This article is the introduction to Renjian Thought 02: Three Parallel Artworlds, edited by Gao Shiming and He Zhaotian, published by Renjian Press in 2015.

One

When Chang Tsong-zung invited me to co-curate the exhibition of Celebrating Hanart 30 Years, my immediate reaction to his invitation was to use it as an opportunity to examine the art structures within Chinese contemporaneity.

No one can stand outside the process of history, and this especially true for Chang. This is not just because he has been deeply involved in the development of Chinese contemporary art, where he played vital roles in several important moments, but also because he embodies the fractures and contradictions within this progression. His promotion of contemporary art, his particular partiality for traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, his preference for art of the Cultural Revolution, and his enthusiasm for the study and revitalization of traditional art forms—these seemingly contradictory actions—are miraculously unified under his career as a curator, gallerist, critic, and art patron. His being is charged with a cultural dynamism formed through periods of upheaval, and these experiences find tangible form in his art collecting.

Chang's collections are mainly concentrated in the long and lingering twentieth century. When exploring Chinese art from this century, we confront an infinitely complex constellation: from Kang Youwei's calligraphy to Huang Binghong's landscape painting, from the revivalist woodcuts to the propaganda paintings of the Cultural Revolution, and extending to political pop; from experimental ink and wash painting in the 1960s and 70s to the “new” ink and wash painting favored by the market; and from Zhang Xiaogang and Zeng Fanzhi's oil paintings to Huang Yongping's installations and Chen Chen Chieh-jen's moving images. The range of work produced constitutes a dynamic and turbulent art history.

The chaotic exists in each of us, more or less.

Many years ago, I wrote this down on the first page of my notebook—it reflects a fractured outlook on nature and history. These words have often come to mind in recent years. Indeed, there is an unbridgeable gap within myself: at one moment, I pontificate about social ideals during seminars, and at another moment, I am completely absorbed by the sublime presence of nature. My enthusiasm for “Renjian Thought” (humanistic thought) is totally different from my immersion in the natural landscape. In fact, my sense of division extends beyond nature and history; even within the art world, the “art” I discuss with Huang Yongping, Wu Shanzhuan, Qiu Zhijie, Wang Jianwei, and others, is totally different from that discussed in get-togethers with traditional Chinese landscape painters. Therefore, my outlook on art is fractured as well.

In our respective art experiences, developing from a fragmented art history, three projections of the art world emerge: a globalized world of contemporary art (considered as the only international art platform), an art world of intellectuals (a vanishing past constructed as a specific “tradition”), and an art world of revolutionary art (that has already come to an end). These three art worlds have not necessarily formed one after another, as would occur in a linear historical process; instead, they resonate with each other through a flow of events, and ultimately converge into an ocean of “contemporaneity” as a result of the conflicts and movements of art history and social history. Therefore, only in the synchronic coexistence of the intellectual world, the socialist state, and a globalized system can we explore the value and nature of art, listen to the news from different art worlds with their various historical undercurrents, and comb through the realities of these three art worlds, interrogating their interwoven motivation mechanisms and excavating their historical potentials and momentum found in the complicated nature of contemporary China.

For these reasons, I have selected one hundred items in the name of “art” from the immense collections of Hanart, asking Chang to write a “brief biography” for each item, as a way to map his relationship and emotional connection to these objects. Additionally, I have invited students from the Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thoughts at the Chinese Academy of Art to use these items as materials for their curatorial practice, utilizing the combination of these “works of art,” originating from different contexts, as a way to examine the complex progression of twentieth-century Chinese art and a means to explore the historical structure of Chinese contemporaneity.

 

Two

Over the past thirty years, China has undergone transformations on an enormous scale: the forces of revolutionary fervor, the end of the Cold War, the struggle for decolonization, and a dramatic expansion for global capitalism. During this period, amidst these transformations, Chinese contemporary art developed from the inceptive steps taken in the 1980s, through its post-1985 upsurge, to its present diversity.

On the one hand, Chinese contemporary art has attained great success on the international stage and in the commercial art market; yet, on the other hand, this success can be reduced to an “alternative contemporaneity”: as an example of localized art making, as a success of identity politics, as a success of “Chineseness,” or as a success of global capital. Today, we no longer limit ourselves to celebrating the strategy of cultural consumerism and are no longer satisfied with being reduced simply to the “other” fighting for space and status on the global stage. Instead, we want to create a different system of meaning, a historical battlefield of cultural creation and subjective renewal: the site of “Chinese contemporaneity” as a space of communication and interaction within the three art worlds. Yet, regarding this historical site, we still lack a deep realization or awareness of the events, or an advanced framework for a detailed analytic discourse.

