The impact of the Cultural Revolutions on Chinese contemporary art

16th December, 2019

Since the 1940s, China has been on a unique course of historical development. This essay will analyse Zhang Linhai’s artworks at different times over the course of this development, and through Zhang’s experience. Metaphors at work in his Narrative, Dust and Sandbox series’ offer a way of understanding important moments in Chinese social history, particularly the Cultural Revolution.  The Cultural Revolution had a profound effect on artists born in the 1950s and 1960s, and still influences subsequent generations and the direction of Chinese contemporary art. Children and infants often feature in Zhang Linhai’s paintings of the Cultural Revolution. This essay argues that these paintings show the  great impact the Culture Revolution had on artists such as Zhang, making Chinese contemporary artworks distinct from other cultures. It is an influence that is still felt in the twenty-first century. This essay threads a timeline from the 1950s to 2000, showing the historical and political background of Zhang Linhai’s different artworks to present a comprehensive understanding of his work.

At the beginning of an interview in Zhang Linhai’s studio in Songzhuang, Beijing, Zhang says, ‘the most thorough and critical article about myself so far is written by an art critic called Wu Hong’ (2019). The article is published in Zhang’s catalogue from an exhibition at Linda Gallery. In the article, Wu Hong writes that, during a major famine in southern China from 1959 to 1963, children were abandoned by their biological parents and adopted by welfare institutions, then sent to wealthy families in northern China, including Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Henan, Shanxi and Hebei. Approximately 50,000 children were sent to orphanages and called the ‘abandoned children of Jiangnan.’ Zhang Linhai was one of those abandoned children. Wang Chuan writes that his generation works hard and has very strong feelings about a better future, but remain confused and distraught (cited in Wu, 29). Wang also argues that, ‘Only pain can be bartered for the beauty of the soul. I started to paint’ (Wu, p. 29). Painting for artists is a substitute for acting out pain and overwhelming feelings. Joining the art academy is also a way to change one’s life. Zhang (2019) points out that for his generation, it was very difficult to go to college, and limits the number of candidates that can participate in the art academy. His major was in woodcuts because it is less competitive. In his latest works, woodcut or wood-framing installations have become one of his commonly used elements.

Zhang Linhai, Purple Series No. 1, Oil on Canvas, 2005

Young generations of artists born during and after the 1970s are not able to comprehensively understand the political issues born in the 1950s. Since 1949, Chinese contemporary art and politics have been intertwined (Lü, P. 8). Sensitive political issues are avoided on the news, on the internet, through the censorship of exhibitions and in the allocation of resources. The mainstream of art is supported by government to praise the positive development of contemporary China, leaving real issues, conflicts and new concepts of art to struggle to survive in the Chinese contemporary art market.

Throughout his work, Zhang Linhai appears to be particularly apt at identifying the stance of static dynamics. It almost appears as if he can peel the petals of reality from the flower. The continuous movements of an excitable child or a boy springing into the air are often frozen in his paintings. A number of his works have a surrealist air about them due to this contradictory tension between the dynamic and static stances. The people depicted in the works appear like flies on a screen, in which the pause button has been pushed. The paintings depict the personal childhood experiences of those in deprived villages in the middle of wooded areas. In one particular work, he portrays a desiccated memory, a barren land that completely contradicts the memories that common individuals have of their own childhood. Furthermore, the depicted figures also portray the Cultural Revolution, in which land is embedded yellow earth and red sorghum. The children in his works seem to have wandered off to the edge of history and merged into the border. Zhang’s works are full of depictions of children. A group of children is also present in a grand picture of the Cultural Revolution. This image is set in Mao’s time. Gladston (2014) argues that the key tensions identified by a majority of Chinese intellectuals are between Chinese tradition and modernism. Artists often have a hard time deciding whether Chinese art ought to be modernized, and if so, how to do this. He Yunchang (2019) says ‘There’s no contemporary art in China, for now’. Since all artworks involve sensitive political topics are inadmissible, with all boundaries and interruptions, artworks that represent reality are not legally supported or sponsored by the government. At the same time, contemporary Chinese artists still struggling resisting a Western dominated market, with overseas curators and gallery managers being major decision makers (Lü, p. 64). It will take a long time to change the dominance of the global market in Chinese contemporary art.

