changing motivations of chinese contemporary art since the mid 1990s

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Changing Motivations of ChineseContemporary Art Since the Mid 1990sGao Mingluab

a 匹兹堡大学b University of PittsburghPublished online: 03 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Gao Minglu (2012) Changing Motivations of Chinese Contemporary Art Since theMid 1990s, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 11:2-3, 209-219

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JVAP 11 (2+3) pp. 209–219 Intellect Limited 2012

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Keywords

Yi Paihumanismspiritual modernityindependencetranscendence

PART TWO

Gao MinGlu 匹兹堡大学University of Pittsburgh

Changing Motivations of

Chinese Contemporary art

since the Mid 1990s

自九零年代中期后中国当代艺术的动机更迭

abstraCt

This essay explores changing perceptions of the value of Chinese contemporary art within China since the mid-1990s. It argues that since the mid-1990s, Chinese contemporary art has lost the status it held as a relatively independent focus for cultural and social criticism during the 1980s and early 1990s. It also argues for a reinstatement of traditional Chinese scholarly values that allow for service to the nation alongside independent resistance to authority.

JVAP_11.2-3_Minglu_209-219.indd 209 9/6/12 9:23:22 AM

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关键词意派人文主义精神现代主义独立性超越性

摘要本篇文章探讨了自90年代中期后，中国对中国当代艺术的价值认知的转变。本文认为中国当代艺术自90年代中期后即丧失了它在80到九90年代早期的那种相对独立的、对文化及社会的批判性地位；同时，本文也为了恢复中国传统儒家价值进行了辩护，并相信儒家价值能在为国家所用的同时，也能维持它对抗权威的独立性。

introduCtion

Changes in the perceived value of Chinese contemporary art during the last decade and a half should not be viewed in a positive light. The spiritual modernity of Chinese contemporary art, as well as the innocence of the artists who make it, has diminished in the face of politics, capitalism and industriali-zation. A combination of ‘Jianghu’ (market gaming within official art circles) and individual artists conspiring with the market has brought about a capitali-zation of the concept of artistic value, as well as a lack of integrity in relation to the making and showing of art.

The change in direction of Chinese contemporary art from 1996 until now is different from that during the period between the mid-1980s and early 1990s, which saw an abrupt revolution in artistic thought and practice based on a humanistic conception of artistic value. Since 1996, Chinese contemporary art has changed incrementally in ways that are often unrepresentative of China’s official political ideology, and that involve a covert restructuring of the system and substance of the Chinese art world. This restructuring relates to the mate-rial benefits that accrue to artists, collectors, critics, businesspeople and owners of organizations involved in the making and selling of art, including the social positions, financial profits and reputations of each individual. The change has penetrated and undermined the root of artistic life in China. Indeed, this change in the value of art can be witnessed both within and outside China in relation to the size, scale and prosperity of audiences, art districts and art organizations. Since the mid-1990s, art within China has been popularized and modernized to a large extent. However, the fundamental task of art – its independence and transcendence – has been eroded, squeezed more and more by an indigenous double-sided system of politics and capital with ‘Chinese characteristics’.

The year 1996 was marked by a fundamental change in the perceived value of Chinese contemporary art. During the early 1990s, China began to open up to the international art market. Collections of contemporary art were started in China. Works of Chinese contemporary art were added to the collections of foreign galleries and museums and included in interna-tional exhibitions. There was also a move away from the thematic seriousness of Chinese contemporary art of the 1980s to a more sarcastic tone after the events of 4 June 1989. Nevertheless, Chinese contemporary art continued to uphold the legacy of the ‘85 New Wave (the focal point for the development of ‘avant-garde’ art within China during the 1980s) and the spirit of modern art. Resistance to authority and a humanistic view of capital were still the main trends of contemporary art in China. During the early 1990s two signifi-cant changes took place in relation to the production and showing of Chinese contemporary art. The first is the synchronization of the Chinese art market and domestic collections with foreign markets. The second is a loss of spiritual modernity. Chinese contemporary art became subject to the opportunism of


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the market and the curatorial visions of foreign countries. It became increas-ingly devoid of content, stylized and fashion driven. Chinese contemporary art entered into a world in which the rich competed savagely for reputa-tion and where artistic spirit had been abandoned. Flexibility of political struc-ture and the power of capital tamed the artist. Contemporary art gradually overturned itself. Modernism, the pursuit of spirit since the 1980s, died.

