Why is there a shortage of good contemporary public art in China?

It’s not that China has “no good public art”, it’s just that there is a shortage of good contemporary public art.

First of all, there is no shortage of public art in China. I don’t agree with the hegemonic interpretation that public art can only occur in today’s democratic era and democratic society. As long as art attempts to influence the public, it will be read, targeted, and affected. Huashan rock paintings, Simuwu Dafangding, and Longmen Grottoes, these arts that appeared in the non-democratic era of primitive society, slave society, or feudal society, obviously also have an impartial nature. The endless folk art in ancient society is basically considered public art. When a kite flies into the sky, no matter who flies it or who it belongs to, the public can appreciate it. The kite is considered public art.

Secondly, even if we do not include the public art of the past, the total amount of public art in contemporary China is one of the largest in the world. The threshold for the concept of "public art" is not as high as imagined. Plastic art that relies on open space is public art. Open space, which is different from private space, is reflected in the fact that the public can view and read it without special permission (including no special payment). Since China began its reform and opening up in the 1980s, the scale of urban construction has continued to be equivalent to the total size of other countries in the world. Massive demand, stimulation of huge sums of money, and short-term overcrowding have made contemporary Chinese public art more than 30 years old. The current output has at least exceeded the total of the past 300 years, with an average of more than 100 pieces of public art appearing in more than 600 Chinese cities. It is conservatively estimated that the number of contemporary Chinese public art can reach six figures, with more than 10,000 pieces in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou alone.

Thirdly, the fine and the bad of public art, right and wrong, cannot be judged based on stage effects. Otherwise, when you are sure that we have a large number of "good" public art, you are moving out of Venus, Mourning Christ, Mermaids, and the Statue of Liberty. China also has examples of social influence and popularity, such as the statues of great men. , panda statues, sculptures in rent collection courtyards, "Learn from Dazhai in agriculture", landscape slogans "Only one child is good", etc., counting them, China is undoubtedly the country with the largest population influenced by public art.

Now, why is China’s public art not well-known by the public? I think it’s because there are too many non-high-quality products and too few high-quality products. There are eight main reasons:

1. Lack of preparation for the new culture. In the transition from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization, the most necessary mentality is to be grateful to the public and fear justice. The purpose of public art construction is to focus on the welfare distribution of advanced culture rather than the promotion, persuasion and warning from the upstream party to the downstream party. It should embody the spirit of the new culture and set priority goals to enlighten and enlighten the public on culture. aesthetic. However, the practitioners are not mentally prepared in this regard, and they still use the public art in agricultural and even some feudal areas.

2. The public’s decision-making power has been reduced. In a country where the people are the masters of the country, the public should be the sole owners of public art. However, the establishment of public art projects does not reflect the needs of the public. Whether it is good or bad, whether they like it or dislike it, the public cannot intervene. When they can't bear it anymore, Fight it with "jingle" and complain about it, but most of the time you deal with it numbly. Most public art project announcements that are just a formality do not truly take into account public opinion, and the public's right to make decisions is often ignored and deprived of them. On the other hand, the overall quality and aesthetic level of the public are constrained, which will also have the reaction to make high-quality products surrender to mediocrity. A society that seriously lacks a truly public artistic population can hardly expect "good" public art.

3. The creative group is incompetent. Most of the contemporary artists engaged in public art do not have an ideal public art knowledge structure. Some sculptors and painters with low cultural attainments are guest artists. They are the kind of art practitioners who emphasize being independent and pursue individuality with a strong private color. They are psychologically satisfied with their success as literati painters. They have few public feelings. With an agricultural civilization mentality, they have not yet understood the public nature. The meaning of new culture is that he only wants to wedge himself into society and accumulate market influence through his works, and does not care about serving the public. The output of good works is low, and the harvest is often poor for a long time.

4. The creation is urgent and too hasty.

Some people in the industry regard public art as a "living activity". It is tied to the urgent needs of city decision-makers or real estate developers to obtain large amounts of funds. Profit-seekers gather here and secretly fight for money and art everywhere. Urban construction is the most intuitive result of China's reform and opening up, and public art is the most direct beneficiary category of urban construction. Except for architecture, no other art category has received such a huge amount of urban construction funds like public art. It is concentrated and huge. Stimulated by the demand for quantity, public art is often produced in batches, and there are few people who strive for excellence.

