Li Songsong, a Successor Generation Artist in Beijing's 798 Art District, Under the Moonlight of Li Bai

798 Art District · Johns Hopkins University

Successor Generation Artists of the 798 Art District and Li Songsong

Following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Chinese contemporary art moved away from being a political tool mobilized for socialist state construction and diligently expanded its artistic foundations. Artists of the post-Cultural Revolution generation, amidst the decline of reform and opening up and socialist realism, created Beijing's 798 Art District (艺术区) as a new space for artistic practice. This area, formed by impoverished artists moving in as tenants into a former Soviet arms factory zone, symbolically represents the unique character of contemporary Chinese art. In 1982, the Beijing Municipal Government announced an urban planning scheme that departed from the socialist collective development model, and pioneering artists of the post-Cultural Revolution generation, including Huang Rui (黃銳, b. 1953), conceived of the 798 Art District. In 2005, the Beijing Municipal Government officially designated the industrial architecture of the 798 district as a 'Historical and Cultural Protection Area.' Notably, the 798 Art District garnered international attention with the 2008 Beijing Olympics, solidifying its position as a symbol of contemporary China.

Today, Chinese artists are once again facing a new 'contemporary China.' A generation has passed since the 798 Art District became vibrant thanks to the pioneering efforts of the post-Cultural Revolution generation. While the 798 Art District has attracted significant capital from the international art market, it has also undergone extreme commercialization (Park Jung-hee, 2012). Impoverished artists have been forced to leave due to soaring rents, and commercial calculations have permeated the art district, leading to a concentration of capital in commercially viable works. Furthermore, around 2008, as capital rapidly flowed into the international art market and the art market became integrated, Chinese aesthetic standards began to clash seriously with global aesthetic standards. In particular, the question of how to position the aesthetic value of 'Chinese motifs' in the face of global aesthetic standards has become a pressing concern.

Li Songsong (李松松, b. 1973), a Beijing-born artist who is the focus of this paper, belongs to the successor generation of the 798 Art District and extensively utilizes 'Chinese motifs.' He debuted in 2000 and was one of the early members to secure a studio in the 798 Art District. Born in 1973, he is over a decade younger than the key figures of the 798 Art District, such as Huang Rui and Ai Weiwei (艾未未, b. 1957). Although he did not directly experience the socialist state construction under Mao Zedong, he is part of the 'in-between generation' that remembers the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. He held his first overseas solo exhibition at the 99 Gallery in Aschaffenburg, Germany, in 2004, and subsequently held exhibitions in New York, London, Lucerne, Baden-Baden, and Bologna.

Li Songsong actively participates on the international stage, while also broadly employing 'Chinese' motifs in his paintings, including historical scenes from China, symbolic figures such as Mao Zedong, Lu Xun, and the educated youth sent to the countryside in the 1970s, cultural symbols like Kung Fu or Dongfanghong (东方红), and socialist revolutionaries like Che Guevara and Karl Marx. The source images for his paintings are taken from newspapers and magazine photographs and illustrations. He generally maintains the composition of these source images, draws a grid over them, and then fills the grid with oil paints of varying colors, applying them thickly to create texture. This approach limits descriptive depictions of historical scenes while maximizing the emotional atmosphere through the colors of the oil paint and rough brushstrokes. 6. Li Songsong, a Successor Generation Artist in Beijing's 798 Art District, Under the Moonlight of Li Bai_798 Art District

[Figure 1] Li Songsong, Khmer Rouge, 2006, acrylic on canvas

This paper traces how Li Songsong, a successor generation artist even younger than the post-Cultural Revolution generation, navigates the tension between Chinese and international aesthetic standards through his work. Specifically, as the first study of Li Songsong in Korea, it aims to explore the significance of his methods of historical representation amidst the clash of international aesthetic standards. Focusing on his historical paintings that utilize Chinese modern and contemporary history as subject matter, particularly works created after his solo exhibition 'Historical Materialism' at MAMbo (Modern Art Museum of Bologna) in Italy in 2015, we will examine his artistic practice. Through this, we can gain insight into the aesthetic possibilities that the 798 Art District, a symbolic space for post-Cultural Revolution artists, holds for the successor generation today.

