“Ideological excitement” is a term I coined to encapsulate the mentality of Chinese modernism between 1979 and June 1989: aggressive and revelatory until the shots were fired. On 5 February 1989, the “Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art” was closed because of the shot fired by Xiao Lu, and at a noisy gathering in a classroom at the Central Academy of Fine Arts a youth in a green bandanna brandished a sword (made of wood) at the artist Xu Bing, as he phrased a long-winded question that people could not hear clearly. Chaos prevailed then, and when the exhibition was closed again a few days later, there was a return to chaos, tension and confusion. As one of the curator of the exhibition, Gao Minglu was anxious to deal with all these incidents and problems one by one. Later, he concluded:
Now this exhibition, in confronting society and the art scene has not only been pervaded by a sense of tragedy but has perpetuated a “hooligan consciousness”, and this social decline from heroism and a tragic sense of life. Like the Chinese bacchanalian spirit depicted in the movie Red Sorghum, there was a lot of bravado, because the life experiences of individuals were not grounded in a rigorous rationality and a natural healthy state but were related to primitivism and the worship of sex. The brush can instinctively be used to touch on any subject but this cannot equate with “genital art”, and the genitals can’t be used to paint; the desires of art and life are, after all, not one and the same and there must be some sublimation.[1]
In the Exhibition the artists Gao Xian, Gao Qiang, and Li Qun represented male genitalia with enormous inflated balloons in their work titled Midnight Mass: The Final Trial of the Century, and the “sexuality” of this work created an uproar. Even though the artists wanted to use the work to give “sexuality” “new aesthetic significance” as a basic truth by highlighting D. H. Lawrence’s view that sex is the “key to life and spiritual regeneration”, Gao Minglu was filled with revulsion by these simulated genitals. Fan Di’an, another curator of the exhibition, recalled that when the Chinese and English names for the Exhibition were being discussed some painters, in the spirit of the times, were unhappy with the term “modern” and wanted something more “avant-garde”. He said that “this touched on two problems: the understanding and evaluation of avant-garde art within the art world and what society could tolerate”. The latter revealed the psychological climate of society at the time, given that there was no diminution in the avant-garde art world’s desire to “charge” ahead.
Li Xianting’s attitude was completely different from that of Gao Minglu and others. When he heard that Xiao Lu had fired a gun at her installation work, he described how he felt excited and stimulated; the gunshot expressed his own excitement, “releasing hopes that had long been suppressed”, as he described it. Gao Minglu had been dismayed and angered by the abrupt firing of the gun; for him this was not simply because this “performance” had neither been scheduled nor had it been approved, but because it seemed to him to be an act that belonged to a reality beyond academic logic and an indulgence in non- conscious and irrational non-culture. Even many years later he regarded the abstruse concept of “spiritual totality” as characteristic of contemporary art. Li Xianting’s feeling most conformed to the social context: before and after 1988, the rapid development of the commodity economy had changed the face of social life, the structure of the planned economy was being subverted, a population for whom work had become destabilized was moving about the country, and many artists from remote areas were coming to Beijing to seek opportunities, thereby becoming part of the increasingly large army of “jobless” drifters. Around 1989, the concept of the Yuanmingyuan artists’ village became widely known in the art world. In fact, the number of free artists continued to grow, and there was a break from the lifestyles of the past; the “units” of the planned economy began to lose their significance for young artists, there was a radical break with previous lifestyles, and a clear and specific rebellion was taking shape.
An open revolt in the field of art began after 1978; when Gao Xiaohua and Cheng Conglin, students of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, completed their Scar Art works, doubts concerning earlier history were ignited. Gao Xiaohua’s Why (1978) clearly questioned the “Cultural Revolution”: Why did hatred break out within the ranks of students? What was the revolution they wanted to defend? How could universal truths be demonstrated? The figures in this painting were oppressed by their gray and gloomy environment; the work depicted a time without hope, a time that provided no reason for enduring, and a time for which no legitimacy could be found. The questions posed by Why were unavoidable, and they were in sharp contrast to the attitudes and even the ideological positions created by the themes, styles, and expression in the treatment of all topics in earlier “Cultural Revolution” art. Cheng Conglin’s Snow on an Unrecorded Day in 1968 (1979) used dramatic conflict in the manner of Surikov to pose a political question: What in the end was the political nature of the tragic and cruel “armed conflict” during the “Cultural Revolution”? Since the political nature of the “Cultural Revolution” itself had lost its legitimacy, did the proletarian revolution that provided the justification for the “armed conflict” continue to have legitimacy? Soon, because the face of the peasant in Luo Zhongli’s Father was held to be lacking in vitality this work too came in for criticism from critics driven by established ideology: perhaps this bitter and possibly illiterate old peasant symbolized or stood for all Chinese fathers! Regardless of specific reasons, the works submitted by these students of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, in fact, constituted a critique of history; even though official artistic standards had not been revoked, those who had experienced the “Cultural Revolution” were more willing to affirm such new art, rather than negate it. There was a legitimating basis for this: Since the “Cultural Revolution” was an “error” as a political movement, art that questioned and criticized the “Cultural Revolution” was legitimate. Very few people could apply long-standing official artistic criteria to assess the new art that was appearing, and at almost the same time impressionist and expressionist art was coming onto the scene, making it possible for what had been regarded as bourgeois humanism to be recognized. This is why He Duoling’s sentimental and complex humane works could so readily assume an acknowledged place in the art world at the same time as impressionist and expressionist paintings by Zhou Chunya and Zhang Xiaogang. It can be seen that the targets of critique started with the theme and then went on to look at the specific expression of that theme, completely disregarding the aesthetic criteria championed in “Cultural Revolution” art (“red, light, bright”; “tall, large, and total”). Because the “Cultural Revolution” had just ended, memories of tragic experiences were still fresh. People were little concerned with thinking about art methods and questions of style; the story and its political stance and attitude sufficed to allow audiences to temporarily ignore art questions. For most of the audience, art issues removed from their original knowledge of the background of the work (their visual experience of realistic painting) did not exist; they basically had no visual experience, having never seen modernist art.
