Post-Critical China: There Is No Author, Just Content!

critic|all I International Conference on Architectural Design & Criticism Madrid 12·14 June 2014

Post-Critical China: There is no Author, just Content!

Brisbin, Christopher The University of South Australia, School of Art, Architecture and Design, Adelaide, Australia, [email protected]

Resumen: ¿Cómo criticamos obras creativas o conjeturas contemporáneas que reivindican no tener ninguna función crítica inherente y trascender todo acto consciente de criticalidad? ¿Cómo criticamos una obra que aparentemente no es más que el resultado de presiones programáticas o comerciales? En los años 90, los arquitectos Robert Somol, Sarah Whiting, Michael Hays y Rem Koolhaas identificaron la emergencia de un nuevo modo de crítica práctica en la Arquitectura Occidental que trascendía las dogmáticas y arduas búsquedas teóricas de las teorías anti-humanistas precedentes de los 60, 70 y 80. Liberada de las auto-indulgencias esotéricas de la alta teoría trans-disciplinaria, la arquitectura post- crítica buscaba reafirmar su experiencia y conocimiento disciplinario explícito, y exonerarse a sí misma de toda función de crítica pública. Sin embargo, eliminar esta función crítica no resulta sencillo, especialmente en la arquitectura contemporánea de China. El artículo evidencia la complejidad de la idea generalizada que define la post-criticalidad como uniformemente acrítica, sugiriendo que las obras post-críticas, a la vez que pretenden aparentar ser neutrales (como por ejemplo las de Michael Zavros, modelo de artista post-crítico), son en realidad “inherentemente políticas y parciales” por su activa oposición a las prácticas críticas de vanguardia. El artículo concluye que la conformidad de la criticalidad se convierte por lo tanto en una forma de acción crítica y de “inconformismo conformista” que demuestra el inherente potencial para reorientar los mecanismos operativos de la economía neoliberal hacia los fines post-críticos y creativos del artista o arquitecto. A pesar de estar escrito desde una perspectiva de Occidente, el artículo refleja la intersección cultural de Oriente y Occidente manifestada en los recientes proyectos arquitectónicos falsificados en China. Mientras China trata de reconciliar su propia ideología de comunismo jerárquico con las estructuras económicas del capitalismo de libre mercado, facilita la transgresión más novedosa: consumir las ruinas post-críticas de Occidente y regurgitarlas dando lugar a una nueva forma de criticalidad global. Es posible que tengamos más por aprender de China que lo que China de Occidente. En Oriente no hay autor, sólo contenido. Palabras clave: criticalidad, post-criticalidad, China, consumo, arte.

Abstract How do we critique contemporary creative works or speculations that claim of themselves no inherent critical function—that claim to transcend any conscious act of criticality—works that are apparently nothing more than outcomes of programmatic and commercial pressures placed upon them? In the 1990s, architects Robert Somol, Sarah Whiting, Michael Hays, and Rem Koolhaas identified the emergence of a new kind of critical practice in Western Architecture that transcended the dogmatic and labored theoretical pursuits of the preceding anti-humanist theories of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Liberated from the esoteric self-indulgencies of trans-disciplinary high theory, post-critical architecture sought to reassert its explicit disciplinary knowledge and expertise and absolve itself of any overt critical functioning, however its critical functioning is not so easily erased, especially in the contemporary architecture of China. The paper complexifies the commonly accepted definition of post-criticality as uniformly uncritical, suggesting that, whilst pretending to be neutral, post-critical works, such as those of exemplary post-critical artist Michael Zavros, are in fact—by the very condition of their active claim of opposition to avant-garde critical practices—"inherently political and partisan.”1 The paper concludes that the acquiescence from criticality itself therefore becomes a form of critical action and “conformist non-conformity”2 that demonstrates the inherent potential to re-purpose the operative mechanisms of the neo-liberal political economy to an artist’s or architect’s own post-critical and creative ends. Whilst written from a Western perspective, the paper reflects on the cultural intersection of East and West that is manifest in recent counterfeit architectural projects in China. As China attempts to reconcile its own political ideologies of hierarchical Communism with the economic structures of free-market Capitalism, it facilitates the ultimate transgressive act; consuming the post-critical ruins of the West and regurgitating them anew as a new form of global criticality. Perhaps we have more to learn from China then they do from the West. In the East, there is no author, just content. Key words: criticality, post-criticality, China, consumption, art. Introduction Whilst the literature in Art, Architecture, and Philosophy generally indicts the post-critical as explicitly ‘un-critical’ in its ideation and inert of any deliberate critical functioning, it is the aim of the essay to argue that post-critical work, both within art and architecture, is inherently critical; not through its conscious application, but through the instrumental analysis of its unconscious application of the capitalist market-system that is its supposed author. In so doing, the essay aims to therefore demonstrate ways in which a post-critical position can be re-framed as a critical lens through which to reflect upon the work’s socio-political and socio-economic context. In particular, the essay explores the affect of the affirmational practices of Chinese Capitalism as a means through which to cast a mirror upon the world of the narcissistic consumptive practices of glamour and allure that is fueling the feverous ‘status consumption’ of Western luxury brands and architecture by the swelling Chinese middle-class. The essay therefore proposes that China requires a post-critical reading in the form of a ‘critical u-turn’ so as to cast a critical gaze upon the affects of Chinese growth and the quasi-oligarchical rule of the People’s Republic of China.

