Ding Yi
DY: It is very hard to determine whether there is real openness or not. You can only make comparisons: comparing the 90s with the 80s, the 21st century with the 20th century. You can only compare it this way and tell yourself whether it is more open than before or the limits are less apparent. Occasionally they will punish you a little.
DY: Surely it will. But I feel it is hard to say whether all the impacts are negative. Just like a poet said: Anger creates the poet. It is exactly because you are under limitations, you become an even greater person. So you cannot wait until the day when everything is open before you create art.
Gong Yan
GY: Well, I think there should be another space between artists and politicians; artists should not try to directly influence politics or politicians.
Hu Jieming
HJ: The relationship is a mutually controlling one. Politics definitely poses control on art, but vice versa art also exerts a reactionary force on politics. Art will serve to criticize or encourage political systems…
HJ: It is a reality. The two are like the two rails for the train, and neither can do without each other. They co-exist.
Huang Kui
DQ: There are two opinions. One says that politics take art as its tool while the other says art utilizes politics. How do you understand these 2 types of relationships?
HK: Politics and art do not have a balanced relationship. There cannot be a dialogue between the two.
Lu Chunsheng
LC: Sure! There are lots of art academies and some government sponsored institutions. I think they are that kind of political tool. (Dadou, we need to be careful when publishing what they say. We have the obligation to protect them.)
Liu Jianhua
LJ: Art is always a subordinate of politics. I think it has always been like this. No need to mention the past. Although both art and politics belong to the superstructure, art has always been dominated by politics throughout history.
Li Lei
LL: Throughout history, there were a lot of cases where politics used art as a tool. What is art? Who cares? Science and religion are also used as tools. Politics is social relationships, that is to say it coordinates human relationships and the allocation of resources…
DQ: This is power.
LL: It is really natural.
Liang Yue
LY: To me, politics maintains society. Art is for reflecting the power struggle within the political arena, and if it interferes in art then it is a sign of its insecurity.
Qiu Deshu
QD: This is of course because the artist is loyal to his own personality and his own thinking. I have my own judgment on politics and other fundamental issues, and if my viewpoints… if there is conflict, then inevitably it will be treated with judgmental eyes.
Song Tao
ST: Last night I read that in the 1930s, the Germans held a conference. One famous German lighting artist assembled all the military searchlights and pointed them straight up. They formed a giant 3-dimensional light screen. They were all columns of light. This piece of work was also used in the German Olympics under the Nazis in the 1930s. When I saw the photo I was greatly stunned. There are artistic and political components here, and you cannot separate the two. As a professional in this area, I found the phenomenon stunning obviously. I think it does not matter whether the artwork is serving politics or not, the key here is the individual artist. I don’t want to condemn anyone, to say that those who serve politics are this, and those who serve art are that. We have to look at the artist’s own ability.
Tang Maohong
TM: Yes. My art has something to do with the political environment. Sometimes there is a small clash. Sometimes I deliberately cross paths with it.
TM: They make the visual language on promotional leaflets more concise.
Wang Nanming
WN: Every citizen should have political consciousness and political rights. Our artists do not have very strong political consciousness. We should strengthen our politics-related education. Right now the art academies put emphasis on the humanities. Art school students have relatively fewer chances to be in touch with things political.
Xu Zhen
XZ: We see a lot of good politicians, who turn out to be very artistic. But the difference perhaps goes back to the issue of ethics just now. Some politicians reach their goals by sacrificing other people’s lives. I think up to now art has not yet reached this point.
Yu Xiaofu
YX: I think the politics in Europe is healthy while ours is not so healthy because it develops in an unnatural way,
Yu Youhan
YY: Usually, art walks in front of others, and it can push politics to move forward. This is sometimes not tolerated because most politicians or politics as a whole work to maintain social stability. Of course, there are forward-thinking politicians as well. And not all artists want to walk in the front. It is easy for artists to move in the front. He is free to come up with any ideas. But politicians, if they are good, must take the entire society into consideration. So this… but a good politician should be able to tolerate this kind of minor dispute.
Yang Zhenzhong
YZ: I think art is in no way comparable with politics. If an artist wants to be involved in politics, he may as well become a politician directly.
Zhang Peicheng
ZP: Every artist is different. My works do not contain any politics and I think there will not be. Eh…don’t say there isn’t. Although my works do not have politics inside, I paint a lot of nude figures. I remember one time I was exhibiting in the USA. In the end an American who has lived in Taiwan asked me this question, “There are artists like you in your communist country?” That is because he does not know much about China.
