One night at the end of December 1978, several young men pasted mimeographed notices at the entrance of People’s Literature Publishing House in Qianguaibang Hutong in the Chaoyang district of Beijing. For several days they had ridden platform tricycles to Peking and Tsinghua Universities to fix their literary magazine Today (Jintian) to the walls there. The young players in these scenes constructed from the absurdist elements of winter nights, platform tricycles, unregistered mimeograph publications and unauthorized bill posting were Zhao Zhenkai (Bei Dao), Mang Ke, Huang Rui and Lu Huanxing. People felt that a political thaw had been coming since October 1976, when the Chinese people, liberated from what was termed ‘the dictatorship of the Gang of Four’, could sense a new lease of life. Concepts were revived that had been not discussed by Chinese intellectuals since the decades from 1911 to the 1940s, concepts like freedom and democracy.
Huang Rui was one of the countless young people discussing these freshly rediscovered concepts. As early as April 1976, he had participated instinctively in the spontaneous mass movement in Tiananmen Square to mourn the recently deceased Premier Zhou Enlai. Huang Rui put up his own poster at the base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes on the square and recited his poem The People’s Grief (Renmin de daonian) to the assembled crowds. In this period of fascist dictatorship, Huang Rui’s placards and his public recital were deemed by the authorities to be illegal and so he was immediately detained for questioning, but the poem now classified as ‘reactionary’ (fandong) was published in a classified run of 400 copies by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Office and distributed as a search warrant.
Born in 1952, Huang Rui grew up in a warren of Beijing courtyard houses. There is something symbolic about this kind of enclosed and self-sufficient environment. Huang Rui’s early childhood memories are from the Great Leap Forward campaign, Mao Zedong’s failed attempt to have China’s industrial output to rapidly overtake that of Great Britain and the United States and begin to enter the new socialist Utopia. The visual memory of the pictures of rockets, blast furnaces, trains and red flags on the walls of the courtyard buildings left a deep impression on the young Huang Rui.
The outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 was cataclysmic. Huang Rui was almost 14 years old at the time, and he has described how he had few basic ideas about culture, but realized that ‘culture was something introduced by others, not something one could choose. Culture was everything related to the government. The streets you wandered around, the school you went to and even the basic educational courses were said to be culture, but with the Cultural Revolution notices on every thoroughfare and alley told us that there was something wrong with my country’s culture, and that it needed a great revolution to put it right. Everybody had to read The Quotations from Chairman Mao, the treasured little red book, to comprehend the origins, development and aims of the Cultural Revolution. This was an era of great revolution; people could see the blaze of revolution spread along the streets and into every small lane’.
When Huang Rui saw Red Guards burning antiques, now regarded as reactionary ‘poison’, he felt both excitement and fear, and these were scenes that occurred almost daily:
Every day, people waited below Tiananmen Gate built during the Qing dynasty for the great leader’s arrival, and then ironically went on to demolish and burn down other ancient buildings and temples. They paraded Buddhists and other worshippers on the streets. Nobody could escape the punishment of the revolution, unless they wore the green military uniform and permanently hung onto the treasured Red Book with both hands.
The year 1978 was a turning point. Huang Rui learned through the Party-controlled media that at the Third Plenary Session of the Tenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping had regained his position. The Cultural Revolution was now judged to have been ‘thirty percent good and seventy percent bad’, and there was a reevaluation of Mao Zedong. This news meant change. People could start to attempt to come to grips with all that had happened. A growing skepticism, political changes within the party and discussions pitting pragmatism against dogma, deemed to be ‘the sole criterion of truth’, allowed people to identify problems and dare to ask questions. There were clear political reasons for the suffering of the recent past, and the once vaunted ever-indubitable truth was now questioned. This was a unique period when people could repudiate, curse and criticize past indignities; public discussion, transparent politics and open-mindedness seemed to be appropriate strategies during this short-lived period. An era of re-examining political and cultural history had been initiated, although there was no change whatsoever in the political system itself. Young people were once again used by the Party, but this time to fight against the Maoists and their actions, and demonstrate that a new age had arrived. This was the reason for the atmosphere of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ in the late 1970s.
In 1977, Huang Rui took part in the first university entrance exams to be held after the Cultural Revolution. He had hoped to enter the Central Academy of Fine Arts, but failed to gain admission. The experience and memory of history made him paint works like The Interrogated (Shoushenzhe); he yearned for the breath of freedom, so he also started to work on landscape oil paintings. In that year, Huang Rui developed close contacts with the poets Bei Dao and Mang Ke. Although painting was his first love, Huang Rui also responded to what was called the New Era in poetry. In 1978, Huang Rui submitted The Interrogated for the Beijing Workers’ Art Creation Exhibition, and finished the painting Fifth April, 1976 (Yijiuqiliu-nian siyue wuri). In October, he together with Bei Dao and Mang Ke initiated the underground publication Today, ostensibly devoted to ‘pure literature’, and on 23 December the first issue appeared at the Democracy Wall in Xidan. Within the next couple of days they had pasted up their own underground publications wherever they thought appropriate. As the magazine’s art editor, Huang Rui had designed the cover in blue, with a picture of a man and woman leaning forward which was not only intended as an image of ‘activism’, but also evoked the propaganda illustrations of the Cultural Revolution. However, these were only abstracted images of youth, not fighters of the working class, peasants or soldiers. The implication of the blue color was clear; blue referred to the sky and infinite space, the space that represented freedom. Huang Rui explained many years later that because people had seen too much red for so many years, blue appeared very precious. In 2006, Huang Rui later described the situation at that time to students in the Department of Historical Theory at the Chinese Academy of Art:
At that time there were people who came to buy the magazine because of the cover I designed. It was 50 fen a copy; and they bought up every issue. We thought a run of 300 mimeographed copies was very advanced. Originally we produced them off with a primitive oil-drum printer, afterwards with roller printers. It was impossible to print six or seven hundred copies, because the text by then had faded to illegibility. When the print-outs were finished and taken to the Democracy Wall in the Xidan area, they sold out immediately. Just because of this blue color? Actually, back then everybody was wearing blue, but even though all clothing was blue, you never saw a book with a blue cover; all books were red or white, but never blue. Ask a child what blue is. Blue means the sky. What is the sky? It’s limitless freedom.
