Gigi Ackerman

13 December 2013

Dr. Porras, Places of Art

Early Contemporary Art in China

Historically, the landscape of Chinese culture has been consistently shaped by the

pursuit of power. After the Cultural Revolution, in an effort to maintain power and exert

control over contemporary art production in China, the ruling Communist Party

suppressed rapid surges of creativity enabled by the global art market, resulting in

constant cycles of reevaluation, reinvention, and reintroduction. Two of the most

important events in the early history of contemporary Chinese art are the 1979 Stars Art

Exhibition and the China/Avant-Garde exhibition of 1989 in Beijing. Both are products

of rapid rise in artistic thought and were followed by severe governmental action. These

cycles have taken a serious toll on the establishment of identity and have become

characteristic of the development of contemporary Chinese art.

In 1942, Mao Zedong (1893-1976), the future Chairman of the Central Committee

of the Communist Party of China, gave his Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and

Art. Speaking to a Communist audience, he delineated guidelines for the production of art

that would be adopted as state policy in all of Mainland China after 1949.1 Mao stressed

the need for art and literature to reach a wider audience, stating that it should serve the

proletariat; art could be no more than a servant helping to shape the consciousness of the

masses. The issue of aesthetic quality was addressed, but political concerns were deemed

more important. He said, “Popular works are simpler and plainer, and therefore more

readily accepted by the broad masses of the people today. Works of a higher quality,

1 John Clark, Modernities of Chinese Art (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pg. 47.1

being more polished, are more difficult to produce and in general do not circulate so

easily and quickly among the masses at present.”2

After the founding of the People’s Republic in China (PRC) in 1949, adoption of

the Soviet-style Socialist Realism was mandatory in all art production, a trend that

reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution. The mandatory new rules required artists

to give up any form of individual self-expression, since every creative action was to be

analyzed by the hard-liners of Communist Party.3

The Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) considered exhibitions and

discussions of ancient and Western art non-existent. One of the largest campaigns

organized by the government, The Attack on the Four Olds, was a movement to destroy

old culture, old customs, old ideas, and old habits throughout China. Examples of

Chinese architecture were destroyed, classical literature and Chinese paintings were torn

apart, and Chinese temples were desecrated.4 The severe ideological and governmental

control of artistic production ensured the complete politicization of art.5

After Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, party leaders including

Deng Xiaoping, the Chairman of the Central Advisory Commission of the Communist

Party, introduced reform programs that rehabilitated many artists who had been purged

2 Mao Zedong, "Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art," Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, 2004, section goes here, accessed November 22, 2013, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_08.htm.

3 Francesco Dal Lago, "The Avant-Garde Has Its Moment of Glory," editorial, TIME, September 27, 1999, World sec., September 27, 1999, accessed November 28, 2013, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054554,00.html.

4 Xing Lu, Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Impact on Chinese Thought, Culture, and

Communication (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2004).

5 Hung Wu and Peggy Wang, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents(New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), pg. 5-6.

2

over the past twenty years during the Cultural Revolution. The countrywide economic

reform and social shift was carried out in the development of “socialism with Chinese

characteristics.”6 Art academies and colleges were reestablished and began to admit all

levels of students in 1979. These changes resulted in the return of academic art, which

was immediately eager to distance itself from monolithic, propagandistic model of art.

Following decades of governmentally authorized movements, contemporary

Chinese artistic progress had been almost completely eroded, which encouraged artists to

reinvent a new aesthetic culture. Many drew from Western models and worked to create

an alternate contemporary art history. Between 1979 and 1990, the Stars Group and the

New Wave radically shifted Chinese art from Socialist Realism to abstract and

experimental practice. These artists, especially those of the New Wave, were based in

collectivism and began the development of internationalization in Chinese art.

