Abstract
This essay proposes that Xu Bing’s artworks, from Book from the Sky to Phoenix, should be seen as engaging larger discourses of twentieth-century Realism operative in the realms of Chinese literature and art. As a concept, Realism has had a local history of shifting meanings in China since it was translated into Chinese as 現實主義 in the early twentieth century. Given its close ties with revolutionary politics, Realism in China has undergone a series of transformations. This article first traces the divergent interpretations of this style that emerged within the Chinese leftist camp between the 1930s and the 1950s, which pointed to different political agendas for China’s future and the resulting political agencies. By contextualizing Xu Bing’s artworks and the textual discourses surrounding them in the social-political context of China since the late 1970s through the present, this essay demonstrates how transformations of Realism in China provide a historical context and a structure crucial for interpreting Xu Bing’s art. From the early 1980s, Xu, among the new generation of Chinese artists, began to break through the dogmatic paradigm of Realism established in China since 1958, by keeping engaged with an ever-shifting social reality in China and the world.
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Notes
- 1.
Chen Duxiu, “Orientation of Today’s Education 今日之教育方針,” Youth 青年 (1915), vol. 1, no. 2: 3.
- 2.
Chen Duxiu, “On the History of Modern European Literature and Art 現代歐洲文藝史譚,” Youth 青年1, no. 3 (1915): 40–1; Chen Duxiu, “On the History of Modern European Literature and Art 現代歐洲文藝史譚,” Youth 青年1, no. 4 (1915): 48–49.
- 3.
See Chen Sihe, “Realism in the Development of Chinese New Literature 中國新文學發展中的現實主義,” Academic Monthly 學術月刊 (September 1986): 42.
- 4.
Hu Feng, “Literature and Life 文學與生活” (1936), in Hu Feng, Complete Works of Hu Feng 胡風全集 (Wuhan: Hubei People’s Press, 1999), 338.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Hu Feng, “Literature and Life” (1936), in Hu Feng, Complete Works of Hu Feng (Hubei People’s Press, 1999), 342.
- 7.
Tong Qingbing, “Hu Feng’s Theory of ‘Subjective Fighting Spirit 胡風的‘主觀戰鬥精神’論,” http://www.aisixiang.com/data/89680-2.html, accessed October 23, 2017.
- 8.
In May 1934, the Chinese Culture Construction Association was established as a peripheral group of the Central Club clique of the Nationalist government. The association’s organizational objective was to use the party-ruling culture of the Three People’s Principles to resist the general cultural movement and launch a Nationalist culture movement centered on “the construction of Chinese culture core.” After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, Zhang Daofan, Minister of the Propaganda Department of the Nationalist government, wrote in his article “The literature and art policy we need,” that the Three People’s Principles [are connected to] “the survival of the whole nation, so our art should take the whole nation as its subject […] According to the Three People’s Principles, who did we create the art for? The nation. In the past, writers usually belonged to a certain class. [But now] we have to be absolutely devoid of any trace of class and create art for all.” See Zhang Daofan, “The Cultural Policies That We Need 我們所需要的文藝政策,” Cultural Pioneers 文化先鋒 1, no. 1 (September 1942): 5–15.
- 9.
Mao Zedong, “Talks at the Yan’an forum on literature and art,” Selected works of Mao Zedong, ed. CCP Central Committee of Publishing (Beijing: People’s Press, 1991): Volume 3: 848–49.
- 10.
Hence the need to criticize Ding Ling and Wang Shiwei in the CCP base, whose writings tended to criticize the class inequalities in Yan’an.
- 11.
Cao Qinghui, “About Xu Beihong’s School of Art Education 徐悲鴻美術教育學派芻議,” Globalization and Nationalization: Xu Beihong Art Research and Artistic Development in 21st Century China 全球化與民族化: 21 世紀的徐悲鴻研究及中國美術發展, ed. Wang Wenjuan (Beijing: Chinese People’s University Press, 2014), 219–41.
- 12.
John Clark, “Trajectories of the National: Xu Beihong and Arthur Kampf in inter-Asian comparison” (2014). I thank Professor John Clark for sharing this paper via email; also see the Chinese version in Globalization and Nationalization: Xu Beihong Art Research and Artistic Development in 21st Century China, 405–24.
- 13.
Earlier in 1933, Zhou Yang published “On Socialist Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism 關於社會主義的現實主義與革命的浪漫主義,” originally published in Modern 現代 magazine. This is the first article that introduced and discussed the method of Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union and its translation in China.
- 14.
Britta Erickson, “The Rent Collection Courtyard copyright breached overseas: Sichuan Fine Arts Institute sues Venice Biennale (2001),” Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, eds. Wu Hung and Peggy Wang (New York: Museum of Modern Art Press, 2010), 368–71.
- 15.
Yang Xiao, “Misreading and Reading of Image of ‘Iron Girl’ ‘鐵姑娘’形象的誤解與解讀,” Chinese Culture Pictorial 中華文化畫報 (May 2011): 38–41.
- 16.
John Clark, “Trajectories of the National.”
- 17.
Qin Zhaoyang (He Zhi), “Realism: A Broad Road 現實主義—廣闊的道路,” People’s Literature 人民文學 (September 1956): 1–13.
- 18.
Deng Xiaoping, “Speech Greeting the Fourth Congress of Chinese Writers and Artists 在中國文學藝術工作者第四次代表大會上的祝詞,” Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (Beijing: People’s Literature Press, 1983), vol. II, 210.
- 19.
For Xu Bing’s experience during this era, see Xu Bing, “Ignorance as a Kind of Nourishment 愚昧作為一種養料,” in My Real Characters 我的真文字 (Beijing: Zhongxin Press Co., 2015), 3–27.
