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The Art of Anxiety: China's SocialTransformation and the UncertainReception of Chinese Contemporary ArtWang Chunchenab

a 中央美术学院b Central Academy of Fine Arts, BeijingPublished online: 03 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Wang Chunchen (2012) The Art of Anxiety: China's Social Transformation andthe Uncertain Reception of Chinese Contemporary Art, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 11:2-3,222-229

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Keywords

anxietycontemporary Chinese

artopening and reform

policysocial systemidentity

wang ChunChen 中央美术学院Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing

The art of anxiety: China’s

social Transformation and

the uncertain reception of

Chinese Contemporary art

焦虑的艺术：中国的社会转型及中国当代艺术的不确定性

absTraCT

In this essay I will argue that Chinese contemporary art since the 1980s has been characterized by a collective outlook analogous to the psychological symptom of anxiety and that this collective outlook drives Chinese artists to make art as a critical proof of their particular conditions of being and identity.

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关键词焦虑中国当代艺术改革开放政策社会体制认同

摘要在本文中，笔者将论证中国当代艺术是如何从80年代便被赋予了一种集体性的面貌，其具有类似于心理学上的焦虑症状；而这样的集体面貌驱使了中国艺术家将艺术作为他们对于自身的特殊存在和身份认同的批判性的证明。

During the current period of unprecedented social and economic transfor-mation within the People’s Republic of China (PRC), no single criterion can be used to analyse and/or judge Chinese contemporary art, and no single discourse can be used to categorize it. Paradoxically, one thing at least is certain: Chinese contemporary art is an inherently heterogeneous phenome-non. On the one hand, the masses (a term that also needs to be analysed:Who are ‘the masses’ and how are they constituted within the particular context of the PRC?) are perplexed by artworks they perceive, quite rightly, to be inherently contradictory as well as in conflict with one another. On the other, they want the reassurance of unified standards and discourses for describing art produced in China today.

Responses to contemporary art in China vary widely. Some welcome it, some reject it, and others deny its existence or validity as art. Individuals inter-pret the significances and purposes of Chinese contemporary art in accordance with their particular social status and psychology. When we examine these responses, we can see that an individual’s understanding of contemporary art in China is strongly influenced by contingent cultural, social and political factors. Because contemporary art in China provokes such a diverse range of responses, harsh judgments frequently appear in official and unofficial maga-zines and media. In 2007 Art Observation Journal published a special feature on contemporary art in China. Within this special feature the significance of contemporary art in China was criticized strongly. Some doubted its existence while others upheld the importance of the so-called ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese contemporary art.1 In 2010, Art and Literature Review published an article enti-tled ‘The critique of Chinese contemporary art’ in which it is argued that contemporary art is not proper in China and that China should have its own art (Yin 2010: 13–17). Those judgments then reinforce the people’s uncertainty about what contemporary art is and what social function it is intended to serve. Such conflicting understandings not only reflect a multiplicity of interpretative perspectives, they also point towards an underlying anxiety with regard to the meaning and function of Chinese contemporary art.

Because of the rapid transformation of society and culture in China over the last three decades, to which the majority of people have not adapted easily, questions regarding art often point towards an underlying sense of uncertainty and anxiety. Titles of recent articles and books on the subject of contempo-rary art in China are strongly indicative of this state of affairs. In 2007, the following article titles appeared: ‘Who Will Represent Chinese Contemporary Culture?’ (Zhang Xiaoling), ‘The Anxiety of Cultural Identity’ (ZouYuejin), ‘The End of Resistance and the Anxiety of Interpretation: Avant-gardeness and its Contemporary Reflection in Chinese Abstract Art’ (Sheng Wei) and ‘Is There Avant-garde Art in China?’(Peng De) (Jia 2007); in 2008 ‘The Exclusive Pluralism?’ (Lv Pingtian), ‘What is Contemporary Art?’ (Zou Yuejin), ‘Why Should Art Criticism Resist Capital Power?’ (Daozi), ‘Which Will You Choose Within the Market: Curatorship or Criticism?’ (Gao Ling) and ‘Who Has Made Morbid China?’(Zhang Xiaoling) (Wang 2008); in 2009 ‘What Remains Except

