Ding Yi

DY: I feel that Art can gradually change Man. In the 1980s or early 1990s, there were in Shanghai no cultural activities and few people came to see art. If you tell people you were staging an exhibition somewhere, almost no one else except your friends will come. Today, artists seldom go to exhibitions, whereas people from all walks of life would attend. They go this gallery today, that exhibition tomorrow, and afterwards they would dine or go to a bar together. You could say the art world today has become richer, and no longer limited to a small niche group. It used to be a small circle – those who create art and those who appreciate art knew each other. Nowadays, many of those who come are people we do not know. This shows that art is continuously penetrating into people’s lives. This is an important contribution to society.

Gong Yan

GY: Harmony. Laugh…

Gu Wenda

GW: Entertainment.

Li Xiangyang

LX: The most important contribution: to establish a harmonious society. (laugh…)

Liang Yue

LY: Hmmm… spiritual enlightenment?

Hu Jieming

HJ: It is definitely not about creating something beautiful. (Laugh…) It should also be a catalyst for changing man’s thinking. It should lead the times, help it move forward.

Huang Kui

HK: It raises some questions, and then it leads to some novel ideas. Art can raise questions in an irresponsible manner. Perhaps the questions raised this way are more interesting and insightful. Unlike sociologists and education experts, artists don’t have to take responsibilities

Huang Yuanqing

HY: I think it is difficult for an artist to change society. But what he does is push things forward a little bit at the front, and this may help to push other things in society forward, make them change. But usually people cannot see this, especially in China.

Jin Feng

JF: On the one hand, if you follow tradition and view art as a tool, then it is also constructive for society. Viewed from another angle, art is also of value to society and culture, because it stimulates culture’s development from a critical perspective and an unconventional mode of thinking.

Lu Chunsheng

LC: These are just empty thoughts. I think art’s contribution, if there is any, is that it might influence some people. And I believe the influence is top down. I feel that art does not have any influence on ordinary audiences. They just come to see the exhibition. They basically do not know what the works are.
LC: Take Jia Zhang Ke’s films, for example. It is really difficult for me to imagine any ordinary audience getting very, very touched after watching his movie. You can tell from the box office.

Li Shan

LS: Inspiring people’s imagination. Our society is in urgent need of imagination, without which it is doomed.

Luo Yongjin

LY: To make life different. There may be lots of way to look at life.

Qiu Anxiong

QA: To provide a spiritual dimension. Ordinary people like to stay within safe territory, but artists sometimes take risks. But this sort of risk-taking is sometimes a failure to the artist personally. It may even be dangerous. But he will leave some traces, and these traces will become a new domain for society in the future.

Qiu Deshu

QD: Independent spirit means that the artist should raise his opinion of some basic issues that all men care about, and to reflect this opinion through his artworks, to his own painting language. So when I created “Fissure”, I put all the ink techniques I have been studying and experimenting with into them. I thought this was most suitable for me because it represented the broken heart I felt. This fissure, this artificial wound, really bruised me at that time. This was the inner most feelings of our post-cultural revolution generation.

Shen Fan

SF: Art is a kind of occupation. So to do one’s work well is already a kind of contribution.

Wang Nanming

WN: In my opinion, the biggest contribution is that the arts have the ability to keep itself at a certain distance from society, and art can keep and develop the independence of cultural.

Wang Tianfe

WT: I think the biggest contribution art makes to society is this: we all expect something would happen every morning we wake up, and often those things that happen are unpredictable. Art will give you surprises, so there is room for the imagination.

Wang Xingwei

WX: The contribution is its preservation of diversity. All the economic activities that are incapable of survival will be eliminated. We should preserve the diversity of human thought.

Xu Longbao

XL: I think the contribution of art to society is in no way comparable to the contribution of science.

Xu Zhen

XZ: Hmmm… it is interesting and fun to me.

Yang Fudong

YF: Lots of times art is trying in a futile way to change man’s thinking. It has not had any real effects. But in fact things are really gradually changing.

Yu Youhan

YY: The most important contribution of art are, firstly, to help man become man, to become a man with ideals. Then secondly, it is to educate the masses, as Confucius put it. And thirdly, man cannot live without art in his life. So now television has become the sole medium of art…
YY: Well, maybe not always… I see that in Italy there are many small scale art exhibitions, and I heard that in Germany, people in the little villages will hold small concerts at home on Sundays. And there are lots of countries with folk dances, including the minority tribes in China. They have dances around the bonfire at night. But we, we the Han tribe, do not have this kind of thing. The Han people are especially reliant on the TV.

Zhang Da

ZD: It is a bit like some songs. You have heard a lot of music before which you did not like so much, or you seemed to like it but you were not sure, and then suddenly you hear a particular singer’s song and you realize that it is exactly what you want. It’s that kind of feeling.

Zhang Enli

ZE: The contribution is not related to the artists. Let’s restrict it to artworks. Life is like a pile of rubbish, and artists look for treasures from this pile of rubbish. That’s what I think it is.

Zhang Peicheng

ZP: I think the biggest contribution of art is that it teaches people how to be a kind person, a noble person. This is the bigger contribution.
We say art is about truth, righteousness and beauty. You must be “truthful”, revealing your real feelings; you must be “righteous”; and you must put your heart totally into this to attain “beauty”. If you use art to attain fame or something inappropriate, then this art cannot move people.