Cultural Metamorphosis:
Arts of Cai GuoQiang and Xu Bing

WOver the decade, new Chinese art has received more and more attention from the contemporary art world. In the process of the remarkable transformation of China, traditional ideology, appropriated, referenced, and incorporated by artists, has been carried over into contemporary society. Therefore, the cultural metamorphosis of Chinese artists, especially those who entered the international art scene over the last decade, demonstrates the alteration of China's reality, the transition and amelioration of an ancient civilization, as will as the integration of the East and West. It closely relates to the new cultural framework of the ongoing globalization.

Xu Bing was born in 1955 and raised in a traditional intellectual family. He spent his childhood and adolescence on the campus of Beijing University, where a great deal of rare ancient Chinese texts have been collected and a number of famous traditional Chinese scholars were teaching there. Many of them were colleagues of Xu¡¯s parents who were heads of the History Department and Library Studies.

Since his mother worked at the Department of Library Studies, Xu Bing went to her library very often. He became interested in the binding, design, printing, and illustrations of numerous ancient Chinese and western books. He was also very curious about those books on Chinese and English etymology and morphology, as well as books on Chinese paleography. He immersed himself in this academic world for a long time, and this played an important part in his artistic development.

When the Cultural Revolution caught fire during the summer of 1966 at Beijing University, Xu was eleven years old. He witnessed violent political unrest: fights took place on the campus, professors were prosecuted and even committed suicide, attacks and conflict occurred between students and teachers, leftists and conflict rightists, high level officials and common people. A great number of polemical texts, called Dazhibao (Bigª²character posters), were posted on the wall, in the classroom, and auditorium. Dazhibao, promoted by Mao Zhedong, rapidly emerged as a typical feature of the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, Dazhibao had been manipulated to attack rivals. The language of these attacks represented an abuse of the Chinese language for political ends. Xu's relationship to books and texts was complicated by this phenomenon.

Throughout the 1980's,Xu Bing spent his time at the Central Academy of Fine Art, where he took his B .A. and his M.A. ,and taught drawing there. In the mid-80's a cultural fever spread among intellectuals and young students, heightened by the free distribution of classic western texts. Many young intellectuals became involved in debates regarding the East and West, tradition and modernity. As the most prestigious university in China, Beijing University became the focus of this cultural fever. In the meantime, the New Avant-garde Art Wave emerged. This movement was a response to modern Western art and theory. The Central Academy of Art was one of the centers of the New Avant-garde Wave. Xu's close relation to the Central Academy of Art and Beijing University gave him special insight into these developments.

In October 1988, Xu Bing's seminal and monumental installation called Tianshu (The Book from the Sky)was exhibited at China Art Gallery, Beijing. It became a blockbuster in the intellectual community. Every detail of the piece was exquisite and perfect: the curved characters, the printing, the binding, and the meticulous design, as well as the thoughtful installation itself, which enabled the viewer to enter an esoteric labyrinth. Nevertheless, the viewer could not recognize the characters. These Chinese-like pseudo-characters were, in fact, unreadable. This piece was widely acclaimed both by Chinese critics and by the international art community for its creative manipulation of the Chinese character, its impressive presentation, its unbearable craftsmanship, and its metaphorical function.
Approaching the Chinese character in a destructive fashion was a very popular strategy among young Chinese artists in the 1980's, such as Gu Wenda, Wu Shanzhung, and Huang Yongpin. They usually demolish Chinese characters and reconstruct them in a messy and inaccessible method.

The extensive but subversive application of the Chinese character, as Xu Bing¡¯s Tianshu did, was directly associated with the international conceptual art pouring into China during mid -1980s. It also points to the abuse of language that occurred during the Cultural Revolution, during which the Dazhibao became an aid in attacking people. The employment of Chinese characters in art practice not only functioned as a criticism of an absurd reality, but also embodied the artists' reflections on text-oriented culture. Tianshu was a milestone in Xu Bing's career.

Cai GuoQiang was born in Quanzhuo Fujian province in 1957. Throughout history, his hometown had commerce with many countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. It was known as the eastern termination of "the silk-road of the sea." This traditionally open city has encompassed many different cultures, races, and religious, such as Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Confucianism, and Christianity. This coexistence of multiple cultures brought on openness, freedom, and tolerance to Quanzhuo, which distinguished itself from the inland cities of China. The uniqueness of the cultural ambience in Quanzhuo accounts for Cai's uniqueness among artists of his generation.

