The Cyclic Year of the Birth Year LI Zhi Hong`s Works 2007.09.15 - 10.09 PREFACE WORKS SCENE TEXT	□ Art, Dignity and Freedom LI Zhi Hong Recently, the theory academia of Chinese culture is busy debating on topics such as “the culture of Asia is a piratical culture”, “experiment of art capitalism in China”, how to develop Chinese traditional culture, comments of the Analects of Confucius and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It looks like a hundred schools of thought contend. Their focuses are all to criticize or advocate the values of east or west. But when speak to values, none of them can put forward a new value. They point out problems based on their own understanding but never give any solution. So they are just either retros or Occidentals. According to a remarkable scholar (a pure Occidentals), “Chinese culture has already been tested by western forces hundreds years ago”. Reserved eastern culture which emphasizes self-discipline was lost in the battle with pragmatic western culture which emphasizes freedom. The Occidentals won’t accept eastern culture as a mainstream. But we Orientals are more like to accept eastern culture. What is interesting is that no matter what those traditional culture defenders create, they also hope their works can sell a good price in art market. Their spirit is far behind our literatures. These are all caused by “capital”. Also because of its attribute of chasing profit, the structure of society was changed (not evolved). China has its original culture. It is aged. But it head upped the world in the past thousands of years. Despite the hardness of communicate, there are still so many foreigners came to learn from it. But now our original culture can not be accept by international and even domestic ideologies. That’s why to pirate become the inevitable choice. Every race has a strong self-esteem (this is also the root of racial conflict). China was ahead the world for so many years, the self-esteem of Chinese is extremely strong. But in order to build a new value, only self-esteem is useless. We must see if we are endued this commission by history. Some people are calling for the stop of uglifying and spoofing Chinese people. But the problem of our culture is not being uglified or spoofed. No doubt the intentional uglify is blameworthy. But the really terrible thing is we not dare to face the ugliness of ourselves and even take sides of it. When my daughter was four, the salesman came to promote Three-Character Scripture and The Four Books & The Five Classics. She also attended classes of Standards for Students. Then I found she learnt lots of things, such as the relationship between monarch and his subjects, the relationship between parents and children, the relationship between gentle and simple, the relationship between old and young, loyalty, filial piety… some of them are valuable, some are not. We often hear about “return good for evil”, but after reading the Analects of Confucius we knew what he said is “return justice for evil”. Not too much people know that. If the traditional culture was use to protect some people’s vested interests, then we do not need it any more. In an unfair environment, the price of the harmony of these people is the discord of others. Time have changed, capital makes people more liberal and independent. The art capitalism in China is not an experiment, it really comes. Actually capital has already changed us in ideology and economy without any dissidence. Only in the field of culture there are still many debates which make people feel that in front of ideology and economy, culture is not so important; or culture has a more stubborn character. According to capitalism, artwork is just like gold or other strong currencies. The value of gold is based on its scarcity. But the value of artwork is based on its value of academic (but this value may shift because of the development of history). When its academic value is validated by history, then its price will raise. Another attribute of capital is to speculate. Some worthless thing which looks good at that time may draws the attention of capital. The economy of China develops swiftly in recent years. The fever in art market is just based on the affluence of China and its polarization. Large amount of capital can not fully enter a relatively low public consumption and investment field. So it entered other investment fields, including artwork investment. It is elite economy engendered elite culture. Those who consume and invest elite culture are must be elites. If the personal property of every individual in the whole country is less than one hundred thousand Yuan, how comes an artwork is more expensive than this price. Western capital came into China, and chose the artworks which fitted their value and standard; both made a profit and advocated their value. To them, it is a business killed two birds in one stone. Our culture lost the battle again. But if it is wrong for capital to kidnap art, what is the orientation of art? When talk about a painting of feudal time, we don’t think it is beyond its time, do we? Is only in the state does man have a rational existence is true? Maybe the artwork of capital time is just like this, is it? What’s the usage of art, especially those in the depositories? Currently most populaces have no chance to care or even see them. But when they have, those artworks have already lost their attributes of pioneer and revolutionary. FANG Lijun said, “Art is the crap of a patient.” Doctor can tell what disease the patient had from his crap. Holy god! To say art is crap is already a compliment, some of them are even worthless! You see those self-important artists. Actually not so much people really care about art and artist. They only care about how much money you can gain from your art. The ideology and economy are all capitalized now. Is it meaningful for us to doubt the capitalization of art? It is impossible for capitalism to stop pursing profit. It is also unreasonable to ask artists to disdain money. One of the real problems is China does not have an arts foundation. Although it is contemptible for artists to become the slaves of money, in this capitalized era, if even the survival of artists has become a problem, not to talk about art, dignity or freedom.
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The Cyclic Year of the Birth Year
LI Zhi Hong`s Works
2007.09.15 - 10.09

