Zhai Zhenming in Conversation with Paul Gladston
Zhai Zhenming is Professor of Philosophy at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China. Among other things, Zhai has lectured and published writing on the subject of contemporary Chinese art. The following conversation focuses on the use of the term ‘avant-garde’ as a way of describing contemporary Chinese artistic practice of the late 1970s and 1980s, and, in particular, differences in the term’s significance within Chinese and Western cultural contexts. Key issues discussed here include the Chinese avant-garde’s reconstruction of a relatively autonomous artistic sphere as a way of resisting established governmental authority; a strategy somewhat at odds with the persistently negative/deconstructivist tendencies of the Western historical and neo avant-gardes.
Paul Gladston: Western historical avant-garde art is often understood as an attempt to negate, transgress or deconstruct established political, social and artistic conventions. You have argued that Chinese avant-garde art of the 1980s does not work in quite the same way. What grounds do you have for putting forward this line of argument?
Zhai Zhenming: Yes, I have made that kind of argument before. But the differences I referred to would manifest themselves only if we make the observation at a certain pragmatic level in a particular context. If we just focus on the function of ‘negating’ or ‘transcending’ alone—which I think is essential to the notion of avant-garde art—and ignore the particularity of the targeted convention for a moment, then we can see a commonality between the Western original and its Chinese counterpart. Only after recognising such a commonality in the first place can we then talk about the differences in a shared framework. In the West, the political, social, and artistic conventions, which the avant-gardes... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline