Monday, September 24, 2007
Linda Lai's first response to YY
Dear YY and all,
Accidentally checking mail when I should be fully retreating for the sake of restoring some peace of mind and recovering from the many wounds of being part of the institution... I felt it's just not right to keep silent.
YY, I wouldn't want to be defensive. I, too, wish there had been more dialogue among us. If it didn't happen, we can still make it, like you have written and raised those questions that are burning issues for you... I am not sure if we can always address every single member of the audience. Perhaps you wanted to come to hear a dialogue, others may just want to hear something... So I assume that I'm now in dialogue with you because now one member of the audience is eager to re-open the conversation.
(BTW, you addressed Leungpo a few times, but her name is not on your mailing list.)
I agree there was not enough dialogue within the session, but personally I knew everything I said was in response and relevant to the 1st rount-table discussion: the need for smaller histories, and more and more histories on different levels, as well as the necessity, at least for the time being, to break down the many big terms we've been throwing around to secure a stronger ground on the factual level. (Please don't take this as naive subscription to facts nor the neutrality of facts...)
In yesterday's event, these voices -- pointing to the more micro-level of contemplating/writing/living/making history -- just came out very clear to me. Actually, before attending the event, I was rather uncertain about whether the thoughts in my mind I've put into a presentation were relevant to the event until I sat through the 1st round-table session, and were glad that there was connection here and there among us.
NOW A RSPONSE TO YOUR QUESTION FOR ME.
"Linda, you positioned yourself as pro-interdisciplinarity. Rigorous interdisciplinarity requires the contributions of truly multiple disciplines of definitions, and comparing them. How does it fall into / negotiate with the fact that at least four times (from Jaspar, Leung Po, Linda yourself, Koon), speakers in the symposium felt obliged, and to communicate that obligation, that he/she is or is not a historian? I don't get it."
Yes, I'm truly pro-interdisciplinarity. When I said this, I have in mind pictures and memeories of some lousy, fashionable claims for interdisciplinarity in Cultural Studies...-- pure narrativity, with jargons from different disciplines, and games of rhetorics by which terms from one discipline slip into those of another, from one paragraph to another, one sentence to the next, and sometimes within a sentence. Yes, rigorous interdisciplinarity requires the contributions of truly multiple disciplines of definitions. Are you suggesting I'm cheating? What do you expect me to do within 10 minutes when I could barely make some intimate thoughts of mine accessible and articulable? All I can tell you is: when working through my interdisciplinary position in my Ph.D. thesis,
I almost killed myself by working through many basic concepts in urban geography, cartography, philosophy, literary theory, and so on to gain sufficient understanding to the many aspects of questions arising from my research. At one point, I wanted so much to have someone in law in to help me read through a long set of regulations on theatre security discussed in the Legco, which I later on gave up for lack of time...
I don't know whether I'm answering your question or not. But I don't get why you tie this to the fact of different people hesitating to claim themselves historian. I'm not an art historian simply because I'm not by profession. But I'm trained in historiography and therefore I was not so ashamed that I wouldn't participate in this event. I believe a more constructive way to address your question is to open up the activity of historiography. It is more important that we break down the job of creating digestible stories with clean-cut positions to a multi-faceted set of tasks that involve people from different disciplines. The issue is how[type-mistake???] is a historian and who is not; it's who and how and at what moment we prove ourselves to to practicing the writing of history. Of course, one other issue would be to talk about the locations / sites in which art history is produced -- any assumed location,
official/legitimate locations? what other locations? any unnoticeable and explorable locations?
YOU ALSO MENTIONED THIS...
"There was still some kind of underlying message in the symposium that
tried to protect art from its social political economic (blah blah)
conditions..."
-- This is not my position. I am with you. The problem of the
understanding and writing of art history in HK has been jeopardized by the
attempt to defend the sacred-ness of art...
ONE LAST POINT YOU MENTIONED I'M CITING HERE...
"I was disappointed because once again, I found myself in a situation
where I wanted to learn from the speakers, not by way of their giving
something to me, but simply in terms of how they TALK TO EACH OTHER,
staging the possibility of conversation. I didn't find much conversation
doing on between speakers, how they connect. Or maybe I just missed
something."
-- I cannot speak for the others. But I did come with a sincere attempt to throw out some organized thinking I've worked on (and still working on) for many years. I wanted to throw it out to see what people think, and to see if someone can dialogue with me. I had the feeling that Victor Lai and I have some common concern because we're both asking what to do. I think Leungpo and I in a sense both point to something similar (not everything similar) but with very different rhetoric and language. I felt that when Jaspar kept saying that he wanted to go back to more theoretical issues, he didn't think grounded and reasoned methodologies could be the most rigorous theoretical issues. I felt that when Andrew Lam brought in those questions of authenticity, he's turning a scenario just made a bit more lucid back to a muddy, fussy state...
Lastly, I want to thank you, YY, for re-kindling the fire for conversations. I hope we can talk more. Actually, I left in peace yesterday at end of the round-table because quite a few people came to tell me they wanted to talk more and to have more conversations. I guess that's what I wanted.
Can't write more now. I need to rest.
Best,
Linda
Accidentally checking mail when I should be fully retreating for the sake of restoring some peace of mind and recovering from the many wounds of being part of the institution... I felt it's just not right to keep silent.
YY, I wouldn't want to be defensive. I, too, wish there had been more dialogue among us. If it didn't happen, we can still make it, like you have written and raised those questions that are burning issues for you... I am not sure if we can always address every single member of the audience. Perhaps you wanted to come to hear a dialogue, others may just want to hear something... So I assume that I'm now in dialogue with you because now one member of the audience is eager to re-open the conversation.
(BTW, you addressed Leungpo a few times, but her name is not on your mailing list.)
I agree there was not enough dialogue within the session, but personally I knew everything I said was in response and relevant to the 1st rount-table discussion: the need for smaller histories, and more and more histories on different levels, as well as the necessity, at least for the time being, to break down the many big terms we've been throwing around to secure a stronger ground on the factual level. (Please don't take this as naive subscription to facts nor the neutrality of facts...)
In yesterday's event, these voices -- pointing to the more micro-level of contemplating/writing/living/making history -- just came out very clear to me. Actually, before attending the event, I was rather uncertain about whether the thoughts in my mind I've put into a presentation were relevant to the event until I sat through the 1st round-table session, and were glad that there was connection here and there among us.
NOW A RSPONSE TO YOUR QUESTION FOR ME.
"Linda, you positioned yourself as pro-interdisciplinarity. Rigorous interdisciplinarity requires the contributions of truly multiple disciplines of definitions, and comparing them. How does it fall into / negotiate with the fact that at least four times (from Jaspar, Leung Po, Linda yourself, Koon), speakers in the symposium felt obliged, and to communicate that obligation, that he/she is or is not a historian? I don't get it."
Yes, I'm truly pro-interdisciplinarity. When I said this, I have in mind pictures and memeories of some lousy, fashionable claims for interdisciplinarity in Cultural Studies...-- pure narrativity, with jargons from different disciplines, and games of rhetorics by which terms from one discipline slip into those of another, from one paragraph to another, one sentence to the next, and sometimes within a sentence. Yes, rigorous interdisciplinarity requires the contributions of truly multiple disciplines of definitions. Are you suggesting I'm cheating? What do you expect me to do within 10 minutes when I could barely make some intimate thoughts of mine accessible and articulable? All I can tell you is: when working through my interdisciplinary position in my Ph.D. thesis,
I almost killed myself by working through many basic concepts in urban geography, cartography, philosophy, literary theory, and so on to gain sufficient understanding to the many aspects of questions arising from my research. At one point, I wanted so much to have someone in law in to help me read through a long set of regulations on theatre security discussed in the Legco, which I later on gave up for lack of time...
I don't know whether I'm answering your question or not. But I don't get why you tie this to the fact of different people hesitating to claim themselves historian. I'm not an art historian simply because I'm not by profession. But I'm trained in historiography and therefore I was not so ashamed that I wouldn't participate in this event. I believe a more constructive way to address your question is to open up the activity of historiography. It is more important that we break down the job of creating digestible stories with clean-cut positions to a multi-faceted set of tasks that involve people from different disciplines. The issue is how[type-mistake???] is a historian and who is not; it's who and how and at what moment we prove ourselves to to practicing the writing of history. Of course, one other issue would be to talk about the locations / sites in which art history is produced -- any assumed location,
official/legitimate locations? what other locations? any unnoticeable and explorable locations?
YOU ALSO MENTIONED THIS...
"There was still some kind of underlying message in the symposium that
tried to protect art from its social political economic (blah blah)
conditions..."
-- This is not my position. I am with you. The problem of the
understanding and writing of art history in HK has been jeopardized by the
attempt to defend the sacred-ness of art...
ONE LAST POINT YOU MENTIONED I'M CITING HERE...
"I was disappointed because once again, I found myself in a situation
where I wanted to learn from the speakers, not by way of their giving
something to me, but simply in terms of how they TALK TO EACH OTHER,
staging the possibility of conversation. I didn't find much conversation
doing on between speakers, how they connect. Or maybe I just missed
something."
-- I cannot speak for the others. But I did come with a sincere attempt to throw out some organized thinking I've worked on (and still working on) for many years. I wanted to throw it out to see what people think, and to see if someone can dialogue with me. I had the feeling that Victor Lai and I have some common concern because we're both asking what to do. I think Leungpo and I in a sense both point to something similar (not everything similar) but with very different rhetoric and language. I felt that when Jaspar kept saying that he wanted to go back to more theoretical issues, he didn't think grounded and reasoned methodologies could be the most rigorous theoretical issues. I felt that when Andrew Lam brought in those questions of authenticity, he's turning a scenario just made a bit more lucid back to a muddy, fussy state...
Lastly, I want to thank you, YY, for re-kindling the fire for conversations. I hope we can talk more. Actually, I left in peace yesterday at end of the round-table because quite a few people came to tell me they wanted to talk more and to have more conversations. I guess that's what I wanted.
Can't write more now. I need to rest.
Best,
Linda
Jaspar's notes on roundtable responses
HistoriCITY
As I said in my introduction before the roundtable, HistoriCITY is just a term I picked for grouping the three projects (art exhibition/reading groups/roundtable) I have with AAA under one umbrella for publicity purpose, and hence it was actually devised later than the whole project.
(sorry as well if I have the habit of not really taking seriously the publicity stuffs, which might actually be the only information the general public could get of the event. But while I allowed AAA to handle what to send out, I always posted the materials I prepared (most of these full version text of mine were considered not suitable for publicity purpose by our team) here in this blog of the project. And the link of this blog should have been included in the publicity stuffs all the while. So if you were getting AAA email, then all materials for the project should only be a click away.)
The whole project relation tie with CITY, should thus be treat as solely a word play on historicity, by revealing where this concern sprung up, that of Hong Kong, a very specific city. And I am still happy with it as it hints on more things under the present Hong Kong social context, but CITY was never intend to be the structuring view of the project. (I am sorry if it leads to directional misunderstanding, instead of more possible imagination as I believe. John Batten, for example, wrote us an email at a pretty late stage, suggesting us a whole list of different speakers (more concern with heritage preservation etc.), that we should included based on that intonation.)
Art Historical Writing in/on Hong Kong
If the whole project has really one focus/structuring perspective (of mine), then rather than trying to figure it out from the press release (which is a joint effort between me and AAA supporting team), I rather say it is the insistent usage of the term art historical writing (distinct from Art History) throughout the project. And this e.g., was definitely inspired by James Elkins' book Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts -- Art History as Writings. (Mentioning him in trying to explain how this project came about, and paying him the credit, I therefore think is instrumental and a necessary token of gratitude).
in/on, too, are consciously pick to divide up the huge subject, but the two are not really supposed to be read as therefore separate issues. But when we have to decide on the roundtable structure, it came in handy.
Even more unfortunately, the rounds of emails AAA send out has not included the session title, and so the speakers has perhaps not a clear idea the specific topic of their own session, so when part of the synopses came in, we discovered that a number of the speakers from the first session are responding to the methodological issue raised. This is however equally fine to me, or suit even more my original goal.
Originally, the roundtable has three sessions. But from the reading group experience, since there was not a great enthusiasm to discuss methodological issues (which is what I planned to cover most in the reading group), I decided to drop the separate session on methodology out and let it to be discussed in both sessions. (We do invite the panel speakers to come to our reading groups, unfortunately only a few of them did or could made it, so their actual interests were therefore not so well reflected in the structuring of the roundtable.)
But as I have responsed right the way before the roundtable on their synopses in the blog here, I have already tried to build up connection or possible dialogue e.g. between the Chinese writings of Lu Peng on the methodological issues of Art History and Frank's presentation on world art history. And that moment of shared understanding actually did occurred in Lu Peng comment on Frank's presentation that day.
Roundtable
For me, the rountable should be a discussion platform for the coming together of the three projects. Now it seems to be just a beginning. It owed to the unsuccessful execution of the art project, the reading group and the roundtable itself. But if it is really a beginning, then this is already worthy enough for me, despite things could always be better.
