A Term Paper about the phenomenon of artist-award schemes in Hong Kong art scene
* Feedback from Dr. Nick CHU Tai-sing after correcting my assignment:
A good reputation is not necessarily an original sin, right? One of the ways to launch successfully ones artistic career, as spelled out by Sarah Thornton, is to get an important award. All the policy related to art development in Hong Kong is elitist, in the sense that, like in sport development, there is no grass root planning. In Bourdieu's sense, there has been and is no desire to accumulate cultural capital for the society as a whole in Hong Kong. As such it will remain elitist, only a very few can make it big--in terms of reputation and money spinning. In general, reputation of an artist requires years to establish, as there are a lot of mechanism, institutional assessment, as well as trial by time. Yet the market in Hong Kong and China is such that this trial by time like long term investment is taken over by short term speculation and even money laundry.
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Fragmentation of artist awards in Hong Kong analyzed
1. 1
FAAS5305 Seminar in Cultural Theory & Criticism
Final Assignment
Analyze the cultural phenomenon about the fragmentation of artist-award
schemes in Hong Kong
LEE Kwun-leung Vincent (ęå čÆ) Student ID: 1007070165
Major: MA Fine Arts (Year 1, Semester 1)
The Canto-pop stars can easily obtain annual awards from the music industry
prize-giving ceremonies organized by various press-media units, whereas the athletes
from Hong Kong sport teams can strive for social recognitions through obtaining
medals from Olympic Games or Asian Games. Thereās a clear index for singers and
sport enthusiasts to pursue upward mobility and earn widespread acknowledgement
on their enhanced reputations. However, for the visual-art field, such index of
meritocracy is often vague as the artist-award schemes in Hong Kong use to be very
fragmented and even the awardees themselves can hardly gain respects from the
conservatives within the art academia.
The former colonial government has established Hong Kong Arts Development
Council in 1995 and this official unit endeavors to annually enforce the āArts
Development Awardā since 2003. This system of acknowledgement persists
effectively after the Handover. However, once Leung Chun Ying succeeded as the
Chief Executive, this artist-award scheme by the official strata began to be challenged.
Florence Hui Hiu-fai (1974 ā 2018) took up the responsibility to plan for the
establishment of Cultural Bureau. The blue-ribbon painters, such as urban-sketchers
from Civic Painting Society Camp, began to make use of this reformative opportunity1
for challenging the āartist-award schemeā culture of HKADC, asking Cultural Bureau
to be the role of traditional patron in distributing continuous premium offers of
survival supports to painters2
for the sake of getting focused to purely produce
paintings as similar as artisans from Da Fen Cun in Shenzhen practicing. The
awardees from HKADCās strata of acknowledgement, though being legitimate in
HKSAR governmentās legal and institutional level, can hardly earn respects because
the philosophy of those blue-ribbon painters think about another story which is a
1
Shaw Tze (čę»), Publishing, Fine Arts, Life åŗēļ¼čč”ļ¼äŗŗē (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Hong
Kong Company Limited, Sep 2017, 1st Edition) {P.139 - Painting is the most disastrous district within
Hong Kong's culture and art: In response to Shu Hua (ččÆ)'s "Three attempts of visits with Leung
Chun Ying for discussing the establishment of Cultural Bureau"}
2
Same as above {P.150 ā What problems have there been appearing from the visual arts in Hong
Kong? ā The HKADC should increase expenditures and make good use of these expenditures. It should
change from a passive allocation of resources to a subjective exploitation of resources.}
2. 2
desire for a direct feeding by a centralized rule as a fulfillment of pragmatism.
The reason for such ideological denial on the authority of artist-award scheme is
subjected to the matter of Sino-Western cultural dispute. If tracing Mou Zhongjian
(ēé¾é)ās explanation on how Western Civilization stresses individuality that violates
the āfamily-nationā altruistic thought of Confucianism, you can find that the
traditional Chinese art culture uses to remain with a hostile attitude against artists
climbing up the social ladder through getting any sorts of personal-brand awards by
defining this gesture as āself-centered protection of egocentric interestsā:
The origin of Western thoughts was the classical Greek philosophy that stressed
individuality. Democritus advocated āAtomismā, which was used to explain the
basic formation of substances within the Universe. Atom is a single particle.