Intellectuals concerned with politics define the political background between 1978 to 1983 as representing as the purge of a clique within the Party. After the arrest in 1976 of the “Gang of Four” clique comprising Jiang Qing, Yao Wenyuan, Zhang Chunqiao, and Wang Hongwen by an older generation of Communists, power in the Party was in the hands of victims of political persecution during the “Cultural Revolution”. However, in the decade following the “Cultural Revolution” in 1966 the “Gang of Four” won political power in every city in the country, and so it became very important to eliminate these forces, and provide political legitimacy for their elimination. At the same time, the power structure required a period of consolidation and it was especially important to have as wide a range of support as possible, and this was why the feelings of deep resentment occasioned by the “Cultural Revolution” were so widely utilized. Scar Art was, of course, a response to such a political background, and there was a major reason why the Scar Art that emerged in Chongqing won the support of the China Artists Association: important officials in the art world such as Jiang Feng and Wang Zhaowen were so persecuted in political movements and the “Cultural Revolution” that after they were restored to positions of status within official art institutions, it was natural for them to use Scar Art to eliminate and critique the political effects of the “Cultural Revolution”. Scar Art was regarded as being of great importance and was supported by official art organizations, the Chinese Artists Association and the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts staged a special exhibition and seminar of the art of these young people in Beijing.
The political fate of the Beijing Stars art group was not as smooth as that of the students who produced Scar Art; from the beginning, the Stars artists had more freedom to choose a public venue for their own exhibition, though they did not qualify as a legitimate exhibition. Their show was canceled the moment it opened, which led to the Stars adopting a more radical course of action: they staged a street demonstration in the hope of having their exhibition reinstated. In China at this time, the real instability was not a parade of young people, but the remnant forces of the “Gang of Four”, and the Stars’ use of the slogan of “democracy” to criticize the “Gang of Four” made it politically difficult for the government to shut down their demonstration. The personal experience of one of the leaders of the Beijing Artists Association, Liu Xun revealed the vicissitudes of his political career,[2] and in 1978 he petitioned Hu Yaobang and finally recovered the rights he lost in the anti-rightist campaign of the Communist Party. During his tenure as Deputy President of the Beijing Artists Association, his support of the Stars accorded with the political climate, and the support provided by Jiang Feng as head of the China Artists Association showed that the political line at this time was quite clear: The “Gang of Four” clique and its followers were in political battle with the older generation of leaders of the Communist Party and their sympathizers. For Deng Xiaoping who had just acquired political power, winning support of the majority was his most important political policy. Therefore, the Stars were also finally able to organize their own exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, and in contrast, could openly display their works on the fences outside the Gallery.
The movement to “eliminate spiritual pollution” that began in 1983 was like a familiar political movement from the past, because as more Western thought and culture entered China, there was opposition to established political discourse and attitudes and new political problems arose. Once Deng Xiaoping stabilized his political power in the Party, he was concerned with advancing the cause of economic development announced at the Third Plenary Session of the Thirteenth Party Congress and at the same time sought to prevent attacks and subversion by bourgeois forces in ideology and the system. In the final analysis, he hoped to develop the economy under the control of the Communist Party, rather than pandering to the total questioning of the socialist system by activists. On October 12, 1983, he said at the second plenary meeting of the Twelfth Central Committee of the CPC: “In the ideological field there can be no spiritual pollution”. He stressed: “The ideological battlefront is extensive and for now I only want to discuss theory and the literary and artistic fronts”. He further hinted: “The essence of spiritual pollution is spreading the various kinds of decadent thinking of the bourgeois and other exploiting classes and distrust of the socialist and communist causes and the leadership of the Communist Party”. He cited discussions on humanism, stressing the importance of the Marxist analysis of humanism and its “criticism of bourgeois humanism”. He was very dissatisfied by some thinkers in the Party who “abstractly” discussed humanism, and expressed economic and political discontent with socialism using Marx’s concept of “alienation” in their analysis; he held that the core of that theory was to “lead people to criticize, doubt, and reject socialism so that people lose confidence in the future of socialism and communism”. Deng talked about art, and complained about literature and art that did not celebrate the Party and socialism and were “eager to describe darkness and gray areas”. He also pointed out that “some people trumpet Western so-called ‘modern’ thought, openly proclaim that the highest purpose of literature and art is to ‘express oneself’, and disseminate an abstract theory of human nature and humanity”. Deng noted the introduction of Western civilization into China after 1978 and emphasized the study of Western science and technology and management, but in the cultural field he stressed that “we must use Marxism to analyze, identify, and criticize their contents and methods”. But “unanalyzed, unidentified, and not criticized” phenomena are widespread, and he said that “the culture of the Western bourgeoisie in decline is corrupting our youth and can no longer be tolerated”.
Most people in China were disgusted with politics and people’s memories of the “Cultural Revolution” were still fresh; an emphasis on yet another political movement not only made people question the purposes of the new political group in power but also severely shook people’s confidence in participating in economic activities. At this time, opposition forces within the Party had been weakened and they could exert little pressure to induce the new collective leadership to abandon stepped-up efforts to promote economic development. Therefore, the movement to oppose spiritual pollution lasted only a very short time, and in his government work report presented at the second meeting the second session of the sixth National People’s Congress on 15 May, 1984, Zhao Ziyang announced:
In the fight against spiritual pollution, because we begin by speaking unclearly in defining certain policies, some inappropriate things have occurred in some places and units, but once discovered, we will correct them in a timely manner.