The term “experimental art” (shiyan meishu), popularized by prominent Chinese

art critic Wu Hung, “can be about almost anything related to art and can be something

major or something minor.”7 Experimental art has a deliberately nebulous definition and

is not connected with any particular subject matter, political alignment, or artistic

technique. Terms used by other critics, such as “unofficial art” and “avant-garde art” do

not fully encompass the goals and characterization of experimental art to the point of

being misleading. “Unofficial art” amplifies and over-exaggerates the political

inclination, while “avant-garde art” implies a level of artistic radicalism that is not shared

by all contemporary Chinese artists.

6 Ming-lu Gao and Norman Bryson, Inside/out: New Chinese Art (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1998).7 Hung Wu, Exhibiting Experimental Art in China (Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, the University of Chicago, 2000), pg. 11.

3

Lacking a concrete definition, experimental art can be identified by its

relationship with the five major traditions of contemporary Chinese art. The first, a highly

politicized official art based in social realism, is produced directly under the sponsorship

of the Chinese Communist Party. The second tradition is an art based in academia that

emphasizes higher aesthetic standards, but struggles to separate itself from political

indoctrination. The third is art that utilizes fashionable images from Hong Kong, Taiwan,

and the West and reflects their metropolitan visual cultures. The fourth facet is a

commercial, internationalized art that caters to the global art market, although it was

often originally part of experimental art. The fifth and final tradition of contemporary

Chinese art is the vanguard of experimental art that deliberately tries to connect itself

with various forms of Western modernist and postmodernist art.8

None of these traditions are overtly anti-Communist, nor do they constitute a

general hostility between experimental art and the ongoing sociopolitical system in

China. Boundaries between aspects are markedly unstable; the definition and content of

all five elements are in a constant state of flux. Wu explains that,

“An art experiment in China is always motivated by the desire to break away from the visual modes and vocabulary of these four traditions, though the focus of experimentation may be an art medium or style, new ways of presenting art to the audience, or even the identity and social function of the artist him/herself.”9

In the 30 years since its materialization, the substance of Chinese experimental art

has been under constant transformation as its relationship with these other art traditions

changes. Despite the vagueness of the term, there are several stable characteristics. In

general, experimental art aims to reinvent the systems of artistic expression, it embraces

8 Ibid pg. 15.

9 Hung Wu, Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century (Chicago, IL: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 1999).

4

new materials and forms, and encourages a self-imposed distance between the artist and

official or academic art.

While the obscure meaning of experimental art is successful in encompassing the

goals and characteristics of contemporary Chinese art, the absence of a clear definition is

used as a tool of suppression by the government to control the production and exhibition

of art in China.

Many young artists, who later became members of the Stars (Xingxing) group,

moved into cities from the countryside were part of the energetic democracy movement

that surfaced in 1979.10 These artists were mostly amateurs who had neither received any

formal artistic training nor were affiliated with any art institution. In the spirit of the

democracy movement, they organized the Stars Art Exhibition (Xingxing meizhan) on the

street outside of the National Art Gallery in Beijing. The exhibition included 163 works

from 23 artists, including sculpture, prints, and oil painting. One of the Stars group’s

most well-know members, Wang Keping, showed a 1978 wooden sculpture, entitled

Silence (figure 1), which was shocking for its political candor. The piece, carved of birch,

takes the form of a human head whose mouth is literally silenced by a large wooden

stopper. He explains,

“I do sculpture for no other reason than to express my pent-up feelings…I don’t hold that art must obey any objective laws, and as the forces of production develop in a society, people will naturally search for new means of expression. I found a medium for myself that is not limited by any rules of outward form that leaved me totally free to express my feelings.”11

10 Hung Wu and Peggy Wang, pg. 611 Xianting Li, "About the Stars Art Exhibition (1980)," in Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, ed. Hung Wu (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), pg. 11-13.

