Prof. Dr. Ruddy Doom

University of Gent, Belgium

VISION(s)

The English word ‘ vision ‘ stands for a multi-layered concept. It refers to something near to a dream (a vision of a happy mankind), to a metaphysical or even religious experience (a vision of heaven), to something volatile (to catch a vision of beauty) or to something concrete, but beyond daily observation (a world-vision). Post-modernism was fiercely against all great stories, and was deconstructing every so-called fairy tale, leaving us with piles of unconnected or un-connectable fragments. If words have barely something to do with reality, if everything is but a smut in the eye of the beholder, if all feelings are but illusions: who cares about visions? It comes down to the basic assumption that a man without a vision is like a fish without a bicycle. We all know that we are easily blinded by our own misconceptions and all too willing to accept the convenient for the truth. And no, there is no need to take cover behind dogmas and to panic when confronted with destabilizing questions. On the other hand: if meaningfulness is not a given thing, but something one has to fight for, it does not imply that meaninglessness is the alternative. ‘Only surrender, and everything else followed ‘: poor Winston already knew it. Bowing before somebody else’s TINA (there is no alternative) and sticking to the official Newspeak may look like a staircase to peace of mind. It is not. It will prevent you from stumbling and most surely from falling. But, you will never fly as well. No one is asking us to take a dramatic great leap forward, but avoiding each and every step into the dark is not a very productive attitude in what can be labeled as a ‘Risk-society’. Imre Kértesz once said: ‘Courageous dreams can lead to great cultures ‘. Fence-sitting cynicism, while practicing the grocery’s calculus leads nowhere, except self-congratulatory boredom.

Visions are challenging reality, or at least the reality conceived by our common sense. You can compare it to the dressing of a rough-hewn block of stone. Some people will not even start the work, out of laziness or because they are overwhelmed by the fear of a failure. People with a vision already see the final product. But, at the same time they are aware of the danger of a fatal hack or the possibility that, in the end the product is not according to the initial concept. As the founding father of the Dutch monarchy said: ‘Point n’est besoin d’espérer pour entreprendre, ni de réussir pour perséverer’ “. Alas, it is not always easy to draw a sharp line between reckless stubbornness and legitimate drives. It is not because the ‘ hero ‘ is dead that his case is worth dying for, it’s not because the ‘ artist ‘ starved in misery that his work is a milestone. Romantic bourgeois’ feelings mostly provide poor guidelines and trying to realize one’s visions against all odds may produce great novels, but seldom sustainable results. Both stupid and overconfident generals lead to disasters, as Tu Mu mentioned more than one thousand years ago. Entitling an exhibition ‘vision’ is swimming in very deep water. It is also warning for the visitors that, as making revolution is not a tea-party, exploring this exposition is more than sipping a cocktail while exchanging social talks. It is both a challenge and a provocation: it is a vision on what art is about.    

Can one mention something like a mission-statement or should one say a vision-statement on behalf of the Chinese artists? For many reasons this is not only a tricky but most probably an erroneous presentation of a non-question. Manifestos and artists seldom match and those artists following consequently the rules of any engagement are rare. The proof of the art is in the art, not in declarations on art. During the Mao-era, and especially during the period ironically called ‘ cultural’ revolution, political explanations grew fat, while arts became meager, shrinking to the dimension of political wallpaper. One Jiang Qing in a lifetime will do; Chinese painters have been enough ‘between the thunder and the rain ‘. So let the work of art speak for itself and carry out its own message. There is no such thing as ‘ Chinese visual artists’. Of course, you have the official academies which are not without merits, but the real pulsing lively scenery is flourishing outside these institutes.  The one-dimensional production process has been replaced by ever-changing networks of artists. Although group exhibitions and temporal fora are very popular, the emphasis lays on the individual artist. Forget about the whole biased idea of the Chinese society resembling an ant’s nest inhabited by identical dummies: Chinese have always been individualists in disguise. There is no common style, technique, subject matter and so on, but personal shifting preferences, different regional accents, evolving tastes … to demonstrate the richness of the Chinese art-setting. And finally: how Chinese are Chinese artists? There is a Chinese saying: ‘if you look into the mirror, what do you see? ’.  Or you look at their work:  who do you see? Globalization does not destroy the local features. What is called ‘glocalization ‘ reflects what is only superficially a contradiction: a complex intertwining of the specific and the global. Let me give you but two examples: look at Ai Weiwei’s ‘ Dao Guang Blue and White Porcelain and Hammer ‘. A Belgian artist presenting these artifacts could only perform a belated homage to the ‘ objets trouvés’ – impetus . Ai Weiwei however is formulating a series of questions: how about my relationship with the tradition of Jingdezhen , how about the actual assembling lines producing copies of the Qianlong blue-and-white-porcelain, what if I destroy an original vase ( what he did in one of his performances) … Or take Wang Xingwei’s ‘ The Testimony of the Hare’, painted in the style of Caravaggio, with direct references to the famous raising by Beuys of a hare into a piece of art . Even Marcel Duchamp is peeping around the corner. But the way the artist is interrogating the poor animal reminds us of the dark period when ‘spontaneous confessions‘ were the order of the day.

Giving too much explanation, looking for another double meaning, citing a widely unknown Chan-verse can , in the end , destroy the pleasure of looking at the work itself. Art is the drug, and if you are in the need to score, just open your mind.  ‘L’Orient n’existe pas‘ wrote Malreaux , so don’t look too hard for it when you are confronted with modern Chinese art . Sometimes, un-learning opens the real door to perception.