Huang Zhuan Visual Political Science: Another Wang Guangyi

ang Guangyi has always held a special position in contemporary Chinese art, one that stems from his inherently contradictory nature. Though his Great Criticism Wartworks will never again provide us with the visual shock that they did in the early 1990s, we cannot deny that these images—or, more accurately, his handling of these images—once precisely expressed the contradictory experiences we were having at the time: from indescribable belief to angry deconstruction, from the mettle of heroism to the fashionable pandering of consumerism, from grave criticism of international political relations to nationalist catharsis. He reveled in continuously creating visual suspense, but before we had time to guess the answer to the riddle, he would destroy it. In terms of art history, he counts as an artist who is full of power yet remains unfathomable.

The Misread Great Criticism From art criticism to mass media, from art history to the art market, Wang Guangyi has always been seen as a poster boy for Chinese pop art. This classification can be traced back to the First Biennial, Oil Painting of the Nineties, held in 1992. At that exhibition, he won the highest academic award, the Document Award, from Chinese art critics for his Great Criticism artworks. The award comments read:

In Great Criticism, familiar historical forms have been deftly linked to what were once irreconcilable popular contemporary icons, sending a hopelessly tangled metaphysical problem into suspension. With the language of pop art, the artist has opened up a contemporary problem: so called history is a linguistic prompt that connects with contemporary life; Great Criticism is one of the best examples of such a linguistic prompt to arise in the early nineties.1

While this was a somewhat sketchy appraisal, it was following the After ’89 New Chinese Art Exhibition held in Hong Kong in 1993 that the title “political pop” was unequivocally bestowed upon the Great Criticism series. Li Xianting, who coined the term political pop, describes it thus:

Since 1989, many representative figures of the ’85 New Wave Movement successively discarded their metaphysical stances, and, without consulting each other, all started to walk the path of pop, most of them deconstructing the most influential subjects and political events in in a humorous manner.2

He believed that for the then-current Chinese deconstructionist culture, political pop was identical to “cynical realism,” except that the former found its inspiration from “reality within the broader social and cultural frame,” and the latter “more from an experience of the reality pertaining to the self and its immediate surroundings.”3 Wang Guangyi’s 1989 Mao Zedong and 1990 Great Criticism series came to be seen as the representative works for this style of painting.

6 In 1992, Western art magazines such as Flash Art and Art News gave prominent coverage to Great Criticism, which led to Wang’s inclusion in the Cocart International Art Invitational held in Italy and the 45th Venice Biennale. Since then, political pop as represented by Great Criticism not only became the main reference point through which Westerners came to know contemporary Chinese art, but also became the main critical field through which to judge the success or failure of Wang Guangyi’s art. Critics felt that “this artwork, in terms of art, is just a low value double copy,” reflecting the notion that “as China passes its political peak and moves towards its economic peak, the impetuous creative state of artists is the illness of the period where our history develops into a commercial society.”4 Another criticism was that political pop pandered to America’s Cold War strategic need to suppress China.5 Thus, Great Criticism became famous because of its affiliation with political pop, but it inevitably paid the price of such fame through a misreading based upon an old methodology.

One could venture that this classification and critique of Great Criticism mostly results from displacing Wang Guangyi from the developmental logic of his own art history, as well as removing him from the specific context of modern Chinese art. In an article discussing the cultural development and emergence of Chinese pop art, I proposed that:

The pop art that arose in postwar America had two backgrounds, one in cultural history and one in art history. The former refers to the nourishment it gained from the mass popularization and utilitarian aesthetic pedigree of American culture, and was also a physical reaction to the fragmented, superficial, and sensory consumer culture that emerged after World War II. The latter refers to the refutation of elitist strains of modernism such as abstract expressionism. Warhol’s visit to China in the early 1980s, and, more importantly, Robert Rauschenberg’s solo exhibitions in and Lhasa in 1985, kicked off the spread of American pop ideas in China. This moment just happened to arrive at the peak of China’s ’85 [New Wave Movement], which was marked by themes of enlightenment and rebellion. It was this set of circumstances that produced such a bizarre shortfall in meaning: pop was lackadaisically understood to be a Dada-style destructive kind of art, and its deconstructionist underpinnings were poorly understood. For political reasons, Chinese society quickly completed its transformation from an enlightened culture to a consumer culture in the early 1990s, and Chinese artists, still stuck in a tragic mood by the failure of cultural enlightenment suddenly realized that they were buried in a completely unfamiliar economic world. The loss of ideals and the death of the critical identity left their thoughts in a chaotic mixture of modernist enlightenment construction and postmodernist deconstructionist concepts, which made pop a natural stylistic choice for the period. Of course, this choice was based on a clear misunderstanding of pop: it was both seen as a weapon of critique and used as a tool for deconstruction.

