Excuse me, who knows the information about artworks?

Postmodernism is the hottest topic in China art circles since 1990s. However, no academic term originated from the West has been endowed with so many ambiguities and ambiguities as postmodernism. After reading many related articles in newspapers and magazines and various artistic creations with this signboard, I found that postmodernism was almost regarded as an all-encompassing grocery store.

In many young artists in China, postmodernism is interpreted as cynicism, the loss of social responsibility and the dissolution of lofty spirit. It is often a simple patchwork of Coca-Cola trademarks and portraits of Peking Opera costumes. Although mankind has entered the information age, China's introduction to western postmodern art is still rare, and its true colors are mostly unknown to Chinese people. Undoubtedly, this is the result of understanding and explaining the post-modernism contradiction. The cause of the case. Fortunately, at the turn of the century, we unexpectedly got an opportunity to witness the post-modern art in the West. The "Outside World-American Contemporary Art Exhibition" (formerly known as "Out of the Border: 265438+American Art on the Eve of the 20th Century" /Out Ward Bound:2 1 American Art on the Edge of the Century) hosted by China Exhibition and Exchange Center and co-organized by American Meridian International Center and Mobil Foundation. From June to June, 2000, it was exhibited in Shanghai and Beijing for a long time, which enabled us to correct our mistakes and correctly understand the true face and significance of western postmodern art.

According to the American organizers of the exhibition, 90 works of this exhibition were selected after they visited thousands of galleries and studios all over the United States, most of which were new works in the 1990s. What do we see from this exhibition carefully selected by the organizers and realized after two years of preparation?

Back to bookshelf art

Let's briefly review the history of modern western art, especially the process of shelving art.

People call Cezanne, a post-impressionist painter, "the father of modern art", and the history of modern art began to be written from him. However, this honest and inarticulate Frenchman only launched a revolution on canvas, and the object of his rebellion was the realism of western traditional painting. This revolution was completed through the continuous progress of animalism and cubism until the emergence of abstraction. Cezanne and his followers are still devout painters, and they always study the subject of "how to draw" with great care. Through the gradual decomposition, reconstruction, simplification and abstraction of objective images, they finally created an abstract art independent of objective nature. In the final analysis, Cezanne's art is still traditional, at least in line with tradition. Cezanne school inherited a way of thinking established by westerners in ancient Greece, that is, to observe, understand and explore the world from the standpoint of humanism. Their art represents the new achievements of westerners in exploring the universe and its mysteries by means of modern scientific means in the era of industrial civilization.

In the history of modern art, Cezanne is great, but compared with another Frenchman named Duchamp, he is too conservative and too revolutionary. If Cezanne is the "father of modern art", Duchamp can be called the "stepfather of modern art", and compared with the former, the latter's art is more revolutionary and influential.

19 13, Duchamp created the first impressive work: fixing the front fork of a bicycle with inverted wheels on a stool and naming it the bicycle wheel. 19 17, Duchamp sent a porcelain urinal for men's toilets to an exhibition held by new york Independent Artists Association. As a representative of Dadaism, Duchamp's so-called "ready-made" art marks a fundamental turning point in modern art. Before that, the art created by Cezanne only brought about the renewal of artistic language and expression, while Duchamp fundamentally subverted people's inherent concept of art. Cezanne was a serious painter and Duchamp was a thorough thinker. Duchamp told the world that artists don't have to paint or make sculptures, because the world and life are art itself. From then on, a myth was born in the world: an object of daily life, even waste, can become art, because artists say it is art, it becomes art. Following Duchamp's direction, western artists created pop art, neo-realism, comprehensive art and installation art after World War II. These arts are the display, reorganization or reproduction of "ready-made products". Starting from these small-scale ready-made arts, artists have further introduced earth art and environmental art, and the next artistic exploration is performance art, performance art, accidental art and process art, striving to break the boundaries between art and life, artists and the public, and paying attention to the process, behavior and experience of creation, rather than the result of creation. Although these arts all think that ideas are more important than works, after all, there are still processes and behaviors. The real narrow concept art, that is, the concept art, completely cancels the works. Conceptual art has a view from Dadaism, that is, works of art are basically artists' ideas, not tangible objects-paintings or sculptures. Tangible objects come from an idea, so the idea itself is a work of art, and conceptual art finally denies art itself by denying traditional artistic ideas. At this point, a history of modern western art developed according to its own logic turned to the last page, which was in the 1970s.

