly in Yuanmingyuan (the Old Summer Palace) in Beijing.8 Later, most of them moved to Songzhuang in the eastern suburbs. The majority of the artists from the ’85 Movement had full-time jobs working for state-controlled universities, middle schools, or local cultural institutions. In other words, they were “amateur” in the sense that they were not full-time artists. Their work was not a byproduct of their regular jobs but rather a product of intellectual interest. In the early 1990s, however, the huajiacun became one of the bases for the post-’85 avantgarde, in particular for pop and cynical art as well as performance art. These two groups lived in different villages: one in Songzhuang, where Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, and Liu Wei relocated, and the other in Dashanzi, or Beijing East Village, where the most active performance artists, such as Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, Zhu Fadong, Zhu Ming, and Cang Xin, settled in 1992. This division, however, is very rough. In fact, the types of artists in the villages were very diverse. Many of them made commercial art, following the trends of pop and the cynical realism. The beginning of the artists’ village can be traced back to the mid-1980s, possibly as early as 1984, when some mangliu (jobless migrant) painters moved into Fuyuanmen village, Guajiatun, and other spots in Yuanmingyuan. They painted ink wash, abstract, and modernist works that catered to the preferences of foreign art markets
Figure 9.9 Artists in Yuanmingyuan village of Beijing, 1995. Photograph provided by Yang Wei.
through ambassadors or foreign visitors. They existed on the periphery of the avant-garde of the 1980s.9 Among them, the most well known are Zhang Dali, Mou Sen, A Xian, and Zheng Lianjie. An artists’ village in the first half of the 1990s was a mixture of avant-garde practice and consumerism. There were two types of consumerism. One group made art to earn a living and get rich quickly; the other suffered, able only to consume their own things, including their own body. The first type committed themselves to making fashionable paintings, mostly in the avant-garde cynical realist and pop styles, for the market. The other group consisted of the performance and conceptual artists led by Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, Zhu Fadong, and the others who lived in Dashanzi. In chapter 8, I
discussed the cynical and pop phenomenon, which has become one of the major commercial sources in contemporary Chinese art. The second type seemed to fit the notion of “privacy” in Chinese apartment art. The majority of this type, namely the Dashanzi village group, engaged in consuming their own body, a performance that involved self-abuse and selftorture in response to the combined political and commercial environment. In a society increasingly directed to the ownership of commodities, the avantgarde artists in this circle felt there was nothing that they could “own” but their own bodies. Artists of the 1990s, such as Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, Zhu Fadong, Cang Xin, Zhu Ming, and He Yunchang, retreated from the public to reclaim their bodies by enduring various forms of self-inflicted injury.
Figure 9.10 Beijing East Village in 1993, photographed by Rong Rong.
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It was not until the early 1990s that Chinese performance artists began to use their bodies to convey a deeply personal experience instead of a social or cultural concern. When performance art first emerged in China, in the mid-1980s, it shared the goals of its Western counterpart of the 1960s: to break down conventional ideas about art.10 For instance, the First Experimental Exhibition, organized by a group of artists from Guangzhou, consisted of dance, music, painting, sculpture, and video. However, in spite of this early effort to create a truly multidisciplinary approach or a crossbreeding of the arts, it never fully took hold as a trend in China. In the early stages, there were key distinctions between Western performance art and body art in the 1960s, although both are commonly referred to as performance art. Performance art drew on many disciplines and media including literature, poetry, theater, music, dance, architecture, and painting, as well as video and film. On the other hand, body art, which first emerged in the early 1960s along with conceptual art, was based on the notion that the artist’s body was an artist’s primary material. Body art commonly addressed issues related to social and political polemics or violence and aggression. The works often presented the artist as a shaman or explored the idea of the artist’s body as an aesthetic object. In this way, body art was a conceptual pursuit guided by continental philosophy, in particular existentialism.11 The social sentiment of Chinese performance art was similar to body art in its exploration of the suppressed human soul. Chinese performance art of the last two decades has, at times, been playful in spirit, with performances taking place in the public sphere, while other works have involved selfinflicted pain or ritualistic acts of endurance. While contemporary Chinese performance art is similar to that of the body art of the early 1960s, Chinese performance artists have often considered their bodies not as aesthetic objects to be used in their art production, but rather as ritual bodies associated not only with contemporary social circumstance but also with larger philosophical issues about what it means to be human. During transitional periods in China, performance art has acted out in particularly violent
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ways to capture the public’s attention. Perhaps the public’s response to performance art mirrors a specific cultural understanding of performance art in China. The Chinese term for performance art is xingwei yishu, which means, roughly, “behavior art.” Behavior not only denotes the physical actions of an individual but also connotes the ways in which an individual expresses him or herself within a community or social structure. This variation in language and cultural perspective may have its roots in a Confucian tradition, as well as in Mao’s ideology of collectivism. In both traditions there is no such thing as a strictly individual behavior. All individual behavior is social, and all behavior reflects some type of social relationship. It is this particular cultural context that gives the body more symbolic and subjective, rather than aesthetic and objective, qualities in Chinese performance art. It is also this understanding of the human body that mystifies the spiritual self and devalues the physical body. For instance, in the second century B.C. the Confucian scholar Dong Zhuongshu formed his theory called tianren ganying, which matches each part of human anatomy with a component of the universe. Consuming Own Body
This social and cultural context is always present, regardless of an individual performance artist’s intention. Since performance art has always had such a strong ability to emotionally impact an audience, it has never been permitted in China. It is precisely this taboo that has effectively encouraged artists to choose performance art as one of the most powerful ways to express their social critiques. It was not until the early 1990s, however, that Chinese apartment artists began to realize that due to the external pressures of both political circumstances and a booming consumer society, they owned nothing except their own privacy, including their own bodies. The body was the only unrestricted medium for the expression of personal freedom. They could arbitrarily punish, sell, and injure their own bodies, and, in doing so, test their own powers of endurance. Endurance, in this way, evolved into another form of free enjoyment. In the early 1990s, performance art could only be realized
in private spaces. The performance art of this period seems to trace a trajectory from shocking the viewer to testing the viewer’s humanity. In the Beijing East Village, artists such as Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, Zhu Fadong, Cang Xin, Zhu Ming, and He Yunchang created a series of performance works in their homes and in the area around their homes, many of which involved sex, gender, and personal suffering. They slowly began to shrug off the influence of the performance art of the 1980s and turned toward their own bodily languages, emphasizing their ability to express their feelings about life through their own limited bodies and their lived relationship with their surroundings. They abandoned the emphasis that the performance art of the 1980s had placed on the event. That type of consciousness had more often than not sought to use the performance as a catalyst that would incite some kind of public disturbance. The performance artists of the Beijing East Village, on the contrary, were more interested in their own internal conflicts and in exploring physical and emotional capacities for endurance. The performance artists of the 1980s, more often than not, had thought of themselves as martyrs and proselytizers. The artists of the Beijing East Village, however, thought of themselves as average members of society, examining the experiences of daily life. For instance, Zhang Huan said in his essay “A Personal Account of Twelve Square Meters”: “What I am actually most interested in are people at their most ordinary, during typical daily moments when they are most prone to being overlooked. This is also what constitutes the original material for when I create, such as, when we are sitting on the couch talking, smoking, in bed resting, going to work every day, eating, shitting, and so on. In these daily activities we find the nearest thing to what humanity is, the most essential human thing—the question of the human spirit, the quest to discover how we relate to the environment we exist in.” In his 1994 piece Twelve Square Meters, Zhang sat in a public toilet in the village for one hour, naked and covered with honey to attract flies. The artist challenged the certainty of his own existence through acts of endurance in which he underwent physical and mental pain. This process not only represented the power of individual experience,
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Figure 9.11 Zhang Huan, Twelve Square Meters, 1994.
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but also manifested how people living in even the most squalid of environments still maintain human dignity. This sort of dignity of the ordinary person has been sought after continuously throughout postCultural Revolution Chinese society, and yet it is also continuously lost.12 Ma Liuming used his girlish facial features and male body to create a confusingly gendered image in his performance works. People pointed out that his body had “hermaphroditic” characteristics, but the goal of his performance was not to challenge popular debates about gender and cultural identity. For Ma, the reason for his use of his body in performance works was very simple: it was purely because of his distinct physical characteristics. When he was young, Ma Liuming’s classmates always called him a girl. This reaction pushed him to display the uniqueness of his body to everyone. Zhu Fadong and Cang Xin, two major performance artists, also lived in the Beijing East Village in the early 1990s. Their early projects carried implications of self-devaluation. Zhu Fadong moved to Beijing from Kunming, Yunnan province, in 1993. In Kunming, he once walked down the street with a poster taped to his back that read, “This person is for sale, the price is negotiable.” When he moved to Beijing, he continued to “sell” himself by putting advertisements on the street. Once he put up missing person notices (xunren qishi). Cang Xin, on the other hand, made thousands of plaster molds of his face and put them on the ground of his courtyard, inviting people to walk on them until they lay in fragments. This destruction of his self-portrait was a declaration of freedom: even if he possessed no other freedom, Cang Xin had the freedom to make other people destroy his own image without violating any law.
Figure 9.12 Guang Tingbo, Steel: Sweat, 1981.
Figure 9.13 Ma Liuming, Fragment: Ma Liuming, 1993.
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Figure 9.14 Zhu Fadong, Missing Person Notices, 1993.
Figure 9.15 Cang Xin, Virus Series: Acme of Commonness, 1995.
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Figure 9.16 He Yunchang, Golden Sunshine, 1999.
In contemporary performance art, He Yunchang was perhaps the last artist to focus on his own bodily language. He began his performances in 1997 in his hometown in Yunnan province. His performances concentrated on his body and in some ways were very close to the language of Zhang Huan. Like Zhang, he examined the process of enduring pain. In a 1999 performance, Golden Sunshine, he covered himself in yellow oil paint and hung from a roof, painting the wall except where his shadow fell. After ninety minutes, he went into shock and fainted. In his Conversation with Water of 1999, He Yunchang hung his body on a chain block over a river and gashed the river surface with a sword held in his hand. He also lacerated his arm and let his blood run into the river water. He’s performances lead us to contemplate the relationship between man and nature. This open space has perhaps nothing to do with privacy and home (apartment). It might, however, imply a certain anxiety about losing
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privacy, being homeless, especially for those migrants in artists’ villages. In the history of Chinese art, it has been a tradition to use monumental landscapes as a metaphor for human virtue. This traditional language continued to be applied in contemporary avant-garde art. The difference is that in contemporary art, because of the prohibition of performance by the authorities, artists could either take their home as a site, or go to a mountain or river to have a natural site as a private space to do performance. For instance, a collective performance work called To Add One Meter to an Unknown Mountain, which involved Zhang Huan and eight other artists, presents the mountain as the home of the artists’ bodies. Artists and the mountain, trees and grass, can all be read as lost and homeless. Although the “unknown mountain” appears to be much different than the artists, they are all “unknown,” naked, primitive, and exposed in the wild.
Figure 9.17 He Yunchang, Conversation with Water, 1999.
Figure 9.18 Zhang Huan and others, To Add One Meter to an Unknown Mountain, 1995.
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while Zhang’s performances were given in private spaces in front of an audience, He’s endurance was balanced against the environment, making the environment into a component of his performance. For him, without mechanical opposition his endurance would have been meaningless. Therefore, his body language was more symbolic and was meant to serve as a spectacle. His endurance was partially enforced by his surroundings—the concrete wall, the crane, and the river. Apartment Art Activities in the 1990s
Figure 9.19 He Yunchang, The Trusting Man Who Drowned While Holding the Column, 2003.
For He Yunchang’s performance entitled The Trusting Man Who Drowned While Holding the Column, he cast his arm in a cement pillar and kept it there for twenty-four hours. The title refers to a famous Chinese love story in which Wei Sheng and a girl were to meet under a bridge. The girl did not arrive and a flood came; the boy clasped a pillar of the bridge and stayed until he died. He Yunchang borrowed this love story about faith, and used his fortitude and endurance to reveal the value of human nature. Do the traditional humanistic values of loyalty, honesty, courtesy, wisdom, and faith still make sense in society today? Zhang Huan and He Yunchang both saw endurance as the priority in their performances; but
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Apartment art in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other places appeared on an even larger scale in the 1990s. Several artist couples who had lived abroad for a long time returned to Beijing, such as Zhu Jinshi and Qin Yufen, Wang Gongxin and Lin Tianmiao, Xu Bing and Cai Jin, and Ai Weiwei and Lu Qing. Furthermore, some couples from Beijing, such as Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen, as well as Beijing artists like Wang Peng and Wang Jin, were all involved in apartment art activities. They made their homes the strongholds of personal space, where they created and exhibited a large number of small-scale installations made of cheap materials and embracing the concept of randomness. Many works had drawn their materials from families and personal living environments, and they could be discarded after exhibition. In Shanghai, a group of artists including Qian Weikang and Shi Yong also created and exhibited various small-scale installation series at home in the early 1990s. In Hangzhou, leading figures from the period of 1985, such as Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi, inspired several younger artists to create some apartment works. Apartment artists from different cities had close contacts, and they created some fang an or “projecton-paper” apartment artworks printed as “postcards” for communication. The themes and materials of the apartment art of this period very closely touched on the circumstances and people’s feelings about cities. The art of the East Village adopted direct expressions (most of them used body language), and they later made their critique on the social environment through the demonstration of private space and personal substance.
Figure 9.20 Friends meeting in Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen’s home, 1994.
Figure 9.21 Bedroom in Song Dong’s home with the artwork Culture Noodles, 1994.
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Figure 9.22 Qian Weikang, Imitation: White: 36K, Square Meters: 36 cm², Additional Electrical Current: 6V. 5A, 1993.
Figure 9.23 Shi Yong, The Site of Sound Amplifying: Echoes in a Private Space, 1995.
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Fang an, or “Projects on Paper”
In Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou, some artists and groups of artists organized exchanges and discussions about art using a loose format, and made works that were not sellable, consisting mainly of writings on particular topics. This kind of exchange was realized not through exhibitions but through publications and distributed photocopies. Such proposals were primarily mechanical and quantitative in nature. In Beijing, as early as 1990, Wang Luyan, Chen Shaoping, and Gu Dexin gathered regularly in Wang Luyan’s home to talk about art and launch their apartment art activities. Wang and Gu had already collaborated on the project Tactile Art in 1988 (see chapter 7).13 After 1989, Wang, Chen, and Gu began to work on the conceptual art series Analysis. In this set of works, they followed the same procedures used in mathematics and geometry. They would decide on a plan beforehand, and then each took turns drawing straight lines, circles, and dots according to a set formula. At the end of the calculation, they would have a result that was the extension of logical procedures. From 1990 to 1995, the New Mark Group (which later changed its name to Analysis Group) made five sets of rules in total, did five sets of analyses or calculations, and bound them into books. The value of Analysis was not in the calculation itself, but in the space and form in which it was executed. Their strict group format, combined with their logical, impersonal, and representational calculation process, suggested a rejection of any romantic, sentimental, and subjective forms. These artists maintained that for an individual, the only freedom was one’s control over one’s own emotions and immediate surroundings. In 1995, Wang Luyan, Chen Shaoping, Wang Youshen, Wang Jianwei, and several other artists edited a collection of art proposals titled Chinese Contemporary Artists’ Work Proposals (1994). Among them there were a large number of ideas for artworks that were never realized, only remaining on paper as drawings made by artists at home. Subsequently the artists turned this fang an, or “project on paper,” into a particular method of art-making. This type of
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extremely prescribed, quantitative art proposal can be seen in similar works produced by artists in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Beijing in the early 1990s. Unlike the members of the Analysis Group, most artists did not join a fixed group. Instead, artists with shared interests would decide on a very specific amount of time or dimensions for a subject. According to his or her own understanding, each artist would come up with a concept and a sketch or photograph of a small-scale installation project, which they would then put together in one publication like postcards. The exhibition space was the post office. In 1995, a group of artists who lived in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing, including Geng Jianyi, Chen Yanyin, Jiang Jie, Shi Yong, Kan Xuan, Qian Weikang, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhang Keduan, Wang Qiang, and Zhan Wang, made fang an art with the given topic of “45° as a Reason” (sishiwu du zuowei liyou). Most works involved materials found in their households, such as doors, windows, TV sets, Chinese herbs, etc. Earlier, most of these same artists had made similar types of works according to the topic “Agree to the Date November 26, 1994 as a Reason.” They went about the given subjects from various directions, such as a specific spatial angle, volume, length of time, date, humidity and temperature, and so on. They maintained a distance from and skepticism toward anything beyond physical proof. This practice of making art based on mathematical and physical specifications continued through the end of the 1990s. Perhaps the largest fang an project was the one called Wilderness (Yesheng). In 1998, Song Dong and Guo Shirui organized a project (later turned into a publication) titled Yesheng, 1997 nian jingzhe shi (Wilderness: Starting from the day of jingzhe, 1997), which featured project proposals, photographs, and sketches of installation plans by artists. According to the editors, Wilderness was an art event “held in a non-exhibition space, according to a non-exhibition model,” with the participation of twenty-seven artists from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. This event was sponsored by the Modern Art Center and opened on the day of the jingzhe in 1997. (Jingzhe literally means “awakening of the insect” and is a designation for March 5 in the Chinese lunar calendar.) The event
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Figure 9.24 Chen Yanyin, Wind and Gate, the Visible Gate and Invisible Gate Set Up at 45°, 1995.
Figure 9.25 Zhang Keduan, Shi Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Chen Yanyin, and others, proposal/envelope for Agree to the Date November 26, 1994 as a Reason, October 1994.
Figure 9.26 Jiang Jie, A Medical Accident, created for the project Agree to the Date November 26, 1994 as a Reason, 1994.
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went on for a year, during which time artists from all over the country held discussions concerning a wide range of issues and made proposals especially for the event. Each artist conducted his or her own work spanning a relatively long time, based on his or her particular cultural environment, natural environment, and individual background.14 This event was no doubt an extreme form of withdrawal, a deconstruction or transcending of ideology. If we interpret it in relation to the artistic climate from 1993 to 1995, Wilderness reveals a detachment from any ideological vanity and illusion, as well as from the market craze brought about by political pop and cynical realism. For these artists, to preserve a specific measurement or other concrete attribute was to approach the truth. The destination of their retreat in space was precisely their own living rooms and apartments. In this sense, the most extreme examples would be Qian Weikang and Shi Yong in Shanghai, although Qian did not participate in Wilderness. Qian and Shi organized their joint exhibition “The Two Attitudes toward Image 93” in 1993. Qian Weikang exhibited To Lift an Object by Five Degrees Brings Out the Volume of the Shadow, Wind Direction: 205 Grams of White, and Leaning toward a Pressure Point. In these works, all the audience could see or were told about were the size of the sand, the level of the water, and the moving speed of the sunlight. All of these elements, even time, could be calculated. Nothing was mentioned about spirituality. It is fascinating that nearly all of the fang an works of those years were conceptualized according to the given subject of a very specific time and place, and characterized by their “documentary” qualities. “A specific spot” and “a fixed quantity” were symbolic of normality and everyday life, and were therefore the easiest platforms for exchange and conversation. Fang an art’s methodology was parallel to the documentary approach in 1990s experimental film and photography, since it was the easiest way to approach life. The publication of these “proposals based on assigned topics” was the equivalent of a display in an art space. Their function was to communicate but also to represent the creative process. Most inventors of these ideas could only think and plan these works within their own living
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Figure 9.27 (through page 297) The art projects of Weng Fen, Liang Juhui, Lin Yilin, and Dai Guangyu in the catalogue of Wilderness: Starting from Jingzhe (Awakening of Insects), 1997, 1997.
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quarters (not studios), rather than actually sculpting, installing, or making paintings. In the same period of time, a number of publications circulated within the art world that were related to fang an art. These pamphlets were not artworks, but more like underground publications read by insiders. In July 1997, Ai Weiwei, Xu Bing, and Zeng Xiaojun planned a book without a specific title, now usually referred to as the Black Cover Book, which was a collection of documentation, edited by Feng Boyi. It documented a variety of artworks, including performance pieces, installations, videos, and photography, as well as proposals and quotes from a number of artists, including some from outside of mainland China. There were, for example, Jeff Koons’s pieces and performance works by Xie Deqing, a Taiwanese artist, which had a great impact on conceptual art and performance art practice at that time. Prior to that, in 1995 and 1996, the White Cover Book and Gray Cover Book came out successively. Ai Weiwei was the editor-in-chief and Zhuang Hui was the editor of both books. This series of publications contributed enormously to the development of apartment art at that time.15 Household Art Practice and Display
In the early 1990s, art productions began to be carried out in the living rooms of artists in Beijing, and these living rooms became a hub for apartment art. The earliest household art activities were probably carried out by Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen, both of whom were middle-school art teachers in Beijing. They made a number of proposals and installations in their tiny living room of twelve square meters. In 1990, Song, Yin, and two of their schoolmates (also a couple) formed the Wooden Stool Group (Bandeng xiaozu), which met once every month. The two couples alternated hosting the meeting in their homes. They would show each other works and discuss art, but they split up in the end due to different interests. Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen continued to make art at home. In one work they observed a loaf of decaying bread. They recorded when they bought and ate bread; Song Dong took a photograph and placed it on the lid of a glass box in which he kept the
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bread. After a winter, worms hatched and continued to eat the bread for two more years, when the loaf had completely disappeared into a small pile of powder. In 1994, Song and Yin produced a number of works at home that could not be exhibited or preserved. In one piece, they poured a kettle of boiling water onto the ice-covered ground in an alley. They also wrote characters on the walls in the alleyways, and wrote diaries in water on stones. They cut books into strips, which they called Culture Noodles, scattering the strips of paper all over their apartment. Yin Xiuzhen took their sweaters apart and remade an “androgynous” sweater. When they made works, they would invite artists to their home. They had visitors every day, as many as fifteen at a time. For his work Water Writing Diary, over a period of time Song Dong recorded wherever he went. He wrote with his fingers on the ground by the river in Houhai, on ice with a brush, on the walls at home, and then on a rock. The gesture of writing diary entries with water was a very private act. He wrote about daily events and things that he could not tell others. Gradually, Song came to regard the rock as his flesh and blood existing outside of his body. It was a part of him, and yet it did not belong to him. In 2001, Water Writing Diary was exhibited for the first time in the exhibition “Living in Time,” curated by Hou Hanru and Fan Di’an. Four photographic images were displayed, but Song had refused to exhibit the rock or to write in front of the public, because he considered it to be a very private act. In 1996, Song declined an offer of 200,000 yuan to buy the rock. He considered it to be part of his life, which he simply could not sell.16 Between 1993 and 1995, artists such as Zhu Jinshi, Qin Yufen, Ai Weiwei, and Xu Bing returned to Beijing from overseas, bringing with them Western contemporary art concepts, especially information about installation art. Among the returnees were Wang Gongxin and Lin Tianmiao, who had been in New York. At their home in the Dongsi area of Beijing, a group of artists such as Chen Shaoping, Gu Dexin, Wang Luyan, Wang Jianwei, and Wang Jin gathered and showed works. In 1995, Wang Gongxin displayed The Sky of Brooklyn, in which he dug a hole in the floor and placed a TV screen in it. Inside the video, Wang Gongxin could be heard
Figure 9.28 Song Dong, Bread, 1995.
Figure 9.29 Song Dong, A Kettle of Boiling Water, 1995.
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Figure 9.30 Song Dong, Culture Noodles, 1994.
Figure 9.31 Song Dong making Culture Noodles, 1994.
Figure 9.32 Song Dong, Water Writing Diary, 1995 to the present.
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Figure 9.33 Wang Gongxin, The Sky of Brooklyn, installation in process, 1994.
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saying, “What are you looking at? What is there to see?” The work was a metaphor. At the other end of the hole was his home in Brooklyn. It was inspired by the American saying that one can “dig a hole to China.” Lin Tianmiao also exhibited her installation work Bound, Unbound, 1995–1997, in which she used spools and spools of thread to make a form symbolic of female genitalia. Zhu Jinshi and Qin Yufen returned to China from Germany and began to exhibit work by themselves and others in their two-room apartment in Ganjiakou, Beijing.17 Zhu Jinshi often discussed art with younger artists at home. In 1994, his home housed the first of the apartment exhibitions, “Open Sky,” which occupied only fifteen square meters. Song Dong used the balcony, Zhu Jinshi a door, and Wang Peng a corner in the room to make artwork. Wang Qingsong created an installation as well. Zhu Jinshi made a bunk bed with a sponge mattress underneath, with needles poking through. Song Dong painted the
walls of the sun porch in black and wrote on them two lines of dates that were important in his life, from his birth in 1966 through 1994. Zhu Jinshi was very interested in conceptual art and integrated concepts from Dada, minimalism, and Japanese Mono-ha. In comparison, Song Dong, Wang Peng, and Wang Jin were more concerned with the relevance of materials, and thus their works were more about perception and social experience. However, Zhu Jinshi’s interest in rationality and conceptualization influenced other artists, who began to create installations using everyday materials. In Zhu Jinshi’s home, Wang Peng exhibited We Live in Art. He moved Duchamp’s toilet to the dining table, vividly revealing the essence of apartment art: eating and sleeping with art. No matter how “antiart” Duchamp’s urinal was, it had still ultimately made its way into a public exhibition. In China’s particular political and artistic environments, art could only exist at home. Thus, unlike Duchamp,
Figure 9.34 Zhu Jinshi, Sudden Enlightenment, 1994.
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Figure 9.35 Song Dong, Days, 1994.
Figure 9.36 Zhu Jinshi, Uncertainty, 1996.
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Wang Peng did not simply label the toilet as artwork or “non-art.” Instead, he allowed it to actually live alongside him in the apartment. In another work, Noah’s Ark, he used a simple wooden box to suggest that the ark from the Bible had gotten into a Chinese private family space. The implication was that any spiritual faith and ideology had turned to a personal belief, nothing to do with the outside world. The physical space of the apartment in apartment art became a symbol of artistic identity. It defined the artists as engaged in life, not isolated in their studios. This kind of apartment art had two features: (1) Works were made with inexpensive materials from everyday life (especially household items), making them economical and space-efficient. (2) Works could not be reproduced, reexhibited, or sold. Artists took down their works after exhibitions. Their art was only meant for the purpose of exchange. Some of these works were narratives conveying private and personal feelings, like Song Dong’s Water Writing Diary. In the early 1990s, a number of avant-garde artists also used apartments that were being emptied out and abandoned to mount exhibitions. In 1992, for example, Geng Jianyi created the installation work Building No. 5, 1990, in a residential compound in Hangzhou. In Chengdu, Dai Guangyu exhibited his political pop work in an unfinished apartment building. In Changchun, Huang Yan took rubbings and copied works on the streets in many cities and in his apartment. In addition to working in urban apartments, avant-garde artists repeated the art practice of the revolutionary artists of the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art in Yan’an in the 1930s by taking their work to the homes of rural residents. Chen Shaofeng displayed his portraits of villagers in a rural area in Hebei province. This style of working, in which artists interact with rural communities and invite them to critique their art, was comparable to the practice of woodcarving artists Gu Yuan and Yan Han during the Yan’an period.18 At that time, the only avant-garde art venue beyond artists’ living rooms was in a place called Hongxia Apartments, near the Beijing Hotel. Lin Pu and his brother Lin Song rented the space to use as an artists’ studio, and they called it Hanmo Art Gallery. They exhibited the works of Wang Peng and Zhao Bandi. Afterward, they displayed Xu Bing’s Cultural
Figure 9.37 Wang Peng, We Live in Art, 1994.
Figure 9.38 Wang Peng, Noah’s Ark, 1995.
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Figure 9.39 Geng Jianyi, Building No. 5, 1994.
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Figure 9.40 Dai Guangyu, Covered by Red, 1993.
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Figure 9.41 Chen Shaofeng, The Report of the Social Images and Art Images of Villagers in Wangguansi Village, Dingxin County, Hebei Province, July 1993.
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Animals, but soon after that the space was shut down because the gallery printed a pamphlet titled “Hanmo Art News” and used one of Zhao Shaoruo’s photocollage works as the cover image. In the image, Zhao replaced the head of Mao Zedong with his own. The workers at the printer mistook it for Jiang Jieshi, reported it, and the officials confiscated the pamphlets. This type of apartment art rapidly disappeared after the mid-1990s. Due to frequent invitations to overseas exhibitions and the emergence of several galleries in China, the apartment artists quickly became international touring artists. Their work no longer narrated their own lives, as it had earlier in their careers. It had now transcended the limits of the apartment and entered the international arena. The languages, forms, and materials that these artists employ now appear to be international and the stories they tell are more representative, no longer private at all. It has lost the concrete, specific, secret, and documentary character of apartment art. Some works that still retain such traits serve as footnotes to a globalized way of living for individuals. Yin Xiuzhen’s suitcases contain records of the cities that she has visited. This work reminds one of the fashionable family portraits in contemporary art of this period. Art has become a common nostalgia, a representational symptom of globalization.
Figure 9.42 Xu Bing, A Case Study of Transference, 1993.
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10 Maximalism
As a phenomenon, maximalism can be seen as a part of apartment art in the sense of “meaningless” art-making in private space responding to a broader social and artistic change. As a mentality and methodology it has developed since the ’85 Movement. The process, labor-intensive and repetitious, involves both personal meditation and social critique in both the Chinese and global context. “Abstraction”: An Inopportune Concept for Considering Contemporary Chinese Art
In the West today, the opposing notions of “abstract” and “realistic” have lost their competence to define artistic trends or genres. It also seems inappropriate to use “abstract” as even a general term for tendencies in contemporary Chinese art, but for different reasons. Actually, in contemporary Chinese art, “abstract art” (chouxiang yishu) in the twentiethcentury Western sense does not exist at all. Paintings by Malevich, Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Newman, which were made in a utopian and abstract spirit and presented in pure two-dimensional, geometric forms, can hardly be found in Chinese abstract art. The Western abstract painting theory advocated by Greenberg stated that two-dimensional form was more convincing and advanced than threedimensional in presenting reality. Three-dimensional form was only a mimetic illusion, while the twodimensional could exclusively and directly represent ideas. This point seems to be a repetition of Plato: according to the latter, reality is the shadow of the Idea, thus making three-dimensional art the shadow of the shadow.1 Therefore, the two-dimensional form (abstraction) is an innovation and progression over the three-dimensional form (realism), and might
even present us with a summary of the world (idea), as illustrated in Malevich’s red and black squares or Mondrian’s grids. The whole utopian Western modernist project is “embodied” in the teleological progression of abstract forms. This kind of abstract practice cannot be found in China, even in ancient times. Concept is alluded to in visual images, so the guiding aesthetic principle relies on “balancing likeness and unlikeness” (si yu busi zhijian). Although today some contemporary Chinese artists use color fields and lines in their compositions and call their works “abstract,” their two-dimensional forms are nothing but decorative works without any philosophical or spiritual significance. Chinese Metaphysics: From Rationalist Painting to Maximalism
Abstract elements that appeal to Chinese aesthetic conceptions and conventions do exist in some Chinese paintings, installations, and photographic works. But Chinese abstract elements differ in specific ways from those in Western abstract painting. A number of such artworks appeared in China in the 1980s, and at the time I wrote an essay on rationalist painting (lixing huihua) to analyze the phenomenon.2 As mentioned previously, at that moment, Ding Fang, Wang Guangyi, Shu Qun, and others used the styles of surrealism and symbolism to allude to a type of religious manifestation. For example, the idea of a “clean and pure northern land” was used to allude to sublimity (Wang Guangyi); “high plateau” was used to imply national aspirations (Ding Fang); and others used relatively abstract forms to refer to ancient Oriental philosophy (Li Shan, Yu Youhan, Chen Zhen, Zhang Jianjun) or the origin of the universe
Figure 10.1 Qiu Zhijie, Assignment No 1: Copying the “Orchid Pavilion Preface” 1,000 Times, 1990–1995.
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Figure 10.2 Lin Tianmiao, Bound, Unbound, 1995–1997.
and the evolution of mankind (e.g., Ren Jian’s concept of yuanhua). These artists employed relatively abstract forms which could not be categorized as either twodimensional and geometric or three-dimensional and realistic. Rather, they were imaginative, moving spaces designed to present multidimensional forms compatible with Oriental philosophical concepts, or contemporary Chinese intellectuals’ thoughts on “transcendence” (chaoyue). All these painting types, which could be called Chinese “metaphysical” paintings, came to maturity in the mid to late 1980s. But owing to the impact of commercialism, as well as the disillusionment of political idealism after the failure of the student democratic June Fourth Movement, this kind of metaphysical painting died out gradually toward the end of the 1980s and early 1990s without reaching a developmental apex. After a period of silence, however, another Chinese version of metaphysical painting came into
Maximalism
being in the early 1990s. This was not a fashionable mainstream but a silent marginal phenomenon, which did not draw the attention of the media at the time. Maximalism may not be considered a movement, complete with the solidly connected artists and groups that term implies. Rather, it was a thought trend shared by many individual artists in a lonely, practical way. Many Chinese artists employed the methods of maximalism without taking on an identity as a maximalist artist: for instance, Qiu Zhijie in his work Assignment No. 1: Copying the “Orchid Pavilion Preface” 1,000 Times, and Lin Tianmiao in Bound, Unbound. The methods used by these artists were different from those of the lixing huihua of the 1980s, their forms more abstract in a way that was particularly similar to minimalism in the West. In this way, the artists created a number of metaphysical paintings, installations, and video works which I call “Chinese maximalism” (Zhongguo jiduo zhuyi).
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The reason for this name is that although the works had the appearance of Western minimalism, their conceptual approach was distinctly dissimilar from that movement. Like the minimalists, Chinese maximalist artists rejected the philosophy of early European abstract art of the 1920s and 1930s that treats painting as a representational vehicle for a utopian world embodied in different abstract patterns—the “material utopia” as remarked by YveAlain Bois, or the illusion of “what the world’s like” as indicated by Donald Judd.3 But Chinese maximalist artists disagreed with the minimalist philosophy that foreclosed on spiritual meaning and treated painting forms as objects in their own right, a philosophy most clearly evidenced by Stella’s remark “what you see is what you see.”4 Simply speaking, Chinese maximalism did not reject the elements of subjecthood and spirituality. On the contrary, it emphasized the spiritual experience of the artist in the process of creation as a mode of self-examination outside and beyond the confines of the artwork. Although in minimalism artists also emphasized process and system, or “durational experience,” the main concern of the minimalists was still based on material forms, and thus on the “object in its own right.” Their objective of “making,” through process and systematic method, eventually comes up with what Michael Fried calls the tendencies “to project objecthood” and “theatricality.”5 All the terms used by minimal artists, such as “shape,” “wholeness,” “Gestalt,” “order,” and “repetition,” were related to that objective. Minimalist art did not concern itself with spirituality, but rather with physical factors, e.g., objects. Chinese maximalists, however, attempted to deny that their work could be seen as pure object, or as a type of theater in which the beholder and object are preconfigured in a physical scale with a particular distance. Rather, maximalist artists accepted that their works bore a certain spirit, not presented from the artwork (from within) but instead experienced from without. Therefore, Chinese maximalism does not attempt to involve the beholder in either “seeing” the work, as minimalism does, nor “thinking” about the work, as modern European art does. The former has an onward-based nature and the latter an outwardbased nature. Chinese maximalism, one might say, is above all committed to a transward-based nature.
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We may consider the artworks of Chinese maximalism to be incomplete and fragmented records of daily meditation. Gu Dexin’s Object as Living Life (Wuzhi zuowei huode shengming), for example, consisted of the action of pinching flesh, in the form of raw meat, every day; Li Huasheng’s Diary, an ink painting series with a repeatedly drawn grid pattern, was another example. Many maximalist artists liked to name their works “diary,” emphasizing the meaning inherent in the action of making art, which was seen by the artists as part of their daily praxis. In other words, we are not allowed to read meanings directly from the art forms of maximalism per se. The work functions as what is often called liushui zhang in Chinese, literally, “an account book of streaming water,” which means an everyday record of something that is extremely unimportant, trivial, and fragmented from daily life. Therefore, there was no such thing as a compositional principle with any hierarchical form, nor any compositional idea like “wholeness,” in maximalist art. Chinese maximalism did not emphasize the oppositions of subject and object, spirit and material, or center and margin. The work was not a reflection of the artist’s thoughts or the universal spirit, nor was it a purely physical object. Every factor was in a state of transformation without a clear boundary, and artwork was a natural, repetitious, fragmentary process, just like liushui zhang. The wo, or “subject” (the artist), apart from the liushui zhang (the artwork) is nowhere to be found, because the wo is already sealed everywhere in the work. Some typical examples can be found in Ding Yi’s Cross Series, Zhu Xiaohe’s paintings, and Song Tao’s 49,368 Square Millimeters. In this regard, one may consider maximalism as a tendency to combine deconstruction and dematerialization in a manner similar to that of Western postmodernism. In the Chinese context, however, the primary objective of maximalism is to question and overthrow assumptions about the meaning of the artwork: that the meaning is contained and expressed by the object, that the object is a unique and privileged product of human culture containing the commonly held values of virtue and creativity. The practice of maximalism inquires: Who confers meaning on an artwork? How is the meaning presented and interpreted?
The artists of the 1980s, whether they were members of the rationalist painting group or expressionists of the current of life (shengming zhiliu) group, all believed that the spiritual meaning of the work was imparted by its creator. They also believed that all those meanings should unquestionably be accepted by audiences. This elite philosophy was very similar to that of the Western modernists of the early twentieth century. The phenomenon of political pop, along with novelist Wang Shuo’s “rascal” (lowbrow) or pizi wenxue literature in the early ’90s, negated, to a certain extent, the past utopian ideal represented by the Mao Zedong era and the elite utopian ideology of anti-Maoist utopias represented by 1980s avant-garde art. Nonetheless, this negation of essential meaning, or meaninglessness, was mostly manifested in their attitude toward the artist’s life philosophy, not in their methodology for developing expressive meaning inherent in the works. In other words, they really believed that they could confer, or had conferred, works with meaningless content, which shows that they did not differ much from the artists of the 1980s. The difference only lies in the fact that the latter demonstrated idealism, the former disillusionment. The critique and interpretation of cynical art from the early 1990s resulted in an overemphasis on the ideological concept of cynicism. Although various interpretations based on ridicule, hollowness, ennui, and disillusionment had some practical significance at the beginning, they soon became dogmatic and vulgarized. Furthermore, the works of the cynical realists, as highly commodified objects, only arbitrarily concerned themselves with meaning on the canvas. As art circles were then full of the discourse of “overinterpretation,” the real crisis was concealed. The greatest critical oversights in this period were based on the failure to note the lack of methodology in contemporary Chinese art, the fact that imitation became utterly fashionable, as well as the fact that artists and their products became commercialized and institutionalized, so that the narration of “meaning” developed in a false and impoverished framework. It was under these circumstances that Chinese maximalism, an alternative metaphysical art form, started to challenge the meaning of art from various extremely personal approaches, thus rebelling against
Maximalism
the “hollow meaning” fad of cynical art. Maximalism, in other words, attempted to depart both from idealism (modernist type) and from anti-idealism (postmodernist type) in the context of Chinese contemporary art. It should be noted that this tendency was not only targeted at art circles in China, but may also have implied a criticism of the neo-Orientalist and postcolonialist practices in contemporary Chinese art practice that still flourish in the context of globalization, in particular when Chinese “abstract” and conceptual painting has been overlooked by Western markets and institutions in the last three decades. For instance, Zhu Xiaohe remarked in a very extreme way that his paintings were composed of an abstruse language. Endorsing the concept of maximalism, he believed that maximalism amounted to an inroad into the territory of Westerners. Using abstruse language is a rebellion: “Our national style (if there is one) is not a simple linguistic narrative form as believed by them [Westerners]. It is an unfamiliar nationality, not one the eyes of Westerners are familiar with.”6 The cynical fad was only concerned with how to discover a symbolic image representing “Chinese people,” so as to satisfy Westerners’ preoccupation with, and ability to recognize, the “other.” In summary, maximalist works posed questions for the linguistic “meaning” of art mainly along the following lines: 1.
Almost everyone involved in maximalism was opposed to self-expression or a representation of reality, and denied that an artist could confer meaning on an artwork.
2.
There was no way to interpret the meaning of an artwork (text), as interpretation per se was another code (text) made in a different context. However, some Chinese artists attempted to bind this deconstructive theory with certain particular personal experience. Zhu Xiaohe copied an ancient piece of art known to everyone by repeatedly using similar short lines, which resulted in a different “abstract” painting. Wu Yiming, by a similar method, used traditional Chinese painting forms to interpret paintings of beauties in ancient costumes. Instead of imitations, their works of copying were a kind of individual meditation, or what Zhu called “metaphysical executions” (xingershang yunzuo).
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3.
As the meaning of artwork existed in process and change, subject to changes of individual experience, the artists paid attention to process by completing an experiential process through different forms of labor or handicraft, of which the completed works were only incomplete fragments.
4.
The unfolding of meaning was limitless, the extremity of which was nothingness (wu). “Nothingness” could not be represented by any form, for “Loud is its sound, but never word it said. A semblance great, the shadow of a shade” (dayin xisheng, daxiang wuxing), as Laozi wrote in the Daode jing. Nonetheless, maximalism implied infinity and the endlessness of numbers through the repetition of quantities. Therefore, “many” is not something substantial or quantitative but insubstantial and hollow, in spite of the serial, orderly, reasonable, and neat appearance. It is the accumulation of many similar contingencies.
5.
This inevitably led maximalism to Chan Buddhism in two philosophical aspects. One is meditation, the other skepticism to any doctrine. That was why most of the artists were seeking experiences in the process of making artwork similar to Chan.
Against Expression and Representation: The First Aspect of Maximalism
Almost all the artists mentioned here denied that the meaning of a work was generated by the artist him or herself. They thought that a work had nothing to do with its creator once it was finished. This point was stated adamantly by Wu Shanzhuan in the middle of the 1980s. Recall that he argued that a work is like a plant, and the artist is the soil. Whether the soil is fertile or not will not affect the essential nature of the plant, as an artist’s motivation will not change the meaning of the artwork. Sharing this view, Gu Dexin also never endeavored to explain the meaning of his work. There is no evidence to show that Chinese artists were influenced by poststructuralism, as the writings of Roland Barthes were barely known in the Chinese art world of the 1980s. However, the ideas of Wu Shanzhuan, Gu Dexin, Ding Yi, and Zhu Xiaoyi on the meaning of the “text” (the artwork) were very similar to those of Barthes. The ideas of the Chinese artists were not born out of philosophical logic, but instead were closely related to the specific reality of
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contemporary Chinese art. They were intended as a criticism of the tendency to overinterpret or create an overflow of meaning. Decades of socialism in China had conditioned artists to practice realism exemplified by a “preconceived motif ” (zhuti xian xing) thought pattern, which was manifested in different ways in different periods. Audiences were also trained to be the passive receivers of given meaning. Under these conditions, the maximalist artists committed themselves to freezing their expressive desires and attempting to eliminate their intentions, thereby compelling themselves to be tools that did not use their brains, but only their hands. Ding Yi’s Cross Paintings
Ding Yi’s Cross Series, and his accompanying theories, are good examples of Chinese serialism. Counting the first Cross works, which were created in 1988, Ding has been producing this kind of painting for twenty-two years. Although different ideas may have occurred to him during this period, the basic method and its clear-cut cross form have remained. Ding’s formalist pattern is, however, based on an antiformalist concept. He is “skeptical about treating pure art language as the ultimate goal,” believing that “the purpose of making paintings is not to justify the real world mirrored on the canvas.” In other words, he thinks painting is neither a display of visual form nor a presentation of reality or nature. It is what it is, a work undertaken “within the deep logic of language structure and its denoting concept.” It is the product of the methodology of the artist.7 Ding’s idea went against the mainstream of Chinese avant-garde art at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, for he belonged neither to the “pure language” (chunhua yuyian) neoacademicism nor to the “grand soul” (dalinghun) expressionism of the late ’80s or the political pop and cynical realism of the early 1990s. Instead, he regarded art as a precise manipulation, which was expressed by his cross shapes, because the cross in printing is a simple sign of measurement that everyone can recognize. As this pure, clear expressive method is close to science, it is far removed from humanistic connotations, suggesting no cultural themes. Most importantly, its simple form provides Ding with the possibility
Figure 10.3 Ding Yi, Appearance of Cross Series: 1988-1, 1988.
Figure 10.4 Ding Yi, Appearance of Cross Series: 1990-1, 1990.
of continuous and monotonous manipulation. He could calmly draw crosses on the canvas, making them as precise as possible, without harboring any desire to reconstruct or destroy culture. What he had was only the feeling of making contact with something substantial, such as his brush, chalk, or canvas. This “sense of substantiation” forced the artist to abandon and escape from any desire to spin illusions. The “sense of substantiation” was also the basis of his automatic color selection principle, which was based on “a distrust of Cézanne and Matisse’s color theory.”8 There is no composition principle at all, for he can start drawing crosses from one side and end up on the other, or vice versa. Technique he views as a mediocre handicraft skill. He adopts his technique without any preconceived concepts, a mere manipulation similar to a female farmer weaving denim. Nevertheless, the meaning of manipulation is not an aim in and of itself, but it seeks to point to a meaning of the norm achieved by the manipulation. The artist has no right to go beyond this norm to “express” himself, and he is not able to do this at all if the norm is not available.
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Figure 10.5 New Mark Group (Wang Luyan, Chen Shaoping, and Gu Dexin), The Works of the New Mark Group No. 1, 1991.
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It is only through this process that artists can get some spiritual release and inspirational experience. As Ding puts it, “creative inspiration comes from the experience of continuous work; an endless, deeply engaged, and open working condition makes the creativity of an artist separate from the limitations set by his ideology.”9 This reminds me of the work done by the New Mark Group at the beginning of the 1990s. After laying down strict collective rules, these artists worked in turns, making their paintings like geometric diagrams. Personal irrationality and desire for expression were eliminated by strict ground rules. In their works, it would be impossible to detect any trace of emotion or meaning except a sense of freedom imparted to them by abiding by the rules and escaping the constraints of meaning. “Metaphysical Operations”: The Second Aspect of Maximalism
Words and artistic images are two different semiotic systems. Any interpretation, whether using images to illustrate words or vice versa, constitutes another text. This has been discussed in the theories of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Roland Barthes’s semiotics, and Derrida’s deconstruction. But maximalist artists do not like to push the relationship between interpretation and text, or word and image, to the extreme. They discovered the nature of the “mingling of ‘you’ and ‘I’” or nizhong youwo, wozhong youni, and put forward the interpretive approach of “there is painting in poetry just as there is poetry in painting” or shizhong youhua, huazhong youshi, and “viewing poetry versus reading painting” or guanshi duhua. As a result, the gap is bridged between image and word, as well as between imagination and concept. The artist Zhu Xiaohe uses a guanshi duhua approach, employing color and lines on the canvas, instead of words on a page, to interpret and read a painting, as he did in relation to the ancient painting Three Court Ladies in creating his own painting of the same name. Another “text” (a new painting) was thus created by the traces formed by the crowded colored lines on the canvas. This painting lives off others in terms of “meaning” and “form,” without its own “theme” and narrative content. It has neither the ordinary painting elements of expression
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Figure 10.6 Zhu Xiaohe, Three Court Ladies, 2002.
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apart from stroke and color field, nor any semiotic functions of “signifier versus signified.” Just as Zhu says, “the broken layers generated by overdrawn lines represent another form of thinking, the thought of seeing. It only allows us to see, not understand. It is not the expression of inner consciousness, feelings, and beliefs, but the new feelings and experience of seeing.”10 The “seeing,” however, does not lead to any directions in aesthetics, philosophy, or narrative. It is just seeing itself. Zhu was one of the participants in the “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition held in Beijing in 1989. In the 1990s, he started to select more abstract short lines as the “word” elements he used to interpret paintings. His paintings of short lines were not specific, and they existed without any direct images for reference. As Zhu himself said, “my writing [painting] is not one that is measured, expressive, and has a purpose, but goes beyond writing, an overlapping writing, writing that generates another writing, which gives rise to complex and abstruse layers of small lines, making recognition and easy representation impossible. It transcends the clear, dull, and simplified subject matter. The outer images become layers of confused lines, obscuring images, and the writing keeps overlapping and dismantling without being able to stop and coming to any conclusion.”11 Thus, he called his paintings “interpretive and complex writing” (jieshixing fuza shuxie) or “metaphysical operations” (xingershang yunzuo). The “metaphysical” here did not refer to Kant, because Zhu was opposed to any preconceived meaning or universalist idea. His “metaphysics” was only an automatic writing without presupposition; writing itself was the noumenon, the meaning and the language. In Zhu’s eyes, language was nothing more than labor.12 Because it presents the status of the “writer,” language excludes the presupposition of all “meanings.” Zhu believed in exhibiting oneself in an open way, and declaring oneself not to be an accessory of imposed “truth.” “Truth” should not be understood as “correct,” but as the language itself being interpreted. Language precedes man, as language is the space where man exists. Zhu said, “I don’t know what reality is when I am not writing. … Writing is like instruments, which I always look
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Figure 10.7 Unknown artist, Three Court Ladies, date unknown.
at, not the scene outside the window. It’s like a pilot in a cockpit, where he seeks direction through instruments, not his naked eyes.”13 Zhu’s lines were neutral, without revolution or counterrevolution, emotion, tendencies, localities, or overall conceptions. Only this neutrality in operation could lead to “deideologization,” and make any categorized “Chineseness” and “correctness” superficial. Take for example the idea of “Oriental beauty” that is linear and decorative, as might be demonstrated by the ancient painting Three Court Ladies. In Zhu’s interpretive version, these “nationalistic aesthetic features” were obscured. This was a strategic “overwriting” (guodu shuxie) aimed at opposing cultural hegemony.14 In order to make his interpretive process more neutral, he formulated rules to ensure that interpretive levels were preserved on the canvas, so the initial and last lines were demonstrated in the crowded canvas without any differentiation. Line-drawing (writing) was only production, without any fanciful notions; he discarded any elements of
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Figure 10.8 Zhu Xiaohe, Educating the Children, 2001.
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Figure 10.9 Unknown artist, Educating the Children, date unknown.
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representation or expressiveness. This “production is a form of resistance against immediacy, subjectivity, conceptual representation, simple imitation, and formalism in contemporary art. Maximalism is bound to be obscure and go beyond nomenclature, forms, and images.”15 “Production is obscure and ambiguous, as opposed to information and fashion, as well as commonly stereotyped notions and slogans.”16 We can see the antimainstream attitude and his criticism of the institutional power system in Zhu’s critical comments concerning his motivation. Another maximalist, Wu Yiming, is from Shanghai. As a traditional Chinese painter, in 2002 he produced a series of ink paintings of beauties in ancient costumes.17 For example, he drew ten ink paintings that were “exactly the same” as the ancient beauties paintings unearthed in Hetian, in the Xinjiang autonomous region. He would make a draft, then draw a contour line to copy the original Hetian painting. Then he used traditional ink wash techniques, operating in multiple layers, to blur the contour and colors of the female figure. The final result was an ancient beauty without facial features or detailed textile patterns. What he strove for through complicated labor was a kind of uncertainty and undecidability, similar to Zhu’s “overwriting.” He wanted to obtain an experience in his “reading” and “writing,” a sense of the impossibility of imitating an artwork of the past and a sense of distance from the mysterious past. That’s why he could take great pains to draw “the same painting” ten times. In terms of visual effects, his paintings have a simple, succinct, and pure beauty that is traditional, experienced, nonvisual. He repeatedly reexperienced the feelings of the ages being unearthed by his brushes. When the same ten paintings are juxtaposed together, they may suggest minimalist works, but this is not what Wu wanted to achieve; rather he strove to dig out something experienced, not visualized, that was beyond the ancient visual form itself. In order to achieve this, he continued to make his brush strokes and ink wash overlap, layer by layer, until the original clear appearance of the ancient painting had disappeared. The original experience he gained through his repetition came at the price of the disappearance of the origin.
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Figure 10.10 Wu Yiming, It Looks Beautiful—The Second Performance, 2002.
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Beyond Objects—Meaning Only Lies in the Process: The Third Aspect of Maximalism
Chinese maximalism is opposed to logocentrism, a European and American tradition which seeks essence, oneness, truth, and clear-cut consciousness. In contrast to the Euro-American tradition, Chinese tradition puts more emphasis on the changes in and contextualization of meaning. As in the example of ancient literati painting, the narrative meaning of an artwork is not important. Meaning is related to one’s accomplishments in every aspect of his lifetime, his temperament and the tastes of his circle, or his circumstances. The Chinese maximalist artists pay more attention to the process of creation and the uncertainty of meaning and instability in a work. Meaning is not reflected directly in a work, because they believe that what is in the artist’s mind at the moment may not necessarily appear in his work. In fact, it is often absent. Therefore, many artists repeat the same movement or form in order to make the absent self “stay put,” or, from another perspective, to reach the distillation of meditation and pure spirituality by eliminating any desire for self-expression through certain physical repetitions (repeated forms) and a continuously meaningless labor-intensive operation. Continuousness, repetition, and monotonous labor often constitute the characteristics of maximalism. Although the works also have physical forms, they always fail to convey an idea. This is because the artists believe that the real meaning remains in every moment, which is always developing, changing, and merging with the ones before and after it, in an endless environment. It is like a monk chanting Buddhist scripture. Each time he chants “Amitabha,” the meaning changes corresponding to the time and space in which he chants it. Each of his chants is a product of the moment, related to the extent of his understanding through meditation (his dialogue with his surroundings and his inner world). As a result, meaning can never stay put in a materialistic form, which only implies the process, and it can never embrace or substitute for the real experiential meaning. Gu Dexin started his conceptual art activities as early as the beginning of the 1980s. The forms he used ranged widely and included two-dimensional
work, installation, and digital output. He always thought that the meaning of the work had nothing to do with him, because it could never be reached. He was more concerned with the relationship between himself and the materials, or with how to make his works more materialistic and formalistic. The materials he used were often found in nature or from animals (such as meat, apples, or flowers), or elsewhere (industrial materials such as plastics and glass). Meat and plastic, natural body and industrial material, however, are always in correspondence, as in the work Wuti (Untitled) which he displayed in the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition in 1989.18 He often used repetitive forms, not for the sake of the beauty of the compositional arrangement, but for the intensified contrast between the “look” of others and the “experience” (touching, for instance) by himself. A case in point is the work Object as Living Life or Pinching the Flesh (Nie rou), created from 1997 to 1998. For a period of time, he would pinch a piece
Figure 10.11 Gu Dexin, Untitled, 1989.
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Figure 10.12 Gu Dexin, Pinching the Flesh: Object as Living Life, 1998.
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Figure 10.13 Gu Dexin, Pinching the Flesh: Object as Living Life, detail, 1998.
of pork every day until he had pinched it dry. The kind of unique and strange feelings involved in this action have been shared by all of us, though we might not express them as clearly. Each time he pinched the pork, Gu would take a photo (and not a video recording) of the event. Photography was the only medium that could record a transient moment of the entire process, not unlike the “Amitabha.” The photographs could not encompass the whole process of Gu’s action. We can imagine Gu, a man full of life, sitting there pinching the water and blood out of a dead life form, experiencing the constant contact between life and death. No meaning, whether rooted in boredom, catharsis, nausea, or sexuality, can ever be truly revealed to us. What the viewers got from his exhibition of “pinching flesh” was only the elegance of false pretenses and the ritual scene in a temple-like space. The photos of hands pinching the pork were neatly arranged, like a series of abstract paintings. The pieces of pork, dried by pinching, were laid on a table covered in a red cloth, like the remains of a deceased person waiting for others to pay their last respects. Gu seemed to deliberately create a distance between what the viewers saw and the real “meaning” that he experienced in the process of creating the work, so as to conceal in the unknown world what he alone had experienced. What he had created was only a provocative scene, lending force to the veil of “meaning.”
Figure 10.14 The exhibition of Pinching the Flesh: Object as Living Life, 1998.
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Li Huasheng’s “Line—Diary”
In recent years, Li Huasheng has produced a good deal of abstract painting in ink and wash. Because he is a Chinese painter well versed in traditional literati painting, it is surprising to many that his recent works are similar to the minimalist style of the West. On the surface, Li’s paintings are grids made of ink lines, not much different from the abstract paintings of the West. But there is a distinction both in their spiritual connotations and creative processes. Li lives in a three- to four-hundred-year-old community in Chengdu that has been swallowed up by new cement buildings. For the past few years, he has been engaged in a fight with the government for the right to stay in his current home; the rest of his time has been spent working on abstract paintings. His paintings are representations of his real life, which is repetitive, quiet, and lonely. The plane of the painting is more than just the plane of the canvas itself: it is also the cubic space in which he lives. Other than that, no additional meaning or aesthetic feeling is expressed.
Figure 10.15 Li Huasheng, 2000.3.9, 2000.
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Figure 10.16 Li Huasheng’s home, photographed by the author with his wife Sun Jing standing outside the gate when they visited Li, 2003.
Li draws along hidden lines on the rice paper, sometimes in short bursts but usually in long strokes. Most of the time, the lines pass continuously across the paper from left to right or from top to bottom. Instead of light touches without any control, the lines are “written” out with considerable force focused on the tip of the brush. We cannot understand the lines by Li without first comprehending why the Buddhist priest Hong Yi would spend six minutes writing only one Chinese character. The process of brush movement is very slow because the artist concentrates on his spiritual motion leading the brush, rather than on the stylized, outward appearance of a character or a line. Sometimes, Li would work on the same line many times, so that the ink would soak into the small squares formed by the intersections of different lines, generating an unexpected effect. He also wrote down thickly dotted “seals,” or Chinese characters similar in shape to seals, on hidden squares of the rice paper. These lines, seals, and characters were written down in a slow, concentrated, and scrupulous way, which is like meditation, the everyday homework of Buddhist monks. The content is a diary. On the other hand, these monotonous and “boring” lines replaced the variety and volatility of traditional lines. For Li, a line must be drawn straight and the dot neat, which runs counter to the traditional approaches of “the eighteen types of ink lines” (shiba miao) and various types of ink strokes. Traditional lines, especially those since the Yuan and Ming dynasties, are mostly for expressing temperament and tastes, but Li’s are arranged in an orderly, anonymous manner. They show rationality and order. Some of the spirituality has been solidified in them: a strict control of temperament and a dispelling of one’s expressiveness and personality. These lines do not try to express any elements of representation. Li avoids any expressive words, including adjectives like graceful, desolate, elegant, flavorful, and tonal. Song Tao’s “Transmigration”
As a member of the “alternative generation,” Song Tao has demonstrated different characteristics from those of the previous artists. These new artists are concerned with the playful aspects of language in
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Figure 10.17 Li Huasheng, 1999.5–1999.7, 1999.
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a work, rather than its social meaning. Therefore, their repetition is similar to the rhythm of electronic games, focusing on the even and mechanical aspects of rhythm, not unlike the sound of shooting. As this work is not dramatic and expressive but monotonous and indifferent, it appears more prosaic and innocent. It is not the prosaic and innocent style of the ancients, which tried to express a desolate and bleak feeling, but that of the modern phenomenon of coldbloodedness. We could say that this cold innocence stems from a total indifference toward the “prosaic and innocent.” Song Tao, in his video work It Is a Fine Day; That Explains Why It Does Not Rain, records a very insignificant and even nonsensical matter: he finds a pulling ring from the top of a pop can, then takes it back home and puts it in a wooden box, then puts it back in the street where he originally found it. Although this is not dramatic at all, and too prosaic to have any themes, I smell in it a sense of transmigration and the fatalism of the old Buddhist and Daoist traditions. Perhaps this group of artists, born at the end of the 1970s, was too familiar with the influx of new media into China while they led simple and dull lives, so their careless attitude naturally reveals a sense of fatalism and unfeeling. What I refer to as the “social meaning” is not what Song strives for, because his works are the products of language. Language precedes taste. Another of Song’s works, 49,368 Square Millimeters, shows the process delineating the notion that “the moment something is created, something is lost as well.” It seems to have been a process of transmigration as well. On blueprints for projects with elaborate squares, he used pen ink to cross out some squares while leaving others untouched, so that the black squares (painted) and remaining white squares (untouched) began to form patterns, similar to the mode of drawing geometric abstract paintings. When he had finished his abstract paintings on a blueprint, he started to smear over the blank squares on the painting until they all became black. Ultimately, Song’s was a self-negating process, for each daubing of a square corrected and revised the previous aesthetic judgment. Each daubing was his aesthetic judgment, or the demonstration of his design consciousness, which was gradually negated, becoming the nothingness of the color black. As Song
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put it, “the continuous aesthetic aspirations toward the surface composition result in the disappearance of the carriers of these aesthetic principles.”19 It was a cycle of “from nothingness to something” and “from something to nothingness,” and also a dialectical relationship between positive and negative. After recording this process by copying, Song made it into a book form for others to appreciate. In the meantime, he enlarged his copies and framed them in sixty separate abstract paintings for exhibition. As in Pinching the Flesh by Gu Dexin, recordings were made of the works of art to satisfy viewers’ desire to see, but the recordings are divorced from the immediacy of the artistic process, and as such they become empty shells of meaninglessness, in spite of their painting-like appearance. Many contemporary Chinese artists may have been unconsciously influenced by the philosophy of transmigration. A good example would be Xu Bing’s very early work, his graduation project of 1986, Five Series of Repetitions. This work clearly demonstrated Xu’s significant concern with the process of dematerialization. In Five Series of Repetitions, each series employed the image of a very mundane scene in a farming village (for example, a view of a fishpond, a field of crops, or a vegetable patch). These images were each carved onto a single woodblock. In each series, after carving an image onto a woodblock, Xu would print each newly finished carving onto the same long scroll (see figure 7.10). The final effect was of a single composition forged from an intricate interlinking of discrete images. The work was executed in monochrome, with the tonalities graduating from dark to light, and then from light to dark. The first and last images, in fact, looked like the negative and positive images of a photograph.20 Five Series of Repetitions subverted the traditional concept of printmaking, because the original woodblock no longer existed at the end of the piece’s creation. All that was left was a cycle: it was the first thing and also the last thing. The function of the woodblock as a means of printing and reproduction was erased, and the concept of originality was itself also erased. This demonstrated the concept of transmigration, which also appears in Song Tao’s work. This kind of meditative process and dematerialization can also be found in the average
Figure 10.18 (through page 338) Song Tao, 49,368 Square Millimeters, 2001.
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person’s daily life. During the summer of 2002, in Shenyang, an industrial city in northeast China, I saw many retired older people and laid-off workers writing calligraphy on the smooth surfaces of the sidewalks and plazas, using big “brushes” that they had made themselves. They wrote characters in a fluent and elegant manner that soon vanished, as the “ink” they used was water. The only thing in their minds was meditation and the enjoyment of the writing process, with no motivation to make materialized artwork at all.
Figure 10.19 A lady writing calligraphy on the street in Shengyang, Liaoning province, 2002.
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Fixed Quantity and Infinity: The Fourth Aspect of Maximalism
Quantity and limitlessness, finite and infinite numbers, are mutually transformable and not fixed. In Buddhism, there are concepts of limitlessness that symbolize the Buddha’s power, such as the ten thousand Buddhas, one thousand Buddhas, and the Buddha with one thousand hands and eyes. Perhaps when a number has reached a certain point it can no longer move forward and so is close to limitless, recalling the Chinese laudatory phrases “long life” (wan sui, literally “live ten thousand years”), or “longevity” (wan shou wu jiang, literally “live forever”). It is a unique character trait of the Chinese to link worldly practice and metaphysics—another type of maximalism. The methods and discourse of Chinese maximalism were developed to an extreme visual form in the so-called “red ocean” (hong haiyang) during the Cultural Revolution. As a part of his revolutionary discourse, Mao employed maximalist methods repeatedly in his poems and political slogans. The vision of Mao’s political space must have inevitably influenced contemporary Chinese artists. Gigantic artworks, repetitive forms, and maximal quantities are frequently used by Chinese artists, though their thoughts and forms are not red anymore. For instance, think of Zhu Jinshi’s rice paper installation and Lu Qing’s long scroll painting. Zhu piled up tons of rumpled rice paper in his work, and Lu painted squares on the same scroll for a year.
Figure 10.20 Zhu Jinshi, Uncertain, 1996.
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The traditional resources of maximalism have also been employed by contemporary Chinese artists, either consciously or unconsciously. Repetition and fixed quantities are frequently found in their art. One example is Qiu Zhijie’s Copying the “Orchid Pavilion Preface” 1,000 Times. Whether it is exactly one thousand times is as unimportant as whether there are really one thousand Buddha sculptures in the Thousand Buddha Grotto in the Dunhuang Caves. What counts is that it is a large number. Although maximalism denotes a general idea of great quantity, it actually treats specific quantity with great indifference. It strives for maximal and implies infinity. This phenomenon can also be found in daily life, for example in the Itinerant Peddler done by the Southern Song Dynasty artist Li Song. In the painting, the peddler’s load is marked with the words yibaijian “one hundred commodities” to show the great quantity of his wares. In A Dream Chronicle of Dong Jing (Dongji menghua lu), written by Meng Yuanlao of the Southern Song Dynasty, more than one thousand kinds of commodities seen by the author at various shops were recorded in a flat and monotonous way. No descriptions were offered; only the names of the items were presented to the reader as a list. No wonder there were many monumental documentary works of art born in the same era, such as The Spring Festival along the River and Landscape of Daunting Dimension.
Figure 10.21 Lu Qing, Untitled, 2000.
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Figure 10.22 Zhang Zeduan, The Spring Festival along the River, Song Dynasty.
Artist Hong Hao created a modern version of A Dream Chronicle of Dong Jing using digital technology. Using a scanner, he entered into his computer images of all the articles that he used every day: toothpaste, Coca-Cola cans, bread, oil colors, cigarettes, pencils, his computer mouse, etc. Then he arranged these articles into a series of abstract images using computer design technology. From a distance, the images are obscure, with only arranged patterns remaining. Approached closely, they look like large numbers of thickly dotted and surrealistically painted articles. Hong called them “my possessions.” He was divorced from the feeling of using them when he scanned, stored, retrieved, and arranged these articles. These useful things had become an ocean of aesthetic objects, the constituent elements of which became the color fields and lines of artistic works. Breaking away from their utilitarian aspects (names, materials, functions, credit, values), each object was reduced to one of the undifferentiated hundreds or thousands of articles: the victims of maximalism. To the Chinese, the process of copying, manipulating, describing,
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and counting these things is a kind of pleasure, a comprehension of the way of truth, or wudao. This great relish of quantities and numbers can also be regarded as an expression of making a fetish of things. Chinese people are known for their fetishism. For example, Mi Fei addressed the Taihu Rocks as “brother rock,” and people in the Ming and Qing dynasties had a great fondness for things to do with the serving of tea. Some contemporary artists also take great pleasure in numbers. A case in point is Yang Zhenzhong’s video work 922 Grains of Rice. The plot is extremely simple: a hen and a cock are pecking the rice with the voiceover of a man and a woman counting for the chickens (“One, two, three …”) until all the grains of rice are completely eaten. The mechanical counting and the movements of the chickens provide the audience with some expectation of the ultimate numbers. As a chance number, 922 implies the absurd extension of numbers, not the choice of the artist. Accompanied by the happy rhythm of the pecking of the chickens, the artist shares the pleasure of the counting.
Figure 10.23 Hong Hao, My Things No. 1-5, 2001–2003.
Figure 10.24 Hong Hao, My Things No. 1-5, detail, 2001–2003.
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Figure 10.25 Yang Zhenzhong, stills from 922 Grains of Rice, 2000.
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The Fixed Quantity in Geng Jianyi and Zhang Peili’s “Gray Humor”
Counting, however, can turn out to be extremely boring, particularly when applied to making artwork. At extremes, it leads neither to maximalism nor to infinity. On the contrary, it may lead to cynicism and nihilism. From the middle of the 1980s, Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi, two leaders of the ’80s avantgarde art group called Chishe (Pool Society) of Hangzhou, had already started applying the fixedquantity method in their creation of “gray humor” art. I use the term “gray humor” to define Zhang and Geng’s art because they both commonly chose gray colors, or white-and-black color combinations, to make artworks that looked muted, insensitive, and cynical. Regardless of the specific significance of using different media, the general idea of the group of artists led by Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi can be described in two major points. First, they opposed the idea that art was intended to bring happiness and pleasure to the public; instead, they tried to find methods (such as painting styles, materials, and rules) to make the audience unhappy. Second, they recognized that most people, accustomed to being emotionless, preferred a life without vitality. Therefore, the Pool Society imitated insensitive reality with numb image types while using long, numbered lists of boring rules to stimulate the people through agitation. (See chapter 7.) In that period, Zhang Peili painted a series of oil paintings called X? Series (X? xilie). The major images of the paintings were clinical chairs and gloves. He had written down the steps and orders he would strictly follow before he started to paint. He duplicated photographs of the chairs and surgical gloves in about one hundred works. The paintings were large oils in which many numbers marked on the canvas point to different parts of the gloves, suggesting a set of paint-by-numbers instructions (see figure 7.27). Zhang published these instructions in an article that also laid down strict conditions for the display and viewing of these artworks. Giving even harsher and more rigid rules governing the exhibition and viewing of artworks, Zhang created a project called Art Plan #2 (Yishujihua erhao) in 1987. The plan was a twenty-eight-page list of instructions,
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with eight parts describing different rules, for a total of 270 items. In each part of the plan, Zhang specified in minute and tedious detail the conditions under which people should be admitted to the art exhibition. Unsurprisingly, the plan has never become a reality. Zhang and Geng continued making gray humor works in the 1990s. Their focus, however, changed from an elite desire to shock people to a hermetic sentiment of isolation from the outside world. From criticizing (or enlightening) the multitude’s lack of emotion in the 1980s, they moved to mocking the excitement promoted by the institutionalized marketing system in the art world of the 1990s. The even more cynical approach of Geng Jianyi might be indicated in a statement he wrote in 1993: “I used to think that a completed artwork was like the completed act of taking a piss: when it’s finished it’s finished—you don’t go carrying the contents of the chamber pot around with you. But now things are different, you can’t just take a piss whenever you like anymore and be done with it. There are special bathrooms, like museums and art galleries that want to expose you in your most basic acts. And doesn’t everybody now accept this situation as normal? The people going in for a look are all very interested, comparing who is big and who is small. How is it that I was born in this age of the institution? And how is it that I want to be proclaimed the champ? It’s really a shame.”21 His new extreme direction can be found in his work of the past decade. In his photographic work The Bright Side and Dark Side of a Face, he measured the light and dark sides of faces of several people, and then used corresponding squares to identify the areas he calculated. Numbers, although not used in the images, served as the foundation of the artwork. This kind of measurement materialized the form of human portraits, just as we measure the area of a rock or weigh a piece of butter. In the same vein, the blackand-white faces are deprived of the gray part, which can best express the subtle feelings of a person. The audience is not reminded of anything by looking at the face; instead it’s as though they are presented with an anatomical diagram. This approach of obstruction has been used by Geng since the 1980s. He likes to create an image to stop the expectation of meaning
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Figure 10.26 Geng Jianyi, The Bright Side and Dark Side of a Face, 2000.
or the visual satisfaction of the viewers. For Geng, the most important thing is what kind of pitfall to set up, which needs specific language for each different artistic backdrop. For example, The Bright Side and Dark Side of a Face uses area as a language to oppose the vogue of “emotional overflow.” The same principle was used by Geng in another work titled How Could a “ ” Character Be Enough? This title will at once remind Chinese viewers of certain moods, such as the mood expressed in Li Qingzhao’s poem “The Word ‘Worry’ Is Not Enough.” However, what Geng did was extremely boring: he inked out all the
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words in a book except the word “of.” Afterward, he made a new book with pieces of white paper, based on the size of the first one. He put the word “of ” in the new book in its original places, except that the words had been changed into squares. This silly, repetitious, and meaningless labor was a satirical attack on the inflammatory writings that use a great number of the word “of ” or de to artificialize “feelings” and overinterpret “meanings” confined only within the scale of art objects themselves, without truly judging the reality and social context.
Figure 10.27 Geng Jianyi, How Could a “ “ Character Be Enough?, 1997–1998.
Figure 10.28 Geng Jianyi, How Could a “ “ Character Be Enough?, 1997–1998.
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Maximalism—A Metropolitan Chan Buddhism? The Fifth Aspect of Maximalism
From what we have illustrated above, we know that maximalism has a close affinity with Buddhism, because the principle of the separation of work and its meaning is very similar to the “not writing words” doctrine of the Chan sect. Maximalism stipulates that meaning lies only in the personal experience, which is the same as the intuitive mysticism of meditation. It also believes that truth is nihilistic and meaning is groundless. This is exactly the ontological nihilism of Southern Chan Buddhism that says “Bodhi trees have no substantial bodies, and a dressing table is immaterial.” Maximalism believes that the meaning of truth is always changeable, and that it is not grandiose but similar to daily life. Therefore, maximalists regard their creation as repetitious labor and production, which embraces the real meanings involved. This is very similar to the ideas of the Confucian school of idealist philosophy of the Southern Song Dynasty put forward by Zhu Xi after he had absorbed the theory of Buddhism; he said: “Sweeping and cleaning the courtyard all contain truth” (sasao yingdui jieshi ge li). Often, the theory of maximalism is in agreement with the life principle of the artist. It advocates a peaceful frame of mind, lack of desire, and it aspires to an almost trivial life and a tranquil nature. It urges people to avoid boastful and inflammatory tendencies and extravagance. It is true that many artists of this school keep themselves away from the metropolitan mainstream and what is in vogue, and are quietly engaged in their own labor. As a mental place, therefore, maximalism can be recognized as a way in which individuals can peacefully coexist with common urban life, with no anxiety in isolation or self-exile. For example, Geng Jianyi, Gu Dexin, and Zhu Xiaohe of the old generation do not hanker after fame and fortune, instead leading ascetic lives. The Representation of Chan Thinking in Lei Hong’s Drawing
Still, the artists of maximalism are seriously concerned with the integrity of artistic creativity and human daily life. They believe that art is not a vehicle to express something, but rather a part of life. It is not
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that they deliberately try to reach into the realm of truth by making their art into meditation, but that the “truth” or “Chan Buddhist significance” (chanyi) is reflected in their works in a natural way as the works are bounded with their daily life. This is especially shown in Lei Hong’s works. Lei graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art, so painting is only his sideline, but I think his paintings really manifest his religious aspirations. He has drawn thousands of pencil sketches, which, being composed of dots, lines, and squares, exhibit characteristics similar to some abstract paintings of the West. However, in his works it is very hard to identify any of the rational structural elements present in most Western abstract paintings. Instead, his works reveal a sense of life and the spirit of humanism, for those signs of dots and lines are not created out of concepts but of imagery. In a sense they are like Chinese traditional ink paintings, which never carried abstraction to an extreme point of conceptuality. Looking at Lei Hong’s drawings, one might be reminded of a line of wild geese, people chanting on a returning fishing boat at dusk, or lonely smoke in the great desert. The interrelation between parts, the direction of movement, and the intensity of the signs in Lei’s work seem to suggest a narrative, revealing the process of imaginary creative vision while also expressing the feelings of a single person at a certain moment. Lei’s perseverance is closely related to his personal experiences. He was mistakenly diagnosed with cancer in 1993, which dealt him a heavy blow, pushing him into nihilism and forging his determination to explore extreme forms of consciousness. In the dead of night, for nights on end, he would devote himself to working on sketches that were extremely simple and orderly but filled with much of his energy and excitement. We can see in his works how his impulses and passion are controlled and regulated through rational forms. This passion stems from his sudden grasp of a “momentary eternity,” and “it is a completeness, a transcendence, and it entails entering into a religious state to have been able to express it.”22 He was often compelled to sleep during the day due to extreme fatigue. This reminds me of Malevich’s suprematism, in which he imbued his black and red squares with his contemplation of the universe and mankind.
Figure 10.29 Lei Hong, Absolution Series, 2001–2002.
However, Lei’s simple and metaphysical paintings are more like the personal writing of a deep meditation, and as such are a different metaphysical operation from that of Zhu Xiaohe. Unlike Malevich, who transforms an ultimate ideal into a stable and single abstract form, Lei seeks an ever-changing momentary eternity. This eternity is a highly personal experience, not related to any given principle or theory. That is why he likes the repetitive approach of traditional art, because repetition enables him to endlessly catch a fleeting eternity. As a result, Lei’s spiritual representation is separated, fragmentary, chainlike, and repetitive. One cannot appreciate his constantly presented but never fixed spirit unless one has gone over the complete set of his works. Zhang Yu’s Fingerprints
Zhang Yu is another example of this metropolitan Chan meditation. Zhang began his experimental ink painting in the late 1980s. His background is quite similar to that of Li Huasheng, for both Zhang and Li converted to avant-garde ink painting from the
Maximalism
traditional literati style. Zhang Yu has been involved in the experimental ink movement (shiyan shuimo) as a major founder and organizer since the early 1990s. This movement can be regarded as a continuity of the “universal current” ink group of the ’85 Movement represented by Gu Wenda, Ren Jian, and others discussed in chapter 5. Both of the ink movements pursued idealism by finding a balance between the contemplative practice of traditional literati ink painting and contemporary meditation. The difference between the two avant-garde inks, however, is that the meditation of the 1980s avant-garde ink sought a universal cultural sublime corresponding with the particular noncommercial artistic environment, while the 1990s experimental ink took a low-key attitude concentrating on personal meditation in response to the materialized metropolitan surroundings. Many artists from apartment art and maximalism have been involved in kinds of daily material-touch activity. Zhang’s fingerprinting is one of these. In the early 1990s, Zhang Yu abandoned the pursuit by many modern Chinese ink painters of a “renaissance of brush and ink” (bimo fuxing),
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a modern dream that attempted to modernize traditional painting, in particular the literati selfexpressive style of the late dynasties, although Zhang came from this tradition in his early training. This dream has made a bimo myth that has trapped the minds of contemporary ink painters, for they have paid great attention to the transmutation of traditional literati painting with newly discovered, unique brushstrokes and ink wash techniques: what many scholars have termed the xin wenrenhua (new literati painting) of the twentieth century. From the point of view of this bimo myth, Zhang Yu’s work may lack brush value, because he avoids attracting the viewer by leaving any stylish personal brushstroke (cun) on paper. On the contrary, he always paints his strokes in similar shape and same size, or simply repeatedly presses his finger on rice paper. It took Zhang Yu more than ten years to create his Divine Light (Lingguang) painting series, starting in the mid-1980s. The ultimate goal of the series was to construct a symbol, a sign, a mystery image of the primeval chaos and its divine light, rather than to engage in self-expression through the intimate, sensitive brushstroke. The universe his paintings touch and the technique Zhang employs, however, are deeply involved with Oriental philosophical sentiment. The universe is the origin of the world, and the numberless dots indicate Zhang’s personal experience in configuring the symbol. Therefore, it is a balance as well as a unification between the world presented and the person presenting. His recent Fingerprint Series (Zhiyin xilie) moves far beyond self-expression with its extreme inclination toward anti-brushwork, while the atmosphere of primeval chaos from the Divine Light still remains but with less symbolic touch and compositional end. Zhang began his Fingerprint Series as early as 1991 while he was still making Divine Light. One may easily find connections between these early fingerprint paintings and the Divine Light series for their similarities in composition. Since 2003, Zhang has completely shifted his interest from Divine Light to the Fingerprint Series. The focus of the latter is no longer a unified symbolic sphere, rather randomness of fingerprints. Since antiquity, a fingerprint has been a form of personal identification as well as a contractual
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confirmation. The unique pattern of a fingerprint is considered a materialization of an individual identity. In Zhang Yu’s painting, the fingerprint functions as a brushstroke, collectively forming a long scroll that takes him months to make. Zhang does not attempt to involve the beholder in either purely “seeing” the object or abstractly “thinking” about the composition of the work. One may feel touched by the touch of the finger when one experiences the tens of thousands of finger pressings. Every finger trace is transforming to another without a clear boundary. They are identical in physical appearance, and at the same time they are unique in meditative context. All in all, we can say that maximalism is another “meditative” artistic phenomenon in the wake of the rationalist painting of the 1980s. We might say that these artists all belong to the category of meditative artistic practice because they all advocate going beyond reality, putting emphasis on conception and methodology, opposing self-expression, and fighting against simple and inflammatory self-expression. They are all elite artists. Nonetheless, unlike rationalist painting which aims at enlightening the masses, and thus elevates such spiritual sentiments as sublimity, transcendence, and edification, maximalism tries to separate from, avoid, and even cut itself off from the external world in order to gain access to meditative personal truths. It is thus an ivory tower artistic modality, a newly developing phenomenon in the contemporary Chinese art world. You can say that it is a silent, low-key attack on the corruption of market forces and their distortions of avant-garde art and the vulgar numbness of the masses, or an attitude of resistance to authority. No matter how we try to define its social significance, maximalism has never attempted to jump into the discursive system of social critique. Its main concern is about the artists themselves, living in a rapidly changing society. Its discourse is an alternative that aims neither for any “meaning” nor for a formalist object itself; maximalism seeks its own method and language. It does not aim at any metaphysical thinking itself, but turns daily life and art simple and tranquil, thus metaphysical; it is an allegory for the illusion of “meditative presence” which I define as yi pai.
Figure 10.30
Figure 10.31
Zhang Yu, Divine Light series, no. 47, 1996.
Zhang Yu, from the Fingerprint Series, 1997.
Figure 10.32 Zhang Yu, from the Fingerprint Series, 2004.
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11 Conclusion
I have drawn a picture of the historical logic of the Chinese total modernity project and the cultural avant-garde, from the synthetic desire (zhongxi hebi) in the early-twentieth-century avant-garde, to the political qualities of the “art for art’s sake” mentality in the amateur avant-garde in the post-Cultural Revolution period, to the anticonceptual attitude in Chinese “idea art” (guannian), as well as to the meditative practice (rather than formalistic and material concerns) in apartment art and maximalism. This whole picture, however, does not amount to merely addressing a phenomenological difference between Chinese modern art history and that of the West, nor do I attempt to deny the profound influence of Western modern civilization on Chinese art. What I specifically seek to address is a different mentality and approach to modernity in twentiethcentury Chinese art, which has been shaped by, or has responded to, an inner cultural logic unique to the particular historical context of twentiethcentury Chinese history. In this context, Western modernism and postmodernism have become two of the major reference points and resources for the Chinese cultural avant-garde as they generated a synthetic modernity while incorporating tradition. Nonetheless, as discussed above, conventional Western representational art, in particular the realistic style, has also become one of the major models for Chinese conservative, academic, as well as corrupted (either ideologically or commercially) avant-garde art. This realistic style may also be considered as a parallel model of modernity in the Chinese context. However, it has been generated by a philistine sociological view imbued with pragmatism on an ideological level which benefited Mao’s propaganda art project, then morphed into contemporary
academic art, and colored, as well, the short-lived projects of political pop and cynical realism. One of the major functions of the Chinese avantgarde, therefore, is to formulate a critique of the two forms of kitsch (Mao’s kitsch and avant-garde kitsch), and this critique is similar to one Clement Greenberg indicated was present in the Western avant-garde half a century ago. The readers of this book may find that the amateur avant-garde in the post-Cultural Revolution period, the ’85 Movement in the 1980s, and apartment art and maximalism in the 1990s have taken this critical responsibility seriously. Meanwhile, the artists of the Chinese avant-garde also committed themselves to accomplishing a total modern cultural enlightenment (wenhua yishi in Chinese, meaning priority of cultural consciousness) through artmaking, an enlightenment that is different from that of Western modernization, which many Western scholars (such as Max Weber) have well defined as including the autonomy of morality, science, and art.1 The practice of the early-twentieth-century Chinese avant-garde initiated, and the ’85 Movement then reinitiated, this commitment to cultural modernity. It is a synthetic modernity with no splits between art, politics, and morality. It takes into consideration the Western model of modern enlightenment on the one hand, and modifies it by incorporating traditional Chinese synthetic models on the other. This is what the Chinese call the synthesis of China and the West (zhongxi hebi). The approach of zhongxi hebi, however, has been qualitatively and specifically differentiated in different periods. The realist model of Chinese kitsch and the modernist model of the cultural avant-garde are both derived from the same philosophical thread of Western modernity, including a dichotomous
relationship between aesthetic modernity and social modernity.2 In the beginning, however, the Chinese cultural avant-garde claimed that a combination of Western modernism and Chinese tradition would transcend both Western modernism and Chinese tradition from a methodological point of view, in terms of both the creation of art and a theoretical narrative. One may list a number of examples of this synthetic outlook in the approach of the Chinese avant-garde artists: for instance, Huang Yongping’s Chan-Dada theory, and his “nothingness” approach; Gu Wenda’s pseudo-characters as nonsensical narrative and ideology; Wu Shanzhuan’s “red humor”; Xu Bing’s “meaningless meaning” from his Book from the Sky; the metaphors of north land, yellow land, and south land applied by the Northern Art Group and the Southwest Art Group; the meditative function of grids, dots, and tracing in maximalism; the synthesis of family life, surroundings, and art materials (rather than pure dematerialization) in apartment art, and so on. They all have pursued a peculiar methodology merging art, life, and society in the name of a total modernity project. But what is the theoretical ground that has driven the Chinese avant-garde to a different, synthetic theory from its Western counterparts; and what is its inner logic? Put the other way around, can we continue to apply Western modernism or postmodernism as a playground of influences to interpret twentiethcentury Chinese art without considering the different social context, the specificity of twentiethcentury Chinese historical conditions, and China’s longstanding ties to traditional cultural forms? If we cannot, then what integrative theory might be applied to the future study of Chinese contemporary art? Recently, I published a theoretical work titled Yi Pai: A Synthetic Theory against Representation, in which I investigate and critique Western theories of classicism, modernism, and postmodernism from a broad view of comparative studies.3 I argue that no theory from Western art history can be defined without reference to the notion of representation, which regards art as a substitute for human reality, concepts, and logic, namely a mimetic substitute for truth and reality. It is this notion of representation’s relationship to “truth” that has set the foundation for realism
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and conceptual art as well as abstract art, three vital domains in Western modern art. Therefore, modernism, postmodernism, the contemporary avant-garde, the historical avant-garde, and the neo-avant-garde, all these categories of Western art are, in fact, in pursuit of a real, authentic, original representation of the truth, either from the outside world or from inner thoughts, even though they may claim a deconstructive approach against conventional visual representation. It is just another extreme gesture in the pursuit of mimicry of truth. But how one can fit this theory of representation to those cultural areas where there has never been an idea of a substitute for “truth,” in an absolutist sense? For an equivalent example, the real or truth in Chinese is zhen. In ancient China, however, almost all philosophers who discussed goodness (shan) and beauty (mei) in artistic expression never touched upon the issue of “the truth” (zhen), because they had no desire to let art mimic the real. In Chinese aesthetics, art never bears the responsibility to substitute for visual reality or true thought-logic. Ancient Chinese theory always respects yi, or “something that comes from your mind,” which in the Chinese context always merges image, concept, and scene. This synthetic resonance tendency has been embodied in the theory of Chinese literati landscape design, calligraphy, and poetry. These never bear the responsibility of mimetic representation, nor do they pursue an extreme expression or conception in the sense of Western aestheticism. The consequences of the philosophy of mimicry of truth and the theory of representation in Western art lead visual art, in particular contemporary art, toward viewing certain portions of the world in terms of fragmentation, transience, and extremity as well as isolation. This theory has departed far from a synthetic outlook on humanity. With few exceptions, most philosophers and theorists of the twentieth century, worldwide, have fallen into this fragmentary, deconstructive framework, exemplified by the linguistic theories of constructivism, Marxism, and Heidegger’s existentialism. The domains of realism, abstraction, and conception all address their autonomy from one another, assuming their respective positions to be extremely distant. Accordingly, Western art has
transitioned from a tactile perspective in Egyptian art to single-vanishing-point perspective which generated the classical realist style in the Roman and Renaissance periods (see Alois Riegl). This threedimensional illusion met the modern revolution under the slogan “painting is painting itself,” and it saw a parallel liquidation of literary narrative. Modernists believed that their methods directly represented the “idea,” the supremacy of which has been underscored in Western metaphysics since Plato, and therefore modernist flatness became a teleological priority and was advanced over (perspectival) three-dimensional illusions. This debate, however, merely reveals the dichotomous model of representation of an absolute truth throughout modernism’s history. Conceptual art (as well as postmodernism in general) began to challenge this model by getting rid of dimensional issues and challenging the materialization of art, by insisting that any objects, even readymades, could be applied directly to substitute for truth, as long as they bore a conceptual logic (or an embedded social critique). Although Western conceptual art attempted to transcend the dichotomy of modernism, its revolutionary concept of what art is is still compartmentalized in an object world. Although it has broadened the manner of art expression, which was only confined within the issue of flatness versus three dimensions in classical and modern arenas, and it reached the realm of free choice of objects (readymade, earthwork, human body, even words, writing, and voice), the fundamental idea of what art is still remains the same, namely, that art functions as something that should substitute for something else (e.g., the truth or the real). Therefore, the revolution of postmodernism only minutely advanced over the classical and modernist representational worldview in a broader context of subject matter. This broader view was caused, however, by the disillusionment of postmodernists who knew that representation would never be able to reflect something we can see or think about, such as a text, as the old semioticians and modernists believed. Instead, for conceptual art, or the neoavant-garde, representation itself was framed by an institutional (as well as a linguistic) power that we are not able to discover through texts (or artworks) per se. Therefore, representation is a discourse of power,
Conclusion
Abstraction: presenting the idea Conception: Inquiring whtat is art Likeness: imitating visual reality All three are separated to extremity
Figure 11.1 Three domains from Western modern art.
Figure 11.2 The principle of modernism.
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rather than a language that arbitrarily presents a truth, as Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Derrida pointed out. It seems, however, that there is still a fundamental connection between the two, as figure 11.2 shows. In figure 11.3, I illustrate the cycle of the dichotomy theory from modernism to postmodernism. In figure 11.4, I make a comparison between Saussure’s structural semiotics and poststructuralism. The upper diagram here is from Saussure’s book; the bottom one I made myself to indicate the poststructuralist theory of the relation between text and context. Although poststructuralism is more advanced in terms of a mutual relation between text and context, it seems to me that it is still trapped by the conventional dichotomy principle. The postmodernist theories initiated by the French School have inspired me to think about the methodological issues concerning the interpretation of Chinese contemporary art. The sophisticated poststructural theory of the relationship between text and context have also stimulated my interest in transforming Chinese traditional concepts in art into contemporary theory, which I have now named yi pai. This is perhaps also a project of the synthesis between East and West, or zhongxi hebi on the theoretical side, which one may consider an off-time attempt to establish a new grand theory (since the grand master narratives of the West, as postmodernists have noted, were not only an incomplete project but a failed one). I constructed my yi pai theory with reference to an ancient Chinese theory of li, shi, and xing (principle, concept, and appearance) from the ninth-century Tang Dynasty. Yi pai literally means “school of resonance/synthesis.” Yi pai is formulated in a pluralized structure rather than a dichotomous one. Furthermore, yi pai theory demonstrates a worldview continuous from the ancient period, which valued synthesis rather than fragmentation. From a methodological perspective, yi pai favors yizai yanwai, or “the truth being always beyond language,” rather than a dogmatic or logical reflection of truth or reality. However, Chinese ancient aesthetics, while admitting that yi, or “something that comes from your mind,” is dissociative and elusive, tries to overcome this defect of images or xiang: as Confucius
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Figure 11.3 Content versus form: the dichotomy model of Western modernism.
Figure 11.4 Dichotomy models of iconology and semiotics.
said, “to establish the images in order to capture the fullness of the concepts in those minds” (lixiang yi jinyi). Therefore, traditional Chinese aesthetics has high expectations of images or xiang, because xiang, which is an empirical category, is neither a subject nor an object. Instead it includes observers, the thing being observed, and the moment and contextual process of observation. The level of complexity inherent to the concept of xiang is of an entirely different order from mimesis in the West. One thing we should keep in mind is that the “image” in early Chinese aesthetics, for example in the Yi jing or Book of Changes, should not be confused with the illusionistic “likeness” that
Western representation speaks about today, because the “likeness” is no more than a state of the “image.” The “image,” in traditional aesthetics, can be divided into three categories, as the Yi jing indicates. The first category pertains to the hexagram, or the guaxiang. This dates back to the Great Treatise of the Yi jing, which is very similar to what Chinese find in Western modernist painting, known as abstraction (chouxiang), which literally means “to summarize images into a principle.”4 The second meaning of the “image” has to do with the calligraphic connection with statements, or ci. Its function is to append statements to give the fullness of what was expressed through both words and images, namely, to express in calligraphic writing whatever is inexpressible in speech.5 The third is “what you are looking at,” or the actual images. In this context, “image” means “appearance of things.” To summarize, there are three categories of “images” in the Yi jing: hexagrams, calligraphy, and appearance. If yi is a realm of the mind wandering, then xiang is the embodiment and resemblance of yi. The embodiment includes three types, hexagrams (guaxiang), calligraphy (zixiang), and appearance (xingxiang). The three types of xiang also have three correspondences in the manner of visualizing yi, described by the Tang Dynasty scholar Zhang Yanyuan as li, shi, and xing. Zhang said, “The concept of art expression (tuzai) contains three topologies. The first is the form of principles: the forms of the hexagrams are such (li). The second is the form of concepts: the study of written characters has to do with this (shi). The third is the form of appearance (xing), and this is paintings.”6 As a matter of fact, principle, concepts, and appearance in traditional Chinese aesthetics correspond to three such concepts in the West, notably abstraction, conception, and realism in modern art. It is easy to understand the correspondence between li and abstraction, shi and conception, and xing and realism. In the process of development of Western modern art, abstraction, conceptualism, and representation are mutually exclusive, as we saw in figure 11.1. However, li, shi, and xing, in ancient Chinese theory, are always in an inclusive, relational, overlapping, and mutually resonant state. This synthesis was embodied by poetry, calligraphy, and literati painting throughout
Conclusion
the ancient period, and is the foundation of Chinese traditional art. This synthetic theory corresponds to traditional philosophy and the three domains of li, shi, and xing as the visualization of the philosophy. Therefore, the synthesis and resonance of these three domains represents a different epistemological approach, as well as a major difference in visual art between the East and West. It has nothing to do with a framework that is based on representation of the real or absolute truth; rather it is an embodiment of the relational structure between man, things, and the world. It is this different mentality and visual philosophy that has framed the idea of total modernity and the cultural avant-garde in Chinese modern and contemporary art. In total modernity theory there is no desire for the autonomy of art, or a split between morality and science. In visual art, the synthetic theory of yi pai indicates that the principle (li), the concept (shi), and the appearance (xing) are always in a relationship of cross-fertilization, overlap, and correspondence. The May Fourth generation still kept the synthetic mentality, even when Western modern civilization impacted Chinese culture in the twentieth century until Mao’s revolutionary art become the dominant force. Hu Shi’s famous saying, the synthesis
Figure 11.5 Three domains from ancient Chinese art theory.
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of “particular time, specific space, and my choice,” perhaps is a perfect footnote for the ancient theory of li, shi, and xing.7 Even in Mao’s mind, art was no more than a part of revolutionary life, although art is a political ideological instrument. It was during Mao’s social realist period that the ancient synthesis theory was almost abandoned. And the generation of the ’85 Movement had to revitalize the early dream, which seems to remain a challenge today. This is the historical reality that makes me think about the possibility of finding a new methodology. This desire came early during my Chinese graduate school period, when I wrote my thesis titled “Zhao Mengfu’s Archaism and the Transition between Song and Yuan Painting Aesthetics.” It was a historical study on the transition from the art of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) to the literati painting of the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368). In that period, I carried a strong intention to get away from Mao’s representational theory (art is a reflection of social life), because in it art practice and history became a mirror of the social background. In this philistine method, it was easy to insert a social meaning and subjective interpretation into a ready subject matter of artworks. Instead, I wanted to put art practice into a relationship between political life, poetry, calligraphy, and the scholars’ mentality in general, to pinpoint the significant changes in the early Yuan Dynasty within the movement of literati painting led by Zhao Mengfu and others.8 Interestingly enough, while young Chinese art historians attempted to break down Mao’s old Marxist social theory after the Cultural Revolution, in the West postmodernism arose and rebelled against modernism. One of the instruments employed was neo-Marxist theory as adopted by some new art historians, including T. J. Clark and Thomas Crow. This dislocation in the different cultural arenas seems to have existed forever. In the 1990s, when globalization and urbanization become the dominant influences on art-making in the West, China’s apartment art and maximalism rejected the economic and ideological framework in place by making objects that were unsellable and unexhibitable, except in a familial space. In this case, both materials and symbolic meaning are isolated from the outside forces of globalization and the
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market. It was a kind of meditation involving labor that was time-consuming as well as difficult, because it touched upon personal things. From a material point of view, one might like to define the artworks of the Chinese avant-garde as either minimalist or Western neo-avant-garde, in an anticapitalist institutional context. Further study, however, reveals that the Chinese contemporary approach is totally different from either Western modernism or globalized postmodernism. As I discussed in the last two chapters, maximalism and apartment art exist as a search for infinite, undelineated space. The maximalists have no interest in the wholeness of their compositions, which emphasize the difference between center and edge. They do not create independent or self-sufficient paintings. On the contrary, they aim to express their spatial concepts through unfinished forms imbued with the concept of continuation to the infinite. Their “wholeness” is realized in a series of partially completed works. According to the maximalists, there is no fixed, isolated, or unchangeable space limited by a frame. Space is a kind of relationship, always moving and metamorphosing. It is a kind of yi pai spatial theory. Therefore, the “space” in maximalism is neither a composition portraying the spiritual idealism aimed at by the early modernists, nor is it the closed, unchangeable, theatrical space of the minimalists, nor something as symbolic as a gesture in the dichotomy of individual versus global, as the popular theory of globalization describes. On the contrary, maximalism seeks to express the infinity of visual space, not its wholeness. It is anti-wholeness and anti-theatricality. Furthermore, the space of Chinese abstract art goes far beyond its physical presence; it consists of both interior and exterior space. One cannot truly understand the “space” inside the artwork without a thorough comprehension of the conceptual space of the artist in the relation between interior and external world. Accordingly, we can compare early Western abstract art (e.g., Mondrian) and later abstract art (e.g., minimalism) with Chinese yi pai (e.g., maximalism) using the diagrams in figures 11.6– 11.9. It may help to consult the images for a better understanding about the dislocation of the spatial approaches that reveal a different worldview.
Figure 11.6 Individual encoding mode of Western early modernism.
Figure 11.7 Theatricality—late modern: minimalist model (1).
Figure 11.8 Theatricality—late modern: minimalist model (2).
Figure 11.9 Maximalist and apartment art model.
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One of the functions of yi pai theory is to discover and describe this dislocation. In postmodernism, there are many theorists who have discussed the concept of ambiguity that inspired me to develop yi pai theory. However, yi pai is by no means a return to dichotomous ambiguity, such as subject versus object, text versus context, signifier versus signified, etc.; rather, yi pai attempts to go beyond dichotomies to establish a structure consisting of triple, even multiple layers, as an interpretive model of dislocation. The synthesis of yi pai theory is thus by no means a simple additive method, like a + b + c … ; rather it is a main method of interpretation of both art and history by discussing the overlapping portions (not two-dimensional, as the current diagrams limit, but multidimensional in the form of perpetual motion) between li, shi, and xing, namely the mixture, approach, and departure portions between abstraction, conceptualism, and realism in the well-known terms of Western art. Although today, in this period of so-called contemporaneity with the digital revolution in visual culture, the three categories may rarely be applied in criticism, the presumption of the three categories, and of the dichotomy of representational theory, may still provide a framework for criticism and art historical research, in particular when some critics look at a non-Western contemporary art phenomenon. The discussion of art and history in this book attempts to demonstrate these presuppositions by unveiling certain misunderstandings of Chinese contemporary art. For instance, the idea of total modernity and the synthetic cultural framework of the avant-garde in both the early twentieth century and in the 1980s; the tie between the avant-garde and Mao’s revolution; the political existence of the “art for art’s sake” faction in avant-garde art during and after the Cultural Revolution; the art with a modernist appearance that reveals a nonevolutionary spatial consciousness (but instead a meditative spatial consciousness) in the artworks of maximalism and apartment art, and so on. All this dislocation, from the point of view of Western modern art, needs to be understood with a specific framework of history, as well as a synthetic overview. Some of the chapters in this book come from writings I published in one form or another years ago.
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Figure 11.10 Yi pai : dislocation is formed within synthesis.
Although they do not, perhaps, fit my new direction in theoretical work, yi pai theory, very integratively, they might send certain messages about yi pai theory I have just introduced above. Today when globalization and urbanization continually swallow indigenous heritage with various fragmented theories, such as deconstruction and appropriation in the domains of art-making, cultural originality has been thrown away, while the coherent and harmonious traditional philosophy of human beings has been replaced by “transience” and “fragmentation.” Is it possible, however, to reestablish a synthetic theory against the fashionable interpretation of globalization and urbanization that favors the “fragmentation” of the human mind and the “consumption of personality” in visual art criticism? Especially when China has now also joined the world community of industrialization, commercialism, pragmatism, and instrumental rationalization, while facing the problem of modernity and the avantgarde similar to what the West faced during its own industrialization in the period of romanticism, roughly in the mid-nineteenth century? Because of this, when I wrote Yi Pai and this book, I by no means meant to establish a particular art form, movement, or style in either the material or historical sense, but rather I intended to enforce the true humanistic spirit in art with reference to the specificity of Chinese culture and history in the twentieth century.