When the particles fabricate, they form a substance. When the particles scatter,
they lead to voidnessā¦ā¦ After the Renaissance, Baruch de Spinoza advocated
āSubstantialism as a Cause of Itselfā theory, which stresses that an entity of a
substance is of self-existent, independent and eternal peculiarities. Thomas
Hobbes advocated that the self-preservation of humans is the inborn nature of
mankind, as well as a ānatural rightā of mankind. This kind of natural status
definitely causes a power struggle among humans. Therefore, āNatural Lawā
and āSocial Contractā are needed. This is associated with Xunziās thought from
China.3
Going through the ecology of art education in Hong Kong, we can hardly find a
college that grants a āStudent Artist of the Yearā eternal honour as similar as
Rosaryhill School does. The Sovereign Art Foundation began to offer āThe Sovereign
Art Foundation Students Prizeā since 2012 for letting college students in Hong Kong
optimistically and hopefully experience how a teenager of DSE Visual Arts studies can
emerge as an influential master-artist with an international reputation in advance. Of
course, the āestate collegesā deny such artist-award scheme as the educators there
worry about their students getting arrogant to overwhelm the contributions of the
elder generation and become isolated from basic-class humble services. However, if
looking at the case of the United Kingdom, the āTurner Prizeā is a very common
acknowledgement scheme hosted by Tate Modern in which the widespread British
citizens and global art lovers jointly foresee the results of annual awardees as
3
Mou Zhongjian (ēé¾é), The Contemporary Spirits of Chinese Culture äøåęåēē¶äøē²¾ē„ (Hong
Kong: Chung Hwa Book Company, Mar 2017, 1st Edition) {P.168 - Chinese Civilization stresses
family-nation as centered thought, whereas Western Civilization stresses individuality as cored basis}
3. 3
joyously as watching the K-Pop singers from āBTSā music band obtaining an āArtist of
the Yearā honour from āMAMA Music Awards 2020ā. Even for the watercolour
magazines from the United States such as the āAmerican Watercolour Societyā
catalogues, there are often some chapters for promoting artist-award scheme to
uphold some annual representational painters whom can fulfill the perfection of
Watercolour Photorealism.
The pure painters from Civic Painting Society Camp in Hong Kong would regard the
artist-award scheme as causing disorders to the curators in defining which kind of
artworks are of good qualities for collection purposes. Just like how Tomia Koyama
commented, āMerchandizing can hardly remain netural within the realm of fine
artsā4
. For example, a curator can see an ugly art piece by a renowned artist with
public honour as good for promotion, whereas he sees a pretty art piece by a
low-profile painter from Da Fen Cun as not cost-effective for promotion. The matter
of artist-award scheme can thus disorder a businessman or a clientās ability in
aesthetic judgment due to the herd mentality. Tomia Koyama even mentioned that,
āThe exploitations and productions of enterprises that connect with the artists
themselves can actually be very vague. It is because, the artworks are the creations
by various artists with various stylistic personalities. For how the finished products
should be like, it is an issue that we can hardly predictā.5
For example, a gallery from
Central called āIlluminati Fine Artsā has come up a permanent contract with Lam Tian
Xin whom has a great reputation due to its leading position of being an
Art-representative member in āCultural Coexistenceā alliance as well as being
sheltered by pro-establishment great TV stars like Lisa Wang and Cally Kwong. The
Illuminati Fine Arts requests Lam Tian Xin to keep submitting lotus ink paintings
every month for continuous exhibitions. But, owing to Lamās influential reputation
within Lisa Wangās acknowledgement, Illuminati Fine Arts as an enterprise stressing
rewards from exploitations can hardly go through the details of Lam Tian Xinās lotus
ink painting submissions and ask Lam to remove the occasional ugly pieces. So, no
matter Lam Tian Xinās pieces are good or bad, all the submissions from him will be
consistently sold to the clients whereas Lam will never strive for improvements. This
will lead to an unfair phenomenon of reputation-based keen competitions among