Another factor that cannot be neglected is that for ten years during the Cultural Revolution, people did not receive systematic education and there was a lack of theoretical background to support art expression. Lü Peng writes that, ‘The recovery of Chinese art was launched within a political climate and culled from the chaos of low-level philosophy and economics.’ (p. 62) This is also addressed by J. F. Andrews (1994), who writes of the relationship between ‘technical training and literary and artistic cultivation’ (Andrew, p. 205). Artists are forced to do labour works which are not in their specialty. This explains that for the majority of Chinese contemporary artists facing the question of a theoretical or philosophical background for the artwork, the answer was often to ‘go with a flow’. It is not a wrong answer or reckless especially in terms of art. There was a clear post-revolutionary visual culture in place by the mid-1980s, generating a desire for new and expressly cosmopolitan visual languages (Tang, p.12). Therefore, the significance of an artwork is concerning expression or creating a ‘result’? I argue that the intrinsic quality of creating an artwork is touching, feeling sympathy or inspiring. Qiu (2012) argues that artists are maniacal, losing themselves to the mentality of battle (Lü, p. 166).

At the time when the Cultural Revolution was beginning its second stage in the early 1970s, there were consistent attempts to restore the order and discipline that was present in the earlier stage. These attempts often failed, whereas principles for generating revolutionary visual culture were codified and systematically put in place (Gladston, p. 254). In 1985, after the May Fourth New Culture Movement, which opens a new era of Chinese contemporary art especially for young student and artists, in the ‘85 Art Movement’ (Wu, P. 53). At this moment, Zhang Linhai as a college student was also influenced by the new wave. By creating these works, he put his personal life and memories of childhood in rural areas into his artworks, which make them out of the ordinary and may regarded as surrealism. As in the pictures (Figure 1 and 2), He paints bald figures with no expression on faces, all human figures are obedient and identical, as they  lean on rock walls and stand in rows. The paintings reveal an oppressive and silent ambience. Bald figures in his painting represent the drought season in Zhang’s hometown, with men and children having shaved their hair in order to save water. The repeating bald figures standing with their back to the audience is a metaphor of people as ignorant, numb and shaped alike by absolutism and the extinction of individual values. In another way, the bald figures are an artistic language that constructs a theatrical atmosphere, a way of representing the stubborn and cranky crowd in society.

The National Art Gallery, Beijing, on the opening day of the China/Avant-garde exhibition. February 5, 1989.

In the Narrative series, Zhang applies himself to revealing, criticising and questioning the motives of the Cultural Revolution and its absolute powers. The name comes from the sandbox models in commercial constructions, which are used to market and visualise a new lifestyle the Revolution will provide. Zhang borrows the idea to criticise the mainstream civilisation model and cultural model. in this historical period, using the contrast of people with animals, individual with group, history and contemporary, spiritual and material, now and future, rich and poor, power and gangsters, critical thinking and collective unconsciousness. Wu Hung argues that at this period of time, Chinese artistic style as a whole approaches Western style, accepting it and ‘integrating with the Western Culture’ (Wu, p. 53). Wu suggests that Chinese ‘Modern art evolved after Western humanism established a solid social foundation and after the concept of the subjective consciousness had emerged in modern philosophy’ (Wu, p. 54).

In the second year of his college studies, between 1988 and 1989 he created Sound of nature, Sound of ground, Sound of people series. Zhang Linhai borrowed the meaning from Zhuangzi to explain that ordinary people are linked in life and fate, which is the starting point of his art journey. After 2014, Zhang created two series called Dust and Theatre, which were seen in his studio in Songzhuang. In the Dust series, the medium for those artworks are wooden plates which he had collected in flea markets or rural villages. These were once important items in everyday life as serving trays. The material itself is an important part of the artwork.