Many fractures exist within the overall landscape of Chinese contemporary art—traditional painting circles and contemporary art circles refuse to acknowledge the existence of one another, and painters from the Association of Fine Arts and painters from the academy are disconnected from “contemporary art” circle painters. They ignore each other. Even so, in comparison to the range of Chinese contemporary art constructed for international exhibitions, museums, and the art markets, the ecology of Chinese contemporary art is much more diversified and complex. This diversity and complexity are very different from the postcolonial “hybridity,” which becomes more and more ossified and vacuous, and also distinct from the “multiculturalism” promoted as a governing technique in the West. The diversity particular to Chinese art coexists within itself, but still maintains an inner reality and tension.

History has no endpoint, and we are all living in “contemporaneity.” This “contemporaneity” demands that we salvage fragments of meaning from the historical ocean, and collect the sentiments and intellects that still resonate today from the three art worlds, so as to constitute a cultural vision of “Chinese Contemporaneity” rooted in historical contexts, open to present reality, and having a self-aware subject. For that cause, we must move beyond the prevailing the narrative of Chinese “contemporary art” and try to reflect on a narrative model of Chinese contemporary art produced by placing it in the context of the last century.

In mainland China, the historical narratives regarding the twentieth century are often subsumed by roughly thirty-year time spans: from 1919 to 1949 is the thirty years of “New Culture,” from 1949 to the end of the Cultural Revolution is the thirty years of “New China,” and from the end of the Cultural Revolution to the new millennium is labeled as the “Thirty Years of the New Era.” For this tumultuous century, the prevalent research into art history and literary history often resorts to these forms of periodization, and even the academic community frequently references these three periods, creating corresponding categories. Today, these three periods, each stretching over thirty years, overlap in the present historical analysis: can we create a “contemporary” vision by understanding and connecting these three periods?

For the past hundred years, the Chinese people have not only experienced spatial “segregation” and political “severance,” but also historical “fractioning” and a “drifting away” from their fates. This “severance” and “drifting away” evoke a convoluted and almost inextricable sense of reality when reflected against our modern experience with art. In writing the history of art and literature of twentieth-century China, Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong each have their own consistent historical narrative, but the integration of these narratives has proven to be extremely difficult. This difficulty has nothing to do with issues of unification and independence; rather it is because in the twentieth century, the Chinese people experienced a great diaspora that began with colonization and led to political “severance.” We were divided into different ideological camps and distributed among varying political regimes, and consequently, we each developed a drastically different historical consciousness and social experience. This “great diaspora” marks the fate of Chinese people: forged by the historical forces of the Cold War and colonization, it is also a fate common to many non-Western ethnic groups in the twentieth century. Importantly, we are left to consider, in present times, how we can retrieve this historical experience into our thinking and discussion.

During the curatorial process of this exhibition, countless discussions on history and modernity occurred. After one such exchange, I wrote:

To wake up from the illusion of a linear narrative, history appears as an ocean: the so-called “contemporary” is only the ocean surface. One cannot separate this “surface” from that which is contained within it. This tumultuous ocean has traveled in and out of our bodies: “boundless” and “sentient.” Within this ocean, I perceive the grand process of history.

Several words cannot exhaust the entire historical process. In the complex twentieth century experienced by the Chinese people, we perceive the historical constitution of “Chinese contemporaneity.” Through the uneven ocean surface of the contemporary, we can review, experience, as well as, reconstitute the cultural memories from the past hundred years of the modern era. The debate over Sino-centrism, the argument between China and the West, the shadow of the Empire, the disillusionment with the homeland, the fire of revolution, the vacillation of reform, the ebb and flow of the market, etc.—this progression enveloped the history and directed the fates of countless people, articulating the struggle, search, separation, joy, and sorrow of the Chinese people over the past century.

How can we situate ourselves within this complicated and convoluted grand progression? And how can art emerge from it?

 

Three

It was during curatorial projects such as Farewell to Post-Colonialism (2008), Rehearsal (2010), 85 & An Art Academy (2013), and Reflecta (2013) that I gradually realized that contemporary China is like a notorious battlefield where different historical forces are engaged: revolution versus post-revolution, colonialism versus post-colonialism, Cold War versus post-Cold War. Likewise, contemporary art was born from the repeated cultural struggles in this historical arena.