The Status of Historical Painting and the Evolution of Historical Representation in the Post-Cultural Revolution Generation

The Evolution of Historical Representation

Before delving into Li Songsong's historical paintings, it is necessary to examine how the status of historical painting has evolved in Chinese art history. Prior to the end of the Cultural Revolution, during the Mao Zedong era, art and political power were closely intertwined. The prevailing view was that art must serve the people and the Party as an extension of the socialist revolution, with socialist realism leading the way in recognizing and depicting social realities from a socialist perspective. Historical scenes from the Long March, the Yan'an period, the Anti-Japanese War, and the Chinese Civil War were adopted as subjects for numerous works, explicitly conveying messages of loyalty to the Party and the state, encouraging increased labor productivity as model socialist citizens, or urging participation in war ([Figure 2]). 6. Li Songsong, a Successor Generation Artist in Beijing's 798 Art District, Under the Moonlight of Li Bai_798 Art District

[Figure 2] Tang Dash, People's Apple (人民的苹果), 1973

[Figure 3] Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, 1786

The tradition of using historical scenes as a means of political propaganda or popular enlightenment can also be readily found in Western art history. [Figure 3] is a 1785 work by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), depicting a scene from ancient Roman history where the Horatii brothers swear allegiance to the Republic. This work carries a clear political message of devotion to the fatherland beyond personal tragedy and later became a symbol of the French Revolution (Park Hee-sook, 2010). In that historical paintings depicting the significant moments of great figures were used for the purpose of public education, we can confirm that the method of historical representation in socialist realism was not limited to the Mao Zedong era in China but has been widely utilized for a long time.

Examples of using historical scenes as subject matter can also be found in the New Art of the post-Cultural Revolution generation in China. Based on art historian Wu Hung's (巫鸿, b. 1945) assertion that Chinese New Art entered a 'contemporary turn' with the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, we will examine the periods before and after the 1980s and 1990s separately. The avant-garde artists of the 1980s, who led the 'Stars Art Exhibition' (星星美展) in 1979 and the '85 New Wave Movement' in 1985, linked themselves to the enlightenment spirit of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and believed in the modernization of Chinese art by embracing contemporary Western aesthetics and philosophy (Wu Hung, 2011: 30–36). They actively adopted the philosophies of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Sartre to re-examine art and society comprehensively, seeking to represent the 'true spirit' of the Cultural Revolution (Lü Peng, 2012: 314). On one hand, influenced by Western modernism, they explored formal beauty and abstraction; on the other hand, they expressed rejection of the socialist realism of the Cultural Revolution period and called for freedom of expression (Kwon Eun-young, 2009: 330).

Among these, works focusing on historical representation primarily reflect a critical perspective on the Cultural Revolution period. For example, Gao Xiaohua, a representative artist of 'Scar Art' (伤痕艺术) that emerged immediately after the end of the Cultural Revolution, uses realistic historical subjects marked by the scars of the Cultural Revolution to convey sorrow and criticism of that era. In [Figure 4], the vacant expressions of the Red Guard youths sitting on the street realistically convey the desolation of the wounds left by the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, Wu Shanzhuan's 'Red Humor - Big Character Poster' (紅色幽默_大字报), created in the late 1980s, does not merely reproduce the ruins left by the Cultural Revolution but brings them into the context of the contemporary era (Wu Hung, 2011: 19–20). The work features a manuscript in the form of a big character poster, a mix of revolutionary slogans symbolizing the Cultural Revolution and commercial advertisements from the reform and opening-up period, with torn paper filling the room.

[Figure 4] Gao Xiaohua, Why (为什么), 1979

[Figure 5] Wu Shanzhuan, Red Humor - Big Character Poster (紅色幽默_大字报), 1986

Meanwhile, after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, the Chinese art world experienced profound frustration, division, and social upheaval, including globalization, making it difficult for historical paintings depicting scenes from modern and contemporary Chinese history to be mobilized for political propaganda or political movements. Artists who led the '85 New Wave Movement were exiled, deep divisions and frustrations permeated society, and self-deprecation, mockery, and cynicism were likely the only languages available to intellectuals (Yoon Jae-gap, 1996: 73; Kwon Eun-young, 2009: 335; Lü Peng, 2012: 170). Although works with social messages existed, they originated from the artist's individual concerns. Against this backdrop, the characteristics of Political Pop Art and Cynical Realism, representing the Chinese avant-garde, were formed.