My model for the roundtable is the Art Criticism Panel discussion held by, again, James Elkins in Chicago, that I attended. There were some guest speakers talks on the day before, but the panel discussion was really organized as an open and quite free format for the speakers on stage to have spontaneous dialogue and discussion, rather than each having some separate time, giving their own speech or prepared materials. (Of course, Elkins as the moderator handled the flow of the discussion in an active manner. While our moderator for the first session, AAA researcher Wen Yau, wasn't there in most of our reading group sessions.)
more on how we decided on [the HC roundtable guest speakers list]
and my role as a [co-initiator /moderator] later,
but it is worthy to note, that while I actually do not feel it is necessary even to impose the speakers to have something prepared to say, I finally agreed with AAA to ask each speakers to prepare a five minutes short speech on their interested topic. For the presenter, I guess it is always more secure this way. Taking in the suggestion from Andrew Lam, we also invited them to lunch before the roundtable so they could gather together and have some more communication beforehand, but unfortunately only very few of them showed up.
Yet, despite of that, most speakers seemed to prefer to be far more well-prepared than we suggested them to, with some having their own powerpoint presentation or speech that lasted much more than fifteen minutes. But as I said at the beginning that day, the roundtable is actually setup for them, so I did not refrain them to talk if they want to, as long as everyone could have approx. the same length if they want to. And unfortunately, dialogue was thus at the expense of this lax policy of moderation of mine, particularly in the second session, with two speakers less, but also a shorter session.
Planted Questions for Speakers
Listed below, is my list of questions posed for the speakers (which I was only able to prepare in the morning before the roundtable, and despite it was attached onto every speaker's clipboard, I guess not much of the speakers read through it, as far as I recall, only Frank mentioned the first question posted in it. do note e.g. the way I put "art of/in Hong Kong" as distinct from "HK Art", which Frank also brought up in his speech that day.)
Art Historical Writing on HK
Are you satisfied with the existing historical writings on art of Hong Kong?
Or the present progress of art history writing on art of Hong Kong?
What are their most noteworthy contribution? What are their biggest problem/deficit?
What models are available for us to frame art in Hong Kong, or
stereotypes of Hong Kong Art still need to be deconstructed?
Historically speaking, is (art in) Hong Kong such a unique/universal case? that existing grander narratives (models or paradigm) do not fit? or that cliché works too well? which in turn reflection on art historical writing on Hong Kong might have something to contribute to the discipline?
East still meet West? Modernity still our unfinished project?
Has Hong Kong’s subjectivity emerged? Or decolonization leads to the looming of a “Hong Kong, China” perspective?
Art History in Hong Kong
Are you an art historian? How do you count yourself as one or not?
What is the essential relationship between art and history?
Do you have any reservation by calling/treating Art History as Art Historical Writing?
What’s is the difference between them in your mind?
Do you find art history as a discipline in Hong Kong striving or being disregarded? Why?
Is Hong Kong’s historical consciousness in the reawakening? And art history a part of it?
What is the largest obstacles for producing art historical research at present in Hong Kong?
Is it methodological or practical?
Art Historical Writing
What is the most significant reason we (the public) should attend to art history (in general) today?
Have you notice any methodological discussion of the discipline going on, locally or worldwide, that you think is worthwhile to introduce to the discussion today?
“Why Don’t Art Historians Attend Aesthetics Conferences?”
(What is the relationship between Art History and Aesthetics or Art Theory?)
What are the potentials, for an art historian to deal with contemporary art?
(What possible relationship is there between Art History and Art Criticism and Curating?)
What is the relation between Visual Culture / Visual Studies and Art History as you understand it?
What is, in your opinion, going to be the most significant development of the art history discipline ahead? Transdisciplinarity perhaps?
[more of my more specific response will be under the comment section of that specific entry.]
HC:AP
Picture for Tsang Tak-Ping, 2007
after Jeff Wall's Picture for Women, 1979
after Jeff Wall's Picture for Women, 1979
HistoriCITY Roundtable / 歷史 - 城
- Art Historical Writing in and On Hong Kong
- 香港藝術史書寫 圓桌座談會
29 September 2007 (Sat), 2:00-6:00pm
Lecture Hall (B/F), Hong Kong Museum of Art, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
Presented by Asia Art Archive and mMK and supported by Hong Kong Museum of Art
2007年9月29日 (星期六) 下午二時至六時
香港九龍尖沙咀梳士巴利道10號
香港藝術館演講廳 (地庫)
亞洲藝術文獻庫及mMK 主辦/香港藝術館協辦
Session 1
Art Historical Writing on Hong Kong
(to be delivered in English and Mandarin)
第一節 在藝術歷史書寫中的香港 (以英語及普通話進行)：
張頌仁 (漢雅軒總監)
CHANG Tsong-zung (Director, Hanart TZ Gallery)
呂澎 (藝術史學家、藝評人，現居於成都)
LU Peng (Art Historian and Critic based in Chengdu)
萬青屴 (香港浸會大學視覺藝術學院總監)
WAN Qingli (Director, Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University)
朱錦鸞 (香港藝術館前總館長)
Christina Chu (Former Chief Curator, Hong Kong Museum of Art)
官綺雲 (香港大學藝術系助理教授)
KOON Yee Wan (Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Arts, The University of Hong Kong)
Pamela KEMBER (Lecturer Art History & Theory Hong Kong Art School / 香港藝術學院藝術史及理論講師)
Frank VIGNERON (Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Chinese University of Hong Kong / 香港中文大學藝術系教授)
Session 2
Art Historical Writing in Hong Kong
(to be delivered in Cantonese)
第二節 藝術歷史書寫在香港 (以廣東話進行)：
李世莊 (香港藝術歷史研究會副主席)
Jack LEE (Vice Chairman, Hong Kong Art History Research Society)
林漢堅 ( MOST館長)
Andrew LAM (Curator, MOST)
梁寶山 (文化工作者)
LEUNG Po Shan (Cultural Worker)
黎肖嫺 (香港城市大學創意媒體學院助理教授)
Linda LAI (Assistant Professor, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong)
黎明海 (香港教育學院體藝學系副教授)
Victor LAI (Associate Professor, Department of Creative Arts and Physical Education, The Hong Kong Institute of Education)
Moderators / 主持：
魂游 (亞洲藝術文獻庫香港研究員)
Wen Yau (AAA Researcher for Hong Kong),
劉建華 (mMK策劃人)
Jaspar LAU Kin Wah (mMK conceiver)
Presented by: Asia Art Archive and mMK Supported by:Hong Kong Museum of ArtEnquiry/Reservation: Janet CHAN at AAA (2815 1112 / janet@aaa.org.hk)
主辦機構：亞洲藝術文獻庫及mMK
協辦機構：香港藝術館
查詢或留座：亞洲藝術文獻庫 陳靜昕(2815 1112或janet@aaa.org.hk)
- 香港藝術史書寫 圓桌座談會
29 September 2007 (Sat), 2:00-6:00pm
Lecture Hall (B/F), Hong Kong Museum of Art, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
Presented by Asia Art Archive and mMK and supported by Hong Kong Museum of Art
2007年9月29日 (星期六) 下午二時至六時
香港九龍尖沙咀梳士巴利道10號
香港藝術館演講廳 (地庫)
亞洲藝術文獻庫及mMK 主辦/香港藝術館協辦
Session 1
Art Historical Writing on Hong Kong
(to be delivered in English and Mandarin)
第一節 在藝術歷史書寫中的香港 (以英語及普通話進行)：
張頌仁 (漢雅軒總監)
CHANG Tsong-zung (Director, Hanart TZ Gallery)
呂澎 (藝術史學家、藝評人，現居於成都)
LU Peng (Art Historian and Critic based in Chengdu)
萬青屴 (香港浸會大學視覺藝術學院總監)
WAN Qingli (Director, Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University)
朱錦鸞 (香港藝術館前總館長)
Christina Chu (Former Chief Curator, Hong Kong Museum of Art)
官綺雲 (香港大學藝術系助理教授)
KOON Yee Wan (Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Arts, The University of Hong Kong)
Pamela KEMBER (Lecturer Art History & Theory Hong Kong Art School / 香港藝術學院藝術史及理論講師)
Frank VIGNERON (Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Chinese University of Hong Kong / 香港中文大學藝術系教授)
Session 2
Art Historical Writing in Hong Kong
(to be delivered in Cantonese)
第二節 藝術歷史書寫在香港 (以廣東話進行)：
李世莊 (香港藝術歷史研究會副主席)
Jack LEE (Vice Chairman, Hong Kong Art History Research Society)
林漢堅 ( MOST館長)
Andrew LAM (Curator, MOST)
梁寶山 (文化工作者)
LEUNG Po Shan (Cultural Worker)
黎肖嫺 (香港城市大學創意媒體學院助理教授)
Linda LAI (Assistant Professor, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong)
黎明海 (香港教育學院體藝學系副教授)
Victor LAI (Associate Professor, Department of Creative Arts and Physical Education, The Hong Kong Institute of Education)
Moderators / 主持：
魂游 (亞洲藝術文獻庫香港研究員)
Wen Yau (AAA Researcher for Hong Kong),
劉建華 (mMK策劃人)
Jaspar LAU Kin Wah (mMK conceiver)
Presented by: Asia Art Archive and mMK Supported by:Hong Kong Museum of ArtEnquiry/Reservation: Janet CHAN at AAA (2815 1112 / janet@aaa.org.hk)
主辦機構：亞洲藝術文獻庫及mMK
協辦機構：香港藝術館
查詢或留座：亞洲藝術文獻庫 陳靜昕(2815 1112或janet@aaa.org.hk)
Section 2 / Andrew Lam
‘FAULT LINES’ AND ‘HISTORICITY’
Over centuries, the western world witnessed a period of exponential growth in the discipline of art historical writing. Giogrio Vasari, Karel van Mander, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Jacob Burckhardt, Giovanni Morelli, Heinrich Wolffin, Paul Frankl, Roger Fry, Erwin Panofsky, Arnold Hauser, Susan Sontag, E. H. Gombrich, William Fagg, T. J. Clark, Michael Baldwin, Hans Belting… emerged one by one. Since 1980s, the paradigm of object-based research has been shifting to a more problem-based contextual study. Some historians announce that art history comes to an end. (1)
THE GEOLOGICAL TERM ‘FAULT LINES’ IS USED HERE TO DESCRIBE DISPLACEMENTS AND DISCONTINUITIES OF STRATA IN A PLATEAU/ BODY OF WRITING, WHICH CAN FUNCTION TO CONNECT HISTORY, ART, AND ART-HISTORICAL WRITING. (2)
Throughout the ages, ‘fault lines’ within the writings of art, art history and general history has naturally existed and it is doubtful whether there is any ‘perfect’ or ‘scientific’ model of art-historical writing. What i query here, however, is the way interpretation is made and the way art history is interpreted/ related to general history, or the way it contributed to ‘The Idea of History’, by using object of art to illustrate humanity history.
‘FAULT LINES’ APPEARS ON THE PROFESSION AND STRUCTURE OF ART HISTORY.
Can art historian restore the many missing social dimensions of art? Art historian is not a ‘social worker’, spending days and nights analyzing art’s social circumstances of production. Art historian is neither a professor of all things, nor a person well trained in the realm of cultural theory. Since 1980s, the pedagogy of cultural study has long replaced context-based art-historical writing, and the magnetic power of cultural criticism has been a shaping force and a key public voice of society. It seems that editors of cultural column have long put aside the authentic or traditional art-historical writing!
Historical study of Neolithic art is seemingly more ‘objective’, since research conducted is more factual and verifiable. Very often, contemporary historian founds facts in a ‘closed’ situation where he/ she might keep a distance from the artist(s) or reality. Since contemporary history is best- and- well known to the public, new interpretation or assumption about art is meant to be used and that would displace/ deflect the truth and reality. The more ‘interpretative’ and ‘framing’ in writing, the more ‘subjective’ in contemporary history...
‘FAULT LINES’ HAS NO VALUE?
Contemporary art in Hong Kong can signify and name a collective value (i.e. expression of an identity) and is a speaking subject, due to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and the West Kowloon Cultural District issue. Art history, however, is not a speaking subject and in a traditional sense, should not embody personal, political, or commercial value. Nowadays, art history is under threat; it is being assimilated by new historiography and cultural studies. Art history (a term already implies a broader meaning than the more object-based ‘history of art’) is now founded from the influences of feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, philosophy, post-Marxist criticism, post-structuralism and socio-political ideas. New ideas are borrowed from theatre, literature, linguistic, semiotics and the like. Art history is no longer an attribution study and is no longer about style (3), dating, authenticity, rarity, reconstruction, forgery discern, rediscovery of forgotten artists... It is no longer a focus on art’s very systems of representation and social contexts. In an era of intellectual expansion and aesthetic dwindling, traditional art history is imbue with hybrid and eccentric disciplines. IT SHOULD BE THE POWER OF ‘FAULT LINE’, WHICH CAN EXPLORE AND DISPLACE THE TRADITIONAL INTELLIGENCE/ LOGIC OF AESTHETIC, AESTHETIC TRAJECTORIES AND CULTURAL TRAJECTORIES BY PRESENTING/ REVEALING THE WHOLE STRATA AND CONCEPTION OF HISTORICAL FACT. That is a new ‘value’ that art history can ‘name’ and develop!
CONCEALED BY STREAMS AND FORESTS, ‘FAULT LINES’ IS HARDLY VISIBLE IN A LOCAL TERRAINE. IT IS MORE ‘VISIBLE’ FROM A SATELLITE.
Local ‘provocative’ and ‘forgotten’ artists such as Yan Lei (i.e. Artist of Documenta XII), Chan Kwok Yan (Times: First Person of Graffiti in Asia), Paul Chan, Tse Suk Nei, Pan Xing Lei, Cheong Chi Ping, Happening Group and even “The King of Kowloon” (Artist of the Venice Biennial 2003) are more internationally recognized rather than being accepted in a small, sectorized circle.
