"Our aesthetic rights have been influenced by Western discourse for various reasons, and now the young generation in China has awakened and changed the entire ecology. ”
Our Chinese art ecology is more diverse than that of the West, and it is composed of three art worlds, with historical depth and value tension. ”
In the new era, how can foreign exchanges show the beauty of the Orient? ”
In the previous episode, "The Beauty of the East: Re-establishing Our Aesthetic Rights," we discussed the aesthetics and unique spiritual undertones of the Chinese. In the program "This is China" broadcast by Dragon TV on February 5, Professor Zhang Weiwei, Dean of the China Research Institute of Fudan University, and Professor Gao Shiming, President of the China Academy of Art, once again discussed the aesthetic confidence of Chinese and how to show the beauty of the East.
Gao Shiming: The most prominent way of creating Chinese art, I call it "making the new with the ancient", is a traditional way of evolving and changing from history and creating itself through inheritance.
People often think that Chinese are traditional and conservative, but this is not the case. "Gou is new, every day is new, and every day is new". Chinese talk about innovation, but our innovation has a unique connotation and unique way of Chinese culture, which is different from the West.
Behind the narrative of Western art history is a linear view of history, even teleological. As long as there is teleology, its view of history is closed and not open. So we see that most of the ancient, centuries-old colleges and universities in Europe have lost the inheritance of classical art today. In their understanding, the skills of the Renaissance masters are nothing more than the research objects of art history, the preservation objects of museums and the skills of cultural relics restoration, which are no longer used as a reference and driving force for contemporary art creation, and have little to do with today's creative practice.
Similarly, in the vast majority of non-Western countries, in India, Iran, Turkey, where there are very old miniature paintings, such a tradition has been excluded from the creative system of artistic modernity, either as a cultural heritage in museums, or transformed into folk art stripped of its sacredness, or even reduced to a consumer product of cultural tourism in the Grand Bazaar.
The Charm of Persia - Iranian Miniature Painting Art Exhibition" was exhibited at the Shanghai Art Museum. Source: The Paper.
I think this phenomenon is a great tragedy, because this view of history of modernity is constantly seeking to renew, constantly creating fashion, but also constantly discarding the past and creating new obsolescence.
Such a modernity seems to open up possibilities, but it immediately closes it again, a modernity that is constantly self-emasculating, a kind of "sterile modernity", and behind it is a closed view of history.
In contrast, the creation of the Chinese has always grown and transformed from history and tradition, and it has always been accompanied by the retrospective of history, reflecting a deep understanding of "normal" and "change". The Chinese art tradition focuses on "the poor from the source" and "resisting the ancients", and art education emphasizes "keeping the right and innovating". Today's artistic creation has always been in contact with the ancients, sharing with the sages, and extending with the great tradition.
When we teach Chinese painting and calligraphy today, we still have to emphasize "pro, copy, imitate, and imitate", these four words are by no means simply copied and imitated, but directly related to the great works, and then come out of the machine and create a new face.
"Copying, imitating, imitating, and imitating" is not only a means of education, a method of learning, but also a creative link full of agency. These four words point to the different modes of operation and different learning states of the ancients and the masterpieces, and are a kind of "self-renewal way" formed in the cycle of history and in the ancient and modern rewards.
Therefore, the classic transmission of Chinese art is by no means clinging to the defects and blindly sticking to the ancients—we not only "resist the ancients" and "become disciples of the ancients", but also "fight the ancients in blood" and "make the new with the ancients".
Because of this, our Chinese painting and calligraphy still have strong vitality and creative energy in today's academy, in today's art world, and in today's society. For Chinese artists, history is still alive today, and it is still an important part of "Chinese contemporary".
Folk masters use water to write calligraphy on the ground.
I often discuss the issue of "China contemporary" with my friends in the contemporary art circle, and in the past few years, I have often chatted with European and American curators and museum directors, and I say that our Chinese art ecology is more diverse than theirs. They think I'm crazy, and everyone will think it's very strange, because the word pluralism seems to have always been spoken in Europe, the United States, and the West.
