Who is the Driving Force . Pits of Alostract Art? Yang Jinsong

　　I.Is legitimacy necesarry?

　　Today. Questions about “legitimacy’ are often emerged in Chinese context.

　　The proposing of “legalization” consept has somewhat made the emotional and empirical artists to begin consciously grasping of the relations between wishes and outcoms. Whether legal sense and logic ability should be filtered into people’s mind is still in discussion. However. Attentively promoting the depth of originality thinking has become a consensus.

　　Abstract art is not the art without shape or specific content. Our judgement to the so-called aesthetic standards of abstract art and our theory remain in the mannerism taxonamy level which is of the early western abstract forms. Materials. Technology and so on. Therefore. It is inevitable to confront with the discourse system of western abstract art. How to bring out convincing ‘statement’ in this reality requires time and efforts. It is not simply the theory that resorting to “form” induction or applying achema language theory nor the demarcated “legitimacy’ relations.

　　II. What is the theoratical significance?

　　Some curators and theorists must be so sensitive as to think that it is high time that the topic of alostractant be explicated in some way. In the art commercialzed rush. Almost every subject that should be and has already been publicized in China. And it is the only style left.

　　The signiticance of the theory is to reveal the real reality problems reasonalloly and to solve actual problems which should trace the source. Analysis clearly. Lind out the law, point out the difficulty and promote the practice. As a result. Rather than knowledge, theory is the mean and method that can help exploration. Therefore, if abstract art theory could not help People to creat and explore Chinese way of art, but dragging the practice into deeper quagmire, it shoud be abandoned.

　　III. Why not being physics?

　　The “metaphysical” complex was once very eye-catching in Chinese contemporary art discourse.

　　As opposed to “metaphysical”. There will naturally be the related questions of the ‘physics”.

　　Before answering this question. We might as well look at the origin of Chinese abstract art-the

　　‘foreign art movement” of the early last century. Which was defined by theoretical circle. All the signs indicate that it is abstract art’s outward form rather than its theory that has been introduced to China at that time. Through browsing the abstact works of that period, reading the words that the authorswant to convey while creation, even it is the pure art expression, we can see what the authors want to convey is their helpless survivance and feelings of mannerism rather ideology.

　　Recalling this period of history is to look at the relations between source of ideology and culture more cleary.

　　In the past 30 years, introducing comprehensively and imitating the contemporary Western art trends. Inspiring the Chinese people’s thinking of the position of their soul during the process that the Western mannerism being deducted in turns, seeking solution to their own culture and survival problems and development problems have become the impulse that the artists seeking and proving themselves. First of all .it was showed in the selt-awareness and a certain kind of positive spirit, and its vision has transterred from significances to the conceren of up-and-down relations of real life.Distinctively different trom being forced of the last centrury, culture studies and image sociology investigation have been carried out actively.

　　IV. Self-Image is to creat rather than to discover

　　There are only two type of abstract art in my view. One is ‘Mu Xi”. The other is ‘Mu ji”.

　　The so-called ‘Mu xi’ means the continuty of ‘traditional Chinese values aided with Western management and technology”. No matter how many variants of the ‘Mu xi’ it is periodic because its frame of reference is not the self-conscious independent choice. But was forced to do so to get popular.

　　The other one, I called the experimental abstract art form of ‘Mu ji”. It does not distinguish between types or limit to the typology concepts like planarity of form. Concret and abstract. In the view of “Mu ji”, these existed forms(theories, concepts. Methods, language) are no more than the carrier ot “art”,the tool to convey ideas. Whether the carrier and tool working efficiently depends on whether they can convey the art messige accurately. If they are obstructive. They can be analyzed freely. Restructured and even be recreated. Certainly, among the Chinese abstract art group, ‘Mu ji’ is not the masses.

　　Today. There is no kind of mode can be selected as model for others to imitate. Creating self-image.coninously improving one’s goal is the basic characteristic of the present coexisted social diversity,and it is also a path tor Chinese abstract art” to do something. Although it bound to be a path which requires people to overpass loneliness, deserted and oppression. Its glory lies in its paticipating in human civilization construction which could be missed and temporary rather than subjecting to a permanent. Non-hurnan constraints.

July. 20th, 2008

文章节选自《谁是推手·抽象艺术的几道坎》