Week 9 – Monuments & Study Guide

on Post ’76 & Post ‘89

The Star GroupThe Scarred/native soil Movement

1976 1/8 Zhou Enlai died, 4/4 the wrath incidence

Jilin Meteor shower in March

Tangshan earthquake in Aug (1/2 million dead)

1976 9/9 Mao died ( 4/5Jiang died in Taiwan)

Gang of Four (headed by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing) arrested

1977 Art schools reopened, rehabilitation of “Rightists”

1978 Four Modernization campaign, Mao Mausoleum completed

1977-78 Building the Mao Mausoleum and Statue – changing image of Mao

1978 Democracy Wall [liberal atmosphere] & the arrest of Wei Jingsheng

The Star/Xingxing 星星 group and the birth of unofficial/dissident art

1979 Official art & party sanction

- Beijing New International Airport Incident of Yuan Yunshen’s Song of Life

1979-80 Academic New Realism – the wound/scar, the native soil/romantic

1978-84 the gradual increase of artistic freedom and the ‘85 movement

1985 Rauschenberg show in Beijing/Shanghai, Zhao Wuji in Hangzhou

1985 – 87 the feverish unofficial (experimental )

-- 3rd weave of modernist art movement

– philosophical, intellectual, idealistic

1989 Feb China Avant-garde opened in Beijing

1989 June 4th Tiananmen Massacre – disillusionment and sarcasm/cynicism

Yuan Yunsheng, Song of Life, 1979

Nude controversial & the Beijing Airport project

Ai Xun, Defending the Wreaths, 1978

Academic New Realismthe scarred, native soil movement

He Duoling, Spring Breezes Have Arrived, 1980

Cheng Conglin, Sonw on X Month X Day 1968, 1979

Chen Yifei, History, 1980

Luo Zhongli, Father, 1980

The Star/Xingxing 星星 group and the birth of unofficial/dissident art

1978-84 the gradual increase of artistic freedom and the 85 movement

1985 Rauschenberg show in Beijing/Shanghai, Zhao Wuji in Hangzhou

1985 – 87 the feverish unofficial (experimental ) art movement

– philosophical, intellectual, idealistic

1989 Feb China/Avant-garde opened in Beijing

1989 June 4th Tiananmen Massacre – disillusionment and sarcasm/cynicism

Unofficial/dissident Art & The Star Group

Wang Keping, the Silence One, 1978 Idol, 1978

Art in Modern China – Post 89

Mao Revisit & Mao Pop

Cynical Realism

Globalization & the Wizard of Contemporary Art World

Zhang Hongtu

Chairman Mao

1989

Mao Pop

Wang Guangyi, Mao Zedong, 1988

Iconoclasm - Demystification of Mao

Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism: Nikon,1992

Appropriation of fetish from Cultural Revolution

Juxtaposition of political and commercial images

Art as social/cultural critique

Wang Jinsong, Taking a Picture in Front of Tiananmen, 1990

Zhang Xiaogang, Blood line: the Big Family No. 2, 1985

Zhang Huan, 12 Square Meters, 1994

Performance, Beijing

Anti-writingWenda Gu & Pseudo Chinese Characters

Book of Heaven, 1988

Installation & Retrospective, 2008

Ai Weiwei “profiled” in New Yorker, May 24, ’10 “It’s not Beautiful – An Artist Takes on the System”

China’s most active “blog” activist artist“Ai had inverted the usual logic of art and politics: instead of enlisting art in the service of his protest, he had enlisted the apparatus of authoritarianism into his art. Dissidents, like artists, need an audience.”

Terminology

Nationalization of Oil Painting

Socialist Realism

Mao’s Yen’an Talk

Woodcut Movement

Mao (Political) Pop

Chan/Zen Art of Lu Shoukun

The Star Group

The Fifth Moon Group

Dsui Hua [of Betty Ecke]

Book From the Sky [of Xu Bing]