Taking part in the editing and the poetry activities of Today, Huang Rui got to know many people with similar political and cultural ideas. Together, they form a list of important figures in the cultural history of the time: Bei Dao, Mang Ke, Shizhi, Genzi, Duoduo, Chen Kaige, Li Xiaobin, Luo Qun, Wang Zhiping, Shi Tiesheng and others.
Having taking part in vicious political campaigns, young people looked for purity in their artistic efforts. They hoped to avoid what they considered to be ugly politics, and wanted to tend to their own affairs as though they were tending a garden of flowers. Bei Dao wrote in the preface of the first issue of Today:
Today, as the dawn rises from the bloodshed, what we need is colorful flowers, flowers that really belong to nature, flowers that really blossom in people’s hearts.
The Today group was also in contact with other non-official publications, and when they pasted their texts on Democracy Wall, they found that they could not keep their ‘pure literature’ separate from more political articles. Bei Dao and Mang Ke agreed to attend the joint conference of the unofficial journals, which clarified their position on politics and literature, but they also understood their comrades who had retreated from the original credo of Today’s editorial board. After all, they too hoped to live in a free environment. They believed in the utopian dream that resisting oppression did not have to entail a definite political choice. Perhaps even Bei Dao and Mang Ke were not fully aware to what extent life in China is influenced by politics, even now, thirty years later. Huang Rui was to encounter the same problem in connection with the Stars Group Exhibition.
In April 1979, Huang Rui took part in a poetry recital organized by Today in August First Park. He painted the stage backdrops on bed sheets for the poets who, he discovered, wanted to be the central players with the instincts of the awakened young giving free rein to their personalities. Huang Rui came up with the idea of organizing an art exhibition, and initiated discussions with the painter Ma Desheng, whom he had met in connection with publishing Today. They decided that the exhibition should show the works of young amateur artists from Beijing. The theme and format should be open, and works using any kind of material would be allowed. This exhibition became known as the Stars Group Exhibition. Many years later, when the students of the Department of Historical Theory at the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts asked Huang Rui why he chose this name, Huang Rui replied:
During the Cultural Revolution, you could talk about the stars, but you could not do it in public, because the stars did not exist. The reason the stars did not exist was because there was only one sun; that sun was Chairman Mao. The sun was the only thing that shone; Chairman Mao was the only one who gave light. It was like that because the Cultural Revolution only addressed political philosophy, not natural science. Moreover, the stars only appear at night, so the choice seemed very natural at the time, but the stars shine independently and alone. Every single star can exist by and for itself. (2006).
Obviously, Huang Rui, as a poet, and the participants, being painters, were sensitive to the issues their new generation had to face. Once they could only see the sun, in an era that had denied the existence of stars and in which everybody had lost their individuality; an individual’s life was arranged by the Communist Party, and so there was no necessity for stars to exist. Now that kind of life was gone forever, and they realized that the stars had been there all along, even though their existence had been denied. In the past, these ‘Stars’ had always been told that ‘the people’ are the only power driving history, but no-one ever saw who ‘the people’ really were. Now they discovered that the ‘stars’ do not need an abstracted notion of the ‘people’ to shine. A new sense of individual existence emerged simultaneously with the emergence of the notion of the individual pursuit of art. In July 1979, the Anonymous Painters Society (Wuming Huahui, sometimes also called the Anonymity Society in English), which was also organized by amateur young artists, staged an exhibition in Beihai Park, dominated by impressionistic and expressionistic styles. The Beijing Oil Painting Research Association, whose members were mostly professors and professional painters, Liu Xun being one of them, also initiated their own individual activities in Zhongshan Park in April, having received written support from Jiang Feng. In the same year, the landscape artist Wu Guanzhong affirmed his concept of abstract beauty called the ‘beauty of form’ (xingshi mei) in painting in the official magazine Fine Arts (Meishu) and that triggered nationwide discussions about artistic expression. The outmoded political system and its corresponding ideological inertia continued as before, but the restrictions imposed on both language and action began to be incrementally relaxed.
Wang Keping, another member of the Stars Group, documented the birth of the group in his article ‘The Past of the Stars’ (Xingxing wangshi) in January 1989:
The Stars were founded by Huang Rui and Ma Desheng. At the end of 1978, planning and preparation officially commenced, and, later Zhong Acheng, Li Yongcun (Boyun) and Qu Leilei joined the group. I came in later, but ended up becoming a member.
