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| The Ghost of Collectivism in Our Art |
| By Huang Zhuan |
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 rom 1944 to 1945, Karl Popper who was escaping war finished the books of “The Poverty of Historicism” and “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, which were called “the most boring works” by himself. These works didn’t generally condemn the evil government of fascism from the ethical angle; on the contrary, he begins with the good will of human being pursuing ideal society, to find the historical resource of totalitarianism by the research on the general psychology of “uterine-like safe society”. The survival nature of human being, their dreaming of freedom as well as being afraid to afford any responsibility, leads them submit their fortunes to God or anyone who commits he has the same ability as God. It gives the chance to the guys in history who claim that they had figured out the problem of “the rule of history” or “the fortune of human beings”. Popper refers them (including hero, superman, leader, hierarch, even philosopher) to “historicism”, and identifies their claims as “essentialism” or “integralism”. Popper claims that just their commissions to the ideal worlds cause the human tragic. (The most typical example in the current world is George Bush.)
To “Integralism”, the more comprehensible translation should be “Collectivism” according to Chinese custom. Borrowing Berlin’s definition of freedom, such a collectivism of spiritual ideals and power politics could be defined as “positive collectivism”. For the Chinese people experienced the Cultural Revolution, these theories of Poper are easily understandable, but it’s hard to remember it as rule. The collectivism which takes a country, 
including the abstract ideas such as “revolution, advancement, or the romantic society designs such as “democracy” or “freedom”. If we take the era of the Chinese autarchi art as the control of human life by the power politics, hierachical system, and taboo of creative work, then, the modernism art movement of 1980s taking human revolution and freedom on art as goals was continuing the cultural blood of “positive collectivism” through the big words as “national spirit” or “era spirit”. During that time I had deemed them as “art essentialism” and “art integralism” in “The dilemma in the Chinese modern art”, 1989. The paradoxical history is sufficient to illuminate the psychological difficulty for human beings to conquer “collectivism”.
“Globalization” is an era of super “collectivism” There’s another trickier “historicism” concealed in the produce of consumer culture with the symptoms of non-depth, non-center, non-direction, and non-value, which is a mundane religion about people’s amusement of vision, hearing, taste, even sex, but not about the socially uniformed issues, spiritual value, dream and desire, etc. The political leaders and salvation-heroes of the old age were replaced by the internet idols and movie stars of the new age, but the hypotaxis doesn’t change. The worldwide cultural transformation also profoundly changes the scenes of our art life: the center of the stage has undoubtedly been moved to Venice and Kassel, although we also enthusiastically build our native stages in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, dreaming them to be the centers on one day. The former heroes had irredeemably been utility men. The calculative and glib curators won’t give the contemplative and aspiring critics any change to go upon the stage. International standard-styles and auction marketing had become the rigid standards to classify the artists. Today is “sensibility” and tomorrow is “urban”, thus art fashion makes us dazzling. 
I regard the reality of art as a collectivism of economy and symbol-produce, which is different from “positive collectivism”. It’s no longer embodied as a power politics or a spiritual taboo, but it will bring such a willing enslavement in the way of unconsciousness based on the commitments to the freedom of personal choice. What’s dangerous is that it will debase our guards on cultural totalitarianism, thus I call it “negative collectivism” which is a recessive and phantomlike collectivism.
April,1, 2007
 Huang Zhuan, Independent Curator, Associate Professor at the Art History Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
Translated by Xue Lian
Related Links:
·Abstraction: An Expression Concerning Liberty
·Is there any other choice for Chinese Avant Garde art?---- Re-read “Free Communication”
·Reflections on the '80s Avant-Garde
·Who Should Be an Art Critic?
·Xiang Jing vs. Huang Zhuan 
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