![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Professor-Guo-Yaxi-2020-528x379-1.jpg\")
Maybe we can start by talking about the avant-garde movement in Tianjin, could you describe it according to your personal experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I actually majored in design as an undergraduate, and I worked in packaging design after finishing school. But my real interests have always being painting and reading. I spent my spare time either in the library or painting. But at that time, my reading and painting were kind of spontaneous, neither targeted nor systematic. It was in the early 1980s, especially during the so called \u201c1985 New Wave\u201d cultural movement, that there appeared a passion among those in the academic circles for translating classic Western philosophy books, including Jean-Paul Sartre\u2019s \u201cBeing and Nothingness\u201d. In hindsight, such books exerted great influence on Chinese art and literature. In 1985, I joined the first avant-garde movement in Tianjin, the \u201cMing Society\u201d (Ming She) and began to write articles discussing the concerns of Ming Society under the pseudonym \u201cSi Ming\u201d. I remember that at the third Ming Society painting exhibition in 1987, our painting society received some sponsorship. I published an article titled \u201cMing Society, Child of our Time\u201d in the Ming Society newspaper, which generated some attention from the art world at that time. Indeed, \u201cMing Society\u201d in Tianjin, together with the \u201cChi Society\u201d in Hangzhou, the \u201c105 Painting Association\u201d in Guangzhou, \u201cShen Society\u201d in Yunnan, and the \u201cNorthern Artist Group\u201d in Changchun can all be considered as embodying the new ethos of the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You are recognized as a pioneer scholar of the so called \u201cExperimental Ink Painting\u201d movement. For more than three decades, you have been studying the modernization of Chinese ink painting. Can you talk about the new trends and changes within the field of ink painting that have occurred throughout the last 30 years?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I got involved in the \u201cExperimental Ink Painting\u201d school early on. I started working on my master\u2019s degree in 1991 at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1994 I began my teaching career there. I have always paid close attention to issues of the relationship between contemporary Chinese art and Western modernism. Since being admitted to graduate school, I gradually gave up painting and began to focus more on theoretical research. From 1994, I began to publish articles in for example, the series \u201cNew Trends of Modern Chinese Ink Art at the End of the 20th Century\u201d edited by Zhang Yu, and the \u201cContemporary Art\u201d series edited by Zou Jianping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the contemporary art world\u2019s interest in experimental ink art has grown, my articles are also receiving increased attention. For example, my article \u201cReport on the Development of Experimental Ink Painting\u201d from 2004 is often reprinted and cited as the first systematic investigation of this topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the late 1990s to the 21st century, in addition to writing some papers and publishing several monographs, I curated and co-organized some experimental exhibitions, not necessarily confined to experimental ink painting, such as \u201cBeing and Expression\u201d (exhibition and symposium, 1999), \u201cDialogue 1999\u2033 (1999), \u201cAn Exhibition of Graphic Arts of the Neo-Expressionist Master J\u00f6rg Immendorff\u201d (2002), \u201cExperimental Architecture: People, Ethics, Space\u201d (2002), \u201cQualitative: Report on Experimental Ink and Wash Painting\u201d (2005), as well as the international symposium \u201cThe Writing of History of Contemporary Art\u201d (Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, 2011, co-organized with Prof. Gao Minglu and Prof. Zhou Yan).<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I had to generalize about the development of Chinese contemporary art, based on my observations and practice since the 1980s, I would say that the 1980s saw more imitation of Western artistic counterparts, while the awakening of the Chinese local experience was marked by the emergence of \u201cexperimental ink\u201d practices in the 1990s; and then heading into the 21st<\/sup> century, we have seen a tendency of Chinese contemporary art to go beyond geographic borders, and achieve further integration into world art institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your endeavors are not just limited to experimental ink art, you co-authored, along with your students, the first monograph on the history of oil painting in Tianjin. Based on your research, what are the particularities of the development of oil painting in this city? What sparked your interest in writing this book?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was all for the purpose of \u201cpure art\u201d\u2014an idea that can be traced back to the time of \u00c9douard Manet in the 1860s\u2014that I joined Ming Society in the 1980s, decided to start a career as an art history teacher, and then, wrote this book \u201cLiterature on Tianjin Oil Painting\u201d (Tianjin University Press, 2007) with the assistance of some of my graduate students. As one of the earliest cities open to the outside world in the early 20th<\/sup> century, Tianjin has a very distinct oil painting tradition, which is different from the more subject-oriented oil painting in Beijing, and different from Shanghai\u2019s more technically refined styles. Rather, through the book, one can detect a shift in focus in the development of oil painting in Tianjin from formalist to expressionist aesthetics. Although Tianjin oil painting is a regional rubric, it is not unrelated to world modern culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your monograph \u201cCase and History: Chinese Contemporary Art Related to Tianjin\u201d published by Peking University Press is your theoretical analysis of the contemporary art movements in Tianjin. Taking the Tianjin phenomenon here in your book as a case study, what kind of insights can it provide in relation to the understanding and writing of Chinese contemporary art histories?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, you can understand \u201cCase and History\u201d as an extension of my research in \u201cLiterature on Tianjin Oil Painting\u201d. In the earlier book, the focus is more on the modern period and the autonomy of art, while in \u201cCase and History\u201d, I focused more on the relationship between postmodern culture and contemporary art in Tianjin. Since the 1980s, many well-known artists have emerged in Tianjin. These artists are not just important members of the Chinese contemporary art community, but more importantly, the example of Tianjin contemporary art epitomizes the cultural encounters between the East and the West. In 2012, I was invited to give a lecture at Kenyon College, Ohio. My translator was a student there, Mark Bosse, who had just won a Fullbright scholarship with his research project \u201cBeyond Shanghai: The Alternative Modernity of Treaty Port Tianjin\u201d. He chose Tianjin instead of Shanghai as his case study to further explore the recent history of China. In fact from the perspective of art, when it comes to Tianjin and China, and Tianjin and the world, there are many more valuable topics that have yet to be explored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Liang Shuhan, \u6881\u8212\u6db5,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We talked to Guo Yaxi, a Professor at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, who was a member of \u201cMing Society\u201d, the first avant-garde art group in Tianjin, and an important art critic of the so called \u201cExperimental Ink Art\u201d movement. Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/zh-hans\/Ming-Society-Newspaper-1987-528x756-1.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/%E4%B8%8EJrg-Im-Jrg-Immendorff%E5%90%88%E5%BD%B1-528x386-1.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2022\/09\/%E9%83%AD%E9%9B%85%E5%B8%8C%E4%B8%8E%E5%8F%8B%E4%BA%BA%E4%BA%A4%E8%B0%88%EF%BC%8C%E9%B8%A3%E7%A4%BE%E2%80%A2%E4%BA%BA%E4%BD%93%E8%89%BA%E6%9C%AF%E5%B1%95%EF%BC%8C1988%E5%B9%B4-528x372-1.jpg\")