All language subtitles for Art.Of.China.S01E03.WEBRip.x264-ION10

Narrator: I think of Chinese art
as a single great scroll

of calligraphy,

written by many hands,
telling the story

of a 4,000-year-old
civilisation's fears and hopes.

At first,
there was art for the dead,

created to appease the wrath
of the gods,

to take control of the afterlife

or offer consolation
through prayer.

Then there
was the art of the living -

the art of scholars,

who immersed themselves in
nature,

of emperors with an insatiable
thirst for exquisite objects,

or for breath-taking
architecture,

gateway to the divine.

And finally, an art born out
of China's contact

with the West -

brilliant hybrids,
but also portents of disaster,

a humbling end to 2,000 years
of imperial power.

The art that emerged
from the ruins

was one of revolution
and rebirth,

but accompanied too
by shattering destruction.

And now, China has risen again,

and a new generation of artists

are striving to give it
a shape and a meaning.

- We've taken away so much,
so fast,

that we don't even remember
what we had before.

- Have they been crushed
by the oppression of the past?

Or have they found a way
to breathe new life

into China's ancient traditions?

Modern China -
it can be a bewildering place.

Gleaming high-rise buildings
next to wooden shacks.

McDonald's
next to street concessions

selling bowls
of steaming noodles.

An uneasy blend of East
and West.

What can be more uneasy than
a communist capitalist state?

But if you want
to understand the history

of China's relationship
with the West,

you have to turn the clock back
some 400 years

to the arrival of China's
last great imperial dynasty -

the Qing.

The Qing were foreigners,

breaching the Great Wall from
their homeland of Manchuria,

north-east of China.

They formed the last
of China's great dynasties,

but never completely forgot
their outsider origins.

Unlike their predecessors,
the Ming,

whose great symbol
was the Great Wall of China,

who were enclosed,
inward-looking,

the Qing looked outwards.

They opened Chinese culture up
to the outside world

and, above all, to the West.

Qing cultural policy
was two-pronged -

you might say two-faced.

To woo their new subjects,

they commissioned
traditional Chinese art,

expanding the Forbidden City
and adding to its collections.

But at the same time,
they introduced art so foreign,

it seemed positively alien.

When we're talking about the
influence of the West on China,

this really is
'X marks the spot'.

It all began here,

because this was the very first
Western European settlement

in the heart of China's
capital city

and this marks
the centre of it -

it's a Catholic cathedral.

The Jesuits were allowed
to settle here

and to preach the Word of God

by the Qing emperors.

But it was a deal -

what the emperors wanted
in return was Western science,

Western technology,
Western inventions

and, perhaps above all,
Western art.

And one traveller from Europe

gave them that
more than any other.

His name was
Giuseppe Castiglione

and he, almost single-handedly,
changed the face of Chinese art.

Castiglione was by no means
the only Westerner

to come to China from
the Catholic south of Europe,

but he was by far
the most influential.

Before he arrived,
under the Ming,

Chinese court art had continued
in a traditional style.

Exquisite, but unadventurous.

Castiglione,
with his Western innovations,

shook up this frozen world.

His earliest known work
is a scroll of 1723

called 'Accumulating Fortunes'.

On a background
of imperial gold,

Castiglione has modelled
his bouquet in light and shade,

has used bright,
living colours for the blooms,

and painted the vase
in perspective -

techniques familiar in Europe
since the Renaissance,

but unknown in China.

The symbolism of the flowers
was ancient.

Corn and lotus blossom
for fertility and good fortune.

Peonies,
national symbol of China.

But this Western realism
was startlingly new.

'Accumulating Fortunes'
beguiled the emperor

and under his patronage,

Castiglione thrived.

Castiglione is hardly
a household name in the West,

but in China, as Lang Shining,
he is venerated as a master

and his paintings
are national treasures.

The measures taken to protect

this work of art may seem
extreme,

but this 1728 scroll,
'100 Horses in a Landscape',

is considered his masterpiece.

After you.

The painting's got
security guards.

I've never seen a painting
with security guards before.

- So I have to put on a mask?
- Yes.

OK.

- Like this?
- Yes. Great.

Oh, great, thank you.

[laughter]

How am I supposed to work?

A bigger one? Oh, thank you.

So, I've got... It wasn't...

I know I've got a big mouth,
but...

Wow!

I should explain the symbolism.

The symbolism of the painting
is that the horse

stands for talent,
a man of talent

and the landscape stands for
China under the Qing.

So what the painting expresses
as a whole

is the notion that China
under the Qing dynasty

is full of talent,

full of celebrated, clever,
gifted individuals.