In April, Huang Rui visited the exhibition of the April Photographic Society and met the young photographers Li Xiaobin, Luo Qun and Wang Zhiping. These young photographers used their cameras to record that era, and the painters found some resonance in their photos. After consulting with Ma Desheng, Huang Rui made contact with Qu Leilei who loved to read Today and he also prepared some illustrations for their magazine: then there was Wang Keping, the poet and artist Yan Li, whose father was described as a novelist in the Communist Party, Li Shuang, a female painter who later married a Frenchman, and other young people.[1]
In May, a group of young people held a conference at no.76, Dongsi Shitiao, to prepare for the opening of a show, now officially to be titled the Stars Art Exhibition. A Cheng described the atmosphere at that meeting:
I rushed to the preparatory meeting for the painting exhibition, held in a courtyard in the eastern wing of a moldy courtyard in Dongsi Shitiao. It was at night. Proceedings were lit by a naked light bulb, and the participants glowed like wooden engravings. The closer they were to the lamp, the finer the grain of the carved timber. To the left of the lamp was Ma Desheng, to the right Huang Rui. Both were friendly and passionate and they spoke energetically. The house was full of people and almost all of them were smoking. The smoke wafted out of the house. There were people outside too, standing, and when the discussions moved to important topics, they squeezed into the doorway. The handsome poet Mang Ke offered everyone tea. People were busy inside and outside, taking piles of mimeographed single pages to fold and aligning them page by page. The pages were stapled to together to form Today magazine.
I am not sure, but now I think the name of the exhibition ‘the Stars’ was suggested by Huang Rui that night. I agreed with the name, because it gave people some idea of what the exhibition was about.[2]
In the early summer of 1979, Huang Rui and Ma Desheng went to see Liu Xun, director of the Beijing Artists’ Association, to apply for a permit for the exhibition. Unlike the flexibility of conditions that restricted the printing of illegal publications, an art exhibition required a fixed space and location. In fact, until the beginning of the 1990s, any art exhibition in China had to be approved by the official artists’ associations. On the surface, all local artists’ associations nationwide were ostensibly organized by ‘the people’, but in fact they were all financed by the government. Members were selected according to the decisions of the relevant Communist Party departments, and they had to accept the Party’s guidance in administration as well as in matters of literature and art. To a large extent, the identity of an artist depended on whether he or she could become a member of an artists’ association; otherwise one could only be an amateur. Independent exhibitions did not exist. But the loosening political atmosphere was reflected in the consciousness of these young people, and they almost instinctively thought that their own exhibition should be properly run and legal. They looked around for spaces for the exhibition, but found that they needed approvals and authorizations from artists’ associations. So they found the powerful Liu Xun. Wang Keping described Liu Xun in this way: ‘Liu Xun was prudent and tactful, he had courage and insight. In 1957 he had been denounced as a rightist. He had spent ten years in jail, and his experience led him to support young people’. When Liu Xun went to Huang Rui’s home and saw the young artists’ works, ‘he was very excited and at once expressed his willingness to arrange the exhibition for us’. But Liu also told them that the exhibition halls were already fully booked for the remainder of the year and they would have to wait until the following year.[3]
In light of the Chinese political atmosphere’s ‘inconstancy’ (fanfu wuchang), to use Wang Keping’s phrase, they decided to go ahead right away. They were trying to decide between unofficial sites such as the Democracy Wall in Xidan, the Yuanmingyuan imperial garden ruins, and the front of the Broadcasting Building at Fuxingmen. Wang Keping explained: ‘One day we went to the China Art Gallery to see its exhibitions, and we discovered a small garden on its eastern side and chose it as the venue for our exhibition. To prevent officials from taking precautions, we kept this idea secret’. This situation shows the illegal nature of these young people’s activities, and subterfuge and stealth were par for the course. Among the older generations, only those artists from the 1930s who had dealt with soldiers and police from the Kuomintang Party, such as the engraver Jiang Feng, who was a supporter of the Stars, could understand them.
On 25 September, the participating artists held a meeting at Huang Rui’s house. They fixed the exhibition dates for 27 September to 3 October, because at that time there would be a national art exhibition commemorating the 30th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. On 26 September, Wang Keping and Yan Li rode to the Haidian District to mount posters at the Beijing Exhibition Hall, People’s University, Beijing University, Beijing Normal University and other places, and on 27 September, the Stars Art Exhibition went on show in the park on the street corner to the eastern side of the National Art Gallery.
In their ‘Preface for the First Stars Exhibition’, the participants expressed thoughts that were very different from the standard official artistic requirements. From the official viewpoint, their thoughts were deemed to be liberal (‘the world offers boundless possibilities for explorers’), individualistic (‘we learn to know the world with our own eyes’), and formalist (‘those who fear form simply fear any form apart from their own’). In other words, their thinking was deemed to be unhealthy and dangerous: ‘The shadows of the past and the light of the future overlap and create our lives today. Let us remain resolute as we go on living and remember every lesson learned. This is our duty’. Their political standpoint appeared ‘counterrevolutionary’ in the eyes of the authorities. Ma Desheng captured the mood of the young artists: ‘The art of the world today has entered the time of the stars; the era of the sun is long gone’. [4] The artists’ political standpoint was reflected in the signatures on ‘A Letter to the People’ (Gao renmin shu). The protesters associated with this letter included the art exhibition preparatory team of the Stars, the editorial board of Probe (Tansuo), the editorial board of Beijing Spring (Beijing zhi chun), the art team of Fertile Soil (Wotu) and the editorial board of April Fifth Forum (Siwu luntan). Their final slogan in ‘A Letter to the People’ could obviously be described by the authorities as bourgeois and reactionary: ‘Long live democracy! Long live the people!’ According to the logic prevailing since 1942, there had never been democracy in the abstract. The abstract democracy advocated by the artists was nothing more than the dictatorship of the bourgeois class over the proletarian class, and this type of democracy must necessarily be placed under the control of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Huang Rui showed his works, including Yuanmingyuan (Yuanmingyuan), New Life (Xinsheng), Testament (Yizhu) and Fifth April 1976. The brushwork was expressionistic, but the painter apparently tried to use the image of Yuanmingyuan to symbolize the thoughts he wanted to convey. The participating works stirred an intense resonance and response among the audience.