1. Thetitlesofthesearticlesare‘Theclarificationof“ContemporaryArt”’(YangPeiandXuPeijun),‘ContemporaryartistheproliferationofWesternCulturalCrisis’(WangYuechuan),‘ToCallforAKindofContemporaryArtwithChineseStance’(PengFeng),‘TheMissionandDilemmaof“ContemporaryArt”’(DongChunxiao),‘TheImplicationof“ContemporaryArt”inContemporaryChina’(ShenWei),‘TheShiftingof“ContemporaryArt”’(KongXinmiao),‘“ContemporaryArt”asAnArtHistoricalConcept’(WangNanming),‘TheUnderstandingoftheTerm“ContemporaryArt”’(LuHong)and‘TheSubtextof“ContemporaryArt”inChina’(YangBin)(seeJia2007:4–21).

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the Interest Already Obtained?’ (Wang Lin), ‘Does Chinese Contemporary Art Have Its Own Value Measurement?’ (He Guiyan) and ‘The Crisis of Originality’ (Yi Ying) (Yin 2009); and in 2010 ‘Where is The World?’ (Zou Yuejin) and ‘The Embarrassment in Art History Writing’ (Chen Mo) (Laozhu 2010).

Questions and doubts of this sort are not unique in the modern history of Chinese society and culture. Since the beginning of modern China (roughly after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911), art in China has been defined and interpreted in a wide variety of ways by scholars representing different groups. During the early twentieth century, Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Chen Duxiu (1879–1942) advocated an artistic revolution involving the replacement of traditional modes of production associated with literati art by European realist techniques (Wang 2011: 71–78). Between 1949 and 1978, art within the PRC was motivated and controlled by the official ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Artists were referred to as ‘art workers’ and were called upon to serve the revolutionary aims of the CCP and to represent the majority of the Chinese people. Because any non-official advocacy for art and art practice was censured and suppressed during this period, only one kind of art, i.e. socialist realism, was permitted. With the reopening of China to the outside world after the acceptance of Deng Xiaoping’s programme of social and economic reforms in 1978, the conditions of artistic production within China have changed dramatically. Diverse forms of non-socialist-realist art have spread all over China, supported principally by young artists and art students. The conflicts and controversies that erupted in response to this change were widespread in China during the 1980s. The 1980s were referred to as a decade of ‘sixiangjie fang’/‘thought liberation’ and were even regarded by some Chinese scholars as an era of ‘neo-Enlightenment’ (Xiang 2011). At this time, artists wanted to challenge the political status quo by producing artworks that differed markedly from the officially supported socialist-realist art of the Maoist period. Artists involved in the production of this new unof-ficial art felt a genuine sense of emancipation even though socialist-realism was still supported by the political establishment. Since 2000, however, a new and increasing sense of anxiety about contemporary art has emerged within China.

During the 1980s, artists in China understood that the new art they were producing could be called ‘xiandaiyishu’/‘modern art’ and that this modern art could be distinguished clearly from the socialist-realism of the Maoist period. No matter how difficult the lives of those artists may have been at the time – both materially and politically – in their outlooks they remained extremely idealistic. Contemporary art produced within the PRC now exists within the complicated networks of markets, auctions and globalization. When the wider audience for art, as well as professionals such as artists, critics, curators and collectors, talk about contemporary art, they are now more interested in its commercial value than its artistic quality. The attention of artists is certainly no longer focused on art’s function as a platform for idealistic social/political critique.

