Can Chinese Experimental Artists Survive in a Globalised Corporate Culture? 

Gu Zhenqing

        , meaning a proof plate, sample plate, template or model is one of the most familiar terms in contemporary Chinese socio-jargon. The term originally referred to the sample or model of an article used by a craftsman, such a cobbler, to produce identical items. Later it acquired connotations in industry where the industrial "template" () provided the measure for comparing and inspecting products for size, form, lustre and countless other properties. The applications of the term are wide-ranging, but that most familiar outside industry and quality control is its use to denote the model revolutionary operas () first staged from around the time of the Cultural Revolution. Some twenty years ago China bristled with such  politico-social phenomena as "model communes" (), "model dramas" () and "model paintings" (); in today's consumer society we still have "model production lines" (), "model markets" (), "model engineering projects" (), "model urban districts" (), "model houses" (), "model exclusive retail outlets" (), "model design" (), and "model creative concepts" (). Regardless of what is suffixed to the  rubric, all  items connote and suggest unchanging artefacts. Thus,  refers by extension to a paragon that can be studied, emulated and replicated; the social significance of the promotion of such a concept is self-evident.

In the lexicon of contemporary arts the  concept has resulted in a dizzying complexity of usages. From the perspective of artistic exploration in the half century and more since the PRC was founded,  concepts runs through all academic artistic endeavours like a connective skein. At times the  spirit has been so wide-ranging in influence that it has subjected everything to its dictates; at other times it has been almost ineffable and sleekly silent in its workings. The raw art student begins studying painting by copying a pre-existing painting of a gourd; to the still-life "model" gourd the colour red is applied as though the student is taking the first hesitant steps down the path of calligraphic learning. In the study of traditional ink painting one begins by conforming to the "model paintings" with their "model forms" that grace the pages of the ancient . In studying Western painting the student is confronted by unitary formularised "models" selected for their orthodoxy and authoritative artistic vocabulary and colour. In the 1950s the models for institutional or academic sketches and works in colour were introduced as paragons within the Soviet aesthetic pedagogical model, and in the Cultural Revolution the mass arts movement entailed the collective copying of various "model woodblock prints", which were either vermilion drenched woodcuts or sharply contrastive and morally unambiguous black and white image-making materials depicting workers, peasants and soldiers or posters of the type seen on blackboards.  was the most frequently copied work, the "model painting" that could be inflated to fill the largest possible space. Its influence was as far-ranging as that of the "model revolutionary operas" and it became the typical representative of the revolutionary artistic criteria that almost totally dominated the ideological superstructure. In the late 1970s after the social system began to change, this unitary artistic framework began to loosen up and break apart. Luo Zhongli's work  would become the coda in the symphony of unitary "models" in the arts. With the change generated by the advent of the "Arts Movement 1985" artists gave expression to a newly found sense of individuality and freedom; mainstream and non-mainstream arts endorsed and sought recognition of new and diverse "models", in order to strengthen their various individual standpoints; they sought strength through public support by assimilating a newly defined sociality within the reality of their everyday working lives as artists. The new  models not only defined the work they emulated but also served as transmitters of new standards. Regardless of whether artists hailed from the academies, were part of the new arts movement or belonged to the post-89 schools, they had distinctly different academic artistic "model" styles, demonstrating that local artists in painting, sculpture and other traditionally defined genres had acquired a new individual spirit and solid creative abilities. This signalled the replacement, development and coexistence of diverse sets of standards against the new cultural background emerging in Chinese art history. The age in which the individual was repressed had resulted in the blind acceptance of a psychology in which models functioned as objectives towards which a fettered collective ideology rushed in emulative pursuit. Today, more than twenty years after China's reform and opening up began,  models still exist, and they continue to guide social fashions and cultural fads, making it clear that they remain in our collective unconsciousness as an internalised psychological stratum.

Since the outset of the 1990s, China's unprecedentedly bold experimental arts have continued to buffet and break down various boundaries. Some Chinese artists have been enthusiastically received internationally and at least tacitly accepted by society at large domestically. This interdynamic space has provided the incentive and nourishment for an increasingly pluralising local artistic environment to take shape and mature. Within the shared vocabulary of artistic realism, the old "models" imbued with ideological elements have been eased out by new experimental and avant-garde "models". The co-existence of pluralistic "models" truly signals a new multiplicity of artistic criteria. The various conceptual forms of artistic "model" are evidence of the emergence of an increasingly diverse plurality which will open up even newer discourse environments and interactive spaces, presaging the possible eventual interweaving of the psychological multiplicities now informing contemporary art. As logico-empiricism replaces idealism, against the backdrop of idealistically globalised social cultures and trends of thought, this new artistic mindscape born of local Chinese experience will serve to build the fresh dynamism and drive required by Chinese art on the international  horizon.