In the end, this political campaign concluded after a little more than six months. A more open social life continued, and the policy of opening that had begun at the end of 1978 was only paused and not derailed by the campaign to “eliminate spiritual pollution”; according to the selection, translation, editing, and publication cycle, by 1984, many Western works continued to be translated and published, and one assumes these works had been analyzed, identified, and criticized in accordance with Deng Xiaoping’s wishes. Obviously, there were no legal provisions specifically limiting what publishers could select and review; “openness” and “ideological liberation” were legitimate bases for people’s words and actions during this period and, therefore, more Western works were published over time and they occupied an increasingly large section of what was available in the market. This was the background that provided the soil for the so-called “85 art movement”, and increasing numbers of young artists took the slogans and manifestoes they used to defend their radical views from their reading of a large number of Western philosophers and thinkers including Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Sartre, T. S. Eliot, and Freud. By the 1990s, and especially in the new century, Chinese translations of Western works could be seen everywhere, and the constant publication of new works did not attract any surprise.
Artists and critics who experienced the modernist movement of the 1980s all agree that the Rauschenberg exhibition at the National Art Museum of China (as well as in Lhasa) at the end of 1985 made a huge impact on them. Many years later, in June 2016, when the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing’s 798 art district staged another Rauschenberg show, it was clear that artists and critics could not adequately pay tribute to the significance and influence that this US artist had exerted on Chinese modern art. Even though artists and critics might not have been clear about the background to Rauschenberg’s use of “comprehensive” materials in the 1950s, this American artist’s inclusion of paper, wood, glass, metal, and even stuffed animals in his work, which meant that painting lost its purity, was a liberating force for young Chinese. Li Xinjian, Rauschenberg’s assistant at the time of his exhibition in Lhasa, commented:
He was the first artist to bring so many of his works into the Chinese art scene, and this American contemporary pop art master engaged in face to face exchanges with Chinese artists. We can say that almost all contemporary artists in China at that time had him among their reference coordinates, and the US political term “cultural diplomacy” can be aptly used to describe Rauschenberg in China. The real outcome, in terms of background, means of expression, theory, and conceptual description, saw Chinese artists benefited immensely from seeing an original artist from the West. [3]
In the mid-1980s, the various art phenomena that occurred in China under the influence of Western artistic ideas, styles, techniques, or concepts were summarized by critics as the “avant-garde” (xianfeng yishu or qianwei yishu) or “modern art” (xiandai yishu), and critics from the time defined the art of this period with such terms as the “85 art movement”. [4] In any case, “rebellious” and “critical” positions constituted the subject of the new art from this period, and the ideological tools obviously came from the West. The basic techniques of culture and art were the metaphor, the allusion, and the symbol, and after socialist realism and its modes of expression were subjected to continuous criticism, almost no artist was willing to accept reflection theory and mimesis and use them to express their ideas. This endowed their works with a general obscurity and a lack of semantic clarity. Their artistic manifestoes and statements were always filled with philosophical terms and even phrases, but to a great extent these did not let people know what the artist wanted to say. In this way neither the language of art nor the ideas expressed in writing could be examined by censors imbued with official ideology.
On June 10, 1986, Deng Xiaoping said: “Now it looks as though we cannot adapt to the present situation if we do not engage in political reform. Reforms should include reform of the political system and political reform should serve as a symbol of reform”. However, the demands for political reform in the intellectual world seem to have far exceeded those of the Party’s leader. At the end of 1986 in Shanghai, Hefei, and other cities student demonstrations and slogans had exceeded the limits imposed by the Chinese Communist Party, and in mid-December 1986, a number of university students from tertiary institutions in Shanghai, Nanjing, Hefei, Wuhan, Hangzhou, and Beijing took to the streets; in some schools posters of political dissent went up calling for the acceleration of the socialist democratic process and promoting the sensitive issue of political reform. On January 16 of the following year, at the enlarged meeting of the CPC, Party Secretary Hu Yaobang was subjected to political criticism and forced to resign from the post of General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee; on the 17th the CPC’s Anhui Provincial Committee decided to dismiss Fang Lizhi from the position of Vice-Chancellor of the University of Science and Technology of China, accusing him of inciting student demonstrations, denying socialism, and preaching bourgeois “democracy” and “freedom”.[5] It was against this background that the Fourth New Figurative Exhibition organized by Zhang Xiaogang was prevented from going ahead by the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts.
People’s Daily representing the state ideology published an editorial titled “Cherish and Develop the Political Situation of Stability and Unity” and commentary arguing that reform of the political system could only be conducted under the leadership of the Party. Shortly thereafter, on January 28, 1987, the CPC Central Committee issued “Circular Addressing Current Issues related to Combating Bourgeois Liberalization”. [7] In the sixth issue published in December that year, Art Trends gave notice to readers that it would cease publication with that issue.
