Recently re-reading Yin Jinan’s two critical responses to the Chinese art world, “Knocking on the door alone” (1993) and “Step-motherism” (2000), two books that should be noted for their critical response and theoretical interpretations on the world of Chinese contemporary art. Both books are published by Sanlian Bookstore, are in their 4th and 2nd printing respectively, and have received much attention from the Chinese-reading world.

Yin Jinan wrote “Knocking on the door alone” as a response to the urgings of many who thought that his position as chair of the Central Academy of Fine Art’s art history department and as a “close-up” observer, warranted a publication.  The second book “Post-motherism” (will follow in separate review) is a compilation of years of art criticism published in his column in duzhe magazine 《读者》also entitled “knocking”, duzikoumen “独自叩门”. The implied meaning of this title is: when we look at art we are always seeking a personal interpretation, and our individual experiences inform our reading.

The essays range from 1988, in an essay on the joint exhibition of Lu Shengzhong and Xu Bing at the National Museum of Art, “新潮美术的转折点” (The turning point of the New Wave), to 1992 (in dialogue with Sui Jianguo). Yin’s connections with art are very influenced by his proximity to the art academy, and to many artists who were making important names, such as Liu Xiaodong and Yu Hong, Wang Guangyi, Huang Yongping,  Sun Xinping and a host of other young painters whom he calls the “New Generation Painters.” These were the emerging generation of artists who were establishing a new POV, moving away from the collectivism of the 1970s and 1980s and depicting personal experiences. Yin’s style is clear and dry, funny at times but aggressively confident when critical.

The book also includes ample writing on Xu Bing,  the outrageously well-attended first nude oil painting exhibition in early 1989, and writings on the China / Avantgarde exhibition in 1989, on Chinese modernism and more. Posted below is an essay from this book on “New Generation Artists”, it was translated for a forthcoming publication on Chinese contemporary art from the Museum of Modern Art.  To read Chinese version, please switch languages on the upper right hand.
NEW GENERATION AND CLOSE UP ARTISTS

Yin Jinan

Modern Chinese art in the early Nineties is endowed with a certain temporal significance. In the moment when our historical imagination collides with actual landscapes, anyone is able to intuitively identify the fundamental elements belonging to the scope of art history. The literary world’s “age of prose” is precisely coincident with the art world’s period of realism without an artistic manifesto, and settling into their peaceful lifestyles, these artists have created an enormous cultural rift from the maddening infatuation with the explosive and dysphoric concepts that before them. This re-examination and questioning of traditional artistic values and art of the New Wave firstly did not arise from within the theoretical world, but from the creative one. A few stirring solo and group art exhibitions that took place in 1990 and 1991 silently expressed a very confident artistic attitude, a group of young artists born in the 1960s thus emerged onto the scene.

The age of these creative protagonists also became an important aspect of how we characterize the current art praxis. When I began to conscientiously employ these two concepts, “New Generation” and “Close Up”, I was considerate of the fact that these terms possess subtle spatial-temporal variations. The term “New Generation” was not my own invention, I’m making use of it, in the same way the first people to use it borrowed the term from geography and entrenched it within the coordinates of contemporary art’s integrated organization. The turning point for this entrenchment began in May, 1990, at two oil painting exhibitions held in Beijing: “Liu Xiaodong’s solo exhibition” and “The World of Female Artists” (participants respectively were: Yu Hong, Wei Rong, Chen Shuxia, Li Chen, Liu Liping, Ning Fangqian, Jiang Xueying, and Yu Chen). These quietly dealt with issues of cultural pertinence and sublimated the artistic trends emerging amidst the various artistic languages and thus attracted my pursuant interest. I have previously made it clear, “Liu Xiaodong’s solo exhibition” and “The World of Female Artists” exhibition symbolize the true beginning of art’s New Generation. Later painting exhibitions by Wang Huaxiang, Yu Hong, Shen Ling, Zhao Bandi & Li Tianyuan, and the “New Generation Art Exhibition” (including Wang Hao, Wang Huaxiang, Wang Yuping, Wang Youshen, Wang Hu, Liu Qinghe, Zhou Jirong, Wang Jinsong, Song Yonghong, Zhan Wang, Zhu Jia, Pang Lei, Yu Hong, Wei Rong, Shen Ling, Chen Shuxia) one after another pronounced the values of this New Generation.

Most New Generation artists are concentrated in Beijing. Born in the 1960s, none among this group of had been in the Red Guard or were “Sent Down Youth”, and because they lack profound historical memories or mental scars they embody a distinct spiritual fracture from the generation born in the 1950s. Their collective consciousness has been diluted, and there are no life principals or artistic views they unanimously uphold. The idea of “New Generation” art is based on age, while “Close Up” art is based on artistic posturing. This concept arose from the title I have chosen for Wang Huaxiang’s exhibition this March, a distinction from the grand “conceptual art” of the New Wave artists. “Close up” implies a closing of the gap in the psyche between art, concepts, and lifestyle.  Life and concepts, as deliberated by Chinese artists, have always been at opposite ends of the spectrum. In the past, placing importance on daily life resulted in various different styles of realism; after ’85, people began to place importance on large concepts, the conclusion of the Eighties also signaled an end to the artistic New Wave in China. New Generation artists enjoy depicting trivial matters of everyday life, often making the people most familiar to them central subjects in their works. Liu Xiaodong and Wang Huaxiang both use friends and co-workers within their social radius as models for their paintings––they’ve even painted me. Wang Hao and Wei Rong are more accustomed to choosing a comparatively more objective gaze to record urban life and everyday street scenes in Beijing. Shen Ling, Chen Shuxia, Wang Yuping, Liu Qinghe, Zhao Bandi and Li Tianyuan, etc., like to execute scenes from everyday life directly on the canvas. In a first glance, this artistic phenomenon seems obviously inclined to realism, but compared with China’s previous realist incarnations (such as classical painting, Andrew Wyeth style, or Regionalism), it has distinctly unique conceptual elements; this is a relatively new art form in China.

