Writing and Speaking About Yourself

Xia Tianmai (Xia): What kind of a major is the writing department you mentioned before?

Xi Chuan (Xi): In the fall of 2009, I taught a semester at the University of Victoria in Canada in the Department of Writing. This department belongs to the Faculty of Fine Arts. The Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) is different in that as it is an art academy, instead of an art school of a comprehensive university. For example, an English department in a North American university would have a writing department or a writing major, but not here at CAFA. The writing department teaches various kinds of writing skills, such as poetry, drama, fiction, and so on; it also holds various activities, and theater students can perform in the school theater.

Xia: Is there such a writing program in China?

Xi: There are scriptwriting programs in the Academy of Film or Academy of Drama in China, but other kinds of writing instructions are not available. If a writing department or writing program is offered at a university in our country, the corresponding problem we would face immediately is what these students could do after their graduation. 

In Canada, writing students are pretty much guaranteed a job after graduation, unless you want to be a professional writer or artist. Government agencies in Canada have a demand for writing students, and students who study writing can go into places like city hall after graduation. People who study fiction and poetry will be able to handle official government documents effortlessly. I don't know how good our state's civil servants are at writing in general. Maybe people who take the civil service exams probably have never taken writing training. This is a pretty big problem, namely, the counterpart of writing study and work opportunity has not been established in China. Some comprehensive universities, like Renmin University of China, Beijing Normal University, and possibly Peking University, are now starting to prepare writing programs, and I've heard that they will award degrees.

Liu Xiyin (Liu): Writing classes have always had a place in the humanities curriculum of Western schools, do you think art schools should also offer writing classes?

Xi: Our school (CAFA), or at least the Faculty of Humanities of our school, has a course called "Thesis Writing", but it is not the same as the writing courses in American and Canadian. Their "writing" class is more accurately called "creative writing". If we want to offer writing classes at CAFA, we can expand the concept of "writing" a bit. In fact, we are missing a class that trains students, especially non-humanities students, to speak about themselves. If you draw a picture or make an installation, but you can't introduce it well, it would be a failure. I know that a lot of students' theses are about their work, but students aren't actually trained to talk about their work. You have to learn a way to talk about it.

It's not just a matter of being clever enough to organise your language, it's a matter of having the ability to observe things and the training in the logic of presentation. You have to have a set of logic to get from A to B, from B to C, before you can tell it decently. And what kind of references you have in this work - historical references, cultural references, political references - all these things require you to be able to talk about them. All the students in our school so far have not had that training. 

As I recall, in other countries, if you're an artist, you have to be able to tell a story in addition to making the work. It's a set of training in thinking. In Chinese art schools, more training used to be on hand, but I'm afraid there's less training in thinking skills. This is not the same as doing art criticism, which is talk about other people’s work. Art students should be able to tell their own stories. I've seen the logic of the newsletter at our student's art exhibit like this: because I stuttered as a child, I had a five-minute blackout this morning. I've also seen students writing unreadable papers full of undigested hipster philosophical concepts. it is horrible.

Xia: Is it possible that there are artists who can't speak directly about themselves, but he already includes a lot of things in his work? Or maybe they do better in answering questions instead of making presentations directly?

Xi: It's on two different levels. What is included in the work belongs to the work itself, which is something that should be included during the training of making art. But contemporary art is different from classical art in that it has a characteristic, that is, contemporary art does not require so much professionalism anymore. A doctor can do contemporary art, and an employee may also do it. Contemporary artists are already a bit different from the professionally trained artists we used to think of. This statement is probably going to offend some people at our school. For artists working toward classical styling, we may request their work speak for itself. But in the field of contemporary art, you should have a set of your own expressions - your language or your ability to organize your thoughts - in addition to visual presentation, which is indispensable. Contemporary art is particularly dependent on this.

Xia: Is it Concept?

Xi: Not only concept. It is the whole set of thinking skills, which could finally be implemented as the ability to writing. Basic artistic training, such as drawing still lifes, trains you to feel and observe objects, but it doesn't train your brain to think. Good contemporary art requires strong thinking skills.

Liu: What kind of class will the writing course be like if it could be implemented in our school?

Xi: To have this kind of class, the first thing required is not for the students, but the teacher. It's hard to say whether our teacher can do so. Under the existing circumstances, teachers should first train themself to do their best, although it is difficult to achieve the goal immediately. The point is that acquiring a thinking ability is not something that can be solved easily by reading some books, articles on the internet, or remembering a few concepts. On a larger scale, it's a soul-level issue. Specifically, you need vision, experience, question oriented thinking, the ability to control the contexts, training in writing, a sense of reality and history, creativity, and courage, among other things.

