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Time to knock down walls to genuine creativity
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IN every culture, museums play a central role in stimulating the young population’s interest in history, culture and the arts. A new museum in Shanghai, named after one of the founders of the China New Art Movement, Liu Haisu, is expected to do just that. Liu Haisu was a noted art educator, and the museum showcases paintings and calligraphy that are national treasures.
In an attempt to engage the budding art community, the museum invited students from the Fine Arts College at Shanghai University to paint a 300-meter long wall with graffiti.
Conceptually, it was an audacious idea. The monochromatic sharp angles of the building stand in contrast against the vibrant colors of the wall, with swathes of paint applied by the millennial-generation that could potentially challenge notions of a previous generation of original thinkers. It presented a unique opportunity for students to showcase their ideas, talent and originality!
I was disappointed to find out though that the artwork on the walls is all copied from the Internet, admittedly after obtaining permission from the original artists, whose names are painted next to their works.
Is this how art education should be imparted? Is this the most appropriate manner in which one should pay tribute to a great artist, and a movement that revolutionized art education in China? It may be acceptable for the copycat artists of Guangdong Province’s Dafen village to copy, en masse, the paintings of European masters, destined for the living rooms of the nouveau riche; but this was a contemporary art project being sponsored by a new museum in one of the world’s most dynamic cities.
In most parts of the world, graffiti serves as a form of protest. Artists can be fined heavily, and they often work under the cover of darkness, having just a few minutes to do their work and disappear before they are caught. Ironically, in some parts of China, graffiti is being encouraged as an urban art form.
Modern Chinese graffiti is only a couple of decades old. Before the Beijing Olympics, several parts of the capital were opened up for artists to spray their designs on, even as the designs had to be approved first. Even a section of the Great Wall was declared as an authorized graffiti zone. Shanghai’s art district on Moganshan Lu has served as a canvas, with foreign and domestic graffers (the popular name for graffiti artists) turning it into a vibrant neighborhood. They have the luxury of days, even weeks to finish their work.
With such encouragement and support, why would the students not explore original themes and come up with their own designs?
After all, they are at a stage in their lives when they should be forming their own identities, and there should be so many possibilities open to them.
Themes of urban living, digital life and contemporary culture such as cultural flux, migration and consumption can serve as inspiration for urban art, just as the murals by artist Shi Zheng and graffer Julien Malland had done in Shanghai a couple of years ago.
What is required is that the students be inspired through a creative process of negotiation between cultures — something Liu Haisu and his fellow artists represented, not a blind adoption or copying of role-model artists from the West.
This is the spirit of cross-cultural exchange that supports innovation and creative human energy. As urban centers in China evolve into cauldrons of creative activity, the dynamism of their young students will become the vehicles of transformation.
If China hopes to transform itself from the world’s factory into the world’s studio, academic institutions and museums will have to find ways to nurture and fire their imaginations, not merely hone their skills through imitation.
Kunal Sinha has over 25 years of experience commenting on consumer and cultural trends in China. The views are his own.
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