In 1987 the political movement to oppose “bourgeois liberalization” did not last long, because senior party leaders were determined to develop the economy and were worried by political movements (the historical experience of the period from 1949 to 1976 had made a deep impression on them) and the impact these could have on economic development. From party documents of 1987 and 1988 we can see that the pace of economic reform did not slacken because of radical political statements about the introduction of bourgeois capitalist thought, and this naturally opened up space for liberal ideas in culture and art. However, there was an obvious contradiction between using capitalist economic theory to develop the economy and not allowing bourgeois political thought and ethical spirit to affect Chinese thought. The solution was to speed up the development of the economy, and control as much as possible those university or intellectual circles whose words and deeds were not compatible with the Communist Party leadership. This is why intellectuals like Fang Lizhi were harshly criticized by official media and yet economic reform continued. In spite of official and academic circles from time to time issuing reminders that economic reform and political reform should be conducted in parallel, no sign of this happening could be seen. Anyway, as theoretical statement could only address a minority, although the circular on opposing bourgeois liberalization issued by the CPC Central Committee on January 28, 1987 stressed that the core of bourgeois liberalization was “opposition to Party leadership” and that “the struggle against bourgeois liberal thought will be long-term”, the document also issued a cautionary reminder that this political struggle was limited to the Party and “would not impact on economic reform policy, rural policy, science and technology research, and technical exploration in literature and art, as well on people’s daily lives”. The document specifically highlighted political strategy: “Combating bourgeois liberalization must be attentive to policy limits”. Even if those Party members openly advocating bourgeois liberalization prove incorrigible or wish to develop their expertise, we respect their citizens’ rights. At the same time, “we must prevent ‘leftist’ attacks on the ‘right’ in order to allow a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend”. Given the obvious lesson that people had been persecuted by political movements, the document stated: “The movement against bourgeois liberalization must adopt a correct approach, and not to engage in a political campaign. We must adopt moderate, calm, and reasoned methods, be resolute in avoiding the past situation in which ‘people were rigidly defined, pressure was exerted downwards, there were layers of investigation, and everyone had to pass muster’, and call for the exposure of those who indulge in ‘leftist’ errors”.
On 29 January, Zhao Ziyang at a Spring Festival gathering addressed people’s concerns about the opposition to bourgeois liberalism:
The “Announcement of the Enlarged Meeting of the Politiburo of the CPC Central Committee” has been officially issued and urban and rural policies will remain unchanged. Comprehensive reforms will be unchanged, the policy of opening will be unchanged, stimulating the economy will be unchanged, and the policy of respecting knowledge and talented people will also remain unchanged; not only will these reforms remain intact, but we will also to try to do better. [8]
Because the reform of the commodity economy and changes in social life were so rapid, by 1987 one million farmers had already entered the capital from the countryside in search of work. The media also reported that there was a major trend of people going into business. In October that year, the CPC Central Committee, on their basis of their comparison and understanding of historical Chinese and foreign experience, simply determined that the system was the primary stage of socialism, which allowed for the further use of Western science and technology and economic methods. But this meant a strategic redefinition of the previously determined nature of the country’s system and provided a stage for the later “socialist market economy”; at the same time, it also provided conditions for the further extension of their academic and intellectual logic. Ideological excitement was not stopped, but rather intensified by “opposition to bourgeois liberalization”.
In The History of Art in 20th-Century China, there is a description of the context of the 1980s that serves to explain this:
On January 1, 1988, Tiananmen Gate, a symbol of power and history, was open to the public for the first time. It was news that this historic site, still periodically used by politicians, was now open to the general public.
In contrast to this soothing news, the New Year’s Eve issue of The World Economic Herald carried an article titled “The Most Important Issues for the Chinese Nation are Global”. Its author took this time of rest, the end of the year in the Chinese lunar calendar, to again focus attention on the country’s crisis. [9] For more people, the serious events of the previous year showed the issues were more urgent than ever.
At the first meeting of the annual session of the Seventh National People’s Congress in Beijing (25 March – 13 April 1988), a constitutional amendment providing legal protection to the private economy was adopted.
On April 26 the government designated Hainan as China’s largest special economic zone, and outside all large companies and talent agencies queues of hopeful employees rivaled in size those that had formed when more than 10 years previously it was announced that the Cultural Revolution employment situation of work assignment was at an end. Among young people at this time, founding a company or being employed by one was more than an economic act, but also a promise of liberation and an opportunity to participate in the trend of the times. Even though words like “business”, “economy”, and “the market” were words that alarmed and panicked intellectuals and scholars, by the second half of 1988, the “trend of commercialization” was embraced passionately by young people; this did not simply express their economic desires, but to a large extent expressed full-blown hope for the future.
In May, Deng Xiaoping discussed the risks of reform on two occasions, pointing out that reform and opening would have to negotiate some dangerous passages; even though people were concerned about prices, they would soon see that, as did even more intellectuals, that the risks were not only economic, but also political. In June, Deng Xiaoping, meeting with Czechoslovakian guests, said: “Science and technology are the primary productive force”. People’s objectives were guided as much as possible by national leaders towards technical areas, so that political problems were replaced by technical problems in the name of productivity. In July, the CPC Central Committee issued a circular announcing that the discipline inspection groups of the Party in the various government departments would be phased out. The circular announcing the revocation of the Party’s role in the government sector was an important measure of political reform, and these measures prompted sensitive intellectuals to point out that the possibility of upheaval was likely to increase in the political arena; the political reality was full of more challenges than in the “opposition to bourgeois liberalization” a year previously.
Around 1988, a large quantity of political reportage addressing such issues as liberty, “sacrosanct Party doctrine”, changes in gender relations, the Tangshan earthquake, links formed by globalization, problems related to abortion, and the issue of national strengthening passionately and romantically articulated popular political issues, and its authors and avid readers were engaged with reality and a new understanding of traditional culture. Moreover, in June and August 1988 this liberating and aggressive new mentality found its highest expression in a six-episode CCTV-2 television series providing political commentary and titled River Elegy.
