![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_1484w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2014\/05\/28\/Foreign\/Images\/TiananmenHandoutArt041401303132.jpg?uuid=N-9IxuaZEeOnDuoYYyKTlw\")
<\/p>\nBY WILLIAM WAN May 31<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In 2006, Liu Yi began painting in secret faces meant to represent those killed in the 1989 crackdown. For years, he said, he showed the work to no one except his wife and a handful of close friends, not wanting to alienate dealers for his commercial work or get in trouble with authorities. (Courtesy of Liu Yi)<\/p>\n
\nBEIJING \u2014 Rows of faces painted in a funereal palette of black, white and gray stare from the canvas. In the middle of them lies a scene of tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square.<\/p>\n
Liu Yi has never tried to exhibit the painting, nor has he shown it to anyone besides his wife and a handful of friends, for fear of punishment by Communist Party authorities. He keeps it in his studio with other works on forbidden topics as a reminder of what he believes is his responsibility as an artist.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government wants us to talk of other things, to forget, but the feelings are still inside us,\u201d he said. \u201cAs an artist, you can\u2019t run away from the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday marks 25 years since China\u2019s leaders sent soldiers and tanks against unarmed protesters in Tiananmen Square in one of modern history\u2019s most brutal crackdowns. Since 1989, the government has tried vigorously to erase all trace of the massacre from public memory. It is rarely mentioned in schoolbooks and vigilantly censored from China\u2019s Internet.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_1484w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2014\/06\/01\/Interactivity\/Images\/LiuYitankfaces.JPG?uuid=Pcq_CukjEeOoazYv1UQ9GQ\")
\n\u201cI can\u2019t explain why, but I felt a need to do something for the people who died,\u201d said Liu Yi. \u201cOnce I finished the [painting] series, I felt a kind of peace.\u201d (William Wan\/The Washington Post)<\/p>\n
But among a small circle of artists, Tiananmen became a turning point, intensifying their opposition to the government and inspiring works that both recall the massacre and assail other government abuses. Over the years, Tiananmen has also confronted many in China\u2019s cultural world with this question: Does an artist in a repressive society have an obligation to pursue not just beauty but also truth?<\/p>\n
In the West, Ai Weiwei has been the face of this debate. A darling of the international art scene, he has long clashed with authorities at home. But he is for the most part an outlier. Most self-proclaimed dissident artists toil in obscurity with few places in China to sell their work. Their most loyal followers are often the state police who detain and interrogate them.<\/p>\n
Such artists are increasingly facing another hurdle: disdain from China\u2019s now-vibrant contemporary-art community, which is enjoying a boom in which paintings can sell for millions of dollars. Many in that world deride the dissidents\u2019 moral stances as hectoring and regard their anti-party themes as passe.
\n\u201cJust because a topic is sensitive doesn\u2019t mean it is worthwhile,\u201d said a collage artist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of authorities. \u201cThere is so much more to be explored and expressed \u2014 like life, love and death.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many dissident artists reject such reasoning as self-serving.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_742w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2014\/05\/28\/Foreign\/Images\/TiananmenHandoutArt361401303097.jpg?uuid=LAahHOaZEeOnDuoYYyKTlw\")
\nLiu Yi felt compelled to address his feelings about Tiananmen and painted a series of black-and-white portraits of those he imagined had been killed. (William Wan\/The Washington Post)<\/p>\n
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Two years ago, he began painting a series of larger portraits, this time of Tibetans who in recent years have set themselves on fire in protest. (Courtesy of Liu Yi)
\n\u201cArt is supposed to be a dialogue with society. To avoid talking about Tianamen, government oppression, corruption, things that continue to dominate our society, is to ignore reality,\u201d said Wang Zang, a Beijing writer who explores Tiananmen in his poetry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe core essence of art is freedom of expression,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is there to express if you don\u2019t have that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Testing the official red line
\nChinese artists have long wrestled with government-established limits. Today, government censorship is increasingly lax when it comes to historical figures such as Mao Zedong, the founder of Communist China, and events such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. But certain topics \u2014 such as Tiananmen, current party leaders and Tibet\u2019s autonomy movement \u2014 remain off-
