Project Director

Prof. Dr. Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch

Research Fellow

Dr. Birgit Hopfener

 

DFG Research Project

Three year Run-Time

Start: 01.03.2012 — 30.08.2015

 

Project Description

 

Topologies of Art in Relationship to Life as a Theme in Trans-cultural Negotiation in the work of Sun Yuan, Peng Yu and Qiu Zhijie (working title)

 

The relationship between art and life is a universally recognized topos in contemporary art. The present project rests on the assumption that art-historical research in the treatment of this thematic complex has, to date, confined itself to Western modern art and avant-garde movements, both in terms of its logic and genealogies. In so doing, for all intents and purposes it has overlooked the fact that relations between art and life are rather to be understood as histories of the dissolution and demarcation of various boundaries, such as are, in turn, dependent on historical, cultural and institutional contexts.

By taking account of the trans-cultural perspectivation of the discourse, the present project focuses on the artistic practices of Chinese artists Sun Yuan, Peng Yu and Qiu Zhijie – all examples of artists who have undertaken a thorough-going critical investigation of the relationship between art and life, and, in this connection, of questions relating to art’s function and efficacy. 

The above-mentioned artists critically scrutinize culturally and historically diverging relationships and boundaries of art and life, the various types of artistic signification processes together with the aesthetic, social and ethical values and functions of art affiliated with the latter. I argue that they achieve this by way of integrating real commodities, materials and organisms and by thematizing observer experiences between participation and confrontation, and to the extent that they treat culturally and historically diverging notions of artist self-understanding.

By means of a comparative survey of the genealogies and topologies of relationships between art and life as treated in Euro-American and Chinese art, I seek to show that in this respect, the above-mentioned artists thematize cultural differences, or place them in critical relationship to one another. My further claim is that their art may be understood both as a critical investigation of central themes in European modernity – the autonomy of art versus politically relevant or committed artistic practice as claimed by avant-garde art and, consequently, by contemporary art – as well as a critical treatment of Chinese art traditions. The extent to which they discuss the relationship of art and life by making reference to premodern and modern socialist notions of art in China – which either rejected or were else unaware of a separation between art and life – and instead assumed or demanded a responsive reciprocation between life and art, between aesthetic and social or ethical practices, is also the object of research.

By presenting a detailed account of Chinese art-historical perspectives on the relationship between art and life, and by situating this in reference to its Euro-American counterpart, my objective is to augment perception of a historically and culturally differently perspectivized topological matrix of relationships between art and life, while at the same time anchoring this in a trans-cultural perspective. In order to break the usual universalism in the treatment of art and life as a theme of art, and to analyze the extent to which contemporary artists have also critically examined “other” historical and cultural structures and contexts of art, the various aspects involved will be treated methodically and genealogically, and subjected to a structural analysis; recourse will also be made to Claire Farago’s and Donald Preziosi’s work (Art is not what you think it is, 2012). The project works on the assumption that, together with the inclusion of an additional historical perspective, such critically differentiated and epistemological conditions may well prove to be a productive basis for trans-cultural perspectivisation in the discourse on contemporary art and its processes of signification.