The landscape is slowly shifting on China’s art scene. Traditional visions of cascading water, pensive fishermen, minty mountains and century-old pines are being bulldozed and replaced by something that resembles a huge mound of dollars, political slogans, caricatures and Western imitations.

　　A few contemporary artists have achieved an original and modern art from that is distinctively Chinese by drawing inspiration from classical Chinese literature, iconography, and folk art. But the majority of artist from the mainland share a conventional vocabulary with limited social and political meaning. Repeated ad nauseam are the generic opposites east-west, socialism-capitalism, and past versus present in a loud barrage of clear-cut, black-and-white juxtapositions. It is known as wuliao art—a meaningless of nonsensical collage.

　　Beijing critic Hong Lei explains the concept in simple terms: “Once there was an artist who lived in the artists’ colony in Yuanmingyuan just outside Beijing. In 1989 he saw the troops coming into the city and wanted to do something about it, but he was terrified. So, standing on the side of the road, he started making faces. While one man was stopping a column of tanks at Tiananmen, our friend was making faces. Because you can’t oppose something, went his thinking, you needn’t try. You can just sit on a fence and make a face. And that is wuliao—art as a grin.

　　“We need a permanent art. We’re following the market and foreigners love it. Today we need shoes, so let’s make shoes. Tomorrow it will be something else.”

　　It is hard to tell whether Beijing’s avant-gardists are respectable, dedicated artists or merely shrewd hoodlums. Most are graduates from art institutes around China, and most are officially unemployed. They have all-black outfits long hair and foreign girlfriends. The drink hard ,betray their supposed cultural sophistication with torrents of foul language and taunt female acquaintances with sexist remarks. There are few women members of Beijing’s avant-garde elite—which is more like a fraternity—and those few female members tend to showcase the same sexual themes as their male counterparts.

　　Fang Lijun painted bloated pink faces (he has since switched to black-and-white for variety); Liu Wei paints caricatures of his parents in military regalia; Zeng Fanzhi does hospital scenes; Wang Guangyi specialises in juxtaposing Maoist model workers with Western brand names; and Geng Jianyi paints men with overbites who stare straight at the viewer. All the subjects are grinning and the meaning is clear, cynicism, depression and ennui, It is an approach that, for some, has paid off in a big way: one canvas may sell for as much as US$1,000—an astronomical figure by Chinese standards.

　　Some Western critics call the art “alienation”, others term it “ post-Tiananmen social critique”, But Fang Lijun and his peers do not so much break taboos as mock them. That, in China in 1995, is about as dangerous as beating a dead dog. Where were these mavericks when challenging the communist regime involved genuine risk?

　　Today there is little risk and the only path leads to fame and fortune. Not that there is anything wrong with that—it is perhaps the most potent symbol of the new capitalistic People’s Republic. The painting you wanted has been sold? No problem. The artist will do an exact copy for you.

　　Or you can try 28-year-old Wang Wang, who cannot paint but is bursting with ideas. To get to his dusty room on a Beijing college campus, visitors grope their way down dark corridors filled with kitchen appliance and stacked furniture. Once inside, it looks like an action painter has been let loose on the walls. One string of black characters asks: “ Friend, are you neutered?” Avother quotes Chairman Mao: “The greater one’s daring, the greater the results.”

　　Wang, who is best known for his video documentaries, has no pretensions to being an artist. He is an entrepreneur meeting a market demand for a certain artistic genre. Art is just one aspect of his operation; he also runs a food and spices retail business. His five-digit US dollar bank account guarantees his independence, he says, “ I don’t have to pander to anyone’s tastes.”

　　Wang commissions “assistants” to paint his concepts. A painting of Mao sporting Saddam Hussein-style combat fatigues or waving in front of the Statue of rock star Cui Jian performing in front of an applauding and approving Mao (apparently a variation on Shanghai artist Yu Youhan’s Mao meets Wbitney Houston)

　　Inevitably, copycat artists will diminish market demand. But everybody is doing it. Yang Shaobin reproduced Liu Wei’s signature painting of old people in uniforms, while Yue Minjun copied Geng Jianyi’s grinning bucktooth faces. So far, however, things are still looking good and both Yang and Yue held exhibitions in Hong Kong last summer.