5. Public opinion is divided, and there is no pressure for bad works. In the public opinion field, people still have different opinions when it comes to "bad" public art. The obviously ugly sculptures revealed the defense voice of another faction, and mediocre works could always be safely hidden under the conflicting public opinion and continued to emerge.

The public (the people) is originally the legal construction subject of public art, but it has been abstracted to the point that it has no right to initiate projects. When taxpayers are broken down into living individuals, no one realizes that they have paid real money and have the right to speak seriously, so they give up their voting rights and let public opinion represent them (in some states in the United States, if you want to build a Public art, in addition to being reviewed and approved by an expert committee, must also seek the consent of every resident who can see the "art" from their own window. Failure to sign means disagreement and can result in a one-vote veto). Television, newspapers, and the Internet have no time to follow or take seriously public art. "Bad" public art can easily gain a foothold and become overgrown. It is also because of the inability of public opinion to mow the grass. What's even worse is that many low-level public art When the art of quality justice appears, most of the public and public opinion are speechless, while a few praise it. It can actually create a popular illusion.

6. The final decision of the "two masters" is made by Party A. Whose ground a certain public art is built on, who pays for it, and who ultimately decides its theme, shape, style, volume, material, orientation and even its name. Artists who regard public art as a living thing know that the most important thing is to satisfy the "landlords" and "rich people". Party A seems to represent the public and strongly promotes many vulgar customizations. (In developed countries, art construction funds are publicly funded or raised through social donations. The "percentage" is legally extracted and is determined by an expert committee combined with the will of community representatives. The plan is not subject to Party A and is only responsible for the effective monitoring mechanism of society). "Bad" public art is not easy to live in public.

7. The management mechanism is not sound. There are almost no functional management departments for public art in China. A kind of "urban sculpture committee or office" performs its duties, generally attributed to the construction system. However, due to the cross-border factors of public art, municipal administration, transportation, gardens, culture, publicity, streets, campuses, and enterprises can occasionally take strong action based on the "two main mechanisms". This institution that is permanently located in most provinces and cities is often idle. state. Some city functional departments, unable to withstand the temptation, directly or indirectly intervene in public art projects. Some government-based assessments issue "practice qualification certificates", which backfires and issues "government" licenses to many people whose abilities are worrying but who can afford pre-certification training fees. In some expert committees composed of cross-sector departments, most of the members are often also bidders. They are both referees and athletes. Their status as experts has become their signature weapon to get jobs without the neutrality and impartiality of representatives at all. More importantly, there is no survival management mechanism for public art. Once the project is established, it is assumed to be a century-old project. There is no estimate of lifespan and the investment is measured in "lives." After completion, neglect of maintenance, repairs, and unveiling and ribbon-cutting will begin to decline. It went from bad to worse, leaving subsequent audiences to face its old state.

8. Public fine art is facing a global depletion. Any country can cite several good or bad cases of public art. The overall situation is that the total amount of good public art in developed countries in Europe and the United States is greater. The cities in African and South American countries have the largest proportion of good public art, even exceeding that in Europe and the United States. And China is the country with the highest proportion of bad public art. A simple mathematical formula enlightens us that the secret to achieving excellence in public art lies in controlling the total quantity, preferring shortage to excess, and striving for excellence. In fact, European and American countries have done this based on the regulation of social output mechanisms, and African and South American countries have done this due to lack of funds.

Due to the long wait for public art in relatively dormant urban construction, international public artists are very envious of the "source of life" of their Chinese counterparts - the trainees at the Academy of Fine Arts have no worries about not having public art. work. The global situation is that the demand for public art has dropped sharply, while the supply of public art in China has expanded infinitely, and public artists around the world have become the think tank reserves of public art in China. But they often find it difficult to understand the profound meaning and are not acclimated to the local environment, and can only covet their Chinese counterparts. The Chinese public art creation group has benefited from a certain anti-foreign mechanism and has not lost its monopoly like the architectural world. The negative result is that some professional sculptors have gradually snowballed to establish their authority due to their large number of works and numerous works, and have become the main source of important public art projects across China, resulting in a large number of self-repetition and regional homogeneity. .

In short, China is the most populous country in the world. The advanced cultural distribution of public and artistic expression here is responsible for one-seventh of humanity. We have reason to call for "good" public art. □Zou Wen (Professor of Academy of Fine Arts, Tsinghua University)