THE ‘FAULT LINES’ OR DOUCUMENTATION OF VERBAL/ NON-VISUAL EXPERIENCE, SIMILAR TO THE TANGENT EXISTING IN PARTIAL RELATION TO THE PLATEAU/ WHOLENESS OF HISTORY OR HUMANITY STUDY, HAS SAME SIGNIFICANCE TO PUBLISHED LITERATURE.
Since art history is no longer an attribution research, the most ‘reliable’ aspect of contemporary art history could be the verbal experience and the reality re-constructed/ collected during the course of an interview. It could be the true ‘Oral History’ which is definitely more objective than partial interpretation/ documentation in art-historical writing, and which obscures the boundary between the object-based art history and non-problem-based art criticism here. Interview and audio documentation conducted by ‘Fung Man Yee/ Boundary’, ‘Cultural Coolies/ The Hong Kong Art Center’ and ‘Claire Hsu/ Asia Art Archive’ is certainly worthwhile and we also need William Fulong’s Audio Arts or similar type of documentary magazine in Hong Kong for the collection and publication of verbal experience in the process of artistic production and reception.
THE POTENCY OF ‘FAULT LINES’ COULD BE POSITIVE.
Constructive institutional critique or minority voices are usually being missed or neglected in official historical writings or reports. Ever since The High Court declared that The Hong Kong Arts Development Council’s rejection of James Wong’s application for the curatorship of the Hong Kong exhibition in the 50th Venice Biennial (Visual Arts) was unlawful, amazingly there has been no writing report following up the case and problem displayed by the Council. Even more problematic is that the statutory Council did not report the case to the public. (4) If we look at changing power within art and art history as normal and positive, the process of historical authentication and documentation of contemporary art in Hong Kong should be revealed without impartiality. Interpretation-immersed contemporary art narration is partly a power-played fabrication and partly a re-invented connoisseurship.
‘FAULT LINES’ APPEARS ON HISTORICITY.
Hong Kong is not a historic city, but it is a big story-telling city. Art-historical writings tend to be grand-narrating or story-telling. Historicity (Historical authenticity) embodies ‘factificity’ (factual analysis/ support), ‘objectivity’ (objective attitude/ activity) and ‘scientificity’ (scientific identification/ verification). No monograph records history exactly the same way in all historical dimensions and reality. Only certain aspect of historical reality can be re-presented. The Sheldon Adelson’s 20-billion Venetian Macao (2007), which puts an effort to re-present/ fabricate a ‘complete’ or ‘99%’ Venice in a 21st Century Macao is at all impossible. Historicity makes sense only if the right attitude, language and pedagogy have been taken. Authentic writing of a ‘total’ art history of Hong Kong would not make sense until the material base (i.e. film, oral history and archival materials) of an authentic research is available for public verification. Generalization of fact turns history ‘abstracted’ and ‘suppressed’, but the material base for verification remains unchallenged.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, MODERN HISTORY TELLS THAT SUPPRESSION IN THE FORM OF ABSTRACTION ONLY BRINGS ABOUT ‘RESISTANCE’ OR ALTERNATIVE DISCOURSE. REPORTAGE ON RESISTANCE OR ‘FAULT LINES’ HELPS TO RE-CONSTRUCT THE ‘COMPLETENESS’ AND ‘FACTIFICITY’ OF HISTORY.
‘FAULTS LINES’ HELPS TO REVEAL AND ARGUE WHY ART HISTORICAL WRITING SHOULD BE FOUNDED ON A MORE SOLID BASE OF THEORETICAL AND FACTUAL EVIDENCE. IN THE PROCESS OF CITY-MAKING, IT IS IMPORTANT TO HAVE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN (ARCHITECT) TO BUILD VISION ON VENICE, RATHER THAN A ‘VENETIAN’ BUILDING ON OLD KNOWLEDGE. HISTORY WRITING IS NOT A PURE SCIENCE, BUT IT MUST BE ‘OBJECTIVE’! (5)
FOOTNOTES:
1. Please refer to Hans Belting “The End of the History of Art (1984)”, in Eric Femie edit., Art Hstory and Its Methods. London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1995, p. 291-295. The view is also mentioned in Chapter 17, Vernon Hyde Minor, Art History’s History. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1994, p. 204, “Consequences for Art History”.
2. Gilane Tawadros’ s curatorial project “Fault Lines” for the Venice Biennial 2003 revealed African art’s emerging landscape after globalization. This essay can be viewed as an extension of Gilane’s creative approach with a new dimension looking at problems of art history.
3. Art history is no longer about style; but Henich Wollflin’s Principles of Art History should be conceived as ‘revolutionary’ as modern art’s total dissociation with religion in the early 20th century. He recognized and elevated the importance of ‘style’ in formal analysis over iconographical and contextual disciplines. ‘Fault Lines’ or oral history in art-historical writing could be deemed as important as past pedagogies of learning/ researching in an era of media and communicative culture.
4. For the historical details and verdict, please refer to the hyperlink of The High Court: Case No. HCAL 57/2003.
5. Please review the whole book of Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1989.
Over centuries, the western world witnessed a period of exponential growth in the discipline of art historical writing. Giogrio Vasari, Karel van Mander, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Jacob Burckhardt, Giovanni Morelli, Heinrich Wolffin, Paul Frankl, Roger Fry, Erwin Panofsky, Arnold Hauser, Susan Sontag, E. H. Gombrich, William Fagg, T. J. Clark, Michael Baldwin, Hans Belting… emerged one by one. Since 1980s, the paradigm of object-based research has been shifting to a more problem-based contextual study. Some historians announce that art history comes to an end. (1)
THE GEOLOGICAL TERM ‘FAULT LINES’ IS USED HERE TO DESCRIBE DISPLACEMENTS AND DISCONTINUITIES OF STRATA IN A PLATEAU/ BODY OF WRITING, WHICH CAN FUNCTION TO CONNECT HISTORY, ART, AND ART-HISTORICAL WRITING. (2)
Throughout the ages, ‘fault lines’ within the writings of art, art history and general history has naturally existed and it is doubtful whether there is any ‘perfect’ or ‘scientific’ model of art-historical writing. What i query here, however, is the way interpretation is made and the way art history is interpreted/ related to general history, or the way it contributed to ‘The Idea of History’, by using object of art to illustrate humanity history.
‘FAULT LINES’ APPEARS ON THE PROFESSION AND STRUCTURE OF ART HISTORY.
Can art historian restore the many missing social dimensions of art? Art historian is not a ‘social worker’, spending days and nights analyzing art’s social circumstances of production. Art historian is neither a professor of all things, nor a person well trained in the realm of cultural theory. Since 1980s, the pedagogy of cultural study has long replaced context-based art-historical writing, and the magnetic power of cultural criticism has been a shaping force and a key public voice of society. It seems that editors of cultural column have long put aside the authentic or traditional art-historical writing!
Historical study of Neolithic art is seemingly more ‘objective’, since research conducted is more factual and verifiable. Very often, contemporary historian founds facts in a ‘closed’ situation where he/ she might keep a distance from the artist(s) or reality. Since contemporary history is best- and- well known to the public, new interpretation or assumption about art is meant to be used and that would displace/ deflect the truth and reality. The more ‘interpretative’ and ‘framing’ in writing, the more ‘subjective’ in contemporary history...
‘FAULT LINES’ HAS NO VALUE?
Contemporary art in Hong Kong can signify and name a collective value (i.e. expression of an identity) and is a speaking subject, due to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and the West Kowloon Cultural District issue. Art history, however, is not a speaking subject and in a traditional sense, should not embody personal, political, or commercial value. Nowadays, art history is under threat; it is being assimilated by new historiography and cultural studies. Art history (a term already implies a broader meaning than the more object-based ‘history of art’) is now founded from the influences of feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, philosophy, post-Marxist criticism, post-structuralism and socio-political ideas. New ideas are borrowed from theatre, literature, linguistic, semiotics and the like. Art history is no longer an attribution study and is no longer about style (3), dating, authenticity, rarity, reconstruction, forgery discern, rediscovery of forgotten artists... It is no longer a focus on art’s very systems of representation and social contexts. In an era of intellectual expansion and aesthetic dwindling, traditional art history is imbue with hybrid and eccentric disciplines. IT SHOULD BE THE POWER OF ‘FAULT LINE’, WHICH CAN EXPLORE AND DISPLACE THE TRADITIONAL INTELLIGENCE/ LOGIC OF AESTHETIC, AESTHETIC TRAJECTORIES AND CULTURAL TRAJECTORIES BY PRESENTING/ REVEALING THE WHOLE STRATA AND CONCEPTION OF HISTORICAL FACT. That is a new ‘value’ that art history can ‘name’ and develop!
CONCEALED BY STREAMS AND FORESTS, ‘FAULT LINES’ IS HARDLY VISIBLE IN A LOCAL TERRAINE. IT IS MORE ‘VISIBLE’ FROM A SATELLITE.
Local ‘provocative’ and ‘forgotten’ artists such as Yan Lei (i.e. Artist of Documenta XII), Chan Kwok Yan (Times: First Person of Graffiti in Asia), Paul Chan, Tse Suk Nei, Pan Xing Lei, Cheong Chi Ping, Happening Group and even “The King of Kowloon” (Artist of the Venice Biennial 2003) are more internationally recognized rather than being accepted in a small, sectorized circle.
THE ‘FAULT LINES’ OR DOUCUMENTATION OF VERBAL/ NON-VISUAL EXPERIENCE, SIMILAR TO THE TANGENT EXISTING IN PARTIAL RELATION TO THE PLATEAU/ WHOLENESS OF HISTORY OR HUMANITY STUDY, HAS SAME SIGNIFICANCE TO PUBLISHED LITERATURE.
Since art history is no longer an attribution research, the most ‘reliable’ aspect of contemporary art history could be the verbal experience and the reality re-constructed/ collected during the course of an interview. It could be the true ‘Oral History’ which is definitely more objective than partial interpretation/ documentation in art-historical writing, and which obscures the boundary between the object-based art history and non-problem-based art criticism here. Interview and audio documentation conducted by ‘Fung Man Yee/ Boundary’, ‘Cultural Coolies/ The Hong Kong Art Center’ and ‘Claire Hsu/ Asia Art Archive’ is certainly worthwhile and we also need William Fulong’s Audio Arts or similar type of documentary magazine in Hong Kong for the collection and publication of verbal experience in the process of artistic production and reception.
THE POTENCY OF ‘FAULT LINES’ COULD BE POSITIVE.
Constructive institutional critique or minority voices are usually being missed or neglected in official historical writings or reports. Ever since The High Court declared that The Hong Kong Arts Development Council’s rejection of James Wong’s application for the curatorship of the Hong Kong exhibition in the 50th Venice Biennial (Visual Arts) was unlawful, amazingly there has been no writing report following up the case and problem displayed by the Council. Even more problematic is that the statutory Council did not report the case to the public. (4) If we look at changing power within art and art history as normal and positive, the process of historical authentication and documentation of contemporary art in Hong Kong should be revealed without impartiality. Interpretation-immersed contemporary art narration is partly a power-played fabrication and partly a re-invented connoisseurship.
‘FAULT LINES’ APPEARS ON HISTORICITY.
Hong Kong is not a historic city, but it is a big story-telling city. Art-historical writings tend to be grand-narrating or story-telling. Historicity (Historical authenticity) embodies ‘factificity’ (factual analysis/ support), ‘objectivity’ (objective attitude/ activity) and ‘scientificity’ (scientific identification/ verification). No monograph records history exactly the same way in all historical dimensions and reality. Only certain aspect of historical reality can be re-presented. The Sheldon Adelson’s 20-billion Venetian Macao (2007), which puts an effort to re-present/ fabricate a ‘complete’ or ‘99%’ Venice in a 21st Century Macao is at all impossible. Historicity makes sense only if the right attitude, language and pedagogy have been taken. Authentic writing of a ‘total’ art history of Hong Kong would not make sense until the material base (i.e. film, oral history and archival materials) of an authentic research is available for public verification. Generalization of fact turns history ‘abstracted’ and ‘suppressed’, but the material base for verification remains unchallenged.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, MODERN HISTORY TELLS THAT SUPPRESSION IN THE FORM OF ABSTRACTION ONLY BRINGS ABOUT ‘RESISTANCE’ OR ALTERNATIVE DISCOURSE. REPORTAGE ON RESISTANCE OR ‘FAULT LINES’ HELPS TO RE-CONSTRUCT THE ‘COMPLETENESS’ AND ‘FACTIFICITY’ OF HISTORY.
‘FAULTS LINES’ HELPS TO REVEAL AND ARGUE WHY ART HISTORICAL WRITING SHOULD BE FOUNDED ON A MORE SOLID BASE OF THEORETICAL AND FACTUAL EVIDENCE. IN THE PROCESS OF CITY-MAKING, IT IS IMPORTANT TO HAVE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN (ARCHITECT) TO BUILD VISION ON VENICE, RATHER THAN A ‘VENETIAN’ BUILDING ON OLD KNOWLEDGE. HISTORY WRITING IS NOT A PURE SCIENCE, BUT IT MUST BE ‘OBJECTIVE’! (5)
FOOTNOTES:
1. Please refer to Hans Belting “The End of the History of Art (1984)”, in Eric Femie edit., Art Hstory and Its Methods. London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1995, p. 291-295. The view is also mentioned in Chapter 17, Vernon Hyde Minor, Art History’s History. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1994, p. 204, “Consequences for Art History”.
