Cultural-specific and international influences on and critical perceptions of five Asian installation artists: Gu Wenda, Yanagi Yukinori, Xu Bing, Miyajima Tatsuo, and Choi Jeong-Hwa (China, Japan, Korea).

摘要

The study of installation art principles and practices in Europe and the United States lays the theoretical frame to compare five Asian installation artists' statements to European and U.S. critical reviews of the work. The major research question addressed in this study is: how do descriptions by the five selected Asian artists of their work compare with perceptions held by influential European and U.S. critics? From insights into the discrepancies the study interprets possible reasons for these discrepancies.; Four key concepts that developed in installation art after the 1960s—site-specificity, viewer participation as theatricality, syntheses of media and disciplines, and installation art as social critique—serve as the analytical tools and theoretical frame for the study. Using a semiotic approach to examine cultural, social, economic, and political conditions evidenced in the writings about installation art, the study suggests that key concepts developed in Europe and the U.S. are broadly applied in the installation works of the five selected Asian artists. The artists have shown particular interest in using installation art as a means to recreate reality and critique social and political structures. However, their work differs from installation art created by European and U.S. artists in their eclectic use of both cultural-specific elements and references to target international audiences.; Critics who influence international recognition are primarily from European cultures. They tend towards certain conceptual patterns in their approach to the five Asian artists' installations. Some critics emphasize subject matter and content rather than form, technique, or material and in so doing stereotype Asian cultures. Some tend to apply categories derived from canonized theory and art history perpetuated in Europe and the U.S. These tendencies, in part, account for the discrepancies in viewpoint between the critics and artists. On the other hand, these can also be attributed to the intentions and approaches of the five Asian artists. Some of the artists in this study challenge these works contain profound meanings and complex ideology. Some tend to emphasize the quality of “uncertainty” in their art. Some make monumental statements about their works with which critics simply disagree. Consequently, the causes for discrepancies between the five Asian artists' perceptions of their own work and those held by critics are complex and vary by context.