Eastward Expansion:Contemporary Art in Russia and China

1989The year that begins the last chapter

of the Cold War can be said to mark

the “end” of post-modernism and

the emergence of global culture.

Nelson Mandela and F.W. De Klerk were international symbols of apartheid. As a leader of the African National Congress and a participant in the struggle to overthrow apartheid, Mandela spent more than 25 years as a political prisoner. When De Klerk assumed the presidency of South Africa in September 1989, he began to change the system of apartheid and abolish discriminatory laws. On February 11, 1990, De Klerk released Mandela from prison.

F.W. De Klerk and Nelson Mandela

Tiananmen Square, BeijingApril 15 – June 4 1989

1989

N.Vatolina, Thanks to Darling Stalin for Happy Childhood!, Soviet Poster, 1950 Aleksandr Gerasimov, Lenin on the Rostrum (1929-30)

Oleski Shovkunenko, Platon Biletsky, and Igor ReznikAnthem of the People's Love (1950-1951).

Socialist Realism dominated art under Stalin.

El Lissitzky, Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. The Constructor (Self-Portrait), 1924, gelatin-silver print, double exposure

(left) El Lissitzky Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919-20 (Civil War,1917-1921) (right) Compare with Soviet propaganda poster featuring the destruction of White Poland, 1919

Russian Constructivism failed to communicate to “the masses.”

El Lissitzky, (left) agit-prop panel photographed on the streets of Vitebsk in 1920, reads:"The Machine tool depots of the factories and plants await you. Let's get industry

moving." Compare with WW II Stalinist propaganda poster: “Stalin leads”

Vitaly Komar & Alexksandr Melamid, Catalogue of Super Objects, 1977

Charog 15, a grill fitting in front of the face to "protect the purity of your thoughts."

Khaasha is a neckband with a floral crest and a curved wire that extends a small cup to the wearer's nose. Into this "special, medium-sized chalice" one puts "a small piece of your love's skin, flower petals, or whatever you prefer."

“Apartment art”

Alexander Kosolapov, Manifesto, 1983. Oil on canvas, 76 x 72”

Below: contemporary photo of tourists with demolished statue of Lenin, Siberia

Vitaly Komar and Aleksandr Melamid,

Origin of Socialist Realism, 1982–83oil on canvas, 72 x 48”

SOTS Art “Socialist Pop Art”

Vitaly Komar (b. Moscow,1943) and Aleksandr Melamid (b. Moscow,1945)(left) Stalin and the Muses, 1981-2, oil on canvas, 6x7ft 7in.

(right) Double Self-Portrait as Young Pioneers, 1982-83, oil on canvas, 72 x 50 in. (from Nostalgic Socialist Realism series).

Komar & Melamid, The Origin of Socialist Realism (from Nostalgic Socialist Realism series), 72” x 48”, tempera and oil on canvas, 1982-83

Karp Trokhimenko (1885-1975), Stalin as an Organizer of the October Revolution, 1940s, oil on canvas, 85 x 117 cm. (Socialist Realism)

Komar & Melamid, USA’s Most Wanted, 1994-5 (dishwasher sized)

Statistical charts from Komar & Melamid’s survey for Most Wanted Painting published in The Nation magazine

Ilya Kabakov (Russian, b. 1933) The Man Who Flew into Space From His Apartment, from TenCharacters series 1985-89, Installation: six poster panels with collage, furniture, clothing, catapult, household objects, wooden plank, scroll painting, two pages of Soviet paper, diorama. Room dimensions around 8 x 8 x 12 ft

Ilya Kabakov, The Man who Flew into His Picture, 1988. Watercolor, lead pencil, ballpoint pen on paper, 10 1∕8 x 11 1∕4"

Ilya Kabakov, The Man who Flew

into His Picture, 1989. Mixed media.

Installation at the Sigmund Freud

Museum, Vienna, 1989.

Vladimir Tatlin, Model for Monument to the Third International, 1919-20, wood, iron, and glass, 20’ high. Compare with the Soviet monument to Lenin for the Palace of the Soviets, Moscow, and contemporary tourist photo of head of Lenin in Siberia (demolished statue).

Note relativescale.

Plan for the Palace of the Soviets, 1935. Totalitarian architecture with colossal statues in Socialist Realist style.

Vladimir Tatlin, Letatlin, photograph of Tatlin with wing in his studio Tatlin, Letatlin, 1932

Kabakov, Palace of Projects, Project #1: How Can One Change Oneself?

Kabakov, Palace of Projects, Project #15, To Escape From Oneself

Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Student sit-in began on April 15, 1989 and was violently crushed by the Chinese military on June 3 and 4. This photo of the “Tank Man” (identity unknown) was taken by Jeff Widener of Associate Press on June 5.

Students demanding dialoguewith government

Student camp Tiananmen Square

Goddess of Democracy, 33 ft tall, paper mâché and foam over a metal armature, built by students of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in four days, beginning May 27, 1989

Timeline Modern – Contemporary Art in China

• 1949: The People's Republic of China was established on October 1 under Mao Zedong

• 1966-1976: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. Socialist Realism imposed.

• 1976: Death of Mao and the rise of Deng Xiaoping. Art universities and academies, closed during the Cultural Revolution, reopened.