2. Gilane Tawadros’ s curatorial project “Fault Lines” for the Venice Biennial 2003 revealed African art’s emerging landscape after globalization. This essay can be viewed as an extension of Gilane’s creative approach with a new dimension looking at problems of art history.
3. Art history is no longer about style; but Henich Wollflin’s Principles of Art History should be conceived as ‘revolutionary’ as modern art’s total dissociation with religion in the early 20th century. He recognized and elevated the importance of ‘style’ in formal analysis over iconographical and contextual disciplines. ‘Fault Lines’ or oral history in art-historical writing could be deemed as important as past pedagogies of learning/ researching in an era of media and communicative culture.
4. For the historical details and verdict, please refer to the hyperlink of The High Court: Case No. HCAL 57/2003.
5. Please review the whole book of Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1989.
Session 2 / Victor Lai
黎明海
(香港教育學院體藝學系副教授)
過去從事香港美術史的研究和編寫大多只關注藝術家個人的藝術風格/意念的發展；或是對藝術團體或藝術思潮的編年敘述；又或是事件的文獻紀錄，從而概括一片香港美術歷史發展的風景。然而藉着圓桌會議擬提出情境式及社會學角度來探究香港藝術及視覺文化，使未來本地藝術歷史的研習能對政治、社會、文化、經濟、教育及科技的範疇對藝術發展影響投放相同的關注。
Victor Lai
(Associate Professor, Department of Creative Arts and Physical Education, The Hong Kong Institute of Education)
The main focuses on Hong Kong art history writing or research in the past few years are about individual artist’s stylistic/ conceptual development or historical narration on art groups/ art movements or events documentation by which a generalized historical development of the Hong Kong Art scene has been summarized. A broad contextualistic and sociological perspectives in examining the Hong Kong arts and visual cultures will be presented in the roundtable symposium, so that the political, social, cultural, economical, educational and technological aspects of the local arts development will obtain balancing attentions in the future local arts history study.
(香港教育學院體藝學系副教授)
過去從事香港美術史的研究和編寫大多只關注藝術家個人的藝術風格/意念的發展；或是對藝術團體或藝術思潮的編年敘述；又或是事件的文獻紀錄，從而概括一片香港美術歷史發展的風景。然而藉着圓桌會議擬提出情境式及社會學角度來探究香港藝術及視覺文化，使未來本地藝術歷史的研習能對政治、社會、文化、經濟、教育及科技的範疇對藝術發展影響投放相同的關注。
Victor Lai
(Associate Professor, Department of Creative Arts and Physical Education, The Hong Kong Institute of Education)
The main focuses on Hong Kong art history writing or research in the past few years are about individual artist’s stylistic/ conceptual development or historical narration on art groups/ art movements or events documentation by which a generalized historical development of the Hong Kong Art scene has been summarized. A broad contextualistic and sociological perspectives in examining the Hong Kong arts and visual cultures will be presented in the roundtable symposium, so that the political, social, cultural, economical, educational and technological aspects of the local arts development will obtain balancing attentions in the future local arts history study.
Session 1 / Koon Yeewan
Random Jottings on Writing HK Arts
Work in progress, Sept 2007
Please no not cite without permission
Finding the appropriate label for a discussion on HK arts has been a constant headache amongst scholars, critics, curators and artists. East/West, local/global, and hybrid/glolocal are some of the terms of references that constantly crop up. Each have their own merits, some more than others, but many have been misused, misread and misinterpreted. More importantly, the arguments for and against these different typologies follow similar patterns because these terms belong to the same discourse of spatial politics.
As spatial references, they endorse geographies that operate along arguments of differences. For example, in order to be local, the implication is that there is a global, in order to have an East the West acts as the point of reference (difference). Terms such as hybrid and glolocal follow similar patterns even as they attempt to bridge issues of binaries, because in effect they circumscribe the centrality of precisely what they are against – hybridity suggests that there is a tangible “mass” identified as the West and identified as the East, and furthermore that these tangible “mass” are in themselves pure. Although we no longer talk about these issues in terms of identities of artists, we have simply displaced them onto space/place and territory. Glolocal is the crossing points of where the tensions of global and local meet. However, once again, they privilege cultural politics as being determined by spatiality. More recently, there have been research studies that attempt to look outside the glolocal/local logic by exploring local-to-local spatial dynamics and heretopia. However, the critical pedagogy is still situated in places of differences, and ultimately traced back to the East/West model, which I am shocked that we are still discussing as if it is a critical tool with currency. It is clumsy and misgiving, and deserves no place if we are to engage with the topic of HK arts as a serious subject.
I have many objections to the use of spatial politics as framing devices or typologies. Let me relay just two of them:
1) They erase place as a subjective construct. When we talk about the local or the global, I want to know who is defining the local, and the global: those from the outside looking in, or those on the inside looking out. Space, place and territories are the playgrounds of our imaginative communities that may be rooted in concrete subjects such as local café culture vis-à-vis the Starbucks. However, who decide that local café culture has social currency? Is it the movies or sub-cultures that have formed collective identities rooted in nostalgia (looking back at history/memories) to create spaces recognized as being “Hong Kong?” Is it not equally important to talk about communities – actual people who form these memories of place, rather treating place and space (West/East/local/hybrid) as objective criterions? Let's bring the subjectivity of the artist and the subject back into meaningful discussions.
2) They erase history. We examine art based on its value today or worth tomorrow, but not how it sits within a temporal network. Leo Ou-fan Lee described the problem of a “short-term memory” of HK – I think that is a very apt description. One symptom of that short-term memory is the lack of dialogue between older artists and younger ones. As an art historian, I find my training extremely useful in writing about HK art, because you can step back from the object, and from the artists’ statements. We are alert to the dangers of projecting back into history, rather than allowing history to have its own voice.
What are the alternatives? History, sociality, desire, gender, imaginations, the list is endless; there is a huge repertory of critical pedagogy that are simply not used enough. Until we can write critically about HK arts with diverse voice, and until we stop thinking along the “Us and Them” trajectory (and unfortunately, something that is evident in today's roundtable set-up), there is a danger of pampering to intellectual self-indulgence and turning Hong Kong into a mere fetish.
Work in progress, Sept 2007
Please no not cite without permission
Finding the appropriate label for a discussion on HK arts has been a constant headache amongst scholars, critics, curators and artists. East/West, local/global, and hybrid/glolocal are some of the terms of references that constantly crop up. Each have their own merits, some more than others, but many have been misused, misread and misinterpreted. More importantly, the arguments for and against these different typologies follow similar patterns because these terms belong to the same discourse of spatial politics.
As spatial references, they endorse geographies that operate along arguments of differences. For example, in order to be local, the implication is that there is a global, in order to have an East the West acts as the point of reference (difference). Terms such as hybrid and glolocal follow similar patterns even as they attempt to bridge issues of binaries, because in effect they circumscribe the centrality of precisely what they are against – hybridity suggests that there is a tangible “mass” identified as the West and identified as the East, and furthermore that these tangible “mass” are in themselves pure. Although we no longer talk about these issues in terms of identities of artists, we have simply displaced them onto space/place and territory. Glolocal is the crossing points of where the tensions of global and local meet. However, once again, they privilege cultural politics as being determined by spatiality. More recently, there have been research studies that attempt to look outside the glolocal/local logic by exploring local-to-local spatial dynamics and heretopia. However, the critical pedagogy is still situated in places of differences, and ultimately traced back to the East/West model, which I am shocked that we are still discussing as if it is a critical tool with currency. It is clumsy and misgiving, and deserves no place if we are to engage with the topic of HK arts as a serious subject.
I have many objections to the use of spatial politics as framing devices or typologies. Let me relay just two of them:
1) They erase place as a subjective construct. When we talk about the local or the global, I want to know who is defining the local, and the global: those from the outside looking in, or those on the inside looking out. Space, place and territories are the playgrounds of our imaginative communities that may be rooted in concrete subjects such as local café culture vis-à-vis the Starbucks. However, who decide that local café culture has social currency? Is it the movies or sub-cultures that have formed collective identities rooted in nostalgia (looking back at history/memories) to create spaces recognized as being “Hong Kong?” Is it not equally important to talk about communities – actual people who form these memories of place, rather treating place and space (West/East/local/hybrid) as objective criterions? Let's bring the subjectivity of the artist and the subject back into meaningful discussions.
2) They erase history. We examine art based on its value today or worth tomorrow, but not how it sits within a temporal network. Leo Ou-fan Lee described the problem of a “short-term memory” of HK – I think that is a very apt description. One symptom of that short-term memory is the lack of dialogue between older artists and younger ones. As an art historian, I find my training extremely useful in writing about HK art, because you can step back from the object, and from the artists’ statements. We are alert to the dangers of projecting back into history, rather than allowing history to have its own voice.
What are the alternatives? History, sociality, desire, gender, imaginations, the list is endless; there is a huge repertory of critical pedagogy that are simply not used enough. Until we can write critically about HK arts with diverse voice, and until we stop thinking along the “Us and Them” trajectory (and unfortunately, something that is evident in today's roundtable set-up), there is a danger of pampering to intellectual self-indulgence and turning Hong Kong into a mere fetish.
Session 1 / Christina Chu
朱錦鸞
(香港藝術館前總館長)
Christina Chu
(Former Chief Curator, Hong Kong Museum of Art)
Art Historical Writing in & on Hong Kong
Historicity relates to history. History can be understood at least on three levels: Firstly, ‘history’ refers to ‘historical reality’, understood as historical truth, historical facts, historical events, historical occurrences or historical happenings. It can signify human activities that actually took place in the past. Secondly, ‘history’ can mean the scholarly study of history. As an academic discipline, ‘history’ on this level is referred to as ‘historiology’, understood as historical research focused on the shaping of historical knowledge or historical understanding. Thirdly, ‘history’ can also be understood as the writing and narrative of historical knowledge. In the context of this symposium, my understanding of historicity is an approach that examines the construction of narrative as in the third level. The discipline of art history pertains to historiology as it also involves both historical actuality and the importance of history as a standard of value. Yet art historical writing concerns visual imagery. Visuality is a language distinguished from text, it commands a distinctive visual rhetoric. Visual rhetoric used in art historical discourse has two aspects: formalism and contextualism. Formalism is the intrinsic property of an artwork. It involves an examination and analysis of form; that is, line, shape, color, texture, and composition. Formal representation also gives rise to style. Style has been the main element that makes up the sequence in art historical narrative. Contextualism examines artworks in the context of the motivations and intentions of artists, patrons and sponsors. Contextualism also involves a comparative analysis of themes and approaches of the works of past and contemporary artists and in consideration of relevant religious iconography and symbolism. Contextualism has three important attributes: space, time and people. These attributes form the substance of historicity. Art historical writing in and on Hong Kong in the post-colonial era manifests a strong sense of nostalgia. This cogent sensibility of nostalgia embodies “historicity” rather than “history”. It is closely related to spatiality and temporality. Historicity can be instrumental in the construction of a new identity. Yet, historicity is, in fact, neither a representation of the past nor a representation of the future. It can first and foremost be defined as a perception of the present as history; that is, as a relationship to the present which somehow defamiliarizes it and allows that distance from immediacy which is at length characterized as a historical perspective. In capitalizing on the CITY, the title of the symposium sets up a framework of time and space in consideration of art-historical writing in and on Hong Kong art. The beginning of British rule that started in the 1840s put Hong Kong on the path to emerge as an international city as it is today. The colonial period is an interim phase with a Chinese past and future. Historicity necessitates reflective investigation which requires us to continuously reconfigure the structure of experience and thus knowledge. In building the narrative for Hong Kong art history, historicity integrates different issues and aspirations. The study of Hong Kong as a territorial subject becomes an international subject where localism collides with globalism. The study of historicity imbues Hong Kong with a much greater presence with connectivity to both Chinese culture and Western culture with a heightened sense of the locality and internationalization.
September, 2007
(香港藝術館前總館長)
Christina Chu
(Former Chief Curator, Hong Kong Museum of Art)
Art Historical Writing in & on Hong Kong
Historicity relates to history. History can be understood at least on three levels: Firstly, ‘history’ refers to ‘historical reality’, understood as historical truth, historical facts, historical events, historical occurrences or historical happenings. It can signify human activities that actually took place in the past. Secondly, ‘history’ can mean the scholarly study of history. As an academic discipline, ‘history’ on this level is referred to as ‘historiology’, understood as historical research focused on the shaping of historical knowledge or historical understanding. Thirdly, ‘history’ can also be understood as the writing and narrative of historical knowledge. In the context of this symposium, my understanding of historicity is an approach that examines the construction of narrative as in the third level. The discipline of art history pertains to historiology as it also involves both historical actuality and the importance of history as a standard of value. Yet art historical writing concerns visual imagery. Visuality is a language distinguished from text, it commands a distinctive visual rhetoric. Visual rhetoric used in art historical discourse has two aspects: formalism and contextualism. Formalism is the intrinsic property of an artwork. It involves an examination and analysis of form; that is, line, shape, color, texture, and composition. Formal representation also gives rise to style. Style has been the main element that makes up the sequence in art historical narrative. Contextualism examines artworks in the context of the motivations and intentions of artists, patrons and sponsors. Contextualism also involves a comparative analysis of themes and approaches of the works of past and contemporary artists and in consideration of relevant religious iconography and symbolism. Contextualism has three important attributes: space, time and people. These attributes form the substance of historicity. Art historical writing in and on Hong Kong in the post-colonial era manifests a strong sense of nostalgia. This cogent sensibility of nostalgia embodies “historicity” rather than “history”. It is closely related to spatiality and temporality. Historicity can be instrumental in the construction of a new identity. Yet, historicity is, in fact, neither a representation of the past nor a representation of the future. It can first and foremost be defined as a perception of the present as history; that is, as a relationship to the present which somehow defamiliarizes it and allows that distance from immediacy which is at length characterized as a historical perspective. In capitalizing on the CITY, the title of the symposium sets up a framework of time and space in consideration of art-historical writing in and on Hong Kong art. The beginning of British rule that started in the 1840s put Hong Kong on the path to emerge as an international city as it is today. The colonial period is an interim phase with a Chinese past and future. Historicity necessitates reflective investigation which requires us to continuously reconfigure the structure of experience and thus knowledge. In building the narrative for Hong Kong art history, historicity integrates different issues and aspirations. The study of Hong Kong as a territorial subject becomes an international subject where localism collides with globalism. The study of historicity imbues Hong Kong with a much greater presence with connectivity to both Chinese culture and Western culture with a heightened sense of the locality and internationalization.
