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Sometimes people can't help but wonder whether modern art has reached a dead end.
You put on a sweater and go out to walk around. You have a picture taken of yourself in front of any building whose colour matches your sweater. Do you call it art?
That was a project undertaken by Sandy Plotnikoff, one of the six Canadian artists currently exhibited at the Taikang Art Museum.
Derek Sullivan, another of the six, expressed his surprise at discovering the Chinese fine art academy's emphasis on technique. His work on exhibition, an installation, uses packaging material and refuse to depict modern urban scenes.
"Life itself is art," said Ning Zuohong, a local artist and organizer of installations and performing art. It was Ning who got himself arrested in front of the Shanghai Art Museum at the openning of the Biennale - for a performance art work he created.
"Modern art uses free forms and innumerable means," Ning said. "It is a kind of preaching, calling on people to live with aestheticism and poetry."
It surely is. But is technique so unimportant and tradition so outdated that nobody needs to think about them at all when making modern art?
Jin Hongmei, the young artist killed in a traffic accident recently, gave her different answer in a silent way.
Her paintings, on exhibition at the Haishanshan Art Centre, mostly depicted flowers. One huge flower, or even half a flower, in full bloom occupies the whole painting.
"She was the most hardworking artist in the Painters' Village," said Tu Feng, curator of her exhibition. "She made use of traditional Chinese realistic painting method in her oil pieces, putting colours on again and again to achieve a unique effect."
Her flowers, modelled first on fake cloth ones, take on a very forceful and luminous appearance. Jin produced the series with great ambition. It was intended that these works be exhibited in Hong Kong, which made her very happy and proud. "I will be famous," she told her neighbours in the Painters' Village.
"Jin took an active part in modern art forms like installation and performing art," Ning said. "Her work at the 'Shai Tai Yang' art meeting in Nanjing attracted lots of attention from art critics. She was talented, with lots of original ideas."
Jin once told Ning that, if the series of painting sold well in the market, she would turn to something different.
She meant to turn to a novel form - DV (digital video) making. She planned to buy the machine with income from traditional paintings and seek expression in a different medium.
The first part of the plan will still be carried out, with her paintings going on exhibition in Hong Kong. Sadly, she will not see it happen herself.
Jin Hongmei works
December 8-12
Haishangshan Art Centre
618 Wuzhong Lu
Tel: 6406-4626
Selling Out and Buying In
December 5-20
Taikang Art Museum
No. 9, Lane 210, Taikang Lu
(Shanghai Star December 13, 2002)
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