Extract from: Beyond the Stage of Time, Volume I Realised Realms. The Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat

44 45 G I’m sure it’s in the post. What’s the main argument of this article? M Th at Chineseness in art has e ff ectively nothing to do with ethnicity. If it did, we would also have to believe that Yo-Yo Ma shouldn’t play Bach, which would obvious- ly be a ludicrous position to take. I proposed that this question was best addressed through a series of questions covering the entire range of the artistic process, and cer- tainly not just on the narrow issue of ethnicity. I suggested that we look at everything from the materials and methods used to the cultural leaning of the artist, the depth of Chinese cultural involvement and understanding of a non-ethnic Chinese artist, the level of commitment to the artistic tradition and Chinese aesthetic sensibility as well as ethnicity. If you tick all these separate boxes, you end up with a scale rather than a binary yes/no answer. If the balance is heavily weighted towards Chineseness, then we are dealing with someone who is working within the mainstream of the aesthetic culture; so the art should be allowed as Chinese, even if the artist climbs into a kilt and dances a highland fl ing at Christmas. I have yet to do that, despite being half Scots, but based on these criteria I still regard myself as a Chinese artist. G In this context, then, how should we de fi ne the post-Deng liberation art? Do you still categorise it as Chinese art, or do you lean towards regarding it more as western art done by ethnically Chinese artists? M I think that on balance, the latter would be a less confusing way to describe much of it in the short term. But there’s clearly a good deal of Chinese sensibility involved in most of it, and an inbuilt understanding of their own culture, of course, so I wouldn’t claim 100% western-ness. Nor do I think that what is true now of western arts and media will always be true, incidentally. As the world becomes increasingly connected, we are already deal- ing with a much more globalised culture. Th at will only increase with the exponential evolution of technology and communications. At some point in the future, we’ll be able to look back and deal historically with the various levels of in fl uence from indi- vidual cultures in this new global aesthetic. But right now, it’s still useful to allow that ethnicity no longer dictates which culture you express yourself within, nor your level of contribution to it. G So if we allow that some Chinese artists are involved to a greater or lesser extent in western art, and vice versa , is there still any such thing as ongoing tradition in these separate cultures? M Again, it is di ffi cult to make a clear-cut distinction between various groups of artists as to exactly who is doing what. But it’s still true that the tradition of Chinese art is fairly straightforward in terms of media, subject matter, style, cultural expression and sensitivity, even if some or all of these have become a bit blurred at the edges in the past century or so. Th roughout the confusion of the past century there remained a core group of artists who were not unduly swayed by the modernist surge in the West, a group which had no desire to emulate it or become involved in an ersatz revolution. Fang Zhaoling explained this to me many years ago in her studio in London. She was very much aware of what was going on in the rest of the world and was very respectful of twentieth-century western artists. But she told me that while she admired their creativity, she saw no particular merit in following them or switching medium. Her view would pretty much sum up the attitude of the many artists who found the long-standing tradition self-su ffi cient, and who recognised that renewed individual artistic creativity was all that was needed to be contributed from time to time. Th is has been the case throughout the ages, and continued from the late Qing into the mid-twentieth century—good examples are artists such as Wu Changshuo ( 1844 – 1927 ), Qi Baishi ( 1864 – 1957 ), and Fu Baoshi ( 1904 – 1965 ). Th is tradition contin- ued apace on the mainland a ft er the Communist victory in China in 1949 , albeit with the constraints already mentioned. But it also continued with expatriate artists working outside mainland China in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, America and elsewhere. It was they who proved to be among the most intriguing and innovative with their broader perceptual and expres- sive horizons. Th ose were the artists to whom I was most strongly drawn as I became more and more involved in this world. Most of those who intrigued me were clearly well within the mainstream tradition, even if they were enriching it to some extent with outside in fl uences, as were Lui Shoukwan and several of his students, and Liu Kuo-sung and his Fi ft h Moon Group in Taiwan, for instance. A few others seemed to me to have mainly le ft the mainstream tradition to bring some Chinese sensibility to western painting. I would put Zao Wou-ki (Zhao Wuji, 1921 – 2013 ) in that category, since he lived and worked in Paris for much of his life. He used western media most of the time, and was involved more in European abstraction than in the Chinese tra- dition of painting. It was not until the collectors who saw western-style art and media as being both modern and revolutionary reclaimed him that he was seen as a major Chinese artist. I would even venture to suggest the possibility that had he not been Chinese, he would have ended up as a footnote to western art history—one of many artists involved in abstraction who failed to make it to the top. It was Chinese collec- tors, and the Chinese market for art seen as both modern and Chinese, that elevated him to a commanding position as a Chinese artist, and which saw him returning to Chinese media and more obvious Chinese imagery and sensibility late in his career. Th ese deliberate attempts to reclaim Chineseness in some sense are, to me, generally his weakest works. G What role does the audience play here? You’ve asserted that the audience is a vital partner in the artistic process—so doesn’t it have an equally vital role to play in deter- mining who is and isn’t Chinese? Doesn’t market consensus decide who’s going to be acclaimed, and who’s going to be a historical footnote? M Of course. But controversy is unavoidable if we’re proposing a theory that says, in essence, that we have all managed to misunderstand a particular fi eld for more than a century, and that we have to radically change our perspective. So yes, consensus plays an important role here. And I concede that my ideas are not exactly turning the art world on its ear so far—I have been rambling on about them for several years now, and I can’t exactly claim that I’ve found consensus yet.