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Glossary of Key Chinese Terms
Glossary of Key Chinese Terms in the Order in Which They Appear in the Text
Introduction modern
xiandai
modern fashion
xiandai shishang
modern metropolis
xiandai dushi
modern style
xiandai fengmao
modern design
xiandai sheji
contemporaneity
dangdaixing
spirit of an epoch
shidai jingshen
modernity
xiandaixing
cross the river by jumping from stone to stone on the riverbed
mozhe shitou guohe
painting society
huahui
art group
qunti
artists’ village
huajiacun
art district
yishuqu
apartment art
gongyu yishu
proposal art
fangan yishu
experimental art
pretty woman
fenzi
post-Cultural Revolution era
houwenge
idea art
guannian yishu
universal current
yuzhouliu
New Mark Group
Xin kedu
Analysis Group
Jiexi xiaozu
Chapter 1 cultural revolution
wenhua geming
cultural movement
wenhua yundong
debates about the cultural confrontation between East and West
dongxi wenhua lunzhan
cultural debates before and after the May Fourth Movement
wusi qianhou de donxi wenhua lunzhan
culture
wenhua
cultural consciousness
wenhua yishi
self-conscious cultural ventures
wenhua zijue
shiyan yishu
avant-garde
qianwei, xianfeng
synthesis of East and West
zhongxi hebi
kitsch
yansu
avant-garde literature
xianfeng wenxue
alleys
hutong
avant-garde fine art
qianwei yishu
humanism
renben
modern
xiandai
new woman
xinnüxing
new wave
xinchao
city image project
chengshi xingxiang gongchen
novelty
xin
revolutionary
geming
revolution in literature
wenxue geming
Three Prominences
San Tu Chu
Four Masters traditional ink painting
Si Wang
High, Great, and Full
Gao Da Quan
Red, Light, Bright
Hong Guang Liang
art for people’s life
yishu wei rensheng yishu geming
eight models of Beijing operas
bage xiandai yangban xi
revolution in art revolutionary art
geming de yishu
making art for the enlightenment of the masses
yishu hua dazhong
popular art for and by the masses
Chapter 2 Seek truth from facts
Shishi qiushi
dazhonghua yishu
Practice is the only measure of truth
Shijian shi jinayan zhenli de weiyi biaozhun
literature and culture serve the universal law
wen yi zai dao
Anti–Spiritual Pollution Campaign
fan jingshen wuran
Storm Society
Juelanshe
’85 avant-garde movement
85 qianwei yundong
Street Art
Shizi jietou yishu
post-Cultural Revolution period (1976 to 1984)
hou wenge
Rickshaw Driver’s School
Renlichefu pai humanism
rendaozhuyi
proletarian avant-garde
wuchanjieji xianfengdui “self-organized” art salons
huahui
petit bourgeois
xiao zichan jieji scar art
shanghen huihua
Mao’s 1942 Great Rectification in Yan’an
Yan’an zhengfeng yundong rustic realism
xiangtu xieshi zhuyi
red pop
hongse bopu
Gang of Four
Sirenbang
fighting crews (Red Guard)
zhandoudui
searching for roots
xungen
vanguard of the proletarian class
wuchan jieji xianfengdui
April Photo Society
Siyue yinghui
fanyinglun
Hangzhou National Academy of Art
Hangzhou yizhuan
representational doctrine New Year calendar movement
xinnianhua yundong
new academicism
xinxueyuan zhuyi
Beijing Oil Study Society “love-to-see-and-hear” style
xiwen lejian
Beijing youhua yanjiuhui disanci zhanlian
academic socialist realism
xueyuan shehuizhuyi xianshizhuyi
technical experimentation
chunhua yuyan
oil painting research groups
youhua yanjiu hui
liquidating seventeen years (1949–1966)
pipan shiqinian “Twelve-Person Show”
Shierren huazhan
Ministry of Bel-esprit and Beauty
Caizi jiaren bu
“New Spring Painting” exhibition
Xinchun huahui zhanlan
Leading Group of the Cultural Revolution
Wenhua geming lingdao xiaozu
Sixth National Art Exhibition
Diliujie quanguo meishu zuopin zhanlan
Paradise or Pure Land in Buddhist cosmology
Jing Tu Bian
No Name group
Wuming huahui
Stars group
Xingxing huahui
364
Glossary of Key Chinese Terms
Yuyuantan Lake School of painting
Yuyuantan huapai
art for the sake of selfexpression
ziwobiaoxian de yishu
self-expression
ziwobiaoxian
misty poetry
menglong shi
new literati painting
xinwenrenhua
Sunday Painting Society
Xingqitian huahui
Rhinoceros Painting Society
Xiniu huahui
Red, Yellow, Blue Painting Society
Hong, huang, lan huahui
Black-White Creative Society
Heibai chuangzaoshe
Jinling school of painting
Jinling huapai
conceptual or anti-art groups
fanyishu
intellectual aristocrats
guizu qixi
“Shenzhen Zero Exhibition”
Shenzhen lingzhan
Southern Artists Salon
Nanfang yishujia shalong
Chapter 3 freedom of expression
chuangzuo ziyou
debate about science and metaphysics
kexuan dalunzhan
scholarly painting
xuezhe huihua
Art Trends
Meishu sichao
Fine Arts in China
Zhongguo meishubao Meishu
“First Experimental Exhibition”
Diyici shiyanzhan
Art Monthly National Oil Painting Conference
Quanguo youhua taolunhui
Three Step Studio
Sanbu huashi
Guoji yishu shuzhan
“Festival of Youth Art in Hubei”
Hubei qingnian meishu jie
“Exhibition of International Art Publications”
Zero Art Group
Ling yishu jituan
“Young Art of Progressive China” (exhibition)
Qianjin zhong de Zhongguo qingnian meishu zuopin zhanlan
“Fourth National Artists Conference”
Disijie quanguo meishujia daibiao huiyi
Northern Art Group
Beifangqunti
Leishi Painting Society
Leishi huahui
rationalist painting
lixing huihua
Wild Grass Painting Society
Yecao huahui
Pool Society
Chishe
Huaihua Ink Painting Group
Huaihua guohua qunti
gray humor
huise youmo ’86 zuihou zhanlan yi hao
Road Bridge Woodcut Exhibition
Lijiaoqiao banhuazhan
“’86 Last Exhibition, No. 1” Storm Society
Juelanshe
Luoyang xiandai yishuchang
M Art Group
M qunti
“Louyang Modern Art Field” (exhibition)
“Convex/Concave”
Aotuzhan
field
chang
Beijing Youth Painting Society
Beijing qingnian huahui
art field
yishuchang
traditional nationalist spirit
minzu jingshen
Beijing Communist Youth Community
Gongqingtuan Beijingshi weiyuanhui
Shandong Youth Association
Shandong qingnian lianhehui
New Barbarianism
Xin yexing zhuyi
Black Union of Southwest Lu
Luxinan heise lianmeng
“To Bring into the Light”
Shai taiyang Mount Huang (Anhui province)
Huangshan
Glossary of Key Chinese Terms
365
“National Oil Painting Conference”
Quanguo youhua taolunhui
Rice and Sheep Painting Society
Miyang huahui
wild freedom
yexing de ziyou
Southwest Art Group
Xinan yishu qunti
China Anonymous Painting Society
Zhongguo wumingshi huahui
“Exhibition of Vitality”
Shengsheng huazhan
Qingqing Society
Qingqing she
“Innovative Painting Exhibition”
Chuxin huazhan
“Research, Discovery, Expression”
Tansuo, faxian, biaoxian
group
qunti
cultural fever (mid-1980s)
wenhuare
head (of a committee)
fuzeren
curator
cehuaren
black market
heishi
Chapter 5
Chapter 4
spirit of humanism
renwen jingshen
humanism and rationalization
renwen lixing
humanism
rendaozhuyi
searching for roots
xungen
rationalism
lixingzhuyi
moral functionalism
daode gongneng zhuyi
Northern Art Group
Beifang qunti
Pool Society
Chishe
Red Journey
Hongselü
current of life painting
shengming zhiliu
’85 art movement
Bawu meishu yundong
Southwest Art Group
Xinan yishu qunti
“Zhuhai ’85 New Wave Large-Scale Slide Exhibition”
Zhuhai bawu meishu sichao daxing huandengzhan
“Jiangsu Art Week Modern Art Festival”
Jiangsu qingnian yishu zhou: Daxing yishuzhan
grand soul
dalinghun
Chinese Modern Art Research Society
Zhongguo xiandaiyishu yanjiuhui
the approach is in between likeness and unlikeness
miao zai si yu busi zhijian
“Academic Exchange Exhibition for Nationwide Young Artists”
Gedi qingnian meishujia xueshu jiaoliuzhan
representation of reality
fanying xianshi tushi bufen
Ten Great Constructions
Shida jianzhu
“did not distinguish between rocks and earth” (Mi Fu)
Great Hall of the People
Renmin dahuitang
wild soil
retu
Museum of Chinese History
Zhongguo lishi bowuguan
nature consciousness
ziran yishi
“China/Avant-Garde” exhibition
Zhongguo xiandai yishuzhan
modern myth
xiandai shenhua
xiandai
liquidate the enthusiasm of humanism
qingli renwen reqing
modern avant-garde
qianwei, xianfeng
strategy
youxi
Four Fundamental Principles
Sixiang jiben yuanze
behavior art (performance art)
xingwei yishu
366
Glossary of Key Chinese Terms
Chapter 6 idea
guannian
“You will be fined for crossing the street during a red light”
chuang hongdeng fakuan
revolution in ideas
guannian gengxin
“Today no water”
jintian tingshui
revolution of ideas imbued with activism
guannian gengxin yu xingwei zhuyi
red humor
hongse youmo
guannian yishu
Local Residential Committee
Jumin weiyuan hui
idea art concept art
gainian yishu
red
hong
nothingness
wu
empty
kui kong
Yi jing (Book of Changes)
yijing
red
chi
philosophy of nothingness
wuzhong shengyou
empty
chi
cultural activities
wenhua huodong
language
wenzi
sunbathing
shaitaiyang
meaningless
quikong
Southern Artists Salon
Nanfang yishujia shalong
red gangsters
chi fei
contemporaneity
dangdai zhuyi
red-ification
chi hua
environmental art
huanjing yishu
big business
dashengyi
village cultural projects
xiangcun wenhua huodong
business
shengyi
M Art Group
M yishu qunti
business art
shengyi yishu
business icon
shengyi ouxiang
emptiness
xu
nothingness
wu
universal current
yuzhouliu
new scholarly painting
xin xuezhe huihua
Chapter 7 New Mark Group
Xin kedu
indicatives
zhishi
“six functions” theory of Chinese writing
liu shu
pictographs
xiangxing
tactile art
chujue yishu
ideographics
xingsheng
Pool Society
Chishe
phonetic-semantic compounds; ideograms
huiyi
“’85 New Space”
Bawu xinkongjian
Youth Creative Society
Qinnian chuangzao she
mutual explanatories; deflectives
zhuanzhu gray humor
huise youmo
phonetic loans; borrowed characters
jiajie
nearsightedness in the audience
jinshiyan de guanzhong
“nobody can interpret them”
wurenshuodo
red ocean (Cultural Revolution)
hong haiyang
Glossary of Key Chinese Terms
Chapter 8 political pop
zhengzhi bopu
modern myth
xiandai shenhua
367
liquidate humanist sentiment
qingli renwen reqing
metaphysical executions (Zhu Xiaohe)
xingershang yunzuo
pleasant to hear and to look at
xiwen lejian
preconceived motif
zhuti xian xing
pure language
chunhua yuyian
cynical realism
wanshi xianshi zhuyi mingling of “you” and “I”
New Generation
Xinsheng dai
nizhong youwo, wozhong youni
there is painting in poetry just as there is poetry in painting
shizhong youhua, huazhong youshi
viewing poetry versus reading painting
guanshi duhua
interpretive and complex writing
jieshixing fuza shuxie
metaphysical operations
xingershang yunzuo
strategic overwriting
guodu shuxie
Chapter 9 apartment art
gongyu yishu
substance
cailiao
apartment
gongyu
painting society
huahui
projects on paper
fang an
artists’ village
yishucun
suburbs in the outer rings of Beijing
chengxiang jiehe bu
the eighteen types of ink lines
shiba miao
jobless migrants
mangliu
long life (literally, “live ten thousand years”)
wan sui
Summer Palace
Yuanmingyuan
wan shou wu jiang
painters’ village
huajiacun
longevity (literally, “live forever”)
behavior art (performance art)
xingwei yishu
the way of contemplation of truth
wudao
missing person notices
xunren qishi
sasao yingdui jieshi ge li
March 5 in the Chinese lunar calendar (literally, “awakening of insects”)
jingzhe
“Sweeping and cleaning the courtyard all contain truth” (Zhu Xi) Chan Buddhist significance
chanyi
Wooden Stool Group
Bandeng xiaozu
Chapter 10
Chapter 11 synthetic desire
zhongxi hebi
idea art
guannian
abstract art
chouxiang yishu
balancing likeness and unlikeness
si yu busi zhijian
priority of cultural conscious
wenhua zijue
transcendence
chaoyue
synthesis of China and the West
zhongxi hebi
Chinese maximalism
Zhongguo jiduo zhuyi
real or truth
zhen
an account book of streaming water
liushui zhang
good
shan
rascal (lowbrow) literature
pizi wenxue
beauty
mei
368
Glossary of Key Chinese Terms
something that comes from your mind
yi
school of resonance/ synthesis
yi pai
truth being always beyond language
yizai yanwai
images
xiang
hexagram
guaxiang
abstraction (literally, to summarize images into a principle)
chouxiang
statements
ci
calligraphy
zixiang
appearance
xingxiang
art expression
tuzai
study of written characters
shi
Glossary of Key Chinese Terms
369
370
Notes
Notes
Introduction 1. Gao Minglu, “Toward a Transnational Modernity: An Overview of Inside Out: New Chinese Art,” in Gao Minglu, ed., Inside Out: Chinese New Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 16. 2. Habermas has shown that the term “modern,” which first emerged in fifth-century Rome and was closely associated with the origin and traditions of Christianity, again and again expresses the consciousness of an epoch that relates itself to the past of antiquity in order to view itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new, from the past to the future. Continuing this in more secular directions, the Western modern period began in the period of the Renaissance. See Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity—An Incomplete Project,” in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic (Seattle: Bay Press 1983), 3–4. 3. An early example: Bonnie McDougall, in her influential 1971 book The Introduction of Western Literary Theories into Modern China, first describes the major trends of the Chinese literary world of the 1920s and 1930s, and discusses how the work of Chinese writers, such as Guo Moruo, Yu Dafu, Shen Yanbing, and others, was influenced by Western avant-garde movements, including expressionism, futurism, and even Dadaism. She states that the Chinese New Cultural Movement of the 1920s and 1930s was essentially not an avant-garde movement because it did not reject tradition, and that Chinese littérateurs and artists were too socialized, too politicized, and did not promote the idea and practice of the autonomy of art, which was the major characteristic of the Western avant-garde in its original meaning. McDougall’s argument also represents the thinking of a number of other Western scholars and critics about Chinese avant-garde art. See Bonnie S. McDougall, The Introduction of Western Literary Theories into Modern China (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1971), 196–213. 4. See Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism Avant-garde Decadence Kitsch Postmodernism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987); and Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990). 5. Cultural modernization is also called rationalization by Max Weber, who characterized cultural modernity as the
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
separation of the substantive reason expressed in religion and metaphysics into three autonomous spheres: science, morality, and art. See Peter Bürger, “Literary Institution and Modernization,” in The Decline of Modernism, trans. Nicholas Walker (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992). The earliest text on the topic of the postmodernist phenomenon in Chinese architecture of the 1980s is Wang Mingxian’s “Postmodernism in China,” the second part of chapter 6 in Gao Minglu, Zhou Yan, Wang Xiaojian, Shu Qun, Wang Mingxian, and Tong Dian, Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986 [History of contemporary Chinese art 1985–1986] (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 1991), 455–466. The book was republished in a revised version as The ’85 Movement: The Enlightenment of the Chinese AvantGarde (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), in which Wang Mingxian’s “Postmodernism in China” appears as the second part of chapter 7, pp. 431–437. See Gao Minglu, “Material Utopia in Contemporary Chinese Architecture and Urban Design,” Time+Architecture, January 2005, 5–10. Cai Yuanpei, “Yi meishu dai zongjiao shuo” [To replace religion with fine art], Shenzhou Xuehui (a lecture at the Holy Land Study Society in Beijing), Xin qingnian [New youth] 3, no. 6 (August 1917). Hu Shi, “Pragmatism,” Xin qingnian 6, no. 4 (1917), reprinted in Hu Shi Wenji [Essays by Hu Shi], ed. Ouyang Zhesheng (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1988), 211– 212. See Gao Minglu, “Inside and Outside the Political Walls: The Living Space of the Chinese Avant-Garde,” in Gao Minglu, The Wall: Reshaping Chinese Contemporary Art (Beijing: China Millennium Museum of Art; New York: Albright Knox Gallery of Art, 2005), 63–83. See Gao Minglu, The No Name: A History of a Self-Exiled Avant-Garde (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2007). See The Stars: 10 Years (Hong Kong: Hanart TZ Gallery, 1989). For more on the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, see Gao Minglu, “Post-Utopian Avant-Garde Art in China,” in Aleš Erjavec, ed., Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art under Late Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 247–283; and Gao Minglu, “Fengkuangde yijiubajiu: Zhongguo xiandai
13. 14. 15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
372
yishuzhan shimo” [Great social happening: China/AvantGarde exhibition], Qingxiang [Tendency quarterly], no. 12 (1999), 43–76. Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 25. Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde. Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, lii. In an endnote to his “Introduction,” Bürger quotes Burkhardt Lindner’s comment: “In its intention to sublate art in the praxis of life, the avant-garde can thus be understood as the most radical and consistent attempt to maintain the universal claim of autonomous art vis-à-vis all other social spheres and to give it practical meaning. In that case, the attempt to liquidate art as an institution does not appear as a break with the ideology of the period of autonomy but as a reversal phenomenon on the identical ideological level” (Bürger, Theory of the AvantGarde, 106). Poggioli, The Theory of The Avant-Garde, 25–26. Peter G. Christensen summarizes Poggioli’s four characteristics of the avant-garde from the original text as following: (1) activism: self-promotion of a movement out of “sheer joy of dynamism, a taste for action, a sportive enthusiasm, and the emotional fascination of adventure”; (2) antagonism: a spirit of hostility toward something already in existence; (3) nihilism: a kind of “transcendental antagonism” which “finds joy not merely in the celebration of movement, but even more in the act of beating down barriers, seizing obstacles, destroying whatever stance in its way,” (4) agonism: a kind of “transcendental activism” in which a movement “welcomes and accepts its own self-ruin as an obscure or unknown sacrifice to the success of future movements.” See Peter G. Christensen, “The Relationship of Decadence to the AvantGarde as Seen by Poggioli, Bürger, and Calinescu,” in Papers on Language and Literature 22, no. 2 (Spring 1986), 209. I first used the term “apartment art” in “From Elite to Small Man,” in Gao, Inside Out, 161–169, not knowing that the term had already been applied to aspects of sots art and other conceptual art of the 1970s and 1980s in the Soviet Union. In China, I believe, people were not aware of this Soviet avant-garde phenomenon until the late 1990s because of the lack of knowledge about Soviet art of that period. I discuss Chinese apartment art extensively in Gao, The Wall, 63–83. See also Feng Boyi, “From ‘Underground’ to ‘Above Ground’: On Chinese Avant-Garde Art since the 1990s,” Yishu pinglun [Art criticism], no. 7 (2004), 43–47, which discusses exhibitions that occurred in alternative spaces, some of which were orchestrated by independent curators, and many of which were accompanied by publications that circulated unofficially. By no means do I simplify the sentence. Stella articulated it many times, moving in a more sophisticated direction. To me, however, it is always confined in its degree of representation. The exhibition was “Chinese Maximalism,” co-organized by the University of Buffalo Art Galleries and the China Millennium Art Museum in Beijing. It took place at the China Millennium Art Museum in July 2003 and traveled to the University at Buffalo Art Galleries in October 2003. See Gao Minglu, Chinese Maximalism (Chongqing: Chongqing People’s Press, 2003).
Notes
20. The exhibition titled “The Retrospective Exhibition of the No Name Group,” which I curated, took place in the Deshan Cultural Center and the T.R.A. Gallery in Beijing in September 2006. It and traveled to the Guangdong Art Museum in February 2007 and to the Shanghai Zhengda Art Museum in June 2007. See Gao, The No Name. 21. The first conference, titled “Chinese Abstract Art,” took place in the One Moon Gallery in Beijing on December 3, 2006, along with an exhibition “Visible/Invisible”; a catalogue with the same title was published in December 2006 by Timezone8 and One Moon Gallery. The second conference, titled “Aesthetic Narratives: Chinese Abstract Art,” took place in the Today Art Museum on December 25, 2006. A collection of the contributed texts was published in 2007: Gao Minglu, ed., Aesthetic Narratives and Abstract Art (Sichuan Art Publishing House, 2007). The third, titled “Modernity and Abstraction,” took place in the Central Academy of Fine Art on July 2 and 3, 2007. A book that includes the panel discussion and selected articles on the topic was later published: Gao Minglu and Zhao Xun, eds., Modernity and Abstraction, Art Studies 1 (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2009). 22. See “Reconstructing Historical Memory: The Great Wall in Twentieth Century Chinese Art,” in Gao, The Wall, 189– 210. 23. He Chengyao, “Lift the Cover from Your Head,” Yishu 2, no. 3 (Fall/September 2003), 22. 24. He Chengyao, interviewed by Gao Minglu, Beijing, June 30, 2001. 25. Zhan Wang, artist’s statement on Fixing the Golden Tooth for the Great Wall, 1997, quoted from Gao, The Wall, 202. 26. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 1. 27. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). Despite the author’s conservative, America-centric stance, we should acknowledge his anticipation of the facts and support the view that the best response is to learn how to coexist in a complex, multipolar, and diverse world. 28. Jim Yardley, “In a Tidal Wave, China’s Masses Pour from Farm to City,” New York Times, September 12, 2004, B6. 29. Song Dong, interviewed by Gao Minglu, October 4, 2002, in Gao Minglu and Wang Mingxian, Harvest: Contemporary Art Exhibition (Hong Kong: Architecture Post Publishing House, 2002), 25–26. 30. Zhang Dali, interviewed by Gao Minglu, Beijing, December 26, 2004. See also Zhang Dali, “Statement,” in the exhibition catalogue Zhang Dali Headlines (London: Chinese Contemporary Gallery, 2004). 31. He Yunchang, interviewed by Gao Minglu, July 20, 2004. 32. Gao Minglu, Chinese Maximalism (Chongqing: Chongqing People’s Press, 2003). 33. Yve-Alain Bois, “Material Utopia,” Art in America (April 1988), 161–180. 34. Exhibited in the show “Harvest,” held in the Chinese National Agricultural Museum in Beijing in 2002. See Huang Yongping, “About Made in China,” in Gao and Wang, Harvest: Contemporary Art Exhibition, 36.
35. For a detailed discussion of this topic see “The Marginalized ‘Modern Man’ and Chinese Women’s Art,” in Gao, The Wall, 249–263. 36. For more discussion of Chinese “new women’s” art in general, see Jia Fangzhou, “Chinese Women Artists of the 20th Century,” in Half of the Sky (Bonn: Publishing House Frauen Museum, 1998); Liao Wen, Feminism as a Method—Feminist Art (Jilin Fine Arts Publishing House, 1999); Li Shi and Tao Yongbai, The Lost History: The History of Chinese Female Painting (Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, 2000); and Xu Hong, Female: Thoughts on Fine Arts (Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2003). 37. Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1983). 38. Fei Dawei, “Fang Gu Wenda” [To transcend the East and West: An interview with Gu Wenda], Meishu [Art monthly], no. 7 (July 1987), 12–16. 39. Zhongguo meishubao, no. 18 (May 2, 1988), 1. 40. The opinion most strongly opposed to Meng Luding’s essay was Li Xianting’s article “Shidai qidai zhe dalinghun de jiqing” [The age expects enthusiasm with a grand soul], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 37 (September 12, 1988), 1. Li insisted that art should serve politics and reality; he disregarded academicism.
Chapter 1 1. I discussed this link between the ’85 Movement and the May Fourth Movement in my article “The ’85 Art Movement,” originally a lecture presented at the National Oil Painting Conference held in April of 1986 in Beijing, later published in Meishujia tongxun [Artists’ news], no. 3 (1986), 15–23. 2. About the debates, see Chen Song, ed., Wusi qianhou de donxi wenhua wenti lunzhan lunwenxuan [Selected works on the question of the cultural debates before and after the May Fourth Movement] (Beijing: Chinese Social Science Press, 1985). 3. For a classic reference for this literature movement, see Bonnie S. McDougall, The Introduction of Western Literary Theories into Modern China (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1971). 4. A volume edited by Gan Yang collected some articles on this topic from important scholars of the 1980s in different disciplines. See Gan Yang, ed., Zhougguo dangdai wenhua yishi [Chinese contemporary cultural consciousness] (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1989). The book included my article “Zhongguo dangdai meishu yundong” [Contemporary art movement in China]. The same book has recently been published in simplified Chinese version with a revised title; see Gan Yang, ed., Bashi niandai de wenhua yishi [The cultural consciousness in the 1980s] (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 2006). 5. I first mentioned the idea of the ’85 Movement as a cultural avant-garde in my essay “The Avant-Garde Mentality in the ’85 Movement” (“Bawu meishu yundong de qianwei yishi”), Lion Art Monthly (Taiwan, November 1995), 16–21. Also see Gao Minglu, “Bawu meishu yundong de wenhua qianwei yishi” [The cultural consciousness of the ’85 Movement], in Gao, Dalu qianwei yishu [The avant-garde from the mainland] (Taibei: Artists Press, 2001), 213–216.
Notes
6. Song Xiaoxia, ed., Reflections: Chinese Modernities as Self-Conscious Cultural Ventures (Zijue yu Zhongguo de xiandaixing) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2006). This volume came out of a conference titled “Modernity and the Transformation of 20th Century Chinese Art” organized by Pan Gongkai, the president of the Central Academy of Fine Art. The conference took place in Hong Kong City University from April 29 to May 1, 2006, with scholars from around the world participating. I contributed an essay to this volume titled “A Total Project: The Logic of Chinese Modernity” (“Zhengyixing, Zhongguo xiandaixing de luoji”), 326–346. 7. The theory of proletarian “continual revolution” (jixu geming) is the theoretical foundation of Mao’s proletarian Cultural Revolution. This theory, however, first appeared in summary form as an editorial essay in the People’s Daily, Red Flag, and Liberation Army Daily on the same day, November 6, 1967, during the second year of the Cultural Revolution. 8. McDougall, The Introduction of Western Literary Theories into Modern China, 196–213. McDougall described some Chinese writers who were influenced by the avant-garde, such as Guo Moruo, Yu Dafu, and Shen Yanbin, but she did not define the Chinese New Literature movement as an avant-garde movement because the individual artists in the movement had very little concern for antitraditional art (or antitraditional literati art in the Chinese context). She also noted that Chinese intellectuals carried the firm tradition of social responsibility and of involvement in the present through social action. Therefore, quite simply, Chinese writers were unable to completely give up tradition. In other words, the Chinese New Literature movement lacked two major characteristics of the original Western meaning of avant-garde: an aesthetic rhetoric of antitradition and the goal of the autonomy of art. McDougall’s critique, however, did serve to showcase Chinese avant-garde literature, especially literature that contained certain contradictory elements, such as traditional versus modern or social action versus the autonomy of art. 9. When Saint-Simon first used the term “avant-garde” to define art in the early nineteenth century, the meaning of the term “avant-garde” referred not only to art but also to a progressive social role for the artist. “It is artists who will save you as avant-garde. … What a magnificent destiny for the arts … of exercising a positive power over society, a true priestly function, and of marching forcefully in the vanguard of all the intellectual faculties.” Henri de Saint-Simon, Opinions littéraires, philosophiques et industrielles (Paris: Galerie de Bossange père, 1825), quoted in Richard V. West, “The Avant-Garde: Marching in the Vanguard of Progress,” in S. A. Mansbach, ed., Standing in the Tempest: Painters of the Hungarian Avant-Garde, 1908–1930 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 11. 10. In the classical Chinese it indicates a courageous and powerful military official who is the leader of a vanguard troop. When a battle started, he would rush ahead to the enemy first, leading his soldiers. In the popular novels of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), xianfeng was very frequently used to indicate this kind of military official. Some sentences even became employed as popular idioms. For example,
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referring to a militarily weak kingdom, one might say “Shu zhong wu da jiang, Liao hua zuo xian feng” (Because there are no generals powerful enough in Shu, the Shu are forced to take Liao Hua in the position of the commander of the vanguard). This comes from the Ming Dynasty novel Sanguo Yanyi [Romance of Three Kingdoms] by Luo Guanzhong (circa 1300–1400), set in the wars during the period of Three Kingdoms (220–280 AD). See Leo Ou-fan Lee, “In Search of Modernity: Some Reflections on a New Mode of Consciousness in TwentiethCentury Chinese History and Literature,” in Paul A. Cohen and Merle Goldman, eds., Ideas across Cultures: Essays in Honor of Benjamin Schwartz (Cambridge, MA: Harvard East Asian Monograph, 1990), 109–135. In the essay, Lee describes the meaning of xin (new) and the relationship between “new” and “modern” in a specific Chinese cultural and historical context. See also Lee, “Literary Trends 1: The Quest for Modernity 1895–1927,” in The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 12: 451–504. For an excellent English-language source, see Colin Mackerras, “Chinese Language Periodicals on Literature and the Arts,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 6 (July 1981), 219–229. Dongfang zazhi [Eastern magazine], Publishing House of Commerce, 1921–1923. Whistler, Degas, and Picasso were discussed in Shijie meishu [World art], February 1979. Meishu [Art monthly] has introduced modern art since April 1979. For instance, the May 1979 issue of Meishu introduced Auguste Rodin and his artworks. Guowai meishu ziliao [Overseas art collections], founded in January 1979, mainly introduced famous artworks from classicism to the latest style, e.g., essays and pictures about abstract art; its articles, even including comparative studies of Chinese and overseas art, in various forms such as interviews, notes on art, criticism, and so on, consisted of original material written by overseas artists and critics. The name of the journal was changed to Meishu yicong [Collections of art] in January 1980. In January and February of 1986, there were featured articles on Warhol and Miró, also in Shijie meishu. See Young-Tsu Wong, “Revisionism Reconsidered: Kang Youwei and the Reform Movement of 1898,” Journal of Asian Studies 51 (August 1992), 522–526. Chen Duxiu, Meishu geming [Revolution in art] 6, no. l (January 1918), 85–86. Liang Qichao was a Confucian scholar who was one of the advisors of the Guangxu Emperor during the Hundred Days Reform in 1898. After the failure of the reform, he traveled in Europe and wrote up his notes, titled “Ouzhou xinxing lu” [Travels in eleven European countries]; see Shishi xinbao [News and events newspaper], March 3–March 25, 1920. See Gao Minglu, “Lun Mao Zedong de dazhongyishu moshi” [The discourse of Mao Zedong’s mass art], Ershiyi shiji [Twenty-first century], no. 20 (December 1993), 61–73. The essay describes a transition of the Chinese avant-garde when some avant-garde artists went to Yan’an in 1942, from their project of enlightenment to engaging a program of revolutionary mass art advocated by Mao.
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22. 23. 24.
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27. 28.
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Following Mao’s principles, these elite avant-gardists became ordinary art soldiers and were reeducated by the masses. This was a basic but important change in the identification and position of the avant-garde artists. Cai Yuanpei, “Yi meiyu dai zongjiao shuo” [To replace religion with fine art], Shenzhou Xuehui [lecture at Holy Land Study Society in Beijing], Xin qingnian [New youth] 3, no. 6 (August 1917). Lin Fengmian, “Zhi quanguo yishujie shu” [A Letter to the national art world], Yishu conglun [Collections of art essays], 1927, 20. Both Pang and Ni studied art and criticism in Japan. The major members of the group were Ling Xihung, Zhao Shou, Zhou Duo, Wan Jiyuan, Zhang Xuan, Yang Taiyang, Yang Qiuren, and Li Zhongsheng. Juelan literally means “a great wave,” but “Storm Society” was their choice for an English name. See Ralph Croizier, “Post-Impressionists in Prewar Shanghai: The Juelanshe [Storm Society] and the Fate of Modernism in Republican China,” in John Clark, ed., Modernity in Asian Art (Sydney: Wild Peony Press, 1993). “Juelanshe xuanyan” [Manifesto of the Storm Society], Yishu xunkan [Art weekly] 1, no. 5 (October 1932), 9. Pang Xunqin, Pang Xunqin (Nanjing: Jiangsu Education Publishing House, 2006), 24–25. Lin Fengmian, “Dongfang yishu zhi qiantu” [The future of Eastern and Western art], Dongfang zazhi [Oriental journal] 23, no. 10 (1926). The essay came from one of Mao’s talks. On June 11, 1945, Mao gave a closing speech at the Seventh National Conference of the Communist Party of China in Yan’an. See Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong xuanji (Selected works of Mao Zedong) (Beijing: People’s Press, 1964), 1102. For more on the Woodcut Movement see Shirley Sun, “Lu Xun and the Chinese Woodcut Movement, 1929–1935” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1974). See also Tang Xiaobing, Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Liang Shiqiu lun wenxue [Liang Shiqiu’s collection on literature] (Taibei: Shibao, 1978), 234. Examples of such transitions among the Russian and European avant-garde artists who participated in the October Revolution and in the fascist rebellion are described by Boris Groys in The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), and by Igor Golomstock in Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy, and the People’s Republic of China (London: Collins Harvill, 1990). The motivation of achieving material utopia in the Russian avant-garde was analyzed by Yve-Alain Bois in his essay “El Lissitzky in Material Utopias,” Art in America (June 1991), 98–107. See Gao, “Lun Mao Zedong de dazhongyishu moshi.” Jiang Feng is a good example of a transitional avant-garde artist. He participated in the Woodcut Movement, then went to Yan’an. After the founding of the People’s Republic, he served in several of the most important official positions in the art world, but finally was dismissed and received extremely harsh criticism. See Julia F. Andrews, “Revolutionaries
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32. 33.
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and Academics: Art of the Republican Period,” in Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). “Hence, the proletariat, both through its vanguard the Communist Party and through the many types of proletarian organizations in general, should display the utmost activity and play the leading part in all the work of public education.” Lenin, “On Proletarian Culture,” in his Collected Works, 4th English ed. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 31: 316– 317. Also in Lenin lun wenxue yu yishu [Lenin on literature and art] (Beijing: People’s Literature Press, 1983), 119. See note 9 of this chapter. Before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Mao’s views on art were expressed in the “Talk on Literature and Art at the Symposium in Yan’an” in 1942, known as the Yan’an Talk. Parts of his attitudes toward art and literature could be seen in his articles, such as “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (March 1927), in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), 1: 30–34, one part of which is titled “Vanguards of the Revolution”; and “On New Democracy” (January 1940), in ibid., 339–384, which includes several parts that focus on culture and democracy: “XI. The Culture of New Democracy,” “XII. The Historical Characteristics of China’s Cultural Revolution,” “XIII. The Four Periods,” “XIV. Some Wrong Ideas about the Nature of Culture,” and “XV. National, Scientific and Mass Culture.” After 1949, some of his artistic ideas were published in On the Correct Handling Contradiction among the People (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1966); Speech on the Communist Party of China’s National Propaganda Work Conference (March 12, 1957) (Beijing: People’s Press, 1976); as well as some important editorials such as “Attention Should Be Paid to Criticism of the Film ‘Biography of Wu Xun” (People’s Daily, May 20, 1951, 1). He also wrote some editorials related to literature and art for the People’s Daily. Mao Zedong, “Zai Yan’an wenyi zuotanhui shangde jianghua” [Speech on Literature and Art at the Symposium in Yan’an], in Mao Zedong xuanji (Beijing: People’s Press, 1967), 4: 804–835. The speech include two parts: an Introduction, which was given on May 2, 1945, in Yan’an, and a Conclusion on May 23. Ibid., 822; also in English translation in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 3: 86. In footnote 1 of the speech, the full paragraph from Lenin’s article was quoted. The English translation of Lenin’s paragraph comes from Collected Works of V. I. Lenin, English ed. (Moscow: Friendship Publishing House, 1962), 10: 48–49. According to Zhou Yang, the translator of the book, in 1942 Yan’an Xinhua Shudian published Chernyshevsky’s Shenghuo yu meixue (Life and aesthetic) in Chinese, translated by Zhou from an English journal that was published in Moscow in 1935. A revised Chinese version, now titled Yishu yu xianshi de shenmei guanxi (The aesthetic relation between art and reality), was published in 1957; see “Chuban shuoming” [publisher’s words] to the 1978 reprint (Beijing: People’s Literature Press, 2009). Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, 3: 73.
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38. Mao Zedong, “Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing” (February 8, 1942), in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 3: 63 (original in Mao Zedong xuanji [1967], 3: 798). In this translation, dazhanghua was translated as “mass style,” and xiaozhonghua as “small circles.” 39. Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 3–21. 40. Mussolini did eventually move to adopt futurism as it changed into a more classically inspired idiom. Similarly, many avant-gardists willfully adopted the new classicism early on, as Picasso did in his Iberian period during what Kenneth Silver calls the rappel à l’ordre. See Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914–1925 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). 41. From 1953 to 1956, the government officially sent a total of twenty-six artists to the Soviet Union to study. They were divided into four groups as listed below: In 1953, those who were sent were Qian Shaowu, Li Tianxiang, and Chen Zunshan; in 1954, they were Xiao Feng, Lin Gang, Quan Shanshi, and Zhou Zheng; in 1955, they were Deng Shu, Guo Shaogang, Wang Baokang, Ji Xiaoqiu, Ma Yuanhong, Zhou Benyi, Shao Da Zhen, Xi Jingzhi, Chen Peng, and Luo Gongliu; in 1956, they were Zhang Huaqing, Xu Minghua, Feng Zhen, Li Jun, Dong Zuyi, Tan Yongtai, and Wu Biduan. (Document provided by the former president of the China Academy of Fine Art, artist Xiao Feng, one of those sent to the Soviet Union in 1954.) 42. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 76–86. 43. For more on the Peredvizhniki, see Elizabeth Valkenier, Russian Realist Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 76–97. My argument on this topic was also inspired by Marian Mazzone, “China’s Nationalization of Oil Painting in the 1950s: Searching beyond the Soviet Paradigm” (graduate seminar paper, Modern Chinese Art, Ohio State University). The course was taught by Julia Andrews; I was a guest lecturer. 44. Lu Dingyi, “Baihua qifang, baijia zhengming” [A hundred flowers blossoming, a hundred viewpoints contending], People’s Daily, June 13, 1956. 45. See Hal Foster, The Return of the Real (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
Chapter 2 1. In about 1981, Chinese philosophers began discussing questions of humanism and alienation. At that time, the philosophical debate was initiated by renewed interest in and research on Marx’s “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts” of 1844, in which the young Marx criticized alienation in capitalist society and emphasized humanism as an alternative. This discussion indirectly criticized the suppression of the individual’s value in Mao’s ideology and opposed the division of people into different classes. Although in the West humanism has, since the Renaissance, been differentiated from the modern idea of individualism, in China after the Cultural Revolution the term rendaozhuyi
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(humanism) specifically indicated the search for individual freedom in conjunction with a true vision of mankind and fraternity. This humanism also embraced the desire for individual freedom, after several decades of selfless devotion to Mao’s revolution during which humanism was criticized as being bourgeois. Such criticisms appeared in Mao’s Yan’an Talk of 1942. This use of the term is not meaningful to most Western readers. Here, in order to avoid complication, I will continue to use the term as Chinese artists, writers, and intellectuals do. This theme was also noted by Bill Brugger and David Kelly in “The Importance of Humanism,” in Chinese Marxism in the Post-Mao Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). A full discussion of cynical realism follows in chapter 8. I have previously discussed the scar art phenomenon in Gao Minglu, “Yige chuangzuo shidai de zhongjie—Jiantan di liujie quanguo meizhan” [The end of an era—Discussion of the Sixth National Art Exhibition], Meishu sichao, no. 2 (April 1986), 1–7. It was not until I used the term shanghen huihua (scar painting) in my essay “Jinnian youhua fazhan de liupai” [The major trends of the recent development of oil painting], Meishu, no. 7 (July 1985), 62–66, that the term was employed by the Chinese art world. The origin of the term “scar” originally comes from a short story of the same title. For an early treatment of rustic realism, see Shui Tianzhong, “Guanyu xiangtu xieshi huihua” [Rustic realist painting], Meishu, no. 9 (September 1984), 57. The Red Guard movement went through three phases. The first phase was from May 1966 to August 1966. In this period, a few students from Tsinghua University organized a Hong Weibing (Red Guard) group and immediately expanded it nationwide. Because the Red Guards in this period consisted of children of high-ranking officials, they were called the conservative Red Guard. From August 1966 to July 1967 was the period when Red Guard groups occupied all the schools and universities, with the participation of almost all students. They were all called Red Guard; family background was no longer a qualification for joining. In the second phase, the old, conservative Red Guard, who were intent on protecting the leaders of local government (often their parents), fought with the radical Red Guard called “rebel teams” (zaofan pai). The conflict even led to violent physical battles using any means, including military weapons. From July 1967, Mao sent gongxuandui (workers’ propaganda teams) and junxuandui (army propaganda teams) into all universities and schools to make a dalianhe (great merger) between the conservative and radical Red Guard groups. In late 1968, Mao issued an order to send all Red Guards to the countryside for reeducation by the peasants. Most members of the conservative Red Guard, however, joined the army or got city jobs rather than being sent to remote areas, thanks to their family background. I am writing from my own memory, because I am of the same generation as the scar and rustic painters and was sent to Inner Mongolia in 1968 to herd cattle for five years. The Red Guard movement ended in 1968, but the poetry, literature, and music they made during the reeducation period in the countryside is well known as zhiqing wenxue or “reeducated youths’
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literature.” The melancholy, depressive, and self-expressive style is part of the underground literature of the Cultural Revolution, which initiated the amateur avant-garde poetry and art movement when the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976. Chen Yiming, Liu Yulan, and Li Bin, “Guanyu chuansuo lianhuanhua ‘feng’ de yixie xiangfa” [Some ideas about the illustration of the short story “Maple”], Meishu, no. 1 (January 1980), 34. See Shui, “Guanyu xiangtu xieshi huihua.” An early English-language publication on this topic is Eugene Wang, “Anxiety of Portraiture: Quest for/Questioning Ancestral Icons in Post-Mao China,” in Liu Kang and Xiaobing Tang, eds., Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 243–272. Gao Minglu, Zhou Yan, Wang Xiaojian, Shu Qun, Wang Mingxian, and Tong Dian, Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986 [History of contemporary Chinese art 1985– 1986] (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 1991), 37. I discuss these debates in Gao, “Jinnian youhua fazhan zhong de liupai.” Some literary and filmic phenomena of this kind are discussed in Ellen Widmer and David Der-wei Wang, From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in TwentiethCentury China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 1–14. Ibid. For more on the April Photo Society, see the document Biange zai Zhongguo—1976–1986 [Reform in China 1976–1986] (Zhejiang Photo Press, 2003). A number of historical photographs and dialogues with the author Li Xiaobin are published in the book. See Li Xiaobin, “Recording History with a Camera— Li Xiaobin, Ding Dong (Dialogue),” in Biange zai Zhongguo—1976–1986, 45. The most thorough research of pre-1940s Chinese art education has been published by Mayching Kao, including “China’s Response to the West” and “The Beginning of the Western Style Painting Movement in Relationship to Reforms in Education in Early Twentieth-Century China,” Xinya xueshu jikan [New Asian art bulletin], University of Hong Kong (April 1983), 373–397. See also Julia Andrews, “National Academies before 1949: Lin Fengmian and Xu Beihong,” in Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China 1949–1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 27–33. “Beijing Youhua Yanjiuhui disanci zhanlan xuanyan” [Preface to the third exhibition of the Beijing Oil Study Society], Meishu, no. 2 (February 1981), 36. I summarized the four characteristics in “From Aestheticism to New Academicism,” in Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 534–535. Four characteristics of Xinxueyuan zhuyi: distance from society; pursuing literati and elite taste; searching for individual style and allied techniques; eliminating any conceptual and political subject matter. See ibid., 531–536. Ju Yuan, “Shierren huazhan gaikuang” [A brief report on the “Twelve-Person Show”], January 3, 1987, unpublished.
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23. 24.
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26. 27.