But I discovered 20 years ago that multiculturalism in the West has lost its critical character and has become a governance technique, and in recent years it has reached a dead end of so-called "political correctness". Issues such as race, skin color, and gender equality will immediately cease to be extinguished as soon as they encounter a truly open secret within the West.
The art scene in contemporary China is a very complex historical construct, and in short, it is composed of three art worlds. The first of these three worlds is what we call the traditional art world, represented by calligraphy and painting, which is still alive and well in contemporary times. These calligraphers and painters, they represent the traditional art world, and if you understand the fate of the "pre-modern" art of most non-Western countries, such as the fate of Indian, Turkish, and Iranian miniature painters I just mentioned, you will know how valuable the preservation of the traditional Chinese art system is.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, a complete set of institutions was formed, mainly the Artists Association, the Academy of Painting, the National Art Exhibition, and thematic creation, which is what we usually call "art within the system". Although there are all kinds of criticism in the art world, this second world is indeed very good, and some people say that China is the country with the largest number of painters in the world, mainly referring to this group.
The third art world is the so-called global "contemporary art", which consists of galleries, biennials, contemporary art museums and contemporary art museums around the world, as well as art fairs and auction houses.
In the contemporary European and American art worlds, there is actually only one art world at the moment, which is what we call the world of contemporary art. In contemporary China, each of the three art worlds has its own medium, its own battlefield, its own cultural logic, and its own value system. Are we richer than they are? Are we more diverse than they are? Moreover, these three (art) worlds are not separate from each other, but rather there are three cultural contexts in contemporary Chinese art, which are contextualized and unfolded separately, and they are intertwined and infiltrated by each other.
The art field of contemporary China is dynamically constructed by these three veins and three worlds, forming a very complex and pluralistic dynamic mechanism, which is a kind of structural plurality, which carries the depth of history and the tension of value. Interestingly, most of China's most accomplished avant-garde artists, since the '80s, have been travelers between these three art worlds. It is precisely because of such a structural pluralism, precisely because of the three art worlds and the world of folk art, that they construct and strengthen each other, and that such a dynamic mechanism makes contemporary Chinese art vibrant, full of vitality and full of energy.
A few years ago, the artistic director of the Venice Biennale, Ralph Rugoff, came to China to select artists. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu went around and finally came to Hangzhou. I asked him what he thought of his first systematic investigation of Chinese contemporary art. He replied: "Full of energy, but lacking in quality". I then asked him, "So is energy or quality important today?" I also added in particular, "globally." He thought for a moment and said bitterly: "Unfortunately, energy is more important".
Indeed, on a global scale, the energy of art is far more important. And there's one more point that's extremely important, and that's probably our topic for the next time. Energy is not in dispute, but quality is arguable, because all cultures, all values, are born of struggle.
Roundtable discussion. Moderator: In his speech, Dean Gao talked about a concept, energy and quality, and energy is more important. In our program, we also talked about the game "Genshin" that young people like very much, especially foreign young players, in this game, they understand China's solar terms, food, geography and culture, history, literature, etc., so players all over the world play and play, and they also enter the spiritual world of Chinese. Do you think games and other titles are a good interpretation of energy?
Zhang Weiwei: Yes, in fact, the Chinese culture promoted by young people is "going out", including games, including short **, and now the five most commonly used apps by Americans, four of which come from China, are actually China's cultural soft power.
It can be said that as long as a foreigner likes Chinese games, Chinese film and television works, Chinese songs, Chinese online literature, Chinese products, etc., he is generally more friendly to China in judging major issues. This can be seen from the polls, which show that the elderly, those who rarely use the Internet and use smartphones are more hostile to China, while the proportion of young people who have a favorable opinion of China is much higher.
Gao Shiming: Yes, I heard that there will be an epic game called Black Myth: Wukong recently, which has been a crushing success at Gamescom, the top game in the West. It is made and shaped with a very large number of images that come from classical art and sculpture, including architecture. The creator of this game graduated from the first studio of our oil painting department, he studied art, but he did not paint oil paintings, but made games, and implanted the profound heritage of Chinese art in the game. Therefore, it has directly won the popularity of Western gamers, and it is sought after by veteran players, ranking first in the game rankings for a long time.
Zhang Weiwei: The last time I met one of the founders of miHoYo, I asked him how many art graduates, including artists or painters, work with them? He said it was about 1,500 people.
I think the West has done a better job in some aspects because it has made a sense of luxury. Now our immersive game products are also starting to make a sense of luxury, including the entire scene of Liyue in Genshin Impact, with the scenery of Zhangjiajie and other places in the background, which is extremely beautiful, and there is a kind of poetic rhyme in the **, language, vocabulary, etc. I don't really know about games, but from an aesthetic point of view, from an aesthetic point of view, it's a real cultural confidence, and I think that's very good.
Gao Shiming: I think it's been a lot better in the past few years. I used to be very wary, for example, "Kung Fu Panda", the panda is Chinese, in a sense it is a symbol, but I always feel that "Kung Fu Panda" is essentially a black teenager on the streets of San Francisco. The West uses our Chinese image, symbols, and resources to make money, and the biggest box office is in the Chinese market, but behind the film is the Western story and Western values.
Kung Fu Panda tells the story of an American teenager growing up. I think there is a "Trojan horse scheme" behind this, that is, a cultural "Trojan horse scheme", which is worthy of our attention. Over the years, we have found that more and more young friends and creators are taking the initiative in all walks of life, and this situation is gradually changing.
In the final analysis, "Kung Fu Panda" is still an American inspirational story (data map).
Host: Is the beauty in the eyes of the Chinese our own aesthetic decision, is it defined by the Chinese themselves, and how do we do this well?
Zhang Weiwei: In a sense, we need to take back our own aesthetic rights, or rebuild our aesthetic rights. Because of various reasons in recent years, our aesthetic rights have been affected by Western standards and Western discourse for a long time, and it is intentionally and deliberately, causing many of our cultural people to be unconfident and unconfident in aesthetic standards.
In the past, there was a very famous American scholar named Said, who raised the question of Orientalism. I think his core point of view is defensible, he said that the West should define aesthetic rights, what is beautiful and what is not beautiful, and he comes to help Chinese define it, which leads to a lot of problems. Said was referring to the whole of the East, for example, "Miss Saigon", one of the most famous ** plays on Broadway in New York at the time, which was very high at the box office, but the story in it was completely Western. A Vietnamese girl, her parents were killed by the U.S. military, she became a prostitute, she met the American soldier who killed her parents, and fell in love, the American soldier later left Vietnam and married another white woman, but when he returned to Vietnam, this Vietnamese woman was still loyal to him, and finally tried every means to get her children to the United States, seeking the American dream, such a story.
The Western definition of Asian women here is typical of Orientalism. Not to mention the image of Fu Manchu in Hollywood movies in the past, even Charlie Chan (Charlie Chen) is like this, he is still a relatively positive image. Charlie Chen is a detective, but his image is actually very obscene, walking a little girly, and does not have the positive traits of Asians, especially the heroism and sense of justice of Asian men, which must belong to white men. These things have influenced many Chinese cultural people, especially in contemporary art and film, without cultural self-confidence, picking up people's teeth and dwarfing themselves, which is not good.
Broadway drama "Miss Saigon".
Gao Shiming: The incident that Mr. Zhang talked about is essentially the manipulation of an emotional desire mechanism in the West. When we see a landscape, people see it as a landscape, and they also start to "climb and hike", then we lose our independent aesthetics. Aesthetics is the relationship between man and the world, and in this regard, its importance cannot be underestimated. It is not an extra wind and snow, but a celestial occasion for the Chinese.
In fact, this involves the issue of "decolonization" of our aesthetics. Not long ago, I went to Paris and Milan to inspect their fashion systems, to see their "pyramid tops", their power structures.
I went to a workshop of haute couture designers with 50 employees. I asked, how many of your customers are you? He said there were 150 people in the world. How many people are in China out of 150 people in the world? He said twenty or thirty. How much does it cost? Between €200,000 and €1,000,000.