5

The explicitly political work stunned spectators with an aggressive attack on

Maoist ideology and directly instigated a strong social backlash.12 This public assertion of

their ‘outsider’ location in the Chinese art world was shut down and canceled by the

police after showing for only two days. As other artists staged exhibitions without

approval from any institution or governmental society, the Party swiftly responded by

banning all unofficial organizations and activities. This revealed the limitations of Deng’s

seemingly liberal reform movement and marks a trend in the development of

contemporary Chinese art. Every time artists or groups attempt to create and explore their

own aesthetic identity, the exertion of more governmental control over art production and

methods of exhibition rapidly terminates their efforts. After the Stars Art Exhibition,

protests and crackdowns were repetitive.13 The fluid definition of experimental,

contemporary art enabled the government to broaden their control over exhibitions and

ban all modes of expression that they deemed “un-Chinese.”14

From 1983 to early 1984, the Communist Party Propaganda Department

assembled the Anti-Spiritual Pollution campaign. Dialogues on formal abstraction of art

were officially forbidden, contemporary art exhibitions were terminated, and all

exhibitions of Western modern art were suspended. Not just an attack on art, in the words

of Communist Party Propaganda Chief Deng Liqun, spiritual pollution includes,

"obscene, barbarous or reactionary materials, vulgar taste in artistic performances,

12 Xianting Li, "Confessions of a China/Avant-Garde Curator (1989)," in Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, ed. Hung Wu (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), pg. #117.

13 Xuan Wang, Gallery’s Role in Contemporary Chinese Art Market, The Ohio State University, The Ohio State University, 2009, Historical Background of Contemporary Chinese Art Market, accessed December 2, 2013.

14 Cees Hendrikse and Thomas J. Berghuis, Writing on the Wall: Chinese New Realism and Avant-garde in the Eighties and Nineties ([Groningen]: Groninger Museum, 2008), pg. 79.

6

indulgence in individualism" and statements that "run counter to the country's social

system."15

When the Anti-Spiritual Pollution campaign ended because of economic issues

and unanticipated resistance, 16 a rapid influx of “decadent” Western art and culture

became available to all people in China. Reproductions of artworks, exhibitions, and

theoretical writings were translated and published in a very short span of time. The

visually and intellectually diverse content of the past century of modern art in the West

was presented simultaneously, without consideration of chronology or internal logic

The New Wave movement, which began in 1985, was a response to the flood of

Western modern art. It was also an effort to develop contemporary art into a unified

avant-garde “movement.” 17 To promote contemporary experimental artists, a new

generation of art critics and institutional leaders established new publications. The three

most significant ones were Jiangsu Pictorial (Jiangsu huakan),18 The Trend of Art

Thought (Meishu sichao), and Fine Arts in China (Zhongguo meishu bao). Their editors

developed close ties with experimental artists and organized exhibitions and conferences

around the country.

One of the most prominent New Wave artists was Wang Guangyi. In his Post-

Classical: Death of Marat (figure 2), Wang created his own version of the famous

neoclassical work by Jacques-Louis David, painted in 1793. He uses a historic Western

15 Hung Wu and Peggy Wang, pg. 35.

16 Christopher S. Wren, Special To The New York Times, "China Is Said to End a Campaign to Stop 'Spiritual Pollution'" The New York Times, January 24, 1984, accessed December 3, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/24/world/china-is-said-to-end-a-campaign-to-stop-spiritual-pollution.html.

17 Hung Wu and Peggy Wang, pg. 99.

18 Ibid, pg. 35.7

image, which itself is grounded in an actual incident: the assassination of the French

journalist and revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, to comment on the radical climate of

Chinese art and society. Wang’s “revision” of the original—a twin-planed abstraction,

emptied of color and details—reinterprets the traditional, canonic representation with a

contemporary attitude. His repetition of the empty scene adds an existential pop element,

which was common in New Wave works.

Wang’s work, and that of other members of the New Wave, addressed questions

of modernity, internationalism, and identity. What did the influence of western culture

mean for new experimental art in China? Did modernity have to include influences from

the West? Did Chinese identity and traditions have to compete for significance, or was

artistic knowledge cultureless? The Northern Art Group, part of the New Wave, believed

that the tension between China and the West in terms of modernity could be reconciled.

From their point of view, modernity was an international conceit, eastern and western

cultures collapsed after confronting each other and were steadily being replaced by a new

“northern civilization,”19 a culture of logic and rationality.