As Jean-Francois Lyotard has identified in his critique of the postmodern condition, it is not theory that binds the apparent randomness of postmodern plurality, it is Money.3 The cultural value associated with the artistic practices of Art and Architecture is replaced by an ontologically flat conception of the world as no greater than its commodified market value. Artworks are no longer valued for their pleasure or affect, nor are houses valued as culturally enriching ‘homes’: they are quantifiable and measurable financial investments. Critical theory’s esoteric indulgences isolated its audience and diluted its cultural relevancy to the point which society demanded an affirmational quality of its Art; a sense of familiarity that subverted any productive critique of the systemic mechanisms that led to its benign cultural relativism; or its subsequent celebration of increasingly narcissistic notions of beauty and taste and the predicable affects these notions had on the composition of the built environment.4 As Lyotard observes: “Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and “retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games.”5 Every aspect of our consumer life is thus tainted with contradictions of cultural authenticity, fused together as a lattice of simulacra of exotic places, experiences, and identities. It is this cultural branding that Nigel Thrift argues has manifested in contemporary culture as a ‘glamorous celebrity sign system’ in which the legible aesthetic signature of branded architects and artists has become paramount in achieving the transformation of inanimate objects into sites of lust, desire, and status, which are all fundamental to the effective functioning of the market system.6

This overarching financial force resulting in, as Leonard further observes, “some prominent art … [preferring] instead to be appealing, entertaining and affirmative.”7 They elevated themselves, through the direct engagement and manipulation of the fundamental economic practices of supply and demand, to the status of a brand. In order to explain this shift, Leonard cites art historian Rex Butler’s indictment of the ‘artist as brand’ as a ‘post-critical’ turn that can be understood as an irreconcilable outcome of our consumerist age and, as I argue, a fundamental reflection of the thirst for familiarity in the milieu of semiotic and informational saturation that is emblematic of the age. This definition of the post-critical is applicable more broadly than just within an art practice or a theoretical pursuit.

2 Fig. 1

China offers, I argue, the most extreme post-critical cultural context. China has appropriated the architecture of the West vehemently embracing them as accoutrement of modernization and social status. To promote the image of success in China apparently means to look like, and dwell in, the icons of Western modernity; such as reproductions of Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp (1954) in Zhengzhou in 2004; reproductions of the architecture and engineering of Haussmann’s nineteenth-century Paris in the ironic montage of Tianducheng’s 2007 Eiffel Tower copy with surrounding baroque cityscape buildings (Fig. 1); or, more recently, reproductions of Zaha Hadid’s SOHO shopping complex in Beijing (2011–14) in the Meiquan 22nd Century building in Chonjing (2012) (Fig. 2), to name but a recent. As a western onlooker, what has become curious is the seemingly unquestioning belief in the right to the production and consumption of counterfeit goods. It is an economy that is fundamentally built upon a culture of appropriation of the best that Western Architecture has to offer without any approval or acknowledgement of copyright ownership. Architect Rem Koolhaas observes that the sheer speed of development and rapid growth in China creates a kind of design practice based in the art of collage and figurative appropriation; a Photoshop-based architect whom practices a kind of aesthetic and compositional design process that resembles Photoshop montage.8 The socio-political power structures that are embedded within these Western exemplars are effectively reduced to a form of image-based collage as any uniform meaning carried by the semiotic language of its collaged elements is usurped by aesthetic conditions of familiarity and affirmation.

Fig. 2

It is important to acknowledge that this is not necessarily a new phenomenon in China. China has a long-standing history of cultural appropriation and consumption that has privileged the collective over the individual. Ideas are not perceived to be owned by an individual, they are owned by and shared with the collective.9 Sharing takes the form of both conscious and deliberate contributions in order to benefit the whole, and also an acknowledgement that work generated within China is openly accessible to appropriation and re-fashioning to ends never intended by its authors. This is at odds with Western concepts regarding the individual rights of the designers of artifacts. They cannot be replicated/copied without the permission of their author. This clash of Western and Eastern culture produces a vastly different cultural perception as to what it means to copy another’s work. Whilst Chinese Law closely mirrors ‘in-principle’ author rights and copyright conditions that we are familiar with in the West, these contrasting social perceptions about the Chinese right to copy continue to linger today. Whilst much has been written in both the academic domain and in the popular press about China’s meteoric economic rise and the cultural factors directly affecting the consumption of counterfeit goods, there is little literature accounting for broader cultural attitudes that may offer an alternative perspective as to why the Chinese appear so relaxed in their attitudes towards the copying of Western architecture.

According to Julie Juan Li and Chenting Su, the influence of the Chinese concept of ‘face’ cannot be underestimated, in terms of its impact on the consumption of goods and services fueling China’s GDP.10 ‘Face’ is intrinsic to all collectivist cultures, which make up 1/3 of the world’s population, but is especially important in understanding the buying habits of China’s emerging middle-class.11 In the West, we might euphemistically account for ‘face’ through the clique of ‘keeping up with the Joneses, or other such consumptive practices that are driven out of a desire to project oneself as part of a desired social group and reinforce culturally accepted norms of behavior within that group.12 Chinese collectivist culture, which is Confucian at its ideological core, is also ‘interdependent’ in its social structuring: “to the interdependent Chinese, class reflects not only one’s achievement, but also one’s group, usually one’s family, relatives, and kinship clan.”13 It is through this very need to “enhance, maintain, or save face” that Chinese consumers find themselves more likely to purchase luxury goods in particular.14 The display of luxury denotes economic, and thus, social and familial success in China.15

This phenomenon is fundamental to Chinese culture and is widely applied as a form of demonstrable social and economic conformity by the middle-class through the collective consumption of widely recognizable Western aesthetic styles, brands, and architecture. The consumption and display of such objects, through their desire for, and consumption of, fashion, jewelry, and homes, aims to deliberately promote the social status of the middle-class, and demonstrate their good judgment and understanding of socially defined notions of ‘taste’. Thus, as Kant observed of the emerging middle-class of Europe in the eighteenth-century, a citizen is able to denote their social standing by demonstrating their knowledge of the limits and boundaries of acceptable ‘taste’, and thus be assimilated within that socio- economic grouping. Whilst drawn from a Western definition of taste, its application still applies today in China; however, the Chinese are more susceptible to the social pressures that arise in maintaining the aura of their social status than their Western counterparts, expressing a “need to identify with or enhance [their] image in the opinion of significant others through the acquisition and use of products and brands [and] the willingness to conform to the expectations of others regarding purchase decisions.”16 The effects of this overt need to display their luxury possessions is a growing concern in China as the goods consumed are not always legally produced. Super-charged consumption breeds piracy of all forms of consumable goods.

