What is the Academic Context for Chinese Contemporary Art? by Lee Ambrozy

Response to the Berlin Conference (info here)

As contemporary scholarship integrates art from China into a broadening notion of art history, the growing list of important reasons for its study in the west are plagued by methodological fissures, differences between contexts and backgrounds, and a host of competing interests contending for the roles of gatekeepers in the interpretation and writing the history “Contemporary art from China.” This was evidenced in the May “China Contemporary Art Forum,” where real-time translation was not enough to make up for the different value orientations of scholars present (Read a review by participants Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg).

Western/foreign/“outsider” scholars who approach the subject must contend with numerous language and cultural differences, and China’s culture of introversion that is often defensive when confronted with Western criticism, is almost always suspicious of Western interpretations, and definitely rejects negative attention. East-West negotiations (more specifically framed as China-West 中西 within China) are arguably the most important issue in Chinese art during the entire 20th century, and compose a comparative framework that unfortunately still pervades all discussions on art production, theory, criticism and art appreciation in China today.

In this regard, the study of Chinese art across cultures still lacks an accepted framework for discourse, and as the field expands, the already vast pool of variables will only increase: frames of reference, academic training and background, language skills, cultural fluency, one’s stake in their research and incorruptibility, level of participation and mother culture all contribute to our various competing and fluctuating perspectives. How to situate our research in authenticity? How to present art from China in a global context?

The conference “Negotiating Difference” attempted to address some of these questions last October at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, looking at “Chinese” art in an international setting, and adapting English as the primary language at the conference, the main focus was on questions of methodology. Unique in the sense that it was directed at young scholars and graduate students, more than thirty people from diverse backgrounds convened in Berlin for the event. As the introduction reads: “Whether considered from a discursive, institutional or object-centered perspective, contemporary Chinese art always involves aspects of a globally informed locality and a locally affected globality,” [italics mine] organizers hoped to critically examine the predominant existing research frameworks that emphasize an essentialist “Chinese identity” or locate art from China within an entirely “Western” definition of art.
Hans Belting and Gao Minglu were scheduled to attend, but were in absentia, and thus the only “senior scholar” in attendance at the conference was Prof. John Clark from University of Sydney. In his keynote address, the art historian posited three questions that set the tone for the conference: 1) Are ‘Chinese-style’ and ‘Western-style’ twentieth century art practices and their interpretive structures autonomous? 2) If we avoid or defer the bifurcation ‘Chinese’ / ‘Western’, what kinds of historical time is implicit in the development of modern Chinese art? 3) How does Chinese modern and contemporary art look different if we use certain international comparisons from other Asian contexts?

Below, in an attempt to introduce the conference as well as recent scholarship in the field, I’ve provided very short summaries, or rather, interpretations, of each of the papers presented at the conference. Please accept my apologies in advance for any cursory reviews, there was so much to discuss that a full summary of each one of them would be beyond the scope of my abilities. The summaries are divided into the eight panels that framed the discussion over the two-day conference. Comments welcome.

I. Contemporary Chinese Art in the Transnational and Transcultural Context.

Dr. Juliane Noth, a professor at the Freie Universität Berlin and one of the organizers of the conference, presented on the No Name painters of the late 70s and early 80s, stressing their anti-academic, anti-commercial position. Using an art historical approach, she analyzed the group’s primary exhibitions in 1979 and 1981, individual art works, artists and the break-up of the group. One anecdote she highlighted was an interesting account of Rauschenberg, in Beijing for his 1985 exhibition, who went to a social gathering with the No Name painters. They were unhappy with Rauschenberg’s lack of respect for the Chinese avant-garde; he had instead expected to be met with the admiration and respect of pupils for their elder––the whole thing ended badly, and Dr. Noth uses the event to illustrate the problematic nature of globalized terms such as “avant-garde” and “contemporary” when applied to the complexity of Chinese artistic developments.

Birgit Hopfener’s paper was titled “Destroy the Mirror of Representation: Negotiating Installation Art in the ‘Third Space’” and employed a rigorous theoretical approach to challenge the institution of installation art as it is represented in the trans-cultural environment. Using poststructuralist and post-colonial theory, especially Homi Bhaba’s concepts of cultural hybridization, she distanced installation art from modernist and essentialist ideas of meaning in favor of performative models of meaning production. It was an ambitious approach, and a successful use of Chinese art forms that pose potential challenges to accepted notions of art.

