Cynical Realism 玩世现实主义
From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki
Cynical Realism is among the best-known of contemporary Chinese art movements. Emerging at the end of the 1980s, influenced by the events of 1989, its representative paintings typically mirror disenchantment with both political and artistic utopias. Less statements about historic events than expressions of ambiguity, Cynical Realist works often embody psychic conflict and unease about the dizzying pace and character of change in the PRC. Perhaps the most widely-seen group of Chinese artists in the West, Cynical Realism has helped fuel the (mis)perception that all recent Chinese art should first be "read" in relation to its political meanings or subtexts.
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Who
Fang Lijun, Guo Wei, Liu Wei ('72), Liu Xiaodong, Song Yonghong, Wang Jinsong, Yang Shaobin, Yu Hong, Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang, and Zheng Fanzhi
When
The movement reached its heydey in the early 1990s
Where
Beijing was the center of Cynical Realism. Artists associated with it--including Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang and Wang Jinsong--worked together, while living at the Yuanmingyuan Artist Village near Beijing during the early 1990s.
Name
The term Cynical Realism was coined in 1992 by critic Li Xianting, a long time friend of artist Fang Lijun. In an article in the Hong Kong journal Twenty-first, Li asserted that Chinese society's post-1989 mood was best reflected in the art of a group of Beijing artists whose often ironic works spanned an emotional spectrum from ennui to roguish humor. As with American Pop artists 30 years earlier, their realistic style was put to then-untraditional ends, suggesting anything but the idealizing Social Realism that was still at that time the officially-sanctioned artistic approach of the PRC.
In a statement introducing an exhibition of paintings by Fang Lijun and Liu Wei ('72) in April 1992, Li again invoked the exhibiting artists, among others, as part of a "trend." Li wrote: "I call the neo-realistic trend that emerged after 1988 or 1989, and that concentrated mainly in Beijing as Cynical Realism; "cynical" is an English word, and we take up its connotations of ridicule, sarcasm and cold views on reality and life." A year later, the term had gained currency throughout the international art world, where it was too-often used to imply a movement in the traditional sense of self-conscious avant-gardists with shared artistic aims, banding together to organize exhibitions and issue manifestos. It now seems a useful descriptor for a disorganized "group" of artists who created works that embody a widely-shared cynicism regarding social life and developments.
Intentions
For artists growing up during the Cultural Revolution and coming of age soon after it, the 1980s offered mixed messages. The tentative liberalization of the second half of the decade--epitomized by the 85 New Wave Movement and the discussions that followed--was discouraged in the wake of shuttering of the China/Avant-Garde exhibition in 1989. PRC policy later came to favor both economic liberalization and political reaction, allowing the relatively unfettered development of the global market for contemporary Chinese art. Despite the ideologically critical content of some contemporary art, officials were loathe to curtail a growth industry with prospects for generating hard currency and prestige. This trade-off, coupled with the increasing commercialization of Chinese art and society at large, resulted in the ambivalence of the Cynical Realists towards universalizing systems, whether utopian political programs or utopian artistic programs (or "isms").
This rejection of systems and utopias was characteristic of artistic development in societies across the globe at the end of the 20th century--consider, for instance, the former Soviet bloc. The trend away from collective societies and universal identities, in favor of more personal and subjective identities and aspirations, is a key component of global society's transition from Modernism to Post-Modernism during the last quarter of the 20th century.
Art
Formal elements connect some Cynical Realist works with Social Realism and the aggressively ideological images associated with the Cultural Revolution. Blue skies and sparkling waters are the ubiquitous backdrops for smiling figures with awkwardly arranged limbs and over-large heads. What is new is the sense of artificiality pervading these works, a recognition that these images function primarily as commentary about propaganda and advertising, rather than as depictions of flesh-and-blood models or ordinary, non-heroic subjects. Painters such as Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, and Zhang Xiaogang also turn "Every(Super)man"-style propaganda images on their head by inserting depictions of themselves, family members or friends into their compositions. Sometimes the same figure appears throughout a painting, evoking the serial imagery of the comic book or other narrative forms, but without a temporal through-line.