The single greatest generator of China’s skyrocketing middle-class is the concept of ‘face’ and its effect upon ‘status consumption’.17 The middle-class in developing countries such as China, is defined by the World Bank as “those who are not poor by median developing country standards but still poor by developed country standards; those who are not poor by the latter standards constitute the ‘Western middle class’.”18 In other words, the middle-class is simply defined via an economic definition of what side of the poverty line population groups can be defined within, relative to the developing nation they dwell within.19 By this definition, China’s middle-class equates to 1/3 of China’s 2013 population of 1.354B, which, by 2020, is projected to rise by approximately 50%.20 This contrasts with definitions of the middle-class in developed countries, such as the USA, of which approximately 45% of its population of 317M is categorized as middle-class; in the case of the USA, relative to socio-economic criteria such as class, education, occupation, and relative economic income.21 Of critical note, China’s emerging middle-class is already 3x times larger than the USA’s middle-class in 2013, and is set to grow to 4.5x times the USA’s middle-class over the next decade at an exponential population growth rate of 7.15%. At this rate, China would experience a doubling of the population every 10 years, which would effectively result in China having to produce and/or procure more than double the resources that have been consumed in all of its preceding history.22 The emerging middle-class of China want to look like and possess the same kinds of ‘stuff’ that their middle-class US counterparts possess in the West, but the sheer volume of their consumptive demand comes at a very high cultural, ethical, and environmental cost.

4 China’s exponential growth has led to a corrosion of vernacular building traditions and the proliferation of piracy throughout China as Chinese manufacturers copy the patented intellectual property of the West under their own brands in order to meet consumptive demand. There is a large volume of literature outlining the contrasting history of Intellectual Property and Patent law between the East and West, with a more recent alignment of International Copyright law as a result of China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. China’s Copyright Law now reflects many of the same copyright conditions that we take for granted in the West. However, the copying of goods, such as movies, music, and computer games, and the enforcement of the rule-of-law continues to be a challenge for the Chinese government.

In China, Copyright Law post-2001 explicitly acknowledges the protection of ‘construction works’, such as architectural buildings, as ‘forms of expression’ that are protected from unauthorized reproduction.23 This copyright is deemed valid when the ‘construction works’ can be demonstrated to be original and specifically applied in a built form. Copyright only applies to built ‘expressions’, not to ideas, and lasts for the author’s life, plus fifty years. The copyright is deemed to have been infringed when the ‘construction works’ are used without the permission of the author, or copyright owner. Whilst the copying of architectural styles is common in China, as it is throughout much of the Western world, it is certainly not an infringement of legal copyright, however the copying of the explicit built ‘expression’ of Zaha Hadid’s SOHO Beijing shopping complex promotes challenges for Chinese Copyright Law.24 However, jurisdictional boundaries have traditionally undermined the consistent application of copyright law in protecting such architectural ‘expression’, as the laws are only applicable in the legal jurisdiction in which they were ratified.25 At its core however, is a culturally entrenched ambivalence to copyright protection that perhaps explains an unwillingness to enforce the law in some remote areas of China.

There is little academic literature accounting for the widespread copying of Western architecture in China, aside from Bianca Bosker’s Original Copies, Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China (2013), which primarily examines Chinese architectural copying from the perspective of the conceptual relationship between the authentic original and the nature of the Buadrillardian ‘simulacra’ that is present in the copy.26 However, much can be learnt from the research that has been conducted into the prolific counterfeiting of movies and computer games in particular, in order to perhaps better understand the motivations of the Chinese in their architectural piracy activities. According to Wang et al, approximately 98% of Chinese engage in computer software piracy.27 In addition, up to 90% of daily- use goods available in urban areas are counterfeit.28Whilst Chinese copyright law protects against unauthorized reproduction, it is not as clear-cut about the legality of consuming counterfeit goods. There are very clear laws against such flagrant and widespread illegal activity, however the Chinese make decisions about the consumption of illegal goods—whether it be illegal downloads of copyrighted music, movies or computer software, or whether it be the consumption of counterfeit luxury goods—based on the socio-political and socio-economic context of each occasion in which such behavior is considered. In other words, their judgment is culturally determined by a simple analysis of the ‘cost versus the benefit’ of any illegal copying or consumption of counterfeit goods. The Chinese do not take all laws as seriously as their Western counterparts in the USA, whom are more universal in their adherence to the rule-of- law. As Swinyard et al note, Americans are ‘rule-orientated’, whilst the Chinese are ‘circumstance- orientated’.29

It could be argued that this cultural ambivalence to the integrity of copyright is entrenched in China’s feudal history; its historically undulating territorial boundaries, its ongoing subsuming of other cultural minority groups and their own culturally-specific laws and rituals, and its ever-evolving ideological context—more recently from Communism to ‘Commu-Capitalism’.30 It is important to remember that China has only achieved relative political and economic stability in the late twentieth century, whilst the West has had time to gradually entrench Intellectual Property Rights at the core of its cultural ethos over a period of 800 years.31 Basic Human Rights, Intellectual Property, and copyright are all relatively new concepts to a culture whose historical success has been defined by the success of the collective, not the individual—China’s power lies in its sheer scale of population. But how does this newfound contextual knowledge effect the question of architectural production in China? What meaning can we garner from this story; what affect does it have on achieving a better understanding of what contemporary Chinese architecture expresses in the context of a swelling Chinese middle-class? It will take a little instrumental application of techniques and concepts demonstrated by the post-critical Australian artwork of Michael Zavros to illicit a response. It will aid in illustrating the capacity offered by post-critical art in embedding a cultural critique of the very market mechanisms that are at the core of its genetic structure. As such, this final section of the paper will aim to demonstrate the capacity of the post-critical in appropriating the context and content of Chinese Capitalism as a form of critical practice in and of itself—for it is in the very milieu of China’s unfettered growth that its most powerful cultural critique may be drawn. What does a copy say about its copier, or its consumer, and what we might learn in the West?