Brianne Cohen, a student of Terry Smith at the University of Pittsburgh, examined Cai Guo-Qiang’s career from a paranational perspective, starting with the controversial “giant footprints” from the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony. She mapped a larger body of Cai’s work, perceiving his explosion works as a shift to the humanistic, also discussing his Everything is Museum series. These are small museums projects which challenge the apparent uniformity of the art world’s institutions (MoMA, MoCA, etc.) by presenting “museums” in highly localized contexts. Is there an imagined collectivity in his works that transcends national borders, or is he playing on spectacle? Her attempts to move the discussion on Cai beyond whether or not he is “playing the Chinese card” was much appreciated, even if he fuels cynicism in the more tempered observers of the Chinese contemporary art world.

II. The Negotiation of Tradition

Dr. Silke von Berswordt discussed the “white landscapes” of Qiu Shihua (邱世华 b. 1940) bringing one of his optically challenging canvases directly to the scene of the conference. Qiu Shihua’s works are virtually impossible to reproduce in images, they are white on white landscapes that must be seen in person, thus making the very act of viewing a self-conscious act (think “Magic Eye” images from the mid-90s). Qiu challenges our perceptions on seeing, causing us to “analyze how, rather than what we are perceiving.” Dr. von Berswordt made comparisons with the literati tradition and phenomenological approaches where “paintings do not merely offer a view of a well-defined landscape image, but rather they open up a relationship to the world itself.”

Wang Ching-ling, a distinguished PhD student at the Freie Universität Berlin is of Taiwanese background. His discussion of Taiwanese contemporary artists was a well-needed reminder of this marginalized group of artists within the Chinese diaspora, and his paper was a comparative study on how two different artists appropriate a classic landscape in the Chinese canon––Fan Kuan’s Travelers in Mountains and Streams 《谿山行旅圖》. The Taiwanese artist Mei Dean-E (梅丁衍 b. 1954), who works with themes of identity and often in “pop art” styles, integrated the work into a larger installation while Zhang Hongtu (張宏圖 b.1943), a Chinese artist based in New York typically recreates landscapes “in the manner of” Western masters Cezanne, Van Gogh, etc. Wang leapt right over the debate on modernism and postmodernism in China to conclude both of these artists are working in a postmodern context, with Mei Dean-E using the work to explore his unique cultural identity through a highly politicized language that reflect the complexities of the artist himself and Zhang Hongtu employing it as a dialectical tool to explore concepts of East and West, the traditional and modern.

III. Concepts of Body and Gender in Chinese Contemporary Art

Wang Ruobing, from Singapore, is an artist and doctoral student at Oxford University, her paper was an analysis on the photographic work To Add one Meter to an Anonymous Mountain (1995) as an expression of Chinese intellectuals desire to return to ziran. Ziran can be loosely translated as “nature,” but should also be understood to encompass a deeper philosophical notion of “human nature” or the “natural order of the universe.” She reads their literal attempt to commune with and go back to nature as a reflection of a larger artistic and societal movement.

Doris Ha-lin Sung, a Toronto-based visual artist, curator and PhD. candidate at York University, interprets the use of the body in the performances of Zhang Huan (张洹 b. 1965), Ma Liuming (马六明 b. 1969) and He Chengyao (何成瑶 b.1964) as demonstrative of a trend in performance art and “happenings” that illustrate a migration from the public sphere to the private, reflecting the political climate of the time and the artists’ desire to portray the “self.” She concluded that these artists use highly gendered versions of their most private resource, their bodies, to react to the suppression of their individualism, and “in the process, they develop a unique language and strategy that underlines the influences of their predecessors in the search of the notion of ‘selfhood’ through interrogating the present by the past.”

Eva Aggeklint of the University of Stockholm presented an introduction to her extensive research into the subtheme of marriage in conceptual Chinese photography, most specifically the portrayal of brides and grooms and the “masquerading” phenomenon that is often found in the genre. She highlights the flux nature of the bride (not the groom), who is most often represented as something other, or simply alluded to. She postulated what the humor, parody and satire in this bizarre sub-genre of photography could mean.
Dr. Adele Tan provided a feminist analysis of Xiao Lu’s (肖鲁 b.1962) performance in Dialogue, the fabled shot that foreshadowed the massacre in the Square in eighty-nine. Tan stated that her intention was “not to unequivocally take Xiao Lu’s side as true” but to explore alternative readings through feminist perspectives in a realm that she sees as closed to alternative explanations. Her analysis included a break down of the authorial controversy between the Xiao Lu and her then boyfriend Tang Song, a 2004 work in which she claimed authority on the work for herself, and Xiao Lu’s later works, including the controversial performance Sperm (2006), where she hoped to be impregnated through an unknown donor, and Wedlock (2009), a performance where she married herself. Xiao Lu is indeed a controversial character, and Tan painted her in the best possible light.