The attempt to connect all contemporary experimental artists was not realized.

Most artists were in their twenties; a large number of them were still in art school or had

just graduated. They were not only dissatisfied with the restrictions of art education; they

were still fresh from experiences of the Cultural Revolution and fully aware of the power

of culture. So many unofficial art groups emerged that, at one point, there were more than

eighty such groups across twenty-three provinces and major cities.20 No theoretical

principles or artistic styles united these groups. In general, experimental artists of the

19 Cees Hendrikse and Thomas J. Berghuis, pg. 81.20 Hung Wu and Peggy Wang, pg. 51.

8

1980s were very familiar with developments in Western modern and postmodern art.

They saw themselves as cultural critics, struggling to revolutionize Chinese art and

“reexamining the relationship between art and society, religion, and philosophy in all

possible ways.”21 In many ways, it was more of a movement of ideological liberation

within the confines of art theory than a creative effort to advance art itself.

This criticism of the New Wave, that it was not actually an art movement, has

grounds in the understanding of how art has evolved and for what reasons. The most

important element of art is the practice itself. The artist must incorporate his or her inner

vision with the exterior world at the instant of inspiration and to make a meaningful

contribution to the improvement of art. When art is simply used as a vehicle to express

the artist’s sociological concepts, it loses its integrity.

The artists of the New Wave were more concerned with changing the climate of

the arts in China rather than making a contribution to the advancement of art itself. Critic

Jia Fangzhou traces the line between art and social reality, “An artist can never

completely sink into the predicament of humanity; he needs to maintain a certain

relationship to social reality while also maintaining a certain distance from it. Otherwise,

it would be too difficult for him to devote himself to art. This is because art does not have

the fundamental ability or responsibility to transform the fate of humanity.”22 He

compares Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Guernica. The former

possesses greater artistic value because it represents the turning point from classical art

21 Ibid, pg. 52.22 Fangzhou Jia, "Returning to Art Itself (1988)," in Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, ed. Hung Wu (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), pg. 100.

9

into the modern while the latter only extended the language, despite the importance of its

subject matter.23

New Wave artist’s adoption of contemporary Western styles also calls into

question the intrinsic value of their aesthetic. The surge of modern art from the West

introduced Chinese artists to the century-long development of art all at once. China

fundamentally lacked the social and cultural context for modern art.24 The internal

rationality and history of the evolution of modernity became less important than its visual

and academic content. Western modernism is based off of hundreds of years of

precedents. Chinese artists adopted “avant-garde” artistic models based upon styles and

theories that had long become obsolete to critics of western art.25 The value of these

“westernized” Chinese works was placed in the relocation of these styles to a different

time and place instead of in the original historical and social impact. Even the borrowed

term of “avant-garde” implies that the New Wave was more outward facing and resistant

towards individual, personal development.

Modernism as a concept is based in individuality. The collective spirit of the New

Wave resulted in an marked similarity in artistic language. Self-expression through art

was abandoned in favor of expressing the sentiments of an entire generation. These artists

were acting against the subordination of art to the governance of the Communist party

under Xu Beihong. With the extreme underdevelopment of academic thought in China,

artists were inspired not to further the language and strength of their art, but to delve into

23 Ibid, pg. 101

24 Jiatun Li, "The Significance Is Not the Art (1986)," in Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, ed. Hung Wu (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), pg. 62.

25 Hung Wu, Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century (Chicago, IL: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 1999).

10

philosophy and sociopolitical liberation. The New Wave did produce some of the most

influential modern Chinese artists, who today produce work all over the world. Artists

like Zhang Xiaogang, Ai Weiwei, Wenda Gu, Cai Guo-Qiang, and Xu Bing moved

aboard in the late 1980s and have enjoyed successful careers in the global art industry.