[Figure 6] Wang Guangyi, Weather Report, 1989 [Figure 7] Zhang Xiaogang, Tiananmen (天安门), 1993

[Figure 8] Yue Minjun, Execution (处决), 1995

The works from the 1990s are difficult to categorize as part of a collective artistic movement driven by political objectives, but they exhibit characteristics of historical painting within the context of the Chinese avant-garde. [Figure 6], [Figure 7], and [Figure 8] depict Tiananmen Square as rendered by representative artists of the 1990s. It is noteworthy that Wang Guangyi (王廣義, b. 1957), Zhang Xiaogang (张晓刚, b. 1958), and Yue Minjun (岳敏君, b. 1962), three leading artists of the era, completed works using this location as their subject matter after the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. Rather than directly expressing the violence and tragic reality of the Tiananmen incident, they captured the scene of Tiananmen Square in their own distinct styles as an extension of their artistic practices, which were pursued with full effort amidst a prevailing atmosphere of mockery and cynicism.

As such, interest in historical representation has continued throughout modern Chinese art history, from the Cultural Revolution period through reform and opening up to the Tiananmen Square incident. However, the period during which artistic practice could be organized as collective political propaganda or a political movement for relatively clear political objectives appears to have ended in 1989. Today's Chinese art world is situated in a political and social landscape too complex to be solely focused on whether it is favorable or critical of Mao Zedong's socialist revolution. Particularly, with the international integration of the art market following the commercialization of the 798 Art District, discussions are ongoing regarding the aesthetic value and legitimacy of 'Chinese motifs,' including Chinese historical subjects. Historical painting can no longer exert a collective political effect, and global aesthetic standards overwhelm individual historical subjects. In this context, how can historical painting secure its artistic value in today's Chinese art world?

Representation of Fragmented Reality Through Abstraction and Narrative

How, then, can we understand the historical paintings of Li Songsong, a successor generation artist of the 798 Art District, which symbolizes contemporary Chinese art? He extensively utilizes 'Chinese motifs,' paying particular attention to official images from the political history of the Chinese Communist Party after 1949 (Lü Peng, 2012: 347). This section will examine the existing critical framework surrounding Li Songsong through the concepts of abstraction and narrative, and fragmented reality, exploring how conflicting interpretations of abstraction and narrative can be derived simultaneously.

Since his debut in international exhibitions starting in 2004, his work has attracted the attention of Western critics, who have compared him to abstract painters representing Western modernism, such as Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) and Robert Ryman (b. 1930–2019), in terms of his abstract and expressive qualities (Bündge, 2015). Meanwhile, Ai Weiwei, a representative of the post-Cultural Revolution generation, has closely observed Li Songsong since the early stages of his career, discerning the implicit depth of Eastern painting (Ai, 2014: 222). Ai notes that the power of Li's work stems not from visual impact, logic, light, or color, but from profound spirit, emotion, and free will.

Conversely, there are also perspectives that focus on the readability of the narrative in Li Songsong's works. While the use of grids is typically a symbolic practice in Western modernism, emphasizing formal aesthetics over the tradition of representation, Li Songsong's oil painting grids are distinctive in that they do not exclude narrative readability (Bündge, 2019). In other words, while the grid enhances non-representational qualities, it does not erase the representational nature inherent in the subject matter of historical scenes (see [Photo 1], [Figure 9], [Photo 2], [Figure 10]). Therefore, viewers can recognize the original historical scene being depicted by the artist and incorporate the associated historical narrative into their appreciation of the work.

[Photo 1] Hitler's Walk with Blondie

[Figure 9] Li Songsong, Walking the Dog II (走狗〈二〉), 2015, oil on aluminum panel

[Photo 2] President Nixon's Visit to China in 1972

[Figure 10] Li Songsong, Watching a Play (看戏), 2004, oil on canvas Furthermore, it has been pointed out that he illuminates micro-narratives and personal stories that lie outside of official memory (Feng, 2018). The titles given to his works create a distance from the grand narratives that have become official memory. From this perspective, the work in [Figure 11] can be appreciated. This piece depicts a nuclear warhead and the people surrounding it, but the title, a parody of the theme song 'Someday My Prince Will Come' from Disney's Snow White (1937), is appended. Here, the nuclear warhead, placed prominently across the canvas, does not convey the typical symbolism of extreme violence and intimidation associated with modern warfare. The title serves as a hint, juxtaposing the nuclear warhead with Snow White waiting for her prince in a coffin, and the surrounding figures evoke the seven dwarfs anxiously awaiting her awakening. In this light, one can appreciate the subtle and broad spectrum of emotions, such as worry, fear, hope, and anticipation, that ordinary citizens might feel when confronted with nuclear weapons. 6. Li Songsong, a Successor Generation Artist in Beijing's 798 Art District, Under the Moonlight of Li Bai_798 Art District