Xia: Have you ever considered having a combination of students from the School of humanities and students from other schools to work together?

Xi: It's a good idea, but the composition of the School of Humanities is complicated. If a student is studying Ming and Qing dynasty art or funerary art, maybe it is not suitable for him/her to work with students from the School of Plastic Arts. If a student is interested in creating art itself, then there does need to be more interaction. But the students in the School of humanities can be divided into at least three or four categories.

The Perfect Curriculum for Art Academy

Xia: While it may not be possible to implement, could you make a ‘perfect’ public lesson curriculum for our school?

Xi:There's been a lot of discussion within the school about what kind of public classes the school should offer. I discussed it with my colleagues five or six years ago, and it was also discussed in the Academic Committee. A few days ago, Vice President Tan Ping, Ms. Wang Xiaolin from the Academic Affairs Office, Mr. Yu Ding from our School of Humanities, and I, also had a special meeting to discuss the curriculum. We thought that, first of all, courses like Introduction to Ancient Chinese Thought, Introduction to Western Thought, Western Contemporary Art Criticism, and Chinese Contemporary Art Criticism that involve thought and criticism should be offered.

Then there are classes on religion. If we can't have classes on Islam, then classes on Buddhism and Christianity should be offered. These courses could just give a brief introduction and overview to these religions, so that students could know what Christianity or Buddhism is about. If we can't have these kinds of courses, then it's good to have Buddhist art and Christian art, then we can talk about these religions in passing. In fact, not only the students in our school, but every student in every school will encounter religious problems when they grow up, and they will be interested in a certain aspect of religion, which we never touched in our previous courses.

The other kind of classes we should open are cultural classes which not just focus on Europe and America, because for now, basically the foreign countries we see are limited to Europe and America. Once I met a student, she asked me, "Professor, do you think I am "international"? I say no, you are just "westernized". So, for many of us, what we call "internationalization" does not include India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Nigeria, South Africa, etc. Well, we may know a little bit about the culture of Korea, Japan and Thailand. 

It's an interesting thing: when you're in the West, you find it is hard for you to join in a discussion about Asia, because you don't trully understand it. The situation becomes like this: when the topic is about the West, you could only listen, and when the topic is about Asia, you could also just listen. You can only talk about China with an imagination of “Orientalism” from the West, a country which is nothing more than a splendid ancient civilization and a present that is in danger, that is, a present that is not living.

For a long time, in our education and in the minds of our intellectuals, there has not been a complete map of the world. A map of the ture world has to take into account, which in addition to China and the West, also includes South Asia, Asia Minor, Arabia, Africa, Latin America, etc., all these places that we have neglected for a long time. The historical reasons for this situation are complex, and it exists in other post-developed countries as well. We must correct it. Asia itself is already very complex: there are at least three Asia - Confucian Asia, Hindu Asia, and Islamic Asia - and the distinction between these three is already very large. We have never had a correct vision of this area.

Another suggestion for our curriculum is taken from American universities. I think we could have a course called "China in the World", which discusses how the world sees China. Over the millennia, all countries have had their own perceptions of China and have formed their own perceptions of China. It is what we should know.

Lastly, I suggest that contemporary literature classes should also be offered, including foreign contemporary literature and contemporary Chinese literature. As an artist, you should understand what people in other professions are doing at the moment. Students in our school may naturally know a little bit about film and music, but they may not be so sure about what contemporary writers are doing.

Library in an Art Academy

Xia: So if these classes are offered at CAFA, will there be a corresponding supplement in terms of purchasing bookes for the library?

Xi: Now that Mr. Yin Jinan is the librarian of CAFA, he will make some adjustments to the library. Our school library used to introduce more visual arts books, but I have checked the library catalogue and found that some of the books focusing the humanities and social sciences are very old, and there is a big gap between them and the whole Chinese academic and cultural world today. Perhaps our students have more interest in fine art, but other information including humanities and social sciences cannot be missing in order to run a high-quality school.

Liu: So are there any other school libraries that do a better job in this area?

Xi: I've been to some foreign university libraries, but I don't know much about the libraries of other schools in our country. Our school is a specialized art school, and people may unconsciously distinguish between what is my business and what's not my business. But right now it's the 21st century, both art education and music education are part of the larger culture. My view is that the advancement of Chinese culture cannot be the result of a single discipline coming to the forefront of the world all at once; it must be the result of interconnected disciplines moving forward together. When a person asks what level Chinese art is at, you can tell him what level Chinese music is at, or what level Chinese literature is at. Their stages of development are similar.