Quanzhou is also a city with a rich heritage of traditional crafts and folk-arts, such as puppets, lanterns, and stones-sculpture. All these arts come into play in Quanzhou's traditional festival parade. Cai has retained his childlike fascination with firecrackers and fire-flowers. This sowed the seeds of his dream of making artistic use of gunpowder. During his childhood, Quanzhuo was exposed to air-attacks on the two sides of Taiwan Strait during the war between the mainland Chinese army and the Taiwan troops. Thus the sound, light, and smell of explosives were inscribed into his memory. As an adolescent, he associated gunpowder with history and reality, happiness and sorrow and undoubtedly, with his reveries and fantasies as well.

In 1981, at the age of 24, Cai GuoQiang enrolled in the stage design program in the Shanghai Institute of Drama. Shanghai is the most westernized city in China, since most of it was controlled by western country from1862 to 1949.western thinking had a strong influence in Shanghai.

Between 1982and 1985, he spent two months of each summer break travelling alone to China¡¯s remote area, especially traveled along the Great wall and the Yellow River in order to seek the nature and origin of Chinese culture and art. This is a Chinese tradition that requires the intellectual elite to read ten thousand books and to travel for ten thousand miles throughout the country in order to obtain spiritual experience and creative inspiration, as well as a strong physique. Some of his travels led directly to his later project At that time, he began to explore gunpowder painting, inspired by his early memories and motivated by his intention of seeking .¡°a medium full of the sense of emancipation."

In the winter of 1986, Cai moved to Japan, in the hopes of gaining exposure to contemporary art through Japanese art scene and finding greater artistic freedom; another reason forcing his leave was that he did not feel comfortable with the overwhelming pro-Western Avant-garde Wave moment. By the end of the 80's, after several years of artistic exploration and observation in Japan, Cai's gunpowder painting and outdoor explosions had drawn increasing attentions from the mass media and art critics. Some critics saw his exploration as a strategy for penetrating the international art world.

All of Cai GuoQiang's solo shows and outdoor projects have taken place during the 90's. The most significant one is The Project for the Extraterrestrials from which derive his previous gunpowder painting. Using gunpowder, executed outdoors and in large scale, involving process, radiating vertically and horizontally, integrating the temporal and the spatial, as well as requiring the participation of collaborators and viewer, are the common characteristics of the series works of The Project for the Extraterrestrials. The No.10 of the series, entitled Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters, realized on Feb.27, 1994 at the western termination of the Great wall in the desert area of China, is a perfect example. For this project, Cai used 600kg of gunpowder. A ten-thousand-meter-long-fuse was laid on the ground from the ancient stronghold of the Great Wall, leading to the west, with smaller charges of gunpowder placed at intervals of three meters and larger ¡°signal towers" created at 1,000meters. When it was ignited, about 50,000 local viewers witnessed a tornado-like series of successive explosions rushing towards the west from the ancient fortress. In addition Cai motivated a group of volunteers from Japan and acquired the permission and support of the local government and military authorities. This project might be likened to such earth works as Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and Christo's Running Fence in terms of its huge spatial extension, as well as The Lightning Field of Walter De Maria in terms of its use of lightning. Yet its striking characteristic is the instant self-extinction once it has been executed.

From the perspective of the Chinese or Japanese Cai successfully mobilized the East to challenge the west. At the western termination of the Great Wall, the smell, light, and sound of the explosion produced the illusion of war between the East and West. Historically, many westward expansions of Chinese troops started from this stronghold and many battles against western invaders took place here also. Therefore, from a Chinese perspective, this stronghold represents a frontier battlefield. On the other hand, Cai persuaded the Japanese volunteers who worked for him to drink Chinese herbal soup before working. This trick worked physically, mentally, and psychologically. The medicinal soup, in Cai's term, suggested to the wisdom and magic power of the Ancestor, and he saw this as part of his project.

In this work, Cai GuoQiang not only applied Gutai's strategy of using pure natural materials and exposing the work to the natural force of sun, light, wind, but also used Mono-ha's idea of addressing Asian-ness. By using Gutai's methodology to address social consciousness, he works in a way that is akin to Beuys. Although this piece relates to the earth works of Robert Smithson and Christo, its ephemeral quality and the viewers' extensive involvement distinguished itself from other earth-works, and branded with Chinese idiosyncrasies, such as ¡°the Momentary Eternity¡± of Zen and ¡°the Mass Movement¡± fostered by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolutionary period. Cai has successfully realized Joseph Beuy's notion of social sculpture. In the process of executing his work, he provides the participants and viewers with the possibility of realizing their dream, releasing their depression, and experiencing the world by means of a bold, imaginary creation.

