Truly, titles like “avant-garde,” “emerging,” and “subculture” belong to the few, and what each term references is essentially different. “Avant-garde” and “emerging” represent a value judgment. This kind of value judgment could be found in the Realist movement of mid-19th century Europe. The avant-garde arguably began in the wake of Gustav Courbet’s anti-bourgeois tastes. The reason the avant-garde is so highly praised in the realm of art is that it represents exclusivity and supremacy, an attitude of criticism and of contemplation about the progress of society. Therefore, to call these young artists members of a subculture, and therefore lead many to think they are avant-garde, is the perpetration of a lie. Although it cannot be said that true avant-garde spirit does not exist anywhere in China, it definitely exists outside of artistic circles. In truth, these CAFAM graduates or soon-to-be graduates of China’s highest institute of artistic learning are not individuals who have been marginalized by society. Therefore, to call them “young artists” is more than sufficient, and there is no need to add the grand and sympathetic prefix “sub” in front of the title.
“Subculture” attempts to bundle its values with those of the “avant-garde,” and therefore share in the glory of being “avant-garde.” In other words, the term avant-garde has been kidnapped by subculture, and has begun to regress from avant to après — which is another topic altogether. Artists, art institutions, and critics have created a collective “myth” about the avant-garde nature of subculture, and replaced the concept of subculture with the concept of avant-garde. The art world and other cultural domains have come to assume that avant-garde is something that artists should freely pursue, and the results will inevitably be well received, whereas subculture has not gained the same prestige and can only achieve the same effect by being placed in the same category as avant-garde.
As these concepts are continually theorized and confused, some issues have become obscured; artists who use “sub” material to express subculture and directly or indirectly claim to be protecting it are actually being aggressive toward and psychologically “gazing” upon the very thing they are claiming to protect. In general, the pieces on view at the CAFAM exhibition cannot be called examples of “subculture,” to put it bluntly; perhaps they should be described as “mainstream.” The artists’ reliance on mainstream culture is immediately obvious in form and subject matter. These young artists’ anxiousness and eagerness to become successful is much more apparent than any so-called marginalization.
The only commonality between avant-garde and subculture is that they both become subsumed by the mainstream. Regardless, in the current artistic atmosphere, it is very rare for us to see true “sub phenomena;” similarly, it’s extremely rare to discover the “avant-garde” — these terms cannot co-exist with contemporary art, but their imitators do abound.
