The Stars Group 星星画会

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The Stars Group (Xingxing 星星画会) was among the first collectives or organized artists' groups to present the beginnings of a Chinese avant-garde following the Cultural Revolution. Hoping to undermine the Socialist Realism of years past, they employed banned Western styles in their art and unlawfully staged their inaugural exhibition in a public park. After officials banned the exhibition, artist-members took to the streets to champion artistic freedom.

Huang Rui, Self-portrait (1980)

Who

Ai Weiwei, Bo Yun, Huang Rui, Li Shuang, Ma Desheng, Mao Lizi, Qu Leilei, Shao Fei, Wang Keping, Yan Li, Yang Yiping, Yin Guangzhong and Zhong Acheng.

When

The group was primarily active between the years 1979 and 1983. After 1980, prominent members such as Ai Weiwei, Huang Rui, Li Shuang, Ma Desheng and Wang Keping left China, although many of these diaspora artists continued to show their art abroad and eventually back in the PRC. In China the Stars Group disbanded in 1983. Yet the founding members maintained a close relationship between them, organizing regular Group shows, The Stars: Ten Years, 1989 (Hanart Gallery, Hong-Hong and Taipei), Demand for Artistic Freedom, The Stars 20 Years, 2000 (Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo) and a retrospective exhibition in Beijing in 2007: Origin Point (Today Art Museum, Beijing).

Where

The Stars Group met in Beijing, at public places including the China Art Gallery and Beihai Park, as well as at each others' homes.

Name

Ma Desheng and Huang Rui organized The Stars Group, also known as the "Stars Painting Association” or simply the "Stars," in 1979. The group’s name derived from discussions of the concept of ziwo, variously defined as "self image," "ego," or "an individual's relationship to society." These conversations yielded a shared belief in the centrality of individuality to social and creative expression. When asked about the name's origin, founder Ma Desheng replied: “Every artist is a little star. Even the greatest artists are still little stars from a cosmic point of view. We called our group 'Stars' in order to emphasize our individuality.”

Intentions

Ma and Huang hoped to mount an exhibition that would coincide with the opening on September 27, 1979 of the Fifth National Art Exhibition at the China Art Gallery in Beijing. They recruited other artists who shared their belief that policies of the past few decades had stifled creativity and originality and needed to be rolled back. Although not academically trained, Ma and Huang and other “nonprofessional” artist members had acquired art instruction from mentors or from classes at institutions such as the Beijing Worker’s Cultural Center.

Socialist Realism had been the official aesthetic policy of the PRC long before the Cultural Revolution, but after Mao's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Socialist Realist works came to be regarded as literal and metaphorical homage to Mao's memory. The Stars Group, whose members came of age at the end of the Cultural Revolution, both wished to distance itself from officially sanctioned art institutions and associations, which they considered corrupt, and to struggle for individuality of expression. To do so--despite the lack of a formal, aesthetic agenda--they appropriated a smorgasbord of Western, avant-garde art styles of the late 19th- and early 20th centuries including Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Dada, Cubism, and Surrealism. Although these appropriations lacked the social contexts and original meanings of the European imports, they unequivocally announced a new agenda that by official standards was nothing short of revolutionary.

Art

Few people in China saw art created by the Stars Group until photographs of it were published long after the fact. The art created by The Stars during this period was often overtly critical of the PRC and official policy. Wang Keping's wood sculpture Idol (1979), for instance, represented, in part, the unmistakable, if caricatured, features of Mao, suggesting both his self-regard and the esteem in which the citizenry were encouraged to hold him. Given that such deviations from Mao's iconic, official portrait were effectively discouraged, the Idol‘s exhibition must have been a shocking sight.

Although works by Stars artists such as Huang Rui were less overtly political, their deviations from Socialist Realist style were unsettling to the establishment. Like many Stars artist, Huang experimented with diverse styles (and subjects.) In his cubist Self Portrait (1980), Huang appears seated against a brick wall, arms and legs crossed, peering at us through opaque white glasses. His mysteriously missing gaze and ambiguous expression suggest both turmoil and stoicism--the unmistakeably 'guarded outlook' of his peers.

Li Shuang was the only female artist-member of the Stars. Her daring and intensely wrought Black and Red (1979) is a complex, multi-figured composition that evokes numerous western art approaches of the past, from the brushy expressionism that recurs throughout the twentieth century to the nightmarish and allegorical imagery reminiscent of symbolist canvases of the late 19th century.

Exhibitions & Reception

The Stars Group Exhibition (1979)

The Stars Art exhibition opened on September 27, 1979, in a small but centrally-located park just east of the China Arts Gallery (now the National Art Museum of China.) Lacking a permit, its very existence represented defiance of authority and official policy. Under the sign "Kathe Kollwitz is our banner-bearer, Pablo Picasso is our pioneer", Stars-artists hung their mostly two-dimensional works on park railings and the unadvertised show seems, from photographs, to have attracted a large crowd.

On the morning of September 28, authorities declared the outdoor exhibition illegal. The Stars responded by announcing a march on October 1, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, protesting the closing of their exhibition.

The march seems to have garnered the Stars an invitation to re-present their exhibition the following month. It opened on November 23 in The Huafang Studio in nearby Beihai Park and remained open and undisturbed, despite its murky legal status, until December 2.