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Some of the works in the show were published in Meishu, no. 5 (May 1979). For more on Beijing’s exhibitions, see Jiang Feng, “Xinzhun huazhan qianyan” [Preface to the “New Spring Painting” exhibition], in Jiang Feng meishu lunji [Jiang Feng’s writings on art] (Beijing: People’s Fine Art Press, 1983), 126–127. Bu Ji, “Shoudu guoji jichang houjilo Bihua luo cheng” [The mural paintings at the Beijing International Airport have been accomplished], Meishu, no. 11 (November 1979), 3–9. I mentioned the aesthetic inclination in the period after the Cultural Revolution in the article “Schools of Oil Painting in Recent Years,” Meishu, no. 7 (July 1985), 62–65; I referred to Yuan Yunsheng’s mural on the airport wall as “in pursuit of the ‘beauty’ of body, color, line, and structure” (63). As the painter once said, “the most exciting thing is the fantastic beauty of the people of Xishuangbanna and the Dai nationality. It is a world of lines that are both varied and simple: there are gentle and flexible lines, straight and beautiful lines, as well as lines that are persistent, romantic, and slow with the airiness of gossamer” (Yuan Yunsheng, “Dream of the Mural,” Meishu yanjiu [Fine arts] 1 [1980]). See Wu Guanzhong, “Guanyu chouxiangmei” [Abstract aesthetic], Meishu, no. 10 (October 1980), 37–39. Another article by Liu Gangji, entitled “Luetan chouxiang” [A brief discussion of abstraction], attempted to give a philosophical interpretation of abstraction. It was published in Meishu, no. 11 (November 1980), 11–13. Wu, “Guanyu chouxiangmei,” 38. The first issue of Yishu (Art), published in January 1983, collected many articles discussing abstract art, including works by Huang Yongping, Qu Leilei, Wang Keping, Huang Rui, and Zhong Ming. This not only sparked controversy in the world of art, but also led to the overhaul of Meishu by the Chinese Artists Association, the official association of art world. He Rong, the chief editor, was dismissed, and Li Xianting, another editor, was also transferred out. See special issue on the Sixth National Art Exhibition, and “Jianxun” [Brief news], Meishu, no. 11 (November 1984), 64. See Gao, “Yige chuangzuo shidai de zhongjie—Jiantan di liujie quanguo meizhan,” 1–7. For Westerners, it is difficult to comprehend that the entire educational system was shut down in the service of the Cultural Revolution. The reopening of these institutions, and the resumption of university training, only took place in 1977. Those who began their university training at that time are often referred to as 77 jie (the class of ’77). Therefore, those who were maturing prior to this date had to be completely autodidactic. This was a dangerous endeavor, as most intellectual subjects were considered illegal and studying them could result in imprisonment or worse. For a complete treatment of the No Name group, including the most authoritative collection of historical documents concerning the artists and their works, see Gao Minglu, ed., The No Name: A History of a Self-Exiled Avant-Garde (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2006). The Xihua School was founded in 1926 as the Beijing Women’s School for Western Painting, an institution that played an important role in the early era of art education
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in China. It was founded by Tang Shouyi (the daughter of Madame Li Zongren), who hired Xiong Shaokun as director. Tang Shouyi is also known as Xiong-Tang Shouyi, as her husband was Xiong Shaokun, who had participated in the Xinhai Revolution and the Northern Expedition before going to study in Japan in 1914. He returned to China in 1918, teaching in the literary institute at Peking University, as an early Chinese educator and expert on the Yi jing. The school was located in Dongcheng district at 4 Wuliang Daren Hutong. In 1946, Xiong Shaokun assumed twin positions as administrator of the school and a member of the national education committee. In April of 1953, the Bureau of Education changed the school’s name to Xihua Fine Arts Extracurricular School. In May of 1954, the school’s founder and headmistress Tang Shouyi fell ill and died, with her husband taking over as replacement headmaster. In the late 1950s, when Zhao Wenliang and others studied at the school, it was located in the Nan Luogu Xiang area of Dongcheng district on Shajing Hutong. On October 15, 1960, management of the school was taken over by the education bureau of Dongcheng district and administered by the Beijing City Fine Arts Company. See Xiong Shaokun, “Self-Criticism from the Cultural Revolution,” June 25, 1969, unpublished, original manuscript collected by Jia Junxue. Gao, The No Name, 17. Ibid.,75. This comes from one of Mao’s poems titled “Militia Women, Inscription on a Photograph, February 1961.” The complete poem reads: “How bright and brave they look, shouldering five-foot rifles. On the parade ground lit up by the first gleams of day. China’s daughters have high-aspiring minds, They love their battle array, not silks and satins.” (“Sashuang yingzi wuchiqiang, Shuguang chuzhao yanbingchang. Zhonghua ernü duo qizhi, buai hongzhuang ai wuzhuang.”) From Mao Tse-tung Poems (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), 38. Liu Xun was a very important official figure in promoting new art. In particular he supported the No Name and the Stars in the later 1970s. He was a rightist, persecuted in 1957 and later imprisoned for nine years from 1967 until 1976, when the Cultural Revolution ended. In April 1979, in his declaration at the “Beijing Oil Painting Seminar” titled “The Banner of Beauty” (published in Meishu, no. 9 [September 1979], 9), Liu proposed that “political democracy is the guarantee of artistic democracy, and the acknowledgment of an artist’s personal style is the dominant chord in sounding the horn of ‘flourishing art’.” Liu Xun died in 2008. On the history of the Stars, see Wang Keping, “Xing Xing wangshi” [A memo of the Stars], originally in The Stars: Ten Years (Hong Kong: Hanart TZ Gallery, 1989), and republished with the author’s revision in Gao Minglu, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 15–37. The event was published in two magazines outside the art world. “‘Star’ Amateur Art Exhibition,” which included reproductions of works by Huang Rui, Ma Desheng, and A Cheng, appeared in China Reconstructs (monthly, in English, June 1980), 54; A Man, “Jietou meizhan de jixu:
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36. 37.
38. 39.
ji dierjie xingxing meizhan” [The continuity of street art: The second Stars exhibition], in Xin guan cha 241, no. 5 (September 10, 1980), 12–13. Li Xianting, “Guanyu Xingxing meizhan” [The Stars talk about their work], Meishu, no. 3 (March 1980), 8–9. This statement appeared on the title page of The Stars: 10 Years. The book is the catalogue of a tenth-anniversary retrospective exhibition as well as a documentary history of the Stars movement. Guan Wei, Guan Naixin, Song Hong, and Long Niannan, interviewed by Gao Minglu, November 13, 2007. This group also perfectly fit the concept of apartment art. I included this group of artists in the first of the series of apartment art exhibitions I curated with Zhang Runjuan and Zhang Min as curatorial assistant, “Apartment Art in China 1970s–1990s (1): The Ecology of Post-Cultural Revolution Frontier Art,” at Shuimu Contemporary Art Space. The catalogue (see chapter 9, note 1) includes four essays: Gao Minglu, “What Is ‘Apartment Art’?”; Zhang Runjuan, “SelfClaimed Avant-Garde between Family and Society”; Zhang Runjuan, “Family Salon: The Shelter of Abstract Art”; and Zhang Min, “Apartment Art in the Courtyards.” All four essays, in particular Zhang Min’s, connect to the activities of the “loose wanderers” group in Beijing.
Chapter 3 1. In the years 1923 and 1924, there was an intense cultural debate called kexuan dalunzhan (debate about science and metaphysics), which covered all three aspects. All of the important essays of the debate were collected in the twovolume Kexue yu renshengguan [Science and worldview] (Shanghai: Yadong Library, 1925). 2. For instance, traditional styles were challenged by younger artists. In July 1985, the art critic Li Xiaoshan published “Zhongguohua daole qungtumolu zhilu” [The end and death of Chinese painting] in Jiangsu huakan [Jiangsu pictorial]. The essay shocked the traditional painting world and inspired fierce debate between members of the old and new generations. The debate continued for about two years. In November 1985, Gu Wenda and other Chinese ink painters participated in the exhibition “Zhongguohua xinzuo yaoqingzhan” (Recent works of traditional Chinese painting) in Wuhan, Hubei province, updating ink painting by synthesizing early traditional Chinese philosophy, such as Daoism and Chan Buddhism (but not later literati painting traditions, which the young generation of ink painters thought were too personal and a form of degraded formalism) and Western art styles such as surrealism. This new form was called xuezhe huihua (scholarly painting). See Gao Minglu, Zhou Yan, Wang Xiaojian, Shu Qun, Wang Mingxian, and Tong Dian, The ’85 Movement: The Enlightenment of the Chinese Avant-Garde (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 131–142. 3. Before Read’s book was published in Chinese, the most influential small book was Shao Dazhen, Xifang xiandai meishu [Western modern art] (Beijing: People’s Art Press, 1979).
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4. For instance, in 1978, a January exhibition of French nineteenth-century rustic landscape painting at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing—a contribution to the emergence of a new form of critical realism later in the year— was the first show of foreign art since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and parallels an influx of publications on Western art. In September 1982, the Beijing public was introduced to modern American art through an exhibition of works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, held at the National Art Museum of China. This was the second major exhibition of foreign art held in China after the Cultural Revolution. 5. Some other discussions of Rauschenberg’s exhibition, including six short essays, were published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 22 (December 21, 1985), 1–2. The No Name group was the first unofficially organized art group established in 1979; most members of the group were self-taught artists from the same generation as the artists of the Stars. See Gao Minglu, The No Name: A History of a Self-Exiled Avant-Garde (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2006). 6. For the details and numbers, see “Zhongguo xiandaimeishu yundong zhi jingguan” [Overview of Chinese contemporary art movements], in Gao Minglu, Zhou Yan, Wang Xiaojian, Shu Qun, Wang Mingxian, and Tong Dian, Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986 [History of contemporary Chinese art 1985–1986] (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 1991), 606–626; or see the updated version of this book, Gao et al., The ’85 Movement: The Enlightenment of the Chinese Avant-Garde, 443–457. 7. For instance, I worked at Meishu from 1984 to 1990, and I also worked for Zhongguo meishubao (a weekly art newspaper) as a guest editor. Figure 3.4 is the front page of the second issue of Zhongguo meishubao, containing my essay “New Generation, New Idea.” Li Xianting, one of the most influential critics of the Chinese avant-garde, was an editor of Meishubao from 1985 to 1990. Peng De and Pi Daojian, both active critics from Hubei province, were the founders of Meishu sichao. Li Luming, a critic and artist from Hunan province, founded Huajia. 8. See Gao Minglu, “Bawu meishu yundong” [The ’85 art movement], Meishujia tongxun [Artists’ news], no. 3 (June 1986), 15–23. In it I discuss the connection between the ’85 Movement and the May Fourth Movement in terms of the discourse of the Enlightenment. The National Conference on Oil Painting was held in Beijing between April 14 and 17, and representatives of provincial artists’ associations and important oil painters from across the nation participated. Meanwhile, younger critics such as myself and Zhu Qingsheng, as well as several representatives of avant-garde groups (such as Zhang Peili, Shu Qun, and Li Shan), were also invited to participate in the conference. See also Gao Minglu, “Bawu yundong de zongjie he jianyue” [The Survey and Investigation of the ’85 Movement], in Gao Minglu, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 45–79. For another important document about the ’85 Movement, see the exhibition catalogue’85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art (Beijing: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, 2008).
9. The first “Qingnian qunti zhuanlan” introduced the Northern Art Group with Shu Qun’s “Beifang yishuqunti de jingshen” [Spirit of the Northern Art Group], a manifesto of the group with some works by Wang Guangyi and other members, in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 18 (November 23, 1985), 1. Peng De, the chief editor of Meishu sichao, published a special issue on young art groups (January 1987) which covered the most important groups’ manifestos and articles. For other documents about the groups, see Zhang Qiang, Huihua xinchao [The new painting trends] (Nanjing: Jiangsu Art Press, 1987); Hans van Dijk, “Painting in China after the Cultural Revolution: Style Developments and Theoretical Debates, Part II: 1985–1991,” China Information 6, no. 4 (Spring 1992), 1–18. 10. In 1985, the academy bought all of the books displayed in the exhibition “Guoji yishu tushuzhan” (Exhibition of international art books), the first exhibition of this type since 1949, and established a library with the richest resources of Western art in China. The exhibition was held in the History Museum in Beijing. On the other hand, the professors of the academy did encourage students to learn traditional Chinese philosophy. For instance, Fan Jingzhong, a teacher and art historian in the academy, taught a series of classes on Chan Buddhism which influenced a number of the leading artists of the ’85 Movement, such as Huang Yongping, Wu Shanzhuan, Gu Wenda, and Song Haidong. 11. Xiao Feng says that he bought the books with money that was supposed to buy transportation for the school, including a car for himself. This caused a controversy at the time among the faculty and administration. Xiao Feng, interviewed by Gao Minglu, Hangzhou, May 29, 2006. 12. Jin Yide, “Biyiechuangzuo jiaoxue de tihui” [The experience of graduation teaching], Meishu, no. 9 (September 1985), 43–45. The controversy of the graduation exhibition of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art was reported in the issue, accompanied by some reproductions of the works. For a debate about the exhibition, see “Zhemai biyesheng zuopin yinqi zhengyi” [The graduation work of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art caused debates], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 9 (September 21, 1985), 1. 13. For information on the similarities and differences between the graduation exhibitions of different academies, see my essay “Sange cengci de bijiao—du Sichuan meiyuan biye sheng zuopin” [A comparison of three levels—Viewing the graduation works of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art], Meishu, no. 10 (October 1985), 10–13. 14. This work was published in Meishu, no. 7 (July 1985), 40. 15. See the special issue “Young Art of Progressive China,” Meishu, no. 7 (July 1985). 16. For coverage of the new art phenomena of Shanghai in the mid-1980s, see Wang Bangxiong, “Songsan de yipi” [An unsystematic artists’ community], unpublished, but quoted and introduced by Zhou Yan in “Fei qunti de Shanghai meishu jiao” (The non-circle phenomenon in the Shanghai art field), in Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985– 1986, 166–190. 17. The most influential was “Huatan zhiyou shalong huazhan” (Salon show of painters’ friendship), which took place from December 1984 to January 1985 in the Xuhui Cultural
Notes
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19. 20.
21.
Center. It attempted to explore individual feelings and to glorify human life and love. Another important show was “Xiandai huihua: Liuren lianzhan” (Modern painting: Sixperson show), which included the work of Yu Youhan, Ding Yi, Qin Yifeng, and others. This show took place at the Student Club of Fudan University, March 18–26, 1985, and it showed the diverse approaches of the individual artists. The group show “Banhuajiao” (A corner of woodcuts) included the work of twelve artists, and was held in Shanghai Art Gallery from December 1985 to January 1986. Those artists proclaimed that “regardless of the fashion of pursuing collective style and a hegemonic concept, we criticize any phenomena that undermine individuality”; see Gugu, “Kan Shanghai banhuajiao zuopin erxiangdaode” [What I thought when I visited the Shanghai corner of woodcuts], 1986, quoted from Zhou, “Fei qunti de Shanghai meishu jiao,” 171; “Shoujie Shanghai qingnian meishu zuopinzhan” (First Shanghai youth artworks exhibition), held in Shanghai Art Gallery in April 1986 and comprising 205 works by 200 artists; see the reports of the exhibition by Xu Keli in Xinmin wanbo [Xinmin newspaper], April 18, 1986; by Huang Shi in Shanghai wenhua yishu bao [Shanghai culture and art], April 25, 1986; by Zhou Gang in Qingnianbao [Youth newspaper], April 25, 1986; “Hei, bai, hei” (Black, white, black), a small group show organized by four young artists challenging conventional ideas of art by showing readymade objects only in black and white; see Wang Xiaojian, “Hei bai hei” [Black, white, black], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 38 (September 22, 1986); “Haipingxian: 86 Huihua lianzhan” (Shanghai horizontal: ’86 painting group show) comprising twenty-six artists’ self-selected artworks in various modern forms; see Xu Jieren, “Shanghai Meishujie yongxian tansuo chaoliu: Xiezai Haipingxian huazhan kaimushi” [An experimental trend has emerged in Shanghai art world: A writing before the “Shanghai horizontal ’86” painting exhibition], Wenhuibao, June 19, 1986; “Feijuxiang huazhan” (Non-imagery painting exhibition), organized by two young workers searching for modern abstract form; “Huazhan 1” (Painting exhibition 1), a group show organized by six influential Shanghai artists and including two leading artists of Shanghai’s avant-garde art movement, Li Shan and Jian Jun, which took place in the Gallery of Shanghai Theatrical College; and “Aotuzhan” (Convex/ concave), including sixteen of the most influential Shanghai avant-garde artists, such as Li Shan, Yu Youhan, Yu Sen, Ding Yi, Qin Yifeng, and Wang Ziwei, which opened in the Shanghai Xuhui Cultural Center on November 22, 1986. See Li Jian, “Buke siyi de aotuzhan” [The incomprehensible “Convex/Concave” exhibition], Xinmin wanbao [Shanghai newspaper], November 25, 1986. Ibid. See Li Xianting, “Xinxing meishujia jiqun 1” [New art groups 1], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 19 (November 30, 1985), 1. See Xu Lei, “Ping Jiangsu qinnian yishuzho: Daxing yishuzhan” [Discussion of Jiangsu art week modern art festival], and Ding Fang, “Cheng, wenhua fansi de xiangzheng” [The city, a symbol of cultural reflection], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 23 (December 28, 1985), 1.
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22. Fan Bo, “Xinyiexin zhuyi xuanyan” [A manifesto of New Barbarianism], 1985, in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 369–370. 23. Chen Lusheng, “Shai taiyang, zoxiang ’87” [To bring into the light, toward 1987], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 46 (November 17, 1986), 1; Zhang Jiangshan, “Weihe shai taiyang?” [Why bring into the light?], 1986, in Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 393. 24. During the seventeenth century, there was a well-known literati painting school called Jinling huapai (Jinling school) that included eight masters led by Gongxian. Jinling was the old name of Nanjing, used beginning during the third century B.C. when it was a capital of six dynasties. In the modern period, Jiangsu huapai (Jiangsu school), a very influential ink painting school, arose in the late 1950s led by Fu Baoshi (1904–1993). The school aimed to marry traditional literati painting and socialist realism to create a style called “industrial landscape.” 25. See note 2; also “Li Xiaoshan fengbo” [The Li Xiaoshan storm], in Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985– 1986, 467–475. 26. A letter by Wu Pingren to Gao Minglu, May 14, 1987, in Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 287. 27. From “Xuzhou Xiandai yishuzhan qianyan” [Preface to the “Xuzhou Modern Art Exhibition”] by the Sunday Painting Society, May 1986, in Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 286. 28. The manifesto was first published in the four-page newspaper-like catalogue of the “Xiamen Dada Modern Art Exhibition,” and was later published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 46 (November 17, 1986), 1. 29. Liu Xiangdong, “Liangci huazhan qingkuang” [A description of two exhibitions], 1986; see Gao et al., The ’85 Movement: The Enlightenment of the Chinese Avant-Garde, 371. 30. See the manifesto of Lingzhan, 1986, in Gao et al., The ’85 Movement: The Enlightenment of the Chinese Avant-Garde, 294; Shenzhen qingnianbao [Shanzhen youth newspaper], February 18, 1986, in ibid.; and Wang Chuan, letter to Gao Minglu, June 3, 1986, published in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 399. 31. “Nanfang yishujia shalong jianjie” [A brief introduction of the Southern Artists Salon], 1986, unpublished; “Nanfang yishujia shalong zai guangzhou chengli,” Zhongguo meishubao, no. 24 (June 16, 1986), 1. 32. The Song brothers’ article, which had the same title as the performance, was published in Meishu, no. 2 (February 1986), 57. When Li Qun sent the letter to Meishu, I was an editor at the magazine, and in fact I had edited the issue that included the Song brothers’ article. Li Qun’s letter (which remains unpublished) put a lot of pressure on the editor-inchief, and in turn he put a lot of pressure on me. 33. Zhou Shaohua, the chairman of the Writers and Artists Association of Hubei, was a leading figure of the democratic movement in the Chinese art world of the mid-1980s. In 1985, at the “Disijie qunguo meishujia daibiao huiyi” (Fourth national artists conference), held in Jinan, Shandong province, Zhou Shaohua began a democratic movement with the young artists of the conference. His intent was to criticize and reform the election rules designed and
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34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43. 44.
45.
46.
47.
dominated by the inner circle of the official Chinese Artists Association. The movement failed due to its suppression by the Shandong branch of the Communist Party of China. I participated in the conference as a reporter for Meishu and was deeply involved in the movement. The exhibitions of the Festival of Youth Art in Hubei were published in catalogue style in Hubei meishu tongxun [Hubei art letters] (Wuhan: Hubei Artists Association, 1987); also see “Hubei meishujie qianyan jijin” [A collection of exhibition prefaces], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 52 (December 29, 1986), 1. Luo Mingjun, “Women de yishu guan” [Our art idea], in Youhua lunwen ji [The oil study collection], ed. Hunan youhua yanjiuhui [Hunan Oil Study Society], 1986. See Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 401. Jiang Zha, “Changsha Hunan Yishu ling Yishu Jituan Zhanlan” [The exhibition of the Zero Art Group], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 39 (September 29, 1986), 2. The forty-three artists who participated came from the Leishi huahui (Leishi Painting Society), Zero Art Group, Yecao huahui (Wild Grass Painting Society), Huaihua guohua qunti (Huaihua Ink Painting Group), Lijiaoqiao banhuazhan (Road Bridge Woodcut Exhibition), and Hunan meishu chubanshe qingnian yishujia qunti (Young Artists Group from Hunan Art Press). See Li Luming, “Hunan meishujia jiqun-zhongyang meiyuan zuotanhui jiyao” [The recording of the discussion about the art of Hunan Young Artists Groups at the Central Academy of Fine Art], Meishu, no. 2 (February 1987), 16– 19. Yen Shuangxi, “Zhengzhou shoujie qingnian meizhan” [The first exhibition of Zhengzhou young artists], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 40 (October 6, 1986), 3. Hou Zhen and Zuo Xiaofeng, “Minzu jingshen de zhuixun” [Searching for the nationalist spirit], 1986; see Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 372. Hou Zhen and Zuo Xiaofeng, “Manifesto of Yishuchang,” 1986; see Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985– 1986, 373. The defense paper “Women de xiangfa” [What we thought about], by Hou Zhen, 1987; see Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 373. Hou and Zuo, “Manifesto of Yishuchang.” The preface for the exhibition printed in the invitation, 1985; see Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985– 1986, 326. Dong Chao, “Heise Lianmeng Xuanyan” [Manifesto of the Black Union], 1985; see Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 380. Duan Xiucang, “Huihua xiaxiang” [An imagination of painting], 1985; Qiao Xiaoguang, “Chuantong huihua yu minjian zaoxing yishu de sikao” [Rethinking the relation between traditional painting and folk art], 1985; and Wang Huanqing, “Guanyu wo de hua” [About my painting], 1985. Summaries of these three articles were published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 7 (February 17, 1986), 1. See Chuan Zi, “Zhanlan Jicui” [The collection of exhibition news], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 34 (August 25, 1986), 4.
48. Yan Xiaohua, “Zhongguo wumingshi huahui zixu” [Preface to the Chinese Anonymous Painting Society], 1982; and Zhao Rongsheng, “Benhuahui huodong jianjie” [Brief chronology of our Painting Society], 1986. See Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 315, for both documents. 49. Zhao Runfan and Yan Xiaoming, “Yishujia yu yishu” [Artists and art], 1985; see Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 315–316. 50. Liang Yijun, “Yijiu baliunian liuyue Fuling shiye meizhan” [The perspective painting exhibition, June 1986], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 44 (November 3, 1986), 2. 51. Guiqi, “Lutian yitai huazhan” [The open-air yitai exhibition], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 42 (October 20, 1986), 2. 52. Fang Zhou, “Neimenggu xibu qingnian meizhan” [The art exhibition of young artists of western Inner Mongolia], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 40 (October 6, 1986), 2. 53. I was invited by the group and participated in the opening and discussion with Jia Fangzhou, a critic based in Inner Mongolia. 54. Zhang Guangrong, “Qinnian shengsheng huahui qianyan” [Preface to the “Exhibition of Vitality”], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 38 (September 22, 1986), 2. 55. Qian Zhengkun, “Qingqing she ji hanlu huazhan” [The Qingqing Society and its Hanlu painting exhibition], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 46 (November 17, 1986), 2. 56. Yang Jun, “Qiba—tansuo, faxian, biaoxian” [Uniqueness— research, discovery, expression], Lanzhou qinnian bao [Lanzhou youth newspaper] February 1, 1985. 57. Cao Yong, “Lanzhou xiandai yishu ziliao” [The materials of modern art in Lanzhou], 1986; see Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 412–413. 58. See Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 36–64. 59. Some of this analysis is inspired by Chinese translations of Sigmund Freud’s “Le Bon’s Description of the Group Mind,” in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, which appears in Selected Later Works by Sigmund Freud (Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Press, 2005); for an English version see James Strachey, trans. (New York: Liveright, 1949). 60. For information on this exhibition, see Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 36–69. This material also appeared in Meishu, no. 2 (February 1987), 56–57. 61. See Hong Zaixing, “Yongganzhe de xisheng” [The sacrifice of the brave], Meishu, no. 2 (February 1986), 44–46. 62. In the 1980s, I analyzed the characteristics of the group psychology of the ’85 Movement by using the theoretical framework of Freud’s group psychology theory. See Gao Minglu, “Zhongguo xiandai yishu fazhan beijing zhi zhankai” [Unfolding the context of Chinese modern art history], Meishu sichao (Spring 1987), 40–48. 63. Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 20. 64. Ibid., 25. 65. See Peter G. Christensen, “The Relationship of Decadence to the Avant-Garde as Seen by Poggioli, Bürger, and Calinescu,” Papers on Language and Literature 22, no. 2 (Spring 1986), 209; and Poggioli, The Theory of the AvantGarde, 27–40.
Notes
66. Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, 25. 67. I used to give lectures about contemporary art and the avant-garde in various universities in China in the 1980s. I found that students from different fields were fascinated with Western modern art and Chinese avant-garde art, though they might not be able to understand the details. My lectures consistently attracted large audiences, which excited and moved me. 68. Hong, “Yongganzhe de xisheng,” 44–46. 69. For some background on this exhibition, see Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 371–374. The text of the exhibition preface appears on p. 374.
Chapter 4 1. Many descriptions in this chapter come from my memories and various firsthand, unpublished materials I have preserved. I am working on a document about the “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition, to be published this year. My detailed article about the exhibition, written in Chinese, was published in Tendency Quarterly. See Gao Minglu, “Fengkuang de yijiubajiu—Zhongguo xiandai yishuzhan shimo” [1989—a crazy year: A description of the beginning and end of the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition], Tendency Quarterly (Taibei), no. 12 (1999), 43–76. A part of this chapter was also published in English in my essay “PostUtopian Avant-Garde Art in China,” in Aleš Erjavec, ed., Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art under Late Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 247–283. 2. At that time, I was also working as a guest editor for Zhongguo meishubao. My full-time job, however, was as an editor of Meishu. 3. Chen Weihe, Gao Ling, and Fan Bo, “Huiyi jianbao no. 1–4” [Conference bulletin no. 1–4], August 15–19, 1986, unpublished. For more on the members and director of the committee, also see the announcement of the conference published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 38 (September 22, 1986), and Meishu, no. 11 (November 1986), 34–35. 4. “Zhongguo xiandai yishu yanjiuhui yixiangshu” [Manifesto of the Chinese Modern Art Research Society], November 25, 1986, unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. 5. See original contract between the National Agricultural Exhibition Center and Beijing Young Painters Society; unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. 6. See original handwritten letter by Gao Minglu, March 9, 1989; unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. 7. To avoid having political pressure put upon any sponsoring organization, I personally wrote a private letter to the major avant-garde groups in the nation to invite the representatives to have an organizational meeting for the avant-garde show. See Gao Minglu’s letter to the groups, March 9, 1987 (figure 4.6). 8. See “Guanyu choubei gedi qingnian yishujia xueshu jiaoliuzhan de yixiangshu” [An announcement for organizing the “Academic Exchange Exhibition for Nationwide Young Artists”], March 26, 1987, unpublished.
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9. For example, the Renmin dahuitang (Great Hall of the People) is the representative symbol of the people of the whole country. Every important national convention, such as all previous Representative Conventions of the Communist Party and all previous National People’s Congresses, has been held there. Similarly, Zhongguo lishi bowuguan (the Museum of Chinese History) is itself a symbol of Chinese history. It has collected important historical materials to display Chinese ancient history and modern revolutionary history. 10. On the English and Chinese titles of the exhibition, see the conclusion of this chapter. 11. See “Xiandai yishuzhan yixiangshu” [The proposal of the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition], September 1988, unpublished. On the proposal can be found the six original red seals of the units as well as that of the Department of the Secretary of the Chinese Artists Association, which approved it in these terms: “We agree that Meishu is one of the sponsors of the ‘China/Avant-Garde’ exhibition and hope the National Art Museum of China will strongly support it—the Department of the Secretary of the Chinese Artists Association, 9/22/1988.” 12. I discussed the significance of “behavior art” and performance art in both the Chinese and Western contexts in my chapter “Demonized Man: Ritualizing the Body in Chinese Performance Art,” in The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art (Buffalo: Timezone 8/Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 2006), 161–187. 13. Unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. 14. See “Zhongguo xiandai yishuzhan chouzhan tonggao, diyihao” [Announcement of the organization of “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 44 (October 31, 1988), 1. 15. I participated in the organizational work of the Sixth National Exhibition in its late stage, from December 1984 to February 1985, as a reporter for Meishu. 16. Zhang Kangkang, “Zheshi zhiyou zhaoni” [We have to turn to you for help: A letter to Feng Jicai], January 15, 1989, People’s Daily (Beijing), February 2, 1989. 17. On the closing day of the exhibition, Song Wei carried 50,000 yuan in cash to give me as his donation in front of the public on the plaza at the National Art Museum of China. I was shocked because I had never seen that much money before. He donated 7,000 yuan again. Unfortunately, when the student democratic movement began in April 1989, two months after the end of “China/Avant-Garde,” Song Wei’s fast food company was put out of business due to the street being fully occupied by students and Beijing citizens, and he has not had a chance to realize his ambitions. Due to the failure of his business, Song Wei asked me to pay back 30,000 yuan from his original 50,000-yuan donation. He never returned the money and left the budget problem to me, as a result of which I suffered for about two years. The money had been earmarked for the catalogue fee. After the exhibition ended, I carried the 30,000 yuan as a private loan, borrowed from China City Environment (Zhongguo shirongbao) for the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition. I was eventually helped by an artist friend, Ling Huitao, who did a lot of fundraising for me. I was able to repay the money before I left for the United States in September 1991.
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18. There is only a small catalogue, Zhongguo xiandai yishu zhan [China/Avant-Garde exhibition] (Beijing: National Art Museum of China and Guangxi People’s Art Press, 1989). 19. See Wang Guangyi (Zhuhai), Wu Shanzhuan (Zhoushan), Zhang Peili (Hangzhou), Sun Ren, Sun Baoguo (Hangzhou), Ye Yongqing (Chongqing), Geng Jianyi (Hangzhou), Meng Luding (Beijing), Huang Yongping (Xiamen), and Yang Zhilin (Nanjing), “Jiuren baizitan—yu Zhongguo xiandai yishuzhan zhuyao zuozhe tanhua” [Discussion with nine artists—A dialogue with major participants of the “China/ Avant-Garde” exhibition], Beijing qinnian bao [Beijing youth], February 10, 1989. 20. Wang Deren, “Guanyu biyuntao de shuoming” [An explanation of the condoms], February 6, 1989, unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. 21. Xiao Lu and Tang Song, “Guanyu qiangji shijian de shengming” [A claim about the gunshots], February 10, 1989, unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. It will appear in my foreword to Xiao Lu’s forthcoming book Dialogue, translated by Archibald McKenzie. 22. Xiao Lu, personal letters, February 4, 2004; February 25, 2004; March 19, 2004; and March 23, 2004. The four letters are posted on Xiao Lu’s personal Web site: http:// www.xiaoluart.com/dangan.asp?id=204&fid=234. They were also published in Meishu Tongmeng: http://arts.tom. com (accessed April 20, 2004). Gao Minglu, personal letter to Xiao Lu, April 14, 2004; also see http://www.xiaoluart. com/dangan.asp?id=204&fid=233, http://arts.tom.com (accessed April 20, 2004). 23. The book will come out in August 2010, published by Hong Kong University Press. 24. The work was published in Meishu, no. 10 (October 1988), on the back cover page. 25. I discussed some of these issues in my essay “The Sound of Gunshots, Xiao Lu’s Half a Life’s Dialogue: On Xiao Lu’s Dialogue,” published in the exhibition brochure for Xiao Lu’s solo show at Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York, USA, October 2006. 26. One exception was Wu Shanzhuan’s Big Business, which was approved by the organizational committee. The only person who knew about the gunshots was Wen Pulin, who was informed by Xiao Lu because she wanted to be sure the work would be documented. Wen recorded the gunshots in a video that also included the exhibition’s other performance projects. 27. Unpublished. I saw the letter in the Security Office of the National Art Museum of China when I was told to go to the office for the emergency by the museum. The security office of the National Art Museum of China called me at noon on February 14. When I arrived at the museum from a meeting taking place in the Central Academy of Fine Art held by Jiangsu huakan [Jiangsu painting monthly], the Beijing Security Bureau and the National Art Museum of China were in an emergency meeting. I was asked to remain outside the door for about three hours, until 4:00 p.m. When they let me in, I saw the letter. 28. Ann Scott Tyson, “Avant-Garde Bursts onto Chinese Art Scene: Action Art Symbolizes Artists’ Determination
to Brashly Take Advantage of Eased State Censorship,” Christian Science Monitor, February 7, 1989. 29. Li Qi, “Pipan zichanjieji ziyouhua” [To criticize bourgeois liberalism], Meishu, no. 10 (October 1989), 3. A related article by Li Qi is “Buyao wangji” [Do not forget it], Meishu, no. 11 (November 1990), 4. 30. I got a fellowship as a Visiting Scholar, Postdoctoral Researcher, invited by the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China (CSCPRC) of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and The Ohio State University. This was an exchange and collaborative project between Professor Julia Andrews and myself. It was initiated by Professor Andrews when she visited me in Beijing in 1986. She submitted our proposal to the committee in 1988, and it finally got approved in 1990. During one year’s collaborative research and teaching, Professor Andrews and I completed several writings, including “The Avant-Garde’s Challenge to Official Art,” which appears in Deborah S. Davis et al., eds., Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 221–278. We also organized an exhibition titled “Fragmented Memory: The Chinese AvantGarde in Exile,” which took place at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University in 1993. The exhibition was one of the earliest Chinese avant-garde exhibitions to take place outside of China. It featured Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, Huang Yongping, and Wu Shanzhuan’s installation works. See the catalogue with the same title as the exhibition.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Chapter 5 1. Gao Minglu, “Bawu meishu yundong” [The ’85 art movement], Meishujia tongxun [Artists’ news], no. 3 (May 1986), 3. 2. Such criticisms appear in Mao’s Yan’an Talk of 1942. In the early 1980s debates about the concept of humanism in Marx’s writings, the term “humanism” was used to refer to concepts of individual value, human nature, and human freedom. This use of the term is not meaningful to most Western readers. When contemporary Chinese artists use “humanism” in their writings, they usually mean something like individualism. Here, in order to avoid complication, I will continue to use the term as Chinese artists and intellectuals do. 3. Gao Minglu, “Jinnian youhua fazhan de liupai” [The recent developing trends of oil painting], Meishu, no. 7 (July 1985), 62–65. 4. Gao Minglu, “Guanyu lixing huihua” [About rationalist painting], Meishu, no. 8 (August 1986). 5. On December 2, 1985, for example, the Pool Society’s exhibition “’85 Xinkongjiang” (’85 new space) opened in Hangzhou in Zhejing province. The artists described their intent to make yongganzhe de xisheng (brave sacrifices) for the future. See Hong Zaixing, “Yongganzhe de xisheng” [The sacrifice of the brave], Meishu, no. 2 (February 1986), 44–46. 6. Jochen Schulte-Sasse, “Foreword: Theory of Modernism versus Theory of the Avant-Garde,” in Peter Bürger, Theory
Notes
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of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xvi–xix. See, for example, the work of Megan C. McShane, Genese einer Revolution: Von Dada zum Surrealismus [Genesis of a revolution: From Dada to surrealism], trans. Nathalia Broskaia (London: Parkstone, 2009), and Megan C. McShane, “The Balance of Reality and Time: Surrealist Games and Traumatic Memory,” China Museum Journal (January 2007). Shu Qun, the most noted theorist of the Northern Art Group, wrote “Yige xinwenming de dansheng” [The birth of a new civilization] in 1985; see Tuxiang bianzhengfa: Shuqun de yishu [The dialectic of images: The art of Shu Qun] (Guangzhou: Lingnan Art Studio, 2009), 48–49. See also Shu Qun’s “Guanyu beifang wenming de sikao” [Thought on the northern civilization], 1985, in Gao Minglu, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 104–108. It is interesting to note that the surrealists used a barren landscape background to depict the cultural and emotional wasteland following the trauma of World War I, while the Northern Art Group used these barren landscapes following the trauma of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Shu Qun, “Beifang yishu qunti de jingshen” [The spirit of the Northern Art Group], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 18 (November 23, 1985), 1. For instance, the articles written by Shu Qun include: “Yige xinwenming de dansheng” and “Guanyu beifang wenming de sikao” (see note 8); “Handaihou wenhua de chubu xingcheng” [The preliminary emergence of the post-frigid zone culture], unpublished; “Lun lafeierqianpai de lishi yiyi” [The historical significance of the Pre-Raphaelites], unpublished; “Shilun xinwenming de quanzhong yiyi” [The determined significance of the new civilization], unpublished; and “Wei beifangqunti chanshi” [An interpretation of the Northern Art Group], unpublished. By Wang Guangyi: “Beifang wenhua dui huihua de yaoqiu” [The civilization of the north determines creation of painting], unpublished; “Zhongguobeibu de huajiamen” [The artists of north China], unpublished; “Yishu zuowei renlei de yizhong xingwei” [Art creation as an act of mankind], unpublished; and “Women zhege shidai xuyao shenmo yangde huihua?” [What kind of paintings do we need in our age?], Jiangsu huakan [Jiangsu painting monthly] (April 1986), 6. By Ren Jian: “Genxin de jueqi” [Raising the foundation], unpublished; and “Zaoxing zhongde taiji guannian” [Tai chi in art creation], unpublished. By Liu Yan: “Dangdai yishu de kunjing he shiming” [The embarrassment and duties of contemporary art], unpublished; “Rexing de sanzhong xingtai” [Three types of humankind], unpublished; “Fenxi de bainjie” [The boundary of analysis], unpublished; and “Yishu zhongde lixing” [Rationalization in art creation], Meishu, no. 8 (August 1986), 57. Among the critical views, the article entitled “Lixing huihua xiaoyi” [A short discussion of rationalist painting] by Zhang Long, a member of the Southwest Art Group, was the most extreme example. It was published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 51 (December 22, 1986), 1.
