 Quotation
Deos Not Equal to Plagiarism
By Liu Xiaochun
[How to regard the international lawsuit aroused by Venetian
Rent Collection Court of Cai Guoqiang, which has taken the first
place in the 48th Venice Biennial Arts Exhibition].
According to the newspaper, the Propaganda Department of
Chongqing Municipal Party Committee of China Communist Party
and Sichuan Arts Institute jointly held the news conference
concerning the copyright of Rent Collection Court on May 25th.
Mr. Luo Zhongli, the president of the institute declared on
the conference: "together with some of the authors, Sichuan
Arts Institute has began to sue the organizing committee of
the Venice Biennial Exhibition in Italy and the curator Mr.
Szeeman as well as the prize owner Cai Guoqiang." "We
surely will make this lawsuit to the last, and we have the
confidence that we'll definitely win no matter how long it
will take, and how much is the difficulty."
The reason for this matter is that Mr. Cai Guoqiang, the
Chinese artist residing in the United States, has become one
of the three highest prize owners in the 48th Venice Biennial
Arts Exhibition in 1999 for his work of Venetian Rent Collection
Court which is the duplication of the clay sculpture of Rent
Collection Court which has been known to every family in China,
thus, the original writer of the work call it "lifting,
plagiarizing, and tort", and critics regard it as "currying
favor with the west and speaking for the strong power",
which finally make Mr. Luo present his views vehemently.
This article mainly discusses "reason", and leaves
the matter of law to the legal circle.
The work of Cai Guoqiang is not the common sculpture, but
the arts of fitting with the process of action. Embezzling
the ready-made work is the common way for the arts of fitting,
even the important inner factor. This generally acknowledged
truth of arts of fitting was founded by its earliest ancestor
Duchamp, and has been adopted widely.
The subject raised by Duchamp has two aspects of meaning:
(1) all the ready-made works are works of arts, provided we
treat them by the attitude of arts. This was indicated by
the work La Source (the alternation of the environment for
installing and the direction of the urinal). (2) All the works
of arts are ready-made works, if we look them in the way of
ready-made works. This was indicated by the work of L, H,
O, O, Q (the duplication of Mona Lisa with moustache). The
completed work of Rent Collection Court is the ready-made
one embezzled by the on going Venetian Rent Collection Court.
The thoroughly embezzlement is one that copies mechanically
without any decoration, so is the La Source. The design of
the modeling surely is not belong to Duchamp, what he did
is just the embezzlement of the urinal and the raising of
the theory of "ready-made works."
Cai Guoqiang did not copy directly the work of Rent Collection
Court, but to make the incomplete duplication, thus there
exits a little difference with the common embezzlement. In
this case, I'd rather call it "quotation." He introduced
the things from the east in the typical western language environment
as the Venice arts Biennial Exhibition; quitted the things
from the socialist world in the pure capitalist language environment;
cited the things of classics, realistic writing, and narration
in the language environment full of the post-modern theory;
used the strongly confronting things of the cold war today.
This kind of citation of converting the space and time leads
to the Rent Collection Court the complex meaning and strong
shock which is not belong to the Rent Collection Court. The
four trotting horse lamp at the site can hint this extra meaning.
Cai Guoqiang purposely put copies of the photo of the original
work at every corner of the site and leave there 10,000 booklets
publicizing the original work which can be got freely by the
visitors in order to emphasis that it is not his own work,
but the citation of others.
In order to stress the feature of "quotation",
Cai Guoqiang maintained a lukewarm relationship with the original
work and made an incomplete duplication. On the one hand,
he invited one of the original authors to attend the producing,
trying to get the result of "likeness"; on the other
hand, he simplified the figures of more than 100 of the original
work to 81 skeleton of the figures. After the beginning of
the exhibition, several pieces have been accomplished or nearly
completed, and 50 pieces of them were unevenly applied clay,
and the rest of them were made the wooden square on the iron
framework, and some of them even were adding the cross flowers.
But "the rebellion" and "usurp of the authority"
remained in the state of sub-abstract of steel skeleton. What
exhibited were not the completed works, but the process of
duplicating; not the sculptures, but the theory of "process
is the work". Thus, the visitors, position were changed
from seeing the results to the process under the results.
There is another important aspect about Venetian Rent Collection
Court, that is, the clay used by Cai Guoqiang was not processed
deeply, so that the works made earlier were weather-shacked
and peeled off with the proceeding of the making. That is
to say, what the visitors can see was only the flowing process,
but not the entire Rent Collection Court. Cai Guoqiang refused
to collect the works, and with the conclusion of the Exhibition,
the work will disappear with time, this highlights the meaning
of "quotation."
The real things of Venetian Rent Collection Court lie in
what kind of specific object quoted in the relevant environment,
and the way of citing, as well as the shock of the thinking
and inspiration of the theory. The creativity, imagination,
wisdom, and comprehension of the artist are included in this
specific and special quotation.The real things of Venetian
Rent Collection Court lie in what kind of specific object
quoted in the relevant environment, and the way of citing,
as well as the shock of the thinking and inspiration of the
theory. The creativity, imagination, wisdom, and comprehension
of the artist are included in this specific and special quotation.
Provided that we accept the arts of fitting is an important
way of producing the arts, then we should accept the reasonableness
of embezzlement as well, and as a result, we can not regard
the embezzling in the arts of fitting as "lifting and
plagiarizing
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