The China/Avant-Garde of 1989 exhibition represents both the climax and end of

the New Wave movement in China. Held at the National Art Gallery in Beijing, the

organizers dealt with setbacks and problems so regularly that the exhibition had to be

postponed from its original date of 1986 to 1989. Participating institutions included the

Chinese National Aesthetics Society, the editorial committee of Culture: China and the

World (Wenhua: Zhongguo yu shijie), the Beijing Arts Committee, and the publications

Cityscape in China (Zhongguo shi rongbao) and Free Forum of Literature (Wenxue ziyou

tan).26 According to Zhou Yan, a member of the organizational committee, the objective

of the exhibition was to “reveal the value and significance of modern art to the

development of contemporary Chinese culture…[and] would act as a high-level activity

for the interaction and study of modern art while promoting the pluralistic development

of Chinese art.”27 In October 1988, the committee chose nearly 250 works from

approximately 100 artists from every region.

One of the main problems with China/Avant-Garde is that the preparatory

committee had to make compromises with the museum, most importantly over a

prohibition on sexual and performance art. Li Xianting, one of the principal curators of

the exhibition, knew that it would be impossible to realize an avant-garde approach with

26 Yan Zhou, "Background Material on the China/Avant-Garde Exhibition (1989)," in Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, ed. Hung Wu (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), pg. 114.

27 Yan Zhou, pg. 115.11

the prohibition and instead “attempted to build a certain atmosphere with a sense of

freshness and provocation unlike that of any exhibition the general public had ever

seen.”28

Several artists challenged the preconditions of the exhibition and staged

performances. Two of which were Xiao Lu and Tang Song, in their work entitled

Dialogue (figure 3). The work was an installation of a mirror bordered by two phone

booths. On the opening day of China/Avant-Garde, Xiao, a young female artist from

Shanghai, opened fire and shot her installation twice with a loaded gun, leading to mass

panic.29 The exhibition was temporarily suspended, the museum went under lockdown,

and armed riot police swarmed the area.

After three days of meeting between the Public Security Bureau and the

exhibition preparatory committee, China/Avant-Garde was reopened. The “gunshot

incident” was a media sensation and caused the second opening to draw huge crowds.

The unexpected wide public attention changed the state of the exhibition. The show

presented Chinese art to the rest of the world and the international market took notice.

Over the ensuing decade, foreign collectors began to acquire contemporary Chinese art in

mass quantities, leading to a worldwide demand. With the support of the global art

market, many artists shifted from collectivism to individuality.30

28 Xianting Li, "Confessions of a China/Avant-Garde Curator (1989)," in Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, ed. Hung Wu (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), pg. 117.

29 Hung Wu and Peggy Wang, pg. 113.

30 Daojian Pi and Li Pi, "Contemporary Chinese Art Media in the 1990s (1999)," in Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, ed. Hung Wu (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010), pg. 312.

12

Exactly three months after the China/Avant-Garde, on June 4, 1989, several

hundred civilians were been shot dead by the Chinese army in Beijing during a bloody

military operation to crush a democratic student protest in Tiananmen Square in.

Protesters, mainly students, had occupied the square for seven weeks, refusing to move

until their demands for democratic change were met. Many of the demonstrators were

members of the New Wave.

The exhibition presented Chinese art to the rest of the world and the international

market took notice. Over the ensuing decade, foreign collectors began to acquire

contemporary Chinese art in mass quantities, leading to a worldwide demand. With the

support of the global art market, many artists shifted from collectivism to individuality.

In December of 1990, the Chinese government held the Working Conference of

the National Artists’ Association. The attendants were all members of the Communist

party and leaders of national art and literature institutions. The goal of this conference

was to discuss the future of art and literature in China, “seizing onto rectification with

one hand and prosperity with the other”31. In this case, “rectification” meant:

“Purging the harmful influence of the intellectual trend towards bourgeois liberalization in the domain of literature and art [sic] so as to stimulate everyone into an awareness of the difference between right and wrong, to increase understanding, to strengthen the feeling of social responsibility in order to make a new contribution to the prospering of socialist literature and art. [sic]”32

The “purge” began earlier that year with the upheaval of all art institutions,

including the most prominent national art journal, Meishu. The Association carried out a

campaign to investigate all members and to register them with the Communist Party.

