In response to Rachel Marsden’s comments I’ve been looking at Carol Yinghua Lu. In her e-flux article ‘Accidental Conceptualism’ she talks of exactly the issue psychoanalYSL pick up on, namely;
“Collectors, foreign and Chinese, buy Chinese artworks out of fascination with either China’s revolutionary past and sensational present, or for their profit prospect. “
But perhaps this is a particularly western perspective and now I’m in China I have a responsibility to look at the unspectacular, as well as the spectacular that Weiwei and Huang Yong Ping represent. Since arriving I’ve been doing studio visits (so far mostly in 102, the block where my own studio is) and what I’ve found, far from the spectacular orientalism of western curation is a completely banal preponderance of oil paintings of the mega structures of Chongqing; tower blocks, factories and the iconic power station chimneys which preside over the Huang Je Ping art community. One assumes that surely these paintings have little commercial viability, but the artists tell me they sell in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Chengdu (Beijing has been mentioned mostly as a place where these artists go to work as assistants to more successful artists, only occasionally have the oil painters in these studios mentioned having shows there).
There are a few installation artists, they’re work is considered more ‘experimental’. Lastly there are the performance artists; totally political and daring I’m told. The formal strategies appear stacked in a triangle where painting represents the most common practice, an economic base for the market, then installation in the middle and performance at the top.
Before arriving in Chongqing I spent a few days in Beijing staying with performance artist Chengyao he in her 798 studio. She talked about performance as almost entirely unconnected to economy. The performance artist cannot sell work (save a photo here and there) is not accepted by the academies in China therefore cannot teach (Chengyao teaches abroad every now and then) and obviously cannot get funding from the government for her radical and immaterial labour, therefore gets funding from foreign foundations and initiatives. Was this the state of play in the west 50 years ago or more? I find myself constantly asking if such indicators point towards China undergoing the processes of modernism. Some say China has skipped forward beyond modernism altogether because of the Cultural Revolution but what then is this combination of industrialism and hierarchy?
References:
Carol Yinghua Lu, Accidental Conceptualism, e-flux journal #1 december 2008