September, 2007
Session 1 / Wan Qingli
萬青屴
(香港浸會大學視覺藝術學院總監)
各自歷史 各自陳述
古今史書，有所謂“正史”，也有所謂“野史”。史學，有官學，有民學。官學：官修史書，稱為正史；民學：民間記述，稱為野史。歷史進入多元文化時代，一本官修歷史教科書的歷史，應該結束了。藝術史領域更是如此。任何藝術史的教科書，無論篇幅如何浩繁，也只能是一幅簡略的平面地圖、或導遊圖；無論是官修還是個人著作，官方的意識形態，個人的歷史觀決定陳述的內容和解說。因此，不存在絕對正確的版本，更沒有所謂“權威”。
史書的不同版本越多越好；藝術史的作者越多越好。任何藝術史的著作，沒有可能全面概括藝術史本身。即使是一本及格的藝術史著作，充其量也不過是勾畫出一個簡單的輪廓而已。有多少個版本，就有多少個不同的輪廓。不及格的版本，就是連輪廓也畫不出來。
香港藝術史，理應有不同歷史階段、不同藝術領域、不同社團全體，以至於不同個體的專題研究。各自歷史，各自陳述，作者越多越好，版本越多越好。
Dr Wan Qingli
(Director, Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University)
(Unauthorized translation and abstract of Panelist's synopsis originally submitted in Chinese)
Each their own histories, each their own narratives. As history enters its multicultural era, the history of having just one official history textbook should be over. Art history is no exception. So the more versions there are, the better. All versions, no matter lengthy or short, are however just a guide, based on a certain point of view, trying to sketch a simplified outline. It is hence best for Hong Kong art history to have a great many studies on various historical phases, fields, organisations, and topics.
(香港浸會大學視覺藝術學院總監)
各自歷史 各自陳述
古今史書，有所謂“正史”，也有所謂“野史”。史學，有官學，有民學。官學：官修史書，稱為正史；民學：民間記述，稱為野史。歷史進入多元文化時代，一本官修歷史教科書的歷史，應該結束了。藝術史領域更是如此。任何藝術史的教科書，無論篇幅如何浩繁，也只能是一幅簡略的平面地圖、或導遊圖；無論是官修還是個人著作，官方的意識形態，個人的歷史觀決定陳述的內容和解說。因此，不存在絕對正確的版本，更沒有所謂“權威”。
史書的不同版本越多越好；藝術史的作者越多越好。任何藝術史的著作，沒有可能全面概括藝術史本身。即使是一本及格的藝術史著作，充其量也不過是勾畫出一個簡單的輪廓而已。有多少個版本，就有多少個不同的輪廓。不及格的版本，就是連輪廓也畫不出來。
香港藝術史，理應有不同歷史階段、不同藝術領域、不同社團全體，以至於不同個體的專題研究。各自歷史，各自陳述，作者越多越好，版本越多越好。
Dr Wan Qingli
(Director, Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University)
(Unauthorized translation and abstract of Panelist's synopsis originally submitted in Chinese)
Each their own histories, each their own narratives. As history enters its multicultural era, the history of having just one official history textbook should be over. Art history is no exception. So the more versions there are, the better. All versions, no matter lengthy or short, are however just a guide, based on a certain point of view, trying to sketch a simplified outline. It is hence best for Hong Kong art history to have a great many studies on various historical phases, fields, organisations, and topics.
Session 1 / Pamela Kember
Pamela Kember
(Lecturer Art History & Theory Hong Kong Art School)
(香港藝術學院藝術史及理論講師)
Residual Spaces - Marking Stories; Visual Art from Hong Kong
My title relates to Hong Kong, on multiple levels, as it is firstly plays on the word ‘reside’ and ‘dual’, to denote a city that has existed and lies between two or more histories- Colonial and Chinese. It also begins with a question, raised by Simon Leung, now living and teaching at the University of California, Irvine, “ How, for example, does an artist born and raised in Hong Kong, which for more than a decade was the site of Vietnamese refugee camps, renegotiate his [her] subjectivity from being Asian to being Other? I am interested to talk about such issues in order to reconsider Hong Kong's current art scene in relation to its past.
For as far back as Vasari’s ‘Lives of the Artists’, to Gombrich’s ‘The Story of Art’, questions have been raised as to: When does art begin? Who gets included? Are the stories true? Have such questions been raised in respect of art from Hong Kong, for if not, how can we suggest if these are still relevant points to debate, or can we suggest what kind of renegotiations there are for an ‘authentic dialogue’ with stories about Hong Kong's art ? Dialogues that do not merely re-present such structures, as, post colonialist theory, or 'identity crisis', but really engage with Hong Kong as a place, that Paul Chan, (born here, now based in New York,) sees its citizens as being, ‘the first post modern subjects, split between two or more languages, and passports people 'that form a strange amalgamation of Eastern and Western'. Yet we might also see those artists who were either born here and studied abroad, to those who have subsequently returned and who are attempting to either 'de-link' themselves, as he suggests, from both their colonial past, and Chinese cultural heritage, to inhabit a new residing/ dual space - cut off from, or separate to the presiding status quo. Because, as much as there are difficulties of writing about the visible marks in painting and drawing, art historian, James Elkin's suggests that for any critic or historian, there are problems with writing, or more precisely theorizing about hidden histories in art. Also for those interested in issues of ‘historical authenticity’ how might we choose to relate to the many histories still to emerge on Hong Kong's visual art, and who is writing the story so far?
(Lecturer Art History & Theory Hong Kong Art School)
(香港藝術學院藝術史及理論講師)
Residual Spaces - Marking Stories; Visual Art from Hong Kong
My title relates to Hong Kong, on multiple levels, as it is firstly plays on the word ‘reside’ and ‘dual’, to denote a city that has existed and lies between two or more histories- Colonial and Chinese. It also begins with a question, raised by Simon Leung, now living and teaching at the University of California, Irvine, “ How, for example, does an artist born and raised in Hong Kong, which for more than a decade was the site of Vietnamese refugee camps, renegotiate his [her] subjectivity from being Asian to being Other? I am interested to talk about such issues in order to reconsider Hong Kong's current art scene in relation to its past.
For as far back as Vasari’s ‘Lives of the Artists’, to Gombrich’s ‘The Story of Art’, questions have been raised as to: When does art begin? Who gets included? Are the stories true? Have such questions been raised in respect of art from Hong Kong, for if not, how can we suggest if these are still relevant points to debate, or can we suggest what kind of renegotiations there are for an ‘authentic dialogue’ with stories about Hong Kong's art ? Dialogues that do not merely re-present such structures, as, post colonialist theory, or 'identity crisis', but really engage with Hong Kong as a place, that Paul Chan, (born here, now based in New York,) sees its citizens as being, ‘the first post modern subjects, split between two or more languages, and passports people 'that form a strange amalgamation of Eastern and Western'. Yet we might also see those artists who were either born here and studied abroad, to those who have subsequently returned and who are attempting to either 'de-link' themselves, as he suggests, from both their colonial past, and Chinese cultural heritage, to inhabit a new residing/ dual space - cut off from, or separate to the presiding status quo. Because, as much as there are difficulties of writing about the visible marks in painting and drawing, art historian, James Elkin's suggests that for any critic or historian, there are problems with writing, or more precisely theorizing about hidden histories in art. Also for those interested in issues of ‘historical authenticity’ how might we choose to relate to the many histories still to emerge on Hong Kong's visual art, and who is writing the story so far?
Session 1 / Frank Vigneron
Frank Vigneron
(Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Chinese University of Hong Kong)
韋一空
(香港中文大學藝術系教授)
Translation in World Art History: a Utopian Project.
In a book edited by James Elkins on the publication of David Summers’ Real Spaces. World Art History and the Rise of Western modernism, Elkins mentions the pressing problem of non-Western languages and their utilization in studies of non-Western cultures. What seems to me regrettable is the one-way street such studies always seem to take: the starting point is a study of art historical objects in the context of the language of that same culture, but the resulting study always end up being written in one and the same language, namely English. Obviously, there are incalculable advantages in having a lingua franca, but it would be extremely naïve to believe that any given language can convey any concept with absolute efficiency and reliability: no translation is entirely transparent. As long as world art history is exclusively written in English, it submits to a kind of imperialist historicism. Ideally, a true world history would be written in as many languages as there are actors in the art history/art production domain. What would be truly interesting is to see how such a book would be translated in other languages. How many languages is another, maybe simply financial, problem; if Tintin has been translated into Catalan and the Luxemburg tongue, is there going to be a publisher adventurous enough to invest money and time in such publications? And yet, is it really a ‘world art history’ if it remains formulated in only one language?One captivating project would the translation into different languages of key concepts, like the ones created by David Summers. Elkins already mentioned the absence of a clear equivalent for many Chinese concepts, which would already make clear the fact that some concepts can be understood through explanation and illustration but not translated with a single word. But the problem goes deeper, if we remain in the Chinese realm, we will see that other concepts coming from Western languages have been successfully transposed into modern Chinese, but that, because they refer to ideas that are originally profoundly different, they do not create strict correspondence of concepts in the receiver’s mind. Such a concept is that of ‘metaphor’ for instance, which presents extremely concepts problems of translation. It is obvious that one English signifier cannot ‘materialize’ the same signified when translated into another language.James Elkins made a list of various terms from other languages (warri-ngirniti, tableau, Weg, ambulatio, etc.) and the question was whether they could be used in English art history to describe situations and concepts that did not exist, or did not exist in exactly the same way, in Western art. On the other side of the translation problem, Elkins also mentioned the fact that the English term modernism could not be transposed untouched into German, but the issue of translation offers problems that are far more complex precisely because they are about very small differences. Differences so slight in fact that they usually pass unnoticed and would seem unimportant if they were not about conveying very rich notions.These differences might be felt as rather too subtle for most readers (the ‘inattentive readers’ most people have become in a world where books are more common than cockroaches), and it is true that we are seldom called upon to think about these connections when reading anything. But they should be revived to get access to a richer understanding of any text, and translation might even be the ideal tool to do so, both for the readers and for the translator. I would definitely disagree with David Summers who believes that languages are ‘ultimately untranslatable’, but it is true that translation can only be made of constant interpretations and frequent approximations. By approximation I mean something like Chen Xiaomei’s notion of ‘misreading’, i.e. ‘an act of dialogue between text and interpretation, between past and present, and perhaps most importantly in the study of cross-cultural literary relations, between individual readers and their various social and historical formations.’ But, if translation is like a funnel, transforming, shaping and misinterpreting things always in the same direction – into English – it is bound to be limiting. Ideally, and if art history is truly a way to disseminate a rich but practical understanding of all types of art to all types of individuals into all types of culture, translation should be like a food processor with the lid open, multiplying concepts and their approximations in every possible direction: deterritorialization on an epic scale. I am obviously not thinking about academics here, the ‘targeted audience’ for such an endeavor would be, first and foremost, the artists themselves, the producers of art in all its forms.To take the question of translation at a very practical level with a specific example, it would be very interesting to put theoretical texts on painting, a very rich corpus of texts in several cultural domains, through the process of translation. One would have, in the first place, to submit to the demands of international research by putting these texts in English. As a second step, it would be fruitful, for instance, to try to put these texts written in English, French or German into the modern Chinese language. Starting from there, there would be no limits to the translations: from Italian to Yoruba, from Chinese to Bengali, from German to Ourdou, etc. (and why not, from English to French). In fact, translation would not only be useful for people from other cultural backgrounds, it would also be a way to force any speaker to think about the concepts they are using in a way that would resurrect meaning. Concepts tend to become like tools in a phenomenological sense; the more we use them, the more we tend to put their meaning in a mental background that can become so comfortable it erodes the original meaning of the concept (the image that comes to mind is Merleau-Ponty’s walking stick for the blind: after a while, it becomes an extension of the arm and is no longer a stick). As in Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”, where our perception of the painting of van Gogh shoes makes us aware of the “thingness” of a real thing, translating a concept may be seen as a creative process, it forces us to think about the concept’s meaning or meanings and about all its/their ramifications in specific contexts.Translation could therefore become a major tool of art history in a practical context, by that I mean not only the writing of art history and the analysis of the concepts of art making and art reception against various cultural backgrounds, but also the manipulation of concepts by artists throughout the newly created peripheries created by globalization – the fabled idea of ‘glocalisation’. It would not be a matter of transferring Western analytical tools in the understanding of the artistic traditions of the rest of the World, but also a matter of understanding one’s own art tradition through the prism of other languages and, therefore, other ways of thinking. James Elkins mentioned the fact that there are no art historians specializing in Chinese art being hired in Western universities ‘for their ability to deploy Chinese interpretive methods. They are hired for their expertise, and partly for familiarity with Western methods, such as iconography, semiotics, social art history, and so forth.’ I might add that there seems to be less and less specialists of Chinese painting in China who can afford to deploy Chinese interpretive methods. That new generation of Chinese art historians in Mainland China and Taiwan are truly caught between hammer and anvil. They have to satisfy their old mentors and a vast majority of Chinese amateurs, painters and art lovers, who expect them to use such concepts as zhuo 拙, qiyun shengdong 氣韻生動, or pingdan 平淡 (concepts which have been in use for so many centuries and are so well adapted to the discourse on Chinese painting there is absolutely no point getting rid of them); but they also have to satisfy the criteria of a more internationalized readership who expect them to have read Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Luc Nancy. In this world thirsty for more ‘centers’, or more ‘peripheries’ depending on which side of the divide you situate yourself, the desire for a world art history makes sense insofar as it can find its place without falling into the usual pitfall of academic and linguistic imperialism. It can be a precious pedagogical tool for a certain type of already-initiated art historians, especially those dealing with comparison, but to fulfill a possible role of initiator in what came to be known as a globalized world, it would be preferable to use another form than the book. Hypertext would be an interesting option, if it was not even worse than the book as a solution for opening up that project to other, very different, cultures like the oral cultures of South America or Africa: a book can always be transported anywhere, while a website with hypertext does necessitate at the very least a computer, and at best a connection to the Internet. Similarly, that hypertextual tool would have to be adapted to many kinds of language, and therefore, many kinds of episteme, as I still like to believe that, in spite of globalization, human beings are not thinking alike everywhere. The endeavor of a ‘universal translation project’ is obviously idealistic, must be collegial and would necessarily be never-ending and, therefore, not practical: no one would be able to access it in its entirety. It is like Borge’s library of Babel: out of reach but everywhere. But it does not mean it is not desirable, such a project would be like the gigantic map of another of Borge’s short stories, a situation that Jean Baudrillard exploited in a famous text. A “hypertextual multilingual world art history” would be a map of art so accurate it would also cover its entire domain, but hopefully this time, not smother and destroy the ground it covers. It would obviously be more like art than science, if we believe that such distinctions can be made on the ground of objectivity. An exhaustive history of all art(s) translated in every possible language, a grand oeuvre that would be like peace on earth, desirable and unreachable, always meeting with a multitude of delays like a work by Marcel Duchamp.
(Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Chinese University of Hong Kong)
韋一空
(香港中文大學藝術系教授)
Translation in World Art History: a Utopian Project.
In a book edited by James Elkins on the publication of David Summers’ Real Spaces. World Art History and the Rise of Western modernism, Elkins mentions the pressing problem of non-Western languages and their utilization in studies of non-Western cultures. What seems to me regrettable is the one-way street such studies always seem to take: the starting point is a study of art historical objects in the context of the language of that same culture, but the resulting study always end up being written in one and the same language, namely English. Obviously, there are incalculable advantages in having a lingua franca, but it would be extremely naïve to believe that any given language can convey any concept with absolute efficiency and reliability: no translation is entirely transparent. As long as world art history is exclusively written in English, it submits to a kind of imperialist historicism. Ideally, a true world history would be written in as many languages as there are actors in the art history/art production domain. What would be truly interesting is to see how such a book would be translated in other languages. How many languages is another, maybe simply financial, problem; if Tintin has been translated into Catalan and the Luxemburg tongue, is there going to be a publisher adventurous enough to invest money and time in such publications? And yet, is it really a ‘world art history’ if it remains formulated in only one language?One captivating project would the translation into different languages of key concepts, like the ones created by David Summers. Elkins already mentioned the absence of a clear equivalent for many Chinese concepts, which would already make clear the fact that some concepts can be understood through explanation and illustration but not translated with a single word. But the problem goes deeper, if we remain in the Chinese realm, we will see that other concepts coming from Western languages have been successfully transposed into modern Chinese, but that, because they refer to ideas that are originally profoundly different, they do not create strict correspondence of concepts in the receiver’s mind. Such a concept is that of ‘metaphor’ for instance, which presents extremely concepts problems of translation. It is obvious that one English signifier cannot ‘materialize’ the same signified when translated into another language.James Elkins made a list of various terms from other languages (warri-ngirniti, tableau, Weg, ambulatio, etc.) and the question was whether they could be used in English art history to describe situations and concepts that did not exist, or did not exist in exactly the same way, in Western art. On the other side of the translation problem, Elkins also mentioned the fact that the English term modernism could not be transposed untouched into German, but the issue of translation offers problems that are far more complex precisely because they are about very small differences. Differences so slight in fact that they usually pass unnoticed and would seem unimportant if they were not about conveying very rich notions.These differences might be felt as rather too subtle for most readers (the ‘inattentive readers’ most people have become in a world where books are more common than cockroaches), and it is true that we are seldom called upon to think about these connections when reading anything. But they should be revived to get access to a richer understanding of any text, and translation might even be the ideal tool to do so, both for the readers and for the translator. I would definitely disagree with David Summers who believes that languages are ‘ultimately untranslatable’, but it is true that translation can only be made of constant interpretations and frequent approximations. By approximation I mean something like Chen Xiaomei’s notion of ‘misreading’, i.e. ‘an act of dialogue between text and interpretation, between past and present, and perhaps most importantly in the study of cross-cultural literary relations, between individual readers and their various social and historical formations.’ But, if translation is like a funnel, transforming, shaping and misinterpreting things always in the same direction – into English – it is bound to be limiting. Ideally, and if art history is truly a way to disseminate a rich but practical understanding of all types of art to all types of individuals into all types of culture, translation should be like a food processor with the lid open, multiplying concepts and their approximations in every possible direction: deterritorialization on an epic scale. I am obviously not thinking about academics here, the ‘targeted audience’ for such an endeavor would be, first and foremost, the artists themselves, the producers of art in all its forms.To take the question of translation at a very practical level with a specific example, it would be very interesting to put theoretical texts on painting, a very rich corpus of texts in several cultural domains, through the process of translation. One would have, in the first place, to submit to the demands of international research by putting these texts in English. As a second step, it would be fruitful, for instance, to try to put these texts written in English, French or German into the modern Chinese language. Starting from there, there would be no limits to the translations: from Italian to Yoruba, from Chinese to Bengali, from German to Ourdou, etc. (and why not, from English to French). In fact, translation would not only be useful for people from other cultural backgrounds, it would also be a way to force any speaker to think about the concepts they are using in a way that would resurrect meaning. Concepts tend to become like tools in a phenomenological sense; the more we use them, the more we tend to put their meaning in a mental background that can become so comfortable it erodes the original meaning of the concept (the image that comes to mind is Merleau-Ponty’s walking stick for the blind: after a while, it becomes an extension of the arm and is no longer a stick). As in Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”, where our perception of the painting of van Gogh shoes makes us aware of the “thingness” of a real thing, translating a concept may be seen as a creative process, it forces us to think about the concept’s meaning or meanings and about all its/their ramifications in specific contexts.Translation could therefore become a major tool of art history in a practical context, by that I mean not only the writing of art history and the analysis of the concepts of art making and art reception against various cultural backgrounds, but also the manipulation of concepts by artists throughout the newly created peripheries created by globalization – the fabled idea of ‘glocalisation’. It would not be a matter of transferring Western analytical tools in the understanding of the artistic traditions of the rest of the World, but also a matter of understanding one’s own art tradition through the prism of other languages and, therefore, other ways of thinking. James Elkins mentioned the fact that there are no art historians specializing in Chinese art being hired in Western universities ‘for their ability to deploy Chinese interpretive methods. They are hired for their expertise, and partly for familiarity with Western methods, such as iconography, semiotics, social art history, and so forth.’ I might add that there seems to be less and less specialists of Chinese painting in China who can afford to deploy Chinese interpretive methods. That new generation of Chinese art historians in Mainland China and Taiwan are truly caught between hammer and anvil. They have to satisfy their old mentors and a vast majority of Chinese amateurs, painters and art lovers, who expect them to use such concepts as zhuo 拙, qiyun shengdong 氣韻生動, or pingdan 平淡 (concepts which have been in use for so many centuries and are so well adapted to the discourse on Chinese painting there is absolutely no point getting rid of them); but they also have to satisfy the criteria of a more internationalized readership who expect them to have read Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Luc Nancy. In this world thirsty for more ‘centers’, or more ‘peripheries’ depending on which side of the divide you situate yourself, the desire for a world art history makes sense insofar as it can find its place without falling into the usual pitfall of academic and linguistic imperialism. It can be a precious pedagogical tool for a certain type of already-initiated art historians, especially those dealing with comparison, but to fulfill a possible role of initiator in what came to be known as a globalized world, it would be preferable to use another form than the book. Hypertext would be an interesting option, if it was not even worse than the book as a solution for opening up that project to other, very different, cultures like the oral cultures of South America or Africa: a book can always be transported anywhere, while a website with hypertext does necessitate at the very least a computer, and at best a connection to the Internet. Similarly, that hypertextual tool would have to be adapted to many kinds of language, and therefore, many kinds of episteme, as I still like to believe that, in spite of globalization, human beings are not thinking alike everywhere. The endeavor of a ‘universal translation project’ is obviously idealistic, must be collegial and would necessarily be never-ending and, therefore, not practical: no one would be able to access it in its entirety. It is like Borge’s library of Babel: out of reach but everywhere. But it does not mean it is not desirable, such a project would be like the gigantic map of another of Borge’s short stories, a situation that Jean Baudrillard exploited in a famous text. A “hypertextual multilingual world art history” would be a map of art so accurate it would also cover its entire domain, but hopefully this time, not smother and destroy the ground it covers. It would obviously be more like art than science, if we believe that such distinctions can be made on the ground of objectivity. An exhaustive history of all art(s) translated in every possible language, a grand oeuvre that would be like peace on earth, desirable and unreachable, always meeting with a multitude of delays like a work by Marcel Duchamp.
Session 1 / Lu Peng
呂澎
(藝術史學家、藝評人，現居於成都)
什么语境或谁的香港？
本次会议将Hong Kong/Chinese、East/West、Tradition/Modernity、 the Local / Regional/ Global、Glocality/Hybridty in artistic creation、works of Criticism/Curating 这些在关系上也许可以用“冲突”来表述的关联词提交给与会者，这本身就意味着涉及香港艺术史的写作与这一系列问题有关。
1895年，German scholar and linguist Ernest Johann Eitel出版了他研究香港的著作Europe in China，该书记录了从1841-1882年之间的香港历史，Eitel在书名中使用了Europe这个词汇，这暗示了他所说的香港历史是谁的和什么语境下的。
不存在单一的语境，但也不存在平均值的历史要素，每一个时间段落，都有可能导致特殊的语境概念。亲历者告诉我们很多故事，我们也清楚日本军队的入侵破坏了宝贵的文献而我们可以在Eitel的著作中能够恢复历史的档案，但是，这不等于说Eitel的故事具有历史的完整性，更不用说本质主义意义上的正确性。我们能够尊重Eitel的原因是，那是一个亲历者并且仅仅反映1841-1882年这个时间段落的历史文献，这就足够了。这个例子正好或者说主要涉及到East/ West，尽管我们也不能够说这个例子与Tradition/Modernity、the Local/Regional/Global方面的问题无关，我们只能说，Europe与China这对关系可能是1841-1882年这段时间的重点。就像在书的A Short Summery最后说的那样：Hong Hong has clearly fulfilled……the purpose of its establishment as the guardian of the interests of Europe in China. 结论是，我们对比如说40年代、60年代以及1997年之后的香港艺术的理解，将考察不同时期的语境，不存在一个恒定不变的香港，只有在不同阶段和时期的特殊语境中香港。语境的特殊性决定了历史阶段的重点问题。
此外，一个中国大陆的作者，一个在香港的中国作者、一个西方作者，一个在香港的西方作者，他们各自关心的焦点问题真的可以达到最终一致吗？排除作者的个性与个人经历的特殊性，知识背景、政治立场、民族主义观点以及对文明史的判断，难道不会导致对资料的收集和判断上的差异？香港的艺术与欧洲艺术、传统艺术、台湾或者美国艺术发生过关系，这样的关系序列与大陆一百年的艺术历史类似的关系序列究竟有什么样的联系？这就涉及到了Hong Kong/ Chinese，与此相关的就是对the context of Tradition/Modernity的判断和认识。这样，知识背景、政治立场以及民族主义态度将发生作用，决定着对香港艺术历史问题的判断。所以，什么时期、什么艺术家、什么事件可以成为香港历史研究的基本对象？取决于作者的态度和立场。举例，迄今为止，大陆的中国美术史教材对香港早期和20世纪的艺术很少考虑，甚至对广东地区的艺术也没有更多的关心。受西方艺术影响的中国艺术家被归纳到另外一个文明系列，结果是，他们究竟是中国艺术家还是仅仅是黄皮肤的西方艺术家？由于艺术史家主要基于传统文人画的标准，所以，香港的早期艺术就难以进入中国艺术史。60年代以后，香港艺术受到了西方现代主义的影响，在时间上与大陆并不对称，就像台湾50年代的现代主义与大陆的社会主义现实主义完全不对称一样，如何理解特定的语言与特定的社会之间的关系？什么是一个作者的基本立场？存在一个纯粹的、或者公共的艺术史立场吗？能够离开西方入侵、自由贸易、战争、意识形态的影响讨论香港艺术和与大陆艺术的关系吗？而对“西方入侵、自由贸易、战争、意识形态”的解释不会受到上述因素的影响吗？例如，对吕寿琨的抽象水墨的基本语境的设置范围究竟是什么？我们如何判断陈福善艺术的上下文？他的那些幻像般的作品与欧洲现代主义究竟是什么关系？与香港又有何干？又例如，从香港艺术总体史来看，香港的历史结构需要林风眠吗？为什么需要？为什么不？这类问题在不同的作者那里将有不同的判断与答案。如果我们使用微观史的方法，我们又如何能把林风眠的香港经历与香港艺术史联系起来？微观分析容易掉入趣味倾向与个人爱好，或者说截断上下文，那么，其历史学的价值会是怎样？历史判断将如何进行？概括地说，历史技术、历史方法并不能必然导致历史的结论。那么，四个不同的作者将有四个不同的香港艺术史。接下来的问题是，所有的历史都是成立的吗？如果每个人的判断都是历史判断，还存在历史判断吗？
归纳：我们同意分析语境，但是，一个被分析的语境是否可以叫做“历史语境”却难以统一认定；我们也可以不断收集资料，但是，什么是“香港艺术史”的资料却是一个问题。
Lu Peng
(Art Historian and Critic based in Chengdu)
What Context or Whose Hong Kong?