At the end of the twentieth century, anti-capitalism, which had by then existed in the West for well over 100 years, gave in to the prevailing political system, bringing about widespread self-mockery and selling of souls. The criti-cality upon which western art had been predicated declined to an unprecedented degree. The heat generated by Chinese contemporary art and its associated ‘Big Names’ brought about not just excitement but also anxiety within the interna-tional art world. Within China during the 1980s and early 1990s, art had never been so close to life. Art and lived reality were connected as never before. In the history of China there had never been such a large social class of artists. From the mid-1990s onwards, however, within China art began to move farther and farther away from the people. As the Chinese economy grew, the art market became one of a number of brutal conduits for the upgrading of social class. The ecology of art became more and more cruel. There were fewer and fewer sincere artists and artworks. Independent art creation and discovery were harder and harder to find. A process of industrialization and centralization of art districts began to take place supported by local government and real estate policy.

short-lived avant-Garde and low-Key avant-Garde

Throughout the 1980s, artistic experimentation within China focused on the rationale and logic of self-modernization. This is in many ways similar to the May Fourth period in China during the early years of the twentieth century, which promoted spiritual modernization and internationalization of Chinese ways of thinking. During the second half of the 1990s, however, Chinese contemporary art became internationalized both in terms of its practice and selling through international exhibitions and markets. This is, of course, related to the context of the post-Cold War period during which the West began to pay greater attention to China. Much of this attention was paid to contem-porary Chinese politics after 1989, as well as the associated artistic genres of painting known as political pop and cynical realism. These two genres are very similar in approach and tone to the Sots Art that appeared during the 1980s before the fall of the Soviet Union. Both are examples of ironic uses of socialist imagery combined with American Pop Art styling. Sots Art enjoyed popularity in the western market before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and vanished after it. It can be seen as a kind of short-lived avant-garde.

When I started to plan the exhibition ‘Inside Out – New Chinese Art’, which opened in New York in 1998, I already had an understanding that Chinese contemporary art exhibitions in the West had up until then focused on political ideology, and that this led to the overlooking of two key things: first, the historical development of Chinese modern and contemporary art, which by the 1990s had been in existence for more than ten years; and second, catego-ries of art other than political pop and cynical realism such as the Apartment Art of Song Dong, Zhan Huan and Wang Jin. When I presented the proposal for the exhibition I knew that political pop and cynical realism signified China because of their relationship to Chinese politics, and that the alternative genre of Apartment Art was not seen as characteristically Chinese in the West.


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Since 1993, small installations and conceptual artworks had emerged as a phenomenon in China. I presented examples of these kinds of artworks in ‘Inside Out – New Chinese Art’, giving them the name ‘Apartment Art’. At the time, such works represented the unique characteristics of Chinese avant-garde art. The value of the works lay in their continuation of the spirit of the 1980s in the form of silence. They were not supported or funded by any private or government organizations, but were produced independently by artists who exhibited their works privately in apartments or houses. These artists did not make art for the market or for public exhibition. The low-key nature of Apartment Art was partly a response to the suppressed art ecology in China after 4 June 1989, and partly a self-questioning and criticizing of the purity of modernism itself.