Early Chinese pop art clearly contained mutations that were wholly different from Western pop ideas. First, the appropriation of readymade images was “historicized” and definitely not limited to that which was “current.” This differed markedly from the “random” or “neutral” image selection method in the West. Second, the linguistic strategy of “removal of meaning” was replaced by an attitude of rearranging meaning as a result of the abovementioned appropriation method. This formed the most bizarre and contradictory semantic and cultural traits in Chinese pop art: it deconstructed the original images by reconstructing the meaning of the image, and it removed the cultural burden through a culturally

7 Wang Guangyi, Solidified Arctic Region, 1985, oil on canvas, 150 x 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

critical attitude. It was because Wang Guangyi’s Great Criticism rearranged the highly different images of Chinese political history and Western consumer history that [his work] produced a new form of critical power.6

Obviously, without acknowledging the dual nature of the cultural qualities in Chinese pop art and seeing it only and simply as a direct product of Western modernism, it would be difficult to make faithful judgments about its logical relationship to the cultural enlightenment and social criticism of the 1980s.

For a time, in the early 1980s, Wang Guangyi was a utopian, believing that a healthy, rational, and strong civilization could save a culture that had lost its beliefs. His early artistic activities with the Northern Art Group, and his early series Solidified Arctic Region, displayed a passionate and delusional pursuit of culture that was marked by order, succinctness, and coldness. This idealized approach was quickly replaced by a strongly analytical form of image making, and in his Post-Classical series, which he began in 1987, he discarded his humanist sentiments and used a method of revising the images of Western art history to carry out his project of “cultural analysis” and “schematic critique.” If we say that in Black Rationality and Red Rationality, the subject of analysis was still limited to classical art and literature, then it was with Mao Zedong AO that he first began using political images as material for analysis. Maybe we shouldn’t take too much stock in this term analysis, because the marks and letters Wang Guangyi applied to the surface of the leader’s image were not truly the result of analysis, nor did they indicate any political standpoints or attitudes. They had only one function: to break away from the established expectations of significance and aesthetic judgment that people had towards these kinds of political images.

In 1989, Wang Guangyi classified the images, concepts and methods that he produced during this period as a “clearing out of humanist passions.”7 We can understand this as a desire to maintain tension between abstract and hollow humanist passions and a cold, rational attitude critical of socialist realism. It should be pointed out that during this period, whether he used classical art

8 Wang Guangyi, Red Rationality: Revision of the Idols, 1987, oil on canvas, 120 x 150 x 3 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Wang Guangyi, Mao Zedong AO, 1988, oil on canvas, 120 x 150 x 3 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

and literature, or political images, it was mainly directed at the deficit of meaning created by the universal humanist passions of the ’85 New Wave Movement; he was not taking a “political” stance, and it was wholly unrelated to the pop strategy of deconstructing the meaning of images, even though it made use of readymade images. Wang Guangyi once described his motives behind using political images such as that of Mao Zedong:

I had wanted to provide a basic method for clearing out humanist passions through the creation of Mao Zedong, but when Mao Zedong was exhibited at the China Avant/Garde exhibition, observers multiplied the humanist passions by a hundredfold to imbue Mao Zedong with even more humanist import. . . . Mao

Following page: Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism—Art and Totem, 2007, oil on canvas, 400 x 300 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

9 10 11 Zedong touched on the question of politics. Though I was avoiding this question at the time, it really touched on it. But at the time I wanted to use an artistic method to resolve it; a neutral attitude is better, as a neutral attitude is more of an artistic method.8

What should attract our attention here is the way he proposed a “neutral attitude,” because we can see his “neutral attitude” towards politics and ideology in his later art. This neutral attitude is not detachment; instead, it indicates that art can make effective judgments about political events and history only after it has removed specific political standpoints and humanist passions, so that it can naturally present its inherent significance and value. This forms the basic methodology of Wang Guangyi’s “visual political science,” and it is an effective way for us to understand his political nature, which has its roots in his appraisal of classical and contemporary art.

The post-classical period was an important stage in Wang Guangyi’s transition from modernism to more contemporary ideas. This period clearly divided classical art from contemporary art, and he believed that the former included art of the classical period as well as modern art: “They [classical and modern art] draw their meaning from the overarching classical knowledge structure, they are natural arts that are the product of a projection of humanist passion.” What they express are mainly mythological illusions, religious passion, and the common and mundane emotions of the individual. In contrast, contemporary art discards its dependent relationship to “humanist passion” and its quest for the meaning of art; it “enters into a relationship of resolving the problems of art and establishes a logically verifiable linguistic background which uses the past cultural facts as experiential material.”9