Everyone investigated was either recorded as cleared or “under suspicion or worthy of 31 Cees Hendrikse and Thomas J. Berghuis, pg. 78.32 Ibid, pg. 81.

13

punishment for involvement in proper activities (either actual involvement in the events

around June 4 or activities construable as seditious incitement thereof).”33 Essentially,

anyone who was associated with experimental art in 1989 was banned from the Artists’

Association.

A member of the Association, Gua Yang, expressed that all modern art was

fundamentally “un-Chinese” and completely influenced by the West. During the

conference, he said,

“There are those who proclaim that literature and art needs to ‘express the self’. They deny the splendid tradition of our literature and art consider the literature and art of the masses before them to be of a lower stratum, and that which no one can understand they consider of a higher stratum. The works exhibited at the February 1989 ‘modern Chinese art exhibition’ at the china art gallery in Beijing were absurd and bizarre and clearly were influenced by the new currents of western art.”34

The strong reaction against China/Avant-Garde and the events at Tiananmen

Square spurred the Association to redefine art in the context of politics and Chinese

socialism. Wang Qi, the secretary of the Artists’ Association, advocated for the

development of, “a new kind of art (a socialist art furnished with Chinese characteristics)

which is thus not the same as the art of capitalist countries, and also must be different to

the art of other socialist countries.”35 Like many others at the conference, he wanted

China to develop a national identity in the arts with a clear and unified style, dictated by

the party.

The consequences of these anti-modernist actions alienated all of the experimental

artists and critics in the early 1990s, who suddenly found themselves without the support

33 Ibid, pg. 85.

34 Ibid, pg. 82.35 Ibid, pg. 79.

14

of any national institutions. There was no longer an intellectual or academic arena where

they could openly discuss and interpret new forms of art. Everyone involved had to make

the decision between accepting the styles dictated by the Communist Party, or ignore

both the Party and it’s decrees against modern art. With the growing encouragement from

foreign collectors and institutions and the waning support from their own country, many

artists became independent. Several artists, including Wenda Gu, Zhang Xiaogang, and

Ai Weiwei, left China and moved abroad indefinitely.

Without the presence of many of the most influential New Wave artists, and with

the government crackdown on modernism, contemporary Chinese artists were once again

left to redefine the art of their time. They had to change in order to accommodate the

international art market that supported them and, in the process, developed a more

individual sense of modernism. During the 1990s, the Chinese government was still

opposed to experimental art, although as the global art community showed more interest

in contemporary Chinese art, the industry became much more economically profitable.

Once the Party realized that modern art could be used as a soft power strategy to enhance

China’s global status, more exhibitions were approved.36

In the early period of contemporary Chinese art’s development, neither artists nor

critics were able to create a consistent, cohesive artistic identity. The Chinese Communist

Party regularly exerted tight control over art production in the country. The government

has a long history of swiftly shutting down any attempts by experimental artists to define

themselves and their art. These tensions resulted in cycles of creativity and suppression

that galvanized the Chinese art world into a constant state of reinvention. The Stars

Group Exhibition of 1979 and the China/Avant-Garde Exhibition in 1989 in Beijing were 36 Richard Vine, New China, New Art = Zhongguo Dang Dai Yi Shu (Munich: Prestel, 2011), pg. 207.

15

both the culmination of revolutionary expansion of artistic thought and marked the end of

their respective movements.

Appendix

16

Figure 1Wang Keping,Silence, 1978.

Birch, 18’ 7/8” (48 cm) highCollection of the Artist

17

Figure 2Wang Guangyi,

Post-Classical – Death of Marat. 1986Oil on canvas, 65” x 45”(166 × 116 cm)

Sigg Collection, Switzerland

18

Figure 3Xiao Lu and Tang Song,

Dialogue. 1989. Installation and performance.

Color photograph of performance, February 5, 1989, National Art Gallery, Beijing.Installation 7’10” x 8’10” x 3’ (240 x 270 x 90 cm).

Installation collection Taikang Life Insurance Company

19

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