　　But the genre is limited; there are only so many ways of combining Charman Mao’s face with fast food. And Shanghai critic Wu Liang blasted wuliao painting for its “poverty of images”. “ The meaning of political pop,” he said, “is completely derived from outside the frame of the picture, which is devoid of any self-reference. That is the reason why wuliao endlessly copies itself.”

　　While the avant-garde movement is Western-influenced and pro-Western, some artists are using ia as a chauvinistic critique of the capitalist system and economic reform. Ironically, most owe their survival and businessmen who live in Beijing. In their critique of the nation’s new-found consumerism, they are paradoxically siding with conservative elements inside the Communist Party.

　　It was the introduction of market economics that allowed experimental artists to break free from the limiting structure of the Chinese state in the first place. “ With the government focusing on economic development, it has let loose ideological controls—and that’s something to welcome,” says Beijing-based poet Xi Chuan. These artists dislike the old men heading the Communist Party as much as any mainland citizen; their rebellion is rooted in the Western “ counter-culture” of the 1960s.

　　Guangzhou—China’s most Westernised city—hosts an artistic community whose sole aim seems to be criticism of commercialism. The medium of choice is marquee-style neon and store mannequins. Resident artist Li Yilin tucks 10 yuan bills between bricks to create a sinister enclosing wall. Sculptor Sun Ping inserts hundreds of acupuncture needles into replicas of Western statues such as the Venus de Milo and Michelangelo’s Slave. He identifies the various insertion spots by using ancient Chinese medical taxonomy.

　　The implication is that what appears as pain to Western eyes may actually be healing. The healer is the Chinese artist, while the healed is the moribund Western civilization.

　　In Beijing, artist Zhu Fadong wanders the streets dressed in an old blue Mao suit and holding a tattered briefcase. When he is not playing his role of artist, Zhu, who hails from Yunnan province, wears blue jeans and multiple rings on his fingers. In his performance he puts on a naïve expression, a la Charlie Chaplin, and walks the capital carrying a large cardboard sign reading: “This Man is for Sale. Good Price.”

　　Given that they have benefited from its freedom, why do China’s experimental artists fear or hate the open market? The answer may be that they are scared of its whims. The state artistic establishment of its whims. The state artistic establishment of old picked winners and losers is based on permanent rules known to all. Socialist-realism served as the unique prerequisite for success. Today’s public is more volatile; today they may like, and buy, what they see tomorrow they may not.

　　There is further irony in that artists have been tremendously favoured by China’s new economic climate. While artists have acquired China’s writers and financial prosperity, China’s writers and poets, for example, have fared less well. There are fewer outlets for their work. Literary magazines are facing a crisis brought about by rising coats of paper and printing and by a declining readership. And when they are published, authors are paid about HK$40 for a thousand words.

　　“Everything around us is expensive. Only a writer’s pen id cheap,” says the dramatist, Wu Huan, who has switched to writing more lucrative TV soaps .

　　“It’s a hard time to be a writer.” agrees Xi Chuan, “but even harder to be a poet.”

　　One work that goes beyond wuliao is Beijing sculptor Sui Jianguo’s Memory Space, a set of rocks that resemble bizarre tortoises or patched medieval armour. A closer examination reveals that Sui, 38, has welded a metal structure to each of the stones—a typical post-Tiananmen parable and a symbol of imprisoned souls.

　　“They are a document of the times,” Sui says before warning against taking the metal cage to represent the Communist state, and the rock as the repressed individual, thinker, or artist.

　　“I did this in 1989, after the failure of the Tiananmen movement. My heart was heavy. For two years. I pondered why the protest ended the way it did. The failure was also inside ourselves.”

　　After decades of one-party rule and ideological education, Sui is saying, the Chinese artist and the state are Siamese twins. “There are only accomplices.”

　　After reaching this conclusion, Sui’s art became less political and more personal. And that, to him, is the future for Chinese art.

　　“The political system is not the only thing we can oppose,” he says.

　　“Maybe there is more to oppose inside oneself, things that we as Chinese share. The deeper I will be able to dig inside me, maybe the more meaning my work will have.”

作者：MATEL,MIHALCA