From Chen Danqing's Criticism of Bing Xu
These activities mocked the rigid rules of novelty, terror and gangs, the hypocrisy of "everyone can be an artist" in western ready-made art, the "popularization" against the masses, and the special aristocrats with dead logic and special civilians with fresh spirit. These activities really return the popularity to the public in a way that the public likes to see and hear, and show a fresh vitality and modern vitality in the voluntary and heartfelt participation and carnival of the public.
Bing Xu said in an interview: "I am very interested in contemporary art, and I have accepted the baptism of this system and actively participated in it, but only after I participated did I know that this system is actually equivalent to a' dilemma'. I began to feel too tired, too bored and too tired of this system. " ①
After watching the interview, Chen Danqing said: "Bing Xu's interview is very clear and insightful-but dishonest." Because "he not only belongs to this system, but also is in the mainstream", he criticized that system, "I don't know why he said that? Either he really thinks so, which makes me a little surprised "; "Either he knows, but at the same time he knows that someone in China wants to listen. I wouldn't be surprised. " "It is not true, irresponsible and dishonest to talk about how great and correct the West is, or that the West is in a mess and fooling around." ②
Chen Danqing didn't finish. More than two years later, he said, "I am surprised that he will completely deny the western contemporary art after Duchamp." "I always feel that these words should be said to the West, not to my domestic counterparts." . ③
Chen Danqing seems to have decided that Bing Xu is putting on a show.
In fact, criticism of an art system is very common in the history of art. Impressionism, post-impressionism, cubism and fauvism ... are all in the western oil painting system, which system do you criticize? As a disciple of Duchamp, Bing Xu criticized Duchamp's artistic system, which is no different from the above phenomenon.
It is not only art, but also virtue's "killing ancestors" and burning scriptures is not to set up another system outside Buddhism. On the contrary, it is purely a question of Buddhist "system" and has entered the "mainstream".
Chen Danqing didn't understand what Xu Bing meant. What Bing Xu said is consistent with what he did (especially his Introduction to New English Calligraphy).
Bing Xu's "Curse the Buddha" is mainly aimed at "the serious dislocation between the expresser and the receiver of contemporary art", and "Duchamp equated art with life, leaving artists with a special status of" nobility ".
What do Bing Xu's words and deeds mean? It means restoring Duchamp from the perspective of the relationship between art and the public, and restoring Duchamp in an anti-Duchamp way, which means looking for the "truth" of a certain aspect of ready-made art in the process of cleaning up contemporary art.
The so-called non-easel art is the art beyond easel painting and easel sculpture, such as installation art, earth art, packaging art, body art, performance art, event art, accident art, concept art and so on. Its founder is Duchamp.
According to Duchamp's question, it is to ask the boundary between art and ready-made products. There are two directions: 1. All ready-made products may be works of art as long as we treat them with an artistic attitude. This is mainly reflected in the work "Spring" (changing the display environment and changing the display direction of the toilet); All works of art may be ready-made products, as long as we treat them with the attitude of ready-made products. This is mainly reflected in L.H.O.O.Q (replica of Mona Lisa with beard). So, what do you mean by the consequences? It means that everyone can regard themselves and everything around them as art, so everyone can become an artist, which means the popularization of art.
What about the facts? The opposite is true. Although postmodern spokesmen generally like to say that "the value of a work is the same as the value of a bottle of perfume and a pair of shoes", "lowering a work of art to a practical height, or raising a practical height to the height of a work of art", "taking the audience as the center" and "the participation of the audience is crucial" (5), everyone is an artist, and art is not superior, noble or vulgar.
What makes popularization the opposite of the masses? Money!
However, if commercial power wants to be the power to manipulate art history, it must find a dividing point in art history, and from this dividing point, establish a set of rules of the game of non-frame art academically. This demarcation point was first provided by Duchamp.
Duchamp denied the purification itself according to the process of artistic purification. This process could be peaceful, but Duchamp did not. He used gangsters to desecrate all civilizations to realize this same historical subject.
Any ready-made product can be selected, and he prefers the toilet; The Mona Lisa can be reworked any way, but he just added two beards to the girl. Therefore, he explosively raised an important historical issue: the limit of purification is the death of art itself, that is, the mixture of art and non-art.
The further the history goes, the more important Duchamp's significance becomes. Almost all ready-made works of art are in that toilet.
With the appreciation of Duchamp's position, his gangster style has also appreciated. Gangster style has become the most fashionable means of post-modern art, and it is precisely the power of business that most powerfully affirms the gangster way.
