1

Alternative Modernity: Contemporary Art in Shanghai

Elisabeth Slavkoff
MA dissertation 2005

Word Count: 10 752

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Abstract

This paper is a preliminary inquiry into Chinese alternative modernity as a theory and
an artistic practice. The first was developed in reaction to Jamesons postmodernism as
a cultural manifestation of late capitalism. Next to applying twentieth century German
Marxist scholarship (Benjamin, Adorno, Habermas) which is influential in China I look
at the uneasy relationship between modernisation and westernisation and at attempts to
construct a Chinese, earlier modernity in Shanghai as well as at the revolutionary
hegemony which have all become part of the discourse about alternative modernity.

In the global art circuit a complex inside-outside dilemma for artists and viewers
coming from different cultural backgrounds leads to some expectation of Chineseness.
I describe how this expectation is circumvented by the curator Harald Szeemann and by
the artists.Huang Yong Ping and Cai Guo-Qiang.

I argue that adjacent to a singular postmodernism Chinese alternative modernity

relates to the specific cultural, historical and socio-economic conditions of a country
experiencing uneven development and I look in particular at the situation of the urban
metropolis of Shanghai. The confusion about the presence and the ever increasing
velocity of life are translated into new visual languages applying new media. At the
same time more universal concepts like chaos, anguish, confusion are being conveyed
from a critical distance and with a certain ambiguity.

What Chinese art is still lacking is the creation of the necessary material conditions for
an art system .Such a system might indeed break down West centricism and realise an
alternative new order.(Hou Hanru)
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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Alternative modernity

Chinas response to postmodernism.....p.4

1.1: A theory of alternative modernity

1.2: The early modern - A Chinese modernity?
1.3: Shanghai modeng and Lu Xuns nalaizhuyi [grabbism]
1.4: The (Venice) Rent Collection Courtyard - a critique of ideological art

Chapter 2: Inside-outside and in between:

curatorial and artistic responsesp23
2.1: Curatorial strategy - Harald Szeemann: Opening up of the 48th Venice Biennale
2.2: Huang Yong Ping at the French Pavilion
2.3: Reception of Chinese Art in the West: Expecting a Spring Roll?
2.4: Artistic response: symbolic meaning and the ephemeral: Cai Guo -Qiang

Chapter 3: Contemporary Art in Shanghai..p.33

3.1: The post-Tiananmen political, social and cultural shift
3.2: Facing modernity in artistic discourse

Concluding
remarks..............................................................................................................................p.42

Bibliography

List of Illustrations

Illustrations
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Alternative Modernity : Contemporary Art in Shanghai

Introduction

This paper is a preliminary inquiry into Chinese alternative modernity (Zhao, Liu), as a

theory developed in reaction to Jamesons postmodernism with an emphasis on Chinas

revolutionary heritage. I also examine attempts to construct a Chinese, earlier

modernity in visual representation and look in particular at Lu Xuns theory of

nalaizhuyi (grabbism) developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Visual historical examples

cover a wide range from the Shanghai school of the 19th century to avant-garde and

kitsch of the 1930s and Red Guard Art from the Cultural Revolution. Cai Guo-Qiangs

Venice Rent Collection Courtyard becomes an example of alternative modernity, in

other words a critical review of an earlier period rather than just a playful,

postmodernist appropriation.

The call for Chineseness in the contemporary global art circuit as complex inside-

outside dilemma (nei/wai)1 for artists and viewers coming from different cultural

backgrounds is the subject of the second part. One- curatorial - response was Harald

Szeemanns Aperto, the opening-up the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. The works of

two Chinese artists, both living abroad, Huang Yong Ping and Cai Guo-Qiang illustrate

their negotiation between different cultures, but are also evidence of these artists

concern about wider, global and cosmic issues. Some of Cais works abandon to a

certain degree the notion of duration of the artwork and in a sense seem to realise

Adornos ideal of truth while becoming spectacular, local events.

1
Nei- inner, within, inside; wei-outer,outward,outside.
 6

Individual artistic responses to the environment of Shanghai and the local reality of

global capital overaccumulation in urban China are the focus of the third chapter. While

modernisation seems to be endorsed by the majority of Chinas urban population 2 the

pessimistic or sceptical view of urban modernity as expressed in Weimarian Germany

verbally by Walter Benjamin and visually by George Grosz is in a way comparable to

artistic discourse in contemporary Shanghai.

This discourse ranges from the irony of Yang Zhenzhong and the ambiguity of Yang

Fudong to the delicate figurative work of Ji Dachun. I deal more closely with the work

of Geng Jianyi who together with Zhang Peili was at the forefront of the avant-garde

movement since Gengs graduation in 1985. 3Geng Jianyi s works are shown at the

China Avant Garde 1993 in Berlin, the 45th Biennale in Venice, Cities on the Move

1997 in Vienna, 1998, Inside Out in New York and San Francisco and 2004

Techniques of the Visible in Shanghai to name just a few of the many international

exhibitions in which Geng perticipated.

The paper concludes with an inquiry about Chinese alternative modernity and the

weakness of the art system applying Luhmanns theory for self description of art

through the institutionalisation of art and the establishment of supporting information.4

Finally a word about the difficulty which is symptomatic for anyone working on

modern China .This difficulty makes in my view general or generalising conclusions

problematic or at least premature. It is the lack of coherent and comprehensive reliable

sources. But then China is rather about tensions- in the words of Zhang Xudong

2
Bettina Gransow/ Li Hanlin, Chinas neue Werte, Einstellungen zu Modernisierung und Reformpolitik,
[Chinas New Values, Attitudes towards Modernization and Reform Policy] Berliner China Studien,
Minerva Publikationen, Muenchen, 1995 p.107
3
For a history of the Avant Garde movement which is beyond the word limit of this paper see Gao
Minglu,Chronology Inside Out: New Chinese Art, Exhibition Catalogue, San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art and Asia Society Galleries New York, 1999 pp197-212
4
Nikolas Luhmann, Art as a Social System, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2000
 7

tensions of social, political, cultural and sometimes even personal kinds- rather than

any single theoretical model or procedure that provide the productive space of a

reading.5

5
Zhang Xudong, Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms, Cultural Fever, Avant-Garde Fiction, and
the New Chinese Cinema, Duke University Press, London ,1997 p.8
 8

Chapter 1- Alternative Modernity-Chinas Response to Postmodernism

I.1. A theory of alternative modernity

German Marxist scholars of the twentieth century developed divergent attitudes to

modernity: one optimistic with an emphasis on the concept of rationality considering

modernity as an unfinished enlightenment project (Habermas) the other, pessimistic in

outlook, critically unmasking delusions and pretensions of the urban modernity

(Benjamin). 6 While Adornos model of criticism of the enlightenment project is in a

way a Western self criticism it shares with Chinese thinkers the scepticism about

material progress which has caused a number of cultural shifts in contemporary China

to be discussed in detail in chapter three.

The question of whether or not modernity has been abandoned and replaced by

postmodernism is complicated by a number of factors: firstly, in Europe modernity is

closely linked to the Enlightenment project, a concern of bourgeois (liberal) society,

while postmodernism is described as a dominant cultural logic of late capitalism, and

becomes a critique of capitalism.7 Secondly, postcolonial discourse links Western

enlightenment and modernity inevitably with repression and violence that are as

instrumental in the victory of the modern as is the persuasive power of its rhetorical

strategies.8 Specific to China is that she was never colonised; her condition was one of

ban zhimindi [semicolonialism]9. Also unlike India whose elite adopted English as a

vehicular language, Chinese has always remained the only language spoken and written

6
Graeme Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis, Walter Benjamin and the City, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1996
p.2
7
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso, London 1991
8
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000 p.43
9
Mao Zedong explains it as a unique social formation because of the multiplicity of the colonial powers
involved and because of its coexistence with residual feudalism. Mao Zedong, Reasons for the
Emergence and Survival of Red Political Power in China, Selected Works of Mao Tse Tung,Volume 1,
Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1977, pp.64-7.
 9

by a large majority of intellectuals including professors of elite universities.10 Also,

patriotism aiguozhuyi is historically linked to the movement against the [Manchu]

emperors and against foreign domination, in particular during the war of resistance

against Japan11. Thirdly Chinese Marxism is basically a Western concept12 which

underwent a process of makesizhuyi zhongguohua [Marxism made Chinese] by Mao

Zedong thought mao zedong xixiang.13 Or in other words the Chinese revolutionary

tradition is characterised by its native and indigenous reconstruction of Marxism.14

Next to these general considerations there are specific historical reasons for the

Chinese scepticism about postmodernism (hou xiandai zhuyi)15 which Xudong Zhang

explains in the light of the new enlightenment thinking of the early 1980s:

Postmodernists are threatening to obscure social, economic and political imperatives

known as modernity. Furthermore, Chinese intellectuals, who after the Tiananmen

massacre have become powerless as a social group, consider the postmodern as a

harmful deviation or a premature and thus a sort of useless present from the West.16

There is, so they claim, similar to previous generations of the Chinese enlightenment

10
This is why the issue of translation becomes political one since it determines what foreign literature
becomes accessible. Ben Xu, Anxiety of Translation and abdication of the translator: a case of Sino-
postcolonialism in the 1990s, Postcolonial Studies, Vol.2, Number .2, Routledge, London,1999 p. 231-
245
11
Helmut Opletal, Durch Nein Sagen zur Weltmacht? Nationalismus in China von Mao Zedong bis
Deng Xiaoping [ Worldpower by Saying No? Nationalism in China from Mao Zedong to Deng
Xiaoping], Beitraege zur historischen Sozialkunde, 4/98, October-December 1998, Verein fuer
Geschichte und Sozialkunde, Vienna, 1998, p.171-2
12
Accepting Marxism meant accepting the materialistic conception of history and its development in a
linear fashion with a goal. Such a perception of history is alien the Chinese cosmogony where there is no
act of creation, hence the cosmos is not seen as a journey towards a goal. Adrian Chan, Chinese Marxism,
Continuum, London, 2003, p.109
13
The term zhuyi relates to a doctrine, an -ism, while xixiang is an individuals persons thinking. Hence
the terms makesizhuyi, Marxism and mao zedong xixiang, Mao Zedong Thought. The latter implied the
centrality of the peasant revolution rather then the revolution of the urban proletariat, the endless spiral of
practice and knowledge and the concept of a permanent revolution. For details of Mao Zedong thought,
also regarding culture see Chan, p.118-137
14
Liu Kang Hegemony and Cultural Revolution, New Literary History, Vol.28, No.1,Winter 1997, p.
74
15
During the fall semester of 1985, Fredric Jameson taught at Beijing University (Beida).His lectures
were translated into Chinese.
16
Zhang Zudong, Epilogue:Postmodernism and Postsocialist Society-Historicizing the Present, Arif
Dirlik/Zudong Zhang (eds.) Postmodernism and China,pp.399-438, Duke University Press, London,
2000
 10

thinkers 17 a persistence of the premodern (poverty, ignorance, superstition, repression

etc). This is also a point Jameson admits when talking about uneven development. In an

interview I conducted, Zhang elaborated on the new enlightenment of the 1980s18:

central was the concept of ziyou [freedom] which has nothing to do with the rugged

individualism of the West but meant in terms of aesthetics that after a long period of

prescribed content and prescribed style one was using ones own imagination, ones

own judgement19. Making art became an expansion of the self, it was a subjectivism but

with a deep commitment to the improvement of society. There is a conceptual overlap

between the public space and the individual artist. In socio-political terms new

enlightenment of the 1980s meant a self legislation governed by reason, and the

protection by the rule of law. I would argue that this is in a way the modernity agenda

which is conceptually comparable to the Habermasian concept of the unfinished

Enlightenment project.

