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Home » City specials » Hangzhou

Exhibit revisits art that shocked establishment

By Xu Wenwen | September 10, 2013, Tuesday | Print Edition

Art serves politics. It must be realistic, and must be in praise of something. That had been the rule for art in China since the 1950s, and it did not change until mid-1980s, when young artists began to show new, nonconformist tendencies.

The iconic event for the change was in 1985, when graduation projects of students of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou shocked the country’s art establishment: They depicted figures with indifferent expressions, exaggerated animals like a horse with a huge belly and needle-like legs, and unusual colors, such as blue grass.

Comments show the reaction of the academy’s leaders during the students’ thesis defense: “The faces are so apathetic but young artists should be passionate,” “the sculpture has not used any basic sculpting skill” and “the young student dares to explain Taoism in his painting?”

But a debate erupted even in the country’s art establishment over the bold new works, and eventually the Art magazine published an article that inclined slightly toward the young artists’ view, putting an end to the uproar.

Those controversial works have been on exhibit at the gallery of the China Academy of Art since Saturday, with the adverse comments printed beside them, as the first part of the “8585 Exhibition.”

“These works look quite normal today, but they were astounding then,” says Xu Jiang, principal of theacademy. “Young artistsactually attacked the hypocrisy of that time.”

To commemorate the event in 1985, and also to celebrate the academy’s 85th anniversary, the 8585 Exhibition will continue through Sunday.

“We teachers, in fact, agreed with those students, and that’s how we educated the students, but the leaders and old scholars in the school did not accept it,” recalls Zheng Shengtian, who taught students during the 1980s at the China Academy of Art.

After the event, the words “revolution” and “politics” were linked less and less to art, and terms like “uniqueness” and “individuality” became more valued.

The exhibition lists 85 famous names from the academy, including the school’s pioneers like celebrated painter Ling Fengmian and calligraphist Sha Menghai, contemporary masters Ai Qing and Wu Guanzhong, as well as modern artists who experienced the 1985 event.

But the exhibition does not exhibit their works. Instead, the academy’s students and teachers spent months interviewing the subjects and made 85 videos, each about 20 minutes long. For those who have passed away, the crew edited old documentaries and interviews into their video.

Each video is played on one screen, and the screens are hung above desks that contain old materials the artists used.

For example, in the desk of Song Jianming, the current vice president of the academy, there are old French books since Song studied in France after graduation from the academy, and in the desk of Shi Hui, head of the Fiber and Space Studio at the academy, there is an small old rake for knitting.

“The exhibition is interesting and lets people think and learn the history,” said German artist Andrius Schmid, who studied calligraphy and seal carving at the China Academy of Art from 1984 to 1988, among the first several dozen foreign students at the university. He is one of the 85.

Aside from the videos, the exhibition has four parts. The first part explains the 1985 event. The second is about the development of modern art at the academy in late 1980s, including experimental Chinese ink-wash painting and fiber art introducing into China and at the academy.

The third part shows the art produced at the academy in the past 85 years, in the form of a “blackboard newspaper” like the ones that once announced the news in towns; and the fourth part is an exhibition of New Wave art activity during the 1980s, in which many students and teachers of the academy were involved.

Also a parallel exhibit, “Academy Without Walls,” is being held at the campus, displaying large scale art activities in which the academy has been involved in recent decades, such as the Shanghai Biennial, the Fiber Art Triennial and World Expo Shanghai 2010.

Address: 218 Nanshan Rd

Date: Through September 15, 9am-4:30pm

 

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