Under these new conditions, those involved with the production and exhibiting of contemporary art within the PRC have become much more anxious than before. On the one hand, they feel a loss of direction; on the other, they have become blinded to the social purposes of art. Many confidently propose new cultural agendas aimed at boosting economic development. The term ‘dangdaiyishu’/‘contemporary art’ is used widely as part of slogans issued by different groups within China, including the government, official art institutions and those who oppose them. All of these groups are interested

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2. The term ‘’85 New Wave’ refers to a generation of young artists that emerged during the mid-1980s whose work was influenced strongly by western modernist and postmodernist art introduced into China through magazines and exhibitions. This movement provoked nationwide debates on its appropriation of western appearances. Today it is regarded as one of the most important Chinese art movements of the twentieth century. The ’85 New Wave transformed the understanding and reception of modernist and postmodernist art in China.

in the epochal connotations of Chinese contemporary art and fear being left behind in its wake. If we examine the slogans put forward by these groups, we find that the government, proponents of traditional approaches towards art-making, critics, artists and the art market all make use of the term ‘contem-porary art’. Whenever they define and explain Chinese contemporary art, they insist that their own intentions are benign while framing those of others as malign (Wang 2007: 5–7; Huang 2004: 9–17). In taking account of these differing definitions and statements, we can readily assess how anxious and contradictory thinking about contemporary art is within China at the present time. Currently, there is no dominant definition of art within the PRC. During the twentieth century, between 1949 and 1978, all forms of public art were supposed to serve the revolutionary aims of the CCP and represent the posi-tion of the masses – as advocated by Mao Zedong through the handing down of official government-dominated policies. Art produced in China during the 1980s was considered part of a cultural campaign to re-evaluate China’s recent history and material conditions. Now there are ongoing debates concern-ing post-1996 art. Some believe that this art has lost its avant-garde status (Gao 2011: 262) while others celebrate its easily recognizable images, which can be interpreted as a reflection of Chinese society after 1989. For instance, when Li Xianting, the famous Chinese art critic, describes the images of ‘bald heads’ painted by Fang Lijun, he argues that they are ‘the codes of fastid-ium and cynicism’ (Li 2000: 314), which indicate that intellectuals deride this world or themselves by means of cynicism (Li 2000: 316). This is why this kind of art is widely exhibited and welcomed by Chinese critics, foreign curators and buyers. At the same time, there is considerable anxiety over the question of the significance of these well-marketed artworks. Wang Lin, for instance, has asked the question: What remains of mainstream Chinese contemporary art other than the interest it has already generated? (2009: 11). Wang praises art made by artists who have been overlooked or who live on the margins of society. According to Wang, art of this kind acts as a focus for criticism of contemporary culture by referring directly to Chinese experiences of moder-nity as well as China’s particular historical problems (2009: 12). Wang also criticizes the superficiality of contemporary culture, market myths created to generate money, and indifference to the hidden problems of Chinese history. Some artists who were rebellious during the ’85 New Wave Movement of the mid-1980s2 have now turned into market ‘shareholders’ by casting away their social consciousness and responsibility. They have not been able to rid themselves of the innate fatalism of peasant revolt: ‘the throne of the emperor should be occupied in turn until I take it for myself’ (Wang 2009: 12). The popularity of their ‘Big-Head’ paintings within the international art world has encouraged many people, even art critics, to follow suit. They have abandoned independent criticism and analysis, pandering instead to market-based tastes. They extol the benefits of the consumer-oriented ‘pictorial turn’ away from critical artistic tendencies that began in China during the late 1990s. Wang argues that real avant-garde art should occupy a marginal position, that is to say, on the periphery, grassroots and wild lands described by the French theo-retician Henri Lefebvre.

In contrast, others, such as Zhang Xiaoling, now the vice director of the Chinese National Academy of Painting, take issue with morbid Chinese images of cynicism, urination, love-making, violence, autonomy and political icons. They call for the reshaping of Chinese art, including the fore-grounding of subjective Chinese values within the international art world

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3. See the description by the artist Zhou Tiehai in (Liu 1999: 185).