On 11 June 1988, the public reaction to the premiere screening of the six-part documentary was unprecedented. People long familiar with eulogies of the cultural images provided by the “Yellow River” and “the dragon” now encountered the identification of these images as forces or incarnations of evil by the young scholars who wrote the material for the series: Su Xiaokang, Xie Xuanjun, Yuan Zhiming, and Zhang Gang. The “dragon” was described in the commentary as “a monster that was an image of violence”, and this “monster” had become the symbol of China’s rulers, while the Yellow River was not only associated with the authoritarian rule but with what was old and worn out.
In fact, in the 1980s, Chinese intellectuals were well aware of the nature of the Chinese state and its political reality through their reading of translated and imported Western philosophy and ideas; since the aging yellow dragon with its monstrous influence continued to dominate the nation, it was easy to deduce that the nature of the country was authoritarian. Authors were already familiar with the key words in these arguments and they had simply not previously been so publicly articulated.[10]
Apart from presenting the Great Wall not as a symbol of ancient Chinese civilization and its brilliant history but as a direct indictment of cringing before foreigners (in the second episode titled “Destiny”), River Elegy also accused China’s traditional political culture of contempt for science (in the third episode titled “Light”), pointing out that the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917 signalled by the firing of the cannon on the cruiser Aurora would in fact provide no fundamental solution for the development problems of socialist national economies (in the fourth episode titled “The New Era”):
The “Stalinist model” which once applied to all countries of Eastern Europe led, sooner or later, to “dissidence” and the implementation of reforms. The rise of an independent Yugoslavia in the Balkans first broke with the Soviet model and it explored its own path. Later Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia all underwent transformation and took to the road of reform. History seemed to raise Plekhanov’s doubts once again. [11]
At this time, scholars still rejoiced when even small reforms were announced, as when Communist Party Chief Zhao Ziyang, speaking on behalf of the CPC, acknowledged in a speech that the “commodity economy” was a rational aspect of the socialist economy. Intellectuals at that borrowed the explanations of the economist Li Yining, a professor at Peking University, in discussing questions of change in the system of ownership:
As I said, the failure of economic reform may be due to failure of price reform, and the success of China’s economic reforms, will depend on the success of reform of the system of ownership. Addressing the key issue of reform of the system of ownership must challenge our concept of traditional public ownership; we must change traditional public ownership into a new public ownership system.. [12]
Obviously, up until this time, economists as intellectuals tactfully avoided terminology fraught with political risks. But in any case, what the intellectuals were saying could be understood by anyone: the social system of the country needed to be changed.
In the sixth episode of River Elegy titled “The Color Blue”, Bao Zunxin, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher, editor of the Culture and Philosophy book series and editor-in-chief of Research on the History of Chinese Philosophy, again highlighted the importance of the “democratic spirit” and the “spirit of science” of the May Fourth period. On December 7, 1988, Jin Guantao, an adviser at Peking University’s Institute of the Future”, held a seminar on “China and the World”, at which he noted in his address to the plenary session: “The experiment of socialism and its failure are the two major legacies of the 20th century”. At this time, there was also a flurry of books, journals, and articles that treated acute social problems. There was a prevailing sense of general crisis: the contradictions between rapid economic growth and slow political reform were becoming more prominent, and several years of development of market economy mechanisms were further disrupting the established order of society. Disturbing phenomena began to emerge in the wake of reforms: millions of the rural population had abandoned agricultural production in their desire to enter the big cities; some factories were bankrupt, others had insufficient work, and the prospect of an army of tens of millions of unemployed people let people to panic; poor railway traffic management was resulting in frequent accidents; university campuses were characterized by an atmosphere of absurdity, indifference, superficiality, decadence, and panic; and coupled with inflation, official corruption was prevalent. All this constituted an unbearable psychological burden on people.
In a book titled China’s Crisis and Thinking published in February 1989, its editor Li Ming’s anxiety was exhaustively revealed in the four sub-headings he included in his preface (“tragedy”, “crisis”, “the tragic consciousness of crisis” and “China’s crisis”). In his preface the editor expressed the general view of radical intellectuals:
China’s contemporary crises, deposited by history and stemming from reality, have spread to all psychological, physical, and social areas, penetrating all levels covered by phenomenology, structuralism, and deconstruction. Inflation, rising prices, food shortages, and so on, can be said to constitute the most immediate and most urgent crisis. However, the deep crisis in Chinese psychology, morality, beliefs, and values are often injurious and destructive, and there is a serious lack of social power; the most profound crisis is in education, study seems useless, there is tiredness in teaching, and illiteracy is spreading, all of which is really worrying for the future of China. The crisis in the political system of China stems from following the tradition of the old system which still plays an important role. In Chinese culture elements that are old, antiquated, anti-intellectual, anti-liberal, anti-modern, anti-democratic, and anti-scientific await further reform, and because Chinese society tends towards disorder, these often result in obstructive polarizing turbulence that is at the root of extremely slow social development.
In art circles, some critics in 1985 and 1986 were tired of the modernist movement, and questioning the influence to date of Western “avant-garde” art on some questions of art, hoped at least for a decisive change in artistic language, not a shoddy imitation of Western modern art. No one directly opposed such judgments, but most people wanted to discard the intellectual dichotomy between language and form: there was no problem with the spirit and stance of content, but there was a problem with how language could respond and creatively echo the problem. However, critics who advocated “language purification” could cite no good examples of what they were calling for; an academic classical style of painting was used instead as an example of linguistic purification and, as a result, the discussion lost direction. Being a political activist, the critic Li Xianting (writing under the pseudonym “Hu Cun”) published an article, “Our Times Await the Fervor of the Grand Soul”, that sparked debate among artists and critics (Fine Arts in China, 1988:37). In this article, he presented his concept of the “grand soul”:
The soul of our times has taken shape as a result of the dramatic cultural collision between East and West and the enormous contrasts between those who are advanced and those who are retrograde. In the deep recesses of this grand soul, endless uncertainty rolls about violently: hope and despair interweave, ideals and reality are in contradiction, the tradition and the future are in conflict, while pains anxiety, hesitation, and all manner of suffering accompany reflections on culture as ideas are tossed back and forth.
