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“Willpower of China” under the Situation of Genesic Culture

–Written on the Occasion of the “Exhibition of the Willpower of China”

by Wang Meng (Co-curator of “The Will of China”)

“Willpower of China – the Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Paintings” jointly held by Modern Art Museum, Beijing and Bloom Gallery will be introduced to the public soon. This is the second-stage cooperation between the two artistic institutions respectively from Songzhuang Town, Beijing and 798 Contemporary Art District, which is the cooperation for the second time after they jointly and successively held “Expression of China”, a large contemporary painting exhibition. In this exhibition, the wonderful works of more than 10 contemporary artists, such as Shang Yang, He Duoling, Mao Yan, Meng Luding, Qin Feng, Ye Yongqing, Zhang Fangbai, Wu Zhenhuan, Liu Guofu, Cui Ying, Ma Ke, Yang Jinsong, Yang Liming and Guan Jingjing, will be jointly exhibited in the two venues above. On the occasion of my being invited by the sponsor for participating in the academic planning and composing the preface, I hope to place the “willpower of China” into a “genesic” cultural context for understanding rather than make the orientation in a simply “conclusive” manner. The planning thinking and cultural attitude of this exhibition will also be interpreted from this perspective.

It’s not hard to find that the contemporary Chinese art faces not only transformation but also test in changes. The timely presentation of the “willpower of China” reflects a kind of internal voice and shows artists’ strict self-requirements on such aspects as the attitudes, directions, methods and quality of artistic creation in order to pursue higher goals. As the most genuine voice, the “willpower of China” originates from the most cutting-edge source of creation in contemporary artistic ecology. Although the artists who expressed their voices were obscure about the elaboration of “connotation” and indefinite about the pertinency of issues, the capability of putting forward the issues formally by a scale group exhibition shows the collective identification and common wish of these artists participating in the exhibition. It shows that Chinese artists pay attention to the changes of reality at every moment and feel the pulse of the times; they have the piety of art and the creative impulse that the true artists in any country should have; they are not willing to see that Chinese art is still over-dependent on the experience mode of “foreign culture”; they are not willing to see the lack in the subjectivity of Chinese culture and the practical situation of the weakness in contemporaneity; they are eager to face these issues and take the tests. As a result, they make their inquiries about the “willpower of China”.

Transformation is an irresistible trend which is not subject to any personal will. It means that in the originally well-renowned artists, some ones who transform properly can become the focus continuously while others will fade out of the public sight gradually; however, the creative artists with actual capability who receive insufficient attention due to the shadowing of trends or other objective reasons and the young artists with sufficient actual capability will have the chances to choose the ways of breakthroughs different from each other. They will certainly constitute an irresistible cultural power and shock wave to promote the “structural” adjustment of the existing pattern as long as their general orientation is correct once they come into play. Seemingly, it’s the alternation of persons. However, the essence is that the cultural trends by which the previously dazzling artistic forms play their roles suddenly lose their effectiveness immediately after the relentless strike of the financial crisis. What’s more important is that the public has found the manipulating factor of “non-native willpower” hidden behind the contemporary Chinese art and has doubted the cultural logic behind the value narrative of the “contemporary Chinese art”. The fact of China’s continuous mightiness also facilitates the awakening of “local willpower” at a deep level. The situations above directly make the contemporary Chinese art enter a “genesic” cultural state which needs to be restarted.