(Zhang 2007: 37–38). Some art critics, such as Chen Xiaoxin, are troubled by what they call ‘imitation’. They think that Chinese artists should cast away the practice of imitating western art to establish their own value system (Chen 2010: 40). They feel that the appropriation of western modes of artistic production signifies a loss of national pride and confidence. How this casting away might take place and what exactly its significance might be is a compli-cated issue beyond the scope of the present essay. Suffice it to say that the crit-ics in question argue that Chinese artists should uphold Chinese tradition and explore their own cultural context rather than that of the West (Chen 2010: 44). Here the question of context presents itself as an issue requiring further clari-fication. Is cultural context isolated from the material reality of contemporary Chinese society? Or is it a process resulting from material conjunctures and connections? He Qing, in his book To Decode The Theory of Progress, believes that deep cultural concerns behind such questions are linked to fears of the possibility of ‘total Westernization’ and in particular the gaining of knowledge as part of modernization without culture (2004: 162–63). Thinking of this sort has underpinned persistent conflicts between ‘Chineseness’ and ‘westerness’ from the early twentieth century up until the present day as part of the unfold-ing of Chinese modernity. In the context of these conflicts, Chinese contem-porary art is often identified with the influence of western art and culture and the support of foreign capital. This is not the case. Chinese contemporary art is discussed, exhibited and collected by foreigners, but the main reasons for its appearance derive ultimately from China’s own inner dynamics. If we trace so-called Chinese contemporary art back to the mid-1980s, we can see that young Chinese artists were eager to learn from foreign modern art intro-duced into China by art magazines and exhibitions. They also read translated books of foreign philosophy relating to the study of modern art, including works by Freud, Nietzsche, Sartre, Kafka and Heidegger. There was a long-repressed desire to gain new knowledge of art, the world and psychology that had existed since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution study of a wide range of disciplines was prohibited. These included modernist art, aesthetics, sociology, psychoanalysis and modern western philosophy (Gao 1991: 631; Wang 2010: 33). During the 1980s, when young artists quit their jobs or left their hometowns to settle in artists’ villages they were able to explore these forbidden disciplines against the background of a changing Chinese society. When faced with the accusation that Chinese artists who had taken part in the 45th Venice Biennale had simply catered for western tastes, Li Xianting, an important art critic and freelance curator, replied that it was Chinese artists themselves who made their own works in China first, and that these works had then been selected to be shown over-seas (Liu 1999: 151). It is, however, true to say that avant-garde art was not officially recognized within China during the 1980s and early 1990s, and that Chinese contemporary art was shown, discussed and sold for the most part outside China.3 It is this paradox that has led to complicated interpretations of Chinese contemporary art.

It is important that we understand the underlying reasons for such debates and anxieties. We should not overlook the fact that from the last century until now China has been dominated by politics. Here, politics can be understood broadly to include state constitution, laws, social structures, governmental administration, attitudes to reality, changes in the conceptu-alization of culture, historical consciousness and the like. The equilibrium of cultural attitudes within China has been continually disturbed by politics

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4. He Qing studied in Paris for many years. He labels contemporary art as Americanized art due to his strong nationalist position. He has been nominated to be a member of the theoretical committee of the Chinese Artists Association, which is an officially led organization under the Ministry of Culture in China.