\nlimits.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_1484w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2014\/05\/28\/Foreign\/Images\/TiananmenHandoutArt011401303130.jpg?uuid=L57tXOaZEeOnDuoYYyKTlw\")
\nLu Shang paints grotesque pictures of monster-headed men, which he says represent his feelings of anger and frustration toward party leaders. (Courtesy of Lu Shang\/The Washington Post)
\nSome contemporary artists inch up to the official red line but stop short of crossing it, to lend their work an edginess. Many simply explore other topics. Then there are artists who aggressively flout the censorship, like Yan Zhengxue.<\/p>\n
At 70, Yan walks with a bent back. He has lived through the dramatic evolution in China\u2019s art world since the 1949 founding of the Communist state. Tiananmen was the turning point in his work, he said in an recent interview at his home \u2014 which took place just after a visit from state security agents warning him not to talk to foreign media. Many artists have received such visits in recent weeks, and some have been detained.<\/p>\n
Too many artists in China have become obsessed with wealth and success, Yan said, the result of three decades of economic boom. \u201cBut it remains a society where the party controls all the strings, where people suffer with no explanation,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is the point of drawing the green grass or pretty flowers in the face of that?\u201d
\nYan began his career in the 1960s painting the only subjects then allowed \u2014 portraits of Mao and rosy depictions of China\u2019s working class.<\/p>\n
When the rules finally loosened in the 1980s, Yan joined others trying to build an avant-garde movement, experimenting with abstract and performance art.<\/p>\n
But then came the Tiananmen crackdown, which is estimated to have killed anywhere from hundreds of people to several thousand. Yan heard the news on the radio in his home village of Taizhou, in eastern China.<\/p>\n
Soon after, his son died in a suspicious car crash that Yan blames on police, with whom Yan had repeatedly clashed. Those two events created a fury in him that remains visible.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_1484w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2014\/06\/01\/Interactivity\/Images\/CROP-3YanZhengxue.jpg?uuid=dxYc_ukkEeOoazYv1UQ9GQ\")
\nAfter Tiananmen, Yan Zhengxue turned sharply against the government. While imprisoned for two years, he painted almost 100 works, including this one titled \u201c89.6!!!! Tiananmen.\u201d (Courtesy of Yan Zhengxue\/The Washington Post)
\nLike some artists, he had been critical of the government even before the Tiananmen killings. But afterward, Yan became part of an emboldened dissident movement committed to condemning the party and its policies more directly.<\/p>\n
He sued the government after being severely beaten in 1993 and landed in a labor camp for two years. While there, he produced a series of abstract brush paintings, hiding them in the excrement of the jail\u2019s outhouse for his friends and family to later retrieve.<\/p>\n
One of those works, titled \u201c89.6!!!! Tiananmen\u201d shows a blackened sun above a barren Tiananmen Square strewn with black-bleeding veins. Three goats stand in the middle of the square. \u201cThey represent the obedient ones, the only ones left alive,\u201d Yan explained.<\/p>\n
\u2018All stunts, phony posturing\u2019
\nOther dissident artists say the influence of Tiananmen runs through their work even as they have embraced other themes.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_742w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2014\/05\/28\/Foreign\/Images\/TiananmenHandoutArt141401303134.jpg?uuid=MRSudOaZEeOnDuoYYyKTlw\")
\nThe bloated corpses in this early work are meant to represent the corrupt nature of society. (Courtesy of Wang Peng)<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_742w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2014\/05\/28\/Foreign\/Images\/TiananmenHandoutArt271401303081.jpg?uuid=JaY-GOaZEeOnDuoYYyKTlw\")
<\/p>\n
Wang Peng said that after he learned about Tiananmen, his art became more angry and direct. (William Wan\/The Washington Post)
\nWang Peng, 43, a painter in east Beijing, now devotes almost all of his artistic efforts to protesting forced abortions carried out under China\u2019s one-child policy.<\/p>\n
Originally from a rural village, he said he didn\u2019t learn details of the Tiananmen crackdown until he obtained software in 2002 that allowed him to jump government firewalls on China\u2019s Internet.<\/p>\n
Wang had been critical of the party in much of his previous work. But his paintings had tended to be abstract, with a more diffuse political message and a greater focus on aesthetics. After finding out the government had fired on its own citizens, he abandoned painting and took up photography, persuading doctors to smuggle him bloody surgical gloves and the remains from forced abortions and incorporating them into his pictures.
