The Spirit of Individualism: Avant-Garde Art in Shanghai 1979-1989

Abstract

This thesis is a study of avant-garde art in Shanghai from 1979 to 1989 and the role that it played in contemporary art in mainland China in the 1980s. The artists and art administrators discussed in this thesis, I argue, were at the forefront of the development of contemporary art in China through artistic experimentations and institutional engagement in avant-garde art activities. Contemporary Chinese art emerged in the international arena in the early 1990s and began to attract the attention of art professionals and collectors. It went on to become a strong force globally in the first decade of the new millennium. Its emergence in this timeframe mirrors another Chinese phenomenon -- that of the revitalisation of Shanghai to lead China's economic development trajectory onto the world stage. These Chinese phenomena signify the 1980s, the decade following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, through unprecedented political and economic reforms with their transforming impact on art and culture, as being critical to the study of contemporary art in China. Shanghai, with its semi-colonial, political, economic and cultural history, including the strong legacy of the early twentieth-century modernist art movement, has played a vital role in China's modernisation and presents itself as a unique case in the evolution of contemporary art in China.

Art historians and critics, both in China and internationally in recent years, have been increasingly interested in exploring contemporary Chinese art in the 1980s. From my observations and my research findings, avant-garde art in Shanghai in the 1980s has nevertheless been neglected in the discourse and still lacks in-depth scholarly study. This thesis is intended to fill this lacuna in the narratives of China's contemporary art history. It is based on empirical evidence from my personal experiences as a practising artist in Shanghai during this period, my long-term friendship with key artists and art administrators and writers, and extensive new research I have undertaken. In this thesis, Shanghai avant-garde art in the 1980s is examined through case studies of the Shanghai Art Museum and six artists: Zhang Jianjun, Li Shan, Yu Youhan, Chen Zhen, Cai Guoqiang and Gu Wenda. I argue that the essence of avant-garde art in Shanghai in the 1980s was the quality of individualism displayed by artists who resisted the collectivist ethos in China in this period. These artists also retained strong historical connections to the early twentieth-century modernist art movement in Shanghai. I demonstrate in the thesis that these elements have been overlooked in the national and international discourse on contemporary Chinese art and that this has resulted in inadequate representations of the Shanghai avant-garde art in the decade of the 1980s in the art historiography of contemporary China.