Many of the new "models" prove, however, incapable of facilitating the discard of restrictions imposed by the habits of dualist thinking; the fresh life-force they purport to represent can only act out a role in the transition from the old thinking, based on historical determinism and linear logic, to the new. The new models generally find favour with the public, but, in a socio-cultural environment in which the system of the arts is itself incomplete as contemporary art advances to a more general emancipation of individuality, they continue to play a stifling and inhibiting role. In the same way, a number of Chinese artists, by dint of their individuality and imagination, have deployed their rich experience of cultural tactics to achieve prominence in the Euro-American art scene; they stand as icons signifying the internationalisation of Chinese art. In their existential intelligence and rich experience in the struggle to survive within the gap between cultural conflict and synthesis, they have thrived in the Euro-American cultural context by finely recalibrating the stultifyingly neutralised aesthetic criteria in which they were trained, and become "models" of success for local artists striving to attain the authority that an international reputation confers.

In contrast with the artists who have wide-ranging experience of contemporary Euro-American art trends, local experimental artists are attempting to break into mainstream society. This is something quite novel — the total self-refashioning of the artist — and the phenomenon lies outside Chinese artistic traditions. A meta-discourse is used to break into the fortress of traditional cultural positions and artistic genres, as well as the modes of expression and media appropriate to them. Such a breakthrough hinges on the traditional ideological need for a perfected and firm set of criteria; they redefine the creative value of experimental art as it constantly reaches out for an ever broader audience and sociality. Such moves to engage with the artistic tradition are designed to preserve the guiding position of experimental art in the development of the society's culture. The final entry of Chinese experimental art into the mainstream cultural environment is part and parcel of contemporary cultural construction and systems reform and the contemporary cultural values system on which experimental art must ultimately rely. Not only does experimental art seek to go on track internationally, but it must also address Chinese cultural issues within a local context of open discourse. After studying the Western experience for many years, many artists have realised that the main task for Chinese experimental artists is to come on line within local cultural traditions. This may entail placing experimental artistic criteria on a firm traditional cultural basis, while at the same time adopting international qualities, forms and methods, using a trans-media and cross-disciplinary experimental artistic attitude to replace the content of traditional culture with something new, and continuing to revitalise and enrich the artistic lexicons generated from within the tradition itself. These new criteria created outside the tradition can, in fact, link with the tradition as its perpetuation. Within the ecosystem of art the opening up of new paths appends new artistic "models" to a socio-culturally predetermined discourse. Because the criteria themselves are in flux and development , these new "models" are endowed with the ability to break out of and discard their own forms as they advance, setting them apart from the ossified ready-made models that informed the artistic environment. It is also highly probable that their real value lies in the models they in turn provide and in the hope they extend. In the arts these new  models psychologically conjured up by experimental artists no longer serve as veracious models to be copied and emulated, but rather as forms and formulae generated within the social reality of a new conceptual environment. Such forms and formulae demonstrate that  models will be constantly eliminated in the course of contemporary art's development and they will all be relegated to the status of history in good time.

Perhaps such models should never be part of any contemporary art scene; in a mature artistic environment there would be no models or counter-models. The achievement of Chinese contemporary art lies ultimately in the several major artists that have emerged from its ranks and they represent the pinnacles of attainable creative achievement. Their work cannot be replicated and so they can never become models in the  tradition. They have moved beyond such narrow criteria. Their only role as models is the ability they have demonstrated to break with all models and conventions and give full and active expression to the impulse for artistic freedom. The existence of  models also highlights a fundamental crisis in China's art world. Artists, works, styles and artistic vocabularies universally regarded as models necessarily once also contained formulaic elements within them; their rise to prominence hinged on the elimination of these formulaic elements. Ultimately, there is no way that an artist can imitate or replicate the internal field of creativity () of another.

Veneration for an artistic model in reality demonstrates seriousness of artistic purpose, but an artist must rely on a rigorous sense of that reality and proceed towards an artistic praxis grounded in his or her own locale; through rigorously refereed exhibitions and writings the artist must sift through the pluralistic  models that make up the Chinese artistic environment. This empowers the experimental artist with an intellectual stance and the ability to conceptually describe artistic phenomena. Such solid basic work will undoubtedly yield perceptual resources of documentary value. These resources are what are required for the present and future construction of contemporary Chinese art as a rigorous discipline.

 （Translated by B G Doar, China Archaeology and Art Digest)