The friends from the April Photographic Society produced a pictorial record of the exhibition. Surprisingly, Jiang Feng, chairman of the China Artists’ Association, and dean of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, also came to see the exhibition. He told the young people: ‘Art exhibitions in the open-air are a fine thing. One can exhibit inside the art gallery, and one can also exhibit outside the gallery. Artists rise from the within the art academy, as well as from outside the art academy’. In his younger years, Jiang Feng had learned from Lu Xun on tactics for fighting the Kuomintang Party. After the war against the Japanese was declared, he went to Yan’an and began to accept Mao Zedong’s thinking in Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, agreeing that art must serve politics. After 1949, he used the power of the Communist Party to organize the transformation of traditional Chinese painting, and re-organized the departments of traditional Chinese painting in the art academies into departments of color and ink painting that had to produce socialist realism. In the course of the complex political movements and conflicts that ensued, he was labeled a rightist in 1957. In the late 1970s, Jiang Feng had only just been reinstated in his position. At that time, due to his complex experiences, Jiang Feng had a great influence in the art world. As the leader of the China Artists’ Association, he was concerned about the young people’s difficulties. He ordered his secretary to inform the curator, and agreed to stage the exhibition’s works within the grounds of the National Art Gallery, for which the young artists were grateful. That afternoon, Liu Xun also came to see the exhibition, and expressed his support.
On 28 September, when the artists began to hang their works, they encountered several policemen, and soon about thirty to forty policemen in white uniforms had arrived at the scene. They ordered the artists to stop the exhibition and the artists clashed with the police. That day, the head of the Ministry of Culture, Huang Zhen, a student of the artist Liu Haisu held an international press conference announcing ironically that in the middle of October the national literature and art workers’ congress would be held. He told attending journalists that since the Gang of Four had been crushed, artists had been enjoying creative freedom, and art and culture were flourishing on an unprecedented scale. The new state of affairs let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thoughts contend. The spring of the arts had arrived…
On the morning of 29 September, Huang Rui was the first to arrive at the exhibition venue. He discovered that the advertising boards of the exhibition were gone. [5] The policemen in white jackets had confiscated the painters’ works and posted proclamations declaring a ban on the exhibition. The exhibition was surrounded by policemen and plainclothes agents. The artists’ words and activities had now all been placed under scrutiny. The actions of these young people had clearly made the authorities very nervous. Even though Liu Xun communicated with the painters in time, and negotiated a compromise that would have allowed the exhibition to continue, the more radical young people did not want any members of the Stars to compromise. [6] Someone reminded the artists that the important thing was not the exhibition, but the right to artistic freedom. At this moment, the artist Yuan Yunsheng, who was doing a mural at the Capital Airport, also entrusted his assistant Zeng Xiaojun to send the young artists two cartons of Zhonghua brand cigarettes, in those days the most accepted way of expressing support and goodwill.
Urged on by the tense political atmosphere, those involved in the democratic publications and the artists from the Stars Exhibition met that same night at Zhao Nan’s house to discuss an appropriate response. [7] The members of the Stars in attendance were Wang Keping, Huang Rui, Ma Desheng, Qu Leilei, Zhong Acheng, Yan Li and Boyun. During the meeting, Liu Qing reminded the painters that the new constitution guaranteed China’s citizens freedom of speech, publication, association, assembly and demonstration. He told the painters: ‘The constitution is the mother law, the basic law. At present there is no comprehensive Chinese legal system, and it lacks detailed laws to implement the constitution. It is illegal for the Public Security Bureau to use their irrelevant rules to ban the Stars Art Exhibition. Furthermore, once any regulation’s spirit violates the basic law, it becomes invalid’. The upshot was that Xu Wenli urged everybody to prepare for ‘a decisive battle’ (yichang shengzhang). Representing the April Fifth Forum, Xu and Liu Qing suggested holding a discussion on 1 October, National Day, in front of the Democracy Wall in Xidan, to protest against the illegal ban of the Stars exhibition.
The proposal for the protest was put to a vote. Huang Rui expressed his opposition: ‘This could have a negative impact on our exhibition in October. I think it is a victory already if we can exhibit again. Artists should use art to win’. Wang Keping objected: ‘Now everyone is looking to us to plead for justice on behalf of the people. So, we should have the spirit of sacrifice. Restoring the exhibition alone is not a victory and that would simply be appeasing the Beijing Municipal Party Committee’.
Huang Rui later remembered it as follows:
I voted against a protest. The rest of the Stars, Ma Desheng, Qu Leilei and Wang Keping, all endorsed the demonstration, and agreed to Xu Wenli’s suggestion. I objected; I found this too extreme and completely political. I hated politics. I tried not to choose political means, even though I didn’t fear politics. Anyhow, everyone finally decided to hold a demonstration. After the vote I looked at the gathering and said: ‘All right, I surrender’. And so I did participate. Why? Those who joined the demonstration then were all ‘democratic youths’, and they were advocating political democracy. Their excuse was that the works of the Stars had been confiscated unreasonably. If nobody from the Stars participated, especially people like me, then there would be no explanation or follow-up, and the reason for the demonstration would no longer be clear. So I said: ‘All right, I’ll take part. I reserve my opinion that I disagree with the demonstration, but I will go along with you’.[8]
So, a demonstration to ‘condemn the Beijing Public Security Bureau’s Dongcheng Branch for its unlawful action in suppressing the Stars Art Exhibition, and to urge the Beijing Municipal Committee to rectify the incorrect conduct of its Dongcheng Branch’ was held as scheduled. Huang Rui opposed political involvement, but when he found that most of his companions were hoping for a more effective action and attitude, he joined them.