Theoretical Chinese alternatives to postmodernism concern Confucianism, the other

alternative puts forward the revolutionary heritage . The first aspect is the revival of

Confucianism which Arlif Dirlik considers an alternative modernity in the form of a

resurgence against Euro-American ideological domination of the world .20 In his view,

influenced by Huntington, it is a counter-current comparable to Islamic fundamentalism.

However, Wang Hui links the very same Confucian revival to an Asian form of global

capitalism as Max Weber has linked the protestant work ethos to western capitalism.

17
The May Fourth Movements enlightenment (qimeng) thinking is assessed differently. Liu Kang
argues that it drew primarily on Western ideas and concepts, but there was a strong criticism of the
Europeanization inherent in the May Fourth legacy by Qu Qiubai who was Chinas leading Marxist
theorist. Postcolonial scholars like Shi Shumei take Qus criticism further and argue that the urgency of
criticising feudalism and forwarding Western thinking often displaced the immediate need to confront
and criticize colonial domination. See Liu Kang p.73-74 and Shih Shu-mei, The Lure of the Modern,
Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 2001,p.36
18
Interview with Zhang Zudong on March 16, 2005 at New York University
19
In 1985 at its fourth conference in Beijing the Chinese Writers Association, called for freedom of
expression (chuangzuo ziyou), chuangzuo means literally to create.
20
Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura, Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Westview
Press, Boulder,1997 p.22
 11

Chineseness becomes in this context a cultural essence while Confucianism as such is

just another form of capitalism:

In its rejection of Western values, Confucian capitalism enables exponents

to embrace the capitalist mode of production and the global capitalist
system-phenomena born of Western historical specificity - while adding a
layer of cultural nationalism on top. In this context, Confucian capitalism
and contemporary Chinese socialist reforms are simply two sides of the
same coin.21

Other younger thinkers like Zhang Xudong point in relation to Confucianism to the

neo-authoritarism when models like Singapore are conceptually applied to China. For

the young generation who obtained their working language from Heidegger or

Habermas, Confucian China is as dead as ancient Egypt.22

Both Wang Hui and Liu Kang posit alternative modernity as alternative to

postmodernism since the latter would imply neglecting Chinas distinct revolutionary

legacy and hegemony.23 Wang Hui argues further that in Chinese postmodernism, there

is no postcolonial critique of Han centrism from the standpoint of a peripheral culture.

Postcolonial theory becomes synonymous with a discourse on nationalism which

reinforces the China/West paradigm. This turns the postmodernist critique of euro

centrism on its head to argue for Chineseness and to search for the prospects of China

repositioning itself at the centre of the world.24

21
Wang Hui, Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity, Zhang
Zudong , Whither China, Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China, Duke University Press, London
2001, p.174
22
Zhang Xudong, Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms, Cultural Fever, Avant-Garde Fiction, and
the New Chinese Cinema, Duke University Press, London ,1997 p.7
23
Liu Kang: Is there an Alternative to (Capitalist) Globalization? The Debate about Modernity in China,
Fredric Jameson, Masao Miyoshi (eds.), The Cultures of Globalisation, Duke University Press, London,
1998 p.167 .
24
Wang Hui, p.181.Notice the scholarship of occidentalism [xifangzhuyi] which is either a counter
discourse against western orientalism [dongfangzhuyi] or becomes a criticism of Western enlightenment
as a post colonial discourse. See Wang Ning, Orientalism versus Occidentalism, New Literary History,
Vol.28,Winter 1997, No.1, pp.21, Xiaomei Chen, Occidentalism, A theory of Counter-Discourse in Post
Mao China, Rowman&Littlefield Publishers, New York,1995 and Couze Venn, Occidentalism,
Modernity and Subjectivity, Sage, London, 2000.
 12

Alternative modernity is a not a single Chinese concept but can also be found in other

contexts.25 Jameson opposes alternative modernity on the following grounds:

How can then ideologues of modernity in its current sense manage to

distinguish their product the information revolution, and globalized free-
market modernity- from the detestable older kind, without getting
themselves involved in asking the kinds of serious political and economic,
systemic questions that the concept of postmodernity makes unavoidable?
The answer is simple: you talk about alternate or alternative modernities.
Everyone knows the formula by now: this means that there can be
modernity for everybody which is different from the standard or hegemonic
Anglo-Saxon model.. But this is to overlook the other fundamental
meaning of modernity which is that of a worldwide capitalism itself. The
standardization projected by capitalist globalization in this third or late stage
of the system casts considerable doubt on all these pious hopes for cultural
variety in a future world colonized by a universal market order.26

Liu Kang and other Chinese thinkers argue against what seems to become a new

metanarrative of a single postmodernity linked to the late stage of global capitalism.27

Revolution and political struggle in the field of cultural production are central to China

and Liu Kang argues that the Chinese revolution is an integral part of modernity that is

at once fragmentary and unifying, heterogeneous and homogenizing.28 However, while

Maos project was one of alternative modernity, Mao did not succeed in laying the

necessary cultural and ideological foundations for social reconstruction and

modernization. And against Maos primacy of the political struggle, modernization has

crystallized as the central piece of Deng Xiaopings reforms. These reforms have

brought a considerable improvement of living conditions but intensified the ideological

crisis after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Today, socialist ideals and marxism have

fallen victims of economic reform.29 A more differentiated appreciation is made by

25
Olver Thomas, Alternative Modernities in African Literature and Culture, Journal of Literary
Studies, December, 2002
26
Jameson, Fredric, A Singular Modernity, Essay on the Ontology of the Present, Verso 2002, p.12
27
It would go beyond the scope of this paper to cover the criticism of Jameson. However, see Jamesons
defense of his own theory in Marxism and Postmodernism, the Cultural Turn, Selected Writings on the
Postmodern, 1983-1998, Verso, London, 1998
28
Liu Kang, p.168
29
Liu Kang, p.170
 13

Wang Hui. He interprets Mao Zedongs Marxism as an ideology of modernization with

a whole set of values of its own. Mao believed in irreversible historical progress with

the socialist system of public ownership not only establishing a prosperous and modern

nation state but also an elimination of the three differences - between workers and

peasants, town and country and mental and manual labour. Maoist thinking becomes a

critique of euro-american capitalist modernization. In a way it is an antimodern theory

of modernisation. 30 Similarly, the Cultural Revolution was a phenomenon of

modernization and the rejection of rationalization proceeding together and thus

producing profound historical contradictions. The very same modern state system Mao

had established, he aimed at destroying by the Cultural Revolution. While individuals

were stripped of all political autonomy, nationalization and collectivisation proceeded

under the state goal of modernization, at the same time Mao advocated the autonomy of

the masses. In sum, inherent in Chinas socialist modernization is a historical

antimodernity.31

1.2: The early modern - A Chinese modernity?

Next to the Chinese concept of alternative modernity which in the thinking of scholars

like Wang Hui becomes a dialectic process between modernity and antimodernity, there

is scholarship both in the West and in China constructing an aesthetic modernity which

is not or only partially derived from the West.32 Craig Clunas stated that time has come

to cast some doubt on the very existence of that single, global race to the modern.33

This approach , argues Jonathan Hay, would look at contemporary Chinese art from a

30
These traditions go back to the late Qing dynasty and Sun Yat Sen principles of peoples livelihood
(minsheng zhuyi) Wang Hui p.167
31
Ibid.p.168
32
Jonathan Hay, Double Modernity, Para Modernity, unpublished essay quoted with kind permission by
the author.
33
Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China, Princeton University Press, Princeton,
1997 p.10
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perspective of the doubly modern( Western influence and a Chinese indigenous

modernity) and in a way seems to abandon the assumption that modernity was an

arrival into China from the outside world.34 Hays then lists a number of elements of

modern conditions like an intensified social consciousness, the tolerance for doubt and

a concept of subjecthood while Habermas takes the notion of aesthetic modernity as a

forward orientation, which manifests a certain opposition to history and becomes a

break of traditions, a rebellion against established tendencies to normalize, something

that neutralises the good and the useful.35 The following example of the early modern

from the Shanghai School of Painting fulfills both the criteria mentioned by Hays, in

particular regarding subjecthood and doubt. It also embodies a forward movement and

break of tradition in the sense of Habermas.

Chinese scholarship, like Shan Guolin considers the Shanghai School a response by the

Chinese art world to the culture of modern urbanism and a direction of painting which

transcended the boundaries of traditional art.36 Shans evidence is Ren Xiongs Self

Portrait (Fig. 1). Commenting on the same painting, Richard Vinograd argues for the

works modernism, based on a different awareness of subject position, both social and

artistic, as a result of the new realities of artistic origin and status of the period in the

sense of Hays subjecthood. Painters in late 19th century Shanghai were of modest

origin and became professionalized in order to make a living. Consequently, Ren Xiong

vernacularized and popularized painting. While he uses the traditional Chinese outline

style, with strong, forceful lines the newness consists in exaggerating form and thus

emphasizing character and emotions. Vinograd notices on the expression of the self:

34
Hay
35
Habermas: Die Moderneein unvollendetes Projekt, Juergen Habermas, Kleine Politische Schriften
[Modernity an unfinished project ,.Short political texts] I-IV, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt, 1981,p.447
36
Shan Guolin, Painting of Chinas New Metropolis: The Shanghai School 1850-1900, Julia Andrews/
Kuiyi Shen(eds.) A Century in Crisis, Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth Century China,
Exhibition Catalogue, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1998 p. pp20-33
 15

Its impact lies in its combination of a complete, angry alienation with an

unavoidable assertion of the self. The frontality of the self portrait seems
both insistent and aggressive. The robe has been pulled down, or fallen to
expose the right arm in a way that suggests a deliberate challenge to or
provocation of the viewer. The head is without any pretense of gentility or
cultivation.37

By eliminating the customary background Ren Yi attracts full attention on the figure. It

becomes a monumental self portrait38 by exaggerating the dimension of the figure in

relation to the head and by placing the viewer in a low position, which in my eyes

strikes through its immediacy and the position of direct confrontation.

