Behind the Great Wall to Your Wall

"> Industrial production technique applied to the art world is based on the ”One Size Fits All” business model.There is division of labour and the painting is viewed within the prism of the accountants cost/volume/profit perspective. The Ziganof Group in Manchester, England purchases up to six 40 foot containers per order mainly for home furnishings and furniture retailers. 

In contrast is the 798 Art Zone in the Dashanzi Art District:

 

Chen Yufei  is  an avant-garde oil painter who has enjoyed international visibility. He first gained attention in a modern art exhibit just prior to the Tiananmen square massacre and over time has continued to develop technically while refining the protest and rage aspect in his work, in part to avoid scrutiny and permit a given degree of liberty of expression.

 

 

Yue Minjun emerged after the Chinese government stopped the China avant-garde movement. There is a progression away from pre-tiananmen idealism and naiveity towards an acceptance that an Orwellian big brother is an element that could be coopted into the art but the centrality of  the individual would triumph. One has to question if this type of art promotion has propaganda elements. The State’s need to display shiny happy artists.Is this a Chinese Barbie and Ken art doll; model prisoners wearing designer clothes.

 

 

In effect, avant-garde art is a result of  urbanization in China and greater concentration of wealth.It is also a reaction to the calligraphic tradition, peasant painting and ink and wash landscapes that put the China of Pearl S. Buck’s ”The Good Earth” at centre stage culturally for many years. Buck’s protagonist, Wang Lung was a victim of the pervasive violence of Chinese rural life and  the ensuing poverty, within an epic political  and economic crisis of 1920′s China. Wang Lung had no valid exit strategy and the tragic results were inevitable given the author’s frame of reference within the realm of the end days of Imperial China. Lung was like Oliver Twist  but without any prospect to emerge from his own obscurity.

 

 

  The  Chinese modern Art movement since 1985 has resulted in expanding interest for art education.The authorities have raised tuition for an art university program to almost twice the cost of an engineering vocation. The artists not able to live professionally upon graduation turn to commodity art for export. Mao had a cast a long shadow and China’s artists are only beginning to see daylight.