The local and ethnic specifics of Yunnan in the work of modern Chinese artists: an "inside" and "outside" view

Abstract

The article is devoted to the reflection of local and ethnic specifics (mainly Yunnan Province and the Tibetan borderland) in the works of Chinese artists of the Reform and Opening Up period – Jin Shangyi, Wang Yidong, Zhang Jian Jun, Yuan Yunsheng, Ai Xuan, Zeng Xiaofeng, Ma Yun, Mao Xuhui, Zhang Xiaogang, Liao Xinxue and Liu Ziming. Various cultural codes within which ethnic and local culture is interpreted in the paintings of visiting and local artists are identified. These differences in the perception and display of ethno-local specifics are especially evident when artists paint the same ethno-local object – for example, the life of Tibetan ethnic minorities. The glamorous characters of the Tibetan cycle of Zhang Jian Jun and Ai Xuan are strikingly different from the stern Tibetan women in the paintings of Zhang Xiaogang. The main conclusion of the study is that artists of various trends have their own ideological and aesthetic intentions, so they select individual figurative dominants from the whole variety of phenomena of tradition and everyday life of the ethnic group and build them into a new cultural code. It can be argued that the exotic cultural code (the view from the outside, characteristic mainly of visiting artists) presupposes “estrangement” and the dominance of aesthetic form to the detriment of ethno-cultural specifics, while the archaic code (the view from the inside) complements modern ethno-local elements with historical-cultural (folklore) examples. Artists of the esoteric type of coding possess “double vision”: they accurately reproduce the cultural landscape of Yunnan and the “life world” of ethnic minorities, but interpret it through individual optics, using world artistic experience.