[Figure 11] Li Songsong, Someday My Prince Will Come (某一天我的王子将到来), 2007, oil on canvas

Thus, Li Songsong's method of historical representation simultaneously evokes abstraction and narrative. Ai Weiwei's concept of 'Fragmented Reality' (片断的真实) provides a clue to understanding this duality. According to Ai, Li Songsong's oil painting grids miraculously superimpose a hundred contradictions of fragmented historical scenes, supporting each other to reveal the truth of history that exists only in the minute fragments (Ai, 2014: 219). In other words, while the fragmentation of original images is an abstract representational method in form, it can contain a rich narrative by allowing the viewer to sense the complex contradictions, coincidences, and arbitrariness within history as the fragmented historical scenes form a single painting. Ai Weiwei particularly emphasizes that the desire to interpret the work leads to a hypnotic state accompanied by excitement and fatigue, and seeks to harmonize the two opposing characteristics of 'abstraction' and 'narrative' within the experience of art appreciation, as elements constituting the 'fragmented reality' that Li Songsong represents.

Invitation to Historical Time and Space and Aesthetic Practice

As discussed earlier, Li Songsong has become a symbol of the successor generation in contemporary Chinese art, attracting attention from both Chinese and Western art circles and generating numerous critiques. Both the Western critics who attempt to capture his work in the language of Western modernism and Ai Weiwei, who perceives the power of Eastern painting that leads to a hypnotic state, reveal expectations for the successor generation of contemporary Chinese art.

This section, referencing existing critiques and relying on Ai Weiwei's concept of 'Fragmented Reality,' will attempt to infer the aesthetic practice process he engaged in, using 'contemplation' and 'labor' as keywords. Ai Weiwei viewed Li Songsong's work as evoking intense emotional agitation that leads to a hypnotic state of excitement and fatigue. However, this explanation alone does not suffice to understand why he immerses himself in historical scenes of contemporary China and other 'Chinese motifs' for such extended periods as subject matter for his work, while maintaining a distance between his art and reality, as revealed in the following interview.

In fact, 'Fragmented Reality' also describes the current state of contemporary Chinese art in the 21st century, including Li Songsong. Critic Lü Peng (吕澎, b. 1956) captures the changes in the 'ecology of art' that China faces today and the unique sensibility of artists born in the 1970s and 1980s, who are its main actors, with the concept of 'Fragmented Reality' (Lü Peng, 2012). Artists who have been adrift between pre- and post-Cultural Revolution China, and between traditional China and the China viewed by the West, can no longer grasp reality holistically. Furthermore, as China has emerged as a latecomer superpower and international commercialization has accelerated in the Chinese art market, fragmented reality, rather than the whole, has begun to emerge as the subject of art.

Contemplation of Historical Scenes

In an interview conducted in 2004 with Ai Weiwei and critic Feng Boyi (冯博一, b. 1960), Li Songsong stated that photography and video are more effective for representing reality, and painting does not need to directly engage with reality (Ai & Li & Feng, 2004). Furthermore, when asked about his intention in using historical scenes as subject matter for his paintings, instead of answering directly, he recounted his personal experience of first painting a historical scene.

[Figure 12] Li Songsong, Digging, 1999, oil on canvas

Feng Boyi: Have you always been interested in old photographs dealing with historical themes? (omitted) Why did you choose historical events from the revolutionary war period to the construction of the People's Republic of China and the Cultural Revolution as subject matter? It seems you are not simply using these images as historical facts; are you considering that these images reflect the spirit of their time?

