Generation after generation, Chinese artists are always reminded of the word -- tradition seems to be the utmost important thing to bear in mind if they want to become an artist.

But, after being followed for so long and repeated so many times, what is traditional art really like?

Artist Qiu Zhijie attempts to answer in his peculiar way.

For several years, the graduate of the Hangzhou-based China National Academy of Fine Arts repeatedly copied, with a brush and ink on a piece of paper, Lantingxu (Orchid Pavilion Preface), a masterpiece by Eastern Jin Dynasty (AD 317-420) calligrapher Wang Xizhi, which is regarded as the artistic peak of Chinese calligraphy and almost considered a sacred example by calligraphers. While doing so, Qiu used a video to record the process.

Layers of ink accumulated on the paper as Qiu copied the masterpiece. When he finished the final touches for the 1,000th time, the paper turned totally dark, leaving nothing recognizable.

The whole process was recorded and the dark piece of paper remained to became part of Qiu's most well known video/installation work, "Writing the 'Orchid Pavilion Preface' One Thousand Times."

Recognized for its experimental nature in media and conception, Qiu's work is one of the 179 pieces by more than 130 Chinese artists featured at "The First Guangzhou Triennale - Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990-2000)," which is on show until January 19 at the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou, the capital of South China's Guangdong Province.

Retrospective Show

The grand exhibition, which is the largest retrospective of the experimental Chinese art of the 1990s, is sponsored by the leading art museum as a landmark artistic event in the southern metropolis.

The curatorial committee of the exhibition includes Wu Hung, professor of Chinese art history at the University of Chicago in the United States, Wang Huangsheng, director of the Guangdong Museum of Art, Huang Zhuan, associate professor of art theory at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and Feng Boyi, an independent curator and art editor from Beijing.

"We hope that the Guangzhou show will turn out to be not only a major exhibition of art work, but also a stage for us to observe reality, respond to history and tell about life, which make up the soul of art exhibitions," said Wang, who is also the director of the curatorial committee.

Visitors may find themselves suddenly exposed to the different types of artistic experiments undertaken in China in the last decade of the 20th century as most of the exhibits are being shown within the country for the first time, despite the fact they have been widely exhibited internationally, like at the Venice Biennale.

The exhibition is also different from other domestic contemporary art events, such as the Shanghai Biennale and Chengdu Biennale, because of its viewpoint as a retrospective of artistic trends.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a Chinese/English catalog with all the works of art and essays by more than 10 leading experts from China and abroad has been published. An international symposium on the curatorial practice of contemporary art was also held earlier to go with the exhibition.

According to Wu Hung, chief curator of the exhibition, experimental Chinese art began to emerge in the late 1970s as a result of the increased spiritual freedom after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and the influence of Western artistic trends in China during the 1980s.

But it was only in the 1990s that experimental Chinese art began to find its identity and give more emphasis to individual artistic languages, Wu noted.

"In the 1980s, experimental art in China primarily followed Western modern art and was concerned more about 'movement,' that is, political, ideological and group activities on a large scale. The sense of 'movement,' however, lost its appeal for experimental artists in the 1990s," he said.

To realize the so-called contemporary characteristics in their works, the artists challenged tradition by experimenting with novel media in their works of art, Wu said.

"Unlike in the 1980s, when most experimental artists still stuck to traditional media such as painting and sculpture, in the 1990s more and more young artists abandoned their training in traditional Chinese or Western painting," he said. "Overnight, installation and performance became the most popular art forms in contemporary Chinese art."

New Media

The current exhibition includes the representative experimental works of the 1990s, mostly falling into the categories of installation, performance, video and conceptual photography, although a considerable number of works are still paintings and sculptures.

Among the most striking installation works is Xu Bing's Gui Da Qiang (Ghost Knocking the Wall), which is a huge rubbing of a section of the Great Wall that Xu finished in the early 1990s with his students when he was teaching at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

Now based in New York, Xu is internationally recognized as one of the most prominent Chinese contemporary artists in the West. Xu's work covers a wall at the entrance of the Guangdong Museum of Art, producing a strong sense of historical pressure and visual power.

According to Zhu Qi, an art critic and curator in Beijing, contemporary Chinese art in the later half of the 1990s is also noticeable for introducing other new elements like electronic media.

"More and more artists turned to photography and video art that were based on electronic media," Zhu said.

"The images of photography and video art, in turn, also influenced the images of painting and sculpture, creating a new trend of photographic realistic painting."

Many artists of this period used photographs or video tapes to record their performance art, which was often conducted in a private space with few people watching. One of the examples is Song Dong's performance/photography work "Printing on Water" (1996), which portrays the artists printing on the water of Lhasa River in Tibet with a big seal bearing the word "water."

In the oil paintings of artists Zhang Xiaogang, Liu Xiaodong and Yu Hong, the images are often scenes of daily life that are almost reminiscent of pictures taken with cameras. The paintings do not appear to be lofty art works, but are friendly images that reflect the society people are living in.

Emerging China

The emergence of experimental Chinese art is itself a reflection of the unprecedented transformation of contemporary China in social and economic spheres, according to Wu.

With the nation's economic prosperity and social reform since the 1980s, Chinese people found they had better control of their lives and more freedom to move into better jobs and change their living conditions. It was also true in the contemporary art community.

Since the late 1980s, a large number of experimental artists have moved from all over China to large cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chengdu and Nanjing. Because of its political and cultural importance and sensitivity, the nation's capital has become the national center of experimental art, attracting talented young artists to move in and form noteworthy art communities such as Yuanmingyuan Artists Village, East Village and later, the Tongzhou Artists Community.

"Before experimental Chinese art began to attract international attention, it was primarily supported by foreigners living in Beijing, especially diplomats," Wu said.

"But after 1993, the art has managed to become an important part of international modern art as a result of promotion by the international media, the networks of biennales and triennales abroad and Chinese artists, critics and curators in the West and in China."

A lot of foreign collectors, galleries and museums rushed to China to find artists and collect experimental Chinese art before local people started to realize the significance of the trend in the history of contemporary art.

As a result, many important works have been lost to foreign collectors, which means a loss of cultural heritage and makes it difficult to research contemporary Chinese art within the country.

Also, because of the influence of certain Westerners, there has been a worrying tendency for serious distortion in experimental Chinese art, which is harmful to the survival of the form and the national image of China.

"It is good that a Chinese public institution like the Guangdong Museum of Art is standing out to organize such a documentary retrospective. With the involvement of distinguished scholars like Wu Hung, the exhibition is remarkable for its academic significance and international scope," said Zhu Qingsheng, a professor from the Department of Art Studies of Peking University.

"But it is a pity that the selection of artists and works of art are basically based on the understanding of 'experimental art' from the Western standards and missed some important artistic experiments with more Chinese characteristics, including modern calligraphy."

Experts like Chen Yang also point out many of the representative works of experimental Chinese art are now in Western collections, making it difficult to get them for the exhibition. As a result, some of the exhibits are actually recently made, which distract from the authenticity of the exhibition as a retrospective.

In spite of the problems and controversies, the First Guangzhou Triennale has made a significant step forward to document experiments in contemporary Chinese art and help local audiences recall a period of art history that is on the verge of being neglected.

(China Daily December 19, 2002)