Chen Zhen, Cai Guoqiang, and Gu Wenda

Abstract

This chapter examines the ideas and art practices of three renowned artists from the international contemporary art arena, Chen Zhen, Cai Guoqiang, and Gu Wenda. It focuses on their common affiliation with Shanghai and their early artistic careers in the 1980s. Their early artistic careers established an important base for these three artists in forming their thinking and the later direction of their art practices. The uniqueness of the art milieu of Shanghai and how it was conducive and critical to the development of avant-garde art in the 1980s are explored through these three individuals. This chapter also examines the artists’ own writing and statement about individualism which provide essential documentation for ideas advanced in this book. Their intellectual rigour and their artistic creativity, like the three artists discussed in the earlier chapters, display a multifaceted art education in the absence of any formal art academy in Shanghai after 1949. Their intellectual capacity for individualistic thinking is best demonstrated in their artistic explorations that do not blindly follow Western ideas but incorporate also traditional Eastern ideas in their artistic expressions.