When Chinese art critic Fei Dawei arrived in France in 1986 with 1,200 slides of Chinese contemporary art works, he did not expect that he would prompt such a profound change in Westerners' views of the Chinese art scene.

Shanghai-born Fei, a graduate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, gave many speeches and lectures on Chinese contemporary art in Paris, but failed to notice much enthusiasm until he was introduced to Jean-Hubert Martin, then curator of the National Museum of Modern Art at the Centre Pompidou.

When Martin heard of Fei's lectures he became curious. After looking through 200 of Fei's slides, he felt he had found a new continent.

"How many slides do you have?" "1,200," Fei replied. "I want to see all of them," the Pompidou curator said.

Martin was transfixed for almost two days. He carefully examined all the pictures, running through several projector bulbs, and finally decided to come to China with Fei.

"I made a comprehensive list of artists and professors for Martin to visit and learn about Chinese contemporary art and art education," says Fei, who also brought Martin to the home of Wu Guanzhong, who famously devoted his life to combining Chinese and Western painting.

In 1987, Fei took Martin around China to see the contemporary art scene. They met critic Gao Minglu, a Harvard University PhD and now a professor in the Fine Arts department of the University of Pittsburg, and artists like Wang Guangyi who often adopted the "grey humor" method, such as a large-size head portrait, to ridicule.

Later, they went to southern cities such as Nanjing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Xiamen and Guangzhou. "The schedule was so tight that it was a pity we could not go to southwest China's Sichuan, where there were many active artists," Fei says.

In May 1989, Martin curated the "Magiciens de la Terre" exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, which brought Chinese art into the international arena for the first time.

The exhibition featured more than 50 Asian, African and Oceanic artists with the works of 50 well-known Western contemporary artists to compare different cultures and to convey the idea that "not everyone was a follower of Western art".

Fei designed the Chinese part of the exhibition, which introduced prominent Chinese artists such as Gu Dexin whose "Plastic Pieces" featured prominently.

"Martin, as curator, insisted that he must have direct dialogue with artists, which is a desirable opportunity for both parties," says Fei who learned that communication with artists was the key to curatorship.

The art scene from 1985 to 1990, later named the "85 New Wave Movement", signaled the birth of Chinese contemporary art and the beginning of China's cultural transformation, marking a departure from tradition and pointing in a new direction.

In February 1989, the "China/Avant Garde" exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing pushed the "85 New Wave" to its climax, displaying some of the most important work by China's first generation of contemporary artists and attracting "a great many visitors", says Professor Yang Zhiqun, of the Nanjing Arts Institute in Jiangsu Province, who designed the logo of the Beijing exhibition depicting a traffic sign prohibiting U-turns.

Three portraits of Chairman Mao with pane pattern on the paintings by artist Wang Guangyi from northeast China's Harbin, attracted the largest attention.

"The National Art Museum, the highest art palace in China, at that time was basically not willing to admit rebellious contemporary art," critic Zhou Yan, of Ohio State University of the United States, recalls. "Then we talked to the Ministry of Culture and China Federation of Literary and Art Circles."

Art critic Wang Mingxian, of the Graduate School of the China Art Academy, one of the major promoters of the groundbreaking exhibition, says sponsorship at that time was very hard to find, and the National Art Museum only agreed to host the exhibition when artists found Song Wei, a businessman who was willing to invest, and famous magazine sponsors such as Feng Jicai, a well-known writer running a literature journal based in Tianjin.

"Most artists at that time were poor. Their art works were not for sale. Prices were very low if someone offered to buy," Wang says.

Fei remembered he was moved by an artist, who borrowed 5,000 yuan (658 U.S. dollars) to attend the exhibition. His monthly salary was only 50 yuan (seven U.S. dollars).

"Who would borrow 100 times his salary for his art?" Fei asks.

"85 NEW WAVE"

Before 1985, art was still closely tied to politics in China, but with more arts graduates going abroad, artists started to "reinvent their own culture, breaking free from decades of socialist realism to begin a process of intense experimentation," Fei says.

The change was prominent in the work of artist Fang Lijun who dramatically shifted his style from realistic depictions of peasant farmers to abstract and conceptual art in his trademark painting of exaggerated and grotesque bald-headed "battle crying" farmers who seemed at a loss facing the world, which influenced many later artists.

More than 20 years later, Fei believes these works still have much to offer younger generations of artists. He has joined Guy and Myriam Ullens, the Belgian sugar tycoons, who boast more than 1,500 Chinese contemporary works by three generations of artists, the largest such collection in the world, to stage a retrospective exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), in Beijing's 798 art zone, from November to February.