And while some spectators might have an approach of dj vu and relate the painting to

Duerers self portrait, its modernity for the Western eye (although an ancient tradition

in China) might lie somewhere else, namely in the combination of text and painting

which have to be read together.39 In order to illustrate my point, I have added a

translation of the calligraphy to Figure 1.40 This inscription, in Song style poetry, seems

remarkably candid, perhaps even confessional in tone. Vinograd spots a contradiction

between the air of resistance in the painted self image and the pessimistic hopelessness

in the tone of the poem. It should be read in the context of the restlessness and social

disorder of the time of its making.41

37
Richard Ellis Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self :Chinese Portraits, 1600-1900, Cambridge University
Press, 1992 p.128
38
It is a lifesize painting
39
I would like to thank Prof.Clunas for this hint.
40
The translation is based on the text in Vinograd, p.129
41
Ibid. p.130 Vinograd relates the ambiguous subject position to the artists split loyalties between the
Taiping rebels and the Manchu rulers. Taiping means great peace and is a military-religious society
whose founder and chief collaborators were Hakkas, members of a distinct linguistic group. It is a
Christian belief but much of the system came from Chinese tradition. The Taipings never reached
Shanghai, but many refugees came to the city as a result of the rebellion . In 1855 they were defeated,
mainly because the scholar class preferred Manchu rule to rule by heterodox rebels. Later there were a
number of other rebellions against the Qing ( Manchu) dynasty. For details see John Fairbank/Edwin
Reischauer, China, Tradition and Transformation, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1978,pp. 292 ff..
 16

Ren Xiongs Self Portraits manifests a Western influence but sticks to traditional ink

painting. The combination of language (in the form of calligraphy) and representation

with a very subjective content make it ambiguous.42 In the latter painting there is also

an (imagined or real) link to the Taiping rebellion which is part of Chinas

revolutionary heritage. Beyond the subject position and the break of traditions there is

(in my eyes) an element of anguish and alienation in the painting which relates it to the

existentialist philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre of the 1950s and 1960s.43

I.3 Shanghai modeng44 and Lu Xuns nalaizhuyi [grabbism]

The more pessimistic view on urban modernity as expressed by Walter Benjamin45 is

probably the most striking antithesis to the following invitation to a social event in New

York 1931 which is a verbal representation of Western modernism after the crash of

1929.

The modern spirit is not a new recipe for designing buildings, sculpture
and painted decoration but it is a quest for something more characteristic
and more vital as an expression of modern activity and thoughtThe
affect thought is a rhythmic, vibrant quality expressive of the feverish
activity which characterizes our work and our play, our shop windows and
our advertisements, the froth and the jazz of modern life. 46

42
Craig Clunas, Art in China, Oxford History of Art, Oxford University Press,1997 p.171
43
My reference to Sartre is due to the fact that his texts were translated into Chinese and extremely
influential in the debate of the early 1980s. Suisheng Zhao, Chinese Intellectuals Quest for National
Greatness and Nationalistic Writing in the 1990s, The China Quarterly, 152, December 1997, p.727
44
modeng is a phonetic translation of modern into Chinese, and has today the connotation of
fashionable. Notice that in Mandarin there is no obvious difference between modernity and modernism.
the Chinese translation of modernity apart from modeng relates to a temporal concept: jindai [modern
times] is used for the period of the Ming and Qing dynasty (until 1911), The Republican Era is xiandai
while post 1949 is dangdai [the contemporary era]. 44 Avant garde art in Chinese is derived from
qianwei, presumbably from Russian, while the Post Mao era until 1989 is called xin shiqui, I owe this
information to An Hongzhen , my Mandarin tutor
45
Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, Ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus, [a lyric poet in
the era of high capitalism] Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1969
46
Invitation to the Beaux Arts Ball of 1931 inviting architects and artists to participate in a collective
search for the Spirit of the Age quoted in Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, A Retroactive Manifesto
for Manhattan, Thames and Hudson, London, 1978, pp 105-6
 17

In the Shanghai of the 1920s and 1930s, Western architecture represents colonial power:

next to the British neoclassical structure, expressing the spirit of empire came buildings

in the American Art Deco style with skyscrapers having New York as the prototypical

metropolis. These buildings signified money and wealth. They form a sharp contrast to

the general principles of traditional Chinese architecture the shikoumen [stone gate

houses] of Shanghai, never higher than two stories. Thus the skyscraper can be

portrayed as a showcase of socioeconomic inequality, the high and the low, the rich and

the poor. For the average Chinese, most of the high rise buildings were beyond reach,

creating a sense of alienation from Western places.47 The American leftist journalist

Harold R. Isaacs describes Shanghai in postcolonial terms as a city where

the master race were foreigners - British, French, American, Japanese-with

their special preserves and their arrogantly held privileges dominated and
subjected Chinese in all their varieties of second - placeness.
Treaty protected foreigners enjoyed extraterritorial rights-independent
political status in the country, exemption from Chinese legal jurisdiction
and taxation-and the advantage of a five percent limit on Chinas power to
tax the imports that entered the country through these treaty port
establishments.
The Chinese who lived in and around these foreign enclaves were in effect
a colonial population, the natives of a regime complete with all the
trappings of the European colonial system, including the discriminations,
exclusions, and racial attitudes practiced by foreign masters and the
submissive acceptance of the treaty port mentality by great numbers of
Chinese in their role as subjects. For many shame and anger remained near
the surface of this acceptance.48

However, this semi-colonial position allowed Chinese intellectuals more varied

ideological, political and cultural positions than say in India or Algeria where there

was only one colonizer and his reign was not limited to a few places but extended

over the whole territory. Lu Xuns nalaizhuy [grabbism] is an example of a theory that

advocates eclectic, confident borrowing from the foreign without fearing the possibility

47
Lee Ou-fan, Shanghai Modern, The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass.1999, pp.9-12
48
Harold R. Isaacs, Re-encounters in China, Notes of A Journey in a Time Capsule, M.E.Sharpe, New
York, 1985 p.5 see also note 53 on Isaacs role in the protest against Nazism in Germany.
 18

of enslavement by what one borrows. 49 The figurative language has been used by Lu

Xun to conceptualise cultural borrowing not as a one-way flow from the source to the

target culture, but as a two-way cultural enterprise. In China its use is not only a

discursive but also a political choice and has recently been revived in the light of

growing nativism. In contemporary discourse nalaizhuyi is used in the context of the

discussion about a direct transfer of Western concepts such as modernity.50

One historic example would be the reception and dissemination of Western and

Japanese art by Lu Xun himself. A recent Chinese publication gives an overview of the

comments and purchases Lu Xun made, showing a much broader range of interest than

Western woodcuts. 51 One work by George Grosz, Friedrichstrasse (Fig. 2) visually

conveys Walter Benjamins approach of situating modernity in the context of the urban

space and its population in the metropolis. It was bought and published by Lu Xun in

the early 1930s. 52 This lithography depicts not only a cosmopolitan mixture of people

and classes but through the dynamic and to a certain extent cubist lines an expression of

the ever increasing velocity of urban life. And while Shi argues that for inasmuch as

modernism did travel from the metropolitan West to modern China, it did so endowed

49
Shih Shu-mei, The Lure of the Modern, Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, University of
California Press, Los Angeles, 2001 p.15
50
Ben Xu, Anxiety of Translation and abdication of the translator: a case of Sino-postcolonialism in the
1990s, Postcolonial Studies, Vol.2, N.2,Routledge, London, p.242
51
Figure 2 is taken from Yang Li Ang, Peng Guo Liang, Gen Lu Xun pinglun tupin hua ,waiguo
juan ,[critique of artworks with Lu Xun, foreign art] Yuelu Publishing House, Changsha 2003. It is part
of Lu Xuns collection of Modern European and Japanese graphics. Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, writes in an
Exhibition Catalogue that Lu Xuns collection of Modern European Graphics is still in a depot of the
Luxun Museum in Beijing. See Shanghai Modern, 1919-1945 Exhibition Catalogue, Hatje Cantz,
Ostfildern - Ruit 2004 p.46
52
The pourchase was made at a time when Grosz was under attack both by the Communist left in view of
his independent views and by the nationalist right in the midst of a trial against blasphemy. See Barbara
McCloskey, George Grosz and the Communist Party, Art and Radicalism in Crisis, 1918-1936,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997pp.105-6.
Grosz was one of the first German artists to be stripped of his citizenship in 1933 but had already left for
America when Nazi stormtroopers searched his house and studio. On May 13, 1933 Lu Xun together
with Song Qinglin (the widow of Dr. Sun Yat Sen) Agnes Smedley, Harold Isaacs and others protest
against the treatment of academics, writers and artists in Nazi Germany and against the terrorcrippling
social, intellectual and cultural life in Germany at the German legation in Shanghai. Birnie Danzker,
p.51
 19

with the power of cultural supremacy bestowed by imperialism, Lu Xuns nalaizhuyi

was not devoid of criticism of Western society. On the contrary, he wrote that Grosz

showed the dark and negative side of western society.53 Another, visual, aspect of the

influence of nalaizhuyi are covers of books and magazines by writers belonging to the

association of leftist writers (Figures 3 and 4) which can be traced to the Russian avant-

garde, Bauhaus and Art Deco design.54 At the other end of the spectrum of

mechanically reproduced works and not part of Lu Xuns reception is the kitsch of

yuefenpai [calendar posters] with flowery depictions of oriental women in traditional

roles (Fig.6 ) or westernized modern girls (Fig. 7) which derive from the China Trade

paintings (Fig. 5). 55If there is not one singular modernity, but a plurality of styles, then

we will have to abandon Greenbergs distinction between avant garde and kitsch56 and

agree with Li Chao that those vernacular images, which were immensely popular in the

Shanghai of 1930s and often make direct allusions to the modern (Fig.7) become part of

an (alternative) modernity.57

1.4: The (Venice) Rent Collection Courtyard - a critique of ideological art

The theory of an alternative modernity related to the symbolic field of the Chinese

Revolution is reflected in contemporary artistic practice. One example is Cai Guo

Qiangs Venice Rent Collection Courtyard of 1999 (Figure 10). It refers to a tableau
53
Yang Li Ang, Peng Guo Liang, Guo Liang p.95
54
See Julia Andrews, Commercial Art and Chinas Modernisation , Andrews/Shen, A Century in Crisis,
Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth Century China, Exhibition Catalogue, Guggenheim
Museum,New York, 1996 pp.181-212
55
In English there is a clear distinction between modernism which according to Harrison is grounded in
the intentional rejection of precedent and classical style and the modern tradition of high art as distinctive
from other forms of popular and mass culture there is no such distinction in Mandarin. See note 43
Charles Harrison, Modernism, Critical Terms for Art History, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
2003 pp.189-193
56
Clement Greenberg, Avant-Garde and Kitsch, Partisan Review, New York, VI, no. 5, Fall 1939,
pp.34-49 reprinted in Charles Harrison/Paul Wood (eds.) Art in Theory, Blackwell, Oxford, 2003,
pp.539-49
57
Li Chao, Traces of Time, the Art of Early Twentieth Century Shanghai Posters, China Dream, Another
Flow of Chinese Modern Art, Exhibition Catalogue, Fukuoka, 2004 p.178-179 See note 45 on the
temporal conception of modern/modernism in Mandarin
 20

vivant of 114 life size clay sculptures made in 1965 by Ye Yushan and a group of

sculptors in the mansion of a former landlord in Dayi, Sichuan. (Figure 9). Its function

was to demonstrate the boxue [exploitation] of the Chinese people under the feudal

system and the resistance of the people against the landlords before the foundation of

the Peoples Republic of China. 58 Michael Sullivan comments:

Although The Rent Collection Courtyard is often ridiculed as crude

propaganda, the figure of this tableau recreate with vivid detail and some
truth an operation that had taken place every year in this courtyard. Peasants
would bring their pitiful harvest to pay the rent, often leaving nothing for
themselves; some of them had mortgaged their crop for sixty years on
advance. They were cheated by the landlord, sold their children, or were
condemned to the landlords own prison for debt, to die of starvation. The
original version of 1965 ended with their revolt.59