Since 1980s, western art has entered the post-modernism period. What are the characteristics of postmodern art? First of all, returning to the original category of "easel art" and painting and sculpture is the only way to revive postmodern art. At the same time, all kinds of ideas that ignore and oppose skills have also been abandoned. The artist finally picked up the brush and palette and returned to the canvas. From traditional art to modern art, all technical problems, whether it is human anatomy or spatial perspective, whether it is concrete or abstract, whether it is color or modeling, have been solved, and there is nothing unfinished for today's artists. The new generation of artists completely dispelled their attempts and ambitions to "innovate" in artistic style. They are not ashamed to copy the achievements of their predecessors and generously use ready-made styles. As a result, in the 1980s, various artistic styles of new wine in old bottles appeared in the western art world, and critics invented various names for this: new expressionism, new abstraction, new pop art, new geometry, new constructivism, new concept art and so on. Just add a word "new", the past will become new, and others' will become their own. Only a suit was changed, and various schools of modern art once again appeared in black and pink. Although Art Nouveau has its own style and different spiritual connotations, artists all take making and presenting a picture or object that can be perceived by the audience as a means to express their feelings. This is the return of modern western art from art to non-art, from tangible works to intangible concepts, from innovation to despair. By this time, art historians finally breathed a sigh of relief, because art history can write a new chapter.

There is a new work "Exposed Los Angeles" by RobertRauschenberg at the American Contemporary Art Exhibition. Faced with this small painting embedded in the frame, some people may not be able to recover for a while. Is this the old Shen Bai who held an exhibition in Beijing on 1985? Is this still the American "urchin" who used waste paper boxes, broken tires and other wastes to occupy the three exhibition halls of China Art Museum, which stunned the audience in China? Yes, that's him! It is with those so-called "combination painting" and "comprehensive art" that Lao Shenbai became famous in the 1950s and became a dazzling pop art star. In the 1970s, he was engaged in dancing and performing arts. Since the 1980s, Lao Shen Bai has changed his tune and devoted himself to printmaking. Although his works are still the reproduction and reorganization of ready-made materials such as photos and printed materials, the return of Lao Shenbai to the screen is a great change. Back to the world of metaphor

At the opening ceremony of "American Contemporary Art Exhibition", Ms. NancyMatthews, curator and director of Meridian International Center in the United States, said in her speech: "You can see the jungles of the western United States and the plains of New England, the urban scenery and rural scenery of the United States, and the American life from the works of this exhibition." These words have no moral or profound meaning in themselves, but they are very strange and new to a researcher of modern western art history. Because figurative painting, especially landscape works, has disappeared in modern art for too long.

As mentioned earlier, Cezanne launched a rebellion against realism. Although Cezanne's painting itself is still concrete, and he has not abandoned objective objects such as figures, still lives and landscapes, in Cezanne's mind, the purpose of painting is not to realistically reproduce objective objects, but to pursue the value of the form itself, that is, to create a pure plastic picture without emotional content and literariness through the combination of form, block and line. His art was summarized as "meaningful form" by clive bell, a British art theorist, and created a modern formalism aesthetics of "art for art's sake". In the post-Cezanne Fauvism and Expressionism painting period, the reappearance factor was further relegated to a secondary position, and they paid attention to expressing the painter's strong inner passion through simplified images and strong colors. Cubists dismembered the image of reality more unscrupulously, and their pictures were the reassembly of fragmented objects "parts". Finally, in the abstract, what is the objective image? Take it all away Kandinsky wrote in 19 10: "I suddenly understood one thing, that is, my paintings don't need any objective things and descriptions of objective objects, but these things are actually harmful to my paintings." Abstractionists unanimously declared: "Art does not depict the visible, but creates the invisible."

Build it. For abstract artists, nature is an unavoidable plague. In their works, any specific connection is not allowed. They want to create a new universe completely independent of the objective world.

Although as early as 19 13, when the supremacist Malevich created black squares on a white background, he declared that "the zero point of painting has been reached", abstract art still achieved brilliant development after World War II. It was not until the French yves klein painted monochromatic paintings in 1950s, especially after American minimalism and color gamut painting appeared in 1970s, that abstract art finally came to a dead end.