As for the more rational awareness, we must look back upon the historical situation of the contemporary Chinese art itself to discover and analyze the objective situation of culture in the past 30 years. In the grand environment of the ideological emancipation in the 1980s at the beginning of the reform and opening up, aspiring youth in that era saw the hope of “gearing Chinese culture to international conventions” to realize “modernization”. They once regarded the books and records of western culture as sacred, which was indeed beneficial to the enlightenment of local culture and the breakthrough of ossification at some stage. The famous “85’ New Wave” Fine Arts Movement was developed and the mode of contemporary Chinese art enlightened by the modern western art was established. This “introduced” modernized “cultural enlightenment” mode was convenient. It could get on the right track at short notice and lead local culture to modernization by taking the direct experience of other culture as the driving force. However, it was a pity that the radically irrational impulse in the late 1980s suspended the modernization process of the cultural noumenon under complicated domestic and overseas situations and transferred people’s attention to other directions. The contemporary art in the 1990s advanced in a “marginal state” which antagonized the local mainstream culture. The phenomena of the “artists of Artist Village”, the “apartment art” and the independent experimental exhibitions were subject to the transformation from “being marginalized” to “self marginalization”. The favorable part of these phenomena was keeping the “cultural species” of the contemporary art. However, undeniably, they made the focus of artists deviate from the aspiration of the intellectuals in the 1980s, i.e. creating the modernized Chinese mainstream culture. Some artists were popular in the west by depending on political painting contents and folk-custom conceptual art. In the choice of the west’s integrating Chinese art into the global pattern tentatively, the western exhibitions with Venice Biennale as the core created the “political”, “folk-custom” and “marginal” image of the contemporary Chinese art. The phenomenon of many artists’ falling over each other to participate in western exhibitions made the contemporary art in the 1990s called the “export-oriented” cooperation relationship. The phenomenon of “developing domestically but being renowned overseas” seemed to make people believe that the future of the contemporary Chinese art was “overseas” and it seemed that the artistic success could be achieved directly without the examination of “local cultural logic”. However, in fact, it was absolutely impossible for the cultural noumenon of this kind of “marginal art” to be respected by western mainstream society. It was just a small Chinese dish on a western dinning table. In conclusion, Chinese art in the 1980s and the 1990s is mainly the “manneristic” reference of art since the modern western art or the communication of presentative “Chinese symbols” in the west. After 2000, Shanghai Biennale reintegrated the contemporary art into the mainstream art space. Some knowledgeable critics tried to provide academic guidance in this manner for the “abnormal” artistic phenomena of the contemporary art. In addition, the government also started to use the contemporary art in some national projects of external communication. Till the establishment of China National Academy of Arts and the holding of “Dimension of Construction – Invitation Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Art” by National Art Museum of China, the “marginal state” of the contemporary art ended and the contemporary art became not only an important component of the “local mainstream culture”, but also an integrally exploratory cultural existence of the “institutional update” of Chinese culture in the future. In the past 30 years, the “local identity” of the contemporary Chinese art has changed dramatically. It has been stable in general so far, which is beneficial to the development of culture itself “in depth and breadth”. Whether or not people have recovered their sense from the rapid change, the outcome has been a foregone conclusion. There is no room for hesitancy for the pace of history.

The presentation of the “willpower of China” is a signal for the “local awakening” of the contemporary art. The “introduction” and the “modernization enlightenment” in the 1980s, the “export-oriented” cooperation relationship in the 1990s and the ecological changes and the establishment of system and mechanism of the “artistic world” reflected by auctions, galleries, exhibition planners, etc. since the new century focus on the historical tasks or specific issues in specific periods and the cultural awareness of the impossibility of the directly great-leap-forward exploration of “local willpower”. All of these have become the extremely urgent problems under the overall situation of “stable identity” today. The presentation of the “willpower of China” means that Chinese artists have started to think: How large is the gap between China and strong countries in respect of culture? What does the previous cultural practice mean? What’s the condition for China to become a strong country in respect of culture? Is becoming a strong country in respect of culture our objective? If so, how should we act? What’s the objective situation? Are we ready? This kind of consciousness of artists is also the long-anticipated wish of the whole nation.

