INTRODUCTION
The Politics of Chinese Feminist Art 1
By Tong Yujie
The politics of Chinese feminist art is the development and fulfilment of its own value in the formation of bio-power through artistic practice. Consequently, it establishes the visual representations of three political modes: pre-feminist gender politics, identity politics, and post-feminist queer politics. These in turn create a discourse of power for the politics of Chinese feminist art, which includes three main arguments: 1) art is politics, 2) art produces power, and 3) art is an arena of sexual discourse.
1. Art Is Politics
According to Max Weber, ‘politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power.”2 As a discourse that interprets human action, art is inherently related to politics. Aristotle told us that “man is by nature a political animal.”3 In a certain sense, the artist is also a political figure. As a set of guiding principles for a political figure, the politics of Chinese feminist art is concerned with the development and fulfillment of the individual’s self-worth, and its political aim is to share power or influence the distribution of power. In this sense, it is different from the kind of politics defined by Aristotle, which sought to establish a form of government based on common interest. Aristotle asserts that we may observe “in living creatures both a despotical and a constitutional rule.”4 His theory of government is highly hierarchical. In his political theory of the family, Aristotle emphasizes the importance of the superiority of a husband to a wife, or a father to his children, or a master to his slaves 5. The rule of the husband and the father, in particular, foregrounds the unequal relationship between men and women. Narrowly defined, politics can be viewed as the mechanisms of power in government. As the core of Chinese feminist art, the politics of art extricates humans from this narrowly-defined politics (as a form of government) and makes politics a bearer and interpreter of human bio-power. It extends politics into a discursive system beyond government, where the discourses of the gender politics, identity politics, and queer politics of Chinese feminist art can be produced, so that one’s self-worth can be developed and fulfilled in the formation of bio-power. Because the politics of Chinese feminist art is preoccupied with the question of subjectivity and autonomy in the formation of bio-power, it belongs to the broad definition of politics. Subjectivity is about having the power to develop and fulfil one’s self-worth, and autonomy is the condition and guarantee of the implementation of this power. The politics of Chinese feminist art is an open discourse on subjectivity and autonomy; in contrast, politics defined narrowly as government is a closed discourse about the ruler and the ruled. American feminist critic Kate Millett views patriarchal government as the core of male-dominated sexual politics. It is evident that the male discourse within the governing political system inherently differs from, and is antagonistic to, the female discourse that develops and fulfils the individual’s self-worth.
2. Art Produces Power
Art production has a natural link to power. To a certain extent, art is a condition for and the outcome of power. In other words, all forms of art are products of personalized discourses of power. If an artist’s discourse of power comes from the subjectivity and autonomy that emerges from the integration of cultural resources, then it inevitably represents the artist’s strong political teleology. The political qualities of human beings predetermine their possession of power. As Millett points out, the essence of politics is power.6 Based on this view, politics and power can speak to each other. In fact, politics determines how power functions; reversely, power informs political activities. One can see the repressive function of government in the power system of politics. However, Foucault argues that power not only reproduces, but also creates and produces? The creative and productive functions of the politics of Chinese feminist art are that they develop and fulfil one’s self-worth in the formation of bio-power and they establish a set of distinct political discourses on gender politics, identity politics, and queer politics, which lead to “the practices by which individuals were led to focus their attention on themselves, to decipher, recognize, and acknowledge themselves as subjects of desire.”” Michel Foucault wrote, “Where there is desire, the power relation is already present.”” If the art history produced by masculinist discourse has designated women as objects of desire, the politics of Chinese feminist art restores women as subjects of desire. Furthermore, it constructs the subject of desire through the visual representations of gender politics, identity politics, and queer politics, in order to, in Foucault’s words, “look for the forms and modalities of the relation to the self by which the individual constitutes and recognizes himself qua subject.*° Desire and the subject of desire have been a focus in the progression of civilization. In Sigmund Freud’s eyes, desire comes from the instinct of life. Gilles Deleuze modifies the Freudian desire to include not only desiring-machines with organs, but also desiring-machines without organs. Deleuze sees desire as a productive activity that produces reality.” History is also one form of reality produced by desire, which has been dominated by male discourse. The rule of the husband and father discussed by Aristotle is a form of government that comes out of the collusion between politics and power. It excludes the female subject position in history, but it also motivates today’s feminist discourse. By producing desiring subjects, Chinese feminist art returns the language of art to the ontology of life. In this way, the formation of bio-power not only legitimizes the existence of physical bodies, but also the existence of the spirit. While affirming the bio-power of human beings qua political animals, the politics of Chinese feminist art also affirms the value and dignity of life.
