Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980-1990
Project Overview
Thirty years ago, China embarked on a reform program that transformed not only the economy but also the arts. Since then the growth and production of contemporary art have been dramatic, as has the production of documentary materials bearing evidence to the critical debates that surrounded its development. However to this day many of the most important art publications and critical writing, especially from the late 1970s and 1980s, have been difficult to locate, due primarily to the lack of a systematic collecting and archiving infrastructure.
In 2006, Asia Art Archive began a focused archiving project called 'Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980-1990'. This project aimed at developing a comprehensive collection of primary research materials including books, periodicals, newspapers, exhibition brochures, invitations, video recordings, correspondence, and other relevant documents.
As part of this project, AAA digitised more than 80,000 items of material from personal archives to include artists Mao Xuhui, Wu Shanzhuan, Zhang Xiaogang, and Zhang Peili; curators and critics Fei Dawei, Lu Peng, and Zheng Shengtian; as well as the archives of Tokyo Art Gallery. As part of the research process over 75 in-depth interviews with key artists, curators, and critics were conducted. From a portion of these interviews, AAA created a documentary film about experimental art in South China (Guangzhou) in the 1980s entitled From Jean-Paul Sartre to Teresa Teng: Contemporary Cantonese Art in the 1980s.
AAA’s 1980s archiving project culminated with the launch of a comprehensive website portal called www.china1980s.org in September 2010. The website includes introductory texts to the project by Jane DeBevoise and Zheng Shengtian; and seventy-eight interviews clips.
To celebrate this launch, AAA collaborated with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in organising a series of events in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and New York. These events included panel discussions with key artists and critics, as well as a presentation of MoMA’s publication titled Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, edited by Professor Wu Hung.
With the launch of the Collection Online, AAA is able to offer online access to the digital material in its collection, and currently makes available online the archives of Zhang Xiaogang, Mao Xuhui, and Zhang Peili. Material from the project will continually be uploaded and the interviews, currently viewable from the project website, will slowly be integrated into the Collection Online platform.
Mao Xuhui Archive
An inspirational force behind the avant-garde community in southwest China in the 1980s, Kunming-based painter Mao Xuhui has built a comprehensive personal archive documenting his artistic career and activities that spans over three decades.
From 1978 to 1982, Mao Xuhui studied in the Oil Painting Department at the Yunnan Academy of Fine Arts. After he graduated, he became the art director of the Kunming film company. In 1985, Mao, along with Zhang Xiaogang, Hou Wenyi, Zhang Long, and Pan Dehai, organised the exhibition ‘New Concrete Image’, which was presented in Shanghai, Nanjing, Kunming, and Chongqing from 1985 to 1987. In 1986, Mao formed the Southwestern Art Research Group with several artists from the Southwest region.
As the organiser of an artist group and exhibitions, Mao has collected and preserved a prodigious amount of primary documentation. These documents record in great detail not only Mao’s personal artistic development, but also that of artists from Southwest China. Since 2004, AAA has been working with Mao to scan and catalogue his collection of documents. A selection of these documents, dating from 1985 to 1987 and reflecting Mao’s own creative endeavour and the ‘New Concrete Image’ exhibitions and events, are presented here.
For the full collection description, please click
here.
Zhang Peili Archive
Zhang Peili is a pioneer of video and new media art in China. His work 30x30 from 1988 is generally considered to be the first video work in the history of contemporary Chinese art, and his experiments with text-based conceptual art were some of the most radical made in China during the 1980s.
From 1980 to 1984, Zhang Peili studied in the Oil Painting Department at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Fine Arts). In 1986, Zhang, together with Geng Jianyi, Wang Qiang, Song Ling, Bao Jianfei, Cao Xuelei and others, formed the Pond Society in Hangzhou. The group attempted to break away from conventional notions of art and made collaborative works that explored temporary installations in public space and the use of the body. Zhang’s individual work during this time engaged process, text and audience experience. In the 1990s, Zhang Peili continued to experiment with different possibilities of new media art. He was the founder of the New Media Department in the China Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1990s.
In 2008, OCAT Shenzhen held a solo exhibition for Zhang, in conjunction with the publication of a comprehensive monograph entitled
Artistic Working Manual of Zhang Peili. Through this process, a digital archive of Zhang Peili was created and edited, which includes images of all his major works and projects, photos, manuscripts such as notes on certain works, and typed articles and interviews. Zhang Peili and OCAT have generously donated this archive to AAA. In addition, AAA is building a comprehensive collection of articles published by and about Zhang.
For the full collection description, please click
here.
Zhang Xiaogang Archive
In 2007, the Archive worked with Chinese artist Zhang Xiaogang, best known for his ‘Bloodline: Big Family’ series of paintings, to digitise his personal archive. As part of the in-depth research project ‘Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980-1990’, AAA collaborated with Zhang’s studio in Beijing to digitise and catalogue his personal archive which dates from the 1970s to today.
In 1978, Zhang Xiaogang enrolled as one of the earliest students at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute after the Cultural Revolution. While his classmates, such as Luo Zhongli and He Duoling, became famous nation-wide for their 'Scar' and 'Rustic Realism' paintings, Zhang Xiaogang’s early paintings were described as ‘strange’, reflecting his interests in creating distorted figures and dreamy landscapes. From 1985-1986, he, together with other young painter friends, especially Mao Xuhui, organised a series of exhibitions and forums in Shanghai, Nanjing, Kunming, and Chongqing, under the title ‘New Concrete Image.’ These young artists from the Southwestern part of China, mainly Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, formed one of the major groups in the ’85 New Wave. Critic and historian Gao Minglu describes their painting style as ‘the stream of life’, because of the expressionistic depiction of nature, dreams, and primal emotions in their works.
In an
interview with AAA, Zhang mentioned that a 1992 trip to Europe, which included a visit to the 9th Documenta, was crucial in making him rethink his artistic path. In 1993, Zhang Xiaogang started to paint portraits of people in the style of studio photographs from the 1960s and 1970s. This soon became his most well-known body of work, the ‘Bloodline: Big Family’ series. The mixture of dream and reality, personal memory and national history, imbue Zhang’s paintings with a poetic yet ambiguous feeling, which still today remains one of the most recognised pictorial styles in contemporary Chinese art.
For the full collection description, please click
here.
Acknowledgments
'Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980-1990' is made possible by the generous support of The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation, The W.L.S. Spencer Foundation, Ilyas and Mara Khan, and The Foundation of the Arts Initiatives.
Project Team
Project Direction: Jane DeBevoise, Claire Hsu, Phoebe Wong
Project Coordinator: Anthony Yung
Project Assistants: Natalie Cheung, Wong Wai Yin, Silas Fong, Ali Van, Kathy Mak, Michelle Wong, Wing Chan
Researchers for China: Carol Lu, Megan Connolly, Fiona He
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