The Quest for Modernity in Art in Late Twentieth Century China: An Examination of the Discussion on Modern Art in 'Meishu zazhi' (Art Magazine) from 1979 to 1989.

摘要

The first names that come to mind when one talks about "Chinese modern art" are the group of high-profile Chinese artists, art critics, curators and theorists, including well-known names such as Wang Guangyi, Xu Bing, Gao Minglu, Li Xianting, Lu Peng etc. Their current standing within the Chinese art circle is almost indisputable. In terms of the study of the development of Chinese art in the post-Cultural-Revolution era, their theories and research have been well-established, and widely adopted by other scholars. Ever since 1990, their publications, exhibitions and symposiums have centered on a group of young artists, who borrowed from Euro-American modernist artistic styles and views to create in the post-Mao period. Furthermore, such art critics-curators have coined these artworks as "Chinese modern art" and "Chinese contemporary art". However, these art critics-curators have yet to come up with appropriate definitions for the notions of "modern" and "contemporary", allowing them to be used in confusing and ambiguous ways at times. Since the 1990s, the majority of their research, publications and exhibitions on "Chinese modern art" have developed into fixed models, with set participating artists and contributors. At the same time, certain arguments within such discourses are deemed unconvincing and far-fetched. In view of such issues, this paper begs to ask---whether the "Chinese modern art" that we have come to know nowadays, is a truthful representation of modern art in China? Under such circumstance where "Chinese modern art" seems to be a "modern art" history of a selected few; and, as these art critics-curators carry on professing their view however authoritatively, if we want to formulate a more objective understanding and commentary on the "Chinese modern art" that we now know of, we will need to start afresh in our understanding of the political and cultural climate in the 1980s, and the various relations within the art field at the time.;Meishu, published by the China Artists' Association, provides us an entry point in which the political and artistic situations in the 1980s can be examined. An analysis on the articles and the contributors reveals that there were three different art circles, each formulating their own interpretation of "modern art", in accordance to the political climate and the nature of their own artistic field. They have been discussed in this paper as "Officialdom", "Modernization of Chinese traditional painting" and "New Trends in Art"; among which, "New Trends in Art" became the "Chinese modern art" in today's term. Hence, the landscape of "Chinese modern art" in the 1980s was different from today's situation. To understand why there was such a difference, then, concepts of "fields", "habitus" and "cultural capital" proposed by the French social theorist, Pierre Bourdieu, can be adopted as analytical tools. All in all, through literary review of Meishu, with the support of sociological theories, this research offers a different angle to dissect the meanings and inner values of "Chinese modern Art", and allow us to further reflect on the various issues in relation to "cultural production", "cultural power", and "the practice of writing art history."