3. Art is an Arena of Sexual Discourses
When sex becomes a discourse about biological sex, it becomes oppressive. French feminist Monique Wittig points out that “the basis of women’s oppression is biological as well as historical.”12 Paradoxically, on the one hand, the female bodies produced in male discourse are oppressed by patriarchal culture and strive for the identification with biological sex; on the other hand, they are so subordinate to patriarchal power to the extent that they are complicit with it and become the tools that oppress themselves. Even in Chinese paintings of fedual society, female figures in masculinist discourse, such as virtuous women, chaste women, prostitutes, and concubines, are integral parts of patriarchal culture. Eastern Jin painters Gu Kaizhi’s（顾恺之345-406） work Wise and Benevolent Women（列女仁智图） is a facsimile of feudal moral teachings. Southern Tang painter Gu Hongzhong’s (El 937 – 975) Night Revels of Han Xizai（韩熙載夜宴图），Tang painter Zhou Fang’s（周肪）Court LadiesWearing Flowered Headdresses（簪花仕女图），and Ming painter Tang Yin’s（唐寅 1470- 1524） Court Ladies of the Former Shu（孟蜀宫妓图）are all representations of ancient China’s courtesan culture and concubine culture, which facilitated identification with patriarchal culture through an emphasis on feminine qualities. Like ancient Chine anes, who are objects of i filed vit itous women, prosties, and concutie win sentials on desire in mal discourse. We can find the same identification with essentialist feminine qualities and the complicit. relationship with patriarchal culture in Western arl, in the demure Venus statues of the ancient Greeks, tinted by Jean Augusted by Raphael (1483 152) in tho decorous odalisques painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780- 1867), or in the lewd prostitutes painted by Tom Wesselman (1931 – 2004). Because the subject of sexual discourse is possessed and dominated by male discourse, women are marginalized in ancient art history and even in modern and contemporary art history. We must be aware that the art history dominated by male discourse is itself a product of the discourse of government.
In the early twentieth century, the Shanghai Fine Arts School, under the leadership of artist Liu Haisu (XU/S 1896 – 1994), began to recruit female students. Pan Yuliang (itE 1895 – 1977) became part of the first cohort of female students. However, she was forced to quit once the school found out that she used to work as a prostitute. 13 As the first Chinese female artist who attempted to become the subject of political discourse, Pan Yuliang’s story reveals the awkward position of women in an art history dominated by male discourse. It is thus important to explore ways of changing the passive role of women in art history and make female artists the subjects of political discourse. American feminist art in the 1960s, for the first time in history, reflected upon the awkward cultural position of women in male-dominated art history, and launched a discourse for women’s gender politics. Chinese feminist art in the 1980s also initiated some historic cultural practices, including three main components: gender politics, identity politics, and queer politics.
The discourses of gender politics, identity politics, and queer politics of Chinese feminist art come into being through negotiation with the codes of politics, power, and sex in historical and contemporary male discourses. Essentially, the politics of Chinese feminist art turns art into the interpretation and creation of human power. Human power can be interpreted and created through questioning and production. The gender politics, identity politics, and queer politics of Chinese feminist art have maintained the soberness to question culture and the initiative to produce culture, so as to accomplish the mission to interpret and create human power. They also constitute an effective challenge to an art history dominated by male discourse.
The key to the politics of Chinese feminist art is the development and fulfilment of one’s self-worth in the formation of bio-power through artistic practice; it adopted the rhetoric “art is politics” as its argument, thereby extending Chinese feminist art into a broader political space. At the same time, the abundant use of similes and metaphors in its rhetorical devices has carved out a more intellectual space for Chinese feminist art. The politics of Chinese feminist art enables Chinese women to regard themselves as the subjects of sexual discourse in the history of sexuality; it creates a rhetoric of Chinese feminist art’s gender politics, identity politics, and queer politics in the material practices associated with power. It also produces the discourse that the core value of Chinese feminist art is the idea that art is politics. This discursive structure transforms the discourses of politics, power, and sex into the art practices and art criticisms of Chinese feminism. This not only produces the values system for Chinese feminist art practice, but also establishes an independent values system for the criticism of Chinese feminist art.
July 2016
Chinese Feminist Art
Tong Yujie
Xi’ an Academy of Fine Arts Subject – Building Sponsored Program
Published by Today Art Museum 2018
If buy this book, please contact Tong Yujie: tong.yj@163.com