In the later part of the essay, Li Xianting cited T. S. Eliot in his explanation of the grand soul, pointing out that the artist “must at a timely juncture appreciate that this soul is more important than from his own personal soul”. This explanation was suitable for the earlier modernist movement, as well as for the post-1978 Scar Art; what mattered was not the question of language, but the rush and impact of the grand soul. In the view of Li Xianting, the “grand soul” of avant-garde art would disappear if language were “purified”: “the current ‘purification of language’ potential ran the greatest risk of a return to the days of psychological evasion and whitewashing”. When Li Xianting discussed the value of the works of the great early masters, they were not all defined by the language paradigms and techniques exhibited works, but the later soul attributed to them, and so he said: what is “behind” these masters’ works is more important than the works themselves. He stated:
There is nothing more tragic for the artist than to have too much placed on him, which makes the artist measure himself against all the masters in the entire history of art, rather than experiencing the pain felt in the living world. Once language, skill, and style become the artist’s goals, artists become just like workers who have to go to work, and under the guise of “autonomy” art loses its self-contained life and impulse.
Li Xianting’s logic was that when artistic practice was separate from language, language “purification” or refinement was probably impossible. Li Xianting in this passage is clear: art must continue to perform its critical mission.
As early as the first half of 1986, Li Xianting published an article in Fine Arts in China (1986: 28) titled It’s Not the Art That’s Important. This article sought to make people aware that the new wave artists and their work had true value and should engage our empathy:
We can see in many of their works that their anxiety and their confusion derive from their reexamination of all concepts in which human values are central, and so they preferred modern Western philosophy, like writing polemical articles, and took pleasure in abstruse and abstract expression. This indicated that the movement of emancipation in thought had begun to enter the stage of philosophy. But this was not the modern art movement itself and at best only a preparatory stage in ideas, because their poverty in science and philosophy forced them to pretend to be philosophers. The weakness of their ideas meant that their works of art could not sustain the heavy responsibility demanded of them, yet they had to shoulder this heavy thought, and this was the pride, as well as the tragedy, of Chinese contemporary art.
The “China/Avant-garde: China Modern Art Exhibition” that opened on 5 Feb 1989, at the National Art Museum of China was a symbol of its time, and all the radical performances at the exhibition and their consequences were a symbol of the period and marked the end of radical modernism. Of course, the exhibition organizers or curators had envisaged something quite different, most of the audience and those involved in art were thrilled and stimulated by such dramatic performance works as Li Shan’s Washing Feet, Zhang Nian’s Incubating Eggs, and Xiao Lu’s Dialogue. [14]
Ideological conflict and the increasing excitement also exacerbated the imminent explosion of the social and political crises. On February 16 during the “China Modern Art Exhibition”, the political radical Chen Jun gave a press conference for foreign journalists at JJ’s Art Bar, and distributed Fang Lizhi’s letter to Deng Xiao-ping and the open letter of 33 people to the National Standing Committee and CPC Central Committee, calling for the implementation of an amnesty, and the release of Wei Jingsheng and other political prisoners; on March 22, the 12th “Democracy Salon” was held at Peking University by Fang Lizhi, Li Shuxian, and Wang Dan. Teachers at Peking University gave lectures on the topic of “New Authoritarianism and Democracy”; “democracy” and “human rights” were concepts frequently invoked in salons. On April 5, at the 14th “Democracy Salon”, 56 students from different colleges signed a poster calling for political democracy, and the student Wang Dan suggested: “All intellectuals feel something will happen this year, and I hope that soon everyone will come together”. On 15 April China Central Television broadcast the notice from the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee that Hu Yaobang had died. That night, a large poster appeared at Peking University: “We request that the incompetent government be removed, the autocratic monarchy be overthrown, and democracy be established”. On April 16, wreaths opened on the Heroes Monument in Tiananmen Square; on April 18, more than 1000 students from Peking University began walking from the campus to Tiananmen Square. Thereafter, in the name of honoring Hu Yaobang, the numbers of students marching to the Square increased daily until there were tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands demonstrating in the Square. They shouted various different slogans. On April 22, three students at the East Gate of the Great Hall of the People requested that they be allowed to present a petition to Prime Minister Li Peng. The events in Tiananmen Square had become the focus of global media attention. On 25 April, CCTV News aired the following day’s People’s Daily editorial, titled “We Must Unequivocally Oppose the Turmoil”, which unequivocally opposed the student voices and demonstrations. On the 28th, the “Beijing University Student Government Association” comprising representatives of more than 20 higher educational institutions was established. More frequent militant activities and political risks were taken by the demonstrators. By May 19, when the Square still contained nearly 100,000 people, the Politburo decided that night to impose martial law the next day. From May 20 martial law was implemented, and at 1:30 A.M on June 4, troops cleared Tiananmen Square. What unfolded in Tiananmen Square spread to other cities in China, until the country was engulfed in a full-scale political crisis.