• 1979: Stars Art Exhibition shut down and the art was confiscated.

• 1982 the state initiated the “Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign” targeting “individualism,” “art for art’s sake,” and “abstraction.” Stars Art Society disbands

• 1985: influential Robert Rauschenberg exhibition opens at the China Art Gallery, Beijing

• 1989: China/Avant-Garde exhibition opens and is closed by the state. Four months later, the Tiananmen Square democracy movement is violently crushed.

"The People's Liberation Army of China is a grand school of Mao Tse-tung Thought"

Work Hard to Realize the Fourth FiveYear Plan of National Economy, 1972

To carry the Great Revolution of Proletarian Culture out to the End, 1972 Work Hard for Speeding Up the Modernization

Of Agricultural Machinery, 1972

Socialist Realism during The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, 1966-1976

Quotations of Mao,1967

The development of avant-garde Chinese art after 1976

Experimental art existed underground by the mid 1970s, with the avant garde emerging openly in 1985. Its development has been closely related to China’s social and economical transformation. Artists who emigrated out of China in the 1980s and 1990s were key participants in the early avant-garde movements and continue to interact with the mainland art world.

Tensions of capitalist communism – market boom and censorship of individual expression continue to exist.

Hung Liu (b. 1948 in Changchun, China, immigrated to San Diego in 1984, San Francisco based) Resident Alien, oil on canvas, 1988

Hung Liu, Goddess of Love, Goddess of Liberty, oil on canvas, wooden bowls, slate and broom, 1989

Hung Liu, Shoemaker, oil on canvas, 1999. In the Crocker Art Museum collection.

Wang Guangyi (b. 1957, Harbin, China, based in Beijing), Mao Zedong - AO, oil on canvas, 47 x 142 inches, 1988. Grid was meant to scale Mao down to human size. One of the most controversial works in the watershed 1989 Beijing exhibition, China/Avant-Garde

Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism-Coca-Cola, 1990-1993, 79 x 79” Great Criticism Series. Political Pop

Zhang Xiaogang (b. Kunming, China, 1958. Lives in Beijing), Bloodline, The Big Family No. 2, 1995, Sichuan school

“We live in a big family, the first thing we learn is how to shut ourselves up in a secret small cell and pretend to keep step with all the other members of the Family.”

Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline: Big Family No. 9 (red baby), 1996, oil on canvas, 59 x 75” Evokes childhood during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76)

Zhang Xiaogang, Bloodline Family, oil on canvas, 118 x 157.5 inches,2004-2005

Zhang Xiaogang, Amnesia and Anamnesis, Shanghai Biennale, 2004

"On the surface the faces in these portraits appear as calm as still water, but underneath there is great emotional turbulence. Within this state of conflict the propagation of obscure and ambiguous destinies is carried on from generation to generation."

Gu Wenda (b. 1955 Shanghai) 1987 moved to US. Currently lives in NYC and Shanghai. United Nations: The Bable of the Millennium, 1999, human hair glued onto a sheer curtain in pseudo-English, Chinese, Hindi and Arabic characters, 75 x 34 feet, San Franciso Museum of Modern Art.

Lin Tianmiao  (Chinese, 1961)

http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=56781  

 

I feel that the "Chineseness" is something very natural. It's in my blood. I don't need to express it through special or iconic symbols. I do believe that I embody many Chinese traditions and philosophies and my work reflects them naturally. But they don't need to be deliberately pronounced.

Lin Tianmiao, The Proliferation of Thread Winding, 1995, a metal-framed bed with an oval cut out of its mattress and filled (pierced) with 20,000 industrial-size needles. Hundreds of lengths of string radiate from the bed to balls of string on the floor, monitor in pillow shows a video of the artist's hands winding thread.

Lin Tianmiao, Badges, 2011-2012. White silk, colored silk thread, painted stainless steel embroidery frame. Variable dimensions

Hanging embroidery hoops in various sizes are each emblazoned with a different word used to describe women in contemporary culture

Xu Bing (China, b. 1955) A Book from the Sky

Prague installation

National Gallery of Canada, 1998

Gallery visitors in Beijing attempt to read the nonsense characters on the printed scrolls of A Book from the Sky.

4,000 printing blocks for A Book from the Sky

Xu Bing in his studio hand carving the characters for A Book from the Sky.

An original printing block for A Book from the Sky.

Ai Weiwei (born Beijing, 1957, in New York from 1981-1993, now based in Beijing), Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn, 1995, Three black-and-white prints, each 58 x 48 inches

Ai Weiwei, Coca Cola Vase, 1994, the Coca Cola logo incised and painted on a Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) vase

Ai Weiwei (Beijing, 1957), Sunflower Seeds, Unilever Series, Tate Modern, London, October 12, 2010 - May 2, 2011Over 100 million hand painted porcelain “seeds”

http://bcove.me/b5f7rawg

Ai Weiwei was taken into custody by Chinese police on April 3, 2011.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/04/06/arts/design/06artist.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/arts/design/ai-weiwei-sculpture-near-plaza-hotel-review.html

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/10/05/arts/1247465005209/forbidden-art-in-china.html