Like Christo's employment of a curtain form that is related to his ¡°childhood experiences of the Russian invasion of his country Bulgaria... and to his earlier theatrical study in Prague,¡± Cai's application of gunpowder is linked to his childhood penchant for fireworks, and his memory of the battle taking place across Taiwan Strait around 1960. Nevertheless, Cai's pursuit of ¡°Momentary Eternity¡± separates him from Christo's ¡°real thing,¡± although both came from former communist countries. Similar tactics have been applied in other pieces of The Projects for Extraterrestrials. In different situations and venues Cai changed his strategy in order to make the best use of his opportunities, in accordance with a given site and context.

Xu Bing has continued to pursue his interest in miscommunication and misreading since coming to the United States in 1990. Increasingly his art has been informed by his own trans-cultural experiences and perception to the interactions between the East and West.

Living and working in the America, a leading super-power in the capitalist world, Xu Bing encounters an entirely different world from that of the China he knew from the 1960's to the 1980's. Although China began, in 1980,to conduct a open-and-reform policy with respect to the Western world, Xu still perceives remarkable cultural social, and ideological differences. He confronts a new artistic context: a well-developed and institutionalized system of art practice and operation, a multifaceted critical mechanism, and a variety of viewers. This tension enables him to produce new works to orchestrate his fresh experience and perception of the western world.

In 1994, after serious and meticulous preparation, Xu executed a new piece entitled A Case Study of Transference in an alternative space in Beijing. A couple of pigs mated in a pen littered with books. The skin of the male pig was stamped with unreadable English-like words and text; the skin of the female was stamped with nonsense Chinese-like characters, his trademark initially used in Tianshu. The violent scene of pigs' fornication was witnessed by hundreds of viewers, and it produced a sense of awkwardness and shock. The video documentary of this piece has been distributed widely since 1994.

Two dichtomies, namely the East and the West, human being and animal, came together in this work. According generations of Chinese scholars, the Eastern culture is Yin, negative, female, and weak; the West is Yang , positive, male, and strong. This distinction shaped Xu's understanding of the tension between the East and the West, and of the dominance of the United States politically, economically, and culturally in the process of global modernization. With respect to the dichotomy of the human and the bestial, hundreds of viewers were forced to face the embarrassing of filthy scene of their collision. This scene has at least three layers of meaning. First of all, it suggests the relation between animals and human beings in terms of sexual behavior. In this piece, the viewers are forced to consider their own libidinal drives. secondly, it suggests the interaction of the East and west ,especially the notorious remark of ¡°Western Challenge, Eastern Reaction,¡± a shibboleth now but once a fact. Thirdly, the piece points to the competition of different persons, genders, classes, races, nations, cultures, plots, and so on. This struggle for existence and development also implies Darwin's principle of natural selection. From this point on, Xu began to use animals , emphasizing performance and process, as well as registering his reaction to the American cultural characteristics, such as sexual freedom and liberation and the hegemony of the United States, demonstrated by Euro American centralism ,through the world.

New English Calligraphy Beginner ,a further rumination on the relationship between the East and the West in terms of written practice and linguistic system. Responding to linguistics and deconstructionist theory, and appropriating Chinese and English writing regulations, this project attempts to manipulate the trends of contemporary art, focusing on the artist's strategy, the curator's intentions, and the viewer's anticipation.

Xu Bing 's basic idea in this piece is to merge the Eastern square character with western spelling, creating a special psychological response when the viewer practices this new type of English calligraphy according to the artist's instructions and requirements.

This work may be realized in the setting of an ordinary classroom, with rows of desks and chairs neatly arranged in the room .A practice book, designed by the artist and made of traditional Chinese rice paper in addition ink and brushes are provided, all from China.

Viewers are invited to sit down and practice the ¡°Calligraphy.¡± When one is practicing it, he /she must find that the Chineseª²like characters are actually accessible in English. The New English Calligraphy requires that the practitioner write English in a Chinese fashion. Eastern participants encounter a new type of English writing and an unreadable Chinese calligraphy. English and Chinese, readable and unreadable, sense and nonsense text, wit and absurdity combine together naturally. All participants, regardless of their cultural background, must adjust their previous habit to fit the new requirements, adjust their conventional way of thinking, learning, looking, reading, and writing.

