Contemporary Art

[Anna]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if anyone could update me on what's going on in Beijing in the Art sphere, are there any contemporary art exhibitions running or planning for the fall?

Also i would like to collect your opinion on how open China is to western arts at the moment from the perspective of people acceptance.

Thanks!

Anna.

[gato]

Maybe you should ask her: http://www.soongli.com/?p=26

[badatpool]

Beijing International Art Biennale will be held in Beijing in fall. China Artist Association (official organization) sponsors it. So maybe it can’t be expected as open as the 2nd Chengdu Biennale, which the curators of it are some contemporary artists and reviewers, it will last until the end of this month.

Many Chinese audiences are still conservative, they prefer to the works depict things accurately and objectively, easier to “understand”…

[Anna]

I was at the Beijing International Art Biennale in 2003, found some really nice artworks and sculptures. I was delighted to see an absolutely wonderful combination of contemporary ideas with traditional, such as a sculpture of Laozi in a shape of a waterfall made out of metall by Chinese artist. However, it seems to me that Chinese contemporary art is still presented in a very small quantity.

Concerning the audience, it's a good hint, I might consider an exhibition for a selected audience rather then having it open to public.

Thanks for reply!

Anna.

[gato]

http://www.bjbiennale.com.cn/english/regulations.asp#

I. Name of Exhibition

The Second Beijing International Art Biennale 2005 (The Second Beijing Biennale, for short)

II. Exhibition Period, place and number of Works

Exhibition Period：Sept. 20 to Oct. 20, 2005

Place: Beijing, China

Number of Works: About 500

This seems be a catalog of works from 2003.

http://www.bjbiennale.com.cn/artists/work_index-e.asp

[gato]

Here's a site with news on Asian art events around the world, including China.

http://www.aaa.org.hk/features.asp

[Outofin]

Also i would like to collect your opinion on how open China is to western arts at the moment from the perspective of people acceptance.

Contemporary Art! It’s contemporary, so most of them are jokes. But it’s still art, so it deserves your attentions and devotions.

My information could be out of date. If you could read Chinese, I’ll give you some keywords for you to search on web.

尹吉男 a critic

独自叩门 the title is used for one of 尹吉男’s books and his column in the magazine 读书

先锋艺术 a booklet published monthly. I have no idea if it’s still available.

徐冰 an artist, whose works make sense to me.

大山子 you'll know where it is.

中国艺术网 a website

[skylee]

徐冰 an artist, whose works make sense to me.

I agree. (I cannot just write I agree as the message would be too short for posting.)

[gato]

徐冰 an artist, whose works make sense to me.

Could you elaborate? Maybe using an example from http://www.xubing.com/

[Outofin]

Could you elaborate? Maybe using an example from http://www.xubing.com/

Of course I can do that, gato, since you're encouraging me. And thank you for the website, which I didn't know.

Art, is an outer presence of a person's inner soul, a message conveyed through a strike, a note or an action. However, my feeling is that the contemporary artists are trying their best to get public attentions. I don't see fundamental differences between them and commercial dot com companies. Licking everything? Living in a cage for one year? Do they have a better thing to do? As artists, they're short of imagination. It's almost as shameful as a programmer who doesn't know binary-decimal conversion. After saying that, I have to come to the admission that it's possible I'm a dummy to sophisticated art.

I only know some of Xu Bing's early works, the well-known 天书 and 鬼打墙 series. He finely reveals the myth and dilemma of civilization. Of course I didn't have a chance to see the real installation. But I could image how it could stun me. Imagine you standing in the middle. From top to bottom, from every direction, you're surrounded by millions of characters. "That could be the wisdom inherited from thousands of years ago, or the undiscovered truth of the universe." You doubt your own capability. "Do I have the guts and patience and curiosity to finish them?" You could start to try to read the books. At that moment, you'll find you don't recognize a single character that you thought you're familiar with. "What am I reading? What did I learn? Throughout my life, what have I read at all?"