But everyone knows that haute couture clothing is only worn for one night, and everyone only wears it for two or three hours at such a high price, which is the so-called "pyramid tip". Then some elements of haute couture are extracted, popularized, and turned into high-end ready-to-wear, and the price of this high-end ready-to-wear is 1Between 50,000 euros and 200,000 euros, it is actually much higher than what we call "global brands", and below that are the so-called "big luxury brands".
I have done research on these "big luxury brands", and their so-called "century-old stores" were tailors back then, and it took decades for them to truly become a global brand. Through two rounds of globalization in the twentieth century, a value system and a business empire were constructed. What's the problem? It's injustice in the **? Their production is in Dongguan, Zhejiang, China.
The laborers there, including those from Vietnam, earn every penny. The boss of a piece of clothing in China and the boss in Vietnam earn 3 percent, and more than 70 or 80 percent is composed of brand value. This brand is a symbolic value, its symbolic value, symbolic value and copyright system control all this, dominate the industrial chain, but the key is that its consumers are in the **? Its largest consumers are in the countries of production. The reason why they have become such expensive luxury goods and global brands is precisely because they are screened out by the global market in the producing countries that make money on a penny.
Moderator: Dean Gao gave the example of luxury, which is a very vivid case to let everyone know how lethal the right of definition is, so why should we put the right to define aesthetics in the hands of others?
Zhang Weiwei: Now a better phenomenon is that the young generation of China has awakened, you look at the Shanghai Auto Show, this is the world's largest auto show, everyone is looking at new energy vehicles, and mainly Chinese brands, because now Chinese young people have become the absolute main force in buying cars, young people are already buying domestic brands, they don't buy imported cars, and Chinese young people are now buying cars through the app to see a variety of test drive evaluations, this culture in the West has not yet, which has changed the entire ecology, This standard escalation stemming from Chinese consumer culture will affect the entire outside world.
Gao Shiming: The ecology is more diverse, and the value is more diverse.
Moderator: In the past, this kind of design and experience was mastered by a small number of people, but now more and more people are experiencing it, and buyers can talk about their own experience in the future, which is more diverse.
Zhang Weiwei: So now the West is a little worried, the box office of Hollywood movies in China has fallen sharply, Chinese's own films have caught up, this situation has been several years in a row, in addition, the sales of major Western luxury brands in China are also declining, many people in the West are beginning to worry, Chinese young people have their own aesthetics, have this aesthetic confidence, up to us to define what is beautiful.
Audience interaction. Audience: I'm a civil servant from Qingpu, Shanghai. We have a lot of beautiful villages in Qingpu that show the national tide culture, and I hope that Dean Gao and everyone will have the opportunity to take a look. I noticed that Dean Gao has a very high opinion of Zao Wou-ki's paintings, how can we see the exchange of Chinese and Western aesthetics from his paintings? Are there some artists abroad who pay more attention to the integration of different cultures?
Gao Shiming: In 2006, I curated an exhibition in Qingpu, in a water town, called the Yellow Cube, which corresponds to the White Cube, and we know that all the gallery spaces and art museum spaces in the West are white cubes, but in fact, they exclude reality from the outside, forming a pure space, a sacred space, and anything that is put into it is valid.
But the concept of the Yellow Box at that time was a Chinese-style space, and the Yellow Box was an art that was ambushed in the everyday, and your mention of Qingpu reminded me of this past.
You talked about Zao Wou-Ki and the issue of mutual learning between civilizations, and we are now doing an exhibition of Zao Wou-Ki's paintings around the world. I didn't expect that the exhibition would cause such a big response in the circle of the general public, originally many people thought that he was an abstract painter and could not understand abstract paintings, but I didn't expect it to be overcrowded, and many people saw it more than once.
In 1964, Zao Wou-Ki was in his studio in Paris, and behind him was the upcoming "2909.64.》。sydney waintrob / studio budd.