Chinese political pop/cynical realism and Apartment Art of the 1990s represent two different sets of standards and values. In doing so, they are also indicative of a paradoxical relationship between the international and local. Political pop/cynical realism engaged with local topics (mainly politics) within an internationally successful format (that of postmodern painting), while Apartment Art was produced according to the typical local art ecology of China: low-key, forced to retreat back to home space and limited in its communica-tion with avant-garde peers. At the same time, Apartment Art looked towards international contemporary artistic practice (that of Beuys, Conceptual Art and Postmodernism), which was partly due to the participation of Xu Bing, Ai Weiwei and Zhu Jinshi, who had returned to China after spending time in the West. This was profoundly challenging within the context of China during the early 1990s. As a result, political pop/cynical realism became successful inter-nationally, while the artists who made Apartment Art had to contend with a brutal localized social and artistic ecology. This close engagement with local context or background was largely ignored by the world outside China.

Since 1996, differences between high-profile political pop/cynical realism and low-key Apartment Art have become increasingly clear. By the end of the 1990s, Apartment Art had died out in the face of the widespread exposure of Chinese contemporary art across China in art districts and galleries and the swallowing up of that art by large-scale auctions, markets and exhibitions. The group of artists involved in the making of Apartment Art did not seek to develop themselves as celebrities or to collaborate with capital. They remained comparatively low-key, with some, such as Wang Jin, retreating completely. Wang Jin was very active during the mid-1990s, taking part in the making of Apartment Art, street art and even performance art. He was involved in the production of many interesting artworks such as the Great Wall and Coca Cola performances. He chose to live a clean and honest life by retreating from the artistic mainstream. Song Dong is also a sincere artist. He always wants to express his understanding of life, of fate, of family, no matter what methods he uses. He Yunchang also uses his own life to produce art.

In light of these differences and contradictions, I had a strong wish when I organized the exhibition ‘Inside Out – New Chinese Art’ to correct the preju-dices of western galleries and museums. We had to give them a complete demonstration covering the period between the 1980s and 1998: rational painting in ‘85; stream of consciousness and conceptual art before political pop/cynical realism; Apartment Art; flat and experimental ink painting of the 1990s, and work by artists already popular in the West. ‘Inside Out’ repre-sented the values of the Chinese avant-garde. The profile of Apartment Art was raised, with individual works by Song Dong and Wang Jin included in the


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exhibition. This exhibition, which opened in New York in 1998 and travelled around the world until 2001, left deep and persistent marks on the memories of many westerners. They regarded ‘Inside Out’ as their first opportunity to see the entire panorama of Chinese contemporary art. I am very proud of the fact that it is the largest exhibition of Chinese contemporary art, in both scale and coverage, to have been staged outside China. I feel extremely fortu-nate that I have been able to stage two exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art at just the right time, the 1989 ‘China/Avant-Garde’ exhibition in China and ‘Inside Out’ in the United States.

Western critics now gradually began to realize the complexity of Chinese contemporary art, as well as misunderstandings in the western perception of Chinese contemporary art. The old values were under adjustment. Take, for example, the famous Italian curator Achille Bonito Oliva. In 2008, when I was in Spain curating the exhibition ‘Yi Pai – Thirty years of Chinese Conceptual Art’, Achille Bonito Oliva saw it and asked me for a catalogue. Oliva brought political pop to Venice in 1993, which happened to meet the expectations of the West at the time. In 2010 he curated an exhibition on Chinese conceptual art. All the exhibited artists except Li Xiangyang were selected from the ‘Yi Pai’ show. Oliva and I had a conversation in Beijing in 2010. He said, ‘I took political pop to the Venice biennale and this time I will take Chinese concep-tual art to Venice’. While he had a clear sense of moral responsibility towards Chinese contemporary art, he could not understand why it had come into being at this time and what it was concerned with. It is perhaps harsh to expect him to understand the Chinese context in the same way as a Chinese critic. His exhibition of Chinese conceptual art did have a self-questioning element to it. He is well known for his saying that ‘All artists are traitors’.