Early next day morning, Xu Wenli and Liu Qing organized their staff to copy the Joint Announcement onto a big character poster and pasted it on the Democracy Wall in Xidan. Another copy was sent to the Beijing Municipal Committee’s First Secretary Lin Hujia. At the same time, Wang Keping, Ma Desheng and Qu Leilei delivered the notice from the Stars Art Exhibition suing the Beijing Public Security Bureau’s Dongcheng Branch, to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in Dongjiaominxiang Street. In the afternoon, when members of the Stars and the people in charge of the unofficial publications met in Liu Qing’s home, Liu Xun came again to negotiate with them, in order to avoid a demonstration. They did not reach an agreement. The young people decided: ‘If the municipal committee refuses to pay attention to this, then we will be resolute in holding the planed demonstration’. It was Liu Qing who came up with the radical slogans and catchphrases for the demonstration: ‘Fight for political democracy, fight for freedom of art!’ Wang Keping thought about the wording and suggested to change the wording from ‘fight for’ to ‘we want’, which everyone agreed on. [9] The designated protest slogans were:
1. We want political democracy, we want freedom of art!
2. The Beijing Municipal Committee must guarantee the citizens’ rights!
3. Banning the Stars is trampling on the Constitution!
4. We strongly urge the Beijing Municipal Committee to deal strictly with the people responsible for the incident of the Stars Art Exhibition!
5. The rights of citizens to carry out social and cultural activities must be guaranteed!
6. Long live the people! Long live democracy!
Huang Rui became one of the front line leaders. [10] At the protest assembly on 1 October, Ma Desheng issued a speech; Huang Rui read the note from the Stars Painting Group to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate to sue the Beijing Public Security Bureau Dongcheng Branch. He and some other members of the Stars and members of the unofficial publications joined the protest march as it approached the municipal office building. Thus the Stars painters eventually participated in an open and dangerous political movement, although their goal had only been to fight for the freedom of their art.
During the demonstration, several hundred leaflets were tossed into the air, and the large horizontal slogan banners were swaying on Chang’an Avenue. The crowds were like a tide. Ma Desheng walking aided by a pair of crutches in the first row of the demonstration left a deep impression on many people. Huang Rui and Xu Wenli, Lü Pu and Bei Dao were leading the march. When a couple of hundred policemen crossed Chang’an Avenue, the crowd dispersed and the protest march of almost a thousand people suddenly dwindled to a group of twenty or thirty. The march was followed by dozen cars belonging to foreign journalists and embassies in Beijing. Besides reporters, many overseas students, foreign experts and diplomatic agents also took part in the demonstration. An ambassadorial attaché of the French Embassy also blended into the procession. The procession was not obstructed. They passed by the Beijing Public Security Bureau and walked all the way to the front of the Office of the Communist Party of China’s Beijing Municipal Committee. People could clearly see the slogans, such as ‘We want political democracy, we want freedom of art’. Here, the speeches were no longer limited to the Stars exhibition. Ma Desheng ‘went from art to politics, from the Stars Art Exhibition to mass public housing’; Xu Wenli then ‘denounced the malpractices of the day, and appealed for democracy’; and Lü Pu ‘used the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought to strike back at the bureaucratic system’. The march for freedom of art eventually became a demonstration for political democracy and, among the young politically sensitive participants, the artists could not refuse involvement. [11] In ‘Our Attitude Regarding the Event of the Stars Art Exhibition’ (Guanyu Xingxing Meizhan shijian women de taidu), issued in Beijing on 7 October, 1979, the young ‘politicians’ expressed it like this:
The Gang of Four is gone; the Cultural Revolution has ended; a new era in the history of the Chinese revolution has begun. At the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party, in the great spirit of liberating thought and developing a socialist legal system and democracy, the newly revised constitution and a series of laws ensuring the people’s democracy were announced and implemented in succession. In all walks of life and in all departments throughout the country, everything is revived and prosperous. It is the same in cultural work. The Stars Art Exhibition is a rising star among the ‘hundred flowers blooming’. Anyone who knows the first thing about dialectic materialist thought will understand that socialist literature and art will flourish not through bans, but only by letting one hundred flowers bloom.
The Stars Art Exhibition was held according to the civil rights bestowed by the constitution, and the contradiction between it and the social administration was completely an internal affair of the people. There were no comprehensive regulations to be applied here, so it should have been possible to resolve the matter through negotiations. But there was no advance consultation. There should certainly not have been forcible closure and banning without any prior consultation, and there should have been no autocratic imposition of irrelevant laws.
We think the essence of the event of the Stars Art Exhibition was the contradiction between executing the constitution and trampling on the constitution, the contradiction between developing people’s democracy and canceling people’s democracy. In this battle to guard the constitution and citizens’ basic rights, we must carry on to the end. And we must make the facts of this struggle clear to the people, and to the world. [12]
In the atmosphere of the time, the Stars exhibition had been temporarily possible politically. Even though the weather was getting colder and colder, on 20 November the painters of the Stars got a notice from Liu Xun, allowing their works to be exhibited in Huafang Zhai (from 23 November until 2 December). People’s Daily (Renmin ribao) also published an announcement of the exhibition. The Stars Art Exhibition was stifled, but had resurfaced; this represented an immense shake-up in Beijing. According to the record of a member of the Stars, from the first day of opening until the return of the exhibition, the number of visitors exceeded thirty thousand; on the last day it reached an audience of eight thousand. Some artists deemed important in art circles, including Jiang Feng, Liu Xun, Hua Junwu, Cai Ruohong, Ye Qianyu, Huang Yongyu, Zhang Ding and Wu Guanzhong, also visited the exhibition. Jiang Feng had told the young participants: ‘Artists can rise up within the art academies or outside the art academies’. This was clearly confirmation of the legitimacy of these illegal amateur artists. Many visitors wrote down excited comments:
Your hearts are full of human dignity, and are the conscience of the nation. History will leave a magnificent page for you, because the people will not forget you.
