Abstract
Reviewing international and indigenous perspectives on the significance of contemporary Chinese art, Paul Gladston argues for the necessity of new theoretical paradigms. Modernism is predicated on a belief in the necessity of a breaking with tradition as part of the development of a rationalist progressive society. This belief informs not only conceptions of revolutionary change associated with Marxist-Hegelian thought but also, to differing degrees, liberal notions of incremental social reform.
Published in Tate Papers 21 (Spring 2014), no page numbers given.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Différance’ is a term coined by Jacques Derrida to signify performatively the simultaneous movement of differing-deferring between signs through which, he argues, language gives rise to meaning. In Derrida’s view, différance deconstructively suspends absolute totality as well as absolute differences of meaning. See Derrida (1982, pp. 1–27).
- 2.
For an overview of such thinking, see Barker (2011, pp. 215–245).
- 3.
Condee et al. (2009).
- 4.
See, for example, Bartlett and Clemens (2010) and Bishop (2004, pp. 51–79).
- 5.
See, for example, Spivak (2008) and Appiah (1995, pp. 1–22).
- 6.
Clarke (2008, p. 274).
- 7.
See Andrews and Shen (1998).
- 8.
The New Culture Movement was initiated shortly after the establishment of the Chinese republic in 1912 through calls for social, political and cultural change issued in the journal New Youth (also known as La Jeunesse). The movement gained national prominence following a wave of student protests on 4 May 1919, initiated in response to the unfavourable terms forced upon China at the Versailles Peace Conference of the same year. The May Fourth Movement was a nationalist movement that also grew out of student demonstrations in Beijing on 4 May 1919. These student demonstrations, which protested against the Chinese government’s poor response to the Treaty of Versailles, initiated an upsurge of Chinese nationalism and a move away from the dominance of intellectual cultural elites towards more populist forms of politics within China.
- 9.
See Danzker et al. (2004).
- 10.
Shan-shui (literally, ‘mountains and water’) is a traditional style of Chinese landscape painting that uses ink and brush on rice paper or silk to depict natural scenes involving mountains, rivers, streams, waterfalls and lakes. Following the traditional Chinese aesthetic concept of i ching, scenes depicted by shan-shui paintings are intended to serve as expressive indexes of their makers’ individual personalities. Viewers are also supposed to enter into an empathetic relationship with the scenes depicted in the paintings and by extension the personality of their makers.
- 11.
There are two main techniques in traditional Chinese painting: gong bi, or meticulous technique, often referred to as ‘court style’ painting, and shui mo (literally ‘water and ink’), freehand technique.
- 12.
Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s artists associated with the No Name (Wu ming) group developed an aesthetic formalist style of painting similar to that of European modernism during the early to mid-twentieth century. See Minglu (2007).
- 13.
See ‘A Conversation with Yu Youhan’, in Gladston (2011, pp. 29–30).
- 14.
Deng Xiaoping’s so-called policy of ‘Opening and Reform’ is, in fact, a series of related policies and directives, including the Four Modernisations, the Two Hundreds (shuangbai) directive and the Liberate Your Thinking and Search for the Truth in the Facts (jiefang sixiang shishi qiu shi) directive. The Four Modernisations calls for the modernisation of technology, education, agriculture and the military. The Two Hundreds directive, which takes its name from the use of the slogan ‘Let one hundred flowers bloom and one hundred schools contend’, calls for greater diversity of thought and public debate as part of the process of reform, effectively reviving the One Hundred Flowers Bloom campaign initiated by Mao Zedong in 1956. The Liberate Your Thinking and Search for the Truth in the Facts directive seeks to promote experimental research and the discussion of subject specific questions rather than purely ideological ones.
- 15.
The first international survey exhibition of contemporary art, Magiciens de la Terre, was held at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris in 1989. The exhibition, which was curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, included the work of three artists from the PRC: Gu Dexin, Yang Jiechang and Huang Yongping.
- 16.
See Said (1978).
- 17.
See Bhabha (1994).
- 18.
See, for example, Merewether (2006).
- 19.
Farquharson (2011), no page numbers given.
- 20.
See Vergne and Chong (2005, pp. 61–69). The Mandarin Chinese word for bat is fu. Within a Mandarin speaking context fu (bat) is often used as a play on the similarly pronounced word fu, meaning ‘wealth and happiness’.
- 21.
Hanru (2002, p. 62).
- 22.
Traditional Chinese thought and practice is informed by a ‘non-rationalist’ dialectical way of thinking associated with the Daoist concept of yin-yang. The term yin-yang refers to the notion that seemingly opposing forces and terms (for example, light and dark, and male and female) are in actuality both interconnected and interdependent. It is important to note that the similarly non-rationalist view of dialectic thinking associated with the Derridean term différance looks towards a persistently disjunctive deferral of absolute meaning, while yin-yang is conventionally understood within a Chinese cultural context to support the possibility of reciprocation between opposites. See Gladston (2008, pp. 63–69).
- 23.
Minglu (2008, pp. 133–134).
- 24.
Minglu, ‘“Particular Time, Specific Space, My Truth”: Total Modernity in Chinese Contemporary Art’, p. 134.
- 25.
Xu (2003, pp. 65–73).
- 26.
Köppel-Yang (2003, pp. 20–21).
- 27.
Xu, ‘Chinese Contemporary Art that has Transcended its Identity’, p. 71; for further indications of nationalist-exceptionalist attitudes in the PRC, see Thomas Eller, ‘The Elysée Treaty and Curatorial Strategies of Reconciliation’, www.randianonline.com, accessed 19 June 2013
- 28.
Shiming (2011).
- 29.
See Yiyang (2013, pp. 49–64).
- 30.
See Zhonggui (1998).
- 31.
See Yingjie (2004).
- 32.
Meiqin (2013, pp. 25–48).
- 33.
ibid.
- 34.
Zemin (2001).
- 35.
ibid.
- 36.
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2001–2002, Nian Zhongguo Wenhua Chanye Lanpishu Zongbaogao (the general bluebook report on the Chinese culture industry, 2001–2002), Beijing 2006.
- 37.
Zemin (2002).
- 38.
Xinhua News Agency (2001).
- 39.
Anon. (2011).
- 40.
Xinhua News Agency (2007).
- 41.
Bing (2012).
- 42.
Zhijie (2012).
- 43.
See Hui (2003, 2009).
- 44.
Shiming (2008, pp. 34–43).
- 45.
ibid.
- 46.
Clunas (2009, p. 235).
- 47.
Ulmer (1985, pp. 83–110).
- 48.
Wimmer (2004).
- 49.
Sartiliot (1989, pp. 215–216).
- 50.
ibid., (pp. 222–224).
- 51.
See Dainan (2002, pp. 83–94).
- 52.
ibid., (pp. 276–279).
- 53.
See Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, pp. 1–27.
- 54.
See Gladston, ‘Chan Dada(o)De-Construction’.
- 55.
See, for example, Yang (2008).
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Gladston, P. (2016). Somewhere (and Nowhere) Between Modernity and Tradition. In: Deconstructing Contemporary Chinese Art. Chinese Contemporary Art Series. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46488-5_1
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