\nThe Tiananmen crackdown \u201cmade me want to rip open the most shocking and ugly side of society. It made me realize beauty is not what\u2019s important, reality is,\u201d said Wang, who tutors high school art students to support his work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tiananmen Square Crackdown
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.washingtonpost.com\/rf\/image_606w\/2010-2019\/WashingtonPost\/2011\/06\/05\/Foreign\/Images\/PHO-09Jun01-163983_China009.jpg\")
\nA dissident student asks soldiers to go back home as crowds flood into central Beijing in this photo taken on June 3, 1989. After the violent suppression of the demonstrators, the government initiated a propaganda effort to quell popular discontent and remove evidence of the military attack and public resistance to it.
\nCatherine Henriette \/AFP\/GETTY IMAGES Share:
\nAi Weiwei has made a similar argument.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence,\u201d he wrote in a 2012 op-ed published in Britain\u2019s Guardian newspaper.<\/p>\n
Among China\u2019s dissident artists, no one has flirted with the censors\u2019 prohibitions as skillfully as Ai, or won as much fame and fortune while doing it.<\/p>\n
While most artists whose work criticizes the party have trouble finding venues for their creations, Ai\u2019s sculptures, photos and installations have been featured across the globe, including at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. He has tackled Tiananmen as well as censorship and government corruption.<\/p>\n
Critics deride the work of Ai and other dissident artists as gimmicky, ham-handedly provocative and too direct. They say it oversimplifies the complexities of China\u2019s society into moral rights and wrongs. But their most stinging criticism? That it\u2019s not art.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all stunts, phony posturing,\u201d said one longtime art exhibitor in Beijing, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about party-restricted topics such as Tiananmen evoked by dissident artists. \u201cIt\u2019s not so different than the government\u2019s propaganda, but a type that\u2019s aimed at pulling foreigners\u2019 heart strings. It\u2019s their way of getting noticed.\u201d
\nHundreds. possibly thousands, of people were killed in 1989 when Chinese soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Dan Southerland, The Washington Post’s Beijing bureau chief at the time, talks about what led to the anti-government demonstrations and military crackdown.
\nPhilip Tinari, director of the influential Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, has supported the work of Ai and other artists. But he takes issue with the argument put forward by dissident artists that any modern Chinese art is bogus if it doesn\u2019t confront the party or its problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo fight is perfectly valid, but so is creating a space which can offer people a place to think,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no shortage of debate among dissident artists themselves over ideological purity, fueled at times by the kind of rivalries and pettiness that can exist in artistic circles anywhere.
\nBeing a true artist, Liu said, requires ignoring not just the government\u2019s strictures but also the opinions of critics and even fellow dissidents. In recent years, Liu has moved on from portraits of Tiananmen\u2019s victims to depictions of Tibetans who have immolated themselves in anti-government protests.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must paint the truth that is inside of you, just as you must face the reality around you,\u201d Liu said. \u201cIf you do not, you will not find anything of worth to say. That\u2019s what makes real art.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liu Liu contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
From http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/china-tried-to-erase-memories-of-tiananmen-but-it-lives-on-in-the-work-of-dissident-artists\/2014\/05\/31\/4fd55a8e-e720-11e3-a86b-362fd5443d19_story.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BY WILLIAM WAN May 31 In 2006, Liu Yi be … Continue reading