Fig. 3

Michael Zavros’ artwork can be understood as a shibboleth of our time and an exemplar of post- criticality. Whilst Zavros’s artwork exists within the cultural framework of Australia, it illustrates a particular ritualistic obsession of our narcissistic age in which the authenticity of the original is corroded through its systematic re-presentations and translations.32 Zavros’ work sets in motion a return of ‘symbols of status’ and an ‘aspirational cannon of beauty’.33 “[Zavros’] subject’ quality and classiness is also mirrored in his impeccable, refined, photo-realistic rendering of them … they reflect our inability to discuss any art without resorting to the default-setting language of criticality, wherein a work can’t simply express something, it has to elaborate, scrutinise or deconstruct it.”34 As Robert Leonard observes of Zavros’ art: it is “rigorously and deliberately uncritical … in its sheer affirmation, it calls for a different kind of reading.”35 It is one that is not an active critical artifact, but that is read and defined as critical by the critic. But what kind of reading might post-critical art demand? More importantly, what might it tell us? Zavros’ obsessive attention to verisimilitude is mirrored by the very subjects of the artwork’s own representational gaze. That is to say, the choice of representational technique is mirrored in the content of Zavros’ art as a commentary on questions of taste, beauty and aesthetic perfection. On the one hand, the work therefore can be understood and read as a mirror through which to reconsider our own aesthetic values; on the other, it demonstrates a critical tactic through which to potentially deploy in other creative contexts, with similar critical outcomes.

In 2009 Zavros painted V12 Narcissus (Fig. 3) as a self-reflective portrait that re-presents the narcissistic gaze of his own self-image, reflected off the bonnet of his glamorous Mercedes Benz luxury SL600 roadster sports car. It recalls the Greek myth of Narcissus who, after shunning the advances of the smitten nymph Echo, is enchanted by Artemis (as punishment) to fall in love with his own self- image.36 The moral lessons underpinning the myth of Narcissus are transcended—if not entirely ignored —within contemporary visual culture as the viewer is invited to affirm their own desire of self; 37 and, I argue, absorbed into the painting as a narcissistic act of auto-consumptive self-destruction. The ‘mirror– stage’ of the work is at once absorptive, whilst simultaneously self-reflective.38 The potential of the post- critical therefore is to consciously use this mirror-stage to critically reflect on our own ego and consumptive practices—to look afresh at the truth of our own vain reality. What allows this reality to be given a presence and voice is the technique used to compose each artwork; the slow and arduous task of composing a real scene, photographing it, and then painstakingly re-presenting the scene in the photograph through the medium of paint-on-canvas. In Zavro’s artwork, the oeuvre is ‘copying’.

6 Fig.4

Zavros’ work is enmeshed in the technical and compositional structures of verisimilitude and ‘reflectivity’.39 It is concerned with a hyper-realism that oscillates between the copy and the original; that carves out an existential space in-between the two—“more than a fidelity to the sorts of photographs you might see advertising perfume or aftershave in the pages of magazines such as Vogue Uomo or GQ. It is a fidelity to self-love.”40 Zavros’ Echo (2009) (Fig. 4) and 2012 Bulgari Art Award winning The new Round Room (2012) further explore the inherent affirmational force of the narcissistic self-image. Echo juxtaposes the opulence and glamour of the hall-of-mirrors in Versailles (France) against the gleaming chrome surfaces of bodybuilding gymnasium equipment. Similarly, The new Round Room juxtaposes the opulence and glamour of the interior of the Grand Trianon in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles—yet again—against the gleaming chrome surfaces of yet more bodybuilding gymnasium paraphernalia. Echo and The new Round Room Zavros present a critical reflection of the contrasting images of beauty (Renaissance and contemporary) and, I would argue, the metaphoric associations of individualised viewpoint that such dogmatic applications of Renaissance linear perspective entails.41 Whilst the image is constructed in order to be ontologically consumed from a singular viewpoint in space as a ‘symbolic form’ that “transformed psychological space” into the “mathematical space” of Cartesian perspectivalism,42 it is constructed through a painstaking process of replicating, in oil-based facture,43 the supposed ‘realism’ of the photograph. It is a ‘slow art’ that directly challenges the instantaneousness of affirmation and self-gratification that the content of the work seeks to consciously draw upon and celebrate. This representational technique becomes a form of operative diagram that enforces a particular kind of subject, and a particular kind of message within the work. Zavros’ focus on high degrees of verisimilitude and photo-realism reveals an inherent undercurrent of criticality in commenting upon questions of beauty and obsessions with male self-image that a surface reading of its aesthetic language might wholly dismiss.

Focusing exclusively on male vanity and men’s fashion, Sebastian Smee argues is endemic of a ‘standardised’ and familiar world that consists of a restricted fetishist vocabulary of “suits, shoes, ties, the same square jawline, the same straight nose” which elicits a “kind of vacuum packed vanity, as airless as it is seductive.”44 Zavros’ artwork challenges the literalism of recent contemporary art that makes a fetish of the real: “not a sculpture of a shark, but the shark itself; not a painting of a pregnant women, but a Madame Tassaud’s-style copy, replete with individually inserted hairs.”45 Much can be learnt from Zavros’ attuned manipulation of the very market system that, on the one hand, celebrates and lauds his work for its fiscal value, whilst being ignorant of its simultaneous critique of the vacuous content and affirmational responses the work generates from its onlookers. Fig. 5

Zavros’ work can also be understood, from a compositional point of view, to be based within the canon of ‘appropriation’. Artist in the 1980s, such as Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, and Richard Prince, treated the copying and reuse of ‘others’ work as a vital tool in the subversive narratives of dissent that was central to their work. Zavros’ most recent travelling exhibition in Queensland, entitled The Prince (2013), consists of re-reproductions of Richard Prince’s seminal 1980’s Cowboys series photographs. The Prince sets up an interesting and slightly ironic modulation of copying as a convoluted inter- relational story that fundamentally questions the validity of an authentic original in Art: ”a copy (Zavros’ painting) of a copy (the reproduction of a book) of a copy (Richard Prince’s re-photograph) of a copy (the staged photograph for Marlboro).”46 More than simply copying for the sake of copying, Zavros’ Prince can be understood to bring to our foremost attention changing contemporary ideals about male masculinity. On the one hand, it redeploys the ‘mythology of the cowboy’ that is manifest in the Marlboro advertising imagery upon which Prince’s original works are based,47 whilst simultaneously “Zavros knowingly presents the (re)commodification of the West as just another luxury fetish item” to be consumed in ignorance of its esoteric narrative.”48

