I cannot stop looking at this picture. It looks like someone breathed life into a Chinese painting. I grew up thinking such cranes, like the dragon and phoenix, were mythical. That they were not real. These birds have been the subjects of Chinese art since time immemorial. Their snow-white bodies appear whiter against shiny black feathers. To see these birds in the mountain snow, you will have to remind yourself you are indeed not in heaven. Art has a way of blurring the line between fantasy and reality. Coming face to face with a subject of art in real life is not unlike seeing a celluloid star in the flesh.
Classic Chinese art has used subjects perceived to be auspicious in the East. The tiger, horse, carp, gold-fish, lotus, peony, mountain and water were popular. Chinese calligraphy is another art form. The brush stroke has long defined Chinese art, but what was written was as much a part of the art. Hence, poets were organic to the evolution of Chinese art and for a long time, the message was the art. When Deng Xiaoping opened China to the world in 1978, the stage was set for an explosion in commerce. The art world set their sights heavenwards; the time had come for the most populous nation to push its art to the edge.
In the early 80s, Chinese artists eagerly experimented with Western techniques and daring political themes. Some addressed the damage of the Cultural Revolution, albeit cautiously. The movement was called ‘scar painting’ and ‘the art of the wounded’. Images of Mao Tsetung began to appear in dark and cynical hues. A Chinese Dada movement was founded, adopting the same esoteric philosophies which mystified the European art establishment before World War I. Artists started going beyond the norms of sculpturing and painting. Conceptual art found expressions in performances captured on photographs, installations and multi-media works. By the mid 80s, bolder and more experimental political works blossomed. Art critic Gao Minglu called this explosion of avant-garde art the ’85 Movement’. Its aim was nothing less than social and political change! Gao was the force behind the controversial 1989 exhibition in Beijing, ‘China Avant-Garde’.
One of the most remarkable pieces to emerge from the 85 Movement was Xu Bing’s exquisite art installation, ‘A Book from the Sky’. Xu and many other contemporary artists began to draw on traditional philosophies such as Taoism to create distinctly modern and distinctly Chinese political works. They also freely mixed traditional mediums such as ink painting and scrollwork with Western techniques. Another leading avant-garde artist is Huang Yong Ping, whose conceptual art was part of the “Inside Out: New Chinese Art” exhibition in New York. Huang put the two leading textbooks on Chinese art into a washing machine for two minutes and presented the pile of pulp on a table. Critics interpreted the work as expressing both Buddhist and Dada concepts of destruction before enlightenment. A third artist who gained fame in the 1980s was Cai Quo Qiang. He is best known for his ‘art happenings’ using the ancient Chinese invention, gunpowder. Photographs documented Cai’s performances. One titled ‘The Century with Mushroom Clouds:Projects for the 20th Century’, was a 1996 performance at a former nuclear test site in Nevada, where a man stood amid the rubble with a single threatening white cloud against the clear blue sky.
The avant-garde movement broke up after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. From the ashes, ‘Political Pop Art’ and ‘Cynical Realism’ emerged in the early 90s. Unlike the previous decade, the cutting edge artists were now based in the West. Those who remained were stuck in a Chinese society also referred to as ‘The Red Heaven’. In a post-ideological system, there was an abrupt move towards material consumption and free market. This sudden capitalism with unprecedented economic development created a schizophrenic generation which followed no ideology.’Waiting For The Sunshine’ was the basic theme of the new utopian vision. ‘What to Get’ seemed unclear, but ‘Escaping From The Sufferings’ was an absolute psychological requirement for survival.
At this point, the art was pulling in different directions. There was the urge to create pretty works to lure wealthy buyers. Or exoticisms of government oppression to appeal the Western collectors, galleries and international exhibitions. This conflicted angst manifested itself as the ‘Chinese Contemporary Art’ that took the world by storm at the turn of the century, forming the foundation for a Chinese contemporary art boom from 2005 till 2009. Zhang Xiaogang’s bloodline series used the traditional Chinese family portrait to show a lonely generation limited by the one-child policy; he would become the poster boy of Chinese contemporary art. Yue Minjun’s serial laughing man was part Lu Xun’s Ah Q and part self ironic defence to the spiritual vacuum and folly. Wang Guangyi’s blunt and literal fusing of Western commercial brands with Chinese revolutionary figures reflected how capitalism did not mix well with communist values. Fang Liyun’s bald-headed protagonists could barely keep their heads above water, showing the alienation and disenchantment of a lost generation.
Yang Jinsong’s most iconic works, showing a watermelon, a fish or a cat torn apart, were fitting, telling and ominous of the Chinese society today. As a country, China is an emerging world power. As a people, the Chinese are at a moral crossroads. A collage of images from the headlines shows a distressing picture. The bullet train crash, the two-year-old Yue Yue left to die on the street, fake milk powder and food, buried coal miners, and corrupt government officials are reminders of the moral decay of a country caught in a transition it is trying to understand and embrace.
Art in China has reflected its political, social and economic changes. The Chinese government is now bracing for social unrest as the economy slows down. There are fresh calls for the ‘return of the good Samaritan’ to provide the needed cohesion as the gap between the rich and poor widens further. During the Cultural Revolution, propaganda posters were the art of its day. They served both political and social functions. Today the Chinese society is going through changes in a digital age. The internet compounds issues and presents new problems with no ready solutions. In a country where oppression and censorship are widespread, the netizens are in turn more vocal and subversive. The time has come yet again for art in China to play a role, this time to mirror the moral landscape of a soul-searching society grabbling with opposing values.
