85 New Wave Movement 85 新潮运动

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The '85 New Wave Movement was a Chinese avant-garde movement that flourished between 1985 and 1989. The movement, the name for which was coined by critic Gao Minglu, represented a kind of explosive answer to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, when China was not only cut off from the rest of the world, but was also asked to disown and renounce much of its own traditional culture. Suppression of such a powerful history could only be met with an equal and opposite force, and the '85 New Wave Movement represents a watershed in contemporary Chinese art history. ^[1]

Contents 1 Who 2 When 3 Where 4 Style

[edit] Who

Gu Wenda, Xu Bing, Wu Shanzhuan, Geng Jianyi, Ding Fang, Ni Haifeng, Zhang Peili, Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Zhou Chunya, Ye Yongqing, Mao Xuhui, Liu Xiaodong, Fang Lijun, Liu Wei (72), Li Shan, Sun Liang, Yu Hong, Wei Rong, Yang Zhilin, Huang Jun, Shen Qin, Guan Ce, Wang Jinsong, Li Tianyuan, Song Yonghong, Song Yongping, Zhao Bandi, Lin Yilin, Xu Tan, Zeng Fanzhi, and Wei Guangqing.

[edit] When

In only two years (1985 and 1986), seventy-nine self-organized avant-garde art groups, including more than 2,250 of the nation’s young artists, emerged to organize exhibitions, hold conferences and write manifestos and articles about their art. A total of 149 exhibitions were organized by these groups within the two-year period. The movement continued to develop in 1987 towards a more provocative and conceptual direction, peaking in 1989 with the China Avant-Garde exhibition.^[2]

[edit] Where

Geographically, the avant-garde groups spread nationwide in twenty-nine provinces including some autonomous regions, such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. Most of the groups, however, were located on the Eastern coast and central regions of China--areas more advanced in education and industrialization.^[3]

[edit] Style

This opportunity for new artistic language and dialogue sent artists in pursuit of multiple lines of inquiry. After decades of politically sanctioned movements, the line of modern Chinese artistic development had been seriously eroded, leaving only traces from which to reinvent a new culture. Forced to work almost from scratch, artists instigated a parallel and alternative contemporary art history to the West that brought Chinese art from strict Socialist Realism to mature experimental and conceptual practice in just a few years.^[4] Between 1985 and 1990, a group of over one thousand young Chinese artists living in an environment without galleries, museums, or any systematic support for art and with unprecedented enthusiasm and passion, led a globally influential artistic movement. It marked the end of a monolithic artistic model in China, achieving unprecedented individualism and opening a path for Chinese art to march toward internationalization and contemporaneity. ^[5]

Most groups from the urban areas were in favour of a conceptual approach, regardless of the kind of media employed. The two major conceptual approaches adopted were Rationalistic Painting, represented by the artworks and writings of the Northern Artists Group from Harbin, the Red Brigade from Nanjing, and the Pond Society from Hangzhou; and the Zen-Dada-like conceptual art, epitomized by the Xiamen Dada Group from Fujian and the Red Humour from Hangzhou. On the contrary, art groups located in the northwest and southwest--areas still overwhelmingly based on traditional peasant lifestyle and home of most of the ethnic minorities--were interested in a frank expression of their intuitive feelings and favoured "primitive" themes. The term "currents of life" was used to define their approach. Among these groups, the most influential was the Southwest Art Research Group, consisting of artists mostly from Yunnan and Sichuan provinces.^[6]

1. ↑ http://www.beauty-reality.com/tonyinchina.com/china5/798/ucca.html)
2. ↑ http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/85-new-wave-art-movement-tf/)
3. ↑ http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/85-new-wave-art-movement-tf/)
4. ↑ (http://www.beauty-reality.com/tonyinchina.com/china5/798/ucca.html)
5. ↑ http://www.beauty-reality.com/tonyinchina.com/china5/798/ucca.html
6. ↑ http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/85-new-wave-art-movement-tf/)