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The Aesthetic and Ethic of the Chinese Diasporic Artist Mu Xin

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The Aesthetic and Ethic of the Chinese Diasporic Artist Mu Xin “Art Is to Sacrifice One’s Death”: The Aesthetic and Ethic of the Chinese Diasporic Artist Mu Xin by Muyun Zhou Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Carlos Rojas, Supervisor ___________________________ Eileen Chow ___________________________ Leo Ching Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Critical Asian Humanities in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2021 ABSTRACT “Art Is to Sacrifice One’s Death”: The Aesthetic and Ethic of the Chinese Diasporic Artist Mu Xin by Muyun Zhou Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Carlos Rojas, Supervisor ___________________________ Eileen Chow ___________________________ Leo Ching An abstract of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Critical Asian Humanities in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in the Graduate School of Duke University 2021 Copyright by Muyun Zhou 2021 Abstract In his world literature lecture series running from 1989 to 1994, the Chinese diasporic writer-painter Mu Xin (1927-2011) provided a puzzling proposition for a group of emerging Chinese artists living in New York: “Art is to sacrifice.” Reading this proposition in tandem with Mu Xin’s other comments on “sacrifice” from the lecture series, this study examines the intricate relationship between aesthetics and ethics in Mu Xin’s project of art. The question of diasporic positionality is inherent in the relationship between aesthetic and ethical discourses, for the two discourses were born in a Western tradition, once foreign to Mu Xin. Examining his life and his works in different media, I trace the intellectual genealogy of his works to Lu Xun and Lin Fengmian’s exchange on aesthetics in the late 1920s. Then, I examine how Mu Xin reinvented their aesthetic-cum- ethical project to shape his social role as an artist in the world. Finally, comparing him to a similar Chinese diasporic artist Gao Xingjian, I put Mu Xin’s artistic image in relation to the political position that he inhabited as a diasporic artist. I argue that Mu Xin not only vigorously forwarded an ethical project in pursuit of humanness with his advice on art but also envisioned such humanness to be a mediative process of social activity instead of any essential state of being or sentimentality in a singular mind. Through such an artistic project, Mu Xin managed to participate in reforming the static boundaries of culture and nation-state, such that he carried out a political project through fictional means, making the world more adaptive to individuals living within it. iv Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... vii 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 2. Mu Xin and the May Fourth Legacy ............................................................................. 15 2.1 Lu Xun’s Sacrificial Narrative .............................................................................. 21 2.2 Sacrifice for “Rendao” .......................................................................................... 30 2.3 Reimagining the Sacrifice ..................................................................................... 38 2.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 43 3. Humanness as Sociality: The Discourse of Sacrifice in Mu Xin’s Arts ....................... 45 3.1 Reality in the Liminal Space ................................................................................. 52 3.2 Traveling Through the Space with Others ............................................................ 60 3.3 An Embodied Journey ........................................................................................... 63 3.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 68 4. Humanness as a Diasporic Problem .............................................................................. 71 4.1 Keeper of the Root: Gao Xingjian ........................................................................ 76 4.2 A Root as a Rhizome: Mu Xin .............................................................................. 82 4.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 94 5. Epilogue ........................................................................................................................ 96 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 103 v List of Figures Figure 1: Mu Xin on the final session of the lecture series, The Tale of Mu Xin. .............. 2 Figure 2: Mu Xin (6th from the left), Wang Bomin and 10 other students at Lu Xun's grave (standing pose). ....................................................................................................... 22 Figure 3: Mu Xin (1st on the right from Lu Xun's portrait), Wang Bomin and 10 other students at Lu Xun's grave (squatting pose). .................................................................... 22 Figure 4: Lin Fengmian, Rendao 人道, ca. 1927. Oil on canvas. ..................................... 35 Figure 5: Lin Fengmian, Flying Geese by Reeds 蘆花飛雁, 1964. Ink on paper, 47.5×58cm. ....................................................................................................................... 53 Figure 6: Mu Xin, Fishing Village 漁村, 1979. Gouache and ink on paper, 68.6×68.6cm. ........................................................................................................................................... 53 Figure 7: Mu Xin, Eve Before the War 戰爭前夜, 2001. ................................................. 53 Figure 8: Mu Xin, Waiting for Rabbi 等待拉比, 2000. Gouache on canvas. ................... 56 Figure 9: Recto 52 from the “Prison Notes,” in “The Art of Mu Xin: Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes.” ............................................................................................................ 91 Figure 10: Prison Notes at Yale University Art Gallery, October 12 – December 9, 2001. ........................................................................................................................................... 92 Figure 11: “The Art of Mu Xin: Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes” exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery, October 12 – December 9, 2001. ....................................... 92 Figure 12: Mu Xin (middle), Liu Dan (left) and Alexandra Munroe (right) at the British Museum............................................................................................................................. 96 vi Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Carlos Rojas, for guiding my year-long journey of finding my language to start talking about Mu Xin, an artist that is immediately so complicated in both the concrete and the creative worlds he inhabits. I thank Dr. Rojas for his astute commentary, truthful feedback, and prompt responses to all the problems that I have encountered along the way. As his advisee and a graduate student at Duke, I have truly matured as a scholar from working with Dr. Rojas closely in the past years, while I am still in awe of his diligence, his work ethic, and his rational approach to difficult problems. I would also like to thank Dr. Eileen Chow and Dr. Leo Ching for being on my committee. I am enormously grateful for their time, their investment, and their feedback. Moreover, this project would not have been possible if it were not for the words of encouragement from Dr. Eileen Chow, Dr. Emily Sun at Barnard College, and Dr. Yang Chia-hsien at National Tsinghua University. Each of them has trusted my instinct in studying this obscure topic and offered me immense emotional support at moments that I doubted the worth of my effort, my ability to realize my vision, and was about to give up my project. In addition to reassuring me, they have also provided me with guidance in terms of promising directions I should pursue and ways to manage my many research interests. I am deeply humbled by their sincere words of wisdom and kindness to me, while I aspire to become teachers like them in the future. vii I also owe a sizable intellectual debt to my fellow researchers working on the life and works of Mu Xin: To Dr. Ouyang Kaibin in Hong Kong, whose dedication to popularizing the academic research of Mu Xin was respectful, and who has generously shared with a green graduate student his research, his truthful opinions, and his resources. To Mr. Xia Chunjin of Tongxiang, Zhejiang Province, who has generously shared with me the current archival situation of Mu Xin. His thorough archival research and publications were central to my research, especially given the COVID-19 circumstances
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