What really brought about Wang Guangyi’s transition from being a modern artist to a contemporary artist and gaining recognition in art history was his Great Criticism (1990). It seems that it was here that he finally found a method for creating images that both “used past cultural facts as experience” and was “logically verifiable.” With Great Criticism, he also discarded all efforts towards a complete artistic style and directly collocated two materially different images—Cultural Revolution style political posters and Western consumer advertisements—together in the same picture, a method that seems more like a stylistic gamble, using a contradictory attitude to narrate the empty state that culture faced in the bizarre landscape in which the enlightenment era was replaced by the consumer era. It appears that if we view the politics of Mao Zedong as nothing more than a method of image arrangement, then it was with Great Criticism that the politics truly became the experiential material for logical verification. But this politics differs from the narrow sense of political realities, political events, and political authority in the original meaning of political pop because the collocation of “images” from the materialist age and “signs” from consumer culture is not necessarily present in order to appraise the two, but, instead, to construct an imagined relationship that can be explained in multiple ways. To put it more simply, if Great Criticism deconstructed or criticized something, then what it deconstructed and criticized was merely the mode of political conception that lies within humanist passion; if it created something, perhaps it merely created a neutral image that at the same time could continuously attract attention and ask for explanation. The artist is often pleased by this and has noted:

I think the reason that people remember Great Criticism, even if they don’t like it, the reason they remember it might be linked to the term “non-standpoint.” I didn’t used to know this word: it is determined by the “neutral standpoint.” Everyone thought I was “criticizing” something, that I had a clear standpoint, but they slowly realized that I hadn’t really done anything. Perhaps Big Criticism drew its meaning from all of these

12 serendipitous reasons. Later I happened upon a conversation with a philosopher, and he said that in philosophy this attitude was called the “non-standpoint.”10

The non-standpoint does not insinuate not having a standpoint, but suggests a repudiation of set modes of thought and biases, using instead a kind of neutral relationship to make the object present a more varied and open potential. Zhao Tingyang, the philosopher friend whom Wang Guangyi just mentioned in the preceding quote, describes the non-standpoint thus:

The non-standpoint says that every standpoint has its useful place, so different standpoints are used in different places, and no standpoint is denied. That is to say, the non-standpoint merely strips away the absolute values or values the priority of any viewpoint . . . . Non-standpoint thinking first resists one’s own biased thinking. Only when one’s own biases are closed off and prevented from becoming the basis of evidence can he see others, hear others, and understand others.11

Perhaps we can trust in art critic Yan Shanchun’s psychoanalysis of Great Criticism:

Wang Guangyi ingeniously grasped the tension between Warhol’s “ease of understanding” and Beuys’ “abstruse.” I think that this kind of artistic taste is most suited to his personality: agile and adaptive like the monkey—Warhol’s “acceptance with pleasure,” and fierce as a tiger Beuys’ “merciless criticism.” To place these mutually contradictory art images together is just the kind of “humor” that he created for contemporary art.12

Another art critic, following the same lines, proposed that the works from this period manifested “the idea of bringing Gombrich’s image form revisionism together with Derrida’s deconstructionism.”13 These are all logical considerations to take into account in our observations of Wang Guangyi’s “visual political science.”

Dangerous Premonition In March 1989, having returned to Zhujiang after taking part in the China/Avant-Garde exhibition in Beijing that February, it seems that Wang Guangyi was not consumed by the excitement of the exhibition’s success; instead, he busied himself with the creation of his first installation piece, Inflammable and Explosive Materials (1989). The materials for this piece were extremely simple,

Wang Guangyi, Inflammable and Explosive Materials (detail), 1989, installation. Courtesy of the artist.

13 14 consisting of strips that resembled pieces of gunpowder bags and some nonsense letters, enough to lead to associations with his Post-Classical works. Later on, I jokingly said that it was a true piece of “poor art,” because it was just like his then impoverished living conditions. The critics had different explanations of this artwork, but they all viewed it as a turning point. Yan Shanchun believed that it was a “relatively rough mutation of Beuys’ art,”14 and that its significance was comparable to the significance that Gertrude Stein and Girls from Arles had for Picasso.15 Lü Peng made the following reading of Inflammable and Explosive Materials:

It brings to mind the “clearing out of humanist passion” that the artist recently spoke of . . . . The topic the artist is facing is how latent drives (which include highly complex spiritual content, including no shortage of extremely personal stuff) can be effectively controlled, so that the appearance of signs is not laden with people’s clear extensions of meaning. Unlike some of the previous painted series, Inflammable and Explosive Materials appears to have no clear extension of any image forms from art or cultural history, which has made it harder to assess. Perhaps it is the artist’s sensitivity towards the future, but the implications of the artwork became quite easy to assess a half-year later. This series was begun in March 1989, and no matter how much chaos, restiveness, unsettledness, crisis, and opportunity was confusingly intertwined from the second half of 1988 to early 1989, Inflammable and Explosive Materials was perplexing and hard to explain. It was a “riddle,” and it disintegrated right at the point where its meaning began. That is to say that just as the artist was cutting into reality, he dissolved the problems of reality. So from the beginning, people will feel that the traces of pop had faded. It was the change in reality that provided people with a new context for assessing the work. There was a change in circumstances, and Inflammable and Explosive Materials was moved to a position that retracted and exposed its original meaning. In the end, the “blind spots” virtually disappeared, and the symbolic meaning of the work emerged.16