During the Cultural Revolution further versions were made with a final version in 1968

with figures holding aloft the writings of Chairman Mao. Between 1973-76 duplicate

versions were produced for distribution in the whole country .60 Cai Guo-Qiang, an

artist born in 1957, had seen this work in his youth since they were shown all over

China as a masterpiece of Socialist Realist sculpture61 but also and foremost as an

example of exploitation (boxue) by a landlord.62 The installation/performance at the

Biennale focussed on the process of recreation, with eight sculptors from China

( including one teacher who had collaborated in the original) and art students as local

assistants. It was made of clay not fired and left to disintegrate since Cai wanted to turn

58
Shao Dazhen, Transmission et Evolution des Beaux Arts en Chine au XX siecle (1900-
1978)[Transmission and Evolution of the Fine Arts in China], Alors, la Chine ? Exhibition Catalogue,
Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2003 p.58
59
Michael Sullivan, Art and Artists of Twentieth Century China, University of California Press, Berkely,
1996 p.165
60
Ibid.
61
Martina Koeppel-Yang, Zaofan Youli/Revolt is Reasonable: Remanifestations of the Cultural
Revolution in Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s and 1990s, Yishu, Summer Issue, August 2002,
p.66-75
62
It was to show the exploitation of the Chinese people under the feudal system , the resistance of the
people against the landlords. It conformed to the artistic rules of the time and succeeded in creating real
personalities, with an undeniable artistic attraction. Shao,p.58
 21

this canonical artwork into a time-based installation, a work of art where the physical

presence of the sculpture is not that important.63 The German art critic, Martina

Koeppel Yang interprets the appropriation of an epitome of Chinese socialist utopia at

a profiled venue for contemporary art as a witty strategy of an artist who, by acting like

a revolting Red Guard intended an open provocation of the international art public. 64

When the work was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice it caused some stir in China.65

The Sichuan Fine Arts Academy accused Cai of spiritual plagiarism and violation of

spiritual property. 66 They intended to sue Cai Guo Qiang for copyright infringement.67

They also organised a research conference that criticized Chinese artists living in the

West for losing their identity, pursuing personal fame and profit without considering

the image of Chinese contemporary art.

The Chinese art critic Zhu Qi remarks in a similar line of thinking that in view of

Western expectations about the Chineseness of the work artists play games. Cai Guo

Qiangs performance has been the work of a master player, who specifically uses

Eastern symbolism and stories (including the revolutionary images) to play hide and

seek with Westerners who are superficially interested in Eastern topics but dont really

understand them.68

63
Dana Friis-Hansen, Octavio Zaya, Serizawa Takashi, Cai Guo- Qiang, Phaidon, London, 2002
64
Martina Koeppel-Yang, Zaofan Youli/ Revolt is Reasonable: Remanifestations of the Cultural
Revolution in Chinese Contemporary Art of the 1980s and 1990s, Yishu, Journal of Contemporary
Chinese Art, Summer Issue, August 2002, pp.66-75
65
For a detailed account of the controversy from the point of view of a Chinese art critic, see Zhu Qi,
We are all too sensitive when it comes to awards! Cai Guoqiang and the copyright infringement
problems surrounding Venices Rent Collection Courtyard, Wu Hung (ed.) Chinese Art at the
Crossroads: Between Past and Future, Between East and West, INIVA,New Media Art, HongKong,
2001pp 56-65
66
For details see Britta Ericsson: The Rent Collection Courtyard Copyright Breached Overseas: Sichuan
Academy of Fine Arts Sues Venice Biennale, Wu Hung (ed.) Chinese Art at the Cross roads: Between
the Past and the Future, Between East and West, New Art Media Ltd.2001, Hong Kong , p.52-55
67
The relevant press release is reprinted in Wu Hung p.53-55
68
Zhu Qi p.62
 22

Cai Guo Qiangs work shows how difficult it can become to fix positions. The Rent

Collecting Courtyard is a piece of socialist realism, used, some would say abused, for

propaganda purposes in the context of the Cultural Revolution. Cai has been accused by

the Sichuan art academy of abuse, since he appropriated a socialist, collectively made

work for personal profit and fame in a capitalist art system.69 While Koeppel Yangs

argument of provocation is not without some truth, it turned out to be a provocation of

some circles in China, not the West. And even the provocation was tempered. My

further research showed that for official opinion the important (patriotic) fact was Cais

international recognition through winning the prestigious Golden Lion Prize. Cais

work was interpreted as a criticism of the capitalist art system and a model of

coexistence between East and West.70 As a matter of fact, Cai Guo Qiang has been

commissioned to curate this years official Chinese participation at the Venice

Biennale.71

The most important feature of the work which in my eyes makes it a piece of

alternative modernity is a new way of thinking and an artistic strategy translating a

mindset of engaging with the past from a critical distance. Or, in the words of Cai Guo

Qiang commenting on the debate which arose in connection with the appropriation of

the work in China :

this [ The Rent Collection Courtyard] was also the first critical review of the art
made during the Cultural Revolution, the role of the makers and the products in
relation to politics. Interestingly enough, literature and intellectual thoughts
have undergone this investigation extensively but visual arts had avoided it until
then.72

69
See note 71
70
Yang Yingshi , China Daily 01/27/2000 www.china-gallery.com
71
Press Communique: China Pavilion debuts in 51st Biennale di Venezia, published on www.
caiguoqiang.com
72
Quoted in Kay Itoi:Inside Cai Guo Qiang www.artnet.com/Magazines/features/itoi/itoi5-17-02.asp
Indeed in political art, next to the former Soviet Union, China has the richest visual resources and the
greatest potential for a deep critical insight. But this hasnt been the case so far. Not only have the
research materials surrounding the Rent Collection Courtyard [which is known as shou zu yuan] gone
unorganized over the past ten years, it has not even become the topic of a masters or doctoral
 23

The reception of Cai Guo Qiangs Rent Collection Courtyard, and the interpretations

ranging from Koeppel Yangs provocation assumption to Zhu Qis theory of the

Chinese artist playing games with his Western audience also bring to light the inside/

outside dilemma of Chinese art which is the subject of the next chapter.

dissertation. The research on politics and art in China lacks a critical foundation and method similar to
that of Marxism in the West. Zhu Qi p.63
 24

Chapter Two: Inside-outside and in between: curatorial and artistic responses

Presenting a large number of Chinese artists is part of my strategy. Firstly, it

means opening up Venice and secondly it happens at a moment, when Chinese
art is hardly shown at all. The cultural institution is ahead of the market.
Harald Szeemann , Swiss curator 1999 73

The main embodiment of visual art are the modernist-postmodernist discursive

system and their institutions, then to impel this system and institutions to fall
into disorder is a constructive process to break down West-centricism and to
realise an alternative new order
Hou Hanru , Chinese curator 200274

2.1. Curatorial Strategies - Harald Szeemann: Opening up

1999 the Swiss Harald Szeeman curated Aperto over All at the Venice Biennale.

Aperto-openness stood for the novel and new.75 The Italian pavilions separating walls

were broken down to present new art in a new, eclectic way. Twenty percent of the

artists came from China, selected personally by Szeemann. He later explained in a

discussion with Chinese artists, critics and curators, that his personal response to the

work of art was the decisive criteria. Did it have a certain degree of intensity? And,

since the Biennale should be different from what visitors have ever experienced before

there was a search for the rare animal, and for the double strategy which is lost in

Europe and America.76

73
Ich liebe stets mehrere Dinge gleichzeitig [ I always love several thing at the same time] Interview
with Harald Szeemann, Kunstforum, Vol.147, September-November 1999, Ruppichterroth pp.313 ff
Translated by me from the German Original
74
Hou Hanru, On The Mid Ground, Timezone 8, HongKong 2002, p.63
75
For the first time the Arsenale was used as an alternative space, in the meantime it has become the
main exhibition site of the Venice Beinnale.
76
Harald Szeeman talks to Chinese Artists about Venice, CCAA,and Curatorial Strategies ,Wu Hung
( ed) Chinese Art the Crossroads, Institue of International Visual Arts, London, 2001pp.148-161
 25

As far as one can judge from the catalogue, there were no schools, no overarching

themes, no hierarchies. The curator proclaimed in the catalogue that

aperto over all, in the exhibited order of its self-actualizations, is sound, is a

commitment, is an oriental playful, is demolishing heroes, is cannibalistic and
distorted, is western beauty in Zen, is self mutilation, is Chinese performance, is
embroidered eroticism, is walking a tight rope, is profusion of time, is inside
and outside etc and a presentation of the individual artworks.77

In this panoply of styles, meanings and images, Yang Shaobins Untitled 11 ( Fig.11a)

exposes violence, which can of course correspond to the money power politics and

the crisis of the primitive accumulation problems discussed by recent economists, but

in fact conforms more to the reality of the humanity reserved in the artists personal

experience. 78 While in pictorial language more direct than other works shown in

Venice Yang Shaobins work addresses hurt and anguish as do Louise Bourgeois

crudely stitched up doll Why have you run so far away.( Fig.11b) Bourgeois adds

another, therapeutic dimension to art comments Peter Joch in the catalogue since by

stitching up she resorts to a salutary and magical power of the needle.79 Threatening

and the awareness of pain is also the subject of Bruce Naumans video installation

Poke in the Eye/Nose/Ear ( Fig.11c ) pursuing a different artistic strategy by bringing

together extreme photography of nature and an extreme use of slow motion and

violence.80 I feel, that those works in their relationship to one another which is not

relational in space but imaginary in the mind of the viewer communicate more

universal concerns like anguish and pain. Szeemann carefully avoided a discourse of

universalism, he wanted to break the rules, not stick with bureaucratic crap.81 At the

same time he stated that he wanted to make a model of ideal society, of all the

77
Harald Szeemann, Introduction to 48th Venice Biennale, Exhibition Catalogue, Marsilio, Venice, 1999
78
Daozi ibid. p.206.
79
Peter Joch ibid. p.2
80
Harald Szeeman, ibid. p.35
81
Steven Henry Madoff, Alls Fair, in Artforum, September 1999, p.184
 26

polarities in art without a single heroic style. If you have no heroes it opens things

up.82 In a way Szeemanns 48th Biennale was a conscious step to create disorder in the

modernist-postmodernist system of exhibiting. Opening up and tearing down walls in

order to abolish the (mental) fences which separate the inside from the outside. Did

Szeemann succeed to change reception in the art world? In the short term the answer

will probably be no, judging from Huang Yong Pings participation at the French

Pavilion.

2.2 Huang Yong Ping at the French Pavilion

A major work of Chinese art at the Biennale was installed in the French Pavilion.