This one is especially
interesting

- because he is so skinny.
- Yeah.

Skinny horse means something,
that they are very...

[she speaks Mandarin]

How to say...? They will not
obey to the authority.

He is just looking
at other horses

and don't want to join them,

but in the last part,
he joins them.

- That's fantastic.

Which symbolises the notion
that, under the Qing,

even the rebellious talented

will come into
the imperial fold.

So it's a great celebration
of the emperor's power.

- Yes, exactly.
- Fantastic.

The horsemen represent
the officials of the Qing court,

tenderly caring
for their happy beasts -

the Qing's loyal subjects.

This is brilliant propaganda.

The painting
is over 25 feet long

and its scale drives home
the strong, clear message.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

Because you can see Castiglione
has looked at Chinese painting.

He's looked at
the imperial collection,

- I imagine.
- Yes.

Here, this remind me of Guo Xi,
and here, he's got the mists

that represent the chi,
the energy,

- of the landscape.
- Yes.

My understanding is that
he could have put more shadow,

but that the Chinese found
shadows in painting

rather disconcerting,

so he included shadow to allow

a sufficient Western amount
of modelling...

- Yeah.

..but then kept it to a minimum,

not to confuse the Chinese
sense of taste.

But it's absolutely beautiful.

Castiglione served
three different Qing emperors,

the last of whom came to
the throne in 1735 -

the charismatic Qianlong.

Castiglione painted his portrait
on horseback,

harking back to the great
equestrian portraits

of European Baroque painting.

Never before had a Chinese ruler

looked down his nose
at his people

quite so convincingly.

Qianlong would reign until
the end of the 18th century.

Under him, China enjoyed peace,
stability

and agricultural abundance.

The population grew rapidly.

China had never had it so good
and to congratulate himself,

Qianlong commissioned

one of the most elaborate
scroll paintings

in the history of Chinese art.

Completed 1759,
it's called 'Prosperous Suzhou'.

This is what the richest town
in China looked like

when Samuel Johnson
was out and about in London.

The painting includes
12,000 figures and 260 shops -

this is the land
of consumer durables,

the land of prosperity.

There are tobacco shops,
wine shops,

cotton shops, silk shops,

garden supply shops -
you-name-it shops.

Qianlong was very, very proud
of how wealthy his China was.

He's competing with
the famous Song emperor Huizong,

who'd commissioned
the Qingming scroll,

China's most famous painting -

a depiction of wealthy,
prosperous Kaifeng

back in the Middle Ages.

He's employed an entire team
of artists,

whom it took three years
to create this 30-metre scroll.

It's a truly extraordinary
object.

What it has to say is,
basically,

"We are as rich
as we have ever been."

Not so much the Qing dynasty

as the 'Ka-ching!' dynasty.

Qianlong saw himself
as the rightful heir to China

and its most precious
traditions.

The transformation of the Qing

from foreign invaders
into Chinese rulers

was complete.

Qianlong's vast wealth
also enabled him

to pursue a new love of all
things Western on a grand scale.

He embraced plans for
a European-style quarter

within the Qing's vast
Summer Palace estate

on the outskirts of Beijing.

Drawn up by the increasingly
influential Castiglione,

ten new European-style palaces
would occupy a new garden

within the 800 acres

previously dominated
by Chinese wooden architecture.

Little remains, but the drawings
reveal stone pavilions

of a dazzling, Frenchified,
Rococo elegance.

The effect must have been
surprising -

like seeing Marie Antoinette
in China.

The one surviving remnant
of the great Summer Palace

is the maze and, in many ways,
it's a perfect symbol

of the Qing's love

of complexity, intricacy,
foreign styles, foreign games.

As Emperor Qianlong's
reign continued,

his passion for art
became an obsession

and the country began
falling behind

in science and technology.

Emperor Qianlong loved art -

in fact, he collected
and commissioned so much of it

that it is said if you laid
his collection end to end,

it would take ten years
just simply to walk past it.

It wasn't enough for Qianlong
to love art and collect it.

He wanted the world to know
forever

just how much he loved it.

He didn't merely, as emperors
in the past had done,

put his own seal
on his favourite pieces -

he put his seal
plus a word of commendation.

"Sublime."
"Marvellous."

"I really like this one."

For me, the ultimate example
of his obsessive collectamania

is this -

the box for the man
who has to collect

absolutely everything
in the world.

Well, that's my name for it.

The museum label calls it

"curio box
with the motif of dragons".

Open it up, and you find
a miniaturised version

of Qianlong's favourite things
from his collection.

