Art and Consciousness in China -- Cultural Evolution

Conditions and Strategies: Contemporary Art Education and Communication Symposium; China Academy of Art – Hangzhou China, April 2008

I recently participated in a fascinating conference on the nature of art schools and education in Europe and Asia sponsored by the most prestigious Art College in China that included art school leaders from elite art schools all over Europe and Asia as well as four from the US. Conspicuous by their absence were any art schools from the third world – none from South America, Africa or the Middle East. Oddly absent too, were representatives from prestigious Australian and New Zealand Art colleges. This visit to China was all about cultural change and institutional prestige.

We had all been invited to a attend this conference celebrating the 80th Anniversary of the China Academy of Art, with 7,000 students China’s second largest, and by far its most prestigious, art college. Over a hundred distinguished art educators from around the world, and I, were housed and fed in luxury for three days in China’s most beautiful city – Hangzhou. We stayed in an elegant hotel, once the domain of high party officials. Facing Hangzhou’s renowned West Lake our hotel was surrounded with fruit trees in full blossom and the unmistakable scent of Chinese Springtime. In China, last week, everything was blossoming.

The stated intention of the conference was to celebrate the anniversary of the China Academy through a meaningful dialogue of contemporary ideas about art colleges and the nature of inter-cultural communication. The subtler agenda was recognition of CAA as a world-class arts institution by the schools whose opinions and relationships China values most – the elite art schools of the world. CAA had just completed a gigantic new campus which featured a 14 story glass tower, as well as about a dozen other buildings, with commanding views of the Hangzhou countryside, where our conference mostly took place. We were there to be impressed by the sheer spectacle of Chinese wealth and ambition. It had been 16 years since I first visited this art school and I was impressed by one thing at least. China has really changed!

We saw clear signs that Chinese art students were actually being encouraged to think independently, to make politically sensitive art works and to challenge repression. First year students were being encouraged to express individual ideas and to experiment with surrealist explorations of the unconscious through drawing and painting exercises. In the past they were only encouraged to develop hand skills and to recite the tired old 19th century artistic styles that were associated with Mao and Stalin and to disdain the traditional artistic practices of Chinese Art. Today, even industrial design students are being taught the traditional Chinese practices of ink and brush -- calligraphy and landscape painting. China is clearly exploring bold new ideas in art education that are somehow deeply related to the astonishing signs of economic wealth that are everywhere today in China. Where only a few years ago there were modest family-run sidewalk grocery stores, there are now posh new Maserati dealerships -- right next door to the art school. Where once students faced bleak careers as official propaganda artists and designers of dull utilitarian appliances, there is now anticipation of wealth and excitement. Students today talk of multi-media installations and video art. They speak openly of political change in China. Young Chinese art students are frank in expressing their belief that this is their century.

I felt deeply honored to have been among those invited, but a bit out of place among such august institutions as the University of the Arts in Berlin and Rhode Island School of Design, and the Tokyo University of the Arts, to name a few. In my introductory address to those assembled, I acknowledged that my program – Arts and Consciousness at JFK University, with only about 70 students, was by far the smallest school present. ‘We’re small’, I told the group ‘but we have big ideas, and big ideas are what changes things – not big buildings’. I told them I thought we were all there to honor and recognize the China Academy’s achievements and to change the world. I received polite applause and a few gratuitous handshakes afterwards. I had seen profound changes in China upon my arrival in China and was eager to be a part of them.

The next two days consisted of tours of the impressive new campus – the newest and largest of three CAA campuses is over 80 acres and includes massive structures for virtually every form of art and design – architecture, Chinese traditional art and most interesting to me, Experimental Art – a daring new BFA and MFA program that invites political and social commentary as well as the use of new genres such as installation, performance art and social and personal documentary and multi-media. They were clearly proud of their new showpiece buildings and technical facilities which included state of the art digital labs and film and video production studios. One student's artwork was openly critical of Chinese government policy towards Tibet. I commented about the blatant dissidence of the student's artwork to an older faculty member. Wouldn't this student have been in serious trouble for this kind of work a few years ago?, I asked. China has changed, she told me solemnly, suggesting that she was not entirely pleased with the new openness, and that she basically considered the student a criminal for criticizing the government -- but rather expressing this belief, she simply stared at the work and moved on.

The President of the China Academy is a tall attractive man in his early 50’s, usually dressed in a hip designer leather jacket and blue jeans. Xiu Jiang did graduate work in Germany in the 80’s. He was formerly the chair of the China Academy’s oil painting department and is purportedly the favorite nephew of China’s former President Jiang Zemin. I have known Xiu Jiang for more than a decade and it is our personal relationship, and mutual friends, that got me invited to participate in this gathering of elites rather than an acknowledgement of JFKU’s preeminence in the art world. President Xiu is clearly set on the path of opening China to the rest of the world – no longer a matter of East and West. China is participating fully in – maybe even engineering – a new kind of cultural scene that is non-local and non-partisan. Xiu Jiang’s political connections to the Chinese government and his radical ideas about artistic freedom signify an important addition to the world as a whole. China has changed – is changing – and doing it in a way that has already subtly eroded the foundations of Western civilization – of Asian civilization – of Communism and Capitalism – of everything. Xiu Jiang aims to create a new perspective on world civilization – not dominated by any ideology (China doesn’t really have an ideology anymore anyway) or nation. China seems to be on the verge of re-discovering its own identity at the very moment that the entire idea of national or even ethnic identity is about to vaporize into irrelevance.