A large country in respect of culture doesn’t mean a strong country in respect of culture. The ideal of becoming a strong country needs struggle. No country is originally strong at the beginning of its founding. For example, the development of America into a strong country was also realized in the persistent pursuit of some talented groups full of creativity in the middle of last century. The international success of the painting of “abstract expressionism” in the 1950s is especially typical. Sponsored by Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) transmitted the first generation of contemporary art created locally in America into major cities of European countries (including London, Paris, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Milan, Venice, Basel, Zurich, Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna, Stockholm, Helsinki and even Belgrade) by a constantly external output strategy called the “International Exhibition Plan” and carried out tour exhibitions in nearly all the art galleries with significant influence in Europe, which created the “American shock” globally. On the one hand, The American asked to the old continent that America was no longer a “cultural desert” in the view of the European and they had “American painting”, the most creative avant-garde art in the world at the time. Meanwhile, it advanced eastwards after it occupied Western Europe. It went across the Berlin wall and made the “new culture” penetrate into Eastern Europe. It carried out a contest of “ideology” in Europe with the former Soviet Union, its old adversary. The “abstract expressionism” and the “socialist realism” carried out a thrilling confrontation. New York took away the cultural position of the “center of the world” from Paris and withstood the strong offensive of Moscow. Since then, such contemporary artistic trends as “Pop art”, “minimalism”, “conceptual art” and “photorealism” have come to the fore in America. America has not only released its own vitality, but also affected the world significantly, becoming the strongest cultural power in the trend of globalization. Abstract expressionism had the crucial significance at the historic moment of the rise of American Art and played a role which couldn’t be replaced by other categories of art. However, American culture was also repressed for a long time previously so that Greenberg mentioned in American-type Painting that “the American had finally created a kind of art important enough to affect the French, letting alone the Italian and the British” [i]. This success was based on American artists’ strict self requirements because Pollock supporters considered early in the 1940s that “any American art which couldn’t compete with European art under similar conditions was not worth mentioning” [ii]. The strong aspiration of “breaking through the instruction of France” represented the “willpower of America” that “America must catch up with Paris”. In fact, before the “abstract expressionism”, America had contributed nothing to the mainstream of painting or sculpture. The resolution of breaking through this situation got abstract expressionist together. Today, American art has just led the international trend after realizing its localized transcendence in catching up with others by absorbing the latest modern culture in European culture. The essence of the rise of American art globally is the world’s recognition of the creativity of the American. The real impact of American Art originates from the American’s salute to the great creative spirit of human beings.

To China, it’s hard to achieve anything by following western styles blindly. The understanding of the “willpower of China” should be the study of the specific situation faced by culture today by going deep into the more essential structure at the deeper level from the awakening of the local willpower. In an era of globalization, culture goes across national boundaries so that the various types of culture of various types of civilization in the whole world spread from their “places of origin” and integrate with each other. The situation of integration is developed. Under this new cultural situation, people have been able to get rid of the unidirectional thinking mode of the “exclusive traditionalism theory” and the “exclusive westernization theory”; they have also realized that interpreting the contemporary Chinese art by virtue of westernized artistic theories will make them face the predicaments of “dislocation” and “dissociation”. The reason is that the Euramerican-centered western “cultural organism” is a “unitary” cultural category in general. Its modernity is the logical phenomenon occurring naturally in the “cultural organism” itself and shows the aggressive intent of the “compelling culture”. However, the modernity of contemporary China is “introduced<, SPAN lang=EN-US style=”FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; mso-ascii-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’”>” rather than caused by the logical evolution of itself if China can act as a “cultural organism”; its structure is “nonunitary” and it has not only the locally stable traditional component, but also the “implanted” modern component. These two components were once “combined” (Xu Beihong) or “integrated” (Lin Fengmian) with different elements in different periods in the 20th century. Both the “realistic spirit” since the introduction of “the Renaissance” and the fresh “modernism” in Europe in the 20th century completed the cultural integration of China in the 20th century under different realistic requirements and cultural propositions and became the models in the history of art. Observed from the cultural perspective of advancing with the times, the west continued promoting its culture from the modern modality to the contemporary modality after the appearance of “the two outstanding artists of China” and made its culture well known and used by contemporary Chinese artists with the trend of globalization and the fact of local reform and opening up. Undoubtedly, the start of Chinese culture needs to face the “transcultural” issue from a new perspective with more “enlightenment”. Not only the rationally selected absorption and creative reconstruction, but also the “compounding” of “cultural materials” into a brand-new realm by the reality of artists’ spirit is needed.

On the occasion of the coming exhibition, I don’t want to place the “willpower of China” into a conclusive “content orientation”. Undoubtedly, framing it prematurely reflects the limitation of a new thing full of vitality and possibility. As a result, indicating the “effectiveness” and “openness” of the issues focused on and situations faced by the “willpower of China” from a macroscopically “genesic” cultural perspective is beneficial to “facing the reality” next and more in line with the meaning of the word “willpower”. The contemporary art is a test of contemporary people’s creativity. So far, China has contributed nothing great to the mainstream of the contemporary art either. This point should be recognized clearly. The “willpower” can be cohered by the exhibition and the “manufacture by China” will be challenged. As a result, planning this exhibition is significant.

Wang Meng

In the Western Building of National Art Museum of China on August 28th, 2011

Artists: ShangYang He Duoling Tan Ping Ye Yongqing Meng Luding Yang Jinsong Zhang Fangbai Qin Feng Cui Ying Mao Yan Wu Zhenhuan Ma Ke Liu Guofu Yang Liming Guan Jingjing