5. Huang Heqing and Heqing (the writer of The Conspiracy of Art) are the same.

over the last 100 years (Luo 2010: 3), leaving the consciousness of history and nationhood in a chaotic and febrile state. The year 2011 is the 100th anni-versary of the overthrowing of the Qing Dynasty and the 1911 Revolution, which together led to the establishment of the Republic of China. Many historians and scholars have sought to discuss this revolution and its histori-cal significance, citing the greatness of Dr Sun Yat-Sen and his uncompleted mission of building a democratic China. Sun is remembered on both sides of the Taiwan straits. But what has been emphasized within Mainland China and Taiwan differs. The present consciousness of modern Chinese history involves conflicting interpretations. What both sides agree on is that Dr Sun is a symbol and rallying point for modern China, one that neither side dares to dismiss. However, while both sides identify themselves as the successor to Dr Sun’s idealism, each has a very different interpretation of the signifi-cance of his philosophy for modern Chinese politics. Inside mainland China, reforms in economic ownership and political governance since the early 1980s have led to numerous social transformations that contrast strongly with social and political changes within China during the Maoist period. An inability to adapt easily to these changes pervades many walks of Chinese life. If we agree that economic reform in China is not just decided by economic factors but also by political concerns, this is also true of the development of Chinese contem-porary art. On 17 January 2012 an exhibition entitled ‘The Disenchantment of Chinese Imagination’ opened at the Guangdong Art Museum in Guangzhou. Checking that everything was ready before the 4 p.m. opening, museum staff noticed that there was a sentence at the bottom of one of the paintings in the exhibition, which read ‘To Kill Everyone without Argument’ (Geshawulun). Since they did not know how government officials would respond, they asked the artist to cover up the Chinese characters with small pieces of paper. When the Chinese Government announced that it was determined to build up China as a cultural power, it also warned that hostile foreign cultural and ideological influences should be closely watched (Hu 2011). The interpretative discourses of contemporary art are ardently debated among different cultural organiza-tions and writers (He 2005).4

Since contemporary art is never simply art for its own sake, nor is it the same as the art that preceded it, how then might we judge it? This is the crucial question for Chinese contemporary art. One of the advocates of Chinese avant-garde art, Li Xianting, has said that what matters is not art but its rela-tionship to society (Li 2000: 110–12). Another important critic, Gao Minglu, stresses the need to move away from an art of critique towards a critique of art (1997: 164). How is art judged as contemporary in China? Is there any way of determining whether it is contemporary or not? How can such art be ‘national’ and what exactly does that mean, especially when contemporary art is related to its international context? How is it pre-constructed as a cultural ideology? Postcolonialism and nationalism are mixed and mingled together in many responses to or discourses on contemporary Chinese art.

In 2007 when contemporary art in China became a very hot topic, Art Observation Journal launched a series of critiques on contemporary art. Some of these critiques decried Chinese contemporary art as the proliferation of a western cultural crisis (Wang 2007), while others argued that contemporary art in China was simply American art (Huang 2004).5 Such critiques view contem-porary art in China as something that has been influenced by western art and ideologies and not as something that is closely related to China’s current modernization. They also ascribe growing interest in Chinese contemporary

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6. In China, the term ‘creative industries’ often refers to the development of animation, design and new digital media services. Songzhuang village is famous as a place in which many Chinese artists have chosen to settle. It is now an official part of the cultural creative progamme developed by the Beijing Municipal Government.

7. This book is one of a series known as ‘“Margins of Margins” – Private Publications’ printed by a private sponsor. Under Chinese law, such publications are illegal, but individual and groups do their best to print and to distribute them among friends or interested persons.

art after 2000 to the booming of China’s contemporary art market and its associated economic benefits.

Nowadays, when government officials discuss the development of Chinese culture they include contemporary art in their agenda by incorporat-ing it into ‘creative industries’6 programmes. The government now encourages the development of culture as a focus for sustainable economic prosperity. In some Chinese cities, real estate developers have built studios and villas on the pretext of developing cultural industry, as this allows them to obtain land at low cost. The critical potential of contemporary art has to be filtered in these contexts to avoid censure by cultural administrators (Jia 2011: 132).7

Anxiety comes from isolation, lack of confidence, narrowness, intolerance and post-totalitarianism. During different periods and in different situations this anxiety has taken on different forms. For example, since many artists now live in artists’ villages, they do not just face censure from high-level govern-ment officials, but also from village administrators who will do whatever they think necessary to stop improper forms of artistic expression. Every year, artists living in Song Zhuang village organize a series of art events. They are required to submit plans for these events in advance of the so-called Songzhuang Art Promotion Committee. If plans are not submitted the committee will stop any event they consider to be unacceptable, especially performance art. Events such as this will be stopped by force with police being used to dispel performance artists or arrest them. The committee insists that artists must follow the regu-lations they set down to avoid any disturbance of village life (Jia 2011: 142). Many of the questions and issues we encounter in the art world of China are not natural, but artificially generated due to this lack of confidence – or, perhaps more accurately, due to an uncertain ideological unconscious formed through the long-term influences of propaganda and political suppression. When contemporary art is elucidated, observers begin to feel anxious about contem-poraneity. Why in China does contemporaneity seem only to be applicable to new art, experimental art, new wave or just plain avant-garde art? Who decides this? Often these decisions are made based not on artistic features but outside factors, such as social critique, theories of progress, art historical narrative frame-works or the use of globalization as a reference point. Such discursive applica-tions have to some extent become legitimate and legalized. At the same time, they are held in doubt because of their exclusion of the vast bulk of contempo-rary artistic practice in China, much of which continues to involve traditional/vernacular modes of artistic production (Silbergeld 2009: 107–08).