In 1980 the Stars group registered with the Beijing Artists Association, and with the assistance of Jiang Feng, acting Chairman of the Chinese Artists Association, was granted a permit for an exhibition at the prominent China Art Gallery. It was soon revealed that Jiang's cooperation in registering the group and helping them secure an exhibition was partially based on his belief that the audience would not understand the meaning of the works being shown. Whether or not nuances of the show's works were lost on some viewers, its spirit of freedom and resistance was unmistakable.

Huang Rui, Landscape (1980)

The exhibition opened on August 24, 1980. Featuring both nudes and abstract works, it was attended by more than 80,000 visitors. (Some estimates put the number at 200,000). This event marked the first time a group of independent artists were granted a permit to show at a prestigious state institution. (Another ten years would pass, however, before experimental art works were again shown at the China Art Gallery, this time for the even more controversial China/Avant-Garde exhibition in 1989.)

In March, 1980 critic Li Xianting, then editor of the officially-supported Fine Arts (Meishu) magazine, wrote an article titled "About the Stars Art Exhibition" (Guanyu 'Xingxing' meizhan). In this essay Li expressed his admiration for the works shown in the Stars Exhibition and his hope that people would take time to carefully look and learn from these artists' work. This exposure from an organ of officialdom was a huge step towards legitamacy and national recognition.

Other reviews from writers such as Feng Yidai, published in the September 10 issue of the New Observer (Xin guancha), acknowledged the challenges overcome by the Stars during their fight for individual expression. Feng writes, "They grew up in a nightmarish and hideous decade; they walked the rough paths of life, yet they still retained their beautiful souls...their expectation of a better life and their pursuit of beauty made them take up paintbrushes, knives and chisels, and express their hopes on canvas, in wood and in stone. They took up their paintbrushes and engraving tools to deal ugliness a deathblow, and opened up a new road to a bright future."

In 1983 Stars Group artist-members Ma Desheng, Huang Rui and Wang Keping organized the collective's final group show at the Zixin Road Primary School in Beijing--a far less visible venue than the China Art Gallery. Officials closed the show soon after its opening, citing the recently-inaugurated spiritual cleansing campaign of the early 1980s. This closure marked the finale of--and perhaps constituted an appropriate end to--the Stars Group.

Coincidentally, the closing of the Stars' inaugural exhibition in 1979 took place approximately two months after the that of the Anonymous Painting Group's. Although both groups appropriated European avant-garde styles of the late 19th and 20th centuries, their ideological styles differed drastically. In response to a question about the similarity between The Stars works and Western Modernism Huang Rui replied, "An artist need not necessarily create a particular style, but should keep developing. One can absorb all kinds of genres, such as impressionism, fauvism or dadaism, but if you are not restricted to them in your forms, this is not formalism at all. Personally speaking, I am really not mature and don't yet have a personal style nor am I capable yet of an integrated presentation. But I hope to keep working and using others' works as a reference point." While the Stars artists seemed to belong to the international counter-culture that had thrived a decade prior, the Anonymous Artists' Group seemed to belong to some earlier, more genteel era.

Following the group's dissolution, many of the twelve original Stars artist-members moved on to successful careers. They include Ai Weiwei, Huang Rui, Li Shuang, and Wang Keping.

In 1987 most of them participated in the founding of the Chinese United Overseas Artists Association, whose headquarters was in New York. According to Michael Sullivan, the Association was "a landmark in the history of modern Chinese art" (Foreword to the Annual of the Chinese United Overseas Artists Association). Along with Stars members (Ai Weiwei, Huang Rui, Wang Keping, Li Shuang, Ma Desheng, Yan Li, Qu Leilei) the Association included also Yuan Yunsheng, Zhang Hongtu, Zhang Wei.

In 1989 the Stars organised a large group show in Hong Kong and Taibei (Hanart Gallery) for the 10th Anniversary of their first Beijing exhibition: The Stars: Ten Years, presenting works from Huang Rui, Ma Desheng, Wang Keping, Qu Leilei, Bo Yun, Zhong Acheng, Yan Li, Ai Weiwei, Li Shuang, Mao Lizi, Yang Yiping, Shao Fei and Yin Guangzhong.

The 20th Anniversary exhibition Demand for Artistic Freedom, was held in Japan at the Tokyo Gallery, featuring works by Huang Rui, Ma Desheng, Wang Keping, Qu Leilei, Yang Yiping, Li Yongcun (Bo Yun), Li Shuang, Yan Li and Zhao Gang.

A Stars Group retrospective exhibition, Origin Point, was held at the Today Art Museum in Beijing in November 2007. More than 100 paintings in oil and ink, woodcut prints, and sculptures--most of which were shown in Stars' exhibitions in 1979 and 1980--were featured. The exhibition's title suggests the Chinese art community's esteem for these arttists who, at great personal risk, championed individuality and freedom of expression.

Commercial Status

Ranging from forgotten to internationally renowned, these artists and their commercial stature are impossible to charactize. Among the latter--such as Ai Weiwei and Wang Keping--the historic status of Stars Group-era works make them highly valued, although not especially so, since the artists' youthful production were typically followed by more highly-regarded, career phases.