Dialectics of blandness: the contemporaneity of Su Shi’s aesthetics

Abstract

ABSTRACTWestern modernity has been said to embrace accelerationism. This article posits a contrasting trend, whereby silent transformations and ‘blandness’ gestures gain prominence. François Jullien’s In Praise of Blandness and Peter Sloterdijk’s Eurotaoismus present an alternative modernity centered on ‘blandness’ and ‘silence’. In this paper the terms are traced back to the work of Su Shi from eleventh-century Song Dynasty China, whose unique expression of the tension between ‘blandness’ and ‘splendor’ reveals blandness is not merely a passive and negative force but rather an inner vitality. Resurfacing in Chinese contemporary art, explored here with the work of artists Xu Bing, Qiu Shihua, and Liang Shaoji, such a view offers a response to violent aesthetics. The work of these artists can be said to reactivate the power of blandness with respect to contemporary understandings and materials, prompting specific artistic language and practice that warrant more critical attention.