Duchamp's negative power to art is also a great power to affirm art, so artistic creation has opened up a vast territory of bookshelves. These territories, like easel art, can judge the advantages and disadvantages, and even have the distinction of tasting, just because the gangster style is as popular as the plague, making all tasting futile.
Postmodern art flourished after the Second World War, especially in the 1960s, after American art dominated the world trend. It was during this period that commercial power took the lead in becoming a big country that actively interpreted ready-made art in the United States.
Ready-made art is an art that everyone can participate in. Only because of the different handwriting of the participants can we see the experts and mediocre talents, but it takes a long time to learn and taste, while commercial speculation needs immediate advertising effects. Therefore, we must find a faster and more effective scale, and we can win the first place from the crowd at once. This scale is a novel and strange way to add gangsters. It doesn't need much knowledge and talent to use this scale, but it mainly needs to compare information in the computer. Indeed, many works of art that are not on the shelf cannot be bought or sold. The reason why commercial forces have eternal enthusiasm for the interpretation of non-easel art is mainly to buy advertising benefits. Once the novel, shocking and gangster way is associated with the master, it is undoubtedly the most sensational advertising effect. And all this, we must catch up with Duchamp.
Non-easel architecture has formed a set of western-style operational logic, forming a deadlock. The basic contradiction that constitutes this deadlock is the increasing reverse movement of popularization and anti-popularization: on the one hand, the essential core of popularization caused by the constant challenges to academics and classics is increasingly exposed, on the other hand, the tendency of opposition to the public caused by novelty and gangsters is increasingly sharp; On the one hand, the works themselves are increasingly superficial and civilian due to constant deconstruction, on the other hand, artistic behavior is increasingly marginalized and aristocratic due to the reduction of original opportunities; On the one hand, artistic creation is becoming more and more available to everyone, on the other hand, the logic of development is becoming more and more elusive.
This contradiction not only brings vitality to the system, but also leads the system into a dead end of self-strangulation. This fast knot can only be killed by the strict logic of western culture, and it may be melted by the intuitive epiphany in eastern culture. The way is to treat Duchamp in the way that he once cursed his ancestors, and to ridicule the existing buildings that are not on the shelves as a whole, so as to restore the true colors of the art of taking off the shelves-to restore this art that often makes the public inexplicable, annoyed and disgusted with public life. At the same time,
It is a popular culture, and everyone can participate in it. One group regards taking part in sports adventures as art, while another group regards playing with garbage as art … These are the things of people in their circle, and they don't all need the attention of art criticism as long as they don't harm the interests of others.
Imitating non-easel art buildings with popular game styles needs to be designed and operated by experts who understand the "context" of non-easel art. Bing Xu's Introduction to New English Calligraphy did just that. Not only, Lu's evocation, his cowboy series, Cai Guoqiang's detonation series, his ice wall, his rural investigation, Huang and the comic generation all did the same. Not only China, but also andy warhol, Lichtenstein and Crystal are doing this kind of thing. They made the post-modern art of special aristocrats really popular and popularized, and even reduced it to some kind of mass life, thus further dissolving the boundary between art and non-art.
These activities mocked the rigid rules of novelty, terror and gangs, the hypocrisy of "everyone can be an artist" in western ready-made art, the "popularization" against the masses, the special aristocrats with dead logic and the special civilians with fresh spirit. These activities really return the popularity to the public in a way that the public likes to see and hear, and show a fresh vitality and modern vitality in the voluntary and heartfelt participation and carnival of the public.
Eliminating the boundaries of art is not to eliminate art, but to carry out a spiritual liberation to meet the unpredictable future of art in 2 1 century. Popularization is not to destroy the elite, but to open a new way for the elite.
Precautions:
(1) Feng Boyi's Dialogue with Xu Bingxin (Introduction to New English Calligraphy). Artist newsletter,No. 1996, pp. 7-9.
(2) Song Xiaoxia's interview with Chen Danqing. Art Research No.3, 1997, p. 18-2l.
③ Gu Chengfeng's "cultural dislocation" —— An interview with Chen Danqing. Jiangsu Painting -t, ~) 1999 No.3, p. 13- 15.
(4) Feng Boyi's dialogue about Xu Bingxin's works (Introduction to New English Calligraphy).
5 Norman. Nonm Klein's Postmodernism and Its Future. Art newspaper 65438+4 edition, August 22 and 29, 0994.
⑥ See my essay "Destruction is Creation-Modern Art with Monsters". Jiangsu pictorial1991no. 1 Page 3-4.
Chen Danqing criticized Bing Xu.