Wang Mai's Keywords

By Liu Libin

Every age will make 'key terms' of certain words, and these key terms in turn often come to be
emblematic of their times. As we look back on those times, when we set our memories in order, these
will be the terms that we must address first. The key terms for a given era are rarely numerous, and
in so far as they are specific to each individual, there will be significant differences in the set of terms
applicable. Clearing out our personal key terms is to put in order the structure of our self-knowledge,
our points of interest and our lived experience. Of course, even the most personal of key terms will
be connected to its times in a myriad of ways. For an artist, who counts as a member of the intellectual
class, the concern he shows for certain key terms is often a manifestation of his ability to think in
depth about the times he is living in – these 'times' include both the era when those certain key terms
were current and the present moment.

Science
As ordinarily understood, 'science' is linked to such terms as 'rationality', 'civilisation' and 'progress'.
As Wang Mai understands the term however, 'science' is associated with doing away with political
ideology and strengthening an ideology of science and technology.

The 'New Culture Movement' of the early twentieth century advocated adherence to both Mr De
and Mr Sai, with the latter being a cognomen (via a little phonetic cross-lingual wordplay, as with Mr
De, who was 'Democracy') for 'Science'. 'Science' was one of the mightiest weapons in the armoury
of the dream of a great and powerful nation that has haunted China since the late nineteenth century
and through the early twentieth. From Wei Yuan's mid-Qing notions of 'studying barbarian advanced
techniques so as to resist the barbarians', to the Self-Strengthening Movement of the mid-1800s, to
the 'New Culture Movement' of the early twentieth century, then on again to the post-1949 mass
participation in the forging of steel during the Great Leap Forward, campaigns to 'surpass Europe
and America' and still later 'the modernisation of science and technology' as one of the post-Cultural-
Revolution 'Four Modernisations', 'science' meant more than just scientific ideas, becoming interwoven
with notions of competition between nation states, the superiority or inferiority of nationalities and
the relative merits of different ideologies.

Born in the 1970s, Wang Mai's childhood coincided with the early years of the 'post-Cultural
Revolution' period. During the historical period of social transition, the scientific symbols that
had come to represent 'science' had an important influence on Wang – images of 'planetary orbits',
'planet Earth', 'aeroplanes' and 'submarines' became major components of his visual memories. This
was also a time when imagery from legend and fable, such as visual representations of 'the goddess
Chang'e flying to the moon', 'Journey to the West' or 'immortals and demons', also insinuated itself
into his childhood recollections. 'Reality' and 'hyper-reality' became interwoven for Wang in his
childhood years.

In the early years of the present century, Wang Mai relocated to Beijing's 798 Art District. The site had
been home to one of the People's Republic's first electronic instrumentation manufacturing plants,
and had played a significant role in supporting China's space programme. By the time Wang Mai moved
in, however, the factory had to all intents and purposes become abandoned. At almost the same time
as Wang moved to 798, China succeeded in sending a spacecraft to the moon, and in Yang Liwei put
its first man in space. The yawning disparity between these various realities provoked Wang's creative
impulses.

When Wang combines symbols from ancient fable and modern science and sets them out in painted
works, the sensation evoked is oddly one of fear; the works send a shiver down the spine. Beautiful
fantasies of former days when depicted with assistance from scientific and technical tropes, lose all
their original romance and dream-like qualities to become something cold and bleak; the boundary
between romantic legend and cruel reality now appears terribly fragile. This fearful response makes
viewers aware of the dual legacy of science and technology: on the one hand it has allowed us to
realise our dream of human flight, made our lives so much easier and allowed us to dominate all other
living creatures; on the other, the development of science and technology has brought with it a whole
series of frightening consequences. Environmental and climate issues become ever more pressing,
and we have now arrived at a point where the seriousness of these problems has far exceeded earlier
predictions.

For Wang Mai, science and technology occupy an important place in his childhood memories; he
rejects his personal experience of the Cultural Revolution, makes no attempt to arrive at a correct
political understanding or address themes of revolution in what for him would be a meaningless and
futile exercise. In Wang's view 'science' is not quite the straightforward force for good it is presented
to be; amidst the various theses on global warming there can also be found an implicit justification of
First World control of the Third World. The scientific consensuses we have arrived at are for Wang Mai
as likely to be devious excuse-making as anything else. There is no-one else in the world of art who
springs to mind as equalling Wang Mai when it comes to digging deep into their childhood experience
of 'science'. Of course, saying that he is unequalled in this isn't proof of anything much, but it does at
the minimum tell us something about the sincerity of Wang Mai's artistic creativity.