**In 2014, when attending the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France in Paris, France, the President mentioned "Zao Wou-ki's paintings of Chinese and Western styles", which is the meaning behind the mutual learning between civilizations. Zao Wou-Ki's inspiration to us is that his artistic roots are Chinese oracle bone inscriptions, Chinese Lao Tzu, ancient artifacts, and so on, but he found his roots in Chinese culture in Paris, and it was Cézanne who helped him become a Chinese artist again, just like his teacher Lin Fengmian, our first principal, who discovered the East from the West, which is a vein of him.
In a pattern of mutual learning between civilizations, he has created modern art with Chinese cultural roots. For quite some time, Zao Wou-Ki was regarded as the leading figure of European lyrical abstract painting, but through this exhibition, a large number of international scholars, guests and collectors realized that his roots were in China, and that he had roots in Chinese culture.
If you ask the West, is there such a kind of mutual learning of civilizations? Of course. When Zao Wou-Ki went to Paris in 1948, the West had already gone through more than half a century of Orientalism.
There is an element of Orientalism in modernism, they yearn for exotic Oriental cultures, including Manet, they also studied ukiyo-e, Van Gogh also painted ukiyo-e, and the same primitivism, such as Picasso. Picasso is certainly the most successful artist, a mythical artist, but everyone knows that Picasso's studio is full of black African masks, and he does borrow elements of black African sculpture in his paintings, but why don't people say that he copied it? You go to Africa today and there are masks and sculptures that are displayed on street stalls as souvenirs, and some of them are in museums, and this museum is a museum of cultural anthropology, which is not considered high art.
Why is this happening? What is the problem? Authoritative in **? Authorship in **? As a European artist, Picasso borrowed elements from black African carving. If a Chinese artist were to do that, it would be imitation and plagiarism, but the authorship was with Picasso, not with the nameless black engraver. This is cultural, aesthetic colonialism.
Zhang Weiwei: This is actually the Eastern and non-Western origins of Western art, which can be a good topic to study. In fact, there have been quite a few research results, once I went to The Hague in the Netherlands to give a lecture, and they said that China is quite modern, but why not accept Western modernity, "modernity" is a very sacred word in the West, as if only the West has it.
I said I suggest you go to the Dutch Porcelain Museum in The Hague, I went to see it, the Dutch imitated Jingdezhen porcelain for more than 100 years, including the craftsmanship of porcelain and the exquisite Chinese patterns on porcelain, what is the philosophy behind it? It was the impetus for the European Enlightenment, which wanted people not to focus on God and God, but to focus on human life, to be human-oriented, not God-oriented.
Our porcelain patterns depict human life, helping the old and loving the young, the elderly fishing, and children playing. At that time, Western art works were depicting stories from the Bible, which was a great enlightenment, and it was a realistic attitude, and there are many studies that can prove it.
Part of the collection of the Dutch Porcelain Museum.
Gao Shiming: I think you can compare the cases of Picasso and Zao Wou-ki. In a sense, there is cultural hegemony behind Picasso's example, and Zao Wou-Ki took the initiative to discover the East from the West, and then constructed a modern style that has been recognized and accepted by the world art world, which is a case of Chinese modernization in art.
If we want to spread our Chinese art to the world, it may not be all Song and Song paintings, for the West this is a great Chinese tradition, but it has little to do with our lives and today's artistic scenes, so in this regard, I think Zao Wou-Ki is a good case.
In the same way, as Mr. Zhang said, since the 18th century, Europe has been influenced by China in porcelain, gardens, decorative arts, etc., but for them, Chinese style is still only a kind of cultural compensation, which is different from the national tide we talk about today, which is an aesthetic trend and a fashion that a generation of Chinese young people have taken the initiative to construct. The core issue here is the subjectivity and aesthetic sovereignty of culture.
Zhang Weiwei: Yes, the cultural awakening and cultural consciousness of young Chinese people today is of unusual significance, because it is the cultural self-confidence and cultural consciousness formed in the context of China's high degree of openness and a lot of contact with the outside world, which is different from the past.
