From art criticism to speculation in art history

Since the reform and opening up, China's modern and contemporary art has traveled for more than 40 years, and in this era of development and change, art works, art exhibitions and art events are numerous, and scholars and critics who have experienced this history are eager to record this period. In the past two years, Gao Minglu's "History of Chinese Contemporary Art", Lü Peng's "History of Chinese Contemporary Art", Lu Hong's "Complete Collection of Chinese Contemporary Art 1978-2008", Zhou Yan's "History of Contemporary Chinese Art from 1949 to the Present" and other works on the history of Chinese contemporary art have been published in a concentrated manner, which has become a phenomenon worthy of attention in the Chinese art world. The 15th Annual Conference of Chinese Art Critics held recently not only sorted out and compared the above theoretical research, but also reflected on "criticism and art history writing" from the perspectives of art history writing methodology, historical significance, and era value, with a view to leaving a new era image and spiritual imprint on China's current literary and art criticism construction and contemporary art writing.

▲ From left to right: Zhou Yan's "History of Contemporary Chinese Art from 1949 to the Present", Lü Peng's "History of Chinese Contemporary Art", Gao Minglu's "History of Chinese Contemporary Art", Lu Hong's "Complete Collection of Chinese Contemporary Art 1978-2008"

Do you want to write "History of Contemporary Art"

Can contemporaries write about the history of contemporary art? And how to write? There has been a lot of controversy in academia. Art historian Lü Peng wrote in "Is the History of Contemporary Art Written or Not?" The article reads: "To write the history of contemporary art is to participate in the historical adventures of contemporary art, and your writing is likely to be a part of contemporary art... Only contemporary historical records can avoid the misleading of legends, and these materials are the materials that we shape or change history. The greatest advantage of participating in the shaping of history is that it is clear about the starting points and problems of the time, and the purpose of the field action, so that it can write 'contemporary history' with its own knowledge, experience, values, and critical analysis. ”

"Books on the history of Chinese contemporary art should not only be written, but also written more." Art critic Lu Hong was quite emotional in the process of writing the history of Chinese contemporary art, he pointed out that since everyone will have some limitations when writing the history of Chinese contemporary art, the more relevant versions are left, the more future generations will study the documents of this period, the more references and comparisons there will be, and some errors can be corrected to prevent the phenomenon of false rumors. History writing is not the patent of one person or a few people, as long as more people participate in similar work and publish more books on the history of Chinese contemporary art, many problems can be solved in comparison and identification. It is in this reflection that works on the history of Chinese contemporary art are conceived.

Methodological logic and standards

So, what are the challenges of writing contemporary art history today? In the view of art historian Gao Minglu, the biggest challenge is how to view the history of contemporary art from a global perspective, sort out a narrative logic that belongs to Chinese contemporary art in the global context, and reflect the contemporary value of Chinese contemporary art in the narrative.

In writing The History of Chinese Contemporary Art, Gao Minglu highlighted and strengthened two perspectives: the "overpass" theory from a cultural perspective and the "process epistemology" from a philosophical perspective. The first is the cultural perspective. Since the 20th century, China has been striving to find its own cultural orientation in global culture, and this sense of orientation of the transition between ancient and modern China and the West is similar to an "overpass", and the discussion of Chinese contemporary art should be sorted out and thought in this "overpass"-like cultural perspective. The second is the philosophical perspective. Different from the concept of "reproduction" that runs through Western art history, which extracts accurate meaning through the analysis and interpretation of works of art, Chinese contemporary art is more suitable for a process epistemological perspective, whether it is Xu Bing's "Book of Heaven", Huang Yongping's conscious anti-Western linguistics from the perspective of linguistics, or Zhang Peili's earliest video art, which is the embodiment of process epistemology.

Gao Minglu said: "From this point of view, Chinese abstraction since the 1990s is not abstraction in the Western sense, but a kind of mutual image, and mutual subjectivity, which becomes a process presentation in the process of mutual integration." The 'reproduction' of Western art history is a kind of judgment epistemology, which needs to extract knowledge through linguistics and logic; and process epistemology is to present the hidden meaning in this process. This is a very important aspect of Chinese contemporary art. Therefore, in the process of writing "History of Chinese Contemporary Art", I pay attention to each case, try to add as much ink as possible, and focus on presenting the artists' ideas and the practical process of their creation. ”

Inspired by some art history writing methods, Lu Hong will collect a large number of works and pictures before engaging in the writing of Chinese contemporary art history, then write an outline based on the visual clues shown by the images, and finally complete the art history writing according to the framework of the outline. At the same time, he also developed a set of writing methods: first, whether the work raises the most sensitive and core questions in contemporary culture; second, whether the questions raised by the work are extracted from the historical and social context of China, rather than a simple conversion and imitation of Western works; third, whether the work is expressed with Chinese visual experiences such as Chinese symbols and images, as well as Chinese-style expression techniques, thus highlighting the local identity; and finally, the expression of the work is not very wise.

