The Philosophy and Art of Wang Guangyi

Abstract

Wang Guangyi, one of the stars of the new wave of Chinese art, has artistically addressed major philosophical trends in Western philosophy while drawing on Taoism, Marxism and Maoism. By bringing together a team of experts in the philosophy of art to discuss his work, The Philosophy and Art of Wang Guangyi presents the first philosophical exploration of Wang’s art, his thought and his analysis of Chinese society.

From his use of words in images to his reference to the classics of Western painting, contributors set Wang’s work against key questions in contemporary art. As well as answering what makes the language of pop art successful, they examine whether art and its history have come to an end, as Hegel posited, and if it is possible or even necessary to rework a new narrative for the history of contemporary art. The Philosophy and Art of Wang Guangyi marks an important contribution to understanding the background, work and ideas of a 21st-century political artist outside the West.

Table of contents

List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Chinese Contemporary Art: Between Deconstruction and Construction, Tiziana Andina and Erica Onnis

1. Defining the Human and Humanizing the Divine
Gratings, Barriers and Boundaries. Wang Guangyi’s Transcendental Painting, Luca Illetterati
Wang Guangyi. Popular Study on Anthropology, Demetrio Paparoni

2. Duplicating the Scene
Wang Guangyi’s “Material Spirit”: a Religion Embodied in Art, Tiziana Andina
The Tears of Pictures. Duplication and Inflection in Wang Guangyi’s Oeuvre, Enrico Terrone

3. Bridging the Cultural Divide Through Pop
On the Meanings of Propaganda, Erica Onnis
A Critique of Wang Guangyi’s “Great Criticism: Coca Cola”, Xian Zhou

4. Words and Images: Two Instruments to Describe the World
Wang Guangyi and the Culture of the Cover: on Contemporary Pop Art and Political Theology, Babette Babich
The Globalist Dimension of Art. Wang Guangyi and Transculturalism, Davide Dal Sasso

5. Erasing the Emotions
Grief and the Power of the Mind, Carola Barbero
Thinking with Idols. A Conversation with Wang Guangyi, Andrew Cohen

6. The Circle of Life: Presenting and Representing Food.
Food Art, A Hymn to Nature, Mary Bittner Wiseman
Food in Wang Guangyi’s Art, Nicola Perullo

7. In Dialogue with Wang Guangyi
Nothingness, God, the Soul and the World. A Conversation with Wang Guangyi, Demetrio Paparoni
Dark Learning, Mysticism and Art. A Conversation with Wang Guangyi, Yan Shanchun

Index

Reviews

“Wang Guangyi is the most significant painter to have emerged out of the 1980s encounter between Western and Chinese postmodernisms. This volume’s essays and interviews –adeptly traversing conventional boundaries of art criticism, philosophy, history, and political theory-comprise the most significant treatment in English of Guangyi’s ironic, intellectual, cool, subversive, and yet wildly popular art. And more generally, the book makes vivid how Chinese contemporary art, despite deploying seemingly similar aesthetic strategies to those found in the West, developed out of substantially sui generis concerns.” –  Jonathan Gilmore, Associate Professor of Philosophy, City University of New York, USA,

“By focusing on Wang Guangyi, a trendsetter in contemporary Chinese art since the mid-1980s, this original volume presents a variety of angles to rethink many key concepts and visual strategies in contemporary art across the East-West divide. In so doing it provides an unusually detailed and sensitive analysis of an important artist as well as a possible model for transregional and interdisciplinary studies on global contemporary art.” –  Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor, The University of Chicago, USA.

The editors

Tiziana Andina is a Full Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Science Education at the University of Turin, Italy.

Erica Onnis is a post-doctoral fellow in theoretical philosophy at the University of Turin, Italy.