Alternative Modernity:Research On Chinese Traditional And Folk Crafts Exhibition(1950-2020)

From the perspective of “alternative modernity”,this paper attempts to study the development path and mode of Chinese arts and crafts exhibitions after liberation.As a macro-narrative of the collection,exhibitions are with research value of synchronicity,and its seventy-year development history reflects the relationship between the arts and crafts exhibitions in socialist China and the nation’s different social situations,economic situation and cultural process from a diachronic perspective.The paper focuses on the experience of organizing arts and crafts exhibitions in China after 1949 and the promotion process of national industrialization and nationalization through arts and crafts exhibitions,which led to the construction of a national subject under a new political system.The thesis traces the introduction of arts and crafts,fine arts,patterns and other related concepts after the global expositions in the early 20th century as an impact force to China’s original knowledge system,which was the beginning of modernity in arts and crafts.After the founding of the People’s Republic of China,arts and crafts became a cultural and economic strategy,promoting the arts and crafts from the production mode of folk individuals to the integrated production mode of semi-industrialization,which was the beginning of the modernization of arts and crafts.The main part of the paper sorts out the types of arts and crafts exhibitions and divides the development of exhibitions into two stages,after liberation to reform and opening up as the first stage,and after reform and opening up as the second stage.The first stage focuses the establishment of the arts and crafts mechanism and the development of nationality in the new era.The author thinks the organization form,the current situation,and the roots of the problems of today’s arts and crafts exhibitions all took shape within the three decades after the founding of the country,especially during its “seventeen years” development history,,which set the pattern base of its development mode afterwards.In terms of arts and crafts exhibitions after the reform and opening up,the author focuses on the impact of both conceptual changes and industrial changes on arts and crafts exhibitions.The progress of social concepts has driven changes in curatorial concepts,exhibition forms and contents;at an industrial level,China’s unique government intervention model brought out the fair landscape in the arts and crafts industry,giving birth to the typology of fairs and its resulting large-scale development ecology in the arts and crafts field with exhibitions(with competitions)as the core.Arts and crafts exhibitions development is a complex history The conflict between cultural and economic concepts under the rational production of arts and crafts as a tool,and the homogenization of arts and crafts exhibitions,have made both the diversified development of exhibitions and the promotion of exhibitions for arts and crafts itself insufficient.Its rapid development in the last decade reflects the vitality of arts and crafts in the new era and the importance the nation attaches to the revitalization of arts and crafts.The exhibition is a power,as well as a responsibility,and it is necessary to change its position from a judge to an interpreter and break the organizational thinking of confined museum-style white box display to the curatorial thinking of enriching the aesthetic orientation of the exhibition to daily life,so as to realize the positive guidance of the exhibition of arts and crafts for the future development of Chinese arts and crafts.The value of arts and crafts as a cultural resource is one of the cultural components of “Chinese modernization”.In this process,all the missed paths,the hidden objects or development omissions are the reflections of history,which cannot be assumed,bu are resources for rethinking,verifying,or correcting of today’ s choices.This is also paper’s attempt to achieve the research goal that “all history is contemporary history”.The paper takes two perspectives,in which the macro perspective focuses on how arts and crafts,while creating possibilities for industrialization,can accomplish the construction of a socialist culture with Chinese characteristics,and realize its special value as a national undertaking on economic and cultural landscape.Its microscopic perspective,on the other hand,focuses on individuals like practitioners and educators of arts and crafts.To them arts and crafts are not only work and life,but their livelihoods,ideals,as well as their experiences and reflections on people,events and encounters around them as grass-roots performers.Individual efforts and struggles constitute another kind of modernity: individual narratives that merge into the torrent of collectivist history with achievements and failures,and setbacks and efforts.As Prasenjit Duara says,the expression “modernity” conceals an extremely complex social world.