Maybe it is only people who actually experienced that period in history who can have a feeling for the sense of crisis and indescribability of that time. It was all-encompassing and specific; it was a composite crisis of reality composed of China’s culture, economy, politics, society, psychology, and belief. Those might have been the circumstances that led to the creation of Inflammable and Explosive Materials, but it is quite apparent that the artist wasn’t hoping to express this crisis of the experiential world, nor was he directly expressing some political opinion. What he applied to this crisis seems to have been a kind of analytical stance: placing within his artistic logic for observation, the logic that “dissolved the problems of reality as it cut into reality.” In the solemnity of this political topic we can see Beuys’ misanthropy, and in the neutrality towards these topics we can see Warhol’s cynicism. Surely, in dealing with crisis, he is accustomed to presenting it using the premonition method of Inflammable and Explosive Materials and doesn’t wish to attach any kind of actual realistic meaning: to prevent people from having specific readings and linear conceptions of the meaning of crisis is to allow them to have a more multifaceted understanding towards crisis.

If there is really any kind of transitional significance to that piece, it is that not only will we be able to understand the pop methodology and real motives behind Great Criticism that appeared the following year, but, more importantly, it is that we will be better able to assess the methodological value of the more political topics he would approach later on in the 1990s.

Opposite page: Wang Guangyi, The Temperature Comparison Between China and America, 1990, gypsum, Loess, wires (later displayed as a photograph of objects). Courtesy of the artist.

15 Wang Guangyi, Visa, 1994, artificial fur, silkscreen, wood boxes, 120 x 80 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Researching the System 1990 was a watershed year for Wang Guangyi’s art. It was in this year that he moved to , and not only did he begin work on Great Criticism, but he also created a well-known installation work, The Temperature Comparison Between China and America. In a sense, it was this among other artworks that truly brought Wang Guangyi’s art into line with real political thought, because it was here that specific ideological themes began to replace historical and political signs as the focus of his visual analytical work.

Temperature is a neutral term with multiple meanings, and Wang Guangyi once joked that perhaps it was the heat of Wuhan that inspired him to produce The Temperature Comparison Between China and America. In fact, temperature and climate often take on political meanings in our lives, such as with the “spring of reform” or the “Cold War,” and it is just this kind of ideological discourse that constructs our imaginary context and often leads us to consciously or unconsciously ignore and halt our pondering of the complex and ruthless mechanism of control that lies behind it. Perhaps the use of “temperature” in these two works is to prompt us to think about a fundamental reality: temperature often functions in the political narrative. We can see in these works a moderate transition from Inflammable and Explosive Materials toward a concrete observation of the ideological system. The problems these artworks raise and the methods the artist used are identical to those of Great Criticism. Though they don’t have the same potential for widespread dissemination and multifaceted interpretation as Great Criticism, which used clear political images and consumer signs, they also avoided an unnecessary misreading.

After 1993, Wang Guangyi successively created a series of installations with titles such as Eastern European Landscape, Visa, Drugs, Blood Test, Similarities and Differences Between Concepts of Food Quality Management in Two Different Political Systems, Source of the Species, A History of European Civilization, and Basic Education. In these works, he transferred the sense of crisis from Inflammable and Explosive Materials into the realms of international politics, psychology, and sociology (during this time he also made a number of canvas works with the same themes, such as Necessary Handshake, Necessary Ceremony, Necessary Meeting, and Entry Visa). There was a very

16 Wang Guangyi, Eastern European Landscape, 1992, artificial fur, silkscreen, wood boxes, 90 x 50 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

pragmatic reason behind the formation of these works. After the 45th Venice Biennale, Chinese artists had the opportunity to compete with international contemporary artists on the same stage. While most Chinese artists at home and abroad were busying themselves employing traditional cultural signs to affirm their cultural identity, Wang Guangyi began instead to observe the ideological systems in international politics. He described his work during this period as “turning internal problems into external problems.” There are two levels of meaning to this: one, extending artistic problems into the fields of political and social problems; two, extending domestic problems into the international arena. He raised this issue in a statement about Visa:

Visa comes from the “national image” that is present at the visa offices of each country’s embassy. In this sense, the visa places everyone in the shadows of the power issue between states. Here, everyone becomes the investigated. Perhaps in contemporary civilization and society, among all of the applications one makes in his life, the visa is the most “ideological” in nature. Everything that is shaped by ideology, such as man’s emotions, beliefs, and national identity, finds embodiment in the visa.17

In the visa process, which we are all accustomed to and accept as normal, Wang Guangyi has seen the “shadows” of the investigators representing state power. In the same way, in Blood Test, he has seen in the blood testing process the “investigative relationship towards individual life” of the national medical system; in Similarities and Differences Between Concepts of Food Quality Management in Two Different Political Systems, he has seen the essence of the power of control exercised over people’s lives by the food management system; in Basic Education, he has seen the terrible logic within the similar war preparedness education programs enacted in countries on both sides of the Cold War. And these are all from a methodology of “symptomatic reading” of the “loopholes” in the ideological script. In 1995, I made the following reading into those works:

Visa and Eastern European Landscape touch on international themes, and they are related and synchronized with the state of political culture for the

17 “non-mainstream culture,” “spread of ideology,” “anti-marginalization,” and “postcolonial culture” on a global scale. Wang Guangyi may already be aware that to simply call his previous work “political pop” would doubtlessly face him with a value judgment crisis: it would place all contemporary Chinese art experimentation into the narrow, Cold War-like and marginalized “Chinese discourse,” or, at best, the “Eastern discourse.” This would break off and suffocate the most challenging segment of contemporary Chinese art—that which turns Chinese problems into global problems. The story that Visa and Eastern European Landscape tell is about states and politics, but it is no longer cynical, closed, or Cold War-like, but a story that is open and has meaning for all of mankind. These works also display some of the artist’s work process attributes: the directness of signs, courage, and resourcefulness in managing tensions between materials.18

Though these artworks were featured in all levels and types of international exhibitions, perhaps owing to the sensitivity of their theme or limitations of the domestic environment, these “system research” works were not exhibited in China until the 1997 First Contemporary Art Academic Invitational held in Beijing. It was with this exhibition that Wang Guangyi began applying his “system research” to local social practice (although the works were never seen by the audience because the exhibition was banned by officials). His original proposal for the exhibition was entitled Anyone Could Be a Disease Carrier. In the proposal, he wrote:

. . . this work tells the story of how the ancient and serious theme of “others and hell” has been quickly vulgarized in contemporary society. Today, a kind of universal spirit of suspicion has become a kind of “civilized fashion” accepted by all. When we place this spirit of suspicion into the contemporary context, we have plenty of reasons to feel that everyone is suspect, so in this “vulgarized psychological story,” we have all unconsciously become the catalysts of this “civilized fashion.”19

This project was an extension of Blood Test. It expanded the criticism of the medical system’s power to engage in control of the body into a decoding of the entire society controlling the system, revealing the paradoxical relationship and psychological reality of controller and controlled mutually controlling each other in contemporary civilization, a concept that reaches similar conclusions in Foucault’s theoretical analysis of “the body tamed.”20 The work that Wang Guangyi actually prepared for the exhibition was an installation titled Quarantine—Anyone Could Be a Disease Carrier. He made it with readymade objects such as vegetables, fruits, shelves, and hygiene posters, bringing this particular probing of the system to a much more concrete level: the collaboration between the disease-control system and the hygiene propaganda to attain control over the public. After these, he went on to create a number of similar works such as Hygiene and Quarantine—Any Food Could be Poisonous and The 24 Hour Process of Food Rotting, to explore the shadows cast over our minds by the reality of all kinds of systems within post-Cold War civilization. These works also serve as his transition towards new artistic problems.

In his “system research,” Wang Guangyi engaged a method similar to a pathological reading towards concrete ideological themes and gave his “visual political science” a kind of methodological significance: he would often predetermine a certain ideological theme to attract people’s visual attention but would avoid making superficial values judgments or critiques of them. He would, instead, use strong visual images (such as with Visa and Blood Test) and contextually suggestive mixed media (such as with Similarities and Differences Between Concepts of Food Quality Management in Two Different Political Systems and Hygiene and Quarantine—Any Food Could be Poisonous) to form psychological suggestions, encouraging people to discard direct

18 Wang Guangyi, Age of Materialism, 2000, silkscreen, wood boxes, food, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

readings about the meaning of images and materials and focus their attention on what has been consciously or unconsciously omitted.

The Mythology of Materialism In the late 1990s, China evolved into a society that was a blend of two ideologies: on the one hand, socialist ideology held the basic set of values that controlled the state system and political life, where a complete system of highly spiritual images and symbols maintained the orthodoxy and legitimacy of the materialist mythology; on the other hand, consumer culture controlled the daily lives, especially the economic lives, of the Chinese through the market values of individualism and freedom of choice. At the same time, there is also a system of material symbols and signs in the media, Internet, advertising, and entertainment to establish a mass cultural mythology. This state of control by dual ideologies makes up the basic reality of contemporary Chinese society today.

Using his Age of Materialism as a “trademark,” Wang Guangyi’s art entered into a new depth of inquiry. This artwork used various framed awards from the old ideological era and all kinds of material necessities to show the lasting influence that the material world, the social system, and cultural memory still has over us. The cultural memories of the age of materialism and the banal desires of the age of consumerism were placed into a more complex relationship.

In the works that followed, Materialist, Workers’ Memorial, History of a Newspaper, and East Wind—Golden Dragon, the investigation of the mythological history of materialist ideology became the focus. The artist referred to his work from this period as research into the “socialist visual experience,”21 and he devoted special attention to the image and ritualization processes of the fabricated subject, the “people,” within this mythological history.

