High Life

36 品 Xu Bing on Chinese contemporary art “The rise of China’s economy for surewill contribute to the development of Chinese contemporary art and Chinese artists. Its marketization, market price and art price increase will actually arouse the world’s attention to Chinese contemporary art. “However, the essence of the problem is actually the value of Chinese contemporary art. Due to the fast development of mankind including science and technology, our old doctrines and values are in fact beginning to collapse. At this juncture, China is rising. It is in fact in search of a newway of civilization. “This is the reason I come back to China, because I really think China is a very experimental place. It gives us too much inspiration, too much possibility, too much space, but complicated problems as well. If China’s search can finally achieve success or obtain a result that would provide a reference and direction to civilization for the next stage in humanity, Chinese artists will become important at that time. But if we cannot find the way for the future of civilization, none of the Chinese artists will be important. Because the core of the art is not artwork. “Why were the American artists of the last century so important? It’s because they, through their art, instructed and revealed the spirit of Americancivilizationinthelastcentury – and such civilization was important because it promoted the progress of civilization as a whole, therefore all their artists were important. “For today’s artist, whoever can unveil the method and core spirit of today’s Chinese civilization as Andy Warhol revealed the spirit of American civilization of the last century, his art might matter. But that also depends on whether such a civilized exploration will be positive or not.”