- 20.
Xu Bing’s countryside-themed prints are similar in spirit to the paintings of Yang Gang (b. 1946). Yang Gang spent years in Inner Mongolia’s countryside as an educated urban youth during the Cultural Revolution. He was admitted to the graduate program of the Central Academy of Art when the college entrance exams resumed in 1978 and then joined the Beijing Painting Academy upon graduation in 1981. He painted in a variety of techniques, such as the fine-line drawing (gongbi) style (exemplified by Escorting the Bride 迎親圖), oils, and a more expressionist style of ink washes to portray the scenes and figures of Inner Mongolia. Those works do not express the author’s grievances. Rather, the people and scenes of Inner Mongolia in his paintings are fresh and lively, especially the horses. After the 1980s, Yang Gang continued painting horses, but the meaning changed; this subject matter no longer indexed the memory of educated urban youth, but rather metaphysical references.
- 21.
Xu Bing, “I and my little paintings 我和我的小畫,” Shattered Jade: Xu Bing’s Woodcut Prints 碎玉集 (Changsha: Hunan Art Press, 1986).
- 22.
For Xu Bing’s experience during this era, see Xu Bing, “Ignorance as a Kind of Nourishment.”
- 23.
Xu Bing, “A New Exploration and Reinterpretation of Pluralism in Painting 對複數性繪畫的新探索與再認識,” Fine Arts 美術 10 (1987): 50–51.
- 24.
Hua Tianxue, “Art creation should respond to times: An interview with Xu Bing 筆墨當隨時代——徐冰訪談,” Art Observer 美術觀察 11 (1999): 11–12. This passage has been quoted by many contemporary artists in ways that did not necessarily reference its original meaning in Shitao’s own inscription on his painting. Taken out of its original context, this sentence is only appropriated by Xu as a description of his own idea that art should reflect and criticize reality and must have practical relevance.
Xu Bing has expressed the same ideas in other ways, such as “I found that all I can do is to go along with this era,” in “Xu Bing: Why does the Society Want you to Become an Idle Professional Artist 徐冰:社會缘何要讓你成為一個遊手好閒的職業藝術家,” http://art.china.cn/voice/2010-08/12/content_3656452.htm, accessed November 10, 2016.
He also said, “You can become an infinitely creative artist if you hold fast to the times.” “Xu Bing: Art for the People 徐冰: 藝術為人民,” Chinese Entrepreneurs 中國企業家 9 (2010): 142.
- 25.
Julia Andrews and Shen Kuiyi, Art of Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 93–114.
- 26.
Chen Shaoxiong, Ink Things, 2007, http://www.chenshaoxiong.net/?p=1024, accessed October 20, 2016.
- 27.
The first wave of this intellectual movement happened in the wake of the May Fourth Movement in the early twentieth century.
- 28.
Xu Bing, My Real Characters, 127.
- 29.
See Han Shaogong, “The ‘Root’ of Literature 文學的‘根’,” in The Root of Literature 文學的根 (Jinan: Shandong Art Press, 2001), 135–36.
- 30.
Cang Jie is the ancestral god who created the Han Chinese characters recorded in the Chinese classics.
- 31.
In Xu’s understanding, in traditional China the craftsmen who handled the knowledge of making books for the literati who consumed the texts would be seen as uneducated people.
- 32.
Xu Bing, My Real Characters, 128.
- 33.
In 2012, Ouyang Jianghe wrote a long poem called Phoenix to echo Xu Bing’s Phoenix in the form of poetry: “And then it’s Xu Bing’s turn. Look, he pulled out some parts of a lobster from a bird’s lung, some wafers, indexes, and firepower, (even war is dismantled, he would still assemble the phoenix into an army). He took a dozen external provinces and foreign countries from internal provinces, then an alien space. Space, is originally empty, emptied by him, but he pulled out some real stuff from it. For example, he took out water and electricity of life, but on the aesthetic side, he pulled the plug. He pulled out a small book, put the epic tome in the form of notes: the warehouse of words, emptied. He assembled the king and queen, but removed their reign. He assembled eternal life, yet he gave it to the dead. He assembled the contemporary, but let people remain in the ancient era. Ah, the chrysanthemum lantern in the bright night. The endless sadness. The scarred craft and the salute with eye. When the phoenix fully understood the essence of flying, she chose not to fly.”
- 34.
See “Xu Bing: We go Fast as Times go Fast 我們走得快, 是因為時代走得快,” http://big5.china.com.cn/gate/big5/art.china.cn/voice/2010-04/02/content_3447681.htm, accessed November 1, 2017.
- 35.
For example, Wang Hui, Li Tuo, Lydia Liu and other new leftist scholars have written articles discussing and interpreting Phoenix, giving it high marks. Their articles may be found at www.xubing.com, accessed October 20, 2016.
- 36.
For the detailed story behind the production of Phoenix, see Zhou Zan, Wandering while Flying: The Birth of Xu Bing’s Phoenix 徬徨於飛 – 徐冰<鳳凰>的誕生 (Beijing: Culture and Art Press, 2012).
- 37.
See, for example, Li Yuan’s article “Xu Bing’s ‘Trashy’ Phoenix 徐冰的‘垃圾’鳳凰,” published online on May 28, 2013, as one such review of Xu Bing’s Phoenix which characterized this work as a “realist” representation of “the Social Reality of Contemporary China” at http://ny.uschinapress.com/weekends/2013/05-28/284.html, accessed October 25, 2016.
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YANG, X. (2020). The Changing Paradigm of Realism in China: The Case of Xu Bing. In: Fraser, S., Li, YC. (eds) Xu Bing. Chinese Contemporary Art Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3064-7_10
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