The most precious thing about the Stars Art Exhibition is that it is like the human spirit that sparkles with all the emotions of mankind.
On the front line flowed my blood, here flow my tears.
Thanks to the Stars Art Exhibition, I have seen human dignity with my own eyes!
Blessed Venus! May there be a bright morning after the stars fall.
Thank you, dear comrades! You are indeed the stars of a new culture; what you call forth is the dawn of art and literature, the morning light of truth. You have used brushes and engraving knives to create new pictures for the people; you are the pioneers of a new culture.
...a newborn power has grown out of the mulch of rotted plants! Young blood, bright colors and lively strokes – ah, this has revived my old man’s heart!
….lucid pens, sharp engraving knives, only the minds and hands of a true person can produce masterworks – the masterworks from blood and tears.
In March of 1980, Fine Arts (Meishu) magazine published an article by editor Li Xianting titled ‘About the Stars Art Exhibition’ (Guanyu ‘Xingxing’ meizhan). This article summarized the views of the members of the Stars during the symposium. Even though Li Xianting also introduced different opinions opposing the Stars, the fact that information about the Stars exhibition could even be published in an official magazine showed that the Stars were acquiring legitimacy. The intention of Li Xianting was clear: to let more people know about the Stars. And he expressed the hope that people would ‘further study’ the Stars.
At a symposium with Fine Arts editor Li Xianting and authors from the Stars Painting Society, Huang Rui said:
We adore life. There are many beautiful aspects of life. Maybe in our art not enough of this beauty emerges, but this is not characteristic. This is because after so many years of being surrounded by a life of reality, we lost those rosy, naïve and beautiful ideals, and in our creative work it was hard to express what Monet did when he was infatuated with the landscape and chased the wonderful fluidity of light. There were historical reasons for this. People had such strong sympathy for us that it was like a fever, because we are all scarred. If we had only relied on our immature artistic expression to convey our understanding of society, we would not have had that effect upon our audience. But we used art to catch a true aspect of life. We painted life to expose reality, and so we achieved results. At the same time, this is also the product of our love of life.
Reacting to the question on the similarity in style between the Stars and Western modernism, Huang Rui argued:
An artist need not necessarily create a particular style, but should keep developing. One can absorb all kinds of genres, such as impressionism, fauvism or dadaism, but if you are not restricted to them in your forms, this is not formalism at all. Personally speaking, I am really not mature and don’t yet have a personal style nor am I capable yet of an integrated presentation. But I hope to keep working and use others’ works as a reference point.
Touching upon the relationship between art and politics, Huang Rui also defended a point of view different from the prevailing one that insisted the arts should serve politics:
Some said that our exhibition was too political, but it was not politics at all. Politics is painting political propaganda pieces. This was not political, but social. When Michelangelo created David, he demonstrated a kind of power. If art becomes just form or technique, then it is not going forward. The Cultural Revolution went to the opposite extreme. Art changed into political phrases and slogans and was just a function of politics.
The truth was that the Stars artists detested the autocratic system which they had experienced. Wang Keping stated at the symposium: ‘Now they say everything was the fault of the Gang of Four, but this convinces nobody’. This standpoint made clear that the Stars knew who the real enemy was. When Ma Desheng said that ‘art in the modern world has already entered the age of the stars, and the age of the sun is over’, everyone could read the political inference. [13] Thus, any statement from their art would eventually become a weapon, like the expressionism of Jiang Feng and his friends in the 1930s.
By the early summer of 1980, when the Stars Painting Society was founded, their ranks had increased: Huang Rui, Ma Desheng, Zhong Acheng, Li Yongcun (Boyun), Qu Leilei, Wang Keping, Ai Weiwei, Yan Li, Mao Lizi, Yang Yiping, Li Shuang, Shao Fei, Zhu Jinshi, Gan Shacheng, Yin Guangzhong, Zhao Gang and others. In that year, through Liu Xun’s introduction, Huang Rui, Ma Desheng and Wang Keping became members of the Beijing Municipal Artists’ Association. This indicated that the right of these young people to engage in creative art had been affirmed; from ‘amateur’ artists they had been turned into ‘professional’ artists. They continued preparing for exhibitions. Jiang Feng personally went to the homes of Huang Rui and Wang Keping to look at the works of the Stars. After his ‘inspection’ of the works, even though Jiang Feng said, ‘The ugly and too abstract ones cannot be exhibited’, the young people’s art obviously made Jiang Feng recall the thirties: pugnacious and advanced, expressive and critical. He did not even object to Wang Keping’s sculpture Idol (Ouxiang). Afterwards, Jiang Feng agreed on a new exhibition of the Stars at the China Art Gallery. On 16 August, People’s Daily once again published an announcement for the second Stars exhibition to be held from 20 August to 14 September. This time, their works were located in the exhibition hall on the third floor of the National Art Gallery. The Stars had finally marched from their own courtyards into the art museum, from the chaotic street corner into an organized exhibition hall. The second Stars Art Exhibition showed about 100 works, including oil paintings, gouaches, water color paintings, sculptures and engravings. It was certainly symbolic; they had started off illegally, evolved towards legitimacy, and had gradually extended their domain. They opened up possibilities for more independent exhibitions and amateur artists’ activities. Huang Rui showed new oil paintings such as Strings Lament (Qin sheng su), Four Seasons (Siji) and Seamstress from the Street Production Team (Jiedao shengchanzu de tiaobuxu nügong). The poet Mang Ke dedicated a poem to him:
song
maybe it’s a dream
you have guessed my heart’s feeling
and expressed it for me
ah, you have cheated
all those countless eyes
The second Stars Art Exhibition was a great success; the sixteen-day exhibition attracted more than eighty thousand visitors. Bei Dao, who had just been transferred to position of editor of the semi-monthly New Observer (Xin guancha), called for contributions on the Stars in the 10 September issue of that journal. In his article ‘Delightful Exploration’ (Kexi de tansuo), the veteran writer Feng Yidai compared the Stars with ‘a pine tree on a mountain road’:
Even though growing in an extremely narrow cleft, its roots extended between two stones far away from the main root, and the tree took hold. Over a long stretch of time, the pine tree absorbed sunshine, rain and dew, and in the shallow soil it established itself and again grew upwards. Now it is tall and erect and has become a mighty tree with many extravagant branches.
