China's other cultural revolution: history and Chinese art

Art in America, Sept, 1998 by Charles Ruas, Richard Vine

The Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 1989 forced avant-garde artists to retreat into "apartment" art -- work produced and shown at home to small groups of trusted friends, in a manner reminiscent of "unofficial" art in the old Soviet Union. Around this time, several critic-scholars like Gao as well as artists such as Cai Guo-Quing, Chen Zhen, Wenda Gu, Huang Yong Ping and Xu Bing, who have since become internationally recognized, left China for cultural centers in Japan, Europe and the U.S. Those who remain, like the globally peripatetic Feng Mengbo, lead a ghostly existence at home. According to Gao, they are given no official aid or recognition, but so long as their work remains sufficiently oblique -- engaging in social critique, especially of burgeoning Western-style consumerism, rather than explicit political complaint -- they are not persecuted. Few civic venues are available for display of their labors, but they may exhibit abroad without penalty. They are permitted to travel but receive no financial assistance from official sources. if their work sells, they pay no fees to Beijing, since taxation would imply acknowledgement of their status as artists.

Curators and dealers who have made working trips to China report a super-abundance of schlock "Traditionalism," and the virtual nonexistence of a market for advanced work, particularly as compared to Taiwan and Hong Kong. Some Western dealers simply make purchases outright from the artists. Studio visits, usually to small living spaces in characterless exurb high-rises, tend to become group sessions when the artist's friends, anxious for contact, materialize with small works or slides.

Gao describes China today not as "one country, two systems" but rather as "one country, many systems." Presumably, this complex nation will make policy adjustments as commerce of all sorts increases between the mainland and the rest of the world, and as plans proceed for this years biennial in Shanghai and for a large museum of contemporary art to be opened there in 2000.

A Recent Sampler

Honors for the first major American survey of contemporary vanguard art from the mainland go to the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, where "Fragmented Memory: The Chinese Avant-Garde in Exile" was mounted in 1993. Since then, public awareness has grown steadily as New York, like other major U.S. cities, has played host to a growing number of Chinese exhibitions. Herewith, a representative, though not exhaustive, summary from the last 2 1/2 years.

Wenda Gu at Steinbaum Krauss, Apr. 27-June 2, 1996 Gu's preoccupation with human hair took the form here of monumental flags and other nationalistic emblems. The 43-year-old artist, who has lived in New York since 1988, has shown extensively at city venues -- including several commercial galleries, the Alternative Museum (1995) and Thread Waxing Space (1996) -- as well as at the Johannesburg Biennale (1997) and other sites abroad. His installation at the 1995 "Interpol" exhibition in Stockholm was vandalized in a performance by Russian artist Alexander Brener [see "Front Page," Apr. '96].