Li Songsong: Not particularly. For example, there is a painting of soldiers digging trenches. I happened to see the original photograph by chance and became fascinated while looking at it. When we see photographs in books, we often close the book after understanding the meaning of the event. I probably started painting because I looked at the scene more closely. In fact, it was a very ordinary scene. People in uniform were digging in barren land. Only after reading the explanation did I realize they were Chinese People's Volunteers digging trenches during the Korean War. If you look at the scene a little longer, you can discover other meanings within it. (omitted)

As can be confirmed from the interviews above, instead of explaining his works and working methods in organized language, he conveys his experiences and delegates the authority of free appreciation and interpretation to the viewers. However, just as he looked a little more closely at the original images containing historical scenes, he requests that viewers take sufficient time to appreciate the works. At this point, the caption again provides a hint. In the case of the work ([Figure 12]) mentioned in the interview, he intentionally conceals the historical facts by attaching the present participle 'digging' as the title. In other words, from the fact that the People's Volunteer Army dug trenches during the Korean War, only the verb 'digging' is left. The viewer confronts the work, relying on the single word 'digging'. Through this, the contemplative experience of asking various questions while initially looking at the original image is conveyed to the viewer.

[Figure 13] Li Songsong, Tempest, 2019, oil on aluminium panel

In his recent work <Tempest> (2019), we can also examine the process of his struggle between contemplative experience and historical representation. The foundational image for this work was taken from documentary footage of Nixon's visit to China in 1972. After the Sino-US summit, which signaled détente, key figures from both countries took a commemorative photo in front of <This Land is Full of Beauty (江山如此多嬌)> (1959), a work by Fu Baoshi (傅抱石, 1904~1965) and Guan Shanyue (关山月, 1912~2000), masters of 20th-century Chinese landscape painting, displayed in the Great Hall of the People. They then dispersed. The documentary footage was frozen at that very moment. Unusually, he added a comment about his work, stating that it took a long time to reconstruct the image, which was a still frame from a video, through brushstrokes, and that he encountered his own limitations (Li 2019).

[Figure 14] Fu Baoshi, Guan Shanyue, This Land is Full of Beauty (江山如此多嬌), 1959

In his brief comment, characteristic of his approach, he avoids specific explanations of the work's narrative, similar to his 2004 interview, beyond mentioning that the image was taken from a documentary. Instead, he begins by talking about how he named the work after Beethoven's <Tempest>, a piece he often listened to while working, and concludes with an anecdote about Fu Baoshi, who painted the background work. Fu Baoshi was also involved in political artistic activities, naming his work after Mao Zedong's poem <This Land is Full of Beauty (江山如此多嬌)>. It is said that in the early 1960s, he visited Sichuan Province as a cultural envoy, where he witnessed the local hospitality, delicious regional food, and corpses of people who had starved to death on the streets, leaving behind several writings.

Through such brief comments, he encourages viewers to spend more time appreciating the work. Initially, viewers will approach the work with curiosity about when the historical scene depicted took place. Alternatively, they might immediately recognize that the scene is related to the 1972 Sino-US summit and imagine the atmosphere of the meeting hall just after the figures dispersed after taking a commemorative photo, or the atmosphere of the meeting just after the century-defining event concluded. Furthermore, by alternating between the individual grids demarcated by aluminum panels and the entire work, viewers can reconstruct 1972, relying on the sensual colors emanating from the oil painting grids. At this point, if they read his comments, they might examine Fu Baoshi's painting in the background of the dispersing figures or recall Fu Baoshi, who personally experienced the light and shadow of his homeland around 1960. 6. Li Bai's Moonlight Shines Here Today_Li Songsong, a Successor Generation in the 798 Art District_798 Art District

Although Li Songsong does not provide descriptive facts about historical scenes or reveal his own perspective, he prompts viewers to ask various questions by comparing the meaning of historical events familiar to them with the artwork before their eyes. In other words, rather than implying a specific truth about a historical scene, he intentionally conceals the concrete narrative of the historical scene, thereby granting broad interpretive possibilities (Bianchi 2015). In particular, through devices such as the oil painting grids, captions, and comments examined above, he offers viewers the experience of contemplation, where they closely observe his works, or historical scenes expressed as 'fragmented reality'.

Materialist Representation of History

The process of painting is like labor. The amount of labor I put in is often a criterion for appreciating my work. Of course, this is my personal opinion (Li 2019).

Following 'contemplation,' 'labor' encapsulates the concrete process by which Li Songsong completes a fragmented historical scene into a single painting. He sometimes mentions the randomness within historical scenes or that arises during the working process as key elements of his work, but at the same time, he describes his work as a process of training and labor by repeatedly applying oil paint along pre-drawn grids (Li 2015). In fact, observing his working process, the original image he references is placed right next to the canvas, and lines and numbers marking the grid are indicated on the edges of the canvas (see [Photos 3] and [Photos 4]). Furthermore, as quoted above, he himself understands his work through the process of labor, involving effort and time. Although art and labor, randomness and repetition may seem like contradictory concepts, it is within this tension that he pieces together fragments of history to approach historical facts.