IV. Contemporary Chinese Art and Its Spaces of Production

Lee Ambrozy’s paper “The Third Studio––A History of Realism in Chinese Art Pedagogy” was a brief overview of Realism as the dominant pedagogy at the Centrl Academy of Fine Arts. By examining Zhan Jianjun (詹建俊 b. 1931), Liu Xiaodong (刘小东 b. 1963), Peng Yu (彭禹 b. 1974), and briefly Qiu Xiaofei (仇晓飞 b. 1978), all sharing the lineage of the Third Studio at CAFA, she attempted to show the dramatic changes in reception and employment of Realism over the century, and more importantly, to establish a definitive lineage connecting contemporary artists to art in “Red China,” indirectly challenging the notion that contemporary art in China was “born” in the late 1970s.

Wenny Teo presented a case study of failed negotiations and global market forces that came to play the fascinating case of Qiu Anxiong’s ‘We Are the World’, an exhibition held at the Contrasts Gallery in Shanghai December 2008. This work embodies the controversies and contradictions surrounding the “Made in China” label, both in theory and practice: a French artist was producing his works in China, but the deal went sour and the artist returned home empty handed, but leaving an abundance of unfinished objects which were utilized by Qiu Anxiong as an installation under his name. The European artist was outraged; Pearl Lam, the gallerist behind the work, stood firmly behind the project, publically defending the artist and his work; whereas Wenny Teo employed it here as a proxy in identifying a state of collective “schizophrenia” in consumer society, furthermore, proposing that it can be reclaimed as “productive.” Qiu’s statement frames the scene as “the front stage and back stage of the materialistic world” and Teo ends by invoking “Deleuze and Guattaris’ notion that the unconscious, or desire itself, is not a theatre, but a factory.”

V. Contemporary Chinese Art and Strategies of (Dis)Engagement

Zheng Bo, an artist and PhD student at the University of Rochester presented on socially engaged art in China, examining projects by documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang (吴文光 b. 1956), Ou Ning’s (欧宁 b. 1969) multi-media research project on the Dashala’r 大栅栏 district of Beijing, and Zheng Bo’s own work, entitled Karibu Islands 贾里布群岛, which approached the debate on homosexuality from an alternative perspective, allowing queer and straight participants to project their ideals onto an imaginary island where time travels backwards. Zheng further outlined the importance of two interrelated and historically significant participatory movements, the Stars Movement and the Democracy Wall movement, envisioning the reemergence of socially engaged art in the mainland today as reflective of larger changes in China, and concluding that “the abstracted concept of ‘the people’ is replaced by specific publics: villagers, workers, gays and lesbians, urban residents facing collective relocation, etc.”.

In “Non-Antagonistic Contradiction: Alternative Spatial Practices and Provisional Communities in Contemporary China,” independent curator Beatrice Leanza examined how the “Museum Age” (the decade since 2000) has affected spaces of art production on the Mainland and changed the critical discourse. In the second half of her presentation she gave an thorough introduction to the emerging scene of Chinese contemporary art today, citing alternative spaces, groups and collectives from various backgrounds who are at work in China today. Her curatorial background was extremely useful in her painting a dynamic portrait of artists working today on the mainland.

VI. Curating Chinese Contemporary Art

Davide Quadrio, director of BizArt, Shanghai/Arthub Hong Kong has a problem. Actually, he seems to be demonstrating symptoms of a collective problem, and it reads like this:

“Here, you will get to know Chinese youth oil painters, and become our friends while enjoying our oil paintings full of eastern sentimental appeal, modern and classical realism oil paintings. 
XXX Art Studio was a professional oil painting organization, which set up in 2001, It mainly sell Chinese youth oil painters original oil paintings to collectors, while receiving entrusted orders of oil painting portrait from different countries and areas all over the world. Foreign collectors, such as American, Japanese, Australian, Brazil and so on, have collected most of his original oil paintings.
We are sure that you will be satisfied with it because of its good quantities in both art standard and materials. If you enjoy a certain original oil painting artwork you can choice to purchase; If you are an art agency or oil painting wholesale dealer, send a e-mail to us, We can provide large numbers of any kind of the high quality oil paintings.”
––––From a promotional email of a Beijing-based gallery received in October 2009

BizArt’s work has been called “marginal” in the overall scheme of Chinese contemporary art, but Quadrio argues, if the above “problem” represents the mainstream, then the margins are where most of the interesting things are transpiring. Over more than ten years of work in China, he sees the recent market recession as a potential time for a rebirth in the art world. He points out China’s current socio-political regime state, the use of her cultural “soft power” and the need to overcome reminiscent imperialistic attitudes, while also commenting on the difference between how official and civil societies interpret cultural change, and the fact that in all nations, the civil society tends to have a more progressive notion of what culture and cultural development are. He feels that the past twenty years in Chinese cultural development have been marked by the hyper-speed of growth but not supported by a mature cultural framework, resulting in a lot of “learning while on the job.”