One man Nine Animals (Fig.12) by Huang Yong Ping. At first glance the installation

evokes Zhus remarks about Chinese artists playing games with a Western audience. 83

But both the cultural references by themselves and the conception of the overall work

showed a concern on a deeper and more global level and an artistic strategy using

architectural space. The work was made of raw wooden columns with nine animals

made in aluminum, symbolizing natural and human catastrophes. These imaginary

animals are drawn from Chinese legends of the Shanhai jing [Guideways though

Mountains and Seas] which is widely known in China (Fig.13). 84 On the inside of the

building the columns are interacting with the architecture of the pavilion in such a way

that the work is never entirely visible from any one point of view. On the outside

Huang drew on the structure of the neoclassic French pavilion itself representing a

legacy of logic and disturbed the regularity of the buildings roof with the images of

82
Ibid.
83
See chapter 1.4.
84
The Shanhai Jing is a reference work about animate creatures, mountains, rivers, pharmaceuticals etc.
See Strassberg, A Chinese Bestiary, Strange Creatures from the Shanhai Jing, Guideways through
Mountains and Seas, University of California Press, Berkeley 2002 with illustrations taken from a 1597
reprint.
 27

Chinese magical animals. Clark interprets the work as an attempt to create a new space

by applying Chinese folk symbols to a Euro-American context, in a way a reference to

the imaginary in between space or interstice Bhaba refers to when writing about the

location of culture. I feel, there is also an ambiguity between the rational of neoclassic

architecture and the imaginary uncanny of mythical animals , made from the same

material as airplanes are made of (aluminum) on wooden (organic) beams, which in

turn reach beyond the (known) space of the inside into an outside of a (yet) unknown

world .85 There is another, literary relationship of the Shanhai jing to Chinese

modernity : Lu Xun was at the forefront of those progressive scholars during the 1920s

who hoped that the recovery and analysis of myths would aid the creation of a modern

Chinese culture and xiao shuos [minor narratives] like the Shanhai jing were seen as

precursors of a modern Chinese fiction. 86

2. 2. Reception of Chinese Art in the West: Expecting a Spring Roll?

Since Huang Yong Ping who had not (yet) acquired French citizenship, he could due

to institutional pressures- only exhibit alongside a French artist. 87 While John Clark

describes in detail the hostility Chinese artists in France face as outsiders, he forgets

to mention that the Centre Pompidou is one of the few major museums with a fairly

large collection of pieces of contemporary Chinese art, amongst them work by Huang

You Ping, Cai Guo Qiang, Yang Fudong, Zhang Peili, Yang Zhenzhong.88

85
In the same French pavilion was also an installation of Jean Pierre Bertrand who worked with 54 citrus
fruits hanging in suspension. The images in the Biennale catalogue were insufficient to imagine either of
the two artworks. The image in Figure 10 is taken from Britta Erickson, On the Edge, Contemporary
Chinese Artists Encounter the West, Exhibition Catalogue, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford, 2005
86
Richard E. Strassberg, A Chinese Bestiary, Strange Creatures from the Shanhai Jing, Guideways
through Mountains and Seas, University of California Press, Berkeley 2002, pp.26-7
87
John Clark, Chinese Artists in France, Gerardo Mosquera/Jean Fisher, Over Here, International
Perspectives on Art and Culture, MIT Press, Cambridge,Mass.2004 p.216
88
Centre Pompidou, La Collection du Musee National dArt Moderne on www.cnac-gp.fr. On MoMas
website there is only evidence for Cai Guo Qiangs Borrow your Enemies arrows www.moma.org. Tate
 28

Nevertheless, the reception of Chinese art at the 48th Venice Biennale in the French

press and amongst critics was cool .The disappointment came mainly from the fact that

Chinese artists used mainly language of western art. Or as Jean-Marc Decrop/Christine

Buci-Glucksmann remarked in Modernites Chinoises

Lacceuil reserve a cet art chinois est cependant mitige. Puissant largement
dans le vocabulaire de lart occidental, il est percu dans un premier temps et
dans une approche toute superficielle comme derivatif des mouvements
inities en Occident.89

What strikes me in this remark is the apparent disappointment with the fact that

Chinese art draws on Western language and is largely derivative and the undertone of

lack of originality.90 On the other hand, the German Kunstforum, known for its

profound and critical comments, centered on the very Chineseness of the artists

works shown at the Biennale and the usual Chinese topics like the Cultural

Revolution. However the real content of their work went equally unnoticed, apart from

generalities like a phrase about problems, anxieties and joys not stopping at the

borders and the global challenge of a comprehensive art market .91 Both the French

and the German reaction to Szeemanns Biennale recall Li Xiantings Spring Roll

theory. In an article titled Should We Be the Spring Roll on the Mixed Platter of

International Art? the Chinese critic Li Xianting wrote :

To westerners, post-colonial culture means the search for pluralism in cultural

expression as a substitute for a Eurocentric cultural hegemony. Where they
would like to prove that, as the leaders of global culture, they have the ability to
determine the direction for the world, they need to bring in cultures from
outside the Eurocentric circle to make them part of their mixed platter of

was kind enough to provide a list of artists born in China whose works are in their collections, but none
of them could be identified as contemporary Chinese.
89
Jean-Marc Decrop/Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Modernites Chinoises, Skira, Paris 2002 p.186
90
Similarly, John Clark in Chinese Artists in France, Gerardo Mosquera/Jean Fisher, Over Here,
International Perspectives on Art and Culture, MIT Press, Cambridge,Mass.2004 p.223
91
Kunstforum International, Vol.147, September-November 1999, Ruppichteroth
 29

international art. Under these circumstances, it happens that at the moment

China is playing the part of the spring roll on this international banquet table.92

I would venture to argue that the limited awareness of Chinese art in the West is also

due to the fact that China starts only now to develop a discourse on contemporary art of

her own. Some of the conditions for the realisation of an alternative new order in the

sense of Hou Hanru are being created, while Chinese artists and curators living abroad

like Cai Guo Qiang, Huang Yong Ping and Hou Hanru play key roles in this process.

Also the wall between the inside and the outside is in the case of China less penetrable

than in regard to other non Western cultures. Only Western work which has been

translated into English can become part of the intellectual discourse of the country.93

On the other hand few Chinese mainland intellectuals speak and write in a foreign

language. Luhmanns concept that art presents a functional equivalent to language94

becomes questionable both for theory and practice when different cultures are involved.

Nevertheless, artistic practice can successfully circumvent language and culture barriers

by employing a multiplicity of symbolic meanings in different cultures. One example is

Cai Guo Qiangs art.

2.3. Cai Guo Qiang: symbolic meaning and the ephemeral

Cai Guo Qiangs Dragon Sight Sees Vienna: Project for Extraterrestials (Fig. 14 ) was

a firework which lasted 15 seconds on the construction site of the Museumsquartier.95 It

is an example of a successful strategy employing the multiplicity of symbolic meanings,

92
Quoted by Pi Li, Presence of Matter and Absence of Personality,www.shanghart.com/texts/ljh5e.htm
93
On the politics of translations see Ben Xu, Anxiety of Translation and abdication of the translator: a
case of Sino-postcolonialism in the 1990s, Postcolonial Studies, Vol.2, Number .2, Routledge, London,
1999 p. 231-245, see also note
94
Niklas Luhmann, Art as a Social System, trans. Eva M. Knodt, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA,
2000 p.19
95
This is a modern and contemporary art centre in Vienna, Austria. See www.mqw.at
 30

in this case the symbolic meaning of dragons in different cultures. The short duration

creates an inside of purity and truthfulness against an outside of a spectacular event.

Cai played on the symbolic meaning of dragons, in China originally a complex symbol

of virility and creativity96 which is quite different from the monster in the West and he

explains his conception of the dragon :

In the West the dragon is often seen as a monstrous force; and when the western
media talk about the new economical powers of the East they often use the
dragon for illustration. As we know the dragon is a symbol of the East, a symbol
of power from the heavens, from the universe; it is a bridge between man and
the universe and supernatural powers This is why its something positive to call
the Chinese children of the dragon97

In his fascinating book A study of Dragons East and West Qiguang Zhao explains the

difference between the Chinese mythological dragon which floats in the sky and

mirrors itself in the human imagination and Chinese folktale dragons resembling the

Western dragon which can be slain since both have their claws planted in the solid

ground of human life. Hence the dragon flying over the roofs of Vienna becomes a

symbol for the invincible East.98 In Western culture a dragon is a monster to be

destroyed. Its killers are the heroes and saints of the occident like St.Michael and St.

George. 99

As mentioned the duration of the artwork was - 15 seconds. Beyond the double
meaning of the symbolic dragons it conveyed an idea of truth. Adorno has written that

Ernst Schoen once praised the unsurpassable noblesse of fireworks as the only
art that aspires not to duration but only to glow for an instant and fade away
If art were to free itself from the once perceived illusion of duration, were to
internalize its own transience in sympathy with the ephemeral life, it would
approximate an idea of truth conceived not as something abstractly enduring but
in consciousness of its temporal essence. 100

96
Wolfram Eberhard, Dictionnaire des symboles chinois, Symboles secrets dans lart, la litterature, la
vie et la pensee des Chinois [Dictionary of Chinese symbols, secret symbols in art, literature, life and
thinking of the Chinese], Seghers, Paris, 1984 p.113-114
97
Gerald Matt in Conversation with Cai Guo-Qiang, Cai Guo-Qiang, I am the Y2K Bug, Exhibition
Catalogue, Kunsthalle, Vienna, 1999 p.50
98
Zhao Qiguang, A Study of Dragons, East and West, Peter Lang, Wien, 1992 p.119
99
Ibid.p.131
100
Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, Continuum, London, 1997, pp.27-8
 31

.
Next to the ephemeral there is also a spiritual dimension to Cais (and other Chinese

artists) work and that is the Daoist notion of qi.101 And while an Eastern scholar would

apply the philosophy of the changing qi Western critic will probably be more happy

with Adornos consciousness of the temporal essence. Any assumption of a

convergence theory between Zhuangzi and Adorno being a bit too far fetched, I would

nevertheless venture with Hasegawa to put forward an increasing receptivity in the

West for Cais and other Chinese artists conceptual foundations.102 And finally, by

locating the work in a specific area and calling it project for extraterrestrials Cai not

only creates light in the sky, but endeavours to reach out from the local, beyond the

global to the cosmic.

Another example of playing with symbolic meanings is Cai Guo Qiangs best known

work, today in the Museum of Modern Art in New York: Borrowing your Enemys

Arrows (Fig. 15).It is a wooden boat struck with 3000 arrows and with a red Chinese

flag at the tail end , blown by a small electric fan. Suspended in space and with the

arrows resembling feathers it conveys the feeling of taking flight. Borrowing your

enemys arrows goes back to a story from the Sanguozhi [Story of the Three Kingdoms]

called cao chuan jie jian [straw boat borrows arrows].103 The Japanese art critic Yukko

Hasegawa tells and interprets the story and Cais work:

101
This means that any two beings imbued with qi respond mutually, their interaction being devoid of any
causal relationship. Also, Zhuangzis idea that the true phase of being is chaos is quite contrary to
Western thought, which articulates the world, linguistically demarcates and defines things, and equates
essence of things with their names. However, Cais work refers to new streams in Western thinking
which go a similar directions. Cai emerged at a time when the theories of chaos and complex systems
flourish in mathematics and science. For details of the argument see: Yuko Hasegawa, Circulating Qi
(Energy) of Mind and Intellect ,Cai Guo-Qiang, I am the Y2K Bug, Exhibition Catalogue, Kunsthalle,
Vienna, 1999 p.8-18
102
Ibid.
103
Sanguozhi is the historical book about the Three Countries in the late Han Period (25-220 AD)a later
version is Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the original story straw boats were sent into the enemys
 32

A General who was ordered to procure 100,000 arrows within 10 days sent a
boat loaded with straw bags into enemy territory. Enemy soldiers shot numerous
arrows at the boat, and these arrows embedded in the straw bags became the
generals weapons. Cais work consist of a single-mast wooden junk, with 3,000
arrow sticking in it, and flying a Chinese flag. In the artists conception the boat
is China , and the arrows represent foreign influence over it today. The work not
only points to the shrewdness of seizing the enemys arrows, but also
symbolizes the pain caused by a multitude of unavoidable foreign influences
that infiltrate the nation. The arrows stuck in so great a number as to alter the
boats silhouette also allude to the transitory state of China in transformation.104