Abstract art has produced thousands of works of art with different faces in its half-century existence, but compared with the colorful and ever-changing natural and objective world created by its creators, the image created by abstract art is still extremely poor, monotonous and limited. Contrary to the abstract artist's beautiful wish to get rid of the shackles of the concrete objective world and enter the infinitely rich world of expression, the limited symbol forms that human beings can create make abstract art more repetitive and boring than concrete art, and the philosophical significance and inner passion that abstract artists want to express are vague and difficult to confirm because of the uncertainty of abstract symbols. At first, Cezanne and his followers tried their best to exclude literariness from painting, but later, if abstract art left the interpretation of written language, it would only be a meaningless body.

In the history of modern western art, with the evolution of artistic abstraction, landscape themes have long been excluded from the artist's sight. Fauvism and Expressionism painting are the last stops of natural scenery. In Cubism and Futurism paintings, where concrete factors are in jeopardy, artists only care about man-made scenery-urban architecture occasionally. As for the photographic realism, which appeared in the 1970s and was extremely opposite to the abstract, although this kind of painting, as a copy of photos, has the realistic ability to deceive the eyes, they still only love the jungle of cement and steel-the city scenery. With the disappearance of abstract art, western artists in 1980s turned their attention to colorful human life and vibrant nature.

Since the universe has aroused the artist's attention again, the realistic artistic technique of reappearing objective objects will naturally make a comeback (of course, the realistic language is not rigid and single). This is an era in which the old painting style is thoroughly remoulded and all kinds of painting styles coexist at the same time. At this time, the meticulous and meticulous photographic realism style was used by some people, and the sloppy brushwork and free expressionism style were also used for reference; Planarization has its shaping treatment, so does the design of three-dimensional space. You can see the painting style of a single color block, and you can also see the works of lines. Some people call all kinds of realistic painting styles in the 1980 s in the west "free figurative art"

There are only three abstract paintings in the 90 works of "American Contemporary Art Exhibition", but in the vast majority of concrete paintings, there are various traditional themes such as people, scenery and still life. Artists show their magical powers in their expressions, so the whole exhibition presents a colorful and diverse face. Take the works with the theme of "indoor scenes" as an example, including JimRichard's black-and-white photographic realistic images and JohnAlexander's low-key simple images. The description of nature covers everything. There are both the Fauvism-like scenery of Wolfkahn and Wei.

WayneBryan has a decorative aquarium; There are PatriciaForrester's watercolor painting Lotus Pond and JonMeyer's computer painting Iceberg.

Towards pluralistic coexistence

As mentioned earlier, modern art has two paths, which are opposite to each other, parallel to each other and sometimes even overlap with each other. This is the formal "art for art's sake" represented by Cezanne and the conceptual "anti-art" represented by Duchamp. I call it "rational modernism" and "irrational modernism". These two roads follow the track of one-way straight line respectively, and extend forward in the mode of secondary progression of genre and replacement of old and new. When Cezanne's followers painted minimalist monochrome paintings and Duchamp's followers created illusory conceptual art that canceled "text", the two modernist roads reached the same goal and came to an end together.

Under the guidance of westerners' innate extremist thinking mode, modernist art has finally fallen into a desperate situation after nearly a hundred years of continuous innovation. At this point, people exclaimed: "Art is dead!" However, this is only the death of modernism. As long as human life continues, art will be revived. According to the development law of things, western postmodern art has embarked on a diversified road of opposing extremes, pursuing compromise, not being single, and advocating integration.