The use of language stands for power, politics, and domination. Obviously, the threeª²hundredª²year colonial rule of the British Empire spread English throughout the world; currently ,so called internationalization or globalization is , arguably ,Americanization in terms of informational and linguistic communication. In China particularly, the Communist government once planned to transform the square Chinese character into a phonetic language, because they mistakenly saw the phonetic system as advanced and the traditional square character as backward. Nevertheless, the development of computer technology has recently confirmed that the square Chinese character is superior to English in terms of textual computerization. On the other hand, more and more young intellectuals and students in China see English as crucial for their careers, and are ignoring the study of Chinese accordingly. Therefore, to some degree, the popularity of English among the Chinese can be viewed as a kind of cultural colonization. This piece could be seen as a metaphorical comment on the situation. Xu turns this situation upside down; his arbitrary regulation requires an English-speaking participant to write English in Chinese fashion, in very traditional Chinese calligraphy, an effective way of preserving a Chinese tradition that has been widely circulated in China's elementary educational system. Xu once told me that the participant who could not practice it or practice it poorly would be seen as an illiterate. He blends English and Chinese words and meanings, and mixes graphic and phonetic systems in accordance with the linguistic principles that Saussure defined. This work reminds viewers of the updated complexity of cultural-political framework.

Cai Guoqiang came to the United States in 1995, starting to realize the Project for 20th Century. The first work of this series is called The Century Mushroom Cloud. Compared with his previous Extraterrestrials series, the scale of this new piece is modest. He merely made two mini mushroom clouds with gunpowder explosions at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, in Salt Lake City, and in front of lower Manhattan, New York City. This work is a metaphor for the threat of catastrophic nuclear war.

Cai came to the United States, where the first nuclear bomb was produced, from Japan ,the only country in the world that ever suffered nuclear attack. The relationship between Japan and the United States remains problematic for Japanese; the trauma of nuclear explosion is incurable. During the Cold war, the nuclear war had threatened the entire human race. Cai's mini-mushroom cloud in Salt Lake reminds people of this block of contaminated and torn earth.

By producing a mini mushroom cloud in a nuclear test site and in New York City, Cai made connections between the America and Japan in the light of history and reality, politics and economy. The mini-mushroom cloud, therefore, becomes a witty expression of a profound social content. In this project, Cai still used gunpowder but imbued it with new meaning. This is the only gunpowder work which was ever executed in the United States, indicating the shift of his attentions from the visual to the metaphorical , from celestial to terrestrial concerns.

The influence of Daoism is visible in Cai's methodology and aesthetic vision. His methodology can be described as ¡°oriental alchemy.¡± His work is highly available to the viewer, and he has a genius for getting people to contribute to his work . For example, he was invited to do a solo-show at the local art museum in Hawaki, Japan. He spent a great deal of time talking with the local people, including farmers, workers, fishers, managers, and municipal officials, and investigating the local history, geography, and cultural background. In his proposal, Cai wrote:
¡¡Construct my work here,in this place,
¡¡Converse the outer space fron here,
¡¡Create a story of this era with the people here.

Through his persuasive rhetoric,Cai motivated many local people to work voluntarily on his project. Without the help of many people, his large-scale outdoor project would never have been realized. Most of his ideas are based on the awareness of harmonizing people's minds through a kind of shamanistic power. The media he used are mainly metal ,wood, water, fire, and earth; the so called ¡°Five basic elements¡± of the world according to Daoism classic. He has applied the doctrine of ¡° Fengshui" and ¡°Qi" to manipulate these natural materials,re-reading Chinese ideology and extending it through the theory and practice of Gutai and Mono£­ho art. Daoism is the source of his notion of the boundlessness and boldness of imagination. His understanding of ¡°Chao," which derives from the basic principle of Chinese natural£­therapy,defines the world as an entity and the human body as a mini£­cosmos. The inner spirit should seek the balance between the physical body and the spiritual world. This perception enables him to see the cosmos, human society and each individual entity as one. Therefore, he can draw from any section or segment of human society to construct his work. Using Daoism as a guide, he is not only deeply involved with contemporary art practice,he has also brought a Chinese aesthetic into the contemporary art scene. Through his work, Cai GuoQiang has extended ancient Chinese ideology into the international art scene. Cai's affinity with Daoism originates from his hometown Quanzhuo, once a center of Daoism.

