Aethetics and
Politics in China
"I thought it would
be terrible to live in this world and not know what another part of the world
was like."
Robert Rauschenberg.
In modern China, politics have been conducted not simply by means of party and
mass movement, but also by way of aesthetic experience. In this course we
will focus on the appreciation and creation of art, and how it has intermeshed
with politics. How the need to forge a modern subjectivity, to foster national
and class consciousness has been addressed aesthetically---in ways that
intimately involve the bodily, sensuous, and emotional dimensions of the
individual’s lived experience and the way that politics themselves have been
turned into aesthetic experience. We will begin with an analysis of literati
Art which established the importance of harmony
between nature and culture, feeling and reason, society and individuals, making
the tone of Confucian aesthetics deeply emotional. Its overturn by Mao
Zedong, the adoption of Lu Xun’s
thinking as the foundation of communist Chinese aesthetics till 1979. The rise
of Scar painting and Star group as important art movements and Rustic Realism
depicting the revolution’s impact on ordinary rural people. We will then
move to the Pro-democracy student movement, the rise of the China/avant-garde
and the Political Pop of the 1990s. Finally we will contemplate the resurgence
of contemporary art movement in China with Beijing once again becoming the
artistic center especially with the creation of 798 art
zone. Students will research and present a contemporary political issue
and write a report on role of the artist in a heavily censored society.
Most readings are linked on line or will be provided in
class.
Suggested Readings.
1. Spence, Jonathan. The Search for Modern China, Third Edition. New York:
W.W. Norton, 2012.
2. The
Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China:
Wang, Ban, Stanford University Press; edition
(June 1, 1997)
5. Four
Essays on Aesthetics: Toward a Global Perspective: Li Zehou,
Lexington Books (July 28, 2006)