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| Is there any other choice for Chinese Avant Garde art?---- Re-read “Free Communication” |
| By Huang Zhuan |
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 otheby's sells Chinese art” and “Beijing galleries hold exhibitions” have become key phrases in the Chinese art world over the past few months. Without even stepping outside of my room, I can sense, through friends’ phone calls, short messages and emails, that the art world is sizzling. But when I think about what’s happening today in the Chinese art world, I recall the words of the distinguished art historian E. H. J. Gombrich, who once said that "art itself does not exist on earth, here all we have are markets and auctions.”
In fact, in some ways Chinese avant-garde art seems to have won a huge victory over politics, economics and the media. Yet for some reason, this kind of “success” more or less disappoints me. I keep wondering who is the real winner here. And my suspicions probably come from called, “Free Communication,” which I read about 10 years ago. In the book, Pierre Bourdieu, a French Philosopher, and Hans Haacke, a German artist, told us that the duty of artists and intellectuals is to strive for freedom and independence of spirit. Bourdieu and Haacke also said that fulfilling one’s responsibility to society is complex. Haacke listed three things that often prevented modern art from freely expressing itself. One is the sponsorship of conservative governments in the name of culture. A second is corporate sponsors. And the third is the mass media.
 Behind the three powerful interest groups are the executives who control them: cultural officials from the government (Hans calls them ‘national affairs thinkers’), corporate sponsors and most active fashion and art news producers — the journalists. They are the ones who eventually form the anti art freedom camp and threaten the independence of artists.
These camps do not control or violate art by arbitrary political logic but by sponsoring art and following market logic. “To support art and culture is a subtle form of domination,” Bourdieu wrote. “It works because people are unaware of this kind of control. The control is based on the fact people are unaware of what is happening and who is controlling things. And so things are controlled because people don’t understand who is controlling things.”
This is what makes us most uncomfortable in today’s art system. “Artists and scholars who accept the support of art and science will gradually attach themselves to economic power or limits created by the market, Bourdieu says.
I don’t want to over-emphasize the relationship between what’s happening now in Chinese contemporary art and the critiques outlined by Hans Haacke and Pierre Bourdieu. But I do see that in the past few years as the political climate has warmed, Chinese avant-garde art is being legalized to some degree. Avant-garde art is no longer regarded as an imaginary enemy by the government and people in the mainstream. And now the market and corporate sponsors are beginning to push contemporary art as fashionable, popular and marketable.
Today, the vision of Chinese contemporary art is being altered by political style curators, trendy media intellectuals and gallery, auction and art agents “who speak in a cultural jargon and have the money to package a cultural product.”
This is especially true for the bigger artists who know how to shuttle among curators, gallery directors and the media, and who are familiar with public relations. They seem to speak in the international accent.Those are the people who are reshaping Chinese avant-garde art. In fact, after the 1990s Chinese avant-garde art moved into this consumption age; it chose an “American path.”
This path has been proven by the elegant and luxurious “international style” which is now popular among artists. What is more, it is proved by the victory of Chinese art at Sotheby’s New York auction.
Now, the true enemy of independence in art is not absolutism but markets, capitalism, the media and all those art enthusiasts -- those who, on the surface, give us freedom. They make us unaware and even joyful to be an accessory to oppose independence in art. They are driving us to abandon our freedoms without us even recognizing it.
I don’t want to breakup the cheerful notion that Chinese avant-garde art is marching ahead and becoming a great success. But I can’t help but think: in China, a country in desperate need of a critical spirit, why don’t we have a group of critical thinking artists like Joseph Beuys and Hans Haacke? This question may be challenge historical common sense but sometimes cultural selection doesn’t depend on what we need but the logical situation. But I still want to persuade everyone one who treats art production as a cultural responsibility, to read this brochure, “Free Communication,” which is less than 150 pages long. (In Chinese, San Lian Publishing House, 1996, RMB 7.8). If you really don’t have time, at least read the following two paragraphs:
“Art works have symbolic power. They can be used to dominate or to liberate. So it is a wager of thought which has an enormous influence on our everyday life.”
“We cannot allow cultural production to depend on the chance of the market or one sponsor’s interest.”
The first paragraph is quoted from Hans Haacke; the second from Bourdieu. At least, they show us alternative attitudes and options for art.
 Huang Zhuan, Independent Curator, Associate Professor at the Art History Department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
Translated by Wei Ying
Related Links:
·Abstraction: An Expression Concerning Liberty
·Reflections on the '80s Avant-Garde
·The Ghost of Collectivism in Our Art
·Who Should Be an Art Critic?
·Xiang Jing vs. Huang Zhuan 
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