[Photo 3] Li Songsong's studio, 2015

[Photo 4] Li Songsong's studio, 2015

Moreover, due to the nature of oil paint, the traces of labor added through persistent repetition acquire concrete materiality. The thickly applied layers of oil paint create a three-dimensional spatiality on the canvas plane, and the clearly visible rough brushstrokes allow viewers to follow each brushstroke. Additionally, even after the work is completed, the oil paint does not dry completely, giving the impression that it could still be transformed (Maraniello 2015). While the raw materiality of historical scenes is enhanced, and on one hand, abstract formality is added, making logical comprehension more difficult, on the other hand, concrete materiality becomes more distinct. 6. Li Bai's Moonlight Shines Here Today_Li Songsong, a Successor Generation in the 798 Art District_798 Art District

[Figure 15] Li Songsong, Black Ship, 2018, oil on canvas

The 2019 work <Black Ship> uses the image of the Black Ships of the US East India Fleet, led by Commodore Perry in 1854, which arrived in Japan ([Figure 15]). The arrival of the Black Ships in the 19th century was a major event that led to Japan's opening and the Meiji Restoration, and it also signaled the reversal of the world order's civilizational standards to a modern international order. Therefore, if viewers recognize the meaning of the subject matter in the work, they will wonder, 'Why did the Chinese artist choose 19th-century Japan as the subject for his painting?' due to the symbolism of the Black Ship's arrival. However, the waves, depicted densely like 'roof tiles,' make the identity of the Black Ship unclear (Li 2019). Furthermore, the dense waves are not a mere imitation of actual waves but project a strong desire for the unknown. Li Songsong's comment, which includes the anecdote of a samurai (Yoshida Shōin) who tried to sneak onto the ship, saying, 'If you are truly strong, I want to visit your country,' catches the eye. He thus creates a certain distance from the viewers' general expectations.

This directs the viewers' gaze back to the dense waves, delaying the period of appreciation. While tracing the brushstrokes of the dense waves, exquisitely fragmented according to the grid surrounding the black ship in the center of the canvas, one might momentarily forget the overall image and then shift their gaze from individual brushstrokes to the entire picture, rediscovering the appearance of the black ship. In this process, the viewer naturally witnesses the traces of labor left by the artist based on the historical scene. The traces of labor, which required long hours and effort, the marks of thick oil paint, become a medium that holds the viewer's attention, moving their gaze back and forth across the canvas, completing the 'fragmented reality' as a finished painting. 6. Li Bai's Moonlight Shines Here Today_Li Songsong, a Successor Generation in the 798 Art District_798 Art District

In <Black Ship> and other historical paintings by Li Songsong, the materiality of oil paint is a accumulation of numerous traditions, anecdotes, and tragedies that constitute China today (Maraniello 2015). His solo exhibitions held in 2015 at MAMbo in Bologna, Italy, and at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in Germany, were titled 'Historical Materialism' and 'Material as History,' respectively, parodying Karl Marx's theory of historical materialism. Li Songsong practices his own 'historical materialism' by filling historical scenes with materiality through persistent, calm, and thick brushstrokes, creating his unique representation of history. Through the process of labor, which requires long hours and effort, he prevents the appreciation of his work from escalating into political commentary and guides the viewer toward contemplation, thereby practicing the representation of history in his own way.

Quiet Night Thoughts, Li Bai's Moonlight Shines Here Today

This field trip focused on the historical painting work of Li Songsong, a successor generation artist in Beijing's 798 Art District, symbolizing contemporary Chinese art, and explored his unique method of historical representation. Following the Cultural Revolution, as the international status of Chinese art rose and the art market became commercialized, Chinese artists began to focus on 'fragmented reality' rather than the 'whole.' In particular, Li Songsong, a representative of the successor generation, uses scenes from modern and contemporary Chinese history as backgrounds, divides them into grids, and adds color with thick oil paints, thereby imbuing historical scenes with both abstraction and narrative.

In particular, we sought to identify the driving force behind his continued focus on significant scenes from modern Chinese history while maintaining a certain distance between his work and reality, centered on the keywords of contemplation and materialist practice. Indeed, he utilizes various devices in his works to lead viewers to linger around the artwork for a long time. Furthermore, the thickly layered oil paint strokes bear the traces of his labor, allowing viewers to reconstruct fragmented historical scenes themselves.