383
12. “Hongselü zhenyan” [An admonition by the Red Journey], Meishu sichao, no. 1 (February 1987), 14–15. 13. Deng Qiyao, ed., “Laizi zhijue de ganwu” [The enlightenment from intuition], of which a summarized version was published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 51 (December 22, 1986), 1; Mao Xuhui, “Xinjuxiang—Shengming quxiang tushi de chengxian he chaoyue” [New specific image— The true presentation and praising of life], Meishu sichao (January 1987), 25–28; Mao Xuhui, “Ji Xinjuxiang huazhan he huajia yiji xinanyishu yanjiu qunti” [New specific images painting, the exhibitions and Southwest Art Group], 1985, unpublished; Ye Yongqing, “Xinan qunti huihua de ziran yishi” [The consciousness of nature in the art of the Southwest Art Group], 1985, unpublished; Zhang Xiaogang, “Xunzhao nage zunzai” [Seeking the true being], Yunnan meishu tongxun [Yunnan art chronicle] (March 1986), 12–16; Zhang Long, “Lixing huihua xiaoyi” [A short discussion of rationalist painting], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 51 (December 22, 1986), 1; Zhai Wei, “Shengming shu women” [The life belongs to us], Yunnan meishu tongxun (April 1986), 4–7. 14. Concerning these artists’ ideas, see Zhang Xiaogang, “Xuzhao nage zunzai” [Seeking the being], Yunnan meishu tongsun (March 1986); Mao Xuhui, “Xinjusxiang, shengming juxian tushi de chengxian yu chaoyue” [New specific image, a presence and glorification of true human inner reality], Meishu sichao (February 1987), 25–28; and Mao Xuhui to Gao Minglu, March 19, 1986; September 9, 1986; November 11, 1986. 15. See the brochure of the “Third Exhibition of New Specific Images” with cover page and prefaces, published in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 315–316. All related materials about the activity are also published in the same book, 315–323. 16. See Zhang Qun and Meng Luding, “Xin shidai de qishi” [The enlightenment of the new age], Meishu, no. 7 (July 1985), 48. 17. Hu Shi, “Pragmatism,” Xin qingnian 6, no. 4 (1917), reprinted in Hu Shi Wenji [Essays by Hu Shi], ed. Ouyang Zhesheng (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1988), 211– 212. 18. Yuan Qingyi, “Wo he ‘wo’ yiji …” [I and ‘I’ and …], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 15 (1985), 2. 19. Note by Zuo Zhengyao, published in “Huajia tan hua” [Artists talking about art], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 52 (1985), 2. 20. Wang Guangyi, “Ziwo kendingde chensi, chensiyi: Chensiyi” [Meditation on self-affirmation: Meditation no. 1], in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 112–113. 21. Ibid. 22. I used the term “universal current” to discuss Chinese contemporary ink painting in an English-language publication; see Gao Minglu, “From Elite to Small Man: The Many Faces of a Transitional Avant-Garde in Mainland China,” in Gao Minglu, ed., Inside Out: New Chinese Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 156–158. 23. Wang, “Women zhege shidai xuyao shenmeyang de huihua?”, 6.
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Notes
24. Wang, “Ziwo kendingde chensi, chensiyi: Chensiyi,” 112– 113. 25. There are several writings by Ren Jian describing the meaning of primeval chaos. Among them, an essay entitled “Wo de zuopin yuanhua daoyan” [An introduction to primeval chaos] gives the clearest explanation of the idea behind the work. The essay includes three parts: (1) the concept and content of primeval chaos; (2) the form of primeval chaos; (3) the construction of primeval chaos. It was published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 21 (1988), 1. 26. Unfortunately, the talented artist died in 2000. Before Chen Zhen moved to Paris, while I was working as an editor for Meishu, he had written to me from Shanghai. See Chen Zhen’s letter to Gao Minglu, December 14, 1986, published in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 232. We never met in China or Paris, but he visited me in 1996 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 27. See Gu Wenda’s “Notes on Art,” part of which was published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 9 (1985), 2. 28. When Chinese artists searched for a national modernity, literati painting became the victim, as it was seen as the backward face of ancient Chinese culture. For instance, Kang Youwei, the leading reformer of the late nineteenth century, after the failure of the Hundred Days Reform in 1898, wrote a harsh criticism of the literati painting tradition of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties in his Travels in Eleven European Countries. See Lawrence Wu, “Kang Youwei and the Westernization of Modern Chinese Art,” Orientations 21, no. 3 (March 1990), 46–53. 29. As mentioned above, Red symbolizes life, so that Red Journey means the journey of life. 30. Ding Fang, “Cheng: Wenhua de fansi” [Castle: Reflections on culture], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 23 (December 28, 1985), 1. 31. From Mi Fu, Huashi [Painting history]; English translation in Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 214. 32. See the following works by Ding Fang: “Yishu guan” [The concept of art], 1985, in Gao Minglu, Zhou Yan, Wang Xiaojian, Shu Qun, Wang Mingxian, and Tong Dian, The ’85 Movement: The Enlightenment of the Chinese AvantGarde (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 182; Ding Fang to Gao Minglu, June 14, 1987; “Weida de duanni” [A great initiation], Meishu, no. 11 (November 1986), 43–44; and “Neirong jiushi linghun” [Content is just the soul], Meishu, no. 12 (December 1986), 48. Ding Fang also authored many other letters full of spiritual and religious reflections. 33. Mao Xuhui, “Yishu biji” [Notes on art], unpublished article, quoted in Gao Minglu, Zhou Yan, Wang Xiaojian, Shu Qun, Wang Mingxian, and Tong Dian, Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986 [History of contemporary Chinese art 1985–1986] (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 1991), 254. 34. Zhang Xiaogang, “Yishu biji” [Notes on art], 1985, unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. 35. Ibid.
36. Yie Yongqing, another major artist of the Southwest Art Group, analyzed the natural consciousness in the artworks of the Southwest Art Group very well in his essay “Xinan huihua qunti de ziran yishi” [The natural consciousness of the painting of the Southwest Art Group], 1985, unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. 37. Yan Shanchun, “Wang Guangyi hewo tan shenhua he youxi” [Wang Guangyi and I talk about myth and strategy], Xinmeishu [New art magazine], no. 2 (April 1988), 25–31; another version is in Yan Shanchun and Liu Peng, eds., Dangdai yishu chaoliuzhong de Wang Guangyi [Wang Guangyi in the trend of contemporary art] (Chengdu: Sichuan Art Press, 1992), 84–85. 38. See chapter 7 for my discussion of this important transitional moment in the avant-garde community.
11.
12. 13.
Chapter 6 1. The slogan “Freedom in creation of literature and art” comes from the title of a speech given by Hu Qili, the secretary of the Communist Party, at the Fourth National Literature Conference. 2. Gao Minglu, “Bawu meishu yundong” [The ’85 art movement], Meishujia tongxun [Artists’ news], no. 3 (May 1986), 3; also in Gao Minglu, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Resources (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 55. 3. Stephen Bann, introduction to Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin 1950–1980s (New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1998). 4. Ibid. 5. This article was first published in a four-page newspaperlike catalogue. See Huang Yongping, Xiamen ’86, xindada xiandai yishuzhan [Xiamen ’86: New Dada Modern Art Exhibition, September 28–October 5, 1986] (Xiamen: Xiamen Masses Art Gallery, 1986), 1. Later it was published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 46 (November 17, 1986), 1. 6. In Gao Minglu, Zhou Yan, Wang Xiaojian, Shu Qun, Wang Mingxian, and Tong Dian, Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986 [History of contemporary Chinese art 1985– 1986] (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 1991), 337–360, Wang Xiaojian wrote a complete summary of Huang Yongping’s and Xiamen Dada’s early art practice. 7. See chapter 2, in which I discuss academicism and the amateur avant-garde. 8. Huang Yongping, “Tan wode jizhang hua” [About my paintings], Meishu, no. 1 (January 1983), 22. 9. “Fujian, 1983 Xiamen: Huang Yongping deng wuren huazhan” [Fujian province, 1983 Xiamen: Huang Yongping and Others’ Five-Man Exhibition], in the section “Xinchao meishu ziliao huibian” [Selected materials of the new wave of art], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 38 (September 22, 1986), 3. 10. Huang Yongping, “Fei biaoda de huihua” [Nonexpressive painting], Meishu sichao, no. 9 (June 1986), 16. In the Roulette Wheel Series, Huang made objects according to a strict set of procedures he determined for himself, which led to a very impersonal work of art. Marcel Duchamp was very interested in roulette. In Duchamp’s Monte Carlo vouchers,
Notes
14.
15.
16.
17. 18.
19.
20.
21.
he engaged with the inventor of the game of roulette, statistical mathematician Blaise Pascal, by reading a treatise on his method and the statistical probabilities in the game. Pascal originally invented the game as a form of statistical play for monks. Duchamp was always interested in games, mathematics, and number theories that approached chance operations and randomness in ways that he could intertwine with his own chance operations. Huang Yongping, “A Letter to Wang Xiaojian, October 22, 1987”; see “Xiamen Dada xielie hudong” [The series works of Xiamen Dada] by Wang Xiaojian, in chapter 5 of Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 342. See note 5. Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Painting (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959). This book was first translated into Chinese in 1979 by Liu Pingjun, and was published by Shanghai People’s Arts Press, Shanghai, in that year. Huang Yongping, “Baqinian de sikao, zhizuo he huodong” [Thinking, making, and projects in 1987], in Fei Dawei, ed., 85 Xinchao dangan [Archive of the ’85 New Wave] (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 2007), 469–485. Huang Yongping, preface for the exhibition, unpublished. See Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 347. Huang Yongping and Huang Yongpan [the former’s younger brother] to Gao Minglu, January 24, 1989, unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. See note 14; this is a sixteen-page essay with illustrations of Huang’s works done in 1987. Of course, in the Western historical avant-garde, particularly in the year 1924, the Dadaists and surrealists were quite famous for their walks, tours, photographs, and general engagement with the slaughterhouses, or abattoirs, of the nineteenth arrondissement in Paris (an area known as La Villette). See Louis Aragon, Le paysan de Paris (1926; Paris: Gallimard, 1998). The marks he made are dated April 20, 1987; June 2, 1987; September 1, 1987; October 7, 1987; November 29, 1987; and January 9, 1988. Due to the historical hegemony of the seat of power being located in the capital in the north, there has been a long history of prejudice against the southern provinces, most notably Guangdong. However, there is also a saying, “The emperor is far away,” which hints at the freedom that has always existed in the south, where one can experiment without official intervention. When Deng Xiaoping opened China to the West and created his policies of reform, most of his uniquely permissive Special Economic Zones were located in Guangdong, because the Cantonese had a long history of interactions of with foreigners. Many believe that people in Guangdong also have a strong sense of initiative, which might have been another reason for the decision. Wang Du, “Tongbu butonglu” [In the same way, but not in the same direction], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 24 (June 16, 1986), 1; “Nanfang yishujia shalong jianjie” [A brief introduction to the Southern Artists Salon], 1986, unpublished.
385
22. “Nangang yishu shalong diyihui shiyanzhan” [First Experimental Exhibition of the Southern Art Salon], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 42 (October 20, 1986), 1. 23. Ibid. 24. Song Haidong, “A Letter to Wang Xiaojian,” October 14, 1986, unpublished. Also see Wang Xiaojian, “2. M qunti”(2. M Group), in Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 384. 25. Qian Ping, “M. Huoshengsheng de ren” [Vivid human being—M Art Group], 1986, unpublished manifesto.
Chapter 7 1. Zhishi (indicatives) and xiangxing (pictographs) are the two most important classifications of the traditional liu shu (six classifications) of Chinese characters. In the Han period, Xu Shen listed them in the following order: zhishi (indicatives), xiangxing (pictographs), xingsheng (ideographics), huiyi (phonetic-semantic compounds), zhuanzhu (mutual explanatories), and jiajie (phonetic loans). The primary importance of zhishi is that it indicates that painting and writing come from the same source. Hanshu yiwen zhi (The Han book of arts and scholarship) puts pictograms first, as follows: xiangxing (pictographs), xiangshi (zhishi) (indicatives), xiangyi (huiyi) (phonetic-semantic compounds), xiangsheng (xingsheng) (ideographics), zhuanzhu (mutual explanatories), jiajie (phonetic loans). The proper order of zhishi (indicatives) and xiangxing (pictographs) was a source of disagreement among later scholars studying the etymology of Chinese characters and the order in which painting and writing developed. For example, Guo Moruo considered the zhishi (indicative) function of characters to have primacy over the xiangxing (pictographic) function, but Tang Lan thought the opposite. See my essay “Cang Jie zao shu, yu shuhua tongyuan” [Cang Jie’s creation of Chinese characters, and a common origin of calligraphy and painting] Xin meishu [New art], no. 3 (1985), 40–45. 2. Translation by Wu Shanzhuan for the original piece Red Characters, printed in Gao Minglu, ed., Inside Out: New Chinese Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). The translation here is incomplete. 3. Wu Shanzhuan, a description of the Red Poster for Gao, Inside Out. 4. Wu Shanzhuan, “Guanyu zhongwen” [Chinese characters], Meishu, no. 6 (June 1986), 61. 5. See Wu Shanzhuan, “Zizhuan” [An autobiography], 1987, unpublished. 6. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Chinese nationalists called the Chinese Communists chi fei (red gangsters) and the Communists’ program chi hua (red-ization, or red-ification). 7. Wu Shanzhuan, “Chizi de dansheng” [Birth of red characters], 1986, unpublished essay. 8. Wu Shanzhuan, “Hongyin, kaihui, huanzi he hongce youmo” [Red seal, meeting, character, and red humor], 1986, unpublished article. 9. Wu Shanzhuan, “Guanyu wenge yishu” [The art of the Cultural Revolution], 1986, unpublished article.
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10. Wu Shanzhuan, “Wuti de meishu pin” [The material work of art], 1986, unpublished essay. 11. Wu Shanzhuan, “Richang shenghuo de yishu” [The art of daily life], 1989, unpublished article. 12. Wu Shanzhuan, “Cong yuedi kaishi de zainan: Shengyi yishu” [A disaster begun since the end of this month: Business art], 1989, unpublished article. 13. Wu Shanzhuan, “Guanyu dashengyi” [About the big business], a statement published in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 11 (1989), 2. 14. The graduation work was published along with Xu Bing’s article “Wo hua wo ai de hua” [Paint what I like] in Meishu, no. 5 (May 1981), 18–19. 15. The event was reported with the title “Nangwang de guocheng” [An unforgettable process], in Zhongguo meishubao, no. 37 (September 15, 1986), 1. 16. This work was first displayed in the United States at the Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of WisconsinMadison, November 30, 1991–January 19, 1992. See Three Installations by Xu Bing, a catalogue of the exhibition with an essay entitled “Process and Meaning in the Art of Xu Bing” by Britta Erickson (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Elvehjem Museum of Art, 1991). 17. The article with the images of Xu’s work was published in Meishu, no. 10 (October 1987), 50–51. 18. Some major articles on the topic of Xu’s Book from the Sky are: Yang Lian and John Cayley, “Three Words and Nonwords on the Art of Xu Bing,” in Xu Bing: Classroom Calligraphy, exh. cat. (Mallorca: Joan Miró Foundation, 1997); Stanley Abe, “No-Sense from Out There: Xu Bing’s Tian Shu [A Book from the Sky] in the West,” paper presented at College Art Association conference, Boston, 1996; Lisa Pasquariello, “From Work to Text and Back Again,” in Fractured Fairy Tales: Art in the Age of Categorical Disintegration (Durham: Duke University Museum of Art, 1996), 13–24; Eugene Yuejin Wang, “Of Text and Texture: The Cultural Relevance of Xu Bing’s Art,” in Xu Bing: Language Lost (Boston: Massachusetts College of Art, 1995), 7–15; Jonathan Goodman, “Bing Xu: 4,000 characters in Search of a Meaning,” Art News (New York) 93, no. 7 (September 1994), 99–101; Wu Hong, “A Ghost Rebellion: Notes on Xu Bing’s ‘Nonsense Writing’ and Other Works,” Public Culture (University of Chicago) 6, no. 2 (Winter 1994), 411–418; Jamara Hamlish, “Prestidigitation: A Reply to Charles Stone,” Public Culture 6, no. 2 (Winter 1994), 419–442; Charles Stone, “Xu Bing and the Printed Word,” Public Culture 6, no. 2 (Winter 1994), 407–410; Geremie Barme, “Xu Bing: A Chinese Character,” Art Monthly Australia 61 (July 1993), 13–14; Gao Minglu, “Meaninglessness and Confrontation in Xu Bing’s Art,” in Fragmented Memory (Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, 1993), 28–31; Peter C. Sturman, “Measuring the Weight of the Written Word: Reflections on the Character-Paintings of Chu Ko and the Role of Writing in Contemporary Chinese Art,” Orientations (Hong Kong) 23, no. 7 (July 1992), 44–52; Shigeo Chiba, “Far East Art on Xu Bing” (paper presented at the symposium “China Tomorrow: Misunderstanding in Culture Exchange between the East and West,” Paris, 1991),
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
15; Britta Erickson, “Process and Meaning in the Art of Xu Bing,” in Three Installations by Xu Bing, 2–32; Jinan Yin, “Ghosts Pounding the Wall and Meaninglessness,” Hsiung Shi Art Monthly (Taibei) 235 (September 1990), 125–133; Fangzhou Jia, “A Book from the Sky: Five Explanations,” Jiangsu Art Monthly (May 1989), 17–20; Weihe Chen, “Xu Bing and his Book from the Sky,” Intellectuals (Beijing), no. 1 (January 1988), 58–62; Christina Davidson, “Words from Heaven: Xu Bing Interviewed,” Art Asia Pacific (Australia) 1, no. 2 (1994), 48–52. Hui Neng’s approach to Buddhist philosophy was completely different from the coexisting Chan Buddhist tradition that was described as Gradual Enlightenment. Founded by a Chan master, Shen Hui, Gradual Enlightenment involved a four-part “purification of the mind” that was based on concentrating the mind through meditation, physical exercise, and ritual forms. The approach of Hui Neng’s Sudden Enlightenment, however, emphasized that when the mind is completely emptied and void, when “all paths of language are destroyed” and “all ways of the mind are cut off,” there occurs a spontaneous psychic insight into the absolute nature of the phenomenal world. This new approach destroyed the need for all scripture, ritual, and formal meditation techniques, and thus won a popular following. The theory of Sudden Enlightenment influenced many generations of traditional artists and philosophers, and has now come to be a potent weapon for Chinese conceptual artists like Xu Bing, Wu Shanzhuan, Huang Yongping, and others. Almost all of them proclaim an allegiance to Chan Buddhism. Xu Bing, “Looking for Something Different in a Quiet Place,” Beijing Qingnian Bao (Beijing youth newspaper), February 10, 1989. The English version is quoted from Wu Hung’s article “A ‘Ghost Rebellion’: Notes on Xu Bing’s ‘Nonsense Writing’ and Other Works,” Public Culture, no. 6 (1994), 411–418. My discussion of Ghosts Pounding the Wall is indebted to Britta Erickson’s essay “Process and Meaning in the Art of Xu Bing.” An important, and the earliest, article on the topic is Jinan Yin, “Ghosts Pounding the Wall and Meaninglessness,” Xiongshi meishu [Lion art monthly], no. 235 (September 1990), 125–133. Andrew Waldron, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), argues that the Great Wall as we know it dates entirely to the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and discusses the strategic failures of the wall as a border defense (see especially pp. 140–164). Xu Bing notes that the seventeenth-century historian Gu Yanwu also remarked on the ineffectiveness of the Great Wall in closing China off from the rest of the world. See Erickson, “Process and Meaning in the Art of Xu Bing,” 23. For more on Gu Wenda’s art creation of the 1980s, see Gao Minglu, Zhou Yan, Wang Xiaojian, Shu Qun, Wang Mingxian, and Tong Dian, Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986 [History of Contemporary Chinese Art 1985– 1986] (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 1991), 207–228; and Zhou Yan, “Gu Wenda’s Oedipus,” in Fragmented Memory, 20–23.
Notes
24. Wang Luyan, “Chujue yishu” [Tactile art], 1988, unpublished manifesto. 25. Ibid. 26. Geng Jianyi, “Chishe de jinqi huihua” [Recent painting by the Pool Society], 1987, in Gao Minglu, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 203–204. 27. Zhang Peili, “Wode yishu taidu” [My attitude toward art], 1987; published as “Zhang Peili de yishuguan” [Zhang Peili’s artistic opinion], in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 200. 28. “Chishe Jianbao diyihao” [Pronouncement of the Pool Society no. 1], June 1986; in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 198. 29. “Chishe xuanyan” [Manifesto of the Pool Society], May 1986, in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 198. 30. “Chishe Jianbao dierhao” [Pronouncement of the Pool Society no. 2], June 10, 1986, in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 198–199. 31. Geng, “Chishe de jinqi huihua.” 32. “Chishe Jianbao disanhao” [Pronouncement of the Pool Society no. 3], November 4, 1986, in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 199. 33. Gao et al., Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 163. 34. Zhang Peili, “Guanyu X? xielie de chuangzuo yu zhanlian zhengxu” [The process and rules of the creation and display of the X? Series], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 120 (November 9, 1987), 2. 35. Zhang Peili, “Guanyu hepishu yihao de tonggao” [A description of the Brown Book no. 1], June 1988, in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 213–214. 36. Quoted in Valerie C. Doran, ed., Hou pa chiu Chung-guo hsin I sho [China’s new art, post-1989] (Hong Kong: Hanart TZ Gallery, 1993), 145. 37. Ibid., 28. 38. Geng, “Chishe de jinqi huihua,” in Gao, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 203–204. 39. Ibid. 40. “Shiyi yue ershiliu ri zuowei liyou” [November 26 as a reason], a catalogue-like booklet that includes the projects of sixteen artists from around the nation, 1994, printed by the artists.
Chapter 8 1. I began to use the term zhengzhi bopu (political pop) before I moved to the United States in October 1991. Before I left, around 1990 and 1991, Wang Guangyi, Yu Youhan, Shu Qun, and Ren Jian all gave me slides of their pop works, and I brought them to the States to introduce their works at Ohio State University. I also gave a talk at the Asian contemporary art conference held by the Asia Society in New York in 1992. I participated in a workshop at the Wilson Center in Washington, with which I published an article including a discussion of political pop, “The Avant-Garde’s Challenge to Official Art” (coauthored with
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
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Julia Andrews) in Urban Space in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 221–278. The first formal English publication in which I used the term political pop was the “Chronology of Chinese Avant-Garde Art, 1979–1993,” in Fragmented Memory: The Chinese Avant-Garde in Exile, exh. cat. (Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, 1993), 14–19. At the time, there was no publication that used the English term political pop. In “Jianbao, 1988 xiandai yishu yantao hui” [Brief report on the 1988 Contemporary Art Conference], in Tunxi city, Anhui Province, unpublished, in Gao Minglu archive. Yan Shanchun, “Wang Guangyi he wo tan shenhua he celue” [Wang Guangyi and I discuss myth and strategy], Xinmeishu [New art], no. 2 (1988), 25–31; another version appears in a book edited by Yan Shanchun and Lu Peng, Dangdai meishu chaoliu zhong de Wang Guangyi [Wang Guangyi in the trends of contemporary art] (Chengdu: Sichuan Art Press, 1992). On the day before the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition opened, a representative of the Ministry of Culture came to examine the works. With the support of some famous painters, Wang Guangyi’s Mao Zedong No. 1 was allowed to be shown under the condition that a short explanatory text be exhibited alongside it. As the principal curator of this exhibition, I drafted this explanation along with Wang Guangyi. Also see chapter 4. These statements and those of other artists are published in the political pop section of the catalogue China’s New Art: Post-1989 (Hong Kong: Hanart TZ Gallery, 1993). Margarita Tupitsyn, “Sots Art: The Russian Deconstructive Force,” in Sots Art (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986). Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rogle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 12. I analyze this phenomenon in “Meishu, quanli, gongfan: Zhengzhi popu xianxing” [Kitsch, power, and complicity: The political pop phenomenon], Xiongshi meishu [Lion art], no. 297 (November 1995), 36–57. An example of this dislocation was found on a New York Times Magazine cover in December 1993. On it was a reproduction of a painting by one of the cynical realists and the title of an article on the Chinese avant-garde: “Not just a yawn but the howl that could free China.” Ironically, if you had visited the artist, you would have found him living in a big house in Beijing with a beautiful garden and a big gate between his lifestyle and that of ordinary people. These new professional artists have been passionately involved in creating a Chinese leisure culture, which is an essential part of any capitalist society, rather than engaging in avant-garde culture. The article was by Andrew Solomon, New York Times Magazine, December 19, 1993, 43. Zhou Yan first named cynical realism “tiaokan realism” in his essay for the 1991 “Xinshengdai” exhibition; later, in 1993, Li Xianting called it “wanshi realism” in the catalogue for “Chinese New Art Post-1989.” In fact, tiaokan and wanshi share the same English meaning of “cynical.”
Notes
11. See chapter 6, in which I discussed Geng Jianyi’s approach to this painting.
Chapter 9 1. I coined the term “apartment art” in my essay “Toward Transnational Modernity: Contemporary Art in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong,” in Inside Out: New Chinese Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 15–40. I am currently working on a series of exhibition/publication projects that started with the catalogue Apartment Art in China 1970s–1990s (1): The Ecology of Post-Cultural Revolution Frontier Art (Beijing: Shuimu Contemporary Art Space, 2008). This apartment art exhibition series aims to recreate the original state of the important historical phenomenon and to display its development processes through large numbers of works, documents, and photos. In the end, a printed document is to be made to provide firsthand materials for researchers and lovers of Chinese contemporary art. This research project also attempts to achieve a new approach in which one may find the whole history of a movement embodied in the development of a specific kind of space for art activity. This may allow us to make a departure from the conventional ideological narrative or formalist evolutionary history in Chinese art history writing. 2. See my discussion of the amateur avant-garde in the postCultural Revolution period in chapter 2. 3. In the jianxun (concise news) section, it said, “American modern artist Rauschenberg’s international traveling exhibition respectively opened in Beijing from November 18 to December 8, 1985 and in Tibet from December 2 to 23, 1985.” Meishu, no. 1 (January 1986), 72. 4. Zhang Wei, “Zhang Wei’s Autobiography,” February 2008, unpublished. 5. Zhang Runjuan, “Family Salon: The Shelter of Abstract Art,” in Gao, Apartment Art in China 1970s–1990s (1): The Ecology of Post-Cultural Revolution Frontier Art, 46–55. 6. For a selection of the photography and works by Zhang and his group, see Gao Minglu, ed., The ’85 Movement: An Anthology of Historical Sources (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 448–452. 7. See Zhang Shengquan, “Notes on Art,” unpublished. 8. Shao Yinong and Mu Chen, “Xicun Yishujia I” [The Artists of Xicun], 1995, unpublished. Xicun is another name for Yuanmingyuan, an artists’ village that thrived in the early 1990s. 9. According to Chen Weihe, mangliu, or “jobless migrants,” was a term first coined by Wen Pulin, a Beijing-based videographer. See Chen Weihe, “Beijing mangliu yishujia yinxiang” [Impressions of Beijing jobless migrants], Zhongguo meishubao, no. 171 (October 31, 1988), 2. 10. See the section “Art Merging with Life” in chapter 6. 11. Lea Vergine, Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language (Milan: Skira, 2000), 15. 12. Gao Minglu, “Private Experiences and Public Happening: The Performance Art of Zhang Huan,” in Zhang Huan (Santiago de Compostela: Museo das Peregrinacións, 2003), 46–63.
13. See chapter 6. 14. Song Dong and Guo Rui, Yesheng: 1997 nian jingzhe shi [Wildlife: Starting from 1997 Jingzhe or “Awakening of Insects”], an informal publication. 15. Feng Boyi’s essay “From ‘Underground’ to ‘Above Ground’: On Chinese Avant-Garde Art since the 1990s” introduces some exhibitions that occurred in alternative spaces, some of which where orchestrated by independent curators. Many publications circulated unofficially. See Yishu pinglun [Art criticism], no. 7 (2004), 43–47. 16. Song Dong, interviewed by Gao Minglu, Beijing, January 14, 2005. 17. Zhu Jinsh, interviewed by Gao Minglu, Buffalo, New York, January 23, 2005. 18. For Gu Yuan’s story of learning art from a village boy, see chapter 1.
Chapter 10 This chapter mainly comes from the essay I wrote for the catalogue for the exhibition “Chinese Maximalism,” co-organized by the University of Buffalo Art Gallery and the China Millennium Art Museum, Beijing. See Gao Minglu, “An Alternative Metaphysical Art,” in Chinese Maximalism (Chongqing: Chongqing People’s Press, 2003), 1–45. 1. Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” Art and Literature, no. 4 (Spring 1965), 193–201. 2. Gao Minglu, “Guanyu lixing huihua” [On rationalist painting], Meishu, no. 8 (August 1986), 41–47. 3. Yve-Alain Bois, “Material Utopia,” Art in America (April 1988), 161–180. Bois is an expert in contemporary abstract art of the West, and a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He analyzed in his work how the early abstract painters of the West regarded two-dimensional paintings as modes of utopia or spiritual revolution. As Donald Judd said: “all that art [European modern art] is based on systems built beforehand, a priori systems; they express a certain type of thinking and logic that is pretty much discredited now as a way of finding out what the world’s like.” Bruce Glaser, “Questions to Stella and Judd,” in Gregory Battcock, ed., Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968), 151. 4. As Frank Stella said: “My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object and anyone who gets involved enough in this finally has to face up to the objectness of whatever it is that he’s doing. He is making a thing. … All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion … what you see is what you see.” Glaser, “Questions to Stella and Judd,” 158. 5. Michael Fried analyzed the difference between the modern painting of the 1920s and 1930s and minimalism, and summarized the nature of minimalism (or literalist art, as he called it) as follows: “Modernist painting has come to find it imperative that it defeat or suspend its own objecthood, and that the crucial factor in this undertaking is shape, but shape that must belong to painting—it must be pictorial, not or
Notes
6. 7.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
13. 14.
15. 16. 17.
18.
not merely, literal. Whereas literalist art stakes everything on shape as a given property of objects, if not indeed, as a kind of object in its own right. It aspires, not to defeat or suspend its own objecthood, but on the contrary to discover and project objecthood as such.” Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” in Battcock, Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, 120. Fried also indicates that the literalist (minimalist) sensibility is theatrical, “because, to begin with, it is concerned with the actual circumstances in which the beholder encounters literalist work. Morris makes this explicit. Whereas in previous [modernist] art ‘what is to be had from the work is located strictly within [it].’ The experience of literalist art is of an object in a situation—one that, virtually by definition, includes the beholder. And the concern of minimalist artists is the scale within which the beholder and the object are related in a comparative distance. The awareness of scale is a function of the comparison made between that constant, one’s body size, and the object. The subject (beholder) and the object is implied in such a comparison” (ibid., 125– 126). Zhu Xiaohe, letter to Gao Minglu, September 4, 2002, in Gao Minglu archive. Ding Yi, “Random Thoughts on Art,” in “Jiangsu Huakan, Nontrend Paintings,” Jiangsu Art Monthly, special issue (1993). Ibid. Ding Yi, “Notes on Creating,” December 1995, unpublished. Zhu Xiaohe, “Overwriting and Obscurity,” entry 21, October 2002, in his “Notes on Art,” unpublished. Ibid., entry 1. Ibid., entry 22: “Thoughts are some outside quantity of labor, some overaccumulation of labor, and a paranoia of certain labor. I am a thinker when I am engaged in overwriting.” Zhu Xiaohe, “Writing Is an Assumption,” entry 2, October 2002, in “Notes on Art,” unpublished. Zhu, “Overwriting and Obscurity,” entries 15, 16, 17, 18. “Entry 15: Overwriting re-presents the old image, makes it hard to understand, so that no one can interpret and respond to it. This suggests a break away from some cultural form, a cultural strategy of rebellion.” “Entry 16: To rewrite the traditional Chinese old images, making them hard to comprehend, mixed up and undifferentiated is a Chinese-style breakaway defined by Chinese and Western cultures. It also makes an inroad into and shares the abstruseness and complexity of the Western culture, and does not stay in the primitive, simple and pure mode.” “17: Overwriting as a cultural strategy against cultural hegemony is necessary.” “18: Abstruseness and mingling is an understanding of the liberation of nationalism. In so doing, the lost territory we take back from Western culture is a kind of reminiscence of the old wisdom. Obscurity and mingling have become the resources, cultural area, and feature shared by us and the West.” Zhu Xiaohe, letter to Gao Minglu, September 4, 2002. Zhu, “Overwriting and Obscurity,” entry 27. I visited his studio in Xinzhuang, Shanghai, in late 2002, when he had almost finished the painting. I had an interview with him about his method and concept. Zhongguo xiandai yishuzhan [China/avant-garde catalogue] (Guilin: Guangxi People’s Press, 1989), 11.
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19. Song Tao, “The Explanation of 49,368 Square Millimeters,” unpublished. 20. For some of Xu Bing’s ideas, see his article “Dui fushuxing huihua de xin tansuo yu zai renshi” [A reexploration and reassessment of repetitive painting], Meishu, no. 10 (October 1987), 50–51. The images of his entire series are also published in the same issue. 21. Janson Chang, ed., China’s New Art, Post-1989 (Hong Kong: Hanart TZ Gallery, 1993), 28. 22. Lei Hong, interviewed by Gao Minglu, May 20, 2002.
Chapter 11 1. See the introduction to this book. 2. Meaning a modernity with a narrative apart from Greenberg’s. For instance, in T. J. Clark’s writing, modernity and the avant-garde are not confined by visual evolution; rather they are regarded as a representation of social structure. Therefore, Gustave Courbet’s realistic painting turns into a texture in the fabric of French history at a particular changing moment of modern social class. 3. The Chinese version has just been published with the title Yi pai: yige dianfu zaixian de lilun [Yi pai: A synthetic theory against representation] (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009). I recently used this theory as a critical and curatorial approach to organize the exhibition “Yipai: Thirty Years of Chinese ‘Abstraction,’” sponsored by Fundació “La Caixa” and Beijing Municipal Culture Bureau, which opened on March 14, 2007, in Palma La Caixa Forum, and traveled to Barcelona in June 2008 and to Madrid in September 2008. The exhibition included ninety works made by forty-six artists since the 1970s. It finished in the Today Art Museum in Beijing with a different title, “Yipai: Century’s Mentality,” from May 31 to June 21, 2009. See the catalogue of the exhibition, Gao Minglu, Yipai: Zhongguo chouxiang sanshinian [Yipai: Thirty years of Chinese “abstraction”] (Barcelona: Fundació “La Caixa,” 2008), with three volumes respectively in Spanish, Catalonian, and Chinese; and Yipai: shiji siwei [Yipai: Century’s Mentality] (Harbin: Harbin Institute of Technology Press, 2009). 4. “Fu Xi [a legendary ruler of great antiquity, the first of the Three August Ones] began to create the Eight Diagrams by way of connecting with the essence of the universe and imitating living things on earth, through his observations of celestial phenomena, the geological environment, and the conditions of all living things as well as the changes of the earth, with his body or other living things at a distance being the objects of his experiment.” From the Yi jing. 5. As the Yi jing said, “observing images while understanding ci, or statements.” 6. Zhang Yanyuan, A Record of the Famous Painters of All the Dynasties, finished in the year A.D. 847. For the English translation of this part, see William Reynolds Beal Acker, Some T’ang and Pre-T’ang Texts on Chinese Painting (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954), 65–66. 7. See introduction to this book.
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8. “Zhao Mengfu de fugu yu Song Yuan hua feng de bianyi” [Zhao Mengfu’s archaism and the transition in Song and Yuan painting aesthetics], a master’s thesis published three times. See the summary in Meishu shilun [Art history and theory], no. 4 (1985), 60–68; a complete version is available in Shanghai huayuan jinian wenji [Commemorative collected works of Shanghai Academy of Painting], 1985 (Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Painting, 1985), 144–189, and in Xin meishu [New art], no. 3 (1989), 40–57.