Most modern artists felt despondent and depressed by events in the second half of 1989. The artist Zhang Xiaogang wrote in a letter to his friend in the United States Yang Qian: “I am often woken up by nightmares and reawaken to the great tragedy that surrounds us. On the one hand we now have a clear understanding of reality, on the other we feel deeply confused about the future”. He complained about the domestic situation and the school at the end of the letter: “At times I feel that can really be no purpose in life for this generation, but nature hasn’t caved in so maybe this is my life”. At the end of the year, Zhang Xiaogang again described his feelings to Yang Qian:
The 1990s is coming soon and for the last decade of the century, people will never escape the fear. I more often have nightmares, and combined with the constant winter rain in Chongqing and power outages, sometimes people feel desperate. I am looking forward to the end of this cold, wet winter. [16]
In 1990, Zhang Xiaogang, in a letter to his friend Yi Dan, reported on the situation among the teachers at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in the Huangjueping district of Chongqing:
It is the 1990s. On the last night of 1989, we gathered listlessly at Ye Yongqing’s house, talked in a desultory way about the weather and Tuopai alcohol’s awards. After listening to the New Year rung in, I went home to sleep. For the past few months, sleep and nightmares have become synonymous for me. I believe that everyone is waiting for something to happen - it might be an earthquake or perhaps a visitation of fairies. [17]
Nothing better describes the psychological situation at that time: everything had ended and everyone was waiting for someone to kick off the next day. Throughout 1990, with the exception of those artists and critics who had left the country, those who continued to live in different cities in China felt they were subject to an unprecedented listless and helpless mental state: the age of ideological excitement had ended.
NOTES:
[1] Gao Minglu et al., “Avant Garde Art and Cultural Reality”, Reading, Beijing, 1989, 5th issue.
[2] Liu Xun (1923-2007), born in Nanjing, Jiangsu, painter, Vice President and Secretary of the Beijing Painting Academy, Vice President of the Beijing Artists Association. He joined the Communist Party at an early date, entered Northern Shaanxi Public School, and did further stuies at the Lu Xun Academy in Yanan. In 1945 he went to work in the liberated areas of Northeast China as a war reporter and editor of Northeast Pictorial. After 1949 he became editor-in-chief of People’s Pictorial, editor-in-chief of People’s Fine Arts Publishing House’s Lianhuanhua Bao, and chief art editor at People’s Fine Arts Publishing House. In the Anti-Rightist Movement he was classified as a “rightist”, and in the “Cultural Revolution” he endured nine years ‘ imprisonment.
[3] Xu Liang, interview with Li Xinjian, World Art, May 2008.
[4] Gao Minglu described the art of this period as the “85 art movement” in a talk at the National Oil Painting Art Seminar in April 1986.
[5] In January the writer Wang Ruowang and the Vice Chairman of China Writers’ Association, Liu Binyan were also expelled from the Party. Previously, on December 30, Deng Xiaoping told Hu Yaobang and others: “I read Fang Lizhi’s speech and it was not like a speech by a Communist Party member. Such people should not remain in the Party, but should be expelled”. Deng said that the student protests of the last few years made it clear that the tide of bourgeois liberalism must be opposed resolutely. “I haven’t given up the fight against spiritual pollution and I agree that the full text of my speech at the second plenary session be included in my collected works. We must fight bourgeois liberalization for at least another 20 years”. See: Central Documentation Publishing House ed., Chronicle of Deng Xiaoping, 2004, pp.1160-1162.
[6] At the end of 1986, Zhang Xiaogang began preparations at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts for the fourth New Figurative exhibition. This was the later phase of the so-called “85 art movement”. Previously in April the Oil Painting Art Committee had sponsored the National Oil Painting Art Seminar (14th-17th April) and had invited avant-garde artists and critics including Zhang Peili, Shu Qun, Li Shan, Zhu Qingsheng, and Gao Minglu to participate. Although such older artists as Zhan Jianjun, Wen Lipeng, Wu Zuoren, Luo Gongliu, and Wu Guanzhong participated in the Seminar, they allowed Gao Minglu to give an academic report on the 85 art movement, and slides of several hundred new works including New Perceptual works were shown. This event obviously fired the enthusiasm of the young people who wanted society and the art world to understand the new art, and it also later encouraged the New Figurative artists to organize exhibitions and other activities. Earlier in June, when they hear that a modernist group in Chengdu called “Red, Yellow and Blue” was organizing an exhibition, Zhang Xiaogang made enquiries and suggested to Zhou Chunya that they hold a three-man (Zhou Chunya, Zhang Xiaogang, Ye Yongqing) exhibition in Chengdu. At that time new wave art was spreading through the cities of China, enthusing Zhang Xiaogang about organizing the Fourth “New Figurative” Exhibition at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. In a letter to Ye Yongqing dated 1 December 1986, Zhang cheerfully described his exhibition program: “The program I am planning will be a three-day art event at the end of this month, similar to an art festival. The main activities will be: (1) A display of photographs of our works and texts, which Yin Qiong already supports. This will be a daytime event. (2) We will ask activists (in philosophy, literature, and photography) from other schools to come and organize seminars. This is more or less organized. (3) We will let the students put on a modernist drama, written, directed, and played by the students. This might be more difficult. (4) A slide night. If you are okay with the idea, we could show the photographs we took in Xishuangbanna, and give a leisurely explanation of the customs, religion, and so on”.