artists themselves without prior precaution to the beauty refinements of their
artworks at all. So, the painters from Civic Painting Society Camp strongly hope
4
Tomio Koyama, The Commercial Opportunities from Contemporary Art (Japan: ACII Media Works
Incorporation, 2008, Original Edition; Taiwan: Business Weekly Publications, a division of Cite
Publishing Limited, 2010, Translated Traditional-Chinese Edition) {P.125 - The hidden problems from
the ācommoditization of fine artsā}
5
Same as above
5. 5
The influx of leftard thoughts since Donald Tsangās administration era with Choi Yuen
Village Incident and property hegemonies also discourage Hong Kong citizens from
cherishing the awardees from artist-award schemes as precious assets of success in
Hong Kong art. As Wang Sufeng (ēē“ å³°) wrote for a publication issued by Taipei Fine
Arts Museum, it is understood that the leftards, including the social activists in Hong
Kong, usually regard the chasing for artist-award achievements as an enrichment of
their career resumes as adopting āconscious brainsā instead of āconsciencesā7
to
achieve a target rapidly through the manipulation of cunning gestures, which finally
makes a human being get exhausted from the immense pursuit on speeds within this
metropolitan realm and diminish your truthful leisure in art expressions. For example,
if youāre obliged to strive for a āSovereign Asian Art Prizeā, you cannot create some
explorative works like visual diaries, collages, printmakings, zentagles and
harmonious soft-pastel greeting card designs because these works are not
cost-effective and risky in adjudications as you can hardly highlight your
advantageous image from these works with loosened contents or an over-multiple
visions of styles. However, art is full of diversity, and art-making is not simply for
obtaining personal-brand awards. So, thereās often a point of contradiction in dealing
with these psychological struggles by some moderate artists with creative
personalities but without aggressive career aspirations. So, both the blue-ribbon
painters and the leftard artists commonly condemn artist-award scheme as not a
totally humanitarian asset of talent formation. The Civic Painting Society Camp would
argue that, not all the painters would be eager to externalize their
ācommodity-basedā materialistic desires on interests as everyone can see from the
cases of painting artisans in Da Fen Cun that they are submissively willing to serve for
the national mission of cultural prospering by putting aside their egocentric
consideration for transforming to be a hedonistic slavery of Capitalism, whereas their
ultimate glory should go to the PRC regime.
The blue-ribbon painters in Hong Kong use to draw an equal line between the
meritocracy from artist-award scheme and the idea of post-colonialism. They think
that, to the agrarian-minded knowledge of senior citizens in Hong Kong, the liaison
groups of the basic-class community would only grant āservice awardsā to those
community volunteers, and they never hear about a huge enterprise or a property
developer like K11 Atelier giving a young artist a āSovereign Asian Art Prizeā simply
because of the attractive gimmicks from a particular piece of his nominated artwork.
7
Wang Sufeng (ēē“ å³°), Post-Modern Aesthetics and Living å¾ē¾ä»£ē¾åøčēę“» (Taipei: Taipei Fine
Arts Museum, June ROC 85, 1st Edition) {P.55}
6. 6
Even for the āestate collegesā, the principals there will just grant service awards to
prefects, boy scouts, Red Cross members and Civil Aid Service members to remind
their fruits that they have to be humble in committing to the caring duties of our
basic-class society even after graduation, instead of asking their fruits to emerge as a
āpainter starā flying to the United States or Europe for showing-offs. Just like the
anti-colonialists in the West or other parts of Asia and Africa, these
proletariat-minded persons would think that, art is also enriched by āmigratory
experiencesā in which they can never be diminished by the British value of nobility
through an implementation of artist-award scheme. A statement from Anne Ring
Petersenās publication can illustrate such anti-British feeling that exactly obstructs
Hong Kong people from cherishing the āArt Development Awardā from HKADC:
In John Druckerās words, āWe jettisoned the idea of originality a long time ago.