The 2019 work <Quiet Night Thoughts (靜夜思)> embodies the essence of aesthetic practice through contemplation and labor. The work depicts the five-character quatrain <Quiet Night Thoughts (靜夜思)> by the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai using the oil painting grid technique ([see Figure 16]).

The grid, divided into twenty sections, contains one Chinese character from the five-character quatrain per section. In particular, this work, more than his other works, clearly delineates the grids, giving the impression that each grid possesses completeness in itself. Within each grid, the brushstrokes are expressed in a consistent direction, enhanced by the three-dimensionality of the aluminum panel. Notably, the corresponding Chinese characters from Li Bai's poem, which served as the motif, are naturally connected, allowing the poem and the work to be read character by character, grid by grid. Even viewers unfamiliar with the Chinese character system encounter Li Bai's poem through his work.

[Figure 12] Li Songsong, Quiet Night Thoughts (靜夜思), 2019, oil on aluminium panel Li Bai, Quiet Night Thoughts (靜夜思) 床前明月光, Moonlight shines before my bed 疑是地上霜.

I raise my head to the moon, like frost spread upon the ground. 举头望明月,

I raise my head to the moon

I raise my head to the moon, 低头思故乡.

down I sink to thoughts of home.

down I sink to thoughts of home. As before, he did not add any commentary explaining his intention in using Li Bai's poem as a motif or interpreting the verses. However, in 2019, he continued his oil painting grid work using the most classical motif of 'Chineseness,' a poem by Li Bai contemplating his homeland. As examined above, in the contemporary art world, motifs of 'Chineseness' or Chinese artists can be excessively imbued with meaning based on their origin within political debates and critical frameworks such as Western-centrism versus anti-Western-centrism, democracy versus authoritarianism, and capitalism versus socialism, while the work itself may be underestimated. Within these critical frameworks, while consistently utilizing motifs of Chineseness, he strives to ensure that his representational work is not reduced to a specific political message and that viewers engage with the artwork for as long as possible.

Today, civilizational standards are once again engaged in a new race. The direction of this race, as indicated by Li Songsong, is likely to observe this moment in history intently, as if examining each brushstroke. The experience of contemplation may appear depoliticized, but it is the most sustainable political practice in that it involves prolonged attention to historical scenes. The process of labor, involving the repeated application of brushstrokes, is a quiet yet focused journey into historical time and space. 6. Li Bai's Moonlight Shines Here Today_Li Songsong, a Successor Generation in the 798 Art District_798 Art District References Korean Papers Kwon, Eun-young. 2009. “A Historical Study on the Cultural Identity of Contemporary Chinese Art: The Relationship Between Political and Social Changes and Art After 1978,” <Journal of Art History>, 33, 325-357.

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China, Milano: Edizioni Charta.

Ratnam, Niru. 2004. “Art and Globalisation", in Gill Perry and Paul

Wood ed., Themes in Contemporary Art, London: Yale

University Press, 277-313.

Sullivan, Michael. 2006. Modern Chinese Artists, London: University of

California Press.

Web Resources Park Hee-sook, 2010, “Expressing 'Civic Virtue' Through History”

https://bit.ly/31P5nJ6 Ai Weiwei, Feng Boyi, Li songsong, 2004, “Conversation”

http://lisongsong.com/doc005_EN.html/

Feng Boyi, Jeff Crosby trans., 2018, “So Close, So Far — On the Art of

Li Songsong” http://lisongsong.com/doc018_EN.html/

Feng Boyi, Li songsong, 2017, “Conversation”

http://lisongsong.com/doc013_EN.html/

Gianfranco Maraniello, 2015, “Li Songsong: Images and Paintings”

http://lisongsong.com/doc016_EN.html/

Hendrik Bündge, 2019, “Painted Thoughts - Remarks on Li Songsong's

Most Recent Works” http://lisongsong.com/doc022_EN.html/ Hendrik Bündge, 2015, “History as Material as History”

http://lisongsong.com/doc017_EN.html/

Li songsong, 2019, “About My Works”

http://lisongsong.com/doc021_EN.html/

Websites 798 Art District Official Website: http://www.798district.com/ Li Songsong Website: http://lisongsong.com/