In many cultures, such as China, Zavros’ copying of Prince would be understood as the “the highest form of flattery.”49 This subtle differentiation in the cultural conception of copying may go some way to also support the architectural reproduction of Zaha Hadid’s Beijing SOHO. The developers of the apparent counterfeit Meiquan 22nd Century building claimed that they “[n]ever meant to copy, only … to surpass.”50 Whilst we acknowledge the role of mastering an artisan practice through the close studying and replication of pre-existing exemplars in Arts Schools throughout the West, the multi-million dollar cost, utility, and embedded patentable technical-knowledge in architecture perhaps separates it from such culturally romantic ideas of ‘flattery’.

But even architecture can become a commodification of the consumerists brands it aims to house. Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, and Michael Zavros are recognizable International brands that embody lifestyle, success, and luxury.51 In Koolhaas’ Prada New York (2001), the architecture becomes an objectified ‘spatial version’ of the Prada brand that brings into being the aesthetic ‘excesses of exclusivity’ that such luxury brands embody in China. They represent a culture of desire and lust that is deferred through the symbolic allure and promise of lifestyle and taste that is presented by the star’s associations with the work they produce. It is no wonder that in the copying culture of China, the work of architect brands are reproduced so openly.

For Baudrillard, aesthetics and economics are ontologically reified as a “single cultural form that becomes the essence of the consumer society.”52 The irony is that as artworks critically react to market forces placed upon them within the dominant Western economic system of Capitalism, they are subsequently consumed by the very system that they seek to disrupt. For Firat and Venkatesh, there are only two possibilities for cultural critique in this capitalist framework: re-appropriation or marginalization.53 It is either subsumed into the market, or it is marginalized by it, to the point that it is no longer relevant. Faced with the undeniable agency of post-critical architecture’s causal effects, post- critical architecture can be argued to be far more critical than the traditional criteria for asserting criticality would infer: “the post-critical turn is not the rise of uncritical approaches to art, but a reconsideration of what it means to be critical.”54 As Diana Mihai has observed, “[p]ost-critical architecture pretends to be politically neutral/post-critical and rejects social critique, but the fact that it is modeled on contemporary business practices and market systems renders it inherently political and partisan.”55 As such, architecture, when conceived of as an edifice of cultural values and principles, cannot be easily be differentiated from its economic and political symbolism—even when its voice is left relatively mute by repressive cultural forces, such as those in China.56

8 It would appear that the Chinese middle-class—perhaps even more than their American counterparts— desire an art and architecture that is affirming, and that does not challenge the overarching power structures of (for the Chinese) ‘Commu-Capitalism’. As Chinese contemporary artists Chen Danqing notes: they wish to be “an artist within the system”, not against it! Architectural examples such the Beijing National Stadium (2003-8), known popularly as the Bird’s Nest, deploys symbols of Chinese culture that are familiar to the West, but say nothing new and are inert of any active contemporary voice.57 They are simply propaganda expressions that ‘stage Chinese-ness’.58 Its audience is the West, not the Chinese themselves. When Australian architects Ashton Raggatt McDougal say ‘sorry’ in braille above the Garden of Australian Dreams in the National Museum of Australia (2001), barely a ripple of discussion or cultural debate was catalyzed in the Australian media acknowledging Australia’s highly contentious history of mis-treatment of indigenous Australians.59 When Chinese contemporary artists Ai Weiwei said sorry on behalf of a grieving Chinese nation for the unacknowledged loss of 9000 children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he was ‘detained’ for ninety-one days by the Chinese government.60 Critical dissent in any form is forbidden.

Conclusion A ‘post-critical u-turn’ is required to ensure a critical engagement with the “present imbalances in power and opportunity” that Architecture so often ignorantly reinforces.61 As the world’s economies and socio- political power structures transform and shift from West to East, it is paramount that we ensure that the West is not left behind.62 In returning to the specificity of this argument in the Australian context, it is not surprising that even Koolhaas has derogatorily satired the Australian architectural context as celebrating a conservative brand of mediocrity.63 We operate in a context of increasing political indifference and naivety in which critique and engagement with the profound problems or our age are swept aside in order to reinforce social stereotypes, pander to the fear of an uninformed public, and to negate the necessary self-reflective practices that criticism and criticality so effectively affords. The formal and social costs are too high when the focus is so exclusively on a Western post-critical architecture that abstracts human relationships to the point that they become post-human and culturally irrelevant.

As Hadid, Koolhaas, and other architects like them, lead their practices into the uncharted territories of China, they have unwittingly monumentalised the ruins of Capitalism. As Walter Benjamin observed, “[e]ach epoch not only dreams the next, but also, in dreaming, strives toward the moment of waking ... In the convulsions of the commodity economy we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled.”64 As China attempts to reconcile its own political ideologies of hierarchical Communism with the economic structures of free-market Capitalism, it facilitates the ultimate transgressive act; consuming the ruins of the West and regurgitating them anew as a new form of global post-criticality. In China, there is no author, just content subsumed from the West. Cultural artifacts are therefore interpretations and translations of what the artist and/or architect see in their world, regardless of whether their author intended then to be explicitly critical or not. These creative artifacts always possess a critical voice—the question is whether we have the fortitude and resilience to objectively listen to what they critically have to say about us.