According to these criteria, Lu Hong places works of art in specific cultural contexts, and uses comparative and analytical methods to combine works to discuss them, which is what he calls "situational logic" writing mode. Lu Hong said that unlike the writing of traditional art history, his writing is to present the history of Chinese contemporary art vividly and vividly, so that the history of Chinese contemporary art can enter the vision of more people, so as to integrate academic and intellectual.

Open horizons Broaden boundaries

According to the statistics of the "2021 Annual Report of Chinese Contemporary Art", there are still some new situations worth paying attention to in 2021 under the influence of the epidemic in Chinese contemporary art. In 2542 articles (as of November 7, 2021) and 36 categories of topics, the discussion of painting issues lasted a long time. In the state of prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, many exhibition forms have changed, paintings have suddenly become more and more in a very eclectic situation; in the discussion of art institutions, alternative space has become the key word, not limited to official institutions and specialized art institutions, art is moving in a broader and experimental direction.

Zhu Qingsheng, an art historian and professor at Peking University, said that the work in 2021 is mainly to summarize the previous year, and through archival investigation work, it can be seen that the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020 has exacerbated the "difficult and subtle" changes in the international political and cultural and artistic pattern, and the impact on Chinese contemporary art has first shown that it has affected the scale of the art ecology, and secondly, the relevant events have caused Chinese contemporary art to begin to contract under the international situation, but the epidemic has not passed. The turning point in Chinese contemporary art has not yet arrived, and the change continues. Young artists are a highlight of this, they have a new attitude to the problem, their art is no longer suitable for generalization with a few concepts, but in the direction of anthropology and ecology to move towards experimentation. "We never knew what the future holds for art, but we always keep open to what art can be." Zhu Qingsheng said.

Similarly, open horizons apply to the study of art history. At present, there are two different concepts of art history research in the academic community, one is for the art ontology, and the other is interdisciplinary. Among them, the phenomenon of interdisciplinary research in art history is becoming more and more obvious, and it has become a trend of contemporary academic transformation.

"The contemporary transformation of Chinese art history was triggered by iconography, that is, the study of the form, theme and meaning of works, which proposed the concept of 'viewing'. But the search for pictorial meaning often gets bogged down, and misunderstandings often occur. On the one hand, the creator does not accurately grasp the direction of the meaning of the image, and on the other hand, the viewer's knowledge structure is asymmetrical. The solution, on the other hand, is to create a link between the two. Zheng Gong, a researcher at the China Academy of Art, called for the study of art history to expand its horizons and break through disciplinary restrictions. In multi-directional academic exchanges, cross-media, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural. "This is not to integrate the differences between different disciplines for art historians, but to continuously open up its internal world in various ways for works, close to the truth, rather than far-fetched and arbitrary interpretation, after all, seeking truth is the purpose of academic research." Zheng Gong said.

Is it criticism, or history

The writing of art has always been accompanied by artistic practice, and people often refer to the artistic writing of the same era as "art criticism", and the artistic writing of future generations to the previous generations as "art history". Whether it is art criticism or art history, it is the recognition and re-understanding of the value of art.

Art critic Jia Fangzhou believes that all art history is a history of criticism. The Italian critic Venturi's "unified view" of art criticism and art history writing is based on the fact that both kinds of writing must be "judgmental" in their essence, and art history without criticism intervention is an art history without value, and without judgmental art history, there is no choice, let alone a sense of problems. As a critic, the essential difference between him and the theorists and historians lies in his concern with the most vivid artistic events and works of art that are taking place, in flux. Therefore, as a critic, the most important quality is neither the ability to construct theoretical systems nor the ability to narrate history, but precisely the 'intuitive ability' similar to that of the artist. This is important to the critic because the critic is a group of people who work at the forefront of art, who must have the ability to grasp the latest trends in the development of art and make immediate judgments, and if he does not have the sensitivity of feeling, he will not be able to grasp the latest and most valuable events and works. ”

In the view of Wang Duanting, a researcher at the China Academy of Art, the differences in the function and nature of art criticism and art history are reflected in three aspects: first, art criticism is to discover the value of art, and art history is to confirm the value of art; second, art criticism is the preliminary review of art value, and art history is the final review of art value; third, art criticism is to do addition, and art history is to do subtraction.

"Contemporary chronicles, alternate generations of revision of history", this is the Chinese academic tradition. Wang Duanting said: "No matter how great and ambitious our critics are, we cannot replace future generations to write the art history of our time and influence the value judgments of future generations." All our critics have to do is strive to be factual and impartial in their writing, and this is the ultimate criterion for today's art criticism to be recognized by the art history of the future. In a sense, art criticism is the material of art history. The value of criticism itself, that is, whether today's criticism can be recognized by future generations, and whether today's criticism results can be adopted by future art history, all need to be tested by time. History is the endless dialogue between the present and the past. As critics, all we have to do today is strive to be honest interlocutors in the eyes of future art historians. ”

January 16, 2022 China Culture Daily

The first edition featured a special report

From Art Criticism to Speculation in Art History

Editor-in-charge: Chen Xiaoyue