But, oddly, we remain attached to the concept of the individual talent.ā This
traditional model continues to structure the way artists are marketed and
presented in many exhibitions, galleries and auction houses today; and there is
nothing to suggest that the marketable concept of the autonomous creator is
going to go out of use in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, we need new
conceptual models because we cannot account for the extent to which
contemporary artistic practices and careers are structured by migratory
experience without developing a conception of the artist as a relational and
transculturally interconnected subject.8
The term āmigratory experienceā by Anne Ring Petersen implies that the
anti-colonialists, including the Civic Painting Society Camp in Hong Kong supporting
the establishment of Cultural Bureau, blame the British meritocracy as not forbearing
the primitive art practices by Oriental, South American and African natives with
cultural and material flexibilities, such as the nomad paintings with tattoos and dry
leafs without any honoring to the technological visual elements as similar as
Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severiniās trend of Futurism in Italian Art.
The blue-ribbon painters would think that, Macau has demonstrated a successful
example of running an āInstituto Culturalā no matter before and after the Handover,
and it is not appropriate for HKSAR to remain HKADC as a colonial unit for persisting
with the elitist mode of artist-award scheme that further intensifies social divisions
and hierarchical exploitations. This department within the RAEM will implement an
8
Anne Ring Petersen, Migration into art ā Transcultural identities and art-making in a globalized
world (The United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 2017, 1st Edition) {P.86}
7. 7
egalitarian allocation of the exhibition chances and resources to all Macau local
artists from different age groups. The Instituto Cultural tightly collaborates with
āAssociaĆ§Ć£o de Mestres de Arte de Macauā to play the centralized role and nominate
quality artists for different joint-exhibitions, as well as contacting institutions like
FundaĆ§Ć£o Macau, Instituto para os Assuntos CĆ
vicos e Municipais and FundaĆ§Ć£o Rui
Cunha to realize these joint-exhibition proposals by offering venues. Different great
casinos, Clube Militar and Casa de Portugal em Macau also feel pleasant in helping
artists curate solo-exhibitions. But they wonāt uphold anybody as distinguished
Macau-artist stars with transcendental awardee status that overwhelm Instituto
Culturalās index of egalitarianism. In Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Arts Development
Council can exert influences to the decision-makings of various social and
commercial institutions through its artist-award scheme. For example, it has granted
an āAward for Young Artist (Visual Arts)ā to Chan Wai Lap in mid-2020 for
acknowledging his inter-disciplinary art contributions with swimming-pools as his
creative themes covering installation, painting and hand-drawn design mediums.
Then, both Tai Kwun and Karin Weber Gallery promptly cope with HKADCās
acknowledgement index to offer Chan Wai Lap sustainable chances in serving for
their Artist-in-Residence projects. Thus, everybody from our society will be aware of
Chan Wai Lapās emergence as a brand-new āswimming poolā contemporary young
artist. Chan Wai Lapās story of upward mobility is never seen in Macau, as HKADC has
successfully made Chan Wai Lap transform from an unknown status to a
suddenly-popular status that even the outsiders can initially pay attention to his
king-making charisma. Also, in Macau, the Instituto Cultural administers both library
and artist-nomination affairs. But, in Hong Kong, the Leisure & Cultural Services
Department administers Central Library and City Hall for dealing with Civic Painting
Society Campās hiring of exhibition halls from these two public facilities, whereas the
Hong Kong Arts Development Council is absolutely independent from LCSD in terms
of acknowledging contemporary artists with transcendental personal-brand awards.
So, HKADC is actually confronting with LCSDās mission in collectivized Chinese cultural
inheritance due to its unique role of commercialism under the post-colonial basis of
British meritocracy. This kind of confrontation is never seen from the compromising
politics of the Macau bureaucracy at all, and so the blue-ribbon painters in Hong
Kong urge the art-management rulers to humbly learn from the harmonious case of
Macau.