In other words, every living creature has a will to survive. He clearly understood the experience and backgrounds of the members of the Stars he knew:
They grew up in a nightmarish and hideous decade; they walked the rough paths of life, yet they still retained their beautiful souls. Like that pine tree on Mount Huangshan, their expectation of a better life and their pursuit of beauty made them take up paintbrushes, knives and chisels, and express their hopes on canvas, in wood and in stone. They took up their paintbrushes and engraving tools to deal ugliness a deathblow, and opened up a new road to a bright future. This required perseverance, blazing hearts, tenacious work and the occasional failure. They went through their training, they probed and they searched. With the myriad colors of their brushes and their strong chisels they accomplished their praise of beauty and expressed their infatuation with life.
Under the pseudonym Aman, Li Yongcun published an article titled ‘The Continuation of the Street-corner Art Exhibition’ (Jietou meizhan de jixu) in which he wrote:
‘Let one hundred flowers bloom and one hundred schools of thought contend’. This was said many years ago, but only today has it been realized. Democracy in the arts may now not just be an empty promise.
In the autumn, students from the Central Academy of Fine Arts invited four members of the Stars to give a lecture at the academy. Invitations then poured in. From late October 1980 until the beginning of January 1981, they visited 26 cities; at the Artists’ Association of Jincheng in Shanxi, then at the Xi’an Municipal Artists’ Association, at the Guiyang Municipal Artists’ Association, the Department of Art at Guangxi Normal College in Liuzhou City, the Guilin Municipal School of Art, and at the graduate students’ dormitory of the Guangzhou Academy of Art they gave a lecture titled ‘The Stars Art Exhibition and Contemporary Art’ (Xingxing Meizhan ji dangdai yishu).
In 1981, as Huang Rui began to change his painting style, the social and political environment also started to change. Li Shuang was arrested because of her marriage to a French diplomat, Democracy Wall was demolished, and Today was forced to disband for observing incomplete procedures for the registration of a publication.
In 1982, the activities of the Stars ebbed, but their individual creative lives continued. Huang Rui did abstract paintings and ink and wash paintings. With the poets Mang Ke, Jiang He and Ling Bing, he travelled to Wutaishan, Beidaihe, Qinhuangdao and other places. Huang Rui met a female Japanese exchange student named Fujiko, and, following A Cheng’s advice, began to read Chinese classics such as Daodejing and scholarly works like 1587, A Year of No Significance. This reading might not have had any direct influence on him, but in the context of his travelling in the south that spring, and ‘possessed by the Chinese feeling for form in the Suzhou gardens’, Huang Rui discovered that these stimuli aroused his interest in expressionism, abstract art and traditional tastes. In 1983, both Huang Rui and Wang Keping were making preparations to marry foreign women, when the ‘Anti-Spiritual Pollution’ political campaign began. ‘Spiritual pollution’ (jingshen wuran) was defined as spreading distrust of socialism, the Communist cause and the Communist Party of China. Given the activities of the Stars, it was impossible for the officials not to keep an eagle eye on them, and the breathing space for the Stars became increasingly confined.
At the beginning of 1984, Li Shuang went to France, as did Wang Keping in May, and in July Huang Rui went to Japan. In the artist’s own words, although he was travelling back and forth between Japan and China, he had already bid farewell to the Chinese art scene.
During the second exhibition, there was this message left by a visitor:
I hope that there will be a sunny morning after the stars fall.
When the night falls again, will the stars rise again in the sky?
It was a sadly prophetic message. But in May 1985, the Progressive Chinese Youth Art Exhibition was held at the China Art Museum. Judging by the ideas presented in the art works on display this exhibition was also a symbol of transition. Skeptical thoughts had been already legitimized and new ‘stars’ began to spring up in rapid succession.
Saturday, 3 March 2007
NOTES:
[1] In ‘The Past of the Stars’ (Xingxing wangshi), Wang Keping introduced the earliest members of the Stars group: ‘Huang Rui worked in a leather factory and was also the artistic editor of Jintian. Ma Desheng prepared blueprints in the laboratories of a foundry and often prepared illustrations for various underground publications. Zhong Acheng had been sent down to the countryside for more than a decade and he was one of the organizers of a strike by educated youth in 1978 at the Yunnan Provincial Production and Construction Militia. On being assigned to return to Beijing, he became a temporary editor at World Books (Shijie tushu). His father was the authoritative film critic Zhong Dianfei. Li Yongcun adopted the nom de plume Boyun, and he had just been accepted as a research student by the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He was the editor of the underground journal Fertile Soil. Qu Leilei was in the lighting department of China Central Television, and his pen sketches often appeared in the pages of underground journals under the pan name Lu Shi. His father was the famous novelist Qu Bo. I worked for the Central Broadcasting and Television Drama Troupe, and I published scripts in Beijing Spring and Fertile Soil.’
