China's abstract painting
by Marion Cotillard artistThe relationship between
abstract art and contemporary culture has been a core topic concerned by the
critics. In western theorists, in addition to the critics like Roger, Fry,
Greenberg who engaged in abstract art criticism and practice, art historians like
Meyer, Shapiro, Merlot, Ponty, Roland and Barthes also participated in the
abstract art movement in full swing in the 1950s and 1960s. It was in the
promotion of criticism and theory; the early years of the avant-garde abstract
art rebellion were gradually replaced by the 'legitimac' of the mainstream art,
and eventually became the art form of western mainstream as academicism.
Instead, the development of abstract art in China was not so lucky. Among so
many constraints, the backwardness of criticism and theoretical study was still
an important reason.
Since 2000, with the increase
of critics' study and abstract art exhibitions, China's abstract art became
active again. Critics such as Gao Minglu, Yi Ying, Wang Lin, Yin Shuangxi, Wang
Nanming, and Huang Zhuan published criticized thematic articles and Gao Minglu,
Jia Xianting, Li Xu and Li Xiaochun had played a positive role in the promotion
of diversification of abstract art through a series of exhibitions. The most
representative was the critic Gao Minglu who has made a large number of
academic activities and seminars for the past 3 years. What he had done has
greatly contributed to the further study of China's abstract art.
In the diversified pattern of
Chinese contemporary painting, abstract painting has been in a marginalized
position and long term played the role of "otherness" no matter in
the Cultural Revolution, in the trendy period or in the diversified
contemporary art. Abstract painting suffered a multifaceted censure: official
art could not accept it, because it was relative to the mainstream ideology;
academic art could not completely accept it, because the existence of abstract
painting questioned the legitimacy of the whole painting model centered on
shape, structure, concrete realism and plot narrative; modernism in the trendy
period could not accept it, because Chinese traditional painting lacked the
conditions to produce abstract art, since abstract painting was only borrowed
from western abstract art without the originality of language and painting
concept; contemporary China's mainstream 'picture' painting rejected the
abstract, whose artists generally considered that abstract painting consumed
the artist's creative passion in the abstract pattern, and could not put
forward constructive suggestions for the building of contemporary culture and
China's real life. Therefore, abstract art has been in a marginalized position.
You have to 'understand'
abstract art with a different part of you, one that you may not normally use or
be familiar with. Essentially, you must: Accept that it is what it is. Don't
try to pinpoint an exact meaning for an image. Look at abstract art in the same
way that you would listen to a symphony. When you listen to music, you don't
try to hold on to the notes - you let them wash over you. Let your eyes wander
over the painting the way the notes of a symphony wash over your soul. Let your
eyes play with the painting, slipping around corners, following the twirls,
twists and turns, dipping in and out of the surface. Understanding abstract art requires an
inventiveness that invites you to discover for yourself the meaning behind the
work. It is not easy to grasp, like still life, portraits, or other form of
representational art, because it is open to interpretation in a way that
representational art is not.
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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.