Through Zhang’s personal experience and the vicissitude of his family, Zhang has put his encounters into a large social and historical background. The motifs that are created through the paintings create an indescribable feeling of mysteriousness and mysticism. Zhang has subtly depicted the nihilist elements of his works and tried his utmost to avoid cynicism. Many key changes took place in politics and the economy of the PRC across the period of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Moreover, political conditions became more liberal, and this applied to both domestic socioeconomic governance and international governance. In the time between Deng Xiaoping’s passing in February 1997 and Hong Kong’s resignation from British to Chinese control in July 1997, a short-term time of heightened liberalization occurred throughout mainland China, which was often called the ‘second Beijing Spring’ (Gladston, p. 225). China was blooming in its economy and this leads to a blooming in its art world. The disparity between the rich and the poor, the rural areas and the majority of the underprivileged groups have not enjoyed the benefits of economic growth, and art developed in a special way under such a broken situation. These 'people outside the social constructions' are the objects of interest to some artists and critics in the art world (Wu, p. 62). On the other hand, the emerging

technology industry needed more qualified people with skills for economic development. Underprivileged people has fewer opportunities. In the process of this great change, money is the biggest driving force, and human factors and social factors have not received the attention they deserve. And the new emerging social issues concerns the ‘majority’ would not be the same to people still starving or struggling to make a living. The rapid growth of China’s infrastructure after the 2000s has been noticeable in many areas, not just in manufacturing, communications and finance, but also amongst the art market and creative industries. Following the southern tour undertaken by Deng, a rapid development was seen in commercial art across mainland China, which culminated in various galleries, auction houses and art districts (such as Beijing’s 798 and Shanghai’s m50) being created in the country’s major cities There was a huge injection of international capital made into the indigenous Chinese art market between the late 1990s and the global financial crisis of 2008–9 (Berghuis, p. 140). This had a major influence on artists and gallery owners, as well as enhancing the production of artworks on a great scale and with more technical sophistication (Berghuis, p.140). This brought to be an inward-looking, Westernized perspective, promoting a deconstructivist and granular view of the importance of the contemporary. Tang argues that it is crucial to understand the tensions between an ostensible desire of Chinese academics to uphold deconstructivist counter-authoritarian thinking, and the influence that two limiting factors have on cultural perspectives in China, these two factors being the continual strength of governmental limitations to expressive freedoms and insurgence of deep-rooted anti-Westernism (Tang, p. 98). The art bureaucracy both encourages and controls art. The communist art education system also resorts to both rewarding and punishing artists, systematically and effectively changed the dimensions and principles of Chinese art (Gladston, 2014). Due to the pressure of political censorship, a growing number of artists choose to exhibit their artwork overseas. This tendency is good for allowing and giving artists an option to speak but also restrains and obstructs the  of the Chinese audience and young artists.

In conclusion, Zhang Linhai creates his artworks from his childhood memories and critical thinking combined with Chinese social issues. One special feature which marks his works out from other artist in his generation is the composition and logic used in his artwork to makes mise en scenes for his viewer. Children as a commonly used figure could be interpreted as himself or as a metaphor for the whole nation. Starting from 2018, Chinese political contexts have been tightened up, and this reflects on contemporary art inevitably. Many artists are watched by mobile phone or through CCTV, while art exhibitions are censored or cancelled for the sake of keeping the society ‘stable’. This is similar to the situation back in 1983, where according to Wu Hung, some exhibitions were cancelled and criticized due to ‘anti-spiritual pollution campaign’ (Wu, p. 35). In the summer of 2019, Ai Song’s exhibition called ‘100 percent intellectuals’ was censored and cancelled by state department. Ai Song (2019) says ‘Several people in my work are banned to talk about, they just don’t like them to be presented’. History repeats itself since the centralization of state power and freedoms to speak are contradictions that cannot be reconciled.

Bibliography

Andrews, J.F., 1994. Painters and politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Berghuis, T.J., 2012. Experimental Art, Performance and ‘Publicness’: Repositioning the Critical Mass of Contemporary Chinese Art. Journal of Visual Art Practice 11, 135–155. https://doi.org/10.1386/jvap.11.2-3.135_1

Gladston, P., 2014. Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History. Reaktion Books, London. Peng, L., 2012. Fragmented reality: contemporary art in 21st-century China. Charta, Milano.

Tang, X., 2015. Visual culture in contemporary China: paradigms and shifts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, [England.

Wu Hung, Wang, P., 2010. Contemporary Chinese art: primary documents. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Zhang Linhai, 2019, Talk with UWA student group, 29 June.

UWA student group. (29th June 2019)