It's like a doll's house version
of his universe.

Onyx.

Porcelain.

Knotted strings
carved from stone.

Curious religious sculptures.

A bronze chicken.

You name it, it's all here.

Qianlong even collected
himself -

well, he collected volumes
of his own poetry,

each with a frontispiece
portrait,

slowly ageing,
rather like Dorian Gray,

from image to image.

If I had to choose a single
object to epitomise Qing taste,

it would be this one.

A Qing vase, commissioned
by Emperor Qianlong himself,

from the imperial kilns.

You have got lattice-work,

embellished discs
attached to the sides,

you've got these fronds,
multicoloured,

climbing up the spout.

Such a contrast
with Chinese porcelain

from earlier dynasties.

Think back to
the aching simplicity

of Song dynasty Ru ware.

This is the Chinese ceramic
equivalent of French Rococo -

both are the styles
of frivolity,

decadence, overconsumption.

It is the style
that perfectly represents

the pride that comes
before a fall.

Qianlong is honoured
in buzzing virtual reality

here at the National Palace
Museum in Taipei.

There's even a cartoon hologram
you can queue up

to have your photograph
taken with.

There's something apt
about enthroning him

in this flickering fantasy land.

He was a man enthralled to the
fantasy of his own omnipotence.

"Mine is a celestial dynasty",

he wrote to King George III
of England,

"my palace, the centre around
which the globe revolves."

In truth, Qianlong took his eye
off the globe -

a great collector
of Western art,

he didn't realise
it was Western science

that was changing the world.

So while Europe
had the Industrial Revolution,

new technology, new weapons,

the newest thing
in Qianlong's China

was a collection
of fragile novelties.

When he waved his last goodbye
in 1799,

he left China ill-equipped
for the new century.

A particular thorn
in China's side

would be the people of a tiny,
far-away maritime nation.

Englishmen in unfamiliar
woollen clothing

had began arriving in numbers
in the mid-18th century.

Chinese tea
was what they were after.

It had become
an English addiction

and they'd stop at nothing
to get it.

The Qing authorities set limits
on the trade,

insisting tea could only be
bought for silver.

But the English paid with opium

they could pick up
for next to nothing in India.

Millions of Chinese
became drug addicts,

brain baffled
by the foreign devils

caricatured in cartoons
like this.

The end result? China seized
British hauls of opium

and the British retaliated,
starting a war which,

thanks to the technological
limitations of the Chinese,

was heavily stacked in favour

of His Royal Majesty the King
of England's drug dealers.

In 1842,
after three years of battles,

Britain was victorious.

Now...

..under the Treaty of Nanjing,

the British were granted -
or, rather, took -

a small fortune in silver
from the Chinese,

as reparation
for their war losses.

They took a small place
called Hong Kong in perpetuity,

and the right to trade from

and create settlements
in five ports,

the most important of which
was Shanghai.

This was a huge humiliation
for the Qing.

Imagine - a foreign power
not only owning property

on Chinese soil,

but usurping
Chinese trading rights.

And I think the style in which
the British chose to build

their consulate
here in Shanghai,

with its rampantly colonial
style,

having the finely-trimmed lawn -

I wonder if they weren't
trying to rub it in a bit?

A fine spot to drink
a rather complacent cup of tea.

Over the next two decades,

the Qing began to lose
the confidence of their people.

There was popular unrest,
uprisings, rebellions,

tens of millions of Chinese
lives lost.

In 1860,
during a second Opium War,

the British struck a hammer blow

from which the dynasty
would never recover.

It was a cold and knowing act
of iconoclasm -

an all-out attack
on the Summer Palace.

They looted its treasures,
they levelled its stone building

and they torched the rest.

Within a month,
they had destroyed

the greatest jewel
of the entire Qing empire.

The French 19th-century writer
Victor Hugo simply remarked,

"We think we are civilised

"and we think the Chinese
are barbarians.

"Look around - this is what
civilisation did to barbarism."

A century earlier,
Emperor Qianlong

had imagined Europe was
something you could dally with -

a source book of styles
for an emperor

to decorate his playground.

Now, the playground was smashed.

No-one in China was taking
the West lightly any more.

In the thriving port
of Shanghai,

Britain's international
settlements had now been joined

by French and American
concessions.

Foreign influence was having
a transforming effect

on the city's art and artists.

Shanghai's a city that grew up
in the 19th and 20th centuries.

That's why it feels a little bit

like a hybrid between Liverpool
and New York.