If we require Chinese contemporary arts to be at the forefront of the world, it means that our cultural studies should also be world-class. These two should be considered together. One discipline may take an extra half-step forward, for example, Philosophical Studies may be a bit more powerful than the others, but it's not possible to be completely decoupled from other studies.

If you are boasting about yourself regardless of the general level of other disciplines, then you must be making empty claims. We used to talk about how we could be at the top of the world, but now it is better for us to rethink what is holding us back from being at the forefront. Perhaps there is something that was not part of our thinking before, that is, something that is already obsolete and we naturally choose to neglect.

The Lack of a Sense of History

Xia: I have ever heard some teachers complained that their students lack a sense of history. What do you think about this?

Xi: I have different requirements for different people. Maybe a person lacking a sense of history could also be a naive contemporary youth, which also is lovely. But if you want to deal with an issue in depth, then historical sense must come into play. The concept "historical sense" is invented by poet Thomas Stearns Eliot. He said that everyone could be a poet when they are young - broadly speaking, everybody more or less has a little bit of a literary interest when they are young. However, we do not need to take a poet before the age of 25 seriously, while if a poet wants to be professional after 25, then he/she have to take a historical sense.

Let’s do not take the requirement that seriously - we can say 30 years old, before that, you can do anything you want, whether it's flat or fresh. However, after 30, if you still claim to be an artist, or if you still claim to be a person in the field of culture, you should take the historical sense into consideration. So what is the historical sense? I think it is the ability to look at something ephemeral and present into the context of a larger historical background, with a larger timeless perspective. Maybe a genius does not need it, but most people can only assume that they are moderately talented, not geniuses. So in addition to doing your own work and research, an artist could cultivate their sense of history, which would be helpful for their work to be richer.

Liu: Is this cultivation not just about the students to practice by themselves?

Xi: First of all, teachers need to realize that "I am living in a world that is getting bigger and bigger". The world we used to understand CAFA was Wangfujing (王府井), then the Second Factory(二厂), and now it's Huajiadi (花家地). The outer edge of the world is constantly expanding. At the same time, this increasingly large world is turning smaller, which is considered as “global village”. Anyway, you have to have an idea that the world as we understood traditionally in the 1980s was five square kilometers, and now the world has to be 1.42 million square kilometers - the area covered by haze. Even the haze has expanded to that size, so your world has to be at least as big as the haze. Every teacher has to have that adjustment in his or her head.

There is another thing that I have experienced. My own knowledge structure has a continuous process of self-purification. From my earliest acceptance of European and American culture to my later exposure to Eastern European culture, it was a cleansing of my original knowledge structure. Then, when I expanded my reading, travel and thinking, turning to Asia and Africa culture, my original knowledge structure was cleansed again. So far my sense of "culture on the road" has not ended. All this self-cleansing is related to my sense of reality and my sense of history, that is, how I understand reality and how I understand the reality in history.

As a teacher, at a certain stage and age, you need to cleanse your knowledge structure. If you have this ability, you are a person who is "on the road", you are still growing - the growth of the soul; you are able to look at things from more angles. Of course it is difficult. If you want to be a really creative person, that's all you can be. I don't have any more expectations of my students than I have of the teachers at CAFA. Students are a blank piece of paper, some are capable and clever, some are a little slower, but it is the face of a school's teachers that determines the quality of the school. As a teacher you should ask yourself, if you can always open up your questions? Can you still spot the problem? For a teacher, solving the problem is not the first thing, but finding the problem. Of course, he/she should already have an overview of the problems that exist in the world. Only in this case, can he identify the real problems. A good school must be a place where you can be motivated to form a brainstorm.

Cultural Heritage and the Age of Consumption

Xia: Do you miss your alma mater Peking University?

Xi: So far, I'm a non-nostalgic person. I've faced so many problems that I wish I could always move forward.

Xia: So what has Peking University given you?

Xi: One very important thing that Peking University has given me - something that students after me have not been able to catch - is that I have touched the blood of modern Chinese culture. I saw Mr. Zhu Guangqian taking a walk by Weiming Lake, but he was slowly losing his health at that time. Another time, when our English department was celebrating New Year's Day, two teachers staggered in with a tall American man with white hair, whom I knew to be Robert Winter. Professor Winter was introduced to China by Wen Yiduo, whose ashes had been left at Winter's home after his death. Winter never married, and we students stayed with him every day during his last days at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital. I saw how these people who were involved in the construction of a new culture of China came to the end of their lives.

