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The histroy of fine arts during the period of the Cultual
Revolution (1966 -1976) will show the audience the yesterday's
myth. The channel of the Cultual Revolution Fine Arts aims
at filling up the gap in the research of the history of China
fine arts by serious historiographic attitude, which will
provide the culture scholars with the raw materials for studying
them.
By "the art of the Cultural Revolution", we mean
a political and cultural movement which took place in China
between 1966 and 1976, which is called "the Great Cultural
Revolution" in the history. During the radical revolutionary
movement, the young students of China did not go to school
any more at that time and turned to destroy all the traditions
including books, temples and cultural relics instead. They
abandoned all of the so-called capitalist books, clothes and
ways of life, attacked teachers, the propertied class and
the people who had any relationship with the Kuomintang Party
(the Nationalist Party) and the United States. Through the
days, the students not only went to streets for their parades
and slogans, but also traveled to all the places around China
for their propaganda and liaisons. The period in the contemporary
history of China has been regarded the best period of the
spirit of the rock-and-roll culture in China, during which
a great number of visual artworks relative with the movement
had been created, including oil-paintings, sculptures, cartoons,
posters and more.
Since 1976, the Chinese people have not made any mentions
of these artworks and the young generation began to learn
from the Western avant-garde art. By 1990s, the Hollywood
culture of the United States and the pop culture of Hong Kong
flooded all over China and the young people forgot that period
of history little by little. It is even more noticeable that
the generation who were born after the 1970s know nothing
at all about the history and the artworks of that period.
The main reason for re-mentioning the visual artworks of the
political and cultural period in China is no other than the
background against which the avant-garde art of China has
entered the international art world and won great notability
in the West. It cannot be denied that the Western artistic
system has played a decisive role in pushing forward the avant-garde
art of China into the international art world, but the Westerns
have their own bias against the contemporary art of China
when they are making their efforts to popularize and influence
the avant-garde artist groups of China. The Western art circles
have regarded the avant-garde art of China as such a model:
the Western avant-garde form plus the Chinese political themes
plus the traditional symbols of China. As a matter of fact,
all of the artworks and artists selected into the Western
international art exhibitions can be explained in such a way.
The value of "the art of the Cultural Revolution"
has been re-mentioned against the background of the post-colonialist
culture. Since 1996, some of the young artists, such as Liu
Dahong, Sui Jianguo, Wang Xingwei and others, who were born
in 1960s, have begun their artistic efforts with both the
post-modernism as their forms and "the Cultural Revolution"
and the modern revolution of China as their themes. They have
raised a basic and common question: where is the modernity
of the Chinese art? In their opinions, the modernity of the
Chinese art should lie in the modernist experiences and the
visual forms of politics in the modern history of China. After
twenty years, some of the artists and critics have begun to
re-evaluate the visual values of "the art of the Cultural
Revolution". In some senses, "the art of the Cultural
Revolution" has been regarded both as an early "self-description"
of the modern political senses of China and the Utopian visions
of the modern times and as an important element of the pop
culture period of the modern political art. In visual forms,
the works of the professionals have been influenced by the
former Soviet Union and, in contrast, the cartoons and posters
have reflected the original instincts of the folk art. It
is no doubt that the current value of "the art of the
Cultural Revolution" lies in the following points: it
is the modern experiences in a Third-World style in the modern
political movement; it is the self-awareness of the modern
politics: it is the self-recording of the modern history of
ego and it is also a local modern culture against the post-colonialist
culture of the West.
Of course, many of the Chinese scholars have different ideas
about the exaggerated values of "the art of the Cultural
Revolution". They think that, whatever it may be, "the
art of the Cultural Revolution" has already become a
part of the political and cultural tools which brought unbearable
pains and nightmare memories to a generation of the Chinese
people. Moreover, even if "the art of the Cultural Revolution"
could be expressed from a cultural angle to re-write the modernity
of China, it is still questionable as to what spiritual values
of the "free" history under the rule of the political
totalitarianism could be tapped. As for re-mentioning of "the
art of the Cultural Revolution", it also contains the
sentiments of reminiscences and anti-post-colonialism.
In fact, as the scholars, artists and individuals from all
around the world have made their efforts to collect and research
the materials with their focuses on "the art of the Cultural
Revolution", it is without doubt that more and more documents
and books will appear in the future.
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