Energy and national interests
With the development of science and technology and other social progress, it was inevitable that
energy resources would become the focus of fierce competition between different nation states.
Stripped of false veils of 'justice', 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'human rights' what is left centre-stage
in these contests is 'national interests', and it is these that are the true drivers of friendly relations or
armed conflict between states. China's aid and development assistance in Africa would be an example
of the former, the invasion of Iraq an instance of the latter; in Wang Mai's view all alike are examples
of the maximising of national interests with accessing energy resources as the key goal. Be it in
addressing issues of energy or of national interests, Wang Mai prefers to consider the question from his
own particular standpoint and as a result he often arrives at conclusions sharply at odds with received
opinion. In truth, regardless of viewpoint, no opinion on these issues will necessarily be objective; the
matter is itself a mix of good and bad and the only difference comes from the perspective of the person
offering their analysis. Wang Mai prompts his audiences to consider history and present realities from a
variety of angles. This may at first blush appear lackadaisical but concealed with is a far more profound
line of thinking.

When Wang showed the piece South China Sea Oil and Gas Pipeline No.1 at the Taipei's Museum
of Contemporary Art in 2009, he was making explicit the entanglement of 'energy' with 'national
interests'. In the official account, South China Sea issues are a question of sovereignty, while Wang sees
it as in reality a matter of access to energy resources (oil and natural gas), with the South China Sea
of the highest strategic importance in China's transport of such resources. Moreover, the strategically
sensitive region is the site of contest and dispute with other interests, including neighbouring
countries and the US. In his piece South China Sea Oil and Gas Pipeline No.1 Wang Mai makes 'energy
resources' concrete in the form of an oil rig, 'threats' concrete in the form of a shark and 'interests'
concrete as 'ox bones'. When the oil rig collapsed with a bang, I expect many watching were put into a
panic concerning the precarious situation in the South China Sea.

In June 2009 Wang Mai had a solo show at Beijing's East Station Gallery. In Climbing Aboard the Oil
Rig, a poem he composed in a pseudo-classical style for this show, Wang wrote:
To journey wide the frozen wastes in youth I set my course,
Where gas-as-ice in bursts of flame stirs waves upon the ocean.
Asked in what part a man might seek this energy resource
The Cosmic Child turns and points to distant petrol station.

Through a pastiche of a famous poem by Tang master Du Mu with added borrowings from the fables
with which Wang is so familiar, Wang presents his audience with the reality of the energy wars told in
a highly peculiar fashion. The work is suffused with a strong sense of disconnect. Wang blends together
concepts from different fields, using planning and imagination to combine together our present sciencemade
reality with fancies that have their origins in fable, legend and classical poetry. This creates a
unique context that can provoke emotional displacement and thus lead the viewers to a sense that things
they thought they knew are in fact not so familiar. Working on a realistic foundation, the artist creates
simulations of his visual memories in such forms as animals, mythic beasts or immortals, using techniques
of extreme exaggeration to blend fantasy and reality and so set out an exposition of the particularity of
various 'key terms', creating an effect where the real and unreal are cross-interpolated.
The appeal of Wang Mai's work comes from careful observation and firm grasp of the world around us
and his study of the circumstances in which humankind is currently living. This is something that goes
beyond symbolist techniques, using parody to highlight some difficult truths of our present reality and
past history.

Culture
Wang Mai attended high school during the 1980s, which was the time when China first began to open
up to the outside world. The influx of Western thought in the '80s led to an explosion of intellectual
activity and students all immersed themselves in questions of culture and philosophy. This was
something that had a profound effect on Wang Mai. A long engagement with Western thought and the
insights gained therefrom brought Wang to realise an advantage Chinese art had: traditional Chinese
art has always been art as a unified single system, an art that combined all types and schools in a broad
church; Wang himself expresses this idea as 'holistic art'. In Wang's view, the fine divisions by type and
so forth in the West meant Western art worked under major limitations, whereas historically China
emphasised the all-round fostering of the literati, positing art as comprehensive and all-encompassing.
This was still more the case after Wang Wei (fl. 8th century CE) proposed his 'poeticised aesthetics',
crafting the experience of 'unity of sensations' that is a particular feature of Chinese culture and taking
the inter-connections between Chinese artists of every school to new heights.

At a time when so many contemporary Chinese artists continue to situate their creative work within
Western art systems, Wang Mai by contrast has focussed on digging down into Chinese traditional
culture, integrating the four classical media of 'poetry, calligraphy, painting and print' into his work.
Because it makes these connections between tradition and present realities, Wang's work is both heavy
with historical import and also sharply critical of and a deep meditation on our present. Of course,
Wang Mai's practice of grafting classical culture into his work is by no means merely 'appropriation';
the clearest distinction between this latter and what Wang is doing lies in Wang's clear understandings
and assessments of classical culture and current reality. He has made an accurate evaluation of the
value of classical culture and the possibilities for its re-purposing in our present day. Absent this
precondition, it would be easy to descend into an artistic farrago of simplistic thinking and crude
imitation of signifiers. Unlike the emphasis of the ancient literati on transcendence and escaping the
world, Wang Hui took the transcendentalist understanding he garnered from tradition and made
it more specifically manifest as a species of calm, a kind of unemotional critique of history and the
present. You get a clear sense of this sort of incision and calm in personal interactions with Wang Mai,
and it is always to be sensed in his artistic work. The sharp end of his critique is aimed not just at a
Chinese contemporary art world obsessed with money, it also touches on the unique present reality
of the country and on a post-Cold-War international environment that fulsomely lauds a supposed
balance of power. In my opinion, coldness and contempt for the over-mighty is a far-sightedness that
not everyone can understand.