And while the story lends itself to different interpretations like the perseverance,

guerrilla tactics, the intelligence and efficiency of the underdog, it is , according to Cai,

about the trauma of cultural conflict and the price you pay for opening up. Cai having

lived in Japan from 1986-1995 experienced the perplexity of contemporary Japanese art

in finding a balance between national pride and the cult of Western culture.105The other

aspect is to use the strength of the opponent in order to empower yourself. And, adds

Cai, while one may feel that the arrows symbolize wounding and pain, the boat is

uplifted, the feathers of the arrows enable it to take flight. This beautiful contradiction

resembles elements of Chinese martial arts. Cai also points out that it is not the role of

art to make judgements on right or wrong . His intention is to highlight cultural

phenomena during a time of transition and change.106 And while this discourse seems to

be geared to make a Western audience understand a certain symbolism, for a Chinese

audience the story is mainly about the intelligent strategy of a popular folk hero.107

territory , so the allusion to the pain is a bit far fetched. It is rather about the underdogs intelligence and
the efficiency. Also the ultimate aim is to weaken the enemy and finally to beat him with his own
weapons. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a popular Chinese story and was one of Maos favourite
books. Edgar Snow, Red Star over China, Victor Gollancz., London 1937. Luo Guanzhong, Romance of
the Three Kingdoms, Graham Brash, Singapore, 1985
104
Yuko Hasegawa p.16
105
Fei Dawei, Amateur recklessness,Cai Guo-Qiang, Exhibition Catalogue, Fondation Cartier pour
lArt contemporain, Paris, 2000 p.9
106
Octavio Zaya in conversation with Cai Guo-Qiang, Dana Friis-Hansen, Octavio Zaya, Serizawa
Takashi, Cai Guo Qiang, Phaidon, London, 2002 pp.26-28
107
I would like to thank my Mandarin tutor, An Zhongzhe for her interpretation. The hero of the story,
Zhuge Liang is a popular character nicknamed the hidden dragon since people underestimated his
capacity to achieve things www.jadedragon.com. His image is used in comics, computer games etc.
 33

Harald Szeeman was one of the first Western curators who no longer locked the

Chinese other into a specific position or status, nor did he push him/her into Bhabas

interstice which remains the (albeit variable) outside of a closed system. However,

judging from the reactions of some Western art critics, his alternative approach to

create a model of all polarities in art was (not yet) understood. I feel that there might

also have been a certain reticence against the idealism and universalism of Szeemanns

strategy. Reception theory (Jauss/Iser)108 implies that the work of art will take on a new

significance and transcend the horizon of the original meaning when read in a different

cultural context. I would argue that both Huang Yong Ping and Cai Guo Qiang play

with the different meanings and symbols in their own culture and in the culture of the

viewer. But they go a step beyond this simple east- west symbolism. The issues they

deal with: natural and human made disasters, communication beyond our planet , truth,

change, are to a certain extent of global concern . I would agree with Hasegawa that as

Western science progresses, the Western audiences scientific and cultural context

changes and becomes more receptive to Chinese thinking. If enlightenment thinking

was based on ( Newtons) science then alternative modernity becomes anchored in the

new science : the new physics like chaos theory and new thinking models like systems

theory.

108
Iser, Wolfgang, The range of interpretation , Columbia University Press, New York, 2000, Jauss,
Hans Robert, Toward an aesthetic of reception, Harvester, Brighton, 1982
 34

Chapter Three- Contemporary Art in Shanghai

3.1: The post Tiananmen economic, social and cultural shift

My confusion is not due to my insufficient understanding,

but because the world is changing so fast.
I look around, there is still too much for me to see
I become more and more puzzled.109

These lyrics by the Chinese rock singer Cui Jian110 date from 1986 but the confusion

still continues writes the Chinese art critic Lu Leiping about Shanghai. 111 Yang

Zhenzhongs video Light as Fuck 2, 2002 (Figure 16) is a visual expression of this

confusion. While the Shanghais Pudong skyline of the next century is lifted up easily

on one finger by the artist, it is difficult to put down the doubt and puzzle from the

crisis of the bubble economy and short-term planning hidden behind prosperity.112

Only the concentration, skill and agility of the artist as an acrobat can keep the

immense, but light sphere with the Pearl of the Orient Tower and the Lujiazui business

district, complete with green spaces and happy people, in a state of upside down,

precarious balance.

The bubble economy Lu Leiping refers to relates to what David Harvey calls a

spatio-temporal fix to the overaccumulation problem of capital. 113 Net foreign

investment in China rose from $ 5 billion in 1991 to around $50 billion in 2002 and the

109
Lu Leiping, Views from Onlookers Horizons, Labyrinth of Shanghai, Light as Fuck , Shanghai
Assemblage 2000-2004, Exhibition Catalogue, The National Museum of Art Norway, Oslo 2004, p.27
110
Cui Jian is the most famous Chinese rock singer, his texts express alienation, confusion, individual
feelings such search for love and tenderness as well as protest against the pressure of everyday work
life. Rock music in China is considered as oppositional counter-culture. For details see: Thomas Heberer
(ed.)Yaogun Yinyue: Jugend-Subkultur und Rockmusik in China, Politische und Gesellschaftliche
Hintergruende eines neuen Phaenomens [Youth counterculture and rock music in China, social
background of a new phenomenon], Lit, Muenster, 1994
111
Lu Leiping, p.27
112
Ibid.
113
David Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003 p.122
 35

Chinese market is growing rapidly with urban incomes rising at a rate of 11% and rural

incomes at a rate of 6 %. Nevertheless, in the face of strong currents of over

accumulation of capital and the competition between centres of capital accumulation

the risk grows that devaluations with their effect on price stability further accentuate the

instability.114 On the other hand, China which had been held back by the hostility of the

Maoist regime against the private accumulation of wealth,115 has by 1995 quadrupled

her economic output and there is a definite and visible improvement of living

conditions. This is one of the reasons why public opinion seems to perceive

modernisation in a more positive light than intellectuals and artists. Research on the

results of public opinion polls comes to the following conclusion116: in Chinese urban

spaces there is, generally speaking, a strong support for the reform policy, albeit

primarily as a tool to improve ones own standard of living. It seems that the

respondents rate personal gains much higher and important than societal values. Hence

that there seems to be a strong case for a trend towards societal irresponsibility.117

Chinese sociology talks in this context about shehui shixu [loss of social order], a

phenomenon during major social changes which Durkheim has diagnosed as

anomy.118

114
David Harvey p.124. Note the strong pressure on China to devaluate its currency. According to the
Nobel Prize winner Robert Mundell, a renminbi appreciation would cut foreign direct investment, cut
China's growth rate, delay convertibility, increase bad loans, increase unemployment, cause deflation
distress in rural areas, destabilize Southeast Asia, reward speculators, set in motion more revaluation
pressures, weaken the external role of the renminbi and undermine China's compliance with World Trade
Organization rules. Quoted in Steve H.Hanke: Why China wont revalue, published February 16, 2005
on www.cato.org
115
David Harvey p.92
116
In the framework of a project at the Free University of Berlin and based on polls conducted by the
Peoples University in Beijing and the Fudan University in Shanghai in the early 1990s, Bettina
Granswo/Li Hanlin: Chinas Neue Werte , Enstellungen zu Modernisierung und Reformpolitik, [Chinas
New Values: Attitudes towards Modernization and Reform Policy], Berliner China Studien, Minerva
Publikationen, Munich,1995
117
Ibid.p.114
118
Emil Durkheim:Ueber die Anomie, in C.Wright Mills, Klassiker der Soziologie, Eine polemische
Auslese, 1960,pp.394ff quoted in Gransow/Li p.16
 36

Add to this sociological phenomenon the effective marketing/propaganda for a new

Shanghai which is to comprise 4500 high rise buildings and the worlds highest

building of 492 m to be completed by 2007 and one understands that the confusion

about the rapid change is at the moment primarily a concern of intellectuals and artists

who deplore this new form of urban policy based on a uniform vision of the modern

world which is according to Hou Hanru deeply related to the ideologies of both

communist and capitalist utopias of modernity.

Today existing as an individual in the Chinese city, behind the excitement of

participating in the making of a brilliant and wealthy urban world, one also has
to bear the pressure of the dictatorship of consumerist ideology and political
cultural unifomisation of art and architecture/urbanism.119

Horkheimer and Adorno observed already in 1947 that a rise in the standard of living

can make the dominated even more powerless .Their argument was a reaction against

the enlightenment belief in progress and modernization. 120 The Chinese thinker Li

Zehou explains the Chinese view on modernization as a philosophy of eating and

comes to a similar conclusion as Horkheimer and Adorno. Namely that, modernization

as such can be so powerful that it destroys almost every kind of obstacles and causes a

series of cultural shifts.121 Wang Hui describes these shifts from a Marxist point of view:

the processes of modernizations cause multiple social crises like population explosion

(in terms of population density), environmental degradation, imbalances in the social

distribution system, corruption.122 In China market reforms were initiated by a strong

state, and members of the political elite and their families directly participate in

119
Hou Hanru, Looking for a place, for yourself, and for all the others, Chang Yung Ho, Wang Jian
Wei, Yang Fudong, Camera, Exhibition Catalogue,Musee dArt Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris,
2003 p.13
120
Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Allen Lane, London, 1973 p.38
However, the abandonment of the enlightenment project which turned against itself and transformed the
quest for human emancipation into a system of universal oppression in the name of human liberation
should be read in the context of Horkheimers and Adornos experience with Nazism.
121
Li Zehou, Modernization and the Confucian World, Address at Colorado College on February 5, 1999
on www.coloradocollege.ed/Academics, Anniversary/Transcripts
122
Wang Hui, Contemporary Chinese Thought and the Question of Modernity, Zhang Zudong ,Whither
China, Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China, Duke University Press, London 2001,p.165
 37

economic activities. In the cultural field, there is no power of resistance against state

intervention since most journals are published by state-owned publishing houses, and if

there are unofficial productions they are usually more cautious because of their greater

vulnerability and lack of systemic protection. On the other hand capital is penetrating

every corner of social and political life. Somewhere between capital power and

authoritarian state power the intellectual is squeezed with an ever diminishing

autonomous space for critique. How do contemporary artists handle these cultural shifts?