Dr. Meiqin Wang, a professor at California State University Northridge offered a rather scathing criticism and grim view on curatorial practice in China in recent years, concluding that those independent curators who were once considered avant-garde, “bear no real substance” in the contemporary Chinese art world today. Progressing through the global avant-garde of the 1990s to the current local situation, where wealth empowers authority, she cites the prevailing commercialism as a goal in itself for so many art professionals. She charts government-sponsored exhibitions and the transition that many names in curating, such as Hou Hanru, made from criticism to curating, and some of the reasons for the multiple roles that curators play (gallerist, writers, filmmakers, museum staff, etc.). When the market came to maturity, the role of curator was already diluted and shaded by an economic priority, she cites Pi Li as a once a promising young curator, now “ashamed” to be associated with the word. Wang’s thesis reflects larger social issues, as she states: “It is a sad but realistic turn as China has transformed into a society that empowers wealth.”

VII. Dis-Playing Contemporary Chinese Art

Dr. Thomas Berghuis, author of the seminal book Performance Art in China, discussed “The Official Re-Positioning of Chinese Contemporary Art onto the Global Stage” through a discussion of the Beijing Biennale. He makes a case for the re-examination of terminology such as “new wave” xinchao, and “experimental art” shiyan yishubu, culturally complex terms that highlight the fissures between “official” conceptions of art and what it should be. Recounting the intense debate over national aesthetics and how to position Chinese art in a global context that transpired in official art journals around 1999-2003, he revives a much-needed discussion of art as viewed in official Chinese channels. He identifies the Beijing Biennale in 2003 as a local portion of a series of official exhibitions that were happening across the world attempting to “correct” notions of art from China, including Alors, La Chine? (Paris), Living in Time (Berlin). Berghuis’s discussion of contemporaneity and modernity reflects some initial steps at identifying a 1980’s “modern” and a 1990’s “contemporary,” as well as some of the significant factors that contributed to a transition in this discourse.

Tackling Uli Sigg’s powerful collection of Chinese contemporary art,
 Franziska Koch discussed the politics and hidden messages in “Dis-Playing ‘Mahjong,’” Sigg’s now world famous collection as it was received around the world. Her research focuses on the Western reception of contemporary Chinese art as it has been exhibited in Europe since the early 1990s, and how this increase in visibility contributed to the creation of a category of “Chinese contemporary art,” a term whose validity she disputes. Using the display of Uli Sigg’s collection as a primary example, including interesting analyses of the different curatorial approaches that frame the collection and how those become the primary vehicle through which overseas audiences understand art from China.

VIII. Contemporary Chinese Art: Market and Meaning

Joe Martin Hill of New York University worked at Sotheby’s for many years, and exercised his grasp on the market by examining and then disputing the supposed correlation between monetary value and artistic significance, especially in light of recent booms. He dissected auction figures very carefully, concluding that the phenomenal boom of Chinese artists that peaked in 2007 was an irregularity, one that does not reflect actual value. The facts seem to spell out that Chinese contemporary artists were perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of these broader trends in geographic diversification of the art market, but he wonders: “does it make sense that of all the artists in the world achieving more than a million dollars at auction, a quarter born after 1950 and almost half of those born after 1960 should be Chinese?”

Peggy Wang is a PhD student of Wu Hung at the University of Chicago. Her paper demonstrated how art exhibitions and journals became the scenes of contested meaning and value in the early 1990s, in light of the immanent arrival of a global art market. Highlighting the debate between “academicism” and “commercialism,” she cited a series of academic exhibitions titled Art Research Documents organized by critic/curator Wang Lin and the market-oriented Guangzhou Biennale, organized by Lu Peng, which was an attempt to use a critic’s eye to assign value to art works through applications for the exhibition to juried prizes for the winners. She also discussed how the introduction of new mediums challenged definitions of significance, framing her discussion around a public debate carried out in journals. She illustrates the critical discourse on art in the early 1990s as a “cultural battleground” where contested meanings and values were debated on their most fundamental levels.

Courtesy of Sinopop