So what do the copied art/architecture works in China say? In reflecting on the deconstructive lens through which the paper has attempted to trace contrasting cultural meanings of copying, copyright, and criticality in China, the discursive zeal and indictment of ‘counterfeit’ copying has perhaps naively led to a negative and Western-centric inference that China should adopt the West’s ideological attitudes to copyright as a basis for Capitalism. What we can yield from much of China’s contemporary art and architecture is that it engenders a kind of complicit-ness in/to consumer culture that in turn engenders the work with a “conformist non-conformity.”65 As Virginia Postrel astutely observes, “form follows function” has been effectively usurped by “form follows emotion,”66 but is this outcome such a bad thing? Instead of interrogating Chinese cultural attitudes towards copyright through a narrow Western and fundamentally-capitalist viewpoint, perhaps the concept of ‘Commu-Capitalism’ should be interrogated more openly to reveal productive insights into what the West instead can learn from Chinese cultural attitudes towards ‘copying’ and ‘sharing’. China’s copying of Western architecture and luxury goods begins to erode the manufactured exclusivity and restricted supply that underpins the affective success of ‘status consumption’. An objective critique of Chinese ideological attitudes towards ‘collectivist’ sharing may go a long way to transform our own unsustainable Western consumptive practices: When did ‘sharing’ become such a derogatory concept in the West anyway?

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Biography Brisbin, Christopher Christopher Brisbin teaches design studio, analogue and digital communication, and history and theory in Architecture and Interior Architecture and is currently the Communication Skills Studies Coordinator in the Architecture Program at the School of Art, Architecture and Design, the University of South Australia. Brisbin’s research spans several areas, including contemporary space/image relations and questions of criticality in design practice today. In particular, Brisbin’s current research examines the impact of recent image-technologies in architecture through the lens of older relations between space and image in Western Art in an attempt to reveal and re-present conceptual and technical clues as to how to accommodate the embodying potentialities offered by ocular image-technologies in architecture today; such as the exploration of the physiognometric and phenomenological conditions of threshold and liminality in the verandah fenestrations of Queensland and South Australia. Brisbin has also co- convened a conference on ‘critique’ in late 2013, exploring the inter-diciplinary structures of critique across Art, Architecture and Design. He is currently editing a book on critique/criticism/criticality to be published in 2015.