3.2. Facing Modernity Artistic responses

Next to Yang Zhenzhongs irony , Yang Fudong creates in his videos and photographs

an ambiguity of multiple meanings. Ji Dachuns paintings are to my eyes expression of

hesitation and withdrawal, while I would read a certain half hidden anguish and despair,

into the portraits of Geng Jianyi . All artists demonstrate an intensive concern about the

process of making and the specificity of the medium they are working with. At the

same time they search for an independent visual language.123

Yang Fudongs Close to the Sea, xiahai124 was shown in 2004 at the Liverpool

Biennial.125 It is about two people who, after struggling for survival on a shipwrecked

raft in the rolling sea, rest completely exhausted on a beach ( Fig.17 b). On the backside

of the screen the same couple is in love, playing with each other, in a beach buggy, on

123
Hou Hanru, On The Mid Ground, Timezone 8, HongKong 2002, p.32
124
Xia hai means literally going down to the sea or going out on the sea and this title of Yang Fudongs
video installation work is translated as Close to the Sea. It was commissioned for the Liverpool Biennale.
However, xia hai has also been coined in the context of recent economic and social changes in China. It
relates to the relatively new phenomenon of self employed businessmen (getihu) and to intellectuals or
scholars who are no longer employed within the (low income) state system, but who turn towards the
market See Wang Hui, The 1989 social movement and the historical roots of Chinas neoliberalism ,
Huters, Theodore (ed.) Chinas New Order, Society, Politics and Economy in Transition, Cambridge
(Mass) Harvard University Press, 2003, p.85.
125
Liverpool Biennial, International O4, exhibition catalogue, Liverpool 2004
 38

a white horse in black and white (Fig.17 a). This double screen is surrounded by eight

smaller screens which show musicians elegantly dressed in Western clothes on rocks

against the rolling Yellow Sea playing the sentimental yet dissonant music of Jin Wang.

It is an impressive video installation which the The Guardians art critic, Adrian Searle,

a painter himself, praised as the only truly major work of the Liverpool Biennial.

Totally engaging, mysterious and full of memorable images and music, this moved

me.126 This work was recently shown in Vienna and art critics there praised its

ambiguity with an undertone of surprise: the images on the screen being so different

from the sterotype of the hardworking Chinese.127 The Austrian curator Sabine Folie

titled her essay on Yang Fudong Film as painting emphasizing the double character of

the work itself and the Andeutung und Anspielung.128 In my own reading xia hai

relates very much to the actual situation of China. It becomes an opportunity to create a

materially better life through modernisation and progress a modernist credo but with

the high risk the instability of the economy in late capitalism. A second, more intimate

reading would relate to the pleasures and difficulties of a partnership. In both readings

xia hai conveys ambiguities- by the double meaning of its title referring to the sea and

to the risk, the sound of the rolling sea against the sentimental yet dissonant music

played on western instruments, the double screen, colour and black white, the couple on

the main screen against the musicians on the eight surrounding screens which evoke the

chorus of a Greek drama. Beyond the ( narrative) reading of images the visual

installation in space with the double screen in the centre and the eight surrounding

screens construct also something imaginary:

126
Searle Adrian, Scouse Stew ,The Guardian , September 21, 2004, www.guardian.co.uk/arts
127
Andrea Domesele, Artmagazine cc. 28, February, 2005 on www.artmagazine.cc
128
Intimation and Allusion, but the German original Anspielung also has to do with Spiel or play.
Spiel or Play, an important element in art, seems to get lost in the translations from German into English .
 39

Die visuelle Installation im Raum unterscheidet sich von der traditionellen

Weise des Betrachtens von Filmen. Ich ziehe es vor, dies mit dem Bild des
Herzens und mit dem Bild der Wahrnehmung zu erklaeren. Wenn man in der
Mitte der Ausstellungshalle steht, dann, so hoffe ich, wird man ein schoenes
Gebauede sehen, das auf einer Gruppe von unsichtbaren Bildern basiert.129

Ji Dachun showed his work in Shanghai in the framework of the 2000 Biennale, 2002

in a solo exhibition at the Aurora Gallery. 130 Besides his better known commercial

work which is a mixture between childrens drawings and cartoons with sexual

connotations, sold by Sothebys as witty pieces created in a new style with bright

colours, comic characters and a theme that is more relevant to our everyday lives,131

there exist also other paintings which are of a rare sensibility and unique concern with

the medium. They are created on sailcloth, with graphite, washes of ink, tea and white

acrylic. One of the most touching works is hole in my body (Figure 18). It shows a

hesitating figure pointing at himself, round but seemingly weightless like an imaginary

self. Similarly to Ren Xiongs Self Portrait( Fig.1) it has no visible background, the

canvas being primed with washes of tea. But unlike Ren Xiong who seems to stand

firmly on an imaginary ground Ji seems to be up in the air- or in other terms with no

firm ground beneath his feet. This is achieved by leaving a lot of empty space around

the figure. Li Xianting, when discussing Jis paintings, talks about a purity of

expression and remarks that the people in his paintings seem to stand still, their

roundness not communicating any physical power.132 Jis work was influenced by Cy

Twombly , Maurizio Cattelan, Joan Miro, but he also spent years tracing classical

129
Yang Fudong, quoted on the panel next to At the Sea. Yang Fudong, Dont worry it will be better,
Exhibition, Vienna Kunsthalle, February 23- May 15, 2005.Visual installation in space is different from
the traditional viewing of films. I prefer to explain that with the image of the heart and the image of
perception. When one stands in the centre of the exhibition hall, then-so I hope- one can see a beautiful
building, based on a group of imaginary images. The translation is my own.
130
Jidachun, Ive seen it all, Exhibition Catalogue, Aura Gallery, Shanghai 2002, www.aura-art.com
131
See for instance Sothebys Chinese Contemporary Art, including Korean Contemporary Art ,
Auction Catalogue, Sunday, May 1, 2005, Hong Kong p.88
132
Li Xianting, Dachun Pure Humor, Jidachun, Exhibition catalogue, Soka Art Center, Time Zone
8 ,Hong Kong, 2004,p.9-34
 40

Chinese paintings and the main focus of his art is the actual process of painting.133 Jis

Hole in my body shows no visible pencil marks. The weightlessness and roundness of

the figure resemble China Trade paintings (Fig. 5).134 Upon closer examination of the

canvassurface he seems to use a sort of rub and paint technique which Rawanchaikul,

curator at the Fukuoka Art Museum, describes as follows: the three-dimensional effect

was achieved by rubbing charcoal powder on to the surface creating gradations of

light and dark. On top of it comes layered colour powder. 135

Striking images of the human face are at the centre of current work by Geng Jianyi

titled Face (Figure 19). It is a series of portraits produced, not reproduced, on glossy

photographic paper. It is a head, photographed frontally and painted over by the artist

on photosensitive paper ( photographic paqper) with a maobi [Chinese brush] and ink.

The black ink which blocks out completely or partially the light this depends on the

wateriness of the ink- creates the fine shades of whites and beiges. Arguing for or

against Chineseness in such work seems to be an issue besides the point although the

theorist will find Western realism combined with Chinese brush technique. Extremely

fine layers of lighter shades reveal and hide the portrait in such a way that the viewer is

left with all her questions unanswered. And unlike Ren Xiongs asserting Self Portrait

( Fig.1) Geng Jian Yis Visible Face which was exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale in

2004 (Fig 20) seem to leave the position of the subject to the artist open. To my mind

there is a certain combination of withdrawal of the self and assertion of the self. The

face is veiled and unveiled, appears and disappears, is revealed and hidden. Unlike the

133
Ibid.
134
Encounters, The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800, Exhibition Catalogue,V&A Publications,
London, 2004, p.275 The original is in the Victoria and Albert Museum
135
Rawanchaikul, Toshiko, Another Current of Chinese Modern Art, China Dream-Another Flower of
Chinese Modern Art, Exhibition Catalogue, Fukuoka Asian Museum, 2004, p.166
 41

angry posture and the air of resistance of the Self portrait Geng Jianyis faces evoke

doubt and questioning. This slightly distant indifference is also conveyed by the sepia

tones of the portraits which create a distancing effect to the stark here and now of the

black and white. A Chinese viewer might also perceive an allusion to the need to keep

ones face (mianzi), not reveal everything to the other person, a game similar to

wearing and taking off a mask.136

Geng Jianyis way as an artist is closely linked to the China Avantgarde of the 1980s.137

Karen Smith writes that his work is one of the most consistent and profound bodies of

work to have come out of this movement138.He faced difficulties as an artist from early

on, today he teaches at the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. Oil paintings of a

serious couple which Geng had put forward as his final work in 1985 were met with

opposition because they showed no positive expression. Nevertheless, he graduated

from the Academys oil painting department and became together with the video artist

Zhang Peili part of a parallel movement to the bawuyundong [1985 movement ] called

the Pool Society (chishe). Their members were notable for their biting sense of humour

and absurdist spirit. In the 85 xin kongjian huazhan (New Space Exhibition) Geng

Jianyis showed grey humour paintings.One of them is The Second State (Fig. 21)139

showing hysterically laughing heads in a photo-realistic style, in tones of grey and of an

enormous scale (200 x 145 cm). They were made as a reaction to earlier criticism that

his subjects show no positive spirit. After the 1986 September exhibition of Xiamen

Dada , the Pool Society--including Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, and Wang Qiang--created

a series called Yangshi Taichi No. 1 (Taiji xilie yihao) on the banks of Xihu Lake and in

the streets of Hangzhou (Fig. 22/22a). This new street art was made outside the

136
I am indebted to my Mandarin tutor, An Hongzhen for this observation
137
See also the introduction and note 3
138
Karen Smith, The Art of Duplicity on www.shanghart.com/texts
139
The image in the illustration is from 1987 and was shown at the China Avant Garde exhibition of
1993. I could not find an earlier version of this painting to which Gao Minlu seems to refer.
 42

confines of the academy, the common people had access to this type of art. (Fig. 22a

shows an early morning practicioner of Tai Ji next to the paintings which had been

made during the night before).140

A comparison between the -Taiji paintings on the walls of the city of Hangzhou and

Geng Jianyis portraits exhibited almost 20 years later at the Shanghai Biennale or

during a recent retrospective in one of the leading Shanghai Galleries141 are evidence

of the cultural shift which has taken place. While the first was Avant Garde with some

remnants of Maoist Revolutionary art for the people and big character posters, albeit no

longer with a political message, the latter becomes a modernist form of high art, with

combines the Chinese brush technique with the Western photography but whose

meaning can be interpreted differently. While a viewers mind trained in Western

thinking and by the mere fact of her age might relate the visual impression to a certain

school of thinking which was popular in the sixties, 142there might be an alternative

meaning like the one of keeping ones face I have mentioned above, which is part of

Chinese culture. However if we look at the issues beyond the first symbolic reading

Zhang Peilis remark comes to my mind. At an interview I conducted with him in

Hangzhou he answered my question of whether society was still a topic for

contemporary artists: Yes, but as seen through the body of the artist .143 And without

venturing into generalising theories I would say that each artwork presented can be seen

as an expression of the uneasy relationship between the artist and the uneven

140
The artists used language and pictorial representation. For instance the Chinese characters in Fig. 20
indicate the name of the Taiji movement depicted.
141
142
And in the early eighties in China. Reception of Western philosophy and literature had its origin in the
Institute of Foreign Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences which was founded during
the Cultural Revolution following Maos strategy know your enemies in order to facilitate professional
studies of modern Western philosophy and social thought..Zhang Xudong, Chinese Modernism in the Era
of Reforms, Cultural Fever, Avant Garde Fiction, And the New Chinese Cinema, Duke University Press,
London, 1997 pp.56ff. However it was only in Post Maoist Era xin shiqui [new era] that translations
became widely available.
143
Interview with Zhang Peili at the China Art Academy, April 4, Hangzhou.
 43

development of China, whether it is the balancing act of Yang Zhenzhong or the risk

taking and exhaustion of a couple in the film of Yang Fudong. Whether Ji Dachun

draws his figure with a hole in his body, weightless and up in the air, or Geng Jianyi

covers a face by hiding it behind his personal, manual painting. In terms of alternative

modernity their work becomes, to paraphrase Hou Hanru , a testimony to the real in an

objective, neutral and un-theatrical way.144 They make work that is non-commercial,

difficult and maybe not even following design principles which would facilitate their

sale. This is not the culture of late capitalism in the sense of Jamesons Postmodernism

but the search for individual responses to an urban environment of uneven development,

with the repercussions of global overaccumulation of capital and with an ever

increasing velocity of life itself. They speak to their audience circumventing language,

provided the viewer is ready to pause and take the time to engage not only with the

image, its meaning but even with the way it is made, ranging from the set up of an

installation to the medium specific technique of a painting In that respect their work

resembles the high modern (albeit executed in different media than at the time of

Greenberg).