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Index
Index
Note: “ f ” with a page number indicates a figure. “......” (Chen Qiulin), 25f A Cheng, 94f A Xian, 276 A Zhen, 142f Absolute Principle (Shu Qun), 171, 172f, 197 Absolution Series (Lei Hong), 349f Abstract art (chouxiang yishu), 10, 20–21, 81, 271, 311 Abstract expressionism, 22 “Academic Exchange Exhibition for Nationwide Young Artists,” 145, 146f Academicism, 78–84, 122, 202. See also New academicism Academic realism, 54, 66–67 Academic socialist realism, 54, 55 Adagio in the Opening of Second Movement, Symphony No. 5 (Wang Qiang), 108f Adam and Eve (Meng Luding), 28 Aestheticism, 2, 6, 10–11, 37, 42, 80, 122, 200 opposition to, 202, 204 Aesthetic principles, Chinese, 311 Aesthetic theory, traditional, 201–202 After Calamity (Yang Yushu), 91f Agree to the Date November 26, 1994 as a Reason (Zhang Keduan et al.), 289f Ai Qing, 97 Ai Weiwei, 24, 97, 284, 298 Alienation, 6, 7, 65, 138, 214, 248 authoritarianism and, 132 in capitalist society, 6, 138 modernization and, 19, 132, 237 Western, 138 Alternative spaces, art in, 210, 270. See also Apartment art; Maximalism Altman, Natan, 45 Amateur avant-garde, 82, 84, 97, 106, 271–273 Analysis (Wang Luyan, Chen Shaoping, Gu Dexin), 287 Analysis Group, 28, 273, 287. See also New Mark Group Analysis, 287 Anti-art ( fanyishu), 96, 114, 137, 200, 202–204, 206 Anti–Bourgeois Liberalism Campaign, 27, 139, 145, 147 Anti-idealism, 315 Antinarration, 266 Antiportraiture, 75
Anti–Spiritual Pollution Campaign, 81, 101, 102, 132, 271 Apartment (gongyu), 270 Apartment art, 7–10, 18, 269–271, 284, 305, 358 ending of, 276, 308 internationalization of, 308 legacy of the guannian artists in, 29 named by Gao Minglu, 7, 269–270 in 1980s, 4–5, 271, 273 privacy and, 7, 276, 308 space of, 305 temporary nature of, 305 women’s art and, 24 Apolitical art, 10, 66, 79–81, 90 Appearance of Cross Series (Ding Yi), 317f Apple and thinker metaphor, 175–176, 178, 180–182 April Fifth Tian’anmen Demonstration (Li Xiaobin), 76f April Photo Society, 75–76 exhibition, 74f, 75 Architectural models, 20 Architectural preservation, 21 Architectural sites, ritualized space in, 11–12, 14 Art and Language group, 199 Art education system, 78–79, 85, 102, 105, 380n24 Art field (yishuchang), 125 Art for art’s sake, 66, 79, 80, 82, 96, 97, 130, 271 apartment art, 271 No Name group, 4, 10, 85, 91 Stars group, 92 Art for Life, 46 “Art for the life of the masses,” 36–38, 40–42, 41f Artists Association (Soviet Union), 44 Artists Association (Heilongjiang province), 173 Artists’ groups. See also individual groups by name huahui, 4, 66, 82, 84, 97, 273 nature and function of, 135–139 Artists’ villages, 273, 276–278, 277f Art Monthly, 81 Art Plan #2 (Zhang Peili), 243, 244f, 245 Art revolutions, 36–38, 40–42 Artworks Become Trash, 8:30 p.m.–10:00 p.m., November 9, 1987 (Huang Yongping), 206, 206f Ashcan School, 66 Assignment No. 1: Copying the “Orchard Pavilion Preface” 1,000 times (Qiu Zhijie), 312f, 313 Audience, art’s relation to, 228, 236–237, 242, 245, 246, 264, 269
August 18 (Zhao Wenliang), 85f, 86f Authoritarianism, 132, 136, 231, 266 Avant-garde, Chinese, 4–9, 137–139, 166, 372n16, 373n9 commercialism and, 28, 67, 201, 276 cultural, 34–35, 44, 63, 65, 217 emergence of, 34 ending of, 42, 44, 45, 65 groups, 27, 135–139, 175 idealism of, 42, 138, 139 ideology, 4–5 literary movements, 36 opposition to, 81, 276 political, 42 proletarian, 35, 36–38, 40–42, 41f, 43, 44–45 Soviet, 41, 45, 46, 372n17 space of, 4–5, 7–8, 305 transitional, 169–175 and Western avant-garde, 4, 6, 7, 62–63, 138, 200, 354 Western influences on Chinese, 5, 36, 44 “Awarded Works of the Sixth National Art Exhibition, The” (exhibition), 81 Backwardness, social, 33, 35 Bao Jianfei, 237 Baptism no. 4 (Song Ling), 241, 241f Barthes, Roland, 315, 319 Baudelaire, Charles, 2 Beauty, 78–84, 90, 97 Beauty industry, 24–25 Behavior art, 278. See also Performance art Bei Dao, 82, 97 Beijing alleys, 18 East Village, 273, 276, 277f Beijing Artists Association, 91, 96 Beijing Communist Youth Community, 111 Beijing Graphic Arts Company, 147 Beijing Oil Study Society, 79 Beijing opera, 62 Beijing Young Painters Society, 111, 144 Bergson, Henri, 170 Bertolucci, Bernardo, 271 Beyond the Great Wall (Shi Lu), 50, 51f, 231 Bhabha, Homi K., 5 Big Business: Selling Shrimp (Wu Shanzhuan), 158, 158f, 227f, 382n26 Big Explosion Series (Zheng Lianjie), 12, 13f Big head painting, 74, 75, 264 Black Cover Book, 298 Black Union of Southwest Lu, 126 Black-White Creative Society, 112 Bloodline: Big Family No. 2 (Zhang Xiaogang), 265f, 266 Bo Yi, 91 Bo Yun, 97 Body art, 278. See also Human body; Performance art Bois, Yve-Alain, 314 Book from the Sky, A (Xu Bing), 27, 201, 219, 228–230, 229f Book of Changes. See Yi jing Bound, Unbound (Lin Tianmiao), 303, 313, 313f
394
Index
Bourgeois liberalism, 27, 132, 136, 139, 145, 147 Bread (Song Dong), 299f Bright Side and Dark Side of a Face, The (Geng Jianyi), 346f Brown Book #1 (Zhang Peili), 243, 243f Brushwork, 330 Buddhism. See Chan Buddhism Building No. 5 (Geng Jianyi), 305, 306f Bürger, Peter, 2, 5, 6, 200 BYY group, 114, 118 exhibition, 117f Cai Guoqiang, 14, 14f, 114 Cai Jin, 284 Cai Yuanpei, 3, 36, 37, 78 Cailiao (substance), 269 Calinescu, Matei, 2 Calligraphy, 202, 339f Cang Xin, 276, 277, 279, 281f, 284 Cao Xiaodong, 173, 191 Cao Yong, 130–131, 132, 134f Capitalism, 2, 6, 138 Case Study of Transference, A (Xu Bing), 309f Casting (He Yunchang), 19f Castle Series (Ding Fang), 191 Censorship, 111, 148–151, 154 Central Academy of Fine Art, 48, 79, 111, 154, 175, 194, 272 Ceremony (Tang Guangming), 216, 217f Cézanne, Paul, 317 Chairman Mao Reporting on the Rectification in Yan’an (Luo Gongliu), 43f Chan Buddhism, 21, 114, 200, 206, 230 Dada and, 114, 125, 204, 206 Chang (field), 125 Chen Chengzong, 209f Chen Conglin, 67, 68, 68f, 192 Chen Danqing, 70f Chen Duxiu, 36 Chen Fan, 94f Chen Jinrong, 228 Chen Junde, 78f, 79 Chen Lide, 117f, 255–256 Chen Maozhi, 73f Chen Qiang, 228 Chen Qiulin, 24–26, 25f Chen Shaofeng, 308f Chen Shaoping, 82, 275f. See also Analysis Group; New Mark Group Analysis, 287 and Analysis Group, 28, 273 apartment art, 287, 298 Tactile Art, 234, 235f, 236, 287 tactile art, 202, 234–236, 269 The Works of the New Mark Group No. 1, 318–319f Chen Shizeng, 40 Chen Tiegeng, 47 Chen Yanyin, 287, 288f, 289f Chen Yiming illustrations for “Maple,” 68, 68p, 72f, 73f
Chen Zhen, 185, 186f, 188 Cheng Li, 130 Cheng Xiaoyu, 182–183, 182f Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Gavrilovich, 44 Chi, 224 China Anonymous Painting Society, 128 “China/Avant-Garde” (exhibition) artists’ preparation for, 127 bomb threats, 163–164 budget, 153f catalogue, 154, 155f censorship, 96, 111, 148–151, 154, 162, 227 commemorative event (2009), 141, 142f, 143f curatorial team, 148, 150, 246 English title, significance of, 166 exhibition plan (1987), 144–145, 147 exhibition poster (Yang Zhilin), 156f fundraising, 151–152, 154, 382n17 Gao Minglu and, 136, 141–148, 142f, 150–154, 155f, 156, 157f, 166, 382n17 gunshots at, 29, 96, 142, 143–144, 158, 161–162, 161f, 166, 382n26 influence of, 27–28, 143 invitation, 146f logo, 156, 156f, 157f, 173 media coverage, 161f, 166 opening, 156, 157f, 158 organizational committee, 135f, 136, 141, 148, 150–151, 152, 163, 165 performance art at, 135, 158, 161–164 police closures, 96, 135f, 142, 154, 156, 158, 160f, 161–166, 161f, 164f proposals, 149f, 208 security, 163–164 sponsorship, 144, 147, 164–165 China City Environment, 147 Chinese Aesthetic Study Society, 147 Chinese Artists Association, 102, 145, 148, 154, 164, 272 Chinese Contemporary Artists’ Work Proposals (Wang Luyan et al.), 287 Chinese language, 202 characters, 219, 221, 223–224 Chinese Modern Art Convention, 227 Chinese Modern Art Research Society, 144, 146 Chineseness, 11 Chinese Writers Association, 101 Chinese Youth, 82–83 Chizi (Wu Shanzhuan), 269 Christensen, Peter G., 137 Christian iconography, 171, 197 Circle Series (Yu Youhan), 187f City Artists Association, 122 City Series: When Sound Fills Up the City Sky (Ding Fang), 22f Civilization of the north, 171–172 Clark, T. J., 358 Class identity, 70 Class struggle drama, 55 Closing Down Twice (Zhang Riyao), 164f Color theory, 317
Index
Commercial art, 76, 197 Commercialism, 7, 28, 227, 259, 315 Commercial media, 62 Communist Party of China, Seventh National Conference, 40 Concept art (gainian yishu), 199 Concept 21 Group, 232, 233f Conceptual art, 2, 7, 114, 118, 197, 199 in Chinese context, 199 in ’85 Movement, 106, 108 Western, 199, 200, 201, 355 Concise History of Modern Painting, A (Read), 206 Confucian pragmatism, 3 Confucius, 37, 356 Consumerism, 25, 219, 276 recontextualization of, 219, 221, 223–225, 227 Contemporaneity, 1, 4, 9, 213 Contemporary Art Conference, 256 Continual revolution, 34 Conversation with Water (He Yunchang), 282, 283f “Convex/Concave” (exhibition), 108 poster, 110f Corruption, governmental, 28, 40, 151 Country Project, The (Song Yongping et al.), 214, 215f Countryside, cultural activities in, 207 Covered by Red (Dai Guangyu), 307f Critical realism, 53 Cross, symbology of, 176, 197 Cross Series (Ding Yi), 314, 316–317 Crow, Thomas, 358 Cubism, 79, 122 Cultural Animals (Xu Bing), 305, 308 Cultural consciousness, 34–35 Cultural fever, 33 Cultural pluralism, 213 Cultural rectification, 41–42, 47, 55, 58, 65 Cultural Revolution art of, 44, 58, 62–63, 67, 81 cruelty of, 90–91 culture in, 34–35 and educational system, 377n27 ending the avant-garde, 42, 44 launching of, 58 total modernity of, 65 Culture: China and the World Series, 147 Culture Noodles (Song Dong), 285f, 298, 300–301f Curators, 148 Current of life painting, 170, 173–175, 191–192, 266, 315 Cynical realism, 5, 9, 28, 44, 67, 75, 197, 255–256, 263–266, 269, 273, 276–277, 290, 315 Dada, 114, 139, 200, 207. See also Xiamen Dada Chan Buddhism and, 114, 125, 204, 206 Dai Guangyu, 291–295f, 305, 307f Daily life, 3, 279 art from, 5, 21, 24, 37, 118, 201, 203, 221, 290 (see also Household art) Dao, 125 Daoism, 176, 230 David, Jacques-Louis, 181
395
David and Venus (Mao Xuhui), 255, 256f Days (Song Dong), 304f Death of Marat, The (Wang Guangyi), 181, 182f Deconstructionism, 9–11, 27–28, 29, 197, 228–230, 290 Decontextualization, 237 Decorative art, 80 Dematerialization, 200, 201, 228, 269, 332 Democracy Wall, 76f, 82–84, 88, 92, 271 Democracy Wall (Li Xiaobin), 77f, 88 Democracy Wall (Ma Kelu), 89f Democratization of art, 42, 380n33 Deng Pingxiang, 122 Deng Xiaoping, 3, 14, 34, 65, 70, 255 Derrida, Jacques, 319 Dialogue (Xiao Lu), 160f, 161–162 Dialogue with Demolition (Zhang Dali), 18f, 19 Diary (Li Huasheng), 21, 314 Diary on Shanghai Water (He Yunchang), 19, 19f Digging the Mountain Endlessly (Wang Yingchun), 59f Digital technology, 20 Ding Fang, 22, 191, 276, 311 Castle Series, 191 City Series: When Sound Fills Up the City Sky, 22f Drawing of a Landscape, 189f The Enlightenment of the Original Spirit, 191 The Power of Tragedy, 191 Red Journey group, 112, 173 Self-Transcendence, 191 The Summons and Birth, 190f, 191 Will and Sacrifice, 191 Yellow Earth series, 184 Ding Yi, 314–317, 317f Disconnection disCONNEXION (Xing Danwen), 20, 20f Dong Chao, 126 Dong Xaioming, 148 Dong Xiwen, 50, 51f, 52f, 53, 55 Dong Zhuongshu, 278 Door Guardian (Yan Han), 47f Door Guardians (Liu Dahong), 257, 259f, 260 Door guardians, traditional, 47, 48f Drawing of a Landscape (Ding Fang), 189f Dream Is Just Dream (Ma Lu), 112f Dreams, 171, 192, 194 Duang Xiucang, 127 Duchamp, Marcel, 2, 6, 42, 200–202, 303 Dust (Huang Yongping), 212f, 213 Earth from the Aliens’ Point of View, The (Song Haidong), 163f Earth Painting, The (Sui Jianguo), 270f East, The (Cheng Xiaoyu), 182–183, 182f Eastern Magazine (Dongfang zazhi), 36 East and West, 33–34, 48, 101, 213 synthesis, 37, 38, 79, 353 East German Embassy, 162 Economic reform, 3, 139, 255 Educating the Children (Zhu Xiaohe), 322f Education system, artistic, 78–79, 85, 102, 105, 380n24 Cultural Revolution and, 377n27
396
Index
“’88 Chinese Modern Art Conference,” 127 “85.8 New Art” (exhibition), 132 ’85 Movement, The (Gao Minglu), 93f ’85 Movement, 23–29, 34, 81, 101–102, 105–186, 203 academies, role of, 102 as anti-art project, 200 audience, 138 avant-garde mentality, 62 in central China, 118, 122, 125–128 compared to Western avant-garde, 7, 138 criticism of, 118, 122, 125–126 on east coast, 106, 108, 111–112, 114, 118 economics, 135 exhibitions, 118, 273 groups, nature and function of, 135–139 humanist tendencies, 169–170, 171, 175, 199 idealism, 138, 139 influences on, 105, 111, 128, 139, 171, 272 leaders, 106, 236 in the media, 108, 111 myth adopted by, 269 named by Gao Minglu, 101, 102, 137 public engagement, 276 purpose and function, 101, 106, 135–139, 169, 175 as revolution in ideas (guannian gengxin), 199–202, 217 self-identification, 169–170 and social reform, 171 in southwest and northwest China, 128, 130, 132 statistics, 103f, 107f, 122, 128 suppression of, 136 traditionalist-antitraditionalist tension, 101, 136 “’85 New Space” (exhibition), 108f, 139, 237 ’85 New Wave, 34 ’87 Body Art (Rhinoceros Painting Society), 115f “’86 Last Exhibition, No. 1,” 106, 109f, 135 Élan vital, 170 Elvehjem Museum, 230–232 Emptiness (xu), 230 Endurance, 278–280, 282, 284 Enlightenment, 106, 176, 178, 194 Enlightenment of the Original Spirit, The (Ding Fang), 191 Environmental art, 125, 214 Environmental change, 15–16 Environmental Works (Huang Yongping), 210 Eternal Life (Zhang Xiaogang), 194, 194f European art, 45, 79, 200. See also Western art Event Taking Place in the Art Gallery of Fujian Province, An, 207, 208f, 210 “Exhibition for the Celebration of the Establishment of the People’s Republic of China,” 146 “Exhibition of International Art Publications,” 105 “Exhibition of Vitality,” 130 “Exhibition of Young Artists of Western Inner Mongolia,” 130 Existentialism, 27, 176, 278, 354 Expanding Series, No. 1 (Li Shan), 187f Experience on a Certain Day in 1986 (Song Yonghong), 118, 121f Exploration (Cao Yong), 84 Expressionism, 122, 237
Face of Modern Tragedy No. 1, The (Cao Yong), 132, 134f Face of Modern Tragedy No. 2, The (Cao Yong), 132, 134f Family, 266 Fan Di’an, 150, 151, 152, 298 Fan Kuan, 191 Fang an. See Projects on paper Fang Lijun, 28, 264, 266, 276 New Generation exhibition, 263 Oil Painting No. 2, 264f Sketch No. 2, 264f Fang Mengbo, 8 Farm workers, 18 Fascism, 47 Father (Luo Zhongli), 70, 71f, 74–75 Favorsky, Vladimir, 47 Fei Dawei, 145f, 150 Feminism, 24 Feng Boyi, 8, 298 Feng Guodong, 82, 272 Feng Jicai, 152 Fengtian Sun Tobacco Company Advertisement (Jin Meisheng), 50f Fenzi culture, 25–26 “Festival of Youth Art in Hubei,” 118, 122 Fifteen Shots—From 1980 to 2003 (Xiao Lu), 162, 162f “First Anhui Oil Painting Exhibition,” 127 First Experimental Exhibition (Southern Artists Salon), 118, 119f, 214, 215f, 278 First Haircut in the Summer of 1985, The (Geng Jianyi), 237, 239f “First National Exhibition of the China Anonymous Painting Society Group,” 128 “First Perspective Painting Exhibition,” 128 “Five-Man Exhibition,” 203 Five Series of Repetitions (Xu Bing), 228, 228f, 332 Five Warriors on Langya Mountain (Zhan Jianjun), 54, 54f Fixing the Golden Tooth for the Great Wall (Zhan Wang), 14–15, 15f Flags (Wang Jiping), 120f Folk art, 47, 48, 55, 128, 257 Folk realism, 44–45 Foolish Man Removing the Mountain, The (Xu Beihong), 38, 40, 40f Formalism, 2, 84, 316 49,368 Square Millimeters (Song Tao), 314, 332, 333–338f Forum, 84 Foster, Hal, 58 Founding Ceremony of the Nation, The (Dong Xiwen), 50, 52f, 53 Fountain (Duchamp), 6 Four Masters, 36 Four Seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter (Liu Dahong), 260, 260–261f Fragment: Ma Liuming (Ma Liuming), 280f Free Discussion on Literature (Sun Zixi), 152 Freedom, individual, 66, 82, 94, 101, 112, 128, 130, 138, 170, 287 body as medium for, 278–280, 282, 284 Freud, Sigmund, 126 Frozen land metaphor, 182–185
Index
Frozen North Pole series (Wang Guangyi), 180, 181, 184–185, 184f Frozen North Pole, No. 30, 180f Fu Baoshi, 50, 380n24 Fu Xi, 194, 390n4 Futurism, Italian, 41, 46 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 319 Gallery of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art, 237 Game (Yang Shufeng), 132f Game-based work, 246 Gan Yang, 147 Gang of Four, 72, 76, 88, 255 Gao Gang, 53 Gao Minglu “About Rationalist Painting,” 170 apartment art named by, 7, 269–270 and “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, 136, 141–148, 142f, 143f, 145f, 150–154, 155f, 156, 157f, 166, 382n17 Contemporary Art Conference, 256 “The ’85 Art Movement,” 144 The ’85 Movement, 93f ’85 Movement named by, 101, 102, 137 maximalism named by, 10, 313–314 National Oil Painting Conference, 144 “Protest,” 141, 142f, 143f “The Recent Developing Trends in Oil Painting,” 170 in U.S. as visiting scholar, 166 Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986, 103f, 107f, 147 “Zhuhai ’85 New Wave Large-Scale Slide Exhibition,” 144 Gao Tianmin, 137f Gao Xiaohua, 68, 69p Ge Weimo, 148 Gendered space, 14, 23–26 Geng Jianyi, 197, 236, 237, 246 and apartment artists, 284 The Bright Side and Dark Side of a Face, 346f Building No. 5, 305, 306f fang an art, 287 The First Haircut in the Summer of 1985, 237, 239f guannian projects, 28 Haircut, No. 4—Fashion and Style in the Summer of 1985, 183f How Could a “ ” Character Be Enough?, 347f Investigative Forms, 246 Investigative Forms—Huang Yongping, 248–250f King and Queen no. 3, 240f, 241 neo-guannian art, 269 Pool Society, 106, 236, 237 Reasonable Relationship, 248 Second State, 245, 245f, 264 Tap Water Factory: A Mutually Voyeuristic Installation, 246, 247f Two People under the Lamplight, 178, 178f Yang’s Taiqi Series No. 1, 241 Ghosts Pounding the Wall (Xu Bing), 14, 201, 228, 230–232, 231f Giddens, Anthony, 15
397
Giovale, Franco, 271, 271f Globalization, 14–16, 22, 23–24, 255, 361 and art, 200, 217, 263, 273, 315 Golden Sunshine (He Yunchang), 282, 282f Goodbye (Li Shan), 159f Go to the Front (Hu Yichuan), 41f Graffiti art, 18 Grain Rain (Li Huasheng), 21f Gray Cover Book, 298 Gray humor, 28, 106, 219, 236–237, 241 Great Castigation series (Wang Guangyi), 257 Great Castigation Series: Coca-Cola, 262f, 263 Great Castigation Series: Marlboro, 258f Great Leap Forward, 54 Great Rectification in Yan’an (Yan’an zhengfeng yudong), 41– 42. See also Cultural rectification Great Wall, 50, 231–232, 233f Beyond the Great Wall (Shi Lu), 50, 51f, 231 Ghosts Pounding the Wall (Xu Bing), 14, 201, 228, 230–232, 231f as ritual space, 12, 14–15 Great Wall Art Museum, 154 Great Wall Fast Food Company, 154 Greenberg, Clement, 2, 6, 9, 42, 45, 311, 353 Groping (Lin Fengmian), 37 Gu Cheng, 82, 97 Gu Dexin, 275f, 315. See also Analysis Group; New Mark Group Analysis, 287 and Analysis Group, 28, 273 apartment art, 287, 298 conceptual art activities, 326, 328 and New Mark Group, 28, 273 Pinching the Flesh: Object as Living Life, 314, 326, 327–328f, 328, 332 “Seven-Man Exhibition,” 272 Tactile Art, 234, 235f, 236, 287 tactile art, 202, 234–236, 269 Untitled, 326f The Works of the New Mark Group No. 1, 318–319f Wuti, 326 Gu Wenda, 27–29, 106, 188, 200, 206, 233–234, 236, 349, 354 language art, 202, 219 monumental ink painting, 182 Mythos of Lost, 188f Pseudo-Characters Series—Silence, 234f scholarly painting, 188 Self-Portrait with a Window Behind, 180, 180f A World in Calm Observation, 234f Gu Yuan, 44, 305 Guan Ce, 173, 191 Guan Naixin, 96 Guan Wei, 96 Guang Tingbo, 280f Guangxu (emperor of China), 35 Guangzhou Zhongshan University, 214 Guannian (idea) art, 27–29, 201–202, 269 neo-guannian art, 199–202, 269
398
Index
Guishan Series (Mao Xuhui), 192 Guishan Series: Encounter on Red Soil, 192, 193f Gun ownership laws, 158 Guo Jin, 264 Guo Wei, 264 Habermas, Jürgen, 2 Haircut, No. 4—Fashion and Style in the Summer of 1985 (Geng Jianyi), 183f Hamilton, Richard, 197 Hamlet in Heaven, 109f Hangzhou National Academy of Art, 78, 79, 236 Hanmo Art Gallery, 305, 308 “Hanmo Art News,” 308 “Haowangjiao Modern Art Exhibition,” 130 Happenings, 122 Hatching Eggs (Zhang Nian), 158, 159f He Chengyao, 14, 14f He Duoling, 176, 177f, 192 He Mole, 272 He Yunchang Casting, 19f Conversation with Water, 282, 283f Diary on Shanghai Water, 19, 19f Golden Sunshine, 282, 282f performance art, 19, 276, 279, 284 The Trusting Man Who Drowned While Holding the Column, 284, 284f Heidegger, Martin, 354 “Henan First Oil Painting Exhibition,” 122 Henan Provincial Agricultural Gallery, 122 Heroic and Indomitable (Quan Shanshi), 54, 54f Heroic cynicism, 255 Heroic realism, 38, 46, 54 History of Chinese Art and a Concise History of Modern Painting in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes (Huang Yongping), 207f History of Chinese Painting, A (Wang Bomin), 206 “Home: Bingyi and Leihong Recent Works” (exhibition), 10 Homeland, Homeland! No. 1 (Qu Leilei), 94, 95f Hong Hao, 343f Hong Yi, 330 Hongxia Apartments, 305 Honisch, Dieter, 271 Horkheimer, Max, 2 Hou Hanru, 150, 166, 298 Hou Yimin, 54, 55f Hou Zhen, 125 Household art, 24, 298, 303, 305, 308 How Could a “ ” Character Be Enough? (Geng Jianyi), 347f Hu Shi, 3, 357 Hu Yaobang, 82–83 Hu Yichuan, 41f, 47, 236 Hua Dong, 109f Hua Guofeng, 65 Huahui (painting societies), 4, 66, 82, 84, 97, 273 Huang Bingyi, 11f Huang Rui, 11, 96
Huang Yali, 123f Huang Yan, 305 Huang Yongpan, 209f Huang Yongping, 22, 200, 202–204, 206, 207–208, 217, 219, 230, 236, 269, 354 Artworks Become Trash, 8:30 p.m.–10:00 p.m., November 9, 1987, 206, 206f Dust, 212f, 213 Environmental Works, 210 An Event Taking Place in the Art Gallery of Fujian Province, 208f History of Chinese Art and a Concise History of Modern Painting in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes, 207f The Kitchen, April 18–December 18, 1987, 213, 213f move to the West, 28, 29 No Move Needed, the Objects Themselves Automatically Become Artwork, 210f No Need to Move, Add, or Remove Objects to Make Artworks, 211f Nonexpressive Painting: Roulette Wheel Series, 203–204, 203f Paint [Spray] Gun Series, 203 Pipe with T Shape, 203 Proposal for Pulling the National Art Museum of China Away, 209f Rearrange the Objects to Make Artworks, 211f rope project, “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, 209f Roulette with Six Plates, 205f Sharpening Pencils, December 16, 1987–January 25, 1988, 213f “Thinking, Making, and Projects in 1987,” 210 World Factory, 22, 23f and Xiamen Dada, 114, 125, 202, 236 “Xiamen Dada: A Kind of Postmodernism?,” 114, 202, 204, 206 Hubei Academy of Fine Arts, 123f Hubei Artists Association, 118, 122 Hui Neng, 206 Human Beings and Their Clock (Zhang Jianjun), 181, 181f Human body, 16, 17f, 18, 19, 182–184, 204, 237, 241, 273, 276–280, 282, 284 Humanism (Lin Fengmian), 37 Humanism (renwen, rendaozhuyi), 19, 27, 28–29, 37–38, 65– 66, 70, 201, 256 ’85 Movement and, 169–170, 171, 174, 175, 199, 201–202 “Humanism in China” (exhibition), 18 Hunan Artists Association, 118, 122 Hunan Young Artists Association, 122 Hundred Days Reform, 35 Huntington, Samuel P., 15 I (Luo Mingjun), 124f Idea art. See Guannian art Idealism, 28–29, 114, 138, 139, 141, 197, 227, 315 Idol (Wang Keping), 94, 95f, 255 I Exist, I Consume, and I Am Happy (Chen Qiulin), 25, 25f Image for Tibet, No. 3, An (Li Yanping), 129f Imitation, 315 Imitation: White: 36K, Square Meters: 36cm2, Additional Electric Current: 6V. 5A (Qian Weikang), 286f
Index
Imperial Palace Museum, 148 Impressionism, 79 Inaction, 207 Individualism, 24, 65, 97, 138, 174, 202–203, 266 and ’85 Movement, 42, 46 Stars and, 94 in women’s art, 24 Industrialization, 50 Industrial production, 202–203 In Front of Tian’anmen (Sun Zixi), 55, 57f, 74 Injured Buddha (Chen Lide), 117f, 255–256 Ink-and-wash painting, 188, 350 Ink painting, 10, 45, 112, 233, 182, 349–351 modern, 80, 112, 330, 349–351, 350f, 351f monumental, 182 traditional, 28, 36, 38, 45, 81, 349–351 In Memory (Zheng Ziyan), 89f “Innovative Painting Exhibition,” 130 Installation art, 298 Institutionalization of art, 9–10, 315 Institutional theory, 6 Intellectuals, 70, 75, 118 “International Youth Art Exhibition,” 175 In the New Era: Revelations of Adam and Eve (Zhang Qun and Meng Luding), 105–106, 105f, 175 Investigative Forms (Geng Jianyi), 246 Investigative Forms—Huang Yongping (Geng Jianyi), 248–250f Itinerants (Wanderers), 53 It Is a Fine Day; That Explains Why It Does Not Rain (Song Tao), 332 It Looks Beautiful—The Second Performance (Wu Yiming), 324–325f Jameson, Fredric, 2 Jiang Feng, 50, 236 Jiang Jie, 287, 290f Jiang Jieshi, 308 Jiang Qing, 58, 62, 72, 255 “Jiangsu Art Week Modern Art Festival,” 112, 113f, 173 Jiangsu huakan (Jiangsu pictorial), 102 Jiangsu school, 380n24 Jiangxi Artists Association, 127 “Jiangxi Second Youth Art Exhibition,” 127 Jiao Yueming, 209f Jie fang ribao (Liberation daily), 135 Jin Meisheng, 48, 49f, 50, 50f Jin Shangyi, 79, 147 Jinling school, 380n24 Jinshi, 272 Jobless migrants, 276 Judd, Donald, 314 June Fourth Incident, 27, 28, 29 June Fourth Movement, 313 Kafka, Franz, 192 Kan Fenggang, 148 Kan Xuan, 287 Kandinsky, Wassily, 311
399
Kang Mu, 11, 12f Kang Youwei, 36, 191 Kant, Immanuel, 321 Kettle of Boiling Water, A (Song Dong), 299f Kiefer, Anselm, 191 King and Queen no. 3 (Geng Jianyi and Song Ling), 240f, 241 Kitchen, April 18–December 18, 1987, The (Huang Yongping), 213, 213f Kitsch, 9, 10, 42, 50, 257, 353 academic, 81 commercial, 7, 9 double kitsch, 7, 263 ideological, 7, 353 Koch, Ulrike, 271 Kollwitz, Käthe, 40, 47 Komar, Vitaly, 259f Kong Boji, 79 Koons, Jeff, 298 Kosolapov, Alexander, 262f, 263 Land, metaphorical language of, 182–185, 188, 191–192, 194 Land art, 125 Landscape (Wu Guanzhong), 81f Landscape (Wu Jian), 22f Landscape painting, 4, 22, 50, 88, 90, 182 Language art, 106, 199, 200–202, 219–227, 319, 321, 323 A Book from the Sky, 228–230 Ghosts Pounding the Wall, 230–232 Red Humor: Big-Character Posters, 221, 223–224 Tactile Art (New Mark Group), 234, 235f, 236 Lanzhou Workers’ Cultural Palace, 132 Laozi, Zhuang, and Wife (Zuo Zhengyao), 178, 179f Leading Group of the Cultural Revolution, 58 Leaning toward a Pressure Point (Qian Weikang), 290 Left-wing art movement, 36, 40–41, 46–47 Left-wing literature and art, 55, 58 Left Wing Literature and Art Association, 37 Left-wing woodcut movement, 236 Left Wing Writers Association, 36 Lei Hong, 349, 349f Lenin (V. I. Ulyanov), 43 as symbol, 263 Li Bin illustrations for “Maple,” 68, 68p, 72f, 73f Li Fenglan, 59f Li Guijun, 176, 176f Li Han, 126, 126f Li Huasheng, 330f, 349 Diary, 21, 314 Grain Rain, 21f line-drawing (writing), 329–330 1995.5–1999.7, 331f 2000.3.9, 329f Li Jian, 108 Li Jingyang, 73f Li Keran, 50 Li Luming, 122 Li Qun, 46f, 47, 118
400
Index
Li Shan, 86f, 90, 108, 144, 145f, 185, 188, 271, 271f Expanding Series, No. 1, 187f Goodbye, 159f installation art, 158 political pop, 256 The Waking Dream, 111f Water Lily, 90f Yuyuantan Lake School, 88 Li Shuang, 96f Li Songsong, 161 Li Xianting, 92, 150 Li Xiaobin, 75–76, 76f, 77f, 88 Li Xiaoshan, 112 Li Yanping, 128, 129f Li Yongcun (Bo Yun), 94f Liang Juhui, 291–295f Liang Qichao, 36, 37, 191 Liang Shiqiu, 40 Liao Wen, 24 Life, art merging with, 213–217. See also Daily life Life drawing, 90 Lin Biao, 72, 255 Lin Fengmian, 37–38, 38f, 45–46, 78–79, 102, 236 Lin Jiahua, 208f, 209f Lin Pu, 305, 308 Lin Song, 305, 308 Lin Tianmiao, 24, 284, 298, 303, 313f Lin Yilin, 118, 213, 291–295f Linchun, 209f Line-drawing (writing), 321 Ling Huitao, 382n17 Literary culture, traditional, 127–128 Literary movements, 36, 75, 169 Literati painting, 21, 79, 112, 191, 219 Liu Anping, 163 Liu Dahong, 257, 259f, 260–261f Liu Dong, 147 Liu Haisu, 78, 79 Liu Kaiqu, 147, 158 Liu Shaoqi, 34, 53, 54, 67 Liu Shaoqi on the Road to Anyuan (Hou Yimin), 54, 55f Liu Wei, 263, 264, 265f, 266, 276 Liu Xiaochun, 145f Liu Xiaodong, 28, 29f, 263 Liu Xun, 91, 96, 96f, 144, 377n29 Liu Yian, 171 Liu Yulian illustrations for “Maple,” 68, 68p, 72f, 73f Liu Zhenggang, 130 “Living in Time” (exhibition), 298 Logocentrism, 326 Long March, 41 Loose wanderers, 84, 96–97 Love-to-see-and-hear (xiwen lejian) styles, 47 Lu Dingyi, 54 Lu Mingjun, 122 Lu Qing, 24, 284, 341f Lu Shengzhong, 27
Lu Xun, 40, 44, 46 Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art, 305 Lu Ying, 107f Lu Zheng, 36 Lu Zuogeng (Lu Yongquiang), 109f Luo Gongliu, 43f, 47 Luo Mingjun, 124f Luo Zhongli, 68–70, 71f, 74–75, 192 Luoyang Modern Art Study Group, 139 “Luoyang Modern Art Field” (exhibition), 125–126, 139 M Art Group, 108, 166, 202, 214, 216, 216f manifesto, 214 Ma Bosheng, 137f Ma Desheng, 88, 93f, 94, 94f, 96 Ma Kelu, 82, 86f, 88, 89f, 272 Ma Liuming, 273, 276, 279–280, 280f Ma Lu, 112f Machine, person as, 204 Makchmobk.M, 48 Malevich, Kazimir, 311, 349 Mao Xuhui, 192, 194, 266 David and Venus, 255, 256f Guishan Series, 192 Guishan Series: Encounter on Red Soil, 192, 193f influence of, 128, 170, 174 Patriarchy, 27 Southwest Art Group, 174 Mao Zedong and art, 36–38, 40–42, 41f, 45–46, 54, 62, 200, 353, 357– 358 Cultural Revolution, design for, 34–35 “The Foolish Man Removing the Mountain,” 40 Great Rectification in Yan’an, 41–42, 43–44, 43f linguistic culture, 219 myth of, 260–261 utopia, 260–261 Mao Zedong, Double Shadows, Tian’anmen (Yu Youhan), 258f Mao Zedong No. 1 (Wang Guangyi), 28, 154, 156, 156f, 197, 256–257 “Maple,” 67, 72, 255 illustrations for (Liu Yulian, Chen Yiming, and Li Bin), 68, 68p, 72f, 73f Marat, Jean-Paul, 181 Marx, Karl, 65, 138, 375n1 Marxism, 6, 37, 41, 354, 358 Masereel, Frans, 40, 47 Mass art, 36–38, 40–42, 41f, 44–45, 55, 62 revolutionary, 44, 47, 58 Mass culture, 24–25, 255, 257 Mass-Produced Nativity (Wang Guangyi), 256, 257f Mass style (dazhonghua), 44 Material culture, 10, 14–15, 16 Materialism, 2, 7, 10, 14–15, 22 Mathematical specifications, art based on, 287, 290 Matisse, Henri, 317 Maximalism, 20–22, 201, 204, 269, 313–319, 326, 358 legacy of guannian artists in, 29