Proletariat-minded people in Hong Kong possess an anti-Freud mindset to lower
artistsā personalities
8. 8
Sigmund Freudās theory is important for the Visual Arts students who aim at winning
the āThe Sovereign Art Foundation Students Prizeā through a submission of narrative
paintings, as Freud stresses the reflection of subconscious mind as an
accomplishment of oneās āegoā for better portraying imaginative episodes as similar
as how Salvador Dali expressed his daydreaming desires to create Surrealist paintings
with illogical episodes. However, Lecan was renowned as counteracting against the
āegoā emphasis of Sigmund Freud and his theories were a violation on the evolution
of an artistās creative development. From Arthur Kroker and David Cookās analysis,
you can see that the leftards including social activists in Hong Kong tend to uphold
Lecanās ideal for justifying their anti-expressionistic approach of ethnographical art
practices:
In the fully estheticized phase of late capitalism, art as institution works to incite
desire in the designer body by providing a reception aesthetics suitable for
āpromotional cultureāā¦ā¦ā¦ Psychoanalytically, the estheticization of the
commodity-form implies that Lacanās misrecognition as the basis of the
bourgeoisie ego (the mirrored self is the fictive centre of the misplaced concrete
unity of bourgeosis identity)9
Lecan believed that artists should lower their personalities to avoid declaring their
desires and āpromotional culturesā for being objective in striving for widespread
recognitions within the institutional framework through the ādiscoursesā of
community penetrations, as well as admitting the limitations from the displacements
of unconsciousness within our āsuperegosā. Lecan was restricted to a
āfiction-orientedā mode of objective art practice, in which Deleuze and Guattari
criticized him as making a wrong allocation of dialogue application on art in terms of
striving for an anthropological level of socio-political recognitions because the
process of his psychoanalytical therapy was just a continuous re-positioning of
language notions which excluded the possibility of front-lined political and creative
engagements. However, the leftards in Hong Kong ironically adore Lecanās
āsuperego-basedā avocation by claiming that all the elites from the artist-award
scheme with narrative-painting submissions are moving towards the decaying stage
of bourgeoisie ego. The leftards think that if a genius in iconographies, who is able to
easily visualize his illusions from his āimage archiveā onto the canvas based on
Sigmund Freudās ideal, can directly win a personal-brand award and emerge as a
9
Arthur Kroker and David Cook, The Postmodern Scene ā Excremental Culture and Hyper-Aesthetics
(New York: St. Martinās Press, 1988, 2nd Edition) {P.17 & 19 - Thesis 3. Estheticized Recommodification:
Art and Postmodern Capitalism}
9. 9
kingmaker; this unfairly overwhelms the silent contributions of community-art
servants whom have done lots of solitary data collections, communicative activities,
codings and sequential analysis in a field-observer role but putting aside their
individual honours. So, they make our whole society be disheartened with the
cherishment on art elites whom can write their achievements of artist-award
schemes onto their job-hunting resumes but to prefer employing some mediocre
servants with Social Science mindsets for dealing with the art-project allocation tasks
and the collectivized portfolio-cultivation tasks.