New Generation artists or Close Up trends in art often reject definite committal, and these artists conceal personal life attitudes behind their representations of it, allowing instead for these attitudes to permeate through their works little by little. It’s easy to understand why New Generation artists don’t like to issue formal declarations, they often lack enthusiasm for art theory’s grand concepts but construct their egos through a creative practice that acts as proxy for the vast system of art theory. Because New Generation artists generally don’t like to dabble in obscure and abstruse philosophical questions, philosophical issues naturally are not the motivating principals at the heart of their works. They frequently capture life’s realistic experiences while executing their artistic creation, beginning from a very practical, very concrete personal episode they project what can definitely be called both emotional and conceptual elements of their psyche.

The New Generation artists make use of their superior technical skills and place a great importance on the creative process, paying attention to distilling artistic language and personal symbols. They place themselves in essentially the position of artist, and not philosopher. A statement from one artist among them clearly illustrates this issue: “Painting is just painting, the result should be authentic.” They feel fundamentally the same about the grand concepts so removed from them––this aspect makes their distance from New Wave artists most obvious. New Generation artists occasionally reflect concepts but they never strive to manifest them.

The cultural backdrop in the early Nineties directly constitutes an important condition for the emergence of New Generation. This is not in so much as to say that these artists choose the Nineties, rather, the Nineties chose them. Owing to the general spiritual fatigue caused by an overheated economy and culture, “conceptual things already make people weary, artists want to return to their own specifically unassuming lives” (to quote Wang Huaxiang). Particularly in their appreciation of ordinary states, quiet and refined experiences replaced these artists’ patience for provocative turmoil. This kind of Close Up art and the reciprocal choice the painter shares with each specific subject is also expressed in the fact that New Generation artists objectively avoid the trends of new wave art.

New Generation and Close Up artists accompany the rise of a Chinese realism. Different forms of realist art suddenly emerged in a muddle. Photorealism as practiced by Wei Rong, Wang Hao, Zhan Wang and Zhang Defeng; Expressionist-realism, from Shen Ling, Wang Yuping and Chen Shuxia; and Conceptual-realism by artists like Liu Qinghe, Wang Jinsong, Rong Yuanhong, Zhao Bandi, Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, Li Tianyuan, Liu Xiaodong and Wang Huaxiang.

Judging from the present, New Generation and Close Up art is not quite a national artistic phenomenon, but a localized one limited to certain cultural areas of Beijing; this group of artists by and large are graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Urban life is their creative backdrop and the intersection of opinions on life and on art shapes their fundamental standpoints. New Generation artists present life, highlighting its logical and integral nature. They exploit the most familiar corners of their lives to allegorically represent life’s limited experiences and points of view. The spiritual elements that permeate their works are a miscellany of trivial and frivolous matters, in no way do their works emphasize or hypothesize on the spiritual direction of any unified concept.

At present, the few attempts at understanding their works found in the theoretical world are either ambiguous or distinctly individualistic interpretations.

Some observers call the implications in New Generation or Close Up art “mockery and self-ironizing,” others call it a “hoodlum mentality.” Ultimately, in a broader theoretical sense, these interpretations are providing these artists with psychological positioning. This kind of thinking also influences our cultural judgment as to whether Close Up art has emerged as a result of historical fortuity or historical necessity. Believing these already emergent movements to be accidental phenomena, or believing that any movement that “should” emerge is an inevitable phenomena, is actually an issue of whether or not that phenomenon will measure up to historical fact or historical logic. Of course, interpretations of and value judgments on the psyche of New Generation and Close Up artists is bound to become an interminable argument; following the transformation of cultural circumstances and issues to come, the axis and focus of this debate will shift. It is not my intention to avoid discussion on the level of significance, only to identify the existing and relational facts on the state of these two trends in the early 90s.

Just as the 1990s are starting out, New Generation and Close Up art is merely in its beginning. These artists attempted to use relatively conventional and stylized artistic language, and tried to integrate the personal life experiences buried inside of each of them, this was the beginning of their artistic practice. Among them, already a few works exhibit a distinct cultural pertinence. The significance of New Generation and Close Up art itself, just like our theoretical attention, must pass the merciless test of history.

October 1991

why other-ify art in China by constantly refering to Chinese art world etc as oposed to world of art IN China etc?

Usually I am more careful about this, translating 中国当代美术 as “Contemporary art in China”. Here, I was less careful, although I essentially agree with you––it should read “…in China”.

Even though I truly do not intend to other-ify, or “ghetto-ize” art, perhaps I want to stress that despite the fact I do not make hierarchical divisions in regard to West vs. East (or Chinese / developing world), I believe that the “Chinese art world” is a unique and complex habitat that should be examined more objectively, instead of assuming that some “universal rules” apply. We need to make exceptions for unique circumstances, and examine them in more detail.

This idea runs throughout Yin Jinan’s writings, for example, in “Anticipation of Ultra-Postmodernism” (forthcoming translation) he questions the idea that “postmodernity” can be applied when notions of “modernity” have barely sunk in.

Thank You!

hmm. I believe divisions need not be hierarchical to be epistemically violent.

To say that all of (modern )art in China is unitary does not lead to an objective examination of any given subject within. Self-orientalization aside, why is a universal power-knowledge system not fruitful?

What tamplate do you use in your blog? Very interesting articles

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