The Ullens developed a love of Chinese art in their youth, and Guy Ullens says he feels it "very necessary" to return his collection to its home country for the public to appreciate. The Belgian baron says the UCCA, a platform for exhibitions, education and dialogue for Chinese contemporary art, is the ultimate place for his collection.

A total of 137 seminal works, represented in painting, photography, video and installation, by 30 well-known artists, are displayed at the UCCA, including a number of works on display at the 89 Beijing exhibition.

Prominent works include Wang Guangyi's "Concretionary Northern Polar Region", Xu Bing's "A Book from the Sky", Geng Jianyi's "The Second Situation", Huang Yongping's "Reptile" -- newspapers washed in three washing machines and piled to a group of Chinese-style tombs to depict the cycle of cultural birth and death, which also featured in the Pompidou exhibition -- and Zhang Peili's "X" a series of paintings depicting rubber gloves used in medical operations, a symbol of life in the artist's eyes.

The installation Waterbed, by Shen Yuan, wife of Huang Yongping and one of the few major female artists at the time, featured in 1989 exhibition and is now on show at the UCCA. It consists of a transparent plastic mattress filled with water, small fish, and plants. Waterbeds, symbols of fashion and affluence fashionable in China in 1980s, were depicted as a way to kill the fish through a lack of oxygen, offering a criticism of "the new consumerism" in China or "a metaphor for the social situation", commentators say.

"It's the first major exhibition exploring the revolutionary movement of artistic and social transformation," says Fei, head of the Ullens Foundation, established in Switzerland in 2002.

He says this part of art history is largely unknown because "a great number of works had been lost or dispersed abroad", and to most people, including a young generation of Chinese artists, the story of Chinese contemporary art only began in the 1990s.

"Chinese artists in 1980s, although inspired by new ideas from the West, had begun to write their own story, and this was the real beginning of Chinese contemporary art," says Fei.

Breaking through 30 years of cultural seclusion, the artists, working almost from scratch, created a parallel and alternative contemporary art history to the West. In five years, thousands of artists all over the country spontaneously formed collectives, instigated debate, and organized hundreds of experimental exhibitions.

Marianne Brouwer, a curator and writer from the Netherlands, says many Westerners had believed that contemporary art only existed in the West, but Chinese artists had been working hard for the recognition of Chinese contemporary art and trying to "legitimize" it domestically.

"Chinese people should let the world know that the country with a long history of civilization boasts not only classical, but also contemporary art, the peer of the Western contemporary form," says critic Zhou Yan.

Some critics say the 85 Movement took just five years to imitate the hundred years of history of Western contemporary art, and should not be claimed as the start of Chinese contemporary art, but Zhou says it enriched China's art scene through both Western and classical Chinese expression and elements. "That is one of the contributions of Chinese artists to the world art scene."

LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWAD

"Twenty years on, looking back on the era could give us a perspective on rethinking the meaning of art," Fei says, adding he often recalls the passionately idealistic spirit at the time when artists created for art's sake and not for money.

Artist Gu Dexin has said in 1989 that he believed, "Chinese artists had everything that was the best in the world, except money and large studios." However, critic Wang Mingxian has pointed out a sharp difference between now and then: "Chinese artists nowadays have nothing except money and big studios."

"The market prices of Chinese contemporary art soar dramatically, but not for the sake of art," critic Gao Minglu says, voicing disappointment that the market had become an incentive for the development of Chinese contemporary art, but not artistic or academic aptitude.

"Many artists of the 85 Movement continue their artistic explorations, but some artists have lost their artistic reason," Gao says.

Many documentary materials, manuscripts, letters, sketches, photos and rare videos are made public for the first time at the exhibition. An album of more than 4,000 pages recording artists' stories and works has been published for the exhibition to explain the period.

The '85 Movement apparently fizzled out in the early 1990s when China's economy began to take off, and the heritage of the period was "sealed up", says critic Huang Zhuan, of the Guangzhou Academy of Arts in the south.

"We want to cure the amnesia of Chinese art circles," Fei says, adding the UCCA exhibition will show contemporary artists, especially young, emerging artists, that their value is so immense that they should continue their pursuit, but not to reduce themselves to mere "interior decorators."

Fei, in 1999 awarded the French Ministry of Culture's Chevalier medal of honor in arts and literature, currently holds a jurist position on the United Nations' Literature, Science and Arts Foundation.

He says the reason the movement was forgotten so quickly was its "heavy idealism" and "missionary zeal", and the aim of the exhibition is to observe the movement from a distance and leave room for viewers to use their own assessments to further understand what is happening in Chinese art today.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 20, 2007)