Also, I once borrowed a biography of Abraham Lincoln written by the American poet Carl Sandburg from our library. On the title page of the book, there was a handwritten note from Mr. Hu Shi on the reason why he gave the book to the library of Peking University. Before returning the book, I was a little hesitant: should I tear out the page? But then I thought, no one has ripped this page out in all these years! So I ended up returning the book to the library nice and whole. These things gave me the feeling that I might belong to a cultural chain that goes on from one generation to the next. To put it in an uncanny way, this is similar to the "golden chain" or "Homeric chain" in Western spiritual alchemy, in which people are the part of a big ring or small ring, who are related to each other. When the Academy celebrated its 90th anniversary, I suggested that huge portraits of the old masters who had taught at the Academy should be typed out and hung up. Learning from its heritage cannot just remain in words, such as discussing how to inherit the spiritual legacy of Mr. Xu Beihong.

Xu Beihong’s teaching system is part of the spirit of the May 4 movement. The realistic painting which Xu advocated come from “Mr. Science” - one of the famous figures of the movement. It is related to the whole process of China's modernization. But now the realistic painting is just a painting, which is about a good price, either hang in museums or living rooms. It has no relationship with China's cultural construction. If people in the Academy can sit down and discuss the relationship between the spirit of Mr. Xu Beihong and the modern history of China, and then think about what the relationship is between us and the contemporary history of China, you can see some big problems. CAFA preaches heritage, but who would dare say that he/she is passing on the relationship between Mr. Xu Beihong and his time? The academy lack both legacy and innovation. CAFA does not find it difficult to add to or even cheer on the consumer age, but anyone with an open mind must be questioning the existing cultural situation. Universities have a responsibility to ask questions about the prevailing culture of the times. If you just consider your role as a supplier in the marketplace, it is honest, but what a university does need is a soul.

Xia: Let's talk about consumer society and art. The K11 Art Mall, which opened from Hong Kong to Shanghai, provides a case study of how commerce swallows/encapsulates art. k11 sells small, flexible artworks that are weakly historical but entertaining, and some work - like the works of Damien Hirst - are equipt with interpreters. There will probably be more and more commercial artists like Hirst. K11 has its own gallery and art store, and this March, it’s retrospective of Monet charges admission (100 yuan per person). K11 has been a success, with plans to open in Beijing. I mean it's been a success in terms of distribution. Do you think it's possible for a truly great work to be born from a combination of art and commerce? Or is it the artist's own sensitivity and the sense of mission that is most critical?

Xi: It's a complicated question to answer. There are artists like Van Gogh, a “hunger artist” in Kafka's concept, but most artists can't cut themselves off from society and capital. Even artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rodin, etc. have to fulfill their orders. Gao Juhan has written about Wen Zhengming's relationship to the art market of his time. So I wouldn't be very naive about it. Maybe the artist has to maintain a relationship with the market, but the artist should maintain the basic principle that you have the right to refuse the market, the person who orders, and in that case stick to your own path and then meet new collectors who can agree with you. An artist is a man engaged in creative work, and in a crowd, in a social situation, he/she should know that he/she is an exception to the rule. The artist's dignity comes precisely from his/her exceptions.

I have seen an artist’s work from different periods in a warehouse of a gallery in the Caochangdi (草场地). I was amazed to see this painter laboriously transforming and following trends over and over again, and ultimately not succeeding - neither in terms of fame nor in terms of income - and I could only feel regret for him. I have also seen Kandinsky's paintings from different periods of his life, from early figurative to later abstract, at a museum in Munich, Germany. It was thrilling to watch, for what was shown to me was a life! This life has been fumbling, moving forward. So, you see, it's surprising that painters who are all seeking change are so different.

Since the Second World War, and especially since the 1990s, world capitalism has undergone great changes. This capitalism is called "new capitalism" to distinguish it from the "old capitalism" that extracted surplus value from workers' labor. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello have written a book called "The New Spirit of Capitalism". In this book, they talk about one of the characteristics of neo-capitalism - the capitalization of the artist and the artistic of the capitalist. We could see this tendency in current Chinese capitalists and artists accordingly. However, I think the real artist has the right not to meet the order.

24 February 2014 at school of humanities, Central Academy of Fine Arts

Interviewed by Xia Tianmei and Liu Xiyin

Xi Chuan, poet and vice president of the School of Humanities, Central Academy of Fine Arts

Originally published in issue 5 , Universities and Art Museum