Brisbin, Christopher Christopher Brisbin enseña el estudio de diseño, analógica y comunicación digital, y la historia y la teoría en Arquitectura y Arquitectura Interior y actualmente es el Coordinador de Estudios Habilidades de comunicación en el Programa de Arquitectura en la Escuela de Arte, Arquitectura y Diseño, de la Universidad de Australia del Sur. La investigación de Brisbin abarca varias áreas, incluyendo las relaciones y cuestiones de criticidad en la práctica del diseño hoy en día el espacio/imagen contemporáneos. En particular, la investigación actual de Brisbin examina el impacto de las recientes imágenes-tecnologías en la arquitectura a través de la lente de las relaciones de mayor edad entre el espacio y la imagen en el arte occidental en un intento de revelar y volver a presentar indicios conceptuales y técnicas en cuanto a la forma de dar cabida a las potencialidades que se incorporan ofrecido por imagen-tecnologías oculares en la arquitectura de hoy, tales como la exploración de las condiciones physiognometric y fenomenológicos de umbral y la liminalidad en las fenestraciones veranda de Queensland y Australia del Sur. Brisbin ha también co-organizó una conferencia sobre la "crítica" a finales de 2013, la exploración de las estructuras inter-diciplinary de la crítica a través de Arte, Arquitectura y Diseño. Actualmente está editando un libro sobre la crítica/crítica/criticidad que se publicará en 2015. 1 Diana Mihai, "Post-Critical Architecture: Going Rouge for Maverick Regimes," in Politics of Fear; Fear of Politics Conference(University of Brighton2010). 2 Nigel Thrift, "Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour," in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth(London: Duke University Press, 2013), 293. 3 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge(London: Manchester University Press, 1984), 76. 4 Hal Foster, "Post-Critical," October 139, no. Winter (2012): 3. 5 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 76. 6 Thrift, "Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour," 307. 7 Leonard, "Michael Zavros: Charm Offensive," 102. 8 Rem Koolhaas et al., Mutations(Barcelona: Actar, 2001). 9 This sentiment is demonstrated in the ancient Chinese proverb; “He that shares is to be rewarded; he that does not, condemned. W. R. Swinyard, H. Rinne, and A. Keng Ka u, "The Morality of Software Piracy: A Cross-Cultural Analysis," Journal of Business Ethics 9(1990): 656. 10 Julie Juan Li and Chenting Su, "How Face Influences Consumption: A Comparative Study of American and Chinese Consumers," International Journal of Market Research 49, no. 2 (2007): 241–43. For example, from 1989 until 2013, China’s GDP Annual Growth Rate averaged 9.2% reaching an all-time high of 14.2% in December of 1992. See also: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp- growth-annual 11 S Ting-Toomey, "Intercultural Conflict Styles: A Face Negotiation Theory," in Communication, Culture, and Organizational Process, ed. Stewart Gudykunst and S Ting-Toomey(Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988). 12 Swee Hoon Ang et al., "Spot the Difference: Consumer Responses Towards Counterfeits," Journal of Consumer Marketting 18, no. 3 (2001): 222–23. 13 Nancy Y. Wong and Aaron C. Ahuvia, "Personal Taste and Family Face: Luxury Consumption in Confucian and Western Societies," Psychology and Marketing 15(1998): 3. 14 Li and Su, "How Face Influences Consumption: A Comparative Study of American and Chinese Consumers," 237. 15 Wong and Ahuvia, "Personal Taste and Family Face: Luxury Consumption in Confucian and Western Societies," 8. 16 William O. Bearden, Richard G. Netemeyer, and Jesse E. Teel, "Measurement of Consumer Susceptibility to Interpersonal Influence," Journal of Consumer Research 15, no. 4 (1989): 474. 17 For a discussion on ‘status consumption’ see Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (Boston, MA: Macmillan, 1899).; Vance Packard, The Status Seekers: An Exploration of Class Behaviour in America(David McKay, 1959).; Roger S. Mason, Conspicuous Consumption: A Study of Exceptional Consumer Behavior(the University of Michigan, Gower, 1981).; Tibor Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy: The Psychology of Human Satisfaction(London: Oxford University Press, 1992).; Jacqueline K. Eastman et al., "The Relationship between Sstatus Conumsption and Materialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Chinese, Mexican, and American Students," Journal of Marketing Theory & Practice 5, no. 1 (1997). 18 Martin Ravallion, "The Developing World’s Bulging (but Vulnerable) Middle Class," World Development 38, no. 4 (2010): 445. 19 Ibid., 452. 20 Dennis L. Gilbert, The American Class Structure: In an Age of Growing Inequality(Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2002). For current population discussion see, Francis Fukuyama, "China’s Middle Class Gets Political," The Australian Financial Review 16 Aug 2013 2013. For projected population discussion refer to: http://www.ey.com/GL/en/Issues/Driving-growth/Middle-class-growth-in- emerging-markets---China-and-India-tomorrow-s-middle-classes 21 In para-phrasing Ravallion’s (2010) research, Birdsall et al (2000) defined the middle-class as those with incomes between 75% and 125% of the median in each country. Milanovic and Yitzhaki (2002) defined the middle-class as those living between the mean incomes of Brazil and Italy. Banerjee and Duflo (2008) defined the middle-class as those living between $2 and $10 a day at 1993 PPP (Purchasing Power Parity). Bhalla (2007) defined the middle-class in developing countries relatively as those who are not poor by developed country standards. What is clear is that there is little clear agreement about what defines the middle-class in developing countries. Recent drops in the widely agreed definitions of the middle-class in the West as a result of the Global Financial Crisis of 2009 has further exasperated a search for consensus on the meaning of the middle-class in any context. See; N Birdsall, C Graham, and S Pettinato, "Stuck in the Tunnel: Is Globalization Muddling the Middle Class," in Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, Working Paper 14(Washington, DC.: Brookings Institution, 2000).; Branko Milanovic and Shlomo Yitzhaki, "Decomposing World Income Distribution: Does the World Have a Middle Class?." Review of Income and Wealth 48, no. 2 (2002).; Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, "What Is Middle Class About the Middle Classes around the World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives 22, no. 2 (2008).; Surjit S. Bhalla, "2007,"(New Delhi, India: Oxus Research & Investments, Second among equals: The middle class kingdoms of India and China).; For current population data for 2013 in the USA see: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/30/census-state- population-estimates-growth/4248089/ 22 Calculation of Chinese anual population growth rate = (((677 - 451) / 451) x 100) / 7 = 7.15%. This population growth rate data was projected over a 7x year period from 2013 to 2020. When calculated as a constant exponential growth rate, 7% would result in a doubling of the population every 10 years. This would effectively mean that every ten years we would have to produce double the amount of resources that we consumed in the preceding ten years; and so on, and so on. ‘doubling time’ refers to the require the discovery of more resources then have ever been located in this recorded history of China. Note: these calculations account for Chinese population as of 16/08/2013. They do not account for the actual GDP growth rate. As Albert Bartlett noted, “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” See: http://www.albartlett.org/ 23 President of the People’s Republic of China Hu Jintao, "Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China " in Order of the President of the People’s Republic of China No. 26, ed. Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Amending the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China(Beijing, ChinaFebruary 26, 2010). 24 Jessie Chen, "Twin Buildings Appeared in Beijing and Chongqing," China Intellectual Property Aug, no. 50 (2012). However, as Chen further acknowledges, the case of explicitly determining copyright infringement of architectrue is far more difficult then for other forms of design. At its fundamental core is the notion that an architectural work is a combination of a vast variety of other copyrighted artefacts and knowledge, such as Windows, doors, engineering, handles, tiles etc. A building’s uniqness and originallity is therefore determined by the ‘artistic qualities’ that are used to compose these disparate elements togeather. Ironiclly, drawings created to represent the building can be copyrighted, as can models also constructed by the building’s author, however the building’s copyright itself proves more difficult in China to determine and enforce. 25 Paul Goldstein and P. Bernt Hugenholtz, "Territoriality, National Treatment, Jurisdiction, and Conflict of Laws," in International Copyright: Principles, Law, and Practice(London: Oxford University Press, 2012). 