Through his work with the Venice Biennale, Oliva was among the very few western art critics and curators who had paid attention to and participated in the showing of Chinese contemporary art from a professional perspec-tive during the 1990s. Others who paid attention were officials working in embassies, art dealers or western newspaper journalists who focused on the social aspects of Chinese contemporary art. During the 1990s the Danish curator Hans Ulrich Obrist also started to pay attention to Chinese contempo-rary art. Obrist participated in the founding of an archive of documents related to Chinese contemporary art in Caochangdi. He represented the values of the main trends in the West, but he had different perceptions of Chinese contem-porary art from Oliva.

Since the 1990s, major collections of Chinese contemporary art have, for the most part, been built up by foreign collectors. Most of these collections are based on the idea of art as capital and the treating of artworks as though they were stock. Most collectors who specialize in Chinese contemporary art have collected without considering its essential value. Instead they have waited, storing it until its monetary value has increased before dumping it on the international art market.

The Ullens collection of Chinese contemporary art was based on different standards and values. The Ullens foundation built up a collection on the basis of an interest in the circumstances of the early development of Chinese contemporary art during the 1980s. But now the Ullens collection is up for auction. If it sells what values will the purchase be based on? Recently some foreign collectors have signalled their intention to build permanent collec-tions of Chinese contemporary art based on longer-term artistic and historical values (unlike Ullens and other western collectors who based their collecting


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on capital value and/or their particular interest in a certain period of history). The organization and operation of a permanent collection needs rational cognition, respect for academic criticism and the verification of art historical facts. This is beginning to happen now.

Today, the West prefers artists who are relatively philosophical, with a certain depth of thought and a diversified approach towards artistic expression. The general western interest is not simply in painting, but in installation and video art with an inclination towards conceptual art. The West is also alert to the expansion of the market for Chinese contemporary art. Western collectors, including Ullens, have started to dump Chinese contem-porary art. We could criticize them for being capital-driven in their view of Chinese contemporary art. But why do they not dump western contemporary masters? Why only popular Chinese contemporary artists? This reveals their doubt over the value of Chinese contemporary art and, in particular, that of Chinese political pop.

‘Jianghu’ (the MarKet) holdinG hands with ‘guanchang’ (the GovernMent)

At the turn of the millennium, starting with the second Shanghai Biennale in 2000, Chinese contemporary art entered into a period of transition. Chinese contemporary art was drawn into a process of internationalization that trans-formed the Chinese contemporary art system into one regulated by both the market and government. This involved a change of standards and values away from the humanistic concerns of the 1980s and 1990s towards values centred on the market, celebrity and self-interest. The established system of modern art criticism in China (not only with regard to its subjects, but also its ecology) has changed towards a bilateral compromise. The emergence of vast art districts has forced artists to collaborate with the industrial interests of local government. Peasants (who were once ranked, before Mao’s time, as the least important class within Chinese society) have now been replaced by artists. Only the government and a very few artists and art agents have benefited from the change.

After the Shanghai Biennale in 2000, biennales started to spring up in other places across China. The government started to integrate art districts such as Beijing’s 798 and Song Zhuang into its cultural planning. The decisive point here with regard to art districts is that the government is the owner of all the real estate, which means that artists working there have no other choice but to collaborate. As a result, the ecology of contemporary art within China is dominated by a system involving competition and interaction between the market and the government – you are within us, and we are within you. There is a pervasive collaboration between capital and the political system that significantly reduces the space for artistic individualism to a minimum. Art is supposed to be independent, and the creativity of artists is supposed to conform to the demands of individual freedom. But this has been squeezed almost to the point of suffocation.

The current situation in China is similar in many ways to that during the Tang Dynasty between 713 and 756. During this period Buddhism started to flourish. Art was funded by government officials and imperial families, as well as individuals, merchants and people from all walks of life keen to participate in the building and decoration of Buddhist temples. At this time there was intense competition between artists. This is reflected by historical documents


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relating to the work of the artist Wu Daozi, who is said to have hired kill-ers to murder his competitors. This complicated ecology of artistic production requiring the active participation of the government and the people is similar to the period we are in now. However, that time was relatively more inno-cent than our own. It was driven by religious enthusiasm, while we are driven by celebrity, self-interest and capital. The madness of that time created art, poetry and calligraphy. But what do we create now?