Xu Bing's art has a strong connection to confucianism. He firmly believes the following maxim of xunzi, a precursor of confucianism, ¡°Tthe world is always in operation, gentlemen should work hark in order to control it." Xu Bing's deep interest in the traditional Chinese disciplines,such as history, literature, and philosophy,enables him to become someone who understands the essence of traditional Chinese culture. All this cultural nutrition has been assimilated into his art. His work has been thoroughly imbued with Chinese characteristics. He is a perfect example of the traditional Confucian intellectual in contemporary art scene.

Xu Bing tends to use words,letters,texts,books,and calligraphy as elements in his work, questioning and examining the effectiveness of textual communication. In traditional confucianism,reading, especially reading classic texts,is essential; therefore, respecting books and knowledge and seeding truth is an important tradition,not only for intellectual social elite, but also for the people. Xu Bing's work starts out from this assumption and extends it into other domains.

The confucian element of his work has a visual and spiritual aspect. His work usually seems solemn, austere, simple, and noble, especially his seminal piece Tianshu. His work invites viewers to be skeptical about the matters that they usually take for granted. Xu Bing's ideological foundation comes mainly from his family background and his own art experience.

Theoretically and historically, Daoism and Confucianism are opposed, but in practice, they are merged together in Chinese daily life. Xu Bing and cai GuoQiang's art has absorbed elements of Daoism and confucianism,as well as Buddhism and Zen.

In addition to traditional Chinese ideology, the modern Chinese ideology has deeply influenced their arts. Here, the reason I use ¡°modern" instead of ¡°contemporary" is that I want to analyze the overwhelming power of Mao's thought during the Cultural Revolution rather than current international art practice. Mao's impact upon Cai GuoQiang's work is reflected in at least three aspects. Mao's military and political strategy - ¡°starting from countryside in order to block the city, at last isolating the city from countryside and then taking the power." - influenced cai GuoQiang, who left the big city for remote areas of China many times during the heyday of the New Avant£­Garde Art wave in the mid£­1980's. In his early days in Japan, he kept himself aloof from Tokyo, working and living in a suburb. The fact that he drew critics, gallerists, and museum professionals away from the center to see his art practice was unusual. Regarding ancient and foreign art, Mao's principle is ¡°to absorb its essence and to banish its trash."36 Cai GuoQiang appropriates this principle very successfully. He also emulates Mao's personal charisma in executing his projects.

Mao's use of the Big£­character poster influenced Xu Bing's greatly. For Mao, the Big£­character poster functioned as a tool for ¡°Open Argument",but in China's context, this¡° open Argument," as well as the Big£­Character poster had been converted into a weapon for attacking rivals and for blurring the truth. From the Big£­character poster, Xu Bing realized that the absolute truth never exists, and that neither text nor book is fully believable. On the other hand, the overwhelming format of the Big£­Character poster inspired him to present his works in a overwhelming fashion, especially The Tianshu.

cai GuoQiang and Xu Bing's art is not only connected with Chinese ancient thought and social context, it is also linked to the contemporary art world. Examining their works, one may notice many traces of the master-pieces of western artists. In Cai GuoQiang's out-door The project for Extraterrestrials, one may find something of Beuys,Christo, De Maria, Smithson, Minimalist art, performance art, and conceptual art. Xu Bing's art contains elements of Andy Warhol's work, Conceptual art, and performance art. Both Cai GuoQiang and Xu Bing are good at synthesizing the methodology of western contemporary art with Chinese ideology.

The demagogic talent of Cai GuoQiang is reminiscent of that of Beuys, but Cai GuoQiang's intention is to create a utopian world or a social metaphor rather than radically recast society as Beuys did. The project for Extraterrestrials resembles Christo's and David Smithson's earthworks and other projects in large scale, but Cai GuQiang pursues a ¡°Momentary Eternity"instead of establishing a permanent sculpture. In Cai's terms, his work was made for extraterrestrials rather than merely for human beings. His work exists eternally in the immense galaxy in the form of light; this point gives his work a conceptual element.

Xu Bing's work The Tianshu for example, owes lot to Andy Warhol in terms of its use of repetition and duplication, but Xu only uses Chinese pseudo£­characters. His use of Chinese characters is to with the strategy of conceptual artist such as Robert Barry, but the character Xu Bing applied is unutterable. Xu Bing's use of nonsensical pseudo£­characters is conceptual in nature. Performance art has inspired him to use animals in his project; the exclusive use of animals and insects has added a new dimension to the category of performance art.