□ Art, Dignity and Freedom

LI Zhi Hong

Recently, the theory academia of Chinese culture is busy debating on topics such as “the culture of Asia is a piratical culture”, “experiment of art capitalism in China”, how to develop Chinese traditional culture, comments of the Analects of Confucius and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It looks like a hundred schools of thought contend. Their focuses are all to criticize or advocate the values of east or west. But when speak to values, none of them can put forward a new value. They point out problems based on their own understanding but never give any solution. So they are just either retros or Occidentals. According to a remarkable scholar (a pure Occidentals), “Chinese culture has already been tested by western forces hundreds years ago”. Reserved eastern culture which emphasizes self-discipline was lost in the battle with pragmatic western culture which emphasizes freedom. The Occidentals won’t accept eastern culture as a mainstream. But we Orientals are more like to accept eastern culture. What is interesting is that no matter what those traditional culture defenders create, they also hope their works can sell a good price in art market. Their spirit is far behind our literatures. These are all caused by “capital”. Also because of its attribute of chasing profit, the structure of society was changed (not evolved).

China has its original culture. It is aged. But it head upped the world in the past thousands of years. Despite the hardness of communicate, there are still so many foreigners came to learn from it. But now our original culture can not be accept by international and even domestic ideologies. That’s why to pirate become the inevitable choice. Every race has a strong self-esteem (this is also the root of racial conflict). China was ahead the world for so many years, the self-esteem of Chinese is extremely strong. But in order to build a new value, only self-esteem is useless. We must see if we are endued this commission by history. Some people are calling for the stop of uglifying and spoofing Chinese people. But the problem of our culture is not being uglified or spoofed. No doubt the intentional uglify is blameworthy. But the really terrible thing is we not dare to face the ugliness of ourselves and even take sides of it. When my daughter was four, the salesman came to promote Three-Character Scripture and The Four Books & The Five Classics. She also attended classes of Standards for Students. Then I found she learnt lots of things, such as the relationship between monarch and his subjects, the relationship between parents and children, the relationship between gentle and simple, the relationship between old and young, loyalty, filial piety… some of them are valuable, some are not. We often hear about “return good for evil”, but after reading the Analects of Confucius we knew what he said is “return justice for evil”. Not too much people know that. If the traditional culture was use to protect some people’s vested interests, then we do not need it any more. In an unfair environment, the price of the harmony of these people is the discord of others. Time have changed, capital makes people more liberal and independent.

The art capitalism in China is not an experiment, it really comes. Actually capital has already changed us in ideology and economy without any dissidence. Only in the field of culture there are still many debates which make people feel that in front of ideology and economy, culture is not so important; or culture has a more stubborn character. According to capitalism, artwork is just like gold or other strong currencies. The value of gold is based on its scarcity. But the value of artwork is based on its value of academic (but this value may shift because of the development of history). When its academic value is validated by history, then its price will raise. Another attribute of capital is to speculate. Some worthless thing which looks good at that time may draws the attention of capital. The economy of China develops swiftly in recent years. The fever in art market is just based on the affluence of China and its polarization. Large amount of capital can not fully enter a relatively low public consumption and investment field. So it entered other investment fields, including artwork investment. It is elite economy engendered elite culture. Those who consume and invest elite culture are must be elites. If the personal property of every individual in the whole country is less than one hundred thousand Yuan, how comes an artwork is more expensive than this price. Western capital came into China, and chose the artworks which fitted their value and standard; both made a profit and advocated their value. To them, it is a business killed two birds in one stone. Our culture lost the battle again. But if it is wrong for capital to kidnap art, what is the orientation of art? When talk about a painting of feudal time, we don’t think it is beyond its time, do we? Is only in the state does man have a rational existence is true? Maybe the artwork of capital time is just like this, is it?

What’s the usage of art, especially those in the depositories? Currently most populaces have no chance to care or even see them. But when they have, those artworks have already lost their attributes of pioneer and revolutionary. FANG Lijun said, “Art is the crap of a patient.” Doctor can tell what disease the patient had from his crap. Holy god! To say art is crap is already a compliment, some of them are even worthless! You see those self-important artists. Actually not so much people really care about art and artist. They only care about how much money you can gain from your art. The ideology and economy are all capitalized now. Is it meaningful for us to doubt the capitalization of art? It is impossible for capitalism to stop pursing profit. It is also unreasonable to ask artists to disdain money. One of the real problems is China does not have an arts foundation. Although it is contemptible for artists to become the slaves of money, in this capitalized era, if even the survival of artists has become a problem, not to talk about art, dignity or freedom.

□ Art, Dignity and Freedom

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