One artist commonly associated with Cynical Realism is painter Fang Lijun. Known for the ubiquitous squat, bald-headed figures that populate his compositions, Fang frequently places them in ambiguous settings with uncertain horizon lines. As a result, the inhabitants of Fang's compositions are physically disconnected from their surroundings, a sensation mirrored in the psychic drift of their expressions. In Fang's work, it can be hard to distinguish the sheepish grin from the grimace, or, as with No. 1. (1993), the casual glance from the awkward one.
Works by Liu Wei bear formal resemblances to Fang's paintings, but are perhaps even more explicit in their unease. New Generation (1990) depicts two small boys in front of a large poster of Mao, a self-portrait of Liu and his brother taken from a childhood photo whose subjects Liu has given oddly-proportioned bodies and facial features older than the depicted bodies suggest. Artist Yayang ShaobIn, too, frequently pairs blue skies and broad grins, in works such as Untitled No. 4 (1993).
Exhibition & Reception
The China's New Art, Post 1989 exhibition organized in 1993 by Li Xianting and Tsong-zung Chang for the Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, was the first large survey of Chinese avant-garde art to travel outside the PRC. A slightly pared down version of another historic exhibition Mao Goes Pop, traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and the Melbourne Arts Festival the same year. Two years later, in 1995, after re-instating its original title, China's New Art, Post 1989, traveled to the 46th Venice Bienalle in 1995 and to five US venues under the auspices of the American Federation of the Arts.
The primary purpose of the China's New Art, Post 1989 was to contrast art produced throughout the 1980s with works created at its very end, that is, from 1989-91. The importance of the show's international exposure during the mid-1990s cannot be over-estimated. It thrust Cynical Realism and Political Pop into the spotlight and helped solidify Western perceptions of the politicized subtexts of virtually all contemporary Chinese art, obviously an over-generalization of massive proportion.
Zeng Fanzhi is another artist who seems to occupy a position somewhere between, or perhaps outside of, Cynical Realism and Political Pop as seen in the work Fly (2000). While often referencing American Pop artist Andy Warhol and images of Mao, Zeng adopts the mask-like countenances regularly found in Cynical realist works. The vibrant palate of Political Pop is present in Zeng’s work along with representations of rainbows and fighter jets. However, the artist also habitually uses his own figure as subject matter for his works.
Commercial Status
After the international exposure resulting from China's New Art, Post 1989 exhibition in the mid-1990s, demand for Cynical Realist canvases sky-rocketed and has not yet fully returned to Earth. Some Chinese observers derogatorily refer to the movement as the "golden pig" of the Chinese art market.
Several of these artists' works regularly sell for more than (USD) 1 million, generally the internationally-known canvases of the early-mid 1990s that heralded the arrival of these artists on the international scene. The works of Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang are among those whose output has recently yielded the highest prices at auction. In ascending order of price, Fang Lijun's 98.10.1 (1998) fetched (USD) 1.7 million and his Series 2, No. 9 (1992) sold for close to (USD) 2.5 million.Zhang Xiaogang's Bloodline paintings have been hammered down for multi-million dollar sums--(USD) 3.5 million for both Bloodline: Big Family, No. 1 (1995) and Bloodline Series: Mother with Three Sons (The Family Portrait) (1993). Yue Minjun's paintings have frequently reached the (USD) 1 million mark, while his canvas Gweong-Gweong (1993) fetched an eye-popping (USD) 6.9 million.
References
Art and Culture: Cynical Realism
Art Realization: Cynical Realism
Li Feng: Twenty-Eight Years of Contemporary Chinese Art and Market
Geremie R. Barmé: In The Red, New York: Columbia University Press, (2000)