In settling on a way to deal with Western culture, China has been through many a twist and turn. Prior
to the Opium Wars, the Qing Dynasty placed ultimate faith in an emperor who was Son of Heaven
and thought himself the sole force of consequence in the world, hence blindly rejecting all that was
foreign and closing the empire off from the wider world. Those Opium Wars shattered the Chinese
dream of being a Celestial Empire and disabused any fantasies of being a wealthy and powerful nation.
Heavy material losses and national humiliation made Chinese people aware of the importance of
knowing Western culture and it was from this point on that Western learning gradually spread East.
After the founding of the People's Republic, the Chinese people once again fell into an emotional
nationalism that was inextricably intertwined with political ideology, then in the years after Reform
and Opening began a renewed infatuation with all things Western. For a century now we have longed
for the approbation of the West. Yet for many years the West has approached Asia, Africa and Latin
America only as an aggressive interloper. Wang Mai uses his artwork to give exposition to a bizarre and
fantastical situation where a Chinese economy and culture always built on the basis of outside imports
finds itself despised and excluded by Western civilisation even as it seeks to emulate it; also, because of
this desire to absorb Western civilisation, it has become impossible to connect effectively with Chinese
tradition. Wang Mai depicts the farcical situation of Chinese culture and although he is sometimes onesided
there in much in his work that is profound.

Ideology and Capital
Be it at the smaller scale of the individual or community collective or the larger stage of the nation,
in today's society a generalised collective absence of consciousness prevails. The middle ranks of the
leadership are unable to think and reflect, and can only put into effect instructions from above. The
ranks of the common people, in part because of their emotional disposition and in part because of
the effects of education, are in the usual course of things willing to maintain agreement with state
ideology. When combined with the pull of nationalist sentiment, people are still more willing to
believe in the justness of the state and government and the correctness of the policies it promotes.
This has meant that the country as a whole has fallen into a fantasy of national power and China as
the embodiment of what is good and right; the ability to seek out the truth has been lost, as has the
required vigilance in thought.

In his Nineteen Eight-Four, George Orwell drew for us a picture of what it means to be saturated in
ideology. One of the most striking lines in the book is the slogan, 'ignorance is strength'. When an
ideology becomes the means for a top-down transmission of ideas and has guiding force, all reflection
and doubt become signs of danger. This closely resembles the control of thought in the church of the
Middle Ages, although then what was required was faith in God whereas now we are asked to believe
in a system of ideas and a social order.

This is Wang Mai's evaluation of the present reality in China. Yet paradoxically, capital has taken a bad situation and made
things worse, turning an already bizarre reality into something still more fantastical. Wang Mai gives his own insightful account of this situation, “Idealism has been lost utterly in the wide ways of
the world; where now will we find the eternal driving forces of capital?” In the past we could lose
ourselves in adherence to this or that ideology; from now on we will see only the astonishing power
of capital that can create an accumulation of social wealth but will also bring a dramatic widening of
social stratification. Yet after the financial crisis of 2008 and through the years following, we have seen
that capital is perhaps no so flawless after all. This should serve as a wake-up call to a general public
solely focussed on narrow self-interest and a government pursuing merely utilitarian goals – don't be
fooled into thinking that capital is the stimulant that can solve all ills.

Setting out some key terms as we have can of course only show us one dimension of Wang Mai's
creative work. An artist who particularly excels at contemplative inquiry, one of the major motivations
for Wang Mai's creative endeavours is to question our present reality. Also a likely motivation for his
work is the derivation of such key terms; a sustained interest in these linguistic items further requires
continual inspiration from happenstance and coincidence. Today, when 'issues-based art' is in the
ascendant for a time, what sets Wang Mai apart from other creatives is the artistic quality of his work,
which in turn has its basis in Wang's continued tempering of his own all-round competence as an artist
and his persistent loyalty to artistic fundamentals. In the final analysis Wang Mai is well aware that he
is an artist, and not an academic studying culture of the Raymond Williams type. Williams worked on
the basis of a thorough familiarity with the central threads of history and culture and a firmly-held
personal intellectual stance; Wang Mai relies on an alertness to history and present realities and a firm
grasp of artistic values. It is this that gives Wang's creative work its unique artistic persona and makes it
possible for him to address the reality of China as it is today.

 

   
   
   
 
LINKS: 2010 Art as Thought --- my view of Wang Mai's art - Zou Yuejin