Concluding remarks : Towards an alternative order?

Hou Hanru has talked about the need of a constructive process to break down West-

centricism and to realise an alternative new order.145 On the other hand, even today,

the new art is still half hidden in the underground and the basic foundations are

missing Zhang Zhaohui complains in a contribution on. www.china-gallery.com.146

Contradictions and tensions.in contemporary Chinese art are too important and

144
Hou Hanru, On The Mid Ground, Timezone 8, HongKong 2002 p.32
145
Ibid. p.63
146
Zhang Zhaohui, Where do we depart to? on www.china-gallery.com
 44

evidence I could gather in the short available time too scarce to make an overall

systems assessment. This is why I limit myself to a few singular examples of the

institutional situation in Shanghai .

The first concerns the Internet as a marketing tool and as an alternative project site.

Chinese galleries and artists make extensive use of the internet, they have websites and

discussion forums.147 These sites provide access to the educated few. According to the

most recent statistics 7, 2 % of the Chinese have Internet access.148 I will come back to

the effect the use of the internet has on the art produced at the end of the pape. Firstly I

would like to focus on the internets function as . an alternative way to improve the

accessibility of art and to show contemporary art outside the big urban centres like

Shanghai and Beijing. One example is the collaborative art project The Long March.

It has a virtual part on the web, and physical projects along the route of Maos Long

March. Organised and financed by a foundation in New York and the 25.000 Cultural

Transmission Centre in Beijing, its purpose is to take Contemporary Chinese and

international art to a to a sector of the Chinese public that is rarely or never exposed to

such work. Its aim is to bring art to people who live in remote communities.149 Edward

Lucie Smith compares the project to the efforts of the Predvizhniki[Wanderer,

Itinerants] who wanted to bring accessible art to the Russian peasants. The long march

is in the words of Edward Lucie Smith an expression of postmodern irony.150 Indeed

the Shanghai artist Qu Guangqis refers ironically to the mingong [ migrant workers] in

the framework of this Project by participating in the project through hiring a paid

147
See Bibliography for some websites used for this paper
148
Figure for 2004 Source: futurezone.orf.at For comparison: Global internet penetration is around 10%
with a top position of the Scandinavian countries followed by the US 59,1%. Other countries internet
penetration: UK 56,88; Austria 45,2 France 28,4. Source www.nua.ie. Note that all the nua statistics are
from 2002, while the orf.at is from 2004.China has recently started a campaign to register all hosts of
websites and censorship is increasing.
149
www.long.marchspace.com
150
Edward Lucie-Smith, Visiting the Long March, www.longmarchspace.com/english/e-discourse6htm
 45

migrant worker who participates by carrying a sculpture of -Qu.Guangqi . 151 However

Gao Shiming, the deputy curator of the last Shanghai Biennale whom I interviewed

during my stay in China sees this project as the manifestation of an alternative

discourse for a number of reasons: firstly it relates to alternative modernity since its

main topic is Maos Long March and hence the revolutionary heritage of China,

secondly it brings art to the people substantially different from a postmodernist

simulacrum or a culture of late capitalism which is focussed on the urban elite. And

thirdly it becomes an alternative mode of cultural production by the combination of

reality- the project takes actually place in many small villages along the Route of the

Long March and often involves the local population - with virtuality there is an

extensive website and it is linked to institutions abroad-.152

The second concerns the classical museum structure, namely the Duolun Museum in

Shanghai which was opened in 2003 and is so far the only public museum of

contemporary Chinese art in China. In a recent article on this museum, its Director,

Biljana Biric wrote that over the past ten years, 90% of Chinese contemporary artwork

went into the hand of Western collectors, museums and other institutions. The cause is

to be found within Chinese museums and their policies. But also Duoluns budget is

limited and at the moment there are a mere 30 works in their collection, most of them

donated by the artists. Also in China artists (or their galleries) have to pay rent to

exhibit , which is one of the reasons why exhibitions are so short and their quality

doubtful. 153At the time of my study trip there was an excellent exhibition called

151
The mingong are the new proletariat of China, the migrant workers from the countryside who work
not only at the destruction and construction sites of Shanghai and other urban centres but who are also a
cheap labor force in the factories of the Special Economic Zones.Their number is estimated between 100
and 200 million.
152
Interview conducted with Gao Shiming, the deputy curator of the Shanghai Biennale 2004 at the
China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, April 4 2005
153
Biljana Biric,The Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Yishu, Spring Issue March 2005, Taipei
pp.12-6
 46

Shanghai Cool with cutting edge Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean Design curated by a

Taiwanese curator . The numerous audience at the exhibition was as far as I could

judge, Chinese, with many young people, and hardly any foreign visitors.

Applying Luhmanns theory about the self description of art through the

institutionalisation of art and the establishment of supporting information154 to the

praxis of Chinas discourse and institution building seems not only difficult because of

the scarcity of the evidence but also because there is as I have shown- an extremely

uneven development between the two realms: the brick and mortar of the museum and

virtuality of the internet. On a third level , the commercial galleries, their number

seems to increase with more and more Chinese entrepreneurs venturing into the art

business. Their compelling use of the internet as a marketing tool could however, have

a negative effect on art .It might bring about the crime of design by which,

extrapolating Foster, I mean a fundamental shift in the appearance of art which has to

be strong enough to look attractive on a screen or page.155 This together with a

sensationalism caused not only by the taste of the Western audience but also by the

extremely competitive system in China make it doubtful of whether an alternative

modernity based on Chinas unique political and cultural heritage which in the last one

hundred years has also included the opening up to other cultures can survive or will be

swept away by a cultural logic of either late capitalism or, alternatively, a revival of

authoritarianism. Since China will most likely become a global player in the cultural

field the answers to this question will also have repercussions on the global art system.

154
Nikolas Luhmann, Art as a Social System, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2000
155
This implies that the language of the advertising world is more and more used in the artworld.
47
 48

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 52

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 54

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Vol.28, Winter 1997, No.1, pp.31-44

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Zhu Qi, We are all too sensitive when it comes to awards, Cai Guiqiang and the
Copyright Infringement Problems surrounding Venices Rent Collection Courtyard,
 55

Wu Hung (ed.) Chinese Art at the Cross roads: Between the Past and the Future,
Between East and West, New Art Media Ltd.2001, Hong Kong , pp. 56-65

Ben Xu, Anxiety of Translation and abdication of the translator: a case of Sino-
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Selected Internet sources:

www.caiguoqiang.com
www.china-gallery.com
www.cnac-gp.fr
www.longmarchspace.com
www.moma.org
www.shanghart.com
www.timezone8.com
www.yangfudong.com
 56

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Ren Xiong (1823-1857), Self-portrait, undated, hanging scroll, ink and colour
on paper, 177,4 x 78,5 cm, Palace Museum, Beijing

Fig, 2. George Grosz (1893-1959), Friedrichstrasse, Lu Xun Museum, Beijing156

Fig. 3.a. Qian Juntao,(born 1906) cover design for the magazine wenxue yuebao
[Literary Monthly], 1932

Fig. 3.b. Anonymous, cover design for the magazine shehui [Society], 1934

Fig. 4.a. Qian Juntao, (born 1906) cover design for weida de lianai [Great Love], 1930,
Museum of the Leftist Writers Association, Shanghai

Fig.4b. Anonymous, cover design for reqing de shu [fervent book], Museum of the
Leftist Writers Association, Shanghai

Fig.5. Pu Qua workshop, Artist Copying a European Print onto Glass, opaque
watercolour on paper, Canton c.1790, from a set of 100 plates, 47,1 x 57,4 cm, Victoria
and Albert Museum

Fig. 6.Yuefenpai,Kwan Wai Nung, Calendar Poster for HongKong Noodle Making Co.
1930, Hong Kong Heritage Museum

Fig. 7.Yuefenpai,Hang Zhiying, Calendar Poster, Lady in a Polka Dot Dress, 1920-
1930, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum

Fig.8, Red Guard Art, Mao Zedong 1966, woodcut print , ca. 85x120 cm, Propaganda
Poster Art Centre, Shanghai

Fig.9. Ye Yushan and a team of sculptors from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts,
Chongqing, The Rent Collection Courtyard (detail), 1965, clay tableau vivant, figures
are life size, installed in former landlords mansion converted into peoples museum,
Dayi, Sichuan

Fig.10. Cai Guo Qiang, Venices Rent Collection Courtyard, 1999 (detail),sculptors, 60
tons of clay, wooden armature, 4 lamps and other props, tools for sculpture, Installation,
Aperto over all, 48th Venice Biennale

Fig.11 a. Yao Shaobin, Untitled I, oil on canvas, 220x180 cm

Fig.11 b. Louise Bourgeois, Why have you run so far away, 1999, pink patchwork
fabric, 25,4 x33x 25,4 cm

Fig.11.c. Bruce Naumann, Poke in the Eye/Nose/Ear, 1984, video installation

156
Most likely in a depot
 57

Fig.12. Huang Yong Ping, One Man Nine Animals, 1999, wood and aluminum,
Installation, French Pavilion, 48th Venice Biennale

Fig.13 Jian Yinhao, Shanhaijing [Guideways through mountains and sea], late 16th
century, plate 22

Fig.14, Cai Guo-Qiang, Dragon Sight Sees Vienna, Project for Extraterrestrials No.32
1999, 15 kg gunpowder, 600 m gunpowder fuse, construction cranes, 600 m,4.30 pm., 6
November,1999, Museumsquartier, Vienna, I am the Y2K Bug, Kunsthalle, Vienna

Fig. 15. Cai Guo-Qiang, Borrowing your Enemys Arrows, 1998, wood boat, canvas
sail, arrows, Chinese flag and electric fan, boat approximately 152,4 x 720 x 230 cm,
arrows 62 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Fig.16. Yang Zhenzhong, Light as Fuck 2, 2002, video, collection of the artist

Fig.17 a/b. Yang Fudong, At the Sea, xiahai, Video Installation, 2004

Fig.18. Ji Dachun, hole in my body, 150 x 110 cm, 2001, graphite and white acrylic on
canvas

Fig. 19 , Geng Jianyi, Face, reagent painting on photographic paper, 2001

Fig. 20, Geng Jianyi, Visible Face, Mixed Media on photographic paper, Shanghai
Biennale 2004

Fig. 21, Geng Jianyi, The Second State, 145 x 200 cm, oil on canvas

Fig.22/22a. Geng Jianyi/Zhang Peili Yangchi Taichi No1. city of Hangzhou, bai he
liang chi [white crane spreads its wings-Taiji movement]
58