On the surface, Age of Materialism would appear to continue the visual forms of Great Criticism— except that the images of people had gone from being flat surfaces to three-dimensional sculptures —but this artwork implies that the dualist logic of politics/consumption and East/West that is present in Great Criticism had begun to be replaced by a more complex relationship. Unlike the pop methodology used in Great Criticism, which brought together materialist age “images” with consumerist age “signs,” Age of Materialism highlighted subjective qualities in images of “the people”:

19 they are both historical and real, self-determined and submissive, both the symbolic body of power and the subject of control. Here, the coexistence of mythological memories and the power of reality show the multifaceted meanings of these classic ideological images. When these sculptures were exhibited at the First Guangzhou Triennial of Contemporary Art, Wang Guangyi gave this self-reading:

In these new “sculpture” works, I was trying to remove the obvious oppositional aspect and take that inherent, somewhat unclear simple power, that is to say, I wanted to reconstruct the power and meaning that those socialist visual elements have. This power and meaning has a direct link to my experience of existence, and it is the same as the most basic things that make up our culture.22

His proposal for the 2001 Fourth Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition was also rooted in his interest in the relationship between the production of socialist ideology and the development of the spirit. The inspiration for the first proposal for Workers’ Memorial (sometimes called Forces of Nature) came from the old prefabricated concrete slabs in the street that had been imprinted with advertisements. The plan was this: to recreate

Wang Guangyi, Workers’ Memorial, 2001, fibre, iron, glass. Courtesy of the artist.

20 twenty slabs of prefab concrete on site that would be imprinted with the names of model workers and dead or injured workers from Overseas Chinese Village in Shenzhen from the past twenty years, then cover the slabs with acrylic, so that each slab would have the significance of an alternative memorial plaque through which to explore and express “some of the things or ‘relationships’ behind a beautiful piece of human scenery.”23 In the Workers’ Memorial that was actually exhibited, he directly copied or appropriated the sculptures from traditional worker’s memorials and placed them in glass cases, giving these icons that are so familiar to the Chinese a kind of estranged or alienated visual effect, alerting people to the implications of focusing anew on these “workers.”

East Wind—Golden Dragon was a work that Wang Guangyi proposed for the National Heritage Exhibition, held in England. This exhibition was about exploring the significance of the cognitive and visual history related to the emergence in recent times of the concept of “nation” in China, and exploring the visual forms and elements (signs, products, ceremonies, space) of the nation’s shift from being a cultural body to a political and spiritual body. The East Wind Golden Dragon was the first automobile designed by the Chinese after the establishment of the People’s Republic. As Mao’s mobile podium, this vehicle also became a symbol of political power. It showed the process of the automobile evolving from an industrial product to a kind of a sign of culture, politics, and consumption. The historical relationship between a sign of political delusion and a sign of consumption, a modern industrial product, was the meaning that East Wind—Golden Dragon set out to explore:

The East Wind Golden Dragon was a product of China’s industrial revolution era dreams. It was hammered out by countless people to be given to Chairman Mao. It was an industrial product that was full of belief and of the last gesture to imperial power. Copying it today in the name of art expresses the conflict between belief and material desire. East Wind Golden Dragon is a material testament to national heritage, and it also shows the relationship between power and the will of the people. “National heritage” happens to cover both of these levels. I will use cast iron to reproduce the East Wind Golden Dragon in full size, giving it a museum feel and allowing it to contain the weight of history—the strong desire of a people to grow up, or the multifaceted nature of desire. Simply put, the East Wind Golden Dragon is a product of belief. In other words, it is in itself a “proposal” for China’s industrial revolution.24

If we are to say that in the 1980s Wang Guangyi was a cultural utopian in the traditional sense and that in the early 1990s he used pop image methodology to dispel the rational mythology of the enlightenment period and replace it with a satirical attitude, then in his Materialism series he used conceptualist methods to document the illusions of heroism that still remain in a thoroughly material society and concealed a more complex cultural utopian sentiment.

Cold War Aesthetic As one of the more challenging contemporary artists in China, Wang Guangyi seems to make a move in every junction of art history: from the “rational painting” of the Solidified Arctic Region series to the analytics of his Post-Classical period; from “clearing out the humanist passions” to Great Criticism; from research of Eastern and Western political systems to reshaping the visual mythology of local materialism. It is in this endless questioning of art history that he has gradually formed a unique “visual political science.” In this political science, instead of saying that the historical and political resources are the matrix for expressing set political concepts, it would be more accurate to say that they are a kind of visual strategy and dialectical wittiness. He has always maintained a careful, neutral attitude towards history and politics and does not make value

21 Wang Guangyi, Cold War Aesthetic—People Living in Fear, 2007, coloured fiberglass, 215 x 60 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

judgments lightly. He allows those highly solemn political topics to maintain a kind of sublimity. On this matter he is very close to Beuys’ attitude towards politics: “he does not care about the art of politics, only about the politics of art.” It is the unity between transcendence and strategy that makes his role in Chinese contemporary art more like that of an historical soothsayer than that of a pure critic. Perhaps it is only because of this that he is considered by critics to be an artist who embodies the qualities of both Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol.