(Unauthorized translation and abstract of Panelist's synopsis originally submitted in Chinese)
From the wordings picked for this particular roundtable, or the dated German book Europe in China (1895) on Hong Kong, what they revealed to me is the question of context and whose narration that was over Hong Kong.There is no one single context. We take each historical documentary as it is, certainly not as any absolute truth. For each period has its own context (and way of contextualizing Hong Kong). The particularity of each context is hence important in determining its own set of question. Besides, could writers of different (personal, cultural, political, racial etc.) backgrounds really come to an agreement on what is their prim question? The art history of Hong Kong/Chinese is also one that requires an understanding and judgement on the context of Tradition/Modernity, which brings all (different backgrounds) factors into its account. What is the prime subject of Hong Kong art history, therefore very much depends on the stances (/background) of the author. Should many Hong Kong art of western influenced be seen as just Western art in Hong Kong, or be put into the Chinese art lineage? Not only the latter has not been happening, the influx of Western modernism influence after the 60s in Hong Kong was also not in pace with mainland China. So how is one to understand a particular context (its language and its society)? What is the stance of a writer? Do a pure or public (commonly shared) stance really exist? Could Hong Kong art and its tie with Chinese art be discussed, without a stance on western invasion, free trade, war or ideology? How is that embedded in our reading of Lui Shou Kwan or Luis Chan? And or do Hong Kong art history structurally need to include Lin Feng-Mian? Why yes? Why No? Should it be keep in a micro-account, but or how/who is to judge for history? When different writers prodcued different versions of Hong Kong art history, does all stand as viable histories, if they each has their own historical judgement, do historical judgement still exist?We agree that context is needed to be studied, but studies of context do not necessary brings about one historical context. We might be archiving materials, but what counts as materials for Hong Kong art history is still an issue.
(藝術史學家、藝評人，現居於成都)
什么语境或谁的香港？
本次会议将Hong Kong/Chinese、East/West、Tradition/Modernity、 the Local / Regional/ Global、Glocality/Hybridty in artistic creation、works of Criticism/Curating 这些在关系上也许可以用“冲突”来表述的关联词提交给与会者，这本身就意味着涉及香港艺术史的写作与这一系列问题有关。
1895年，German scholar and linguist Ernest Johann Eitel出版了他研究香港的著作Europe in China，该书记录了从1841-1882年之间的香港历史，Eitel在书名中使用了Europe这个词汇，这暗示了他所说的香港历史是谁的和什么语境下的。
不存在单一的语境，但也不存在平均值的历史要素，每一个时间段落，都有可能导致特殊的语境概念。亲历者告诉我们很多故事，我们也清楚日本军队的入侵破坏了宝贵的文献而我们可以在Eitel的著作中能够恢复历史的档案，但是，这不等于说Eitel的故事具有历史的完整性，更不用说本质主义意义上的正确性。我们能够尊重Eitel的原因是，那是一个亲历者并且仅仅反映1841-1882年这个时间段落的历史文献，这就足够了。这个例子正好或者说主要涉及到East/ West，尽管我们也不能够说这个例子与Tradition/Modernity、the Local/Regional/Global方面的问题无关，我们只能说，Europe与China这对关系可能是1841-1882年这段时间的重点。就像在书的A Short Summery最后说的那样：Hong Hong has clearly fulfilled……the purpose of its establishment as the guardian of the interests of Europe in China. 结论是，我们对比如说40年代、60年代以及1997年之后的香港艺术的理解，将考察不同时期的语境，不存在一个恒定不变的香港，只有在不同阶段和时期的特殊语境中香港。语境的特殊性决定了历史阶段的重点问题。
此外，一个中国大陆的作者，一个在香港的中国作者、一个西方作者，一个在香港的西方作者，他们各自关心的焦点问题真的可以达到最终一致吗？排除作者的个性与个人经历的特殊性，知识背景、政治立场、民族主义观点以及对文明史的判断，难道不会导致对资料的收集和判断上的差异？香港的艺术与欧洲艺术、传统艺术、台湾或者美国艺术发生过关系，这样的关系序列与大陆一百年的艺术历史类似的关系序列究竟有什么样的联系？这就涉及到了Hong Kong/ Chinese，与此相关的就是对the context of Tradition/Modernity的判断和认识。这样，知识背景、政治立场以及民族主义态度将发生作用，决定着对香港艺术历史问题的判断。所以，什么时期、什么艺术家、什么事件可以成为香港历史研究的基本对象？取决于作者的态度和立场。举例，迄今为止，大陆的中国美术史教材对香港早期和20世纪的艺术很少考虑，甚至对广东地区的艺术也没有更多的关心。受西方艺术影响的中国艺术家被归纳到另外一个文明系列，结果是，他们究竟是中国艺术家还是仅仅是黄皮肤的西方艺术家？由于艺术史家主要基于传统文人画的标准，所以，香港的早期艺术就难以进入中国艺术史。60年代以后，香港艺术受到了西方现代主义的影响，在时间上与大陆并不对称，就像台湾50年代的现代主义与大陆的社会主义现实主义完全不对称一样，如何理解特定的语言与特定的社会之间的关系？什么是一个作者的基本立场？存在一个纯粹的、或者公共的艺术史立场吗？能够离开西方入侵、自由贸易、战争、意识形态的影响讨论香港艺术和与大陆艺术的关系吗？而对“西方入侵、自由贸易、战争、意识形态”的解释不会受到上述因素的影响吗？例如，对吕寿琨的抽象水墨的基本语境的设置范围究竟是什么？我们如何判断陈福善艺术的上下文？他的那些幻像般的作品与欧洲现代主义究竟是什么关系？与香港又有何干？又例如，从香港艺术总体史来看，香港的历史结构需要林风眠吗？为什么需要？为什么不？这类问题在不同的作者那里将有不同的判断与答案。如果我们使用微观史的方法，我们又如何能把林风眠的香港经历与香港艺术史联系起来？微观分析容易掉入趣味倾向与个人爱好，或者说截断上下文，那么，其历史学的价值会是怎样？历史判断将如何进行？概括地说，历史技术、历史方法并不能必然导致历史的结论。那么，四个不同的作者将有四个不同的香港艺术史。接下来的问题是，所有的历史都是成立的吗？如果每个人的判断都是历史判断，还存在历史判断吗？
归纳：我们同意分析语境，但是，一个被分析的语境是否可以叫做“历史语境”却难以统一认定；我们也可以不断收集资料，但是，什么是“香港艺术史”的资料却是一个问题。
Lu Peng
(Art Historian and Critic based in Chengdu)
What Context or Whose Hong Kong?
(Unauthorized translation and abstract of Panelist's synopsis originally submitted in Chinese)
From the wordings picked for this particular roundtable, or the dated German book Europe in China (1895) on Hong Kong, what they revealed to me is the question of context and whose narration that was over Hong Kong.There is no one single context. We take each historical documentary as it is, certainly not as any absolute truth. For each period has its own context (and way of contextualizing Hong Kong). The particularity of each context is hence important in determining its own set of question. Besides, could writers of different (personal, cultural, political, racial etc.) backgrounds really come to an agreement on what is their prim question? The art history of Hong Kong/Chinese is also one that requires an understanding and judgement on the context of Tradition/Modernity, which brings all (different backgrounds) factors into its account. What is the prime subject of Hong Kong art history, therefore very much depends on the stances (/background) of the author. Should many Hong Kong art of western influenced be seen as just Western art in Hong Kong, or be put into the Chinese art lineage? Not only the latter has not been happening, the influx of Western modernism influence after the 60s in Hong Kong was also not in pace with mainland China. So how is one to understand a particular context (its language and its society)? What is the stance of a writer? Do a pure or public (commonly shared) stance really exist? Could Hong Kong art and its tie with Chinese art be discussed, without a stance on western invasion, free trade, war or ideology? How is that embedded in our reading of Lui Shou Kwan or Luis Chan? And or do Hong Kong art history structurally need to include Lin Feng-Mian? Why yes? Why No? Should it be keep in a micro-account, but or how/who is to judge for history? When different writers prodcued different versions of Hong Kong art history, does all stand as viable histories, if they each has their own historical judgement, do historical judgement still exist?We agree that context is needed to be studied, but studies of context do not necessary brings about one historical context. We might be archiving materials, but what counts as materials for Hong Kong art history is still an issue.
Session 1 / Chang Tsong-zung
Hong Kong Art History Written from the Outside
The present discussions about Hong Kong art history has partly been provoked by the appearance of publications written by non-Hong Kong writers, especially by mainland scholars. In fact the real problem at stake is less about outsiders’ perspectives, more about the pack of local writings. Taking a wider view, one should recognize that to varying extents, history is always written from the outside: it is written from memory, or researched at a later period. Also, history represents a detached (outside) look at a bracketed sphere of experiences.
Two main complaints about ‘outsiders’ writing about local art are:
Firstly, the usual issues about the gaze of the Other, which may constitute a ‘colonial’ perspective and control.
Secondly, the misunderstanding of contextual meaning; disputes about which selected ‘typical’ examples to use for illustrating the narratives; disputes about interpretation and the focus of importance.
These complaints point to problems about how the reading of a regional culture may be subsumed by or absorbed into a wider context; and about how ‘accurate’ or ‘significant’ an interpretation can be, and from whose point of view.
A great deal of work needs to be put into the research of local situations, and sympathetic interpretations must necessarily represent the interest of those whose history is being discussed. However, there is a great deal to be said about being interpreted from the ‘outside’.
To stretch and broaden the significance of Hong Kong art history, it must be made available to other for interpretation from the ‘outside’; it needs to make itself ‘useful’. Strategically, to be incorporated and appropriated by others expands ones own reach. Furthermore, apart from cultural strategic interest, it is not possible to write a history without outsider’s views: history is like a face, it is both a self projection and a visage being seen, and the visage agreed upon is the outcome of a dialogue between oneself and others.
The relation between Hong Kong and Chinese art histories reflects problems facing writers of ‘world art history’, of which there have been a number of attempts in recent years. For a balanced view, concepts of art should ideally be translated both ways, and be read from multiple points of view. But realistically we are all aware of the leadership and creative energy of cultural scholarship and cultural industries in the West to know this proposed equal bilateral reading is at best an ideal vision. Then there is the problem of translation, especially in the descriptive and conceptual language of art. For example the title of an exhibition opening later this afternoon: ‘qi yun’ (‘energy rhythm’); this term cannot be rendered into English without losing certain aspects of its connotations. Then there is also the problem of translated terminology taking on a life of its own, leaving misunderstanding as it departs from its native origin. The one word that used to battle me for a long time was the Chinese term ‘yu jing’, one day it was pointed out to me that it is simply the standard translation of the English word ‘context’.
Having said these, the positive point to make about a ‘total’ history is the implied faith in certain master narrative. It reflects the faith in the possibility of order, of common ground, and perhaps even common aspirations. On the surface it also goes against the grain of Multiculturalism. What is at stake here is not ‘completeness’, which is often the focus of critics of world histories; neither is it the problem of language and translation. What is at stake is the choice of canons and narratives that constitute the master narrative of the moment (accepting the need to re-write and re-interpret as times change). In China what has always haunted the Confucian scholars (and perhaps most Chinese people) is the issue of ‘tong xu’ (‘lineage’). In the 20th century Chinese reformers and Communists laughed at the idea of ‘tong xu’ when in fact they had unwittingly been indoctrinated into the lineage and ideologies of the West. For modern China Communist doctrine has worked exactly like the traditional ‘tong xu’, but taking a special European perspective. Today we are fortunate to be able to start rethinking this issue, and for Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region of China, probably the most important contribution it can make is to contribute to the rethinking the ‘tong xu’ of Chinese art.