If Chinese society is becoming increasingly consumer-oriented, the emer-gence of art as a commodity is undeniably part of this trend. Art has become highly commercialized in China now; it seems that the price of an artwork is the paramount criterion and interest for consumers of art. At the present time, art is considered primarily as an investment or as a focus for speculation, not as the representation of an artist’s subjectivity (which is used only as an excuse for the commercial promotion of artworks). This situation makes some feel even more anxious about contemporary art, prompting them to think of it simply as a commercialized art. In some quarters there is a desire to restore the critical functionality of contemporary art, but no coherent critique of the commodifica-tion of art has, as yet, emerged. There is fear of the market. However, arguments against the market are based not on the need for social responsibility and market ethics, but on a crude perception that human nature tends towards the evil of avarice. This irrational and unbalanced view of the relationship between art and the market has affected art practice, leading to the making of art that has been

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produced specifically to cater for vulgar tastes. The notion that art should repre-sent an ideal has already been alienated by the commercial marketing of artworks in China. In the face of the widespread commercialization of art, the question of how art might act as a focus for free and independent self-expression, as well as for constructive and creative criticism, is thrown very much into doubt.

The pressures and stresses surrounding the production of contemporary art within China have led to a widespread sense of anxiety. If we subject this sense of anxiety to analysis we discover deep-rooted complexities relating to the devel-opment of modern Chinese society, not only from artistic but also political and psychological perspectives. Since this sense of anxiety is likely to continue as long as China is enmeshed in its present process of social transformation, we can say that Chinese contemporary art is by definition at present an art of anxiety.

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Wang,Yuechuan (2007), ‘Contemporary art is the proliferation of western cultural crisis’, Art Observation Journal, No.12, pp. 4–7.

Xiang, Jidong (ed.) (2011), Neo-Enlightenment Era: My Readings in the 1980s, Guangdong: Renmin Press.

Yin, Dehui (2010), ‘The critique of Chinese contemporary art’, Art and Literature Review, No.1, pp. 13–17.

Yin Shuangxi (ed.), Annual Critical Essays by Chinese Critics in 2009, Shijiazhuang: Hebei Art Publishing House.

Zhang, Xiaoling (2007), ‘Who will represent Chinese contemporary culture?, in Jia Fangzhou (ed.), Annual Critical Essays by Chinese Critics, Shijiazhuang: Hebei Art Publishing House, pp. 37–38.

—— (2008), ‘Who Has Made Morbid China?’, in Wang Lin (ed.), Annual Critical Essays by Chinese Critics in 2008, Shijiazhuang: Hebei Art Publishing House, pp. 248–252.

suggesTed CiTaTion

Chunchen, W. (2012), ‘The art of anxiety: China’s social transformation and the uncertain reception of Chinese contemporary art’, Journal of Visual Art Practice 11: 2+3, pp. 221–229, doi: 10.1386/jvap.11.2-3.221_1

ConTribuTor deTails

Wang Chunchen is a curator and art critic based in the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. He is also an adjunct curator of the Broad Art Museum of Michigan State University.

Contact: CAFA Art Museum of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, No.8, Huajiadi South Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China 100102.E-mail: wangchunchen2008@gmail.com

Wang Chunchen 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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