Huang Yong Ping
The late Huang Yong Ping was a well-known curator of provocative pieces that had allowed him to confront subjects that were essentially censored in conservative China. He was considered one of the most famous Chinese Avant-garde artists during the 1980s, with his works often honing elements from his artistic inspirations.
Early Life and Influences
Huang was born in 1954 in the Fujian province of China in Xiamen. He remained self-taught in the arts for most of his life, only graduating from an art school in Hangzhou in 1981. Five years later, Huang collaborated with a few of his fellow artists and formed the Xiamen Dada.
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Together with artists such as Zha Lixiong, Liu Yiling, Lin Chun, and Jiao Yaoming, the Xiamen Dada worked as a collection of postmodernist, avant-garde artists who would later engage in radical protests against certain authorities. Being a life-long devotee towards Marcel Duchamp, Huang identified the group’s motto as being ‘Zen is Dada, Dada is Zen’. The collective was first given public limelight when they had burned down several paintings at a 1986 art show in the Xiamen People’s Art Museum. This was their protest after being disappointed with a few circumstances around the eventual show, one where they had previously exhibited their own works.
Throughout his life, Huang was a great admirer of artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, and the musical composer John Cage. Their confrontations and incredulity against institutions and religious beliefs along with the challenging nature of their art inspired Huang to adopt similar stances. Thus, the majority of Huang’s early works demonstrate his own skepticism.
The East to Fight the West, The West to Fight the East
Huang never refrained from using religious and philosophical elements within his artwork. In fact, he infused the characteristics and motifs from Zen Buddhism and Dadaism in his oeuvre quite extensively.
As such, the Xiamen Dada motto was a reference to a common phrase in Zen Buddhism. Zen and Dada both talk about the aesthetic significance and consider the idea of an impossible reality within reality. These paradoxes of religion and philosophy were inherent among Huang’s life and work. However, it particularly shines a light on Huang’s ideas about ‘cross-cultural exchange’.
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The work The History of Chinese Painting and the History of Modern Western Art Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes is one of Huang’s exemplary creations. It displays Huang’s questioning of the division between the East and the West, a subject which is often talked about in art history classes in China. In an attempt to subvert this distinction between the two cultures, Huang put together a book about Chinese art history and Western art history into a washing machine for two minutes – doing exactly as the title of his installation suggests. The result of this act turned the two books into a tattered pulp of papers, allowing no one to be able to identify one from the other.
For decades, Huang used his religious and philosophical inspirations to build installations and sculptures which defied the political censorship of China. A few of his artworks have even incited controversy among activist groups in North America. When talking about his practice, Huang believes in employing the ‘East to fight the West (and) and the West to fight the East.’
Dominating the International Art Scene
Huang traveled to Paris to accept an invitation for participating in the ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ in 1989. It was also at this moment when the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre took place. Because of this, Huang decided to not return back to his homeplace and thus remained in Paris for the rest of his life.
Living in the West propelled Huang’s art to take a different approach, one where he began to question the duality between the East and the West. He also increased his focus on Taoist and Buddhist philosophies, integrating many aspects of Western art in his own oeuvre.
Many consider Huang to be a powerful conceptualist and one who brought his own sense of Chinese tradition and history, philosophy, and European history into his art. His work brims with wisdom and knowledge of what he had learned and the contradictions in a society which he chose to challenge. As Kamel Mennour remarks, ‘Huang Yong Ping was a giant of the avant-garde, a father figure for generations of artists and thinkers. He opened up the delicate path of the dialogue between worlds with intact engagement and philosophical view on the world’s turbulences.’
Huang Yong Ping – Later Works and Controversy
The House of Oracles was a retrospective of Huang’s work exhibited from 2005 to 2008 in various art galleries across the world. The series of sculptures and installations juxtapose references from traditional images with modern ones. This is typical of Huang who often chose to feature diverse traditions and cultures in his later works.
Among the list of sculptures and installations displayed in this retrospective, one in particular received a slew of criticism and indicted for controversy against Huang’s name. Bat Project II was a true-to-life model of the cockpit of an American EP-3 spy plane, where the half-completed installation was filled with preserved dead bats. This plane was notable for its collision against a Chinese aircraft and showed historical materials which referenced back to the incident. Foreign ministries soon took away the installation because it talked about a hushed-down dispute between China and the USA.
In addition to the criticism he faced from the government, Huang was under heat from animal rights activist groups in North America because of his use of live animals. However, Huang continued to use animals in his art pieces. From 2000 to 2014, Huang was known for his signature use of a snake skeleton in the works titled Python, Serpent d’océan, and Bâton Serpent.
Huang in Current Times
On October 19, 2019, Huang was reported to have died from a brain hemorrhage at his residence in Paris. The 65-year-old lived a controversial life, taking on radical approaches with his art and forcing political accountability with comments on human nature. He has been exhibited in many international art shows and galleries, and he will continue to be remembered for his contention with art censorship.
As the director of Guggenheim, Richard Armstrong, describes, ‘Huang is an artist asking tough questions, and that is brutal.’ But Huang was adamant, believing ‘art should take a stand on everything.’
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Huang Yong Ping – Artist Portrait – by www.ChinaArtlover.com