[2] A Cheng, Twinkling Stars (Xingxing diandian).
[3] Huang Rui recalls: ‘One of the chairmen of the Artists’ Association was Liu Xun who had been a Communist boy soldier who had met Mao Zedong. During the anti-Rightist campaign he was one of the youngest people arrested as a rightist and was locked up for nine years. In the Cultural Revolution, he was locked up a second time, but after more than a decade was released together with Jiang Feng, who became chairman of the Chinese Artists’ Association. Liu Xun supported young people. He said he would take care of the exhibition arrangements if we could find a venue, now that he was deputy-chairman of the Artists’ Association and in charge of their work. He agreed with our proposal and then wanted to see our documents. Later he rang me up and said that he was looking into the matter, that I needed to supply him with our addresses, and he’d need our work details and political records. So while nothing could be decided and nothing could be done, we then discussed with him when the event would take place and we told him that autumn would be good. And so we then decided to hold the exhibition for twelve days outside the China Art Gallery between 27 September and 7 October’.
[4] Ma Desheng, ‘An Era of Self-reflection’ (Fanxing de shidai) (Article published on 2 November 1988 in Paris).
[5] The notice banning the exhibition was dated 27 September 1979.
[6] From Wang Keping’s notes: ‘At three o’clock in the afternoon, most of the artists of the Stars came to the Huafang Zhai in Beihai Park. Beihai Park is the largest park in Beijing’s inner city; it used to belong to the emperors. Huafang Zhai is a magnificently decorated old courtyard. In the middle there’s a pond with withered water lilies and rippling daylight. Surrounding the pond there are four exhibition halls. This is the permanent exhibition venue for the Beijing Artists’ Association. There were exhibitions one after another and visitors congregated in small groups. In the meeting room in the inner courtyard Liu Xun took out the exhibition list from the Artists’ Association, to discuss the date of the exhibition with us. Liu Xun presented two plans: one was to move immediately to Zhongshan Park and continue the open-air exhibition; the other was to wait until the middle of October, to exhibit in Huafang Zhai. We were unanimous about the second proposal. If the exhibition were to continue in Zhongshan Park, it would look like our exhibition had never been banned, and that we had only been made to change the venue. In the middle of October, the National Congress of Literary and Arts Representatives would be held in Beijing, and this would also be a good opportunity to show the art works to the entire nation. Liu Xun finally suggested that we continue to store our works in the China Art Gallery. There was too much activity in the eastern foyer for it to be safe, but the China Art Gallery had already found us a storeroom. We accepted right away’.
[7] From Wang Keping’s record: ‘Xu Wenli, Liu Qing, and Lü Pu from the April Fifth Forum were there; Lü Jiamin from Beijing Spring; Beidao and Mang Ke from Today; Zhao Nan and Lu Lin from Probe; those from Fertile Soil never revealed their real names, but they were also there’.
[8] Wang Keping’s recollection: Huang Rui said: ‘I disagree with a demonstration. It’s not that I’m afraid, I just think that it would be a big pity if the exhibition didn’t continue. If everyone’s risking their life, then I’ll also join you. I’m the head of the Stars, so if they arrest anyone I should be first in line’.
Acheng saw that the die was cast, slapped me forcefully on the hand, and suddenly stood up: ‘Brothers, I’ll go ahead. Everyone’s comments made a lot of sense, so I won’t bother to say any more. Those from the political work group are investigating me, so I must say good-bye now’.
After Acheng had walked out, the Stars put the demonstration to a vote.
Ma Desheng banged his fist on the table: ‘I’ll go!’
Qu Leilei said with a smile: ‘I think we can propose to protest’.
The representatives of all the samizdat publications also voted. It was unanimously adopted.
Once the decision to hold a demonstration was made, the Joint Announcement was drawn up right away’.
[9] Wang Keping remembers it this way: When the large horizontal sign was erected in front of the Democracy Wall, I had a shock; those big characters I had written last night were gone; the sign was altered to read: March to defend the constitution. I asked Xu Wenli, and Xu said: ‘Last night we reassessed the situation. We thought it was very possible that a large demonstration could break out. So in order not to irritate the officials too much and to get as much support as possible from the open-minded group in high positions, we changed it to read: March to defend the constitution. What you wrote is still on the reverse side; when we walk it will be visible just as before’.
[10] Other front line leaders elected at the meeting were Xu Wenli, Bei Dao and Lü Pu, while the second line leaders were Wang Keping, Liu Qing and Mang Ke. Their strategy was, ‘If the frontline leaders are arrested, then the second line will succeed them’.
[11] On 16 October, Beijing Municipal Intermediate People’s Court secretly brought Wei Jingsheng to ‘public trial’. Qu Leilei from the CCTV Lighting Department told Ma Desheng the news. Ma Desheng notified the members of Probe and April Fifth Forum. Next day in court, Qu Leilei used the small tape recorder Zhao Nan had sent him, and that had been used by Wei Jingsheng before, to record the entire course of the trial. The following day they transcribed the recording, and pasted it on the Xidan Democracy Wall as a ‘big character poster’.
[12] This document was produced through the participation of the samizdat journals and some political dissidents. The article was signed: Preparatory Group of the Stars Art Exhibition, Editorial Board of Today, Editorial Board of Probe, Art Team of Fertile Soil, Editorial Board of Beijing Spring, and Editorial Board of April Fifth Forum.
[13] Ma Desheng, op.cit.
Translated by Dr. Bruce Gordon Doar