26 Bianca Bosker, Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China(Honolulu, Hong Kong: University fo Hawai'i Press, Hong Kong University Press, 2013). See also, Jean Baudrillard, Simulcra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser(The University of Michigan Press, 1994). 27 Donald B. Marron and David G. Steel, "Which Countries Protect Intellectual Property? The Case of Software Piracy," Economic Inquiry 38, no. 2 (2000). See also, Fang Wang et al., "Purchasing Pirated Software: An Initial Examination of Chinese Consumers," Journal of Consumer Marketing 22, no. 6 (2005): 341. 28 Ang et al., "Spot the Difference: Consumer Responses Towards Counterfeits," 221. 29 For example, when considering the illegal downloading and application of computer software in the advancement of a small Chinese business, the business owner would contrast the financial benefit of the software to themselves, their business, their family, and their immediate community, against the possible financial penalties they may incur. In this case, the ‘collectivist attitude’ may conclude that the benefit to the whole outweighs any potential consequences to the individual. Swinyard, Rinne, and u, "The Morality of Software Piracy: A Cross-Cultural Analysis," 657. 30 For a concise historical overview of China’s history, see Jonathan Spence, Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990). 31 Here I am referring specifically to the formation of the Magna Carta in 1215 and its affect upon cultural attitudes towards the rule-of- law, civil liberty, and ultimately, democracy. See, Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All (University of California Press, 2009). 32 Leonard, "Michael Zavros: Charm Offensive," 102. Leonard cites Rex Butler in Somol and Whiting, "Notes around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism." See also Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations(New York: Schocken Books, 1968). 33 Leonard, "Michael Zavros: Charm Offensive," 104. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Victoria Hamilton, Narcissus and Oedipus: The Children of Psychoanalysis(London: Karnac Books, 1994), 21-5. When coming across a spring as ‘clear as silver’, Narcissus gazed into the untouched waters and fell in love with his reflection: “[Narcissus] gazed at the twin stars that were his eyes, at his flowing locks, … his smooth cheeks, his ivory neck, his lovely face where a rosy flush stained the snowy whiteness of his completion, admiring all the features for which he was himself admired.” His own self-love leading to the ultimate consumption of his own mortality as he plunged a dagger into his own chest declaring; “Ah youth, beloved in vain, farewell!” 37 Leonard, "Michael Zavros: Charm Offensive," 105. 38 Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience," in Écrits: A Selection(London: Travistock, 1977 (1949)). Here I am applying Lacan’s use of the mirror-stage to explain the conceptual functioning of self-reflection as a means through which to determine identity in young children (6-18 months old). Here I am proposing that the mirror- stage allows for a forensic examination of post-critical works that reveal not the author’s degrees of criticality, but the embedded ego of capitalist culture as a whole. 39 Leonard, "Michael Zavros: Charm Offensive," 105. 40 Sebastian Smee, "Brittle Beauty," Weekend Australian, March 24 2007, 18. 41 Christopher Brisbin, "Spatial Transfiguration: Anamorphic Mixed-Reality in the Virtual Reality Panorama," in Panorama to Paradise: Scopic Regimes in Architectural and Urban History and Theory XXIVth Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, ed. Stephen Loo and Katharine Bartsch(Adelaide2007). 42 In referring to ‘symbolic form’, I am directly referencing Panofsky’s seminal work on the construction of subjective truth that is facilitated by Renaissance linear perspective. See: Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher S. Wood.(New York: Zone Books, 1991), 41. See also Anne Friedberg, "The Window," in The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006). 43 In referring to ‘facture’, I am referring to Bryson’s description of the spatial and temporal form of the pigment on the painting’s surface, and in the terms of this chapter’s argument, the way in which we might consider the digital image’s pixel as a digital form facture. See Norman Bryson, "The Gaze in the Expanded Field," in Vision and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster(Washington: Bay Press, 1988). 44 Smee, "Brittle Beauty," 18. 45 Ibid. 46 Elly Raymond, "The Prince: Michael Zavros," Artink 33, no. 3 (2013): 90. 47 Wes Hill, "On Post-Critical Art," Contemporary Visual Art+Culture Broadsheet 41, no. 1 (2012). See also: http://www.rockhamptonartgallery.com.au/Whats_On/Past_exhibitions/Further_Exhibitions/The_Prince_Michael_Zavros 48 See: http://artguide.com.au/articles-page/show/michael-zavros/#sthash.aqpHWVgQ.dpuf 49 Ang et al., "Spot the Difference: Consumer Responses Towards Counterfeits," 221. 50 Jessie Chen, "Twin Buildings Appeared in Beijing and Chongqing," China Intellectual Property Aug, no. 50 (2012). 51 Here I am re-deploying Greefland’s description of a similar transformation of pop-star Madonna from image to representation. See Greefland, On Criticality, 5. 52 Firat and Venkatesh outline Baudrillard’s critique of Marxism. A. Fuat Firat and Alladi Venkatesh, "Liberatory Postmodernism and the Reenchantment of Consumption," Journal of Consumer Research 22, no. 3 (1995): 248; Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production, trans. Mark Poster(St. Louis: Telos, 1975). 53 Firat and Venkatesh, "Liberatory Postmodernism and the Reenchantment of Consumption," 249. 54 Hill, "On Post-Critical Art," 67. Hill is paraphrasing Hal Foster’s argument. See Hal Foster, "An Interview with Hal Foster: Is the Funeral for the Wrong Corpse?," Platypus Review 22(2010): 12. 55 Mihai, "Post-Critical Architecture: Going Rouge for Maverick Regimes." See also: Kim Dovey, "'I Mean to Be Critical, But ...'," in Critical Architecture, ed. Jane Rendell, et al., Critiques: Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities (London ; New York: Routledge, 2007), 256-7. 56 Mary McLeod, "Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism," Assemblage 8, no. February (1989): 25. 57 For a broad overview of the cultural sensitivities in China towards foriegn architecrs in the designing of the National Stadium, see: Xuefei Ren, "Architecture and Nation Building in the Age of Globalization: Construction of the National Stadium of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics," Journal of Urban Affairs 30, no. 2 (2008). 58 Ivan Gaskell, "Spilt Ink: Aesthetic Globalization and Contemporary Chinese Art," British Journal of Aesthetics 52, no. 1 (2012): 1. Gaskell cites Winnie Won Yin Wong’s observations about Chinese architecture in the Beijing Olympics. 59 Janna Thompson, "Is Political Apology a Sorry Affair?," Social & Legal Studies 21, no. 2 (2012). 60 Ai Weiwei explicitly symbolised and expressed his grief in Remembering, backpacks (2009) at Haus der Kunst (Munich), and in Sunflower Seeds, painted porcelain (2010) in the Tate (London). See; Ai Weiwei and Lee Ambrozy, "Conspiracy of Silence," Index on Censorship 38, no. 70 (2009).; Simone Hancox, "Art, Activism and the Geopolitical Imagination: Ai Weiwei's ‘Sunflower Seeds’," Journal of Media Practice 12, no. 3 (2012). 61 Murray Fraser, "Introduction: The Cultural Context of Critical Architecture," in Critical Architecture, ed. Jane Rendell, et al., Critiques: Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities (London ; New York: Routledge, 2007), 249. 62 Jianfei Zhu, "China as a Global Site," ibid. 63 Rem Koolhaas, Content(New York: Taschen, 2004), 480-1. 64 Walter Benjamin, "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century," in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writing, ed. Peter Demetz(New York: Schocken Books, 1979), 162. 65Thrift, "Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour," 293. 66 Ibid. Thrift is paraphrasing Postrel. See Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness(New York: Harper Collins, 2003), 9.

Fig.1. Tianducheng luxury faux-Paris real estate development in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of China. Author unknown (2013) Fig. 2. (left) Zaha Hadid, Wangjing SOHO shopping complex (2011–14), Beijing, People’s Republic of China; (right) Meiquan 22nd Century building (2012), Chonjing, People’s Republic of China Fig. 3. Michael Zavros, V12 Narcissus (2009), oil on board, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Fig. 4. Michael Zavros, Echo (2009), oil on canvas, Michael Zavros private collection Fig. 5. (left) Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), chromogenic print, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; (right) Michael Zavros, The Prince (2013), oil on board, Michael Zavros private collection