censorship celebrities and chinese art

Deep in the Rectum

Western Art is Barking at China

by ANDRE VLTCHEK

In Europe and the US, for years and decades, art has become sclerotic, toothless, and somehow synonymous with grant applications, ego trips, identical-looking museum buildings, hordes of tourists and the constant glorification of form over substance.

Like Gucci and Prada, Impressionists and the “3 Tenors”, for instance, have been elevated to status symbols, or to something one is expected to see, and listen to periodically, in order to show some basic signs of sophistication.

The Western propaganda apparatus spent great energy and tremendous funds on extracting all the teeth from the artists, eventually turning them into well groomed poodles. Sex, gore, booze, drugs and nihilism: yes, yes! Politics, revolution and attempts to overthrow the Western imperialist regime: no, no!

We used to believe that at least those guys and gals sitting in Paris, were somehow different. Then on a May 27^th, 2008 interview with Charlie Rose, Matthiessen stated that he “invented The Paris Review as cover” for his CIA activities.

In China, ‘things’ are different. And the more different they are, more cash and energy is spent by Western governments, propagandists and cultural institutions, in order to make it exactly the same – toothless and sclerotic – as its counterparts in the West.

Chinese art is combative and fully engaged politically, and socially. For years and decades it has been on the vanguard, relentlessly pushing boundaries, asking uncomfortable questions, loudly accusing and demanding.

It also evolves: as it is increasingly involved in one tremendous project – helping to build and to improve the country with the largest population on earth.

Much of Chinese art, at least the best of it, is still undeniably socialist.

But Western propaganda is continuously barking at China.

“Censorship!” it screams. “Freedom of speech!”

Anyone who attacks socialism or the leading role of the Communist Party is immediately elevated to the status of a cultural icon, a divine being, by Western critics and media. It does not really matter how well the artist paints, singer sings or filmmaker directs – becoming a dissident, an anti-Communist; it gains immediate access to fame, limitless grants and funding.

Some dissident ‘heroes’ are subtle, but most of them, so beloved by Western galleries, are actually increasingly vulgar: delivering endless flow of paintings depicting Chinese comrade ladies in military and police uniforms and Mao pants, in near pornographic poses, with huge erect nipples and hairy crotches between widely-spread legs. Such images do not require a great imagination or exceptional talent, and Otto Dix and others better executed them in the West, many decades ago. But they sell very well in New York, Paris and Sydney. And they are considered, ‘oh my god, so risqué!’

Would it not be so gross, barking at China’s art scene could actually be seen as very comical, as at closer examination, Western art is actually much more rigidly regulated than art in China, the same as the so called “Western Democracy”.

The milieu of Western art is egoistic; self-serving, as it was paid, for decades, to be.

Go to London galleries, go to Chelsea in New York, and you will see: much of the contemporary art is about failed erections, about the fear of ageing and lonely death, or about outbursts of selfishness: self esteem, self-admiration and ‘self-discovery’. Most of it is all ‘me-me-me’, plus, as mentioned above, about those experimentations with a quantity of extremely abstract forms, with no meaning or use.

Then visit the “798 Art District” in Beijing or “50 Moganshan Art District” in Shanghai. There, so much appears to be in direct contrast to what takes place in the galleries in the West.

The Chinese artwork is engaged, full of humanism, compassion and wrath against injustice. Many artists exhibiting there are clearly searching for solutions and ways forward. Not for themselves – for their country!

In China, of course, it is not all exclusively about socialist zeal and social consciousness; and the art is not always engaged, progressive and political. There is plenty of repetitiveness and commercialism, too, although it is clear that artistic integrity and willingness to address essential issues is incomparably more alive here than in the West.

An undeniable dose of Western nihilism can also be detected here; it already penetrated local art. It is somehow tolerated, even admired in certain circles.

Dozens of ‘top Western artists’ migrated to China, for many different reasons. Some are here to share, some to learn, although there are those who are here clearly on a mission – to neutralize political messages, to discredit socialism and to separate local art from reality.

We took a close look at one of the galleries run by several Western artists residing in Shanghai. They were not showing anything ground-breaking. What we found was just the usual diet of derogatory pop that is often passed off in the West, as Chinese New Wave: female police officers with heavy make-up, performing erotic dances inside their police car, then sexy poses of female soldiers. All Communist symbols put down, diminished, dragged through dirt.

It is not only in China: the West is working hard on trivializing all Latin American revolutions, and it is paying heavily for any attempt to de-politicize local artists, from Central to South America, from Southeast Asia to the Middle East.

It is also clear that their approach is constructive and socialist, not nihilistic and destructive, trying to serve the country, not to destroy it.

“Art critics admit that Chinese art now leads the world”, I was recently told by Peter King, a Professor at Sydney University.

And it is leading through its substance, not just through its form.

It is not the Chinese government, but the West that tries to muzzle local artists; to strip them of political fervor and social consciousness. And it is doing it cannily, covertly and persistently.

But the most celebrated, the most propagated in the West, are artists like Ai Weiwei; a staunchly anti-Communist artist and a vocal advocate of ‘Western democracy’.

Ai Weiwei, a darling of the Western mass media, recently attacked the great Chinese novelist, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mo Yan. What was Mo Yan’s greatest sin? Apparently, being an unapologetic socialist and the vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association.

In the West, no shadow of doubt can be cast on Ai Weiwei himself. He is allowed to be political, he is encouraged to regurgitate propaganda; ‘our propaganda’, of course.

Western art has always prostituted itself, serving those who happen to be holding the reins of power. This has gone on since the Greeks and Romans; and has continued for centuries, even millennia.

That glorified tradition of Western ‘freedom of expression’; it exists only for as long as most of the artists, media people and thinkers agree to march in closed ranks, serving the regime. As long as they repeat that the idiocy of the ‘multi-party’ system that upholds the dictatorship of elites, is superior to all other forms of governance.

Western artists have a history of being much more submissive than their counterparts anywhere else in the world. And there should be no doubt that the Western regime corrupted or forced into silence many more creative people than any other dictatorship in the history of mankind!

According to the Stuttgart-based painter and political cartoonist, Marina Wiedemann:

“Contemporary art in Europe is a total debacle. Exceptions: sure there are some. But it all feels like some polluted swamp: on the surface are those handpicked artists you are expected to stuff your face with… the art that you are being fed with, by the establishment… underneath, a brutal fight for joining those who are already floating and visible. And artists who are really talented and have plenty to say: they have no chance to surface at all, as they are kept under, by the most celebrated shit covering the surface.”

Artists of the world should unite against nihilism and spinelessness coming from Europe and North America. To hell with their money, and as Sukarno used to say: “To hell with their aid!” and their ‘funding’.

Let them paint their lines and ovals. Let them piss on the canvases, spread it all over and call it art. Let them cover their internal emptiness with abstractions. Alternatively, let them paint flowers for luxury hotels and villas of the millionaires.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/15/western-art-is-barking-at-china/