| Launched in the 1980s, the Chinese avant-garde movement was an artistic incarnation of the concepts and thoughts embodied by these theoretical schools, especially the School of Hermeneutics. Rational Painting, Current of Life and Anti-Art were the main schools comprising this new art movement. They were radical in their attitude towards Chinese culture, as they believed that the visual art revolution was an integral part of critique of culture because it tended to subvert the cultural tradition at discursive level. This made those vanguard artists the natural ally of School of Hermeneutics.; Wenda Gu was a representative of Chinese avant-garde of the 1980s. His career at home and abroad concentrated on the issue of culture. His artistic adventure is composed of three stages---a critique of culture, an analysis of culture and a synthesis of culture. In the 1980s, Wenda Gu was a warrior who radically attacked traditional culture. Starting from a reflection on history and civilizations in general, Gu shifted his focus to the Chinese written language, a strategy of discursive critique. By deconstructing and reconstructing Chinese characters, Gu echoed the call of the School of Hermeneutics for a discursive revolution.; When he moved abroad and settled in New York in 1988, Gu was confronted with an entirely different art scenario and he made the necessary adjustments, though he kept the issue of culture in his thoughts. He explored materials as artistic means and as the object of cultural analysis. By focusing on the human body materials, this initiated a new stage of analysis of culture. Starting from this analysis, Gu expanded his viewpoint of the process of cultural confrontation to include the reconciliation on a global level. This led to another stage of synthesizing culture. In this stage, Gu has utilized human hair to accomplish his ambitious on-going project, titled "United Nations," which crosses over all five continents.; The challenge Gu faces may be the one, the most of contemporary Chinese artists face today. The role of culture in art has been and will continue to be central for them, though their focus, methodology, and strategy may change. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
