Medals and rights: TNR debunks the myth of order in pre-Olympic China
Last month, The New Republic had a fascinating piece by Columbia University China expert Andy Nathan that explained the sticky political situation and human rights violations that went on behind-the-scenes at the dawn of the Olympics.
The efflorescence of creativity that foreign visitors will see in Beijing in August is not a challenge to Party control. It enables that control....the energetic new Chinese art that has caught the imagination of Western buyers, with its pictorial irony and cynicism, repudiation of history, detachment from the world, and love of stunts, is not the challenge to those in power it is sometimes construed to be. Rather, it is a secret joke that the regime shares with the artists and their audience--part of a new social contract that allows the children to have their sly fun so long as the grown-ups run the house.I interviewed Nathan for my last MangoBot feature about China's future. Medals and Rights (The New Republic) ( Lisa Katayama is a guest blogger.)
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"social contract that allows the children to have their sly fun so long as the grown-ups run the house"
Nineteen words that just as accurately summarize the situation in the West.
Patrick, if you think Western art is neutered and faux-controversial, that's nothing compared to what's happening in the PRC. Thank god someone's taking modern Chinese art to task. The Central government and the various local governments in China are still performing horrific abuse of the less powerful members of society. Picture the kind of shameful negligence and corruption the Bush administration practiced after Katrina, except around the clock, every day, for fifty years.
Now that a middle-class has arisen, though, the Chinese government has figured out that so long as you criticize the past, there's really no problem with allowing people to blow off steam, no matter how "daring" the form. Chinese art is a never-ending kitchfest of rage, continually "refuting" and "criticizing" the dead and buried politics of the 60's and 70's, without making any linkages forward in time-- assiduously avoiding references to, say, Tiananmen Square, or to individuals still in power who came up during the end of the Cultural Revolution, or any of the modern problems of China.
Chinese art reflects Chinese society, which, as a whole, has become extraordinarily conflict-averse, and unwilling to challenge the vast abuses of authority that still go on. There are traditional cultural reasons, of course, but it seems to me that half the population is traumatized by the past, and unwilling to stir up the pain they still feel (think Holocaust survivors). The other half-- the artmaking half-- is grabbing as much wealth as they can, as fast as they can, because it's suddenly available. I'm convinced that they also feel the inherent insecurity of Chinese society; they take relatively safe advantage of their freedoms and make as much money as possible.
Very few artists (some photographers and writers) are interested in making political statements. I have sympathy with them, but none for the Western collectors and gallerists who're elevating their dull, safe and awful work.
I wonder. I don't see any Chinese art, and am mostly oblivious to hidden meaning in art (or obvious meaning, for that matter), but I wonder if perhaps there isn't some deeper meaning behind those stabs at long-dead politics, for those with the eye to see it.
Codesuidae: art doesn't have to be political, but if it is, it needs teeth. It's entirely uncontroversial in the PRC to refute the old days-- people talk about it very freely. In any case, it's hardly earth-shattering to say "it's bad to starve" or "weren't those old slogans weird". As a form of rhetoric, criticizing origins doesn't get you very much attention. It does function as code, but its entirely without the power to frame current events. If it had power, it'd be pulled off the wall in a second.
(I can't remember the Chinese author who wrote, "There's no real punk rock in China because if you're a real punk, they arrest you." but it's very true. The government understands the difference between symbols and intentions.)
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