The first ten years of the twenty-first century has witnessed attempts to develop a more completely systemized approach towards artistic produc-tion and selling within China. Complete systemization means the govern-ment and the market working together closely to control the ecology of art within China. Recently, the government organized an important exhibition of Chinese contemporary art at the China Contemporary Art Institute, invit-ing artists to take part in the exhibition and naming them as Academicians of the Institute. On the one hand, this exhibition could be seen as a positive development reflecting a more open-minded attitude towards contemporary art on the part of the government. However, there was also a risk that once artists enter into the official system, especially artists of importance and repu-tation in the Chinese contemporary art market, they would not be able to maintain their individuality. In spite of this risk, none of the artists selected for the exhibition stood up and said they would not take part; no one thought it better to retain their individuality. It seems very odd that there was not even one dissenting voice – but this is the reality of today’s China. It is extremely difficult for any artist to refuse such an invitation since to do so would be to transgress certain unspoken rules. The unspoken rules of market and govern-ment in China are different from those of the western art ecology. They have been built up differently by the institutions, the government and among the people. This is the unity of China. This unity is not a unilateral attitude of government or governmental authority. It is a shared desire among all indi-viduals for unity. Consequently, the important issue is not whether or not the government should set up this contemporary art institute, or whether contemporary artists have been offered government amnesty for past indiscre-tions. These are superficial problems that are not very meaningful to discuss. The important issue is whether artists are able to maintain their individuality. What is the aim of the contemporary art institute? What is its ambition?

Nowadays, we have entered into a period in China during which it is very difficult for scholars to be scholars. In ancient China, a scholar’s service to the country was inseparable from the desire to preserve an individual sense of purity. To combine service to the country and the preservation of one’s own purity required complimentarity between Confucian and Daoist princi-ples. Today, the personality and responsibility of scholars are tightly bound up since the May Fourth Movement with social criticism. Scholars of the May Fourth generation continued to share in aspects of China’s scholarly tradi-tion. But since the beginning of the Maoist period, individual personality and mannerism have given way to class struggle and the interests of the party. The critical positioning of today’s scholars cannot escape these historical horizons.

In the face of these continuing historical drawbacks, artists, as scholars, should not only seek to maintain their independent personality, but also to stand up and speak with an independent voice. During the 1980s we constantly heard appeals for artistic freedom and artistic democracy coming from within the Chinese art world. There were also appeals for art to act as a focus for


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revolution. However, we are now living in a different time from that of the 1980s. We not only need a standpoint, a voice, a way of writing and a way of making art, but also a personality and an ideological way of thinking. Now the government is corrupt and the people are disillusioned. We not only need criti-cism, but also self-criticism. Self-criticism should be conducted with reverence and awe. The criticism should be reasonable, strong and moderate. It should also include the position of the critic. Today’s intellectuals have become used to criticizing others. This started during the Maoist period, especially the Cultural Revolution. The consciousness of revolutionizing others is deeply rooted in the bones of generations of Chinese people. However, over time those radical meth-ods of critical writing, critical works and critical voices have transformed into a kind of metaphor, one that looks superficially powerful and moral but is actually pale and empty. If there were an acceptance among the Chinese people that the individual and the system are connected and can be criticized together, there would be fewer problems. Revolution of the system and criticism of corruption should be more powerful and more effective.