In his opening address President Xiu Jiang, challenged those present to open a new dialogue and exchange about art, education and ideas – perilous ground even today for a Chinese artist/educator. Five years earlier at his opening address on the re-building of the school’s main campus and to a largely Chinese audience, Xiu told everyone with great passion that everything would be different from now on – that the old ways of doing things in China were over. He said there would be new art and new educational policies that would encourage artistic expression and innovation even if the government didn’t agree with it. The looks on the faces of the uniformed Chinese officials present were astonished – dumbfounded by the boldness of Xiu Jiang’s words and fearful of this bold new direction. It was clear that they all saw him as untouchable politically and his utterances were certainly endorsed by the highest levels of the Chinese government. They were bewildered. In China one realizes that what is understood and implied is almost always more important than what is said outright – and what Xiu Jiang said outright was very important.

In the April 2008 conference, Xiu Jiang still spoke with passion and power – still spoke apparently with the imprimatur of the Chinese party leaders. His voice was even more passionate now, but instead of challenging the old ways, he spoke of hope and the future of friendship and ‘guanxi’ – that most important of Chinese words meaning ‘relationship’. He powerfully acknowledged the rapidly expanding partnerships between Chinese art colleges and industry. Xiu Jiang invited all the foreigners and Chinese educators alike, to create something new – to change the world as I myself had modestly and ineffectively exhorted them to do the night before.

In the ensuing two days a seemingly endless stream of 15-20 minute presentations by art school presidents from around the world occurred. Most were simply attempts at institutional promotion listing the great accomplishments of their particular art schools or their perspectives on the nature of art education as national identity and craft. Most of the speakers had nothing new to say and seemed oblivious to the profound changes that were occurring all around them. The best of the presentations, to my mind, dealt with the new issues at hand. What does it mean to make art about a world in which East and West merge into each other? What is the relationship between art, power and cultural identity. What role does the Internet play in re-shaping cultural identity and the foundations of art education? Some art school leaders talked about programs in their schools that addressed the critical issues of a post-post modern and culturally pluralistic world. It was clear that even among the elites, innovation was still the hallmark of the best schools.

The President of San Francisco Art Institute, my fellow traveler Chris Bratten, talked about the ‘Global Studio’ and the imperative for art to be seen as non-local, and interested in issues of justice and social evolution. He said that the ‘best’ art schools realize that the process of art education is ‘simultaneously self-reflexive and dialogical’. He understood an important fact the others seemed to miss – that possibility of cultural exchange was significant as a process rather than as the exchange of knowledge and techniques. He spoke about issues of identity and social relevance that were the heart of what we were there to witness, but which most of us were too self-interested to really appreciate at the time.

Dean Giaco Schiesser of the Zurich University of the Arts acknowledged that the real conversation about what was happening in art and education was only just beginning - that we hadn’t really even identified the true issues at hand. He quoted at length a hugely important, though largely unknown, speech by Jacques Derrida regarding the ‘University without Condition’ (Die unbedinkte Universität). By interpreting Derrida’s ideas, he named the real issues facing us; re-examination of the function of art schools in a post-industrial society (he forgot the China is still an industrial society) and the inevitability of art and culture in issues of social, economic and political change. Schiesser was eloquent in describing the realities of post-modern Europe and America, but misunderstood that the biggest difference between China and ‘the West’ is probably China’s new industrialization . His most significant insight in interpreting Derrida was in stating Derrida’s definition of ‘professor’ as ‘one who views himself as a responsible creator of works rather than someone who merely applies and disseminates knowledge.’ Professor Schiesser understood the importance of Derrida’s remarks. Art professors must be ‘creators of works’ – responsible for the creation of new synergies and strategies for change. Schiesser says Derrida points the way toward the dimension of ‘not-knowing’ and ‘the dimension beyond linguistic knowledge…toward ‘the impossible’ which manifests itself in the events of giving, confession, invention, hospitality or (though Derrida never says so explicitly), the arts’.

Witnessing the profound changes in Chinese art education is only fully possible when one enters that state of ‘not knowing’. Comprehending cultural transformation from the inside requires an acknowledgment that art itself is a process of change and surprise. In hearing the pronouncements by the cultural gatekeepers of international arts education, I was acutely aware that this is a perfect moment of change. We’re right in the middle of it – right this second. In that conference room atop that spectacular glass art-school tower, twelve stories above the Chinese countryside, I witnessed dinosaurs and newly evolving birds, right in the same room. Some of us were dying – speaking from the extinct paradigms of privilege and self-interest; of material and political power wielded by art ‘academies’ of the past. Some of us were evolving – trying to use our new feathers, words, images and brave new ideas, to fly. The symbolism of meeting in so high a place seemed to accentuate China's awareness of its own evolution. It seemed clear that the leaders of the conference were inviting us to see the world differently -- to discover new heights. I left the conference with a great sense of not-knowing. Maybe that's the only way to really experience evolution.