Raymond Rao, a contemporary French painter, wrote in 1979: "I am convinced that the era of artistic revolution that began with impressionism is really over now. Constant destruction and doubt, boiling movement, in a word, the daily new art landscape is over. In my opinion, after these continuous turmoil, the era of integration has arrived. I believe that today, creation should be integrated with each other and develop in all possible directions. This is a vast field that is almost undeveloped. Originality lies in both change and integration, and each unique personality can create a unique integration. " Indeed, as Rao Kejean predicted and practiced in those years, since the 1980s, western art has got rid of the linear development model, showing a pluralistic, eclectic and mixed situation. Except that "art must return to canvas" is the consensus of artists, as for how to draw, it is forgivable, not eclectic. They can adopt any technique invented by predecessors and imitate any style in ancient and modern times. In the choice of themes and themes, artists have no fixed scope, and everything in the material and spiritual world can be painted. At present, people can not only summarize a group of artists with a unified style, but also find it difficult to describe an artist's artistic style with an accurate word. Wang Ruiyun wrote: "The compulsive and declarative avant-garde of American art in the 1960s became a leisurely way of doing things in postmodernism. It is no longer a call from thoughts, but a state of culture. Therefore, the word' postmodernism' cannot be used to refer to style. Style is a' state' rather than a' form'. " "State" is more inclusive than "shape" and not as clear as "shape", but it is everywhere and pervasive. This kind of thing is difficult to build and get rid of, so it is stable. The formation of this state can give artists a kind of freedom that is informal and unconstrained. From the post-modern point of view, the evaluation of art is not measured in form. Therefore, when we understand the art of American postmodernism, we don't have to pay too much attention to how contemporary American artists paint. On the contrary, we should pay more attention to how they look at the world, how they treat themselves, and the new relationship between their people and the world reflected from this. "

Modernist art not only constitutes the opposition to tradition in aesthetics, but also embodies the separation of human soul and body, man and nature in inner spirit, and also creates a gap with the public in the acceptance of art. As someone pointed out, modern art divides the public into two parts: those who know and those who don't, and those who know are always in the minority.

Even so, Cezanne's "art for art's sake" and Duchamp's "anti-art" still make the public feel that there are not enough. Although Duchamp and his disciples flaunted "the popularization of art" and advocated that "everyone is an artist", the result was counterproductive. Their practice of treating garbage as works of art and their "get carried away" conceptual art are further away from the public.

Whether it is formal language, expressive theme or aesthetic function, modern art does subtraction. With the formalization and conceptualization of artistic style, modern art gradually got rid of religion and politics, literature and reality, and abandoned the visible world. When art becomes an intangible and purely metaphysical concept, artists feel "unbearable lightness". Besides being the embodiment of freedom, artists eventually become marginal people in social life. In the post-modernism period, art began to "add" again. The real significance of this artistic style and concept change lies in the recovery of artists' sense of social responsibility. Today, artists not only use humanized artistic language to express their closeness to nature and concern for social life, but also try their best to eliminate the distance between art and the public. They wholeheartedly want to cooperate with the society and do everything possible to cater to the aesthetic taste of the public.

In a sense, the history of modern art is a history of heroism. As Harold Rosenberg Rosenberg, an American art critic, wrote, "Modern art is the style of the past, which always matches masterpieces, representatives and legends at one stage". The history of modern art is not so much a history of the evolution of artistic style as a soap opera performed by a series of artists who have appeared one after another, that is, "I will appear after you sing". At that time, an artist could lead an artistic trend and drive a social atmosphere. People worship heroes and make heroes. Modern art history is more vivid and remarkable through the legendary rendering of these heroes' personal lives.

In the post-modernism period, there is no supreme authority because there is no unified standard and no common style. Perhaps in the eyes of some people, "ownerless" means mediocrity and depravity; For those who are used to following blindly, "no leader" may not know how to go. However, for western culture, postmodernism means more thorough democracy, equality and freedom. Although postmodern art appears as a rebel of modernism, it is the product of western modern art and still retains some modernist genes in it. Not to mention that post-modern art continues to use various forms and languages of modern art, even the post-modern attitude of opposing authority, pursuing equality, advocating freedom, being close to the public and caring for society can find theoretical basis from Dadaism, but at the beginning, artists stood at the commanding heights and told the public what freedom and equality are with various tangible or intangible arts, but now they have taken off the cloak of heroes, fully integrated into the public, and expressed their thoughts and feelings with art acceptable to the public, thus proclaiming one. This is the transformation and sublimation of the liberal democratic thought from "form" to "state" mentioned above. Undoubtedly, if there is no rough extremes of modern art, there will be no moderate compromise of postmodern art, and there will be no colorful and pluralistic postmodern art without ever-changing modern art. As daniel bell pointed out, "the development route followed by postmodernism is the ultimate goal of modernist logic development".

"The Outside World: American Contemporary Art Exhibition" is not the whole of western and even American contemporary art, but it is a microcosm of western post-modern art, which brings us new information of western art circles. Compared with those post-modernist theories that are shrouded in mist and scenery, the image of this exhibition tells us intuitively what western post-modernist art is.