art serves neither politiCs nor Capital

We are now calling for a third space – an individual space. This means that artists must have an independent identity, independent mind and independent personality. Artists with these kinds of independent qualities are too few nowa-days. We call this third space ‘Yi Pai’. ‘Yi Pai’ does not give definition to a certain style. ‘Yi Pai’ is more concerned with the epistemology of art. This is the task of the theories of ‘Yi Pai’. Though it could be used as a way of illuminating a certain style, such as Chinese contemporary abstract paintings, what we have aimed to tell foreign audiences via exhibitions focused on the concept of ‘Yi Pai’ in recent years – especially the one staged at the Today Art Museum in Beijing in 2009 – is that the exploration of generations of Chinese contemporary artists has one common characteristic, and this is that all Chinese artists combine aestheticism with their lives, no matter whether they are 20-year-old youth or in their 90s. This position can be summarized by three key points:

1. Culture first. During the period of the Republic of China before 1949, intel-lectuals and artists tended to put culture first. Here culture does not mean an isolated materialistic culture, but one that includes politics, aesthetics, art and life. Culture involves care about the state, a state of humanity and a state of life, requiring good taste and an ability to transcend.

2. There must be openness in the language between East and West. It should not be confined to any one point of view, but should be built on capa-ble organization and an organic creativity with a view to making a real contribution.

3. Art is itself. This is similar to the old saying that a painting or piece of writing is like the painter or the writer himself or herself. We should not look at how artists and critics complement themselves and their art, but instead at what they are doing and what their identities are. Some celebri-ties and currently fashionable masters might become future masters. But history will make the selection. Some know how to operate in the present, sometimes being modern, sometimes being market-oriented and some-times being commercial. We should not look at their self-advertisement. We should look at what is being advocated and whether it is really unified with life. Standards and values are never separated from personal lives.


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The third point relates to difficulties that intellectuals face under the current art ecology within China. Not only difficulties in terms of their ability to speak critically, but also to develop a state of personal independence. We should all work towards a state of independent identity. This is a value standard that we should aspire to as part of our self-development, even within the current ecology. Sometimes I ask myself whether the third point is too demanding. Some people have criticized me, saying that very few people can live up to that kind of expectation. I disagree with their thinking. Artists and intellectuals tend to have high aspirations. Constantly falling short requires them to have high expectations. Good artists are rare at any time. Those remembered as part of the history of art are always the minority. Good artists of our own time may be hidden or ignored by the media.

I miss the idealism of the 1970s and 1980s in China and also the people’s innocence during those times. The general outlook today may be more realistic than before. Ideas reflected by society and art may be more essential. There is a lack of innocence now. This is a source of sadness. But we are facing a reality that people in the past, even people now in other parts of the world, have not met before. I still believe that there are relatively innocent artists. Mao Xuhui could be one of those artists, sticking to his beliefs for years and maintaining a capacity for self-criticism. He always questions the relationship between the context he is in and himself. As a human being as well as an artist he has a general requirement and standard. It is difficult to maintain this for years, but Mao Xuhui has retained his ideals. I know him well and we have kept communicating over a number of years. Among China’s contemporary artists, Mao Xuhui keeps a low profile and is worthy of respect. Last year, the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai held an exhibition of his work and I edited a book related to the exhibition. The process was very touching.

Art, like religion, is a most unpractical thing. It contains wisdom and other wonderful aspects of humanity, including terror, fear and tragedy. Art is humanity’s metaphor. It can neither serve politics nor capital. It is the highest expression of spirituality. To be an artist is to have an identity, but art should not be seen as a profession. Except for the Maoist period when art served the people and was used to promote politics, during Chinese history there have been very few works of art that have actually changed society and politics. This is because the fundamental nature of art is to act as a means of intellec-tual expression via metaphor and symbol, not representation. Consequently, art should not be thought of as a tool, since it cannot solve problems itself. It should be seen as a sacred thing.

