 n early stages of revolution and art, deification of revolution serves as means of manipulation and art of propaganda in revolution. While to romanticize revolution is to romanticize its inhumanity and the bitter memories of the self-crucifying revolutionists, and this is intended to free them from sufferings and to secure them a self-salvation from a religious point of view.
Revolution and art are almost in a paired relationship of salvation. Revolution needs art for self-salvation, for example, for its deification or romanticization. When revolution becomes a memory of the past, the idol creations or a succession of religious and historical figures related to redemption and self-salvation end up a language choice for modern sculpture.
Qu Guangci opted for the threshold of spirit and image. He chose symbolic sculptures, like the memorial statue of worker, peasant and soldier set in front of the entrance to Agricultural Exhibition Hall and that appearing in titles of films produced by China News and Documentary Film Factory, a Chinese revolutionary version of the Last Super of “Jesus and his twelve disciples”, the model wife and husband in socialist novels, the shepherd and angel in legends of Christian religion, and the ancient road and west wind and bony horse in poems of ancient Chinese literati. Then, another image resource comes from ordinary people such as the Red Guards and the rebellious groups in Cultural Revolution, who had been influenced by this sort of mainstream socialist literature and art.
It is thought-provoking that the human idols of different historical times who were marching along roads to salvation are all represented as a deified and benighted sort. These benighted people all acquire body figures of an imbecile feature, like bloated statures, clumsy behaviors, and unconscious somnolence or hypnosis in expressions of their eyes and faces. Like the deified fatheads in history, they are given to a spiritual indulgence and their whole ego is ultimately converted to a holy absolute state. For the second thing, he sets these figures in a Christian context and assigns roles to them. For example, he sets the Red Guards in a character scene of “The Last Super” and renders it a modern version of Cultural Revolution: a Red Guard sits on a high ladder and apprehends there, and an angel’s wings are fixed on his back, effecting a Red Guard version of the angel; he draws on tales of the shepherd and makes it a parable narrative image of pig herdsman; he makes fowls and dogs and the masses all rise to heaven and turn immortals. For the third, he portrays a fatuous sort of romantic behavior, such as a Red Guard’s plays the violin clumsily, a countrywoman’s awkwardly imitates to cast a handspike, and a revolutionary couple with lifeless expressions but a dedicated belief stand on a high mound. All these are pole apart from figures in historical memories, for in religious and political legends they are all depicted as people of passion, high spirit, high intelligence and super will, whereas in Qu’s hands they seem to have lapsed into a post-revolution hypnosis.
It is hard to say the creation of deified and benighted idols is intended to satirize their behaviors in their previous existence. A fatuous state features most of their images, and they no longer acquire a heroic will and a touch of wisdom. As far as their personality symptoms are concerned, they manifest self-addictions of phantom and fantasy.
Later, this door to memories was closed for a long time by modern art, and Qu attempted to reopen it. Why would he open it? Qu called this series “revolutionary romanticism”. Formally, the major task is to recreate images of the idols and models in revolutionary cultures, i.e. to sanctify and satirize these long esteemed revolutionary models and orthodox political images.
For Qu, a revolutionary version of deified and benighted figures is by no means merely a formal experiment of sculpture language; its significance resides in the fact that a self-affirmative portion of spiritual sources of the generation born in 1960s can be stripped off from an implanted cultural memory, and this portion is right the romantic element of revolution. Romanticization of revolution acquires a priori spiritual power in the sense of modernity, such as the pure spirituality, the pursuit of ultimate goals and absolute spirit, social movements and struggles, Utopian and progressionist ideas, and the belief in power of innocence and virtuousness.
Though Qu and his generation were born in 1960s and did not experience the early stages of the bitter myth-fabrication process, he went through the deification process of revolution when revolution was fictionalized into novels, public sculptures, movies, music and all other perceptible art forms by ideology, and even when general public was molded into a political part that formed square rallies, demonstrations, political education and oath-swearing meetings, and other masses’ realities of spectacular political revelries in 1960s and 70s. Actually the demarcation line between art and reality had disappeared in the political and ideological fabrications, only the media they used differed. Qu attempts to pursue an imaginary dialogue with post-revolution memories from the angles of history, religion and politics, which is about the bitter process of revolutionary romanticization and its romanticized subjects in cultural memories. He strives to hunt out from the figure’s introversive memories a testimony contrary to reality. Those deified and benighted people who have been pigeonholed into the portal of memories represent a spiritualized reality; their statues are merely a materialized embodiment of deity; just like all the material realities in times of their existence, they are essentially a romanticized and deified spiritual presentation. In contrast, all our psychology today is repercussions of a material society.
Translated By Hu Zhu
Revolutionary Romanticism,fibre glass，painted,80×60×36cm,2006
Even Pets Ascend to Heaven With Taoist Immortal,fibre glass，painted,80×30×26cm,2006
Three Delegates,fibre glass，painted,50×47×42cm,2006
Eyes right!,fibre glass，painted,90×36×35cm,2006
Stand at the Knoll II,fibre glass，painted,56×39×27cm,2006
Discus Thrower,fibre glass，painted,65×30×37cm,2005
Last Dinner – Mourn,fibre glass，painted,58×110×34cm,2005
Beloved Motherland,fibre glass，painted,24×62×53cm,2005
Mourns Christ,fibre glass，painted,46×23×42cm,2004
No Labor dumb million,fibre glass，painted,103×55×85cm,2003
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