The present discussions about Hong Kong art history has partly been provoked by the appearance of publications written by non-Hong Kong writers, especially by mainland scholars. In fact the real problem at stake is less about outsiders’ perspectives, more about the pack of local writings. Taking a wider view, one should recognize that to varying extents, history is always written from the outside: it is written from memory, or researched at a later period. Also, history represents a detached (outside) look at a bracketed sphere of experiences.
Two main complaints about ‘outsiders’ writing about local art are:
Firstly, the usual issues about the gaze of the Other, which may constitute a ‘colonial’ perspective and control.
Secondly, the misunderstanding of contextual meaning; disputes about which selected ‘typical’ examples to use for illustrating the narratives; disputes about interpretation and the focus of importance.
These complaints point to problems about how the reading of a regional culture may be subsumed by or absorbed into a wider context; and about how ‘accurate’ or ‘significant’ an interpretation can be, and from whose point of view.
A great deal of work needs to be put into the research of local situations, and sympathetic interpretations must necessarily represent the interest of those whose history is being discussed. However, there is a great deal to be said about being interpreted from the ‘outside’.
To stretch and broaden the significance of Hong Kong art history, it must be made available to other for interpretation from the ‘outside’; it needs to make itself ‘useful’. Strategically, to be incorporated and appropriated by others expands ones own reach. Furthermore, apart from cultural strategic interest, it is not possible to write a history without outsider’s views: history is like a face, it is both a self projection and a visage being seen, and the visage agreed upon is the outcome of a dialogue between oneself and others.
The relation between Hong Kong and Chinese art histories reflects problems facing writers of ‘world art history’, of which there have been a number of attempts in recent years. For a balanced view, concepts of art should ideally be translated both ways, and be read from multiple points of view. But realistically we are all aware of the leadership and creative energy of cultural scholarship and cultural industries in the West to know this proposed equal bilateral reading is at best an ideal vision. Then there is the problem of translation, especially in the descriptive and conceptual language of art. For example the title of an exhibition opening later this afternoon: ‘qi yun’ (‘energy rhythm’); this term cannot be rendered into English without losing certain aspects of its connotations. Then there is also the problem of translated terminology taking on a life of its own, leaving misunderstanding as it departs from its native origin. The one word that used to battle me for a long time was the Chinese term ‘yu jing’, one day it was pointed out to me that it is simply the standard translation of the English word ‘context’.
Having said these, the positive point to make about a ‘total’ history is the implied faith in certain master narrative. It reflects the faith in the possibility of order, of common ground, and perhaps even common aspirations. On the surface it also goes against the grain of Multiculturalism. What is at stake here is not ‘completeness’, which is often the focus of critics of world histories; neither is it the problem of language and translation. What is at stake is the choice of canons and narratives that constitute the master narrative of the moment (accepting the need to re-write and re-interpret as times change). In China what has always haunted the Confucian scholars (and perhaps most Chinese people) is the issue of ‘tong xu’ (‘lineage’). In the 20th century Chinese reformers and Communists laughed at the idea of ‘tong xu’ when in fact they had unwittingly been indoctrinated into the lineage and ideologies of the West. For modern China Communist doctrine has worked exactly like the traditional ‘tong xu’, but taking a special European perspective. Today we are fortunate to be able to start rethinking this issue, and for Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region of China, probably the most important contribution it can make is to contribute to the rethinking the ‘tong xu’ of Chinese art.
對於[歷史城]的我思
香港人和歷史
可能因為香港於近代史的時空位置和角色其實頗為獨特，香港人和歷史的關係，也不是那麼易於處理。然而一地的文化身份位置，若有若無，歷史的論述，在過去重視歷史的時代，無疑起著一個很關鍵的作用。歷史書寫的背書，可說是肯定對象在文化歷史上的一種價值，甚至是確立主體性的重要手段。但若果香港長期以來的所謂主體性，正是在於其對大環境下大歷史、大論述的逃避，它的歷史主體書寫會是如何?或還是根本不會出現?
雖然香港文化工作者對大歷史論述有所保留，卻大概未至這般極端。回歸十年後的今天，連串的保育事件，是否意味著香港人對歷史意識的重新重視?談保育、談去殖，近年香港人也不是不熱衷於整理自身歷史，但「又喊又笑阿婆」的「口述歷史」、「環頭環尾」的「私檔案」、「一人一故事」劇場，最後如何匯成歷史?香港人對大歷史的抵制，會否正也是在要求一種別於過去、期望帶出眾數主體的(高難度/若非自我矛盾的)歷史書寫的方法?
期待香港人寫的香港藝術史?
繼外藉作者Petra Hinterthuer於1985寫成其Modern Art in Hong Kong後，內地學者朱琦也於2005年底出版了其《香港美術史》。前後20年間，一英一中的香港藝術史論述，(湊巧地?)同樣非出自港人的手筆。
其實，由誰來撰香港藝術史，本不特別重要，重要的是每本論著代表著一種對於香港藝術史的認識和理解，而我們在尋求多角度理解事物及歷史時，香港本土的聲音又怎可以缺席?這個缺席本身，會否反映出一些香港文化上的現象、或是本地促進藝術史發展的建制上的某些缺陷?這些問題無疑同樣富有意思。
[海外的華人藝術史學者高名潞就在2003年的《香港雙年展》場刊(頁57)就提到「絕對個人化的身份意識提倡得過多，它也會成為一種抵觸建構鮮明的、有凝聚力的香港藝術的獨特語言和方法論系統的負面力量…更容易將自己消解掉…文化身份不是多種個人身份的相加。」]
然而對於實際的香港人，「究竟要到什麼時候才會有由香港人執筆的香港藝術史？」的問題，癥結每每還是研究條件欠奉，支撐撰寫論著工程的前期準備資料不足，對比如《今天》「香港十年」談到香港文學史的問題無疑更是嚴重，只能靠個別的人物、分散的組織、無協調的機構來努力，一切離認真的動筆寫一本香港藝術史似乎還有一大段距離。
[藝術史書寫中的香港]
香港藝術書寫-中國現代歷史香港近代的歷史性首要大事件，當然是九七回歸。但這個政治主權的回歸以外，香港的文化、藝術的身份位置，究竟有何意識/現實的變更，這無疑並非是香港人能單方面自我決定的。但若朱琦的《香港美術史》論著不過是王伯敏的《中國美術通史》計劃中遺留下的「邊界美術史」一章，那呂澎在其《20世紀中國藝術史》的〈前言〉提到其將〈台灣和香港的藝術〉獨立章節調整為〈繼續推進的現代主義〉，無疑就有一種把香港納入中國現代藝術史的視角調整。雖然這是章節名稱上的改變而已，但到底有一種從中國的全盤現代藝術歷史發展看香港的眼光在其中。當然，作為邊界，往往更也是文化交流的橋頭堡，對於引進現代性，其在引進的角色，或也可以扭改整個中國的現代藝術歷史發展為主導的論述，不過這些理論當然要有考證的支撐才不是理論空話。比較高名潞及何慶基各為今屆文件展的「is modernity our antiquity?」問題的不同切入，就或可見兩地對現代性和現代主義理解上的歧異。
[藝術史書寫在香港]
我們教與學的是什麼樣的藝術史?(我們在再生產的是藝術史/藝術歷史/藝術史書寫?)
在香港，藝術史作為香港史的一部份這說法好像比較少聽，藝術史作為藝術教育的一部份則比較多，但藝術史作為(研究藝術歷史的)專科，實際的價值意義在那裡?藝術史作為研究藝術歷史的一門學科，在中大和港大藝術系所佔比重不輕，加上如新辦的香港藝術學院、浸大視覺藝術學院，甚至中學課程的引入，故此藝術史在香港當刻，似有相當長足的發展和普及。然而藝術史僅是藝術歷史?藝術的發展史，來到當代被受質疑，傳統的藝術史方法論(風格學、圖像學等)更被指未能顧及當代藝術的「(後歷史)發展」。事實上，藝術史若是一種知識的書寫，而非一種從處理過去藝術歷史而提煉出來的既定方法，能不著的更生，那好些「藝術史之終結」的論點也就不能成立。但藝術史的書寫，跟藝術理論、藝術批評的界線，到時候就可能同樣會變得乏晰。未來西九文娛區的m+標榜的視覺文化，在嶺南大學將成為獨立學系，又究竟是傳統藝術史的當代延伸，還是對傳統藝術史的挑戰?
可能因為香港於近代史的時空位置和角色其實頗為獨特，香港人和歷史的關係，也不是那麼易於處理。然而一地的文化身份位置，若有若無，歷史的論述，在過去重視歷史的時代，無疑起著一個很關鍵的作用。歷史書寫的背書，可說是肯定對象在文化歷史上的一種價值，甚至是確立主體性的重要手段。但若果香港長期以來的所謂主體性，正是在於其對大環境下大歷史、大論述的逃避，它的歷史主體書寫會是如何?或還是根本不會出現?
雖然香港文化工作者對大歷史論述有所保留，卻大概未至這般極端。回歸十年後的今天，連串的保育事件，是否意味著香港人對歷史意識的重新重視?談保育、談去殖，近年香港人也不是不熱衷於整理自身歷史，但「又喊又笑阿婆」的「口述歷史」、「環頭環尾」的「私檔案」、「一人一故事」劇場，最後如何匯成歷史?香港人對大歷史的抵制，會否正也是在要求一種別於過去、期望帶出眾數主體的(高難度/若非自我矛盾的)歷史書寫的方法?
期待香港人寫的香港藝術史?
繼外藉作者Petra Hinterthuer於1985寫成其Modern Art in Hong Kong後，內地學者朱琦也於2005年底出版了其《香港美術史》。前後20年間，一英一中的香港藝術史論述，(湊巧地?)同樣非出自港人的手筆。
其實，由誰來撰香港藝術史，本不特別重要，重要的是每本論著代表著一種對於香港藝術史的認識和理解，而我們在尋求多角度理解事物及歷史時，香港本土的聲音又怎可以缺席?這個缺席本身，會否反映出一些香港文化上的現象、或是本地促進藝術史發展的建制上的某些缺陷?這些問題無疑同樣富有意思。
[海外的華人藝術史學者高名潞就在2003年的《香港雙年展》場刊(頁57)就提到「絕對個人化的身份意識提倡得過多，它也會成為一種抵觸建構鮮明的、有凝聚力的香港藝術的獨特語言和方法論系統的負面力量…更容易將自己消解掉…文化身份不是多種個人身份的相加。」]
然而對於實際的香港人，「究竟要到什麼時候才會有由香港人執筆的香港藝術史？」的問題，癥結每每還是研究條件欠奉，支撐撰寫論著工程的前期準備資料不足，對比如《今天》「香港十年」談到香港文學史的問題無疑更是嚴重，只能靠個別的人物、分散的組織、無協調的機構來努力，一切離認真的動筆寫一本香港藝術史似乎還有一大段距離。
[藝術史書寫中的香港]
香港藝術書寫-中國現代歷史香港近代的歷史性首要大事件，當然是九七回歸。但這個政治主權的回歸以外，香港的文化、藝術的身份位置，究竟有何意識/現實的變更，這無疑並非是香港人能單方面自我決定的。但若朱琦的《香港美術史》論著不過是王伯敏的《中國美術通史》計劃中遺留下的「邊界美術史」一章，那呂澎在其《20世紀中國藝術史》的〈前言〉提到其將〈台灣和香港的藝術〉獨立章節調整為〈繼續推進的現代主義〉，無疑就有一種把香港納入中國現代藝術史的視角調整。雖然這是章節名稱上的改變而已，但到底有一種從中國的全盤現代藝術歷史發展看香港的眼光在其中。當然，作為邊界，往往更也是文化交流的橋頭堡，對於引進現代性，其在引進的角色，或也可以扭改整個中國的現代藝術歷史發展為主導的論述，不過這些理論當然要有考證的支撐才不是理論空話。比較高名潞及何慶基各為今屆文件展的「is modernity our antiquity?」問題的不同切入，就或可見兩地對現代性和現代主義理解上的歧異。
[藝術史書寫在香港]
我們教與學的是什麼樣的藝術史?(我們在再生產的是藝術史/藝術歷史/藝術史書寫?)
在香港，藝術史作為香港史的一部份這說法好像比較少聽，藝術史作為藝術教育的一部份則比較多，但藝術史作為(研究藝術歷史的)專科，實際的價值意義在那裡?藝術史作為研究藝術歷史的一門學科，在中大和港大藝術系所佔比重不輕，加上如新辦的香港藝術學院、浸大視覺藝術學院，甚至中學課程的引入，故此藝術史在香港當刻，似有相當長足的發展和普及。然而藝術史僅是藝術歷史?藝術的發展史，來到當代被受質疑，傳統的藝術史方法論(風格學、圖像學等)更被指未能顧及當代藝術的「(後歷史)發展」。事實上，藝術史若是一種知識的書寫，而非一種從處理過去藝術歷史而提煉出來的既定方法，能不著的更生，那好些「藝術史之終結」的論點也就不能成立。但藝術史的書寫，跟藝術理論、藝術批評的界線，到時候就可能同樣會變得乏晰。未來西九文娛區的m+標榜的視覺文化，在嶺南大學將成為獨立學系，又究竟是傳統藝術史的當代延伸，還是對傳統藝術史的挑戰?
Monday, September 10, 2007
encounter
happened to have seen this work a santralistanbul museum, an artwork reflecting on art history by an turkish artist.