Recently, I had a public conversation with the chairman of the Art Institute of Yale University and the curator of the most recent Venice Biennale. Ai Weiwei had just been arrested and many American members of the audience asked my opinion on this. During his stay in the United States in the 1980s, Ai was strongly influenced by western thinking. When he came back to China in the 1990s, Chinese contemporary art had already travelled a certain distance, including influence from European Dadaism. This is why even though Ai produced a series of Dada-influenced works during the 1990s he did not have a major influence on art within China. His influence in recent years is mainly in relation to human rights issues through his participation in demon-strations for equal treatment and human rights protection. His influence has gone beyond the art world. Regardless of his standing as an artist or Chinese citizen, Ai’s contribution to Chinese life is an invaluable one. He has stood up as an individual, investigating the corruption of the Chinese government


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and challenging its supposed impartiality. His actions and sufferings should make us feel ashamed about ourselves for not doing more. There are differ-ences in opinion about the quality of Ai’s work as an artist, but we should place these in an academic context for criticism and comment. As for other Chinese contemporary artists, there are fewer and fewer who now pay atten-tion to social and moral problems. Artists should have a sense of social and moral responsibility, as well as an independent voice, since the ecology of art is closely connected with the rest of society.

Today there is a pressing need for more artists in China to be independent and socially functional in the face of the suppressions of the political and capital system. Artists should be independent of the market and the political system. This does not mean abandoning the market and a free and open politi-cal system, nor a policy of unity. Art should be treated as nothing but art, not as a commodity or something with use-value. Art should be connected with artists and the way they live their lives. All of this relates to morality. If artists have morality, they will be inclined to take responsibility for society and culture and to have a suffering consciousness. During the 1980s within the Chinese art world we always talked about suffering. This is not discussed very often now. However, it is needed now more than ever. Many problems exist in both domestic and international contexts. Many problems exist in contem-porary art. The effect of celebrity and the workings of the market have a major influence on society, especially among the youth. I recently heard a postgradu-ate student at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing claiming that the institute supported the idea that a student driving a Mercedes-Benz should be seen as successful. His works may get sponsorship from companies and may be sold after the graduation exhibition, which will be an honour for the professors and the institute. This is a very common phenomenon now.

What is good art? What is a good artist? We have to comment from an integrated perspective based both on academic theories and social values. Nowadays, critics in the marketplace usually stand on the same side. Few critics contribute convincingly to academic education or clarify the significance of art for a general audience. This means that we, as critics, have problems. We believe, however, that in the future history will select. This happened both in ancient China and the West. Wu Zhen, one of the four masters of the Yuan Dynasty, was the contemporary of a second- or third-tier Yuan painter who enjoyed greater fame and market success. Wu Zhen lived poorly, painting fishermen and landscapes. His bulky ink dots and thickly applied brushstrokes on paper were not widely admired. His wife was very disturbed and criticized him all the time. Wu Zhen was very confident and said that she should wait for another ten years and see the outcome. At last, he became one of the four masters of the Yuan Dynasty.

Even though the real value of Chinese contemporary art is strongly contested and obscured by numerous superficialities, understanding of that value must tend over time towards consensus and openness. In the future, there will be a shared view. We will be able to state confidently what kind of art is good. That time is definitely coming.

suGGested Citation

Minglu, G. (2012), ‘Changing motivations of Chinese contemporary art since the mid-1990s’, Journal of Visual Art Practice 11: 2+3, pp. 209–219, doi: 10.1386/jvap.11.2-3.209_1


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Contributor details

Gao Minglu is a research professor in Art History at the University of Pittsburgh and curator of a series of landmark exhibitions of contempo-rary Chinese art, including ‘China/Avant-Garde’ (1989), ‘Inside Out – New Chinese Art’ (1998) and ‘The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art’ (1985). He has published extensively on the subject of contemporary Chinese art both within the People’s Republic of China and internationally.

Contact: University of Pittsburgh, 130 Desoto St # A526, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15261, USA.E-mail: [email protected]

Gao Minglu has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.


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intellect books & journals Performing Arts Visual Arts Film Studies Cultural & Media Studies

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SILVIA FOK teaches at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

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changing motivations of chinese contemporary art since the mid 1990s

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