In 2007, Wang Guangyi played another card from his visual political science—Cold War Aesthetic. This ambitious project also made use of dual historical and political resources. With the nationwide civilian military preparedness from the height of the Cold War in the 1960s as the backdrop, it reveals his visual illusions about the real world. The “three defenses” (defending against atomic, chemical, and biological weapons) was a national defense education movement that took place in the 1960s when Sino-Soviet relations were at their worst. It has virtually all of the political traits of the Cold War: a highly specific hypothetical enemy, a high level of ideology, and a high level of pertinence to the entire populace. Compared to the “internal revolution” of the Cultural Revolution that was taking place at the same time, it is marked more by peculiarly international traits. It is clear that just like Great Criticism, with its usage of political image resources, Cold War Aesthetic is not about dredging up our visual memories of this movement but about proving reality. Here is how the artist describes this project:

The Cold War had a brutal side, which was of course imagined. It also had a game side to it. At the same time, it influenced our view of the world. To this day we still look at the world with a Cold War mentality. Today’s political state of affairs is the fruit of seeds planted during the Cold War; it is the same with 9-11, the same with Al-Qaeda. These are all different means of expression from the Cold War.25

Of course, we can’t look too much into this description for the meaning of this work. In fact, perhaps what the artist is really interested in is that the Cold War has provided him with another opportunity to activate his visual and verbal wit. This fits nicely with his artistic personality: letting himself stray far from his own creations and model visual world and allowing this world to expand to a greater degree of meaning through the discussion of others. That is exactly what he calls “aesthetics”:

22 Wang Guangyi, Cold War Aesthetic— People Taking Cover in the Air-Raid Shelters, 2008, coloured fiberglass (six pieces), 415 x 107 x 215 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

As I see it, my art is searching for dually opposed stuff. The Cold War mentality fits with a lot of my own ideas. The Cold War mentality has shaped a lot of my views on the world and art. In this way, we can imagine an enemy, and that enemy is the starting point for all of our behaviour. The flipside is the same. Our enemies will imagine us to be their enemies, and that’s the beauty of this world, in the beauty of this opposition, existing with this oppositional stuff.26

Cold War Aesthetic is marked by the same methodological traits as Great Criticism, Visa, Materialist, and The Face of Belief, except that what is being reproduced is no longer crazy historical images, but historical scenes that are cold to the point of being suffocating. These magnified and solidified scenes are more like a historical catalyst, providing us with a new field of vision for understanding the meaning of life and the world. Perhaps this work Wang Guangyi, Cold War Aesthetic—People has returned to the “external problems” from before but Killing the Virus-Carrying Insects, 2008, coloured fiberglass, projection, 81 x 61 x 106 cm. Courtesy within a wider field of thought. of the artist.

The Cold War is political heritage from the twentieth century that has been left to mankind. It wasn’t a conclusion of history, but a new seed that was planted in human history. The Korean War, the Vietnam War, nuclear testing, China’s Cultural Revolution, the 1968 uprisings across Europe, the Beatles and the Rock movement, the space race—all of these real historical spectacles are not only influencing our psychological orientation and cultural consciousness, they are also influencing the future direction of the world. In this sense, Cold War Aesthetic is a visual prophecy that is being provided to the world’s new history by a Chinese artist.

While this essay was being written, Wang Guangyi encountered a rare individual political crisis. The crisis stemmed from his announcement of withdrawal from a Chinese-themed exhibition to be held at the Marseilles Fine Arts Museum. The announcement was made to express his anger at the disruption of the Beijing Olympic Torch rally in France. This act made him a target of criticism from the Internet mobs. His actions were seen as a “risk-free patriotic show,” and he was seen as

23 a shallow democratist. Though these attacks were far removed from artistic issues and even fell in the range of illogical personal attacks, this crisis showed that in comparison to Wang Guangyi the artist, Wang Guangyi the public figure lacked a “visual political science” with which to face the real world. Just as in the art world, correct political attitudes and viewpoints are no guarantee of a correct outcome. In the end, this world is divided by different interests.

In this essay we have another reading of Wang Guangyi. We don’t know whether this Wang Guangyi—when compared to the Wang Guangyi who has been called the father of Chinese political pop or with the Wang Guangyi who has been shaped by publicity and market mythology—will prove to be closer to the true Wang Guangyi. Perhaps the “real” Wang Guangyi never existed.

Translated by Jeff Crosby

This is a revised version of a text from the catalogue Visual Polity: Another Wang Guangyi, published by Linnan Fine Arts Publishing House (2008) for an exhibition organized by the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal at the He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen.