Audience: How do we show these oriental beauties in our foreign exchanges in the new era, and do we need a certain cultural background and knowledge accumulation to understand these oriental beauties?
Zhang Weiwei: I think some of them may require some cultural accumulation, such as understanding and appreciation of Chinese calligraphy. Why calligraphy is mainly spread in East Asia, mainly in Japan, South Korea and other places where the Chinese circle or is greatly influenced by Confucian culture, I think it requires a certain amount of knowledge, if you really study Chinese calligraphy, its degree of artistic maturity, its level of beauty, is definitely no less than Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa", but most foreigners can't appreciate it, because he doesn't understand Chinese characters.
But there are many that don't require much cultural accumulation, for example, we always repeat some basic elements, such as cheongsam, fan, green tea, acrobatics, kung fu and so on. I think that with the awakening of the younger generation in China, especially now mainly through the Internet, our cultural products are too rich, there are almost no boundaries, and foreigners often intuitively think that this is good-looking, this is fun, and then start to learn Chinese, or learn the pronunciation of some Chinese characters. So I don't think there's any particular boundary.
We now talk about spreading Chinese culture and so on, but in fact, the basic truth is very simple, only what you really love and like, you can confidently spread it, and this kind of communication will affect foreigners. For example, for a small drama, due to various reasons in China, the audience is very small, and you have to take it abroad to become popular, which is quite difficult, but if you do it well in China, let young people do it with creativity, and let people with artistic inspiration do it, the effect may be completely different. Once it becomes popular at home, it will often become popular abroad, and this is the power of the "civilized country" I am talking about.
Gao Shiming: We used to do the international dissemination of aesthetic culture, why wasn't it so effective? You always associate with people with your most unique things, and everyone thinks you're unique, and that's it. The core is not uniqueness, but whether there is a kind of excellence in uniqueness.
First, whether this excellence can be communicated and accepted. Second, whether this excellence can form a commonality, and we will find that we emphasize common values over the years. Common values are not "universal values", "universal values" are hegemonic and uniform, while common values are negotiable, which are slowly constructed and occur in the dynamic process of exchanges. How to make the beauty of the Chinese, the aesthetic taste and character of the Chinese become a common value and a shareable value, this is the key, which requires us to restore our very unique things into our common things in a sense, I think this can be developed.
Zhang Weiwei: Let me add another example, we are now talking about cultural self-confidence, which includes China's contemporary modern culture and socialist culture, so the red culture should also be self-confident. For example, our classic red ballet "Red Detachment of Women" went to Europe for performance, I was still in France at the time, and it was difficult to find a ticket, and I couldn't book a ticket two weeks in advance.
Second, as long as there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor in this world, and there is exploitation and oppression, this kind of red classic will be welcomed. It was so that you couldn't buy tickets in Paris or Lyon at that time. Therefore, we should have confidence in red culture, what everyone likes in China, foreign countries often like it, I have always said that foreign students in China should be taught to sing red songs, so that they can understand the history of the struggle of the Chinese people.
Gao Shiming: One thing that comes to mind, between the 1920s and the 1930s, there was a story all over the world, which was "Roar, China!" 》（roar china）。This "Roar, China! The author, first translated as Tieczech, was a Soviet poet who wrote a long poem, which was later turned into a play, which was staged in Moscow, and later in Tokyo and New York.
When it was staged in New York around 1930, there was a scene that was so moving that critics said it was the first time that New Yorkers had heard so much non-standard English in its mainstream theater. Why? Playing the Chinese laborers is an Asian from New York. It was at that time that all of a sudden, through "ROAR China", an international association was formed, and people from different Asian countries staged Chinese workers to convey China's struggle and anger. It's a very touching piece of history.
Zhang Weiwei: Including the black American singer Robertson singing "March of the Volunteers", it touched countless people.
Gao Shiming: During the Yan'an period, we had such a hard time, why did we win an emotional recognition and empathy from so many intellectuals and so many artists around the world? Why did so many elite intellectuals rush to Yan'an? Actually, we have to study this matter very seriously.