Isn't it an enlightening experience?

[gato]

Thanks for sharing, Outofin. I saw the 天书 ("A Book from the Sky") installation when I was in NY. It was pretty awe-inspiring because of its scale. From his website, it seems as if Xu has repeated the same calligraphy theme many times since. It seems as if he's stuck in a rut of sorts.

One problem I see with some contemporary Chinese artists, at least based on the works I've seen in the US (perhaps there's a selection bias), is that they've attached themselves too undiscriminatingly to the "conceptual art" movement, producing exactly the uninspiring "man in a cage" kind of work that you're complaining about. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art

These art works stress ideas over the traditional values of beauty (or emotions). If we think about it, it's not that different from the propaganda art people used to produce. Some of the art also suffers by being overtly shocking. I can understand why these artists are tempted to break old taboos, but the result is often not good art, which for me would be something that you can "enjoy" (in a broad sense of word), that transports you to another place, worthy of repeat viewing, possibly revealing something new every time. A lot of contemporay art works unfortunately cannot produce a reaction more profound than a little giggle or grimace. One easily gets bored of them after a few minutes.

Here's an exhibition of new art works from China I saw back in 1999. It was actually my first exposure to contemporary Chinese art. I was kind of impressed by the variety. There were a few good pieces. I liked the photographs particularly.

http://www.asiasociety.org/arts/insideout/works.html

I'm probably more of a traditionalist becauase I really like these paintings, much more than the idea-oriented sort of art:

http://www.westpower.com.cn/exphs/teacher/liuhong/liuhong.htm

[gato]

Too many of them seem to be children of Marcel Duchamp brand of provocateur art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp

Duchamp who once displayed a urinal in a gallery as art:

[Anna]

Gato, thank you so much for the links, they are awsome!

Of course i can't agree with Outofin that contemporary art is mostly a joke. In fact, it's a first time i hear such an opinion. There are works that quite funny but in such case they often carry pretty serious political contectst or have phsichological background.

[Anna]

Art, is an outer presence of a person's inner soul, a message conveyed through a strike, a note or an action. However, my feeling is that the contemporary artists are trying their best to get public attentions. I don't see fundamental differences between them and commercial dot com companies. Licking everything? Living in a cage for one year? Do they have a better thing to do? As artists, they're short of imagination. It's almost as shameful as a programmer who doesn't know binary-decimal conversion. After saying that, I have to come to the admission that it's possible I'm a dummy to sophisticated art.

Nice definition of art, Outofin, no doubt that it is what art ment to be and it is also true that in the rush for commecrial success a lot of modern artists lost their sense of purity, inspiration and true creativity.

It is an unfortunate that we often get access to the works of people whos main features are in commercial sphere, not a talant in arts. But I can not agree that just becuase we have no access to a really good contemporary art it is a proper thing to decline everything.

[Anna]

Too many of them seem to be children of Marcel Duchamp brand of provocateur art.

The word "Art" seem to be too general. If we take Outofin's definition of art as an example, it's hardly possible to apply it to the works like that one of Duchamp's. The same issue is with propaganda, when art is basically used as a mass media tool and can't really be called that way neither. (However, even that can be proven wrong by the example of scocial realizm originally used in propaganda purposes and now considered by critics to be one of the most appealing and interesting).

However, historically people tryed to express something important through arts, example could be Chinese Book of Songs, there probably should be some sort of a proper balance between the message and the soul. Both should be present in an artwork and coexist in harmony.

I'm falling into too much theory here, sorry, but actually what does really matter to me is a talant. When i see something genius, it inspires me so much! I totally support Gato in admiration of something not politically or ideologically oriented, such as http://www.westpower.com.cn/exphs/teacher/liuhong/liuhong.htm (By the way, i can scence some scocial realizm in these artworks, the artist probably had some influence, i'm not sure if there is a biography on the page becuase i'm still not very good in reading Chinese )