Report 6 - November 16, 1999

While in Kunming, we witnessed an "art performance" that took place in a newly opened bar (the Red Star Café) just behind the Yunnan University's dormitories. What was it all about?
On the doorstep of the Café were placed glasses of beer and animal viscera, under a label that read: "free beer". Behind the beers a basket with quails (supposed to be killed during the performance, as we were told), with a bleeding dead goat skull hanging over it all. Slaughtered animals were hanging here and there, and ducks were "roasted" by burning art books beneath them. The meaning (yes, it had a meaning) was that modern Chinese art has no more contact with reality, while all inspiration should come from "flesh" (i.e. reality) and not from books.

All right, it's true that for more than a decade (guess when...) Chinese culture suffered a complete stop, and it was only after 1979 that the Chinese were free to look at Western models; but why choose the worst of Western so-called contemporary art? We will just remind you that this kind of performances were trendy in the 70's: at the Venice Biennale an art group called "Magazzini Criminali" (Criminal Department Store) exhibited an agonizing horse, and nearly got prosecuted for it. (Sadly a few years ago the Biennale showed a decomposed pig: we don't learn from our past neither).
Of course, a small group is not representative for the whole country, and as it is, we happened to see at the last Venice Biennale a handful of very good Chinese artists; but we were astonished at the lack of critical sense of these guys (and of many of their Western public).