Unfortunately, an imminent nationwide political campaign against “bourgeois liberalization” had been announced by the Communist Party and all independent activities and debate at schools and academic institutions was proscribed. Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts was quick to implement the orders issued by the Communist Party and Zhang Xiaogang was told that he would be unable to include any of planned recitation events in the event he was organizing. On December 28, Zhang sent a report on the progress he was making with his exhibition to Mao Xuhui and Ye Yongqing in Kunming. At the start of the letter he gave a resolute and spirited account of his planning and design of the art events, and wrote that “the moribund posturing of the Academy of Fine Arts failed to dent” the exhibition and art activities that had been enthusiastically arranged. Zhang Xiaogang described the event: “The upshot was that many people attended the event, both Chinese and foreigners, and some people waited for the exhibition to open from the early hours of the morning. The leaders of the Academy and a number of shady people also filed through the exhibition, which was unprecedented”. In the end, however, the Fourth “New Figurative” Exhibition did not go according to plan, as Zhang Xiaogang described in a subsequent letter of 28 December:
“Starting from the first day the leaders summoned me for a talk and on the morning of the next day, the people from the Party office again summoned me for a talk! The reason was simple; the campus unrest in Shanghai had been spread by students from Shanghai who had come to Chongqing, where students now wanted to hold a street demonstration. This was bad timing and I had never expected that the school would now be watching me almost as though I was public enemy number one. In addition our partners, the members of the Chongqing Teachers College Literary Society suddenly left without warning yesterday morning, pulling the rug from under us, and the people who were going to present lectures (also from Chongqing Teachers College) scheduled for eight o’clock in the evening did not turn up. I had prepared everything and there were already a lot of people sitting in the auditorium; at the same time, behind the stage curtain, the Communist Party Secretary of the Academy was presiding over a meeting he had convened of the Communist Youth League’s Student Union to discuss the question of the student movement. At the same time other people were all suddenly disappearing! I felt so isolated!”
[6] Provided by Ye Yongqing.
[7] Previously, on January 13, 1987, Deng Xiaoping met with Japan LDP Secretary-General Takeshita and said the recent “student unrest” “had little attraction for students”. He said:
This was a big mistake. We must take a clear-cut stand, change those being misled, educate young people with our own history, and expose those people with ulterior motives, because their slogans are against the leadership of the Communist Party, opposed to the socialist road. …these people advocate total Westernization and want to bring Western capitalism to China. These agitators are well-known people, and we have to deal with these people. Uphold the Four Cardinal Principles and Combat Bourgeois Liberalization,, People’s Publishing House, February 1987.
[8] Uphold the Four Cardinal Principles and Combat Bourgeois Liberalization, People’s Publishing House, February 1987, p.394.
[9] The text of the article was strident:
From overall economic strength, especially per capita indicators, it can be said, the Chinese people once again “face great danger”, the danger being no less than that of the life and death time when our anthem March of the Volunteers was written.
If current rates continue, in about fifty or sixty years, China will reproduce the conditions when foreigners used cannons against us in the Opium War, and we Chinese had only swords and spears.
If we lack awareness about this situation ... ... Our country and people may fall behind, and there will be no ranking for us in the world”.
This radical statement in the context of the discussion of globalization turned what were considered to be economic problems into political problems, and the crisis of national survival was reduced to political systems and ideologies. By the end of April, its radical positions led to the newspaper ceasing publication.
[10] The authors’ views and stance called for changing the existing political system. In 1988, Hong Kong’s Liberation Monthly (November issue) ran an article titled “The Devil Incarnate Mao Zedong” by Liu Xiaobo that expressed very clearly these political attitudes and goals: China’s reality hinges on this: No force can be found within authoritarianism to oppose authoritarianism. Specifically, in politics the strength cannot be found within a one-party dictatorship to oppose one-party dictatorship; economically, within the economy of public ownership and the planned economy the momentum to reform cannot be found; in terms of ideology, new ideas cannot be found in Marxist doctrine; in the broader culture, nothing excellent can be found within traditional Chinese culture. Only multiparty democracy can replace one-party dictatorship, only private ownership can replace public ownership and only the market economy can replace the planned economy; only a diversity of ideas and freedom of expression and thought can replace monistic thought; only modern world (Western) culture can replace traditional Chinese culture.
[11] Cui Wenhua ed., Discussion of River Elegy, Culture and Arts Publishing House, 1988, p.42.
[12] Cui Wenhua ed., Discussion of River Elegy, Culture and Arts Publishing House, 1988, p.51.
[13] See: General Office of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the CPC ed., Record of the 1989 Suppression of the Counter-revolutionary Turmoil in Beijing (1989 Beijing zhizhi dongluan pingxi fangeming baoluan jishi), Beijing Daily Press, August 1989. A few months later, the political actions of the scholars and other intellectuals who participated in the June 4 political events inevitably prejudiced their political and intellectual positions.
[14] At around 10 AM on the 11th, Xiao Lu fired a shot at her installation work. The “shot” led to the exhibition being closed for the first time. On February 10, the exhibition reopened. On February 14, Beijing Daily, Beijing Public Security Bureau, and the National Art Museum of China simultaneously received an anonymous letter threatening that explosive devices had been placed at these three units and the China Modern Art Exhibition was immediately shut down. For safety, the China Art Gallery was closed for two days. On February 17, the exhibition opened again and ended on February 19.
[15] “Letter to Yang Qian from Zhang Xiaogang (6 October)”, in Zhang Xiaogang, Lü Peng ed., Amnesia and Memory: Zhang Xiaogang’s Correspondence, 1981-1996, Peking University Press, 2010, pp.139-140.
[16] “End of year letter to Yang Qian from Zhang Xiaogang”, in Zhang Xiaogang, Lü Peng ed., Amnesia and Memory: Zhang Xiaogang’s Correspondence, 1981-1996, Peking University Press, 2010, p.142.
[17] “Letter to Yi Dan from Zhang Xiaogang (9 January)”, in Zhang Xiaogang, Lü Peng ed., Amnesia and Memory: Zhang Xiaogang’s Correspondence, 1981-1996, Peking University Press, 2010, p.150