For over a century, Chinese people have been divided due to the dual structures of an empire and a nation-state. They have been cut off and separated within the entanglement of a colonized history and the Cold War, and distributed and reintegrated by the production/consumption network under the condition of globalization. Mainland China continues to be influenced by multiple historical events such as revolution, revitalization, colonization, and the Cold War, which has prevented its contemporary artistic ecology from being fully integrated into the network of global capitalism. Nevertheless, the culture of traditional calligraphy and painting, and the collection system are remain vibrant. In addition, the nation-commissioned operating mechanism continues to work. Those systems, along with international biennales and exhibitions, influence on each other mutually. Compared with the art world in Europe and America, Chinese contemporary art demonstrates a unique complexity and ambiguity. However, whether in the vibrant painting industry, in the academies or artists' associations that represent the political mainstream, or in the contemporary art circle that boasts of a rebellious spirit, the twentieth century legacy of these three Chinese contemporary art worlds still individually use their own methods to collude with capital and fashion.

Art should help us create and criticize: to change our lives and society. This revolutionary nature is vital to art. Art should address the needs of the public. Confucius had four criteria for the cultural valuation of art: xing (inspiration or subjective enlightenment), guan (social perception), qun (communication), yuan (critique), which refer to the expression of sensations, insight into the world, making friends, and the criticism of current affairs. However, behind the vanity of Mainland China's artistic world, the most important significance of art has been lost. In contemporary China, art has forgotten its commitments and has become underutilized in society.

As I wrote this preface, the social movements were in full swing in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Unlike their peers in Mainland China, the artists from Taiwan and Hong Kong, equipped with their theories, directly engaged in social movements, or delved into specialized fields of inquiry. However, at this time, the wave of new social movements has made me rather nervous. On the surface, Occupy the Legislature and Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) appear to be very similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement that took place a few years ago, but there are differences in their political orientations. In fact, many artists and intellectuals who have deep experiences with social movements are now facing a dilemma: in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the right wing is now skillfully running leftist discourse, making it difficult to distinguish real political claims advocated by leftist intellectuals from the right wing. Hence, the left falls into a vulnerable state, gradually becoming mute. Leftist intellectuals were easily incorporated into this current movement; unfortunately, they were just as mercilessly abandoned later. In Hong Kong, people use the hyphenated words “leftard”; while in Taiwan, they say it brings shame on “left pro-unificationist.” In Mainland China, on the surface, the politics probably tend to be left, while the economics tend to be right, which could be explained as a right “essence” operating under a left form. This phenomenon covers a complicated reality, and the questions it raises become more difficult if we investigate it through the lens of motivation mechanism, which have multiple layers, from governmental discourse to knowledge discourse, to public discourse. In addition, there are multiple mapping relations between official media, mass media, and the new social “we media.” But now, here comes the question: without a systematic analysis of the cultural and social dynamics in “we media,” and careful observation of the political economy behind these structures, it is extremely difficult to untangle today's social consciousness. The political participation of the artists might be a form of role-playing, but one where they attach too much significance to old ideological tools.

The artists who are eager to get involved in social movements need to ask themselves what remains after they dissipate. All movements are working towards some sort of a revolutionary reversal, or a new beginning: regardless of the stated purpose, they should be founded on greater equality or wider freedom, develop democratic infrastructure, or explore general elections that are routinely cited as a goal (even if they might not be a particularly reliable form of governance). Nevertheless, the sacred historical moment has not yet come, and the “before-the-rain” moment that intoxicates us has not disappeared, so eventually all those great expectations of revolution might be corrupted and defeated by the realities of everyday life.

What comes after the movement? On a global scale, with the confluence of art and social movements, the slogan “Artist as Activist” has been very popular for half a century. Whether in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, or in Beijing or New York, in today's era labeled as “big data-all media-post network,” the reality of art's situation has quietly changed. Social engagement, institutional critique, political art, or aesthetic politics: all these popular or obsolete discourses have been insufficient to describe our current real experience. In this era of the capitalist spectacle, the reality of our condition, as Chen Chieh-jen says, is like “global imprisonment, local exile.” In such a situation, I deeply feel that the period of social engagement initiated by the cultural and political environment of the 1960s has come to an end.

At this moment, the world's art history is in an “intermission”. One act is over, while the next has not begun. Yet, for those of us who are engaged with the three art worlds, there are urgent requirements: we need to think about how to extract a subtle sensibility that illuminates the contemporary world; how to develop a “public” creativity collectively from the historical experience of socialism; how to cultivate an art that engages fully in our daily life from the radical reality of today's new media; and how to produce art that is thoroughly engaged in the social process that stems from our complex historic reality.

After the “movement” there is exhaustion and confusion, and “intermission” leaves us only vanity and stagnation. However, the next grand show, or rather, the breakthrough moment for art, is perhaps on its way, being prepared and undertaken. As long as we believe in it, every “intermission” might be the eve of a revolution. This upcoming new art will be the art of production, the art of action, the art of the people, and the art of liberation.