Notes 1 Lixiang Yu Caozuo: Zhongguo Guangzhou—Shoujie Jiushi Niandai Yishu Shuangnianzhan Youhua Bufen (Ideals and operation: China Guangzhou—First ‘90s Art Biennial, Oil Painting Segment), 1st ed. (Chengdu: Fine Arts Publishing House, October 1992), 104. 2 Li Xianting, “Zhongyao de Bushi Yishu” (The importance isn’t art) (: Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House, 2000). 3 Li Xianting, “‘Hou 89’ Yishu zhong de Wuliaogan he Jiegou Yishi—‘Wanshi Xieshi Zhuyi’ yu ‘Zhengzhi Bopu’ Chaoliu Xi” (Feelings of boredom and a deconstructive mentality in ‘After ‘89’ art: Analyzing the trends of ‘Cynical Realism’ and ‘Political Pop’), in Piping de Shidai: 20 Shiji mo Zhongguo Meishu Piping Wencui (A time of criticism: A collection of Chinese art criticism from the late twentieth century), vol. 1 (Guangzhou: Guangzhou Fine Arts Publishing House, December 2003), 386. 4 Duan Lian, “Shiji mo de Yishu Fansi” (Rethinking turn-of-the-century art), 1st ed. (: Shanghai Art and Literature Publishing House, May 1998), 142. 5 Ibid., 12. 6 Huang Zhuan, “Wei Guangqing: Yi zhong Lishi hua de Bopu Zhuyi” (Wei Guangqing: An historicized form of Pop), in Zuo Tu You Shi (Interplay of images and history), 1st ed. (Guangzhou: Lingnan Fine Arts Publishing House, November 2007), 1. 7 Wang Guangyi, “Guanyu Qingli Renwen Reqing” (About clearing out the humanist passions), Jiangsu Pictorial 10 (1990). 8 Lü Peng, “Tushi Xiuzheng yu Wenhua Piping” (Image alteration and cultural criticism), in Dangdai Yishu Chaoliu zhong de Wang Guangyi (Wang Guangyi within the trends of contemporary art), 1st ed. (Changdu: Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House, October 1992), 36. 9 Wang Guangyi, “Guanyu Qingli Renwen Reqing.” 10 Wang Guangyi and Wu Shanzhuan, “Guanyi Yixie Wangshi de Fangtan” (Guangyi remembers some things from the past), Asia Art Archive, unpublished. 11 Zhao Tingyang, Lun Keneng Shenghuo (Discussing the life possible), 1st ed. (Beijing: China People’s University Publishing House, July 2004), 7, and Meiyou Shijie guan de Shijie (A world without a world view), 1st ed. (Beijing: China People’s University Publishing House, December 2003), 3. 12 Yan Shanchun, “Dangdai Yishu Chaoliu zhong de Wang Guangyi” (Wang Guangyi within the trends of contemporary art), in Dangdai Yishu Chaoliu zhong de Wang Guangyi (Wang Guangyi within the trends of contemporary art), 1st ed. (Chengdu: Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House, October 1992), 20. 13 Lü Peng, “Tuxiang Xiuzheng yu Wenhua Piping,” 42. 14 Yan Shanchun, “Dangdai Yishu Chaoliu zhong de Wang Guangyi” (Wang Guangyi within the trends of contemporary art). 15 Ibid., 21. 16 Lü Peng, “Tushi Xiuzheng yu Wenhua Piping,” 40. 17 Wang Guangyi, “Wo Jinqi de Guongzuo Qingkuang” (My recent work situation), Gallery 4 (1994), 64. 18 Ibid. 19 Shoujie Dangdai Yishu Xueshu Yaoqing Zhan (Catalogue for the First Contemporary Art Academic Invitational Exhibition), 1st ed. (Guangzhou: Lingnan Fine Arts Publishing House, December 1996), 122. 20 Michel Foucault, Guixun yu Chengfa (Surveiller et punir), trans. Liu Beicheng and Yang Yuanying (Beijing: Shenghuo-Dushu-Xinzhi Joint Publishing Company,1999), 153. 21 Charles Merewether, “Guanyu Shehui Zhuyi Shijue Jingyan” (About the socialist visual experience), interview with Wang Guangyi in Wang Guangyi (unpublished by HanART Gallery, Hong Kong). 22 “Chongxin Jiedu: Zhongguo Shiyan Yishu Shi Nian” (Reinterpreting: Ten years of Chinese experimental art), Beijing Youth Daily, November 28, 2002. 23 “Bei Yizhi de Xianchang: Di Si Jie Shanzhen Dangdai Diaosu Yishu Zhan” in the exhibition catalogue for Transplanted scenes: Fourth Shenzhen Contemporary Sculpture Art Exhibition (Shenzhen: Shenzhen Museum of Art, 2003), 119. 24 Wang Guangyi, “Dui Huangquan Zuihou de Zhuihou Lizan” (The last gesture to imperial power), unpublished. 25 Excerpted from “Wang Guangyi: Faxian ‘Leng Zhan’ zhi Mei” (Wang Guangyi: Discovering the beauty of the “Cold War”), Guangzhou Daily, December 29, 2002. 26 Ibid.

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