Index
metaphysical operations, 319, 321, 323 named by Gao Minglu, 10, 20, 313–314 and process, 326, 328–330, 332, 339 Western minimalism versus, 314 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 45 May Fourth Movement, 33–35, 42, 46, 65, 171, 357 Meaningless Choice No. 1 (Song Ling), 247f Meaninglessness, 203, 207, 228–232, 233f, 273, 315 “Media Report on Five-Youth Art Exhibition,” 133f Medical Accident, A (Jiang Jie), 290f Meditation, 11, 192, 201, 314, 326, 328–330, 332, 339 Meishu (Art monthly), 92, 102, 111, 118, 136, 139, 147, 272 Meishu sichao (Art trends), 102 Melamid, Alexander, 259f Meng Luding, 28, 105–106, 105f, 175 Metaphysical art, 311, 313–316 current of life painting, 169–175 land, metaphorical language of, 182–185, 188, 191 rationalist painting, 169–175 thinker and apple metaphor, 175–176, 178, 180–182 wild earth and minority body metaphor, 191–192, 194 Mexican muralists, 66 Mi Fu, 191 Middle class, 23–24, 263 Migrants, 16, 17f, 18, 276 Military, Chinese, 35 Minimalism, 21, 314 Ministry of Bel-esprit and Beauty, 58 Ministry of Culture, 58, 148, 154, 163 Minority body, metaphor, 192, 194 Mirror to Analyze the World—The Last Book of the End of the Century, A (Xu Bing), 27 Missing Person Notices (Zhu Fadong), 281f Misty poetry, 97 Modern Art Center, 287 “Modern Art Conference,” 28 “Modern Art Design” (exhibition), 130 “Modern Art Exhibition” (Chifeng, 1986), 130 Modernism, 3, 9, 10, 20–22, 81, 315, 355 bourgeois, 90 with Chinese characteristics, 122 early twentieth-century Chinese, 10, 45–46 Modernity, 11, 21, 22, 33, 35, 194, 201. See also Total modernity Chinese versus Western, 1–4, 353 cultural, 28, 33, 35, 170, 371n5 ’85 Movement artists on, 175–176 and humanism, 169–170 transnational, 16 and women’s art, 23–26 Modernization, 2, 14, 16, 40, 101, 132, 194, 237 in art, 22, 50, 231 Mondrian, Piet, 311 Monumental style, 182, 229, 282 Monument to the People’s Heroes, 88 Morality, art and, 40, 170, 201 Mou Sen, 276 Mount Huang, 126–127 Movement, characteristics of, 137
401
Müller, Hans, 271 Murray, Michael, 271 Museum age, 9–10 My Things No. 1–5, 2001–2003 (Hong Hao), 343f Mythos of Lost (Gu Wenda), 188f Naive style, 174 Nanquan Park Gallery, 128 Narcissism, 266 Narration of meaning, 315 National Agricultural Exhibition Center, 144–145, 145f, 146f National Art Museum of China, 105, 112, 122, 146, 148. See also “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition Sixth National Art Exhibition, 67, 81, 151 Stars exhibition (1980), 92, 148 National Beiping Art School, 78 National History Museum, 105, 263 Nationalism, 26, 40, 45, 53–54, 125, 170, 231, 260, 261, 263 “National Oil Painting Conference,” 102, 127, 144 National soul, 191 Native soil writing, 169 Naturalism, 194 Nature consciousness, 194 “Nature-Society-Man” (exhibition), 75 Neo-avant-garde, 5, 42, 63 Neo-Orientalism, 315 New academicism, 78–81, 111, 114, 175 New Analysis project, 234 New Art movement, 33, 35, 36, 37, 79 New Barbarianism (group), 112 New Cultural Movement, 3, 34, 36, 42 New Generation, The (Liu Wei), 265f New Generation painters, 263–264 exhibition, 263 New literati painting, 112 New Literature movement, 33, 40, 373n8 Newly Born (Huang Rui), 11 New Mark Group, 28, 219, 234–236, 235f, 269, 273, 275f, 287, 318–319f, 319 manifesto, 236 Tactile Art, 234, 235f, 236, 287 New scholarly painting, 233 “New Spring Painting” (exhibition), 79, 90 New Times and Space Dimension for the Shuttle, A (Liang Juhui), 295f New Women’s Movement, 23–26 “New Works of the Rice and Sheep Painting Society” (exhibition), 128 New Year calendar movement (xinnianhua yudong), 45 New Year paintings, 48, 50 Ni Yide, 37–38, 79 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 126 Nihilism, 54, 58, 62, 138–139 1995.5–1999.7 (Li Huasheng), 331f Noah’s Ark (Wang Peng), 305, 305f No Move Needed, the Objects Themselves Automatically Become Artwork (Huang Yongping), 210f No Name group, 4, 10, 34, 84–85, 88, 90–92, 97, 271 Non-art, 200. See also Anti-art
402
Index
No Need to Move, Add, or Remove Objects to Make Artworks (Huang Yongping), 211f Nonexpressive Painting: Roulette Wheel Series (Huang Yongping), 203–204, 203f Northern Art Group, 106, 144, 170–174, 184, 197, 202, 236, 256, 354 manifesto, 171–172 Northern Song painting, 188, 191 Note, Jochen, 271 Nothingness (wu), 202–203, 207–208, 210, 212–214, 216, 230 “November Exhibition,” 111 November 26 as a Reason (Pool Society), 248 Nu Wa, 194 Nudity in public art, 80, 175 Oil Painting No. 2 (Fang Lijun), 264f Oil painting research groups, 79 Old Summer Palace, 11–12 100% (Wang Jin), 16, 17f Open Air Theater, 128 Opening the Great Wall (He Chengyao), 14, 14f Opening to the West, 65 “Open Sky” (exhibition), 303 Opera, 62 Opium Wars, 35 Origins of Socialist Realism, The (Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid), 259f Orphan (Luo Zhongli), 69 Other, the, 18, 69–70, 175 Otherworldly landscape, 182–185, 188, 191 Overwriting, 321, 323 Pain, 242 Painters’ village (huajiacun), 276 Painting about Mind Moving, A (Chen Zhen), 186f Painting Frame Series (Li Han), 126, 126f Painting of Being Well Fed and Well Clothed, A (Li Qun), 46f Painting societies (huahui), 4, 66, 82, 84, 97, 273 Paint [Spray] Gun Series (Huang Yongping), 203 Pan Dehai, 170, 174, 192 Pan Tianshou, 40 Panda Electronic Industry Corporation, 152 Pang Xunqin, 37–38, 39f, 45, 79 Pastiche, 10 Pastoralism, 132, 194, 266 Patriarchy (Mao Xuhui), 27 Peasant art, 58 “Penetration and Outlook of Northern Art” (conference), 173 Peng De, 145f Peng Gang, 82 People, taking art to the, 44, 207, 214, 215f, 305 People’s Cultural Palace, 128 People’s Republic of China, founding of, 48 Peredvizhniki, 53–54, 66, 72 Performance art, 108, 213–214, 216, 273, 276–280, 282, 284 in artists’ villages, 276 body as language in, 19, 273, 276–280, 282, 284 (see also Human body)
at “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, 148, 158 in ’85 Movement, 106, 108 Pool Society, 241 prohibition of, 282 Red Humor Series: Windy Red Flags, 225, 226f violence in, 216, 278 Person Who Appealed to the Central Authority, The (Li Xiaobin), 75 Perspective, 355 Petit bourgeois art, 97 Petit bourgeois lifestyle, 26 Photodocumentary movement, 75–76 Photography, 18, 75–76 Photorealism, 70–71, 72, 74, 122 Physical specifications, art based on, 287 Pi Daojian, 145f Picasso, Pablo, 9 Pinching the Flesh: Object as Living Life (Gu Dexin), 314, 326, 327–328f, 328, 332 Pipe with T Shape (Huang Yongping), 203 Please Enjoy Jazz (Zhang Peili), 237, 238f Plein air painting, 88 Poggioli, Renato, 6, 7, 137–139 Political mass language, recontextualization of, 219, 221, 223– 225, 227 Political pop, 9, 27–28, 44, 197, 255–263, 315 exhibiting, 305 rationalist painting and, 255–257, 260–261, 263 socialist realism and, 260 utopianism and, 315 Pollution, 20 Pool Society, 139, 170, 178 gray humor, 106, 236–237, 241 guannian art, 28 November 26 as a Reason, 248 The Travelers in a Green Space No. 2, 240f, 241 Yang’s Taiqi Series No. 1, 241 Pop art, 29, 44, 122, 219, 221, 255 and artists’ villages, 276–278 Popular art. See Folk art Popular culture, 40 Postclassical Series (Wang Guangyi), 181 Postcolonialism, 315 Post-Cultural Revolution era, 65–84, 170 Postmodernism, 3, 10, 62–63, 315, 355–356 in Chinese context, 9–12, 14–16, 18–23, 114, 202, 204, 206 Power of Tragedy, The (Ding Fang), 191 “Practice is the only measure of truth” (Deng Xiaoping), 65, 70 Pragmatism, 3–4, 58, 65 Primeval Chaos (Ren Jian), 184, 185, 185f Primeval land metaphor, 185, 188 Primitivism, 112, 128, 174, 194 Printmaking, 228 Private space, art in, 24, 276, 278–279, 282, 298. See also Apartment art Projects on paper (fang an), 273, 284, 287, 290, 298 Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 19,000 Meters: Project for Aliens No. 10 (Cai Guoqiang), 14, 14f
Index
Proletarian art, 54 Proletarian class, 43, 46–47 Proletarianized artists, 44 Propaganda Department, 145, 148, 154, 163 Propagandist art, 10, 36, 45, 81, 114, 197, 257, 261 Proposal art, 7 Proposal for Pulling the National Art Museum of China Away (Chen Chengzong, Jiao Yueming, Lin Jiahua, Linchun, Huang Yongpan, Wu Yiming, Huang Yongping), 209f Pseudo-Characters Series (Gu Wenda), 233–234, 234f Public Security Bureau, 158, 163–164 Public space, art in, 25, 207, 210, 269, 270, 273 Qi, 188 Qi Baishi, 40, 80 Qian Weikang, 284, 286f, 287, 290 Qian Zhijian, 8 Qiao Xiaogang, 127 Qin Yufen, 24, 272, 284, 298, 303 Qinghai Provincial Gallery, 130 Qingming Festival, 88 Qingqing Society, 130 Qiu Zhijie, 312f, 313 Qu Leilei, 92, 94, 94–96f, 97 Qu Yan, 137f Quan Shanshi, 54, 54f “Quanzhou Modern Art Exhibition,” 118 Qunti (collective bodies), 273 Randomness, 4, 125, 203–204, 208, 269, 284 Rao Shushi, 53 “Rascal” (pizi wenxue) literature, 315 Rationalism, 125, 170 Rationalist painting, 28, 144, 170–183, 173f, 315 and current of life painting, 170, 174, 192 defined by Gao Minglu, 171 landscape in, 106 Red Journey group, 112 thinker and apple metaphor, 175–176, 178, 180–182 transition to political pop, 255–257, 260–261, 263 Rationalization, 371n5 Rauschenberg, Robert, 271–273, 272f Read, Herbert, 206 Readymades, 118, 122, 203, 221, 223, 256. See also Daily life Realism, 66–67, 80, 105, 237, 263. See also Cynical realism in art academies, 105 early twentieth-century Chinese, 46 heroic, 38, 46, 54 socialist, 53–55, 66–67, 72 suppression of, 42, 45 Realist-surrealist painting, 175, 181 Rearrange the Objects to Make Artworks (Huang Yongping), 211f Reasonable Relationship (Geng Jianyi), 248 Reconstruction of the cultural spirit, 175 Red, Black, White—Cash (Wu Shanzhuan), 220f Red Guard movement, 42, 67–68, 68p, 69p, 376n5 art and, 42, 45, 200 Red humor, 261
403
Red Humor: Big Poster installation, 106 Red Humor series (Wu Shanzhuan), 221 Big Business, 221 Big-Character Posters, 221, 222f, 223 Red Seals, 220f, 221, 224–225, 225f Windy Red Flags, 221, 224, 225, 226f Red Journey group, 112, 170, 173, 174f, 191 manifesto, 173 Red pop, 42, 58, 62 Red Reason and Black Reason series (Wang Guangyi), 197 Red Reason—Revision of the Idol (Wang Guangyi), 257f Red, Yellow, Blue Painting Society, 112 Regionalism, 132. See also Xungen fiction Religion, art and, 37 Ren Jian, 107f, 185, 197, 349 influence of, 106 monumental ink painting, 182 Northern Art Group, 171, 184 political pop, 256 Primeval Chaos, 184, 185, 185f Ren Xiaoying, 273 Ren Yueming, 208f Rental Collection Yard, 55, 56f Repin, Ilya, 53, 53f Repin Academy of Art, 48 Report of the Social Images and Art Images of Villagers in Wangguansi Village, Dingxin County, Hebei Province (Chen Shaofeng), 308f Report on the Hepatitis Infection in 1988, A (Zhang Peili), 242, 243f Representational art, 178, 201, 203 “Research, Discovery, Expression” (exhibition), 132, 133f Return of the real, 58 Return of the Real, The (Foster), 62–63 Revolutionary art, 33, 36–38, 40–42, 41f, 44, 200 mass art, 44, 47, 58 realism, 54, 62 romanticism, 54, 55, 62 Revolutionary “Flag Bearer” (Li Jingyang), 73f Revolution in art, 36–38, 40–42, 41f, 45–46, 191, 200, 236, 269 Revolution in literature, 36 Revolution of ideas, ’85 Movement period, 202, 217 Rhinoceros Painting Society, 112 ’87 Body Art, 115f Rice and Sheep Painting Society, 127–128 Rickshaw Driver’s School (Renlichefu pai), 40 Riegl, Alois, 355 Romanticism, 6, 26, 28, 53, 191, 201 Rong Rong, 277f Roulette with Six Plates (Huang Yongping), 205f Ru Xin, 147 Ruins art, 18–19 “Ruins: Tan Ping and Zhu Jinshi” (exhibition), 10 Rustic realism, 67–75, 169, 192, 194, 201, 266 versus American photorealism, 72 Ding Fang, 191–192 other as theme, 175
404
Index
in printmaking, 228 versus socialist realism, 72, 74 transformation to commercial art, 76 Saint-Simon, Henri de, 35, 42, 43, 63 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 126 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 356 Saving People from Death (Concept 21 Group), 233f Scar art, 67–68, 72, 106, 169, 192, 201 Scar literature, 169 Scholarly painting, 188, 233 “Science and democracy,” 35 Scientific revolution in art, 37, 38, 40 SDX Joint Publishing Company, 147 “Searching for roots” movement, 75, 169 Second State (Geng Jianyi), 245, 245f, 264 “Seeing and being seen,” 18 “Seek truth from facts,” 65 Self-expression, 65, 97, 202 Self-Portrait with a Window Behind (Gu Wenda), 180, 180f Self-strengthening, 11 Self-Transcendence (Ding Fang), 191 Serialism, 316 “Serve the people,” 214 70% Red, 25% Black, and 5% White, 106, 221, 221f 777 Group, 107f 77 jie, 377n27 “Shangdong Art, Photography, Calligraphy, and Seal Cutting Exhibition of the International Youth Year,” 126 Shandong Industrial Exhibition Gallery, 126 Shandong Youth Association, 126 Shanghai Workers’ Cultural Palace, 216 Shanxi Artists Association, 118 Sharpening Pencils, December 16, 1987–January 25, 1988 (Huang Yongping), 213f Shen Changwen, 147 Shen Qin, 173, 191 Sheng Qi, 11, 12f “Shenzhen Zero Exhibition,” 118 poster, 119f Shi Dihua, 137f Shi Jingsheng, 94f Shi Lu, 47, 50, 51f, 231 Shi Yong, 284, 286f, 287, 289f, 290 Shi Zhenyu, 84f, 85 Shu Qi, 91 Shu Qun, 107f, 144, 197 Absolute Principle, 171, 172f, 197 and “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, 147 influence of, 106 Northern Art Group, 184 political pop, 256 surrealism and symbolism, 311 Sichuan Academy of Fine Art, 102, 128, 192 Sichuan Provincial Museum, 68 “Sichuan Youth Red, Yellow, Blue Painting Exhibition,” 128 Sichuan Youth Red, Yellow, Blue Painting Society, 128 Sigg, Uli, 154
Silence (Wang Keping), 94, 95f Sino-Japanese War, 35, 37, 40, 42 Site of Sound Amplifying: Echoes in a Private Space, The (Shi Yong), 286f Six functions theory, 219 Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other (Chen Maozhi), 73f Sixth National Art Exhibition, 65–67, 81, 127, 130, 132, 151 Sketch No. 2 (Fang Lijun), 264f Sky of Brooklyn, The (Wang Gongxin), 298, 302f, 303 Small-scale installations, 4, 7, 201, 284. See also Apartment art Snow on a Certain Day of 1968, The (Chen Conglin), 67, 68p Snow Scenery in Fuxing Park (Chen Junde), 78f Social class, 16, 18, 24 Socialism with Chinese characteristics, 3 Socialist realism, 54, 62, 66, 72, 74, 138, 257 influence in art academies, 79 political pop and, 260 Soviet, 45, 54 Social space, art and, 5, 270–271, 276 Social realism, 9, 42, 66, 75 Social reform, 40, 201 Soil, 84 Song Baoguo, 106, 245 Song Dong, 18, 285f, 298 apartment art, 7, 24, 284, 303 Bread, 299f Culture Noodles, 285f, 298, 300–301f Days, 304f A Kettle of Boiling Water, 299f neo-guannian art, 269 “Open Sky,” 303 Together with Farmer Workers, 18 Water Writing Diary, 298, 301f, 305 Song Haidong, 108, 162, 163f, 206, 214 Song Hong, 96 Song Ling Baptism no. 4, 241, 241f King and Queen No. 3, 240f, 241 Meaningless Choice No. 1, 247f Pool Society, 237 Youth Creative Society, 237 Song Tao, 330, 332, 339 49,368 Square Millimeters, 314, 332, 333–338f It Is a Fine Day; That Explains Why It Does Not Rain, 332 Song Wei, 154, 382n17 Song Yonghong, 118, 121f Song Yongping, 118, 170, 207, 263 The Country Project, 214, 215f Song Dynasty, 358 Sots art, 260, 263 Southern Artists Salon, 118, 119f, 166, 213 Southwest Art Group, 128, 136, 170, 174, 192, 354 Soviet Union, 44–45, 47, 54 apartment art, 270, 372n17 artistic exchange, 48 avant-garde, 41, 45, 46, 372n17 and Peredvizhniki painters, 53–54 socialist realism, 45, 54 sots art, 260, 263
Index
Space, 4–5, 7–8, 12, 14–15, 20, 176, 237. See also Private space, art in; Public space, art in gendered, 14, 23–26 historical, 12, 14–15, 176 Spiritual experience, 273, 278, 314 Spiritual pollution, campaign against, 65–66 Spring (Kang Mu, Zhao Jianhai, Sheng Qi, and others), 12f Spring Comes to Tibet (Dong Xiwen), 50, 51f Spring Festival along the River, The (Zhang Zeduan), 342f Spring Has Come (He Duoling), 176, 177f Spring Hoeing (Li Fenglan), 59f Spring Is Coming, The (Yuan Qingyi), 176, 177f Stalin, Joseph, 42 Stars group, 34, 82, 84, 92, 93f, 94, 94f, 96–97, 106, 170 exhibition (1979), 5, 76f, 91, 92, 92f, 96f, 132, 136 exhibition (1980), 96, 136, 148 manifesto, 170 Steel: Sweat (Guang Tingbo), 280f Stella, Frank, 10, 314 Still life, 90–91 Storm Society, 37–38, 40, 108 manifesto, 37–38 Story of the Twelfth Lunar Month, A (Wang Huanqing), 127f Street Art (Shizi jietou yishu), 40 Studio (Li Guijun), 176, 176f Stylization, 80 Su Xinping, 194, 196f Sublime and Contemplation Series (Huang Yali), 123f Substantiation, 317 Sudden Enlightenment (Zhu Jinshi), 303f Suffering (Lin Fengmian), 37, 38f Sui Jianguo, 270f Summer Swimming (Zhang Peili), 237 Summons and Birth, The (Ding Fang), 190f, 191 Sun Baoguo, 109f Sun Jing, 330f Sun Zixi, 55, 57f, 74, 152 Sun Yat-Sen University, 214 Sunbathing, 207 Sunday Painting Society, 112 Surikov, Vasili, 53 Surrealism, 5, 22, 28, 38, 105, 106, 139, 170–171, 175, 233, 311 Sweeping the Floor (Zhang Shenquan), 274f Swimming (Zhang Peili), 237, 238f Symbolic realism, 46 Symbols of the Century (Kosolapov), 262f, 263 Synthetic theory (zhongxi hebi), 38 Tactile Art (New Mark Group), 234, 235f, 236, 287 Take a Picture in Front of Tian’anmen (Wang Jinsong), 55, 57f Take Brushes as Arms (anon.), 60f Tang Guangming, 217f Tang Pinggang, 82 Tang Qingnian, 150 Tang Shouyi, 377n29 Tang Song, 158, 161–162 Tang Dynasty, 356, 357
405
Tap Water Factory: A Mutually Voyeuristic Installation (Geng Jianyi), 246, 247f Ten Great Constructions, 19, 145, 146 “Ten-Man Exhibition,” 135 Theory of the Avant-Garde, The (Poggioli), 137 Thinker and apple metaphor, 175–176, 178, 180–182 “Third Exhibition of New Specific Images” (Southwest Art Group), 175 “Thirty-Year Anniversary of the Yan’an Talk” (exhibition), 62 Thought culture, 181–182 Thousand Li of Water and Mountains (Huang Bingyi), 11f Three Court Ladies (Zhu Xiaohe), 320f Three Gorges Dam, 25 Three Prominences, 62 Three Step Studio, 118, 170, 214 exhibitions, 120f, 136 Three Young Victims (Li Qun), 46f Thursday Afternoon (Zeng Hao), 267f Tian’anmen Square April Fifth Tian’anmen Demonstration (Li Xiaobin), 76f demonstration (April 5, 1976), 76f, 87f, 88, 88f In Front of Tian’anmen (Sun Zixi), 55, 57f, 74 Mao Zedong, Double Shadows, Tian’anmen (Yu Youhan), 258f student demonstrations (May-June 1989), 7, 27 (see also June Fourth Incident) Take a Picture in Front of Tian’anmen (Wang Jinsong), 55, 57f Tianjin Writers and Artists Association, 152 Tianren ganying, 278 Tibet, 50, 51f, 70f, 128, 129f Tibetan Series: Going to Town (Chen Danqing), 70f Timeline of Chinese Experimental Art (Feng and Qian), 8 To Add One Meter to an Unknown Mountain (Zhang Huan et al.), 282, 283f “To Bring into the Light” (exhibition), 112, 113f Today, 84, 84f Together (Liu Xiaodong), 29f Together with Farmer Workers (Song Dong), 18 Tokyo Modern Art Gallery, 154, 162 To Lift an Object by Five Degrees Brings Out the Volume of the Shadow, Wind Direction: 205 Grams of White (Qian Weikang), 290 Tong Dian, 103f, 107f Topographical maps, 22 Total modernity, 1–4, 26, 33, 35, 192 project, 3, 6, 28–29, 35, 65–66, 138, 170–171, 175, 197 Transmigration, 332 Travelers in a Green Space No. 2 (Pool Society), 240f, 241 Trusting Man Who Drowned While Holding the Column, The (He Yunchang), 284, 284f Truth, 3, 170, 174, 290, 321 “Twelve-Person Show,” 79, 90 Twelve Square Meters (Zhang Huan), 279–280, 279f 21st Century (group), 12 203 Big Yard, 90 Two People under the Lamplight (Geng Jianyi), 178, 178f 2000.3.9 (Li Huasheng), 329f Tyson, Ann Scott, 166
406
Index
Uncertain (Zhu Jinshi), 340f Uncertainty (Zhu Jinshi), 304f “United Exhibition of All Groups of Hunan Young Artists,” 122 Unit 1, Room 15, Building No. 1, 271f Universal current (yuzhouliu), 28, 182, 184, 233 Untitled (Gu Dexin), 326f Untitled (Lu Qing), 341f Untitled (Pang Xunqin), 38, 39f Untitled (Wu Shaoxiang), 270f Urban culture, 18, 19, 23–25, 214 Urban Fiction (Xing Danwen), 20, 20f Urbanization, 3, 15–16, 20–24, 194, 237, 248, 361 Urban landscape, 18, 19–20, 22, 37 Urban literature, 169 Urban planning, 16, 18 Urban realism, 67 Utopianism, 114, 170, 201, 202, 227, 255, 266, 315 Western modernism and, 311 Vegetables Greening, Melon Fatting, and Yields Highly Increasing (Jin Meisheng), 49f Village cultural projects, 214 Violence (Zhou Tiehai and Yang Xu), 216, 217f Virus Series: Acme of Commonness (Cang Xin), 281f “Visible/Invisible” (exhibition), 10 Visual-conceptual balance, 201–202 Visual languages, 202, 224 Wait (Su Xinping), 196f Waking Dream, The (Li Shan), 111f Walker, Alice, 24 Wall: 93 Installations Exhibition, The (Wang Peng), 8f Wanderers, 53 “Wandering Exhibition of Modern Art,” 130 Wang Bomin, 206 Wang Choude, 82 Wang Danshan, 109f Wang Deren, 158 Wang Du, 118, 213 Wang Gongxin, 24, 284, 298, 302f, 303 Wang Guangyi, 144, 171, 191, 197, 236, 260 The Death of Marat, 181, 182f Frozen North Pole series, 180, 180f, 181, 184–185, 184f Great Castigation series, 257 Great Castigation Series: Coca-Cola, 262f, 263 Great Castigation Series: Marlboro, 258f influence of, 105, 106 Mao Zedong No. 1, 28, 154, 156, 156f, 197, 256–257 Mass-Produced Nativity, 256, 257f Northern Art Group, 184, 236 political pop, 256 Postclassical Series, 181 Red Reason and Black Reason series, 197 Red Reason—Revision of the Idol, 257f surrealism and symbolism, 311 Wang Huanqing, 127, 127f Wang Jianwei, 298
Wang Jin apartment art, 284, 298 neo-guannian art, 269 100%, 16, 17f 0%, 16, 17f, 18 Wang Jinsong, 55, 57f Wang Jiping, 120f, 214, 215f Wang Keping, 92f, 94, 95–96f, 97, 255 Wang Luyan, 102f, 272, 275f. See also Analysis Group; New Mark Group Analysis, 287 and Analysis Group, 28, 273 apartment art, 287, 298 Chinese Contemporary Artists’ Work Proposals, 287 neo-guannian art, 269 and New Mark Group, 28, 273 Tactile Art, 234, 235f, 236, 287 tactile art, 202, 234–236, 269 The Works of the New Mark Group No. 1, 318–319f Wang Mingxian, 150, 152 Wang Peng, 8f, 284, 303, 305, 305f Wang Qiang, 106, 108f, 237, 287 Wang Qingsong, 303 Wang Shikuo, 47 Wang Shuo, 264 Wang Xiaojian, 118 Wang Yazhong, 118 Wang Ying, 237 Wang Yingchun, 59f Wang Zhiping, 75 Wang Ziwei, 260 Warhol, Andy, 197, 256 Water Lily (Li Shan), 90f Water-Splashing Festival: Ode to Life (Yuan Yunsheng), 80, 80f Water Writing Diary (Song Dong), 298, 301f, 305 Weber, Max, 37, 40, 353, 371n5 Weekend (Zero Art Group), 124f Wei Hai, 88f Wei Sheng, 284 Wei Tongxian, 145 We Live in Art (Wang Peng), 303, 305, 305f Wen Pulin, 382n26 Weng Fen, 291–295f Wenhua (culture), 34 Western art abstract, 65, 311 avant-garde, 4, 6, 7, 137, 200 body art, 278 conceptual art, 199, 200, 201 minimalism, 10, 313–314 modernism, 79, 80, 81, 213, 271, 315, 353, 377n4 performance art, 278 pop art, 263 postmodernism, 314 surrealism, 171 Western modernity, 1–4, 353. See also East and West White Cover Book, 298 Why? (Gao Xiaohua), 68, 69p
Index
Wian Weikang, 284 Wild earth metaphor, 191–192, 194 Wilderness, 287, 290 catalogue, 287, 291–295f Will and Sacrifice (Ding Fang), 191 Wind and Gate, the Visible Gate and Invisible Gate Set Up at 45° (Chen Yanyin), 288f Witness of the Years (Zhou Maiyou), 82–83, 83f Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 199 Wo Zha, 47 Women’s art, 23–26, 162 Woodblock printing, 27, 332 Woodcut art, 47, 228–229, 305 Woodcut Movement, 36, 40–41 Wooden Stool Group, 298 Worker’s art, 58 Works of the New Mark Group No. 1, The, 318–319f World Factory (Huang Yongping), 22, 23f World in Calm Observation, A (Gu Wenda), 234f Wu Dayu, 45 Wu Guanzhong, 80, 81f Wu Jian, 22, 22f Wu Pingren, 137f Wu Shanzhuan, 200, 202, 206, 219, 230, 236, 315, 354 Big Business: Selling Shrimp, 158, 158f, 227f, 382n26 “The Birth of Red Characters,” 224 chizi, 269 influence of, 105 language art, 202, 219 move to the West, 29 Red, Black, White—Cash, 220f Red Humor Series, 220f, 221–226, 225f, 226f Wu Shaoxiang, 270f Wu Yiming, 209f, 324–325f Wu Zuoren, 53, 79, 147 Wuti (Gu Dexin), 326 Wuzhong shengyou, 210 Wyeth, Andrew, 72 X? Series (Zhang Peili), 242, 242f Xiamen Dada (group), 114, 125, 166, 173, 175, 200, 202, 206f, 210, 236 An Event Taking Place in the Art Gallery of Fujian Province, 207, 208f manifesto, 114 “Xiamen Dada Modern Art Exhibition,” 206 Xi’an Academy of Fine Art, 130 Xi’an College of Foreign Languages, 130 Xianfeng, 36 “Xi’an First Modern Art Exhibition,” 130, 131f Xiao Feng, 105 Xiao Lu Dialogue, 160f, 161–162 Fifteen Shots—From 1980 to 2003, 162, 162f gunshots at “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, 29, 96, 142, 143–144, 158, 161–162, 161f, 166, 382n26 Xie Deqing, 298 Xie Yali, 82
407
Xihua Fine Arts Institute, 85 Xin Haizhou, 264 Xing Danwen Disconnection disCONNEXION, 20, 20f Urban Fiction, 20, 20f Xinming Hutong, 271f Xinmin wanbao, 108 Xiong Shaokun, 377n29 Xiong-Tang Shouyi, 377n29 Xu Beihong, 38, 40, 44, 46, 53, 78, 79 The Foolish Man Removing the Mountain, 38, 40, 40f Xu Bing, 200, 202, 228–232, 269 Black Cover Book, 298 A Book from the Sky, 27, 201, 219, 228–230, 229f, 354 A Case Study of Transference, 309f Cultural Animals, 305, 308 “The Exploration and Rethinking of the Repetition of Painting,” 228 Five Series of Repetitions, 228, 228f, 332 Ghosts Pounding the Wall, 14, 201, 228, 230–232, 231f language art, 201, 202, 219 A Mirror to Analyze the World—The Last Book of the End of the Century, 27 move to the West, 29 return to Beijing, 284, 298 Xu Jin, 237 Xu Lei, 173, 191 Xu Yihui, 173, 191, 276 Xu Yongsheng, 137f Xungen fiction, 169 “Xuzhou Modern Art Exhibition,” 112–113, 114f, 137f Yan Han, 47f, 305 Yan Xiaohua, 128 Yan’an woodcuts, 47, 55 Yang Jinsong, 263 Yang Min, 109f Yang Shaobin, 276 Yang Shufeng, 132f Yang Wei, 277f Yang Xu, 216, 217f Yang Yingsheng, 137f Yang Yushu, 84f, 85, 88, 91f Yang Zhenzhong, 287, 289f Yang Zhilin, 142f, 156f, 173, 191 Yang’s Taiqi Series No. 1 (Pool Society), 241 Ye Yongqing, 128, 174, 192 Yellow earth metaphor, 191 Yellow Earth series (Ding Fang), 184 Yi jing (Book of Changes), 185, 203–204, 356–357 Yin Xiuzhen, 7, 24, 284, 285f, 298, 308 Yin Yang Cycle (Zhang Xiaogang), 194, 195f Yi pai, 351, 354–361 “Yitai Painting Exhibition,” 128 “Young Art of Progressive China” (exhibition), 105 Youth Creative Society, 237 Yu Xiaogang, 208f Yu Youhan, 185, 187f, 188, 256, 258f, 260
408
Index
Yuan Qingyi, 176, 177f Yuan Yunsheng, 80, 80f Yuan Dynasty, 358 Yuanmingyuan village, 277f Yue Minjun, 276 Yuyuantan Lake School, 84, 88 Zeng Hao, 266, 267f Zeng Xiaojun, 298 Zero Art Group, 122, 124f manifesto, 122 0% (Wang Jin), 16, 17f Zha Li, 237 Zhai Xiaogang, 173, 191 Zhan Jianjun, 54, 54f, 147 Zhan Wang, 14–15, 15f, 287 Zhang Da’an, 85 Zhang Dali, 18–19, 18f, 276 Zhang Huan, 276 Black, White, and Gray Cover Books, 298 performance art, 273, 276, 279, 284 To Add One Meter to an Unknown Mountain, 282, 283f Twelve Square Meters, 279–280, 279f Zhang Jianjun, 181, 181f, 185 Zhang Jun, 228 Zhang Kangkang, 152 Zhang Keduan, 287, 289f Zhang Nian, 158, 159f Zhang Peili, 236, 237 Art Plan #2, 243, 244f, 245 Brown Book #1, 243, 243f guannian art, 28, 197 influence of, 105, 284 neo-guannian art, 269 Please Enjoy Jazz, 237, 238f Pool Society, 106, 236, 237 A Report on the Hepatitis Infection in 1988, 242, 243f Swimming, 237, 238f X? Series, 242, 242f Yang’s Taiqi Series No. 1, 241 Youth Creative Society, 237 Zhang Qianti, 107f Zhang Qun, 105–106, 105f, 175 Zhang Riyao, 164f Zhang Shengquan, 273, 274f, 275f Zhang Shuguang, 107f Zhang Wei, 88, 88f, 102f, 271, 271f, 272 Zhang Xiaogang, 192, 194 Bloodline: Big Family No. 2, 265f, 266 current of life painting, 170 cynical realism, 264 Eternal Life, 194, 194f influence of, 128 Southwest Art Group, 174 Yin Yang Cycle, 194, 195f Zhang Yanyuan, 357 Zhang Yu, 349–351 Zhang Zeduan, 342f
Zhao Bandi, 305 Zhao Jianhai, 11, 12f Zhao Mengfu, 358 Zhao Runsheng, 128 Zhao Shaohua, 118 Zhao Shaoruo, 308 Zhao Wenliang, 82–85, 84–86f, 88 Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art, 102, 105, 106, 114, 175, 202, 206, 233, 236 Zheng Lianjie, 12, 13f, 276 Zheng Ziyan, 86f, 88f, 89f “Zhengzhou First Youth Art Exhibition,” 122, 125 Zhengzhou Youth Committee, 122 Zhong Ming, 82 Zhongguo dangdai meishushi 1985–1986 (Gao et al.), 103f, 107f, 147 Zhongguo meishubao, 102, 104f, 111, 116f, 144, 147, 150f Zhou Enlai, 67, 88 Zhou Maiyou, 82, 83f Zhou Shaohua, 380n33 Zhou Tiehai, 217f Zhou Yan, 118, 150, 166, 216 Zhoumo, 122 Zhu De, 67 Zhu Fadong, 276, 279, 281f, 284 Zhu Jinshi, 82, 82f, 271f apartment art, 24, 303 “Open Sky,” 303 return to Beijing, 284, 298, 303 Sudden Enlightenment, 303f Uncertain, 340f Uncertainty, 304f Zhu Ming, 276, 277, 279 Zhu Qingsheng, 118, 144, 145f Zhu Wei, 109f Zhu Xiaohe, 315, 319, 320f, 321, 322f, 349 Zhu Xiaoyi, 315 Zhu Yanguang, 273, 275f Zhuang Huan, 269 Zhuang Hui, 298 Zhuhai Academy of Painting, 144 “Zhuhai ’85 New Wave Large-Scale Slide Exhibition,” 28, 144, 145f, 173 Zuo Xiaofeng, 125 Zuo Zhengyao, 178, 179f
Index
409
