China está en boca de todos estos días, pero poco se había escuchado de su arte contemporáneo... hasta ahora. La siempre curiosa Virgina Postrel (autora de The future and its enemies) nos comenta de uan conferencia que escuchó sobre el tema en el festival de ideas del Aspen Institute y la revista The Atlantic, y algo me intriga. Muchos de los logros de Occidente (el inicio de la ciudadanía política moderna por ejemplo) se deben al Renacimiento italiano de los siglos XV y XVI, especialmente en Venecia, Florencia y Padua. Y eso se debió a la unión de varias variables: riqueza, conocimiento y una cultura por arriesgar nuevas cosas, y parece que lo mismo empieza a suceder en la China del siglo XXI. Copio del blog de Virginia Postrel:
"Take Melissa Chiu, the museum director of the Asia Society in New York, talking this morning about "Chinese Culture: The Tensions and Trends of Contemporary Chinese Society." In remarks that desperately needed photos but were otherwise fascinating, she recounted the evolution of the contemporary Chinese art world. Delayed by a phone call, I came in as she was addressing the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, in which art students were heavily involved. The subsequent crackdown led to a large diaspora, particularly to the U.S., which accepted 30,000 Chinese students, and Australia, which took 20,000. (Chiu is from Australia.) During the 1990s, travel and communication between Chinese artists abroad and those at home was limited, and artists within China found it difficult or impossible to exhibit their works. Beginning around 1994, the Web became an important place for "virtual exhibits" that allowed artists within China to show the rest of the world their work. And as China opened more and more to the world for business reasons, the art world opened as well. The year 2000 was something of a turning point, as the Chinese government decided that avant garde art was OK. Chinese artists gradually began moving back to China and even those who remained abroad travel there more frequently.
The result has been a "New Renaissance" that Chinese artists compare to the great T'ang Dynasty period. Those who stayed in China have become "art entrepreneurs," operating large-scale studios with many employees and in some cases producing very large-scale works. "It's a great time to be a Chinese artist," said Chiu, noting that artists have far better facilities than their New York counterparts. "As China has become a manufacturing center in the world, so has it become an art manufacturing center," she said. The combination of commerce, craftsmanship, and culture really does sound like the Italian Renaissance.
Art has become an expression and source of national cultural pride, and Chinese artists increasingly incorporate and adapt national iconography: pandas, Chinese flags, Tiananmen Square, and, especially among younger artists who didn't experience the Cultural Revolution, images of Mao. (Where are PowerPoint slides when you need them?) When moderator Jim Fallows asked for examples of "xenophobic" art, however, Chiu said she couldn't think of any. In the art world at least, it sounds like Chinese pride is manifesting itself as positive, self-affirmation rather than negative, foreigner-bashing.
Satisfying my yen for photos, The Atlantic's website features slide show on Chinese contemporary art, with narration by curator Britta Erickson. (No subscription required for slide show.)"
Claro, los jerarcas del partido comunista no son los Medicis, pero sin duda algo interesante está ocurriendo...
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