Chinese culture never denies entrepreneurial spirits if talking about artist-award
schemes
Chinese art academia with a mixture of Confucian feudalism and Maoist socialism
uses to think that painters will definitely become famous beyond their ageing or after
their deaths, and there is no need to accumulate personal fames by obtaining
artist-awards since adolescence. The literati-painting intellectuals even suggest that
the cultivation of painting skills must connect with the long-term sedimentation of
Sinological nourishments. This kind of thought also influences the ideology of
blue-ribbon painters in Hong Kong. Just like Liang Shixiong (ę¢äøé) replied to the
interview by Guangzhou Artists Association, there is a need for painters to indulge in
a realm of persistently studying the Ancient Han Language, talking about Painting
Theories and learning poetries because being a continuous researcher in Sinology
definitely helps refine the spiritual characters of ink-paintings and calligraphies10
. If a
winner in HKACDās artist-award scheme or āSovereign Asian Art Prizeā hasnāt got a
stable foundation but emerge to be globally renowned all of a sudden, he cannot
take over the complicated collection-based creative tasks with diversified
requirements in spiritual expressions. Their lack of life experiences make them be
unable to highlight cultural significance and spirituality from their
daydreaming-based works, whereas the so-called āself-curatorshipā methodologies
cannot directly reflect their sophistication in philosophical thinkings. However, the
modern cultural-management elites from the advanced provinces of Mainland China
have abandoned such autocratic thought of judgments. Enterprises of cultural
industries in Beijing, including those administering the curatorial tasks of 798
Avant-garde Art District, will keep abreast with Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zeminās
āLetting the partial civilians become wealthy firstā rightist economic philosophies to
10
Ou Guangan (å廣å®), The Fine Arts of Guangzhou 廣å·ē¾č” (Guangzhou: Guangzhou Artists
Association, 3rd Edition of 2010) {P.46 - Sinology helps enhance the spiritual characters of literati
paintings and calligraphies}
10. 10
efficiently foster art elites based on a new party concept called āTen New Holistic
Capabilitiesā (ę°åå Ø): āmoral integrityā, āgifted talentsā, āacademic excellenceā,
āknowledgeable qualitiesā, ācourageā, āapplicable contributionsā, āforbearanceā,
āstrategic thinkingsā, āflexibilityā and āprudenceā11
. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao further
accomplished the āTen New Holistic Capabilitiesā by allowing Yue Minjun, Zhang
Xiaogang, Zeng Fanzhi and Cai Guoqiang to undergo the speculation strikes and
gigantic rewards of the global art-auction market for proving the success of Chinaās
experimentation that contemporary Chinese artists can reach the bidding level of
Damien Hirstās āFor the Love of Godā diamond skull. During Hu Jintaoās administration,
the PRC regime thoroughly trusted Donald Tsang to continue with this HKADC mode
of art-talent management, including HKADCās artist-award scheme, and connect the
acknowledgement ideal of this official unit with the planning tasks of M+ Pavilionās
establishment at West Kowloon Cultural District. Thatās why, some artists who have
obtained āArts Development Awardsā from HKADC can also be nominated by M+
Pavilion to participate in Venice Biennial Exhibition on behalf of contemporary Hong
Kong art.
The reformative version of contemporary Chinese culture is supposed as being
forbearing to the brand-promotion strategies and an emergence of individuality
because the Capitalism with Socialist features also enforces wholehearted
developers to catch up with keen competitions for adapting to the trend of
globalization. Just like Chen Fang (é³ę¾)ās analysis, earning a graceful reputation is for
a celebrity or a renowned organization to showcase his/its good qualities, or for
those un-popular persons and units to emerge as popular. Chen also reminded that
the curatorship of earning a graceful reputation can associate with the matter of how
an individual person or an organization makes use of charitable events to
demonstrate social contributions as a way of propagandizing himself/itself.12
The
urban-sketchers from Civic Painting Society Camp and the leftards from social
movements are afraid of accumulating a bunch of exhibition records, award records,
art-tutorship experiences and community-art project experiences for enriching the
resume whenever competing for the āArts Development Awardsā of HKADC. They
think that the culture of artist-award scheme is much more like a game of insurance
promoters or banking-and-financial professionals to chase the quotas for salary
increase by supervisors whereas artists should put a prior emphasis on the beauty of
their works first because the HKADC adjudicators might easily neglect this concern
11
Gao Zhanxiang (é«å ē„„), Theories of Cultural & Art Managements ęåčč”ē®”ēč« (Beijing:
Peking University Press, July 1994, 1st Edition) {P.156}
12
Chen Fang (é³ę¾), The Methodology of Cultural Curatorship ęåēååø (Beijing: Current Issues
Publishing House ęäŗåŗēē¤¾, Jan 2000, 1st Edition) {P.56-57}