twocities White Papers

Subject: Overview of Contemporary Art Movements in China

Author: Eva Ting

Date: February 2007

1. Foreword

2. Significance

3. Analysis

4. Conclusion

I. Foreword

In looking at the positioning of twocities in the Chinese contemporary art market, we need to have a general understanding of the current art scene in China. Knowledge of the overriding influences, the major artists and the kind of work that is drawing both domestic and international recognition will enable us to be more perceptive and effective in establishing relationships with artists, curating exhibits and branding twocities strategically.

II. Significance

The contemporary art movements in China reflect the dramatic societal and economic developments that the country has undergone and continues to undergo since its reform and opening at the end of the 1970s. The major art movements can be broadly categorized by three generations: the New Wave Art Movement, the Political Pop and Cynical Realism Schools of Art and the Gaudy Art School.

Artists of the New Wave Art generation (also called the 85 Movement) were born in the 1950s and experienced the Cultural Revolution as young adults, most eventually leaving to work overseas in the 1980s and 90s. These artists have established their reputation in the international art scene, but their work is disconnected to the changes that have taken place in China since then.

Huang Yongping, a member of the New Wave Art generation, is an artist who has led the way in exploring contemporary Chinese conceptualism. Huang was a founding member of the ‘Xiamen Dada’ in 1986, a group of conceptual artists that followed Dada, “a broad cultural movement that was geared toward the rejection of artistic standards and aesthetics and advocated irrationality, randomness, nonsense and chance.”¹ One of his more famous works is an installation piece entitled ‘A History of Chinese Painting’ and ‘A Concise History of Modern Painting’ Washed in a Washing Machine for Two Minutes (1987/1993). Huang took a classical Chinese art history book and a Western art history book and put them into a washing machine together, washing them for two minutes. In doing this, Huang was refuting the authority of art history, be it Chinese or western. His action presented the dilemma that many artists of this generation were facing as China was exposed to Western art schools of thought after years of artistic expression were suppressed by Communism: how does contemporary Chinese art find its voice between its traditional culture and Western culture? Other influential artists of this movement include Xu Bing, Cai Guoqiang and Gu Wenda.

Image:
Huang Yong Ping, “The History of Chinese Painting and the History of Modern Western Art Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes,” 1987.

Source: http://visualarts.walkerart.org/oracles

The artists of the Political Pop and Cynical Realism Schools of Art of the 1990s were born in the 1960s. They were children of the Cultural Revolution and adults during the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989, so their work is heavily influenced by the political atmosphere of these two events.

Fang Lijun is a leading artist in the Cynical Realism movement. Developed just after the Tiananmen Square incident, Cynical Realism was a dominant style that expressed a growing feeling of disillusionment and skepticism, using humor and irony: “While the beginning of the 1980s had signaled an optimistic outlook brought about by the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s, by the end of the 1980s optimism was waning. It would seem that political and social turbulence during such a relatively short period of time resulted in a certain feeling of loss and disenchantment with the country and political rule.”² Fang’s trademark was using bald-headed youth with ambiguous expressions, and his paintings illustrated the lost idealism and a more realistic yet cynical view of changing Chinese society. One of his better known paintings is Untitled from 1992, where a man stands alone in the foreground, mouth wide open either in a yell or a yawn, with three figures in the background, identical in their clothes and blank expressions. This image depicts the clash between the old and the new and the collision between the complacency for conformity and yearning for individuality, caught in a whirl of confusing conflicts and desires of the time.

Image:

Fang Lijun, “Untitled” Series 2: No. 2, 1992.

Source: http://china.arts.ubc.ca/ArtistPages/FangLiJun/fanglijun.html

Another influential artist of this generation is Zhang Xiaogang. Since 1993, Zhang has been working on a series entitled Big Family or Bloodlines. These paintings are inspired by old family photos and explore the complexities of Collectivism in Chinese social history. Of this greater family, Zhang says “we are mutually restricted and interdependent.”³ Zhang’s paintings, figures of porcelain-like faces and steady stares with slight idiosyncrasies (a crossed eye, a wisp of hair out of place), depict the surface homogeneity of Collectivism.

Wang Guangyi is considered to be the leader of the Political Pop Movement. He combines propaganda images, Pop Art and commercial advertising, juxtaposing icons from different eras to produce an ironic effect that Wang calls “anatomic structuralism.” This method destroys the original meaning of these icons, resulting in absurdity.⁴ In the Great Criticism series, Wang combines the propaganda posters of the Cultural Revolution with the brand names of famous western consumer products to depict idealized peasants commending brand names such as Coca-Cola and Givenchy. Other influential artists of this movement include Liu Xiaodong, Zhao Bandi and Wang Jin.

Image:

Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism series, “Givenchy,” 2002.

Source: http://www.chinesecontemporary.com

The third generation is the Gaudy Art School, and these artists were born in the 1970s. This art movement emerged at the end of the 1990s, and the artists use technology and audio-visual media to explore the sense of desire, loss and confusion being experienced in China’s urbanization and modernization. Beijing art critic Li Xianting defines Gaudy Art as “not an attempt to cater to the tastes of masses. Rather it demonstrates the powerlessness of art to impact on the pervasiveness of consumerism in today’s reality.”⁵

Xu Yihui is a leading artist of the Gaudy Art School and is known for his porcelain sculptures of money, a lunch box or Mao’s Little Red Book nestled among porcelain flowers. The flowers make reference to the peasant culture, and the works are made in Jingdezhen, the home of the imperial Chinese porcelain production. In “The Little Red Book,” Xu leaves the pages of the book blank because he says the book holds no meaning for him, whereas for his parents’ generation, the book was a source of daily inspiration and guidance.

Many artists who are considered part of the Gaudy Art School are new media artists, creating performance art and installation pieces. Yin Xiuzhen is one such artists who moved into installation work in the 1990s, inspired by the rapidly changing environment in her hometown of Beijing. Yin explores the effects of globalization, looking at the changes brought about by the advancement of communications technology and at changes in the distribution of wealth.⁶ Zhao Bao is a young avant-garde artist who can also be considered part of the Gaudy Art School. Based in Chongqing, Zhao’s paintings capture the frenetic pace of life played out on the streets: the clash of communist and capitalist, the east and the west, the overwhelming feeling that everyone is “on the make.”⁷

Image:

Xu Yuhui, “The Little Red Book,” 2000.

Source:

http://www.chinesecontemporary.com

III. Analysis

Much of contemporary art in China is a response to ideologies that have ruled for decades and the current rapid socioeconomic changes. Artists are trying to make sense of the past and present, though their solution is often to not find sense at all. The themes of confusion, conflicting desires, search for identity, grasping of both tradition and modernity and refusal of political and economic ideals prevail the works of influential Chinese contemporary artists. Since the end of the 1970s, a dominant theme that plays out through all three major art movements is a strong sense of disillusionment: disappointment with an ideology that failed and skepticism at the modernization that has swept in and attempted to fill voids with consumer goods and wealth.

IV. Conclusion

Contemporary art in China is still evolving. Though these are the current trends that dominate the market, they are not conclusive. The development of the art world in China is closely tied to her economic and social growth. To gauge the climate of contemporary Chinese art is to also keep one’s finger on the pulse of the nation, keeping a watchful eye on China’s internal progress and participation in the global arena.