But thanks to the settlements,
from the 1860s onwards,

this was really an urban
experience like no other.

Not only did you have Westerners

and Chinese
living cheek by jowl,

but the indigenous Chinese
of Shanghai

developed their own versions
of Western architecture.

Town houses, apartment blocks -

they were living
in new types of spaces.

And suddenly, they lost their
enthusiasm for the old forms

of Chinese art -
the scroll and the screen.

What they wanted was pictures
in frames to hang on their wall

and lots of bright colours -

a subtle change in taste,
but a profound one.

At first sight,
this Shanghai School art

can look a bit too pretty -

wallpaper for
the new Chinese collectors

of the international settlements

to decorate
their Western-style homes.

But it's understandable
that they wanted to look

at colourful blooms,
cuddly animals.

Many of these new
Chinese collectors

were traumatised refugees,

fleeing the violence
and bloodshed

that had racked China
throughout the 19th century -

Opium Wars,
the Taiping Rebellion.

But the presence of
foreign powers on Chinese soil

was a continuing cause
of confusion and anger,

epitomised in a masterly
self-portrait

that the Shanghai School artist
Ren Xiong created in the 1850s.

The image of an angry young man
in knife-edged clothing

echoes the romantic
self-portraits

that European artists were
painting at just this time.

But it's hardly a homage -

the scroll bears
a pained inscription,

lamenting China's
territorial losses

and the indignation of being
subjugated to foreign powers.

China's century of disasters
came to a climax in 1894

with the loss of
the first Sino-Japanese War,

fought over control of Korea.

This was the most humiliating
defeat of all.

China had fallen so far behind,

it wasn't just losing
to the West,

but to its own
far-smaller neighbour, Japan,

which HAD embraced
Western technology.

At the higher levels
of Chinese society,

there was a deep sense
of shame and betrayal.

Their rulers had let them down.
It was time for change.

1911 was the year
of the Great Revolution.

The last Emperor, Puyi -
still just a little boy

who could barely reach
his throne -

was forced to abdicate.

More than 2,000 years
of dynastic history

had been brought to an end.

Chinese society would be
fundamentally altered.

So too would Chinese art.

The old skills
were no longer encouraged.

Western-style industrial design
began to displace

brush and ink painting.

And the Forbidden City,
for so many centuries

the principal source
of commissions,

was closed for business.

After 1911, the new
Republic of China

would endure decades
of political instability.

The Nationalist leaders

struggled to keep the country
unified,

as regional warlords
exploited the power vacuum.

And how did
China's artists respond

to these turbulent times?

The more adventurous travelled
west in search of fresh ideas.

In 1919, a young painter
called Xu Beihong

went all the way to France

and enrolled in the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

When he returned to China
eight years later,

he adapted 19th-century
French ideas

to create a new kind of epic,
politically engaged Chinese art.

One, two, three.

The most celebrated of his early
paintings lies buried deep

within the vaults
of Beijing's Capital Museum.

[chuckles]

I think my Chinese is improving.

That was Chinese for, "Whatever
you do, don't drop it."

Influenced by French painters'
meditations

on their own tumultuous times,

like Delacroix's 'Liberty
Storming the Barricades',

the young painter's new work
made him

the most acclaimed
and influential artist

within a country
still racked by uncertainty.

Ah-ha!

So, this is the very first
example of a fully-fledged,

Western European-style
narrative history painting

ever created in China,
and it's 1928-30.

Xu Beihong, in his own mind,
is cutting edge.

He's been trained in Paris.

He's been trained
at the Beaux-Arts.

He's studied anatomy,

he's studied Delacroix,
Gericault, Courbet.

He's studied Veronese,

the great tradition
of the Italian Renaissance.

In truth,
Western modern painting

has moved on from this style.

We've had Cubism, Futurism,
Surrealism is just being born

at the point when this picture
is painted.

But for him
and for his audience,

this is startlingly new.

Now, what has he done?

He's taken a moment from Chinese
history when Tian Heng -

he's the hero of the painting -

he realises that
he cannot possibly defeat

the Emperor of the time.

Rather than accept surrender,
accept defeat,

he is going to kill himself.

This is the moment
when he announces

to his 500 followers
that he will leave.

He doesn't tell them he's going
to kill himself, but they know.

That's why you've got this
pervasive sense of melancholy.

These figures reaching out.

And right at the centre
of the painting,

as if to sign it
with his own identity,

he's placed a self-portrait.

In fact, several of
the characters in the picture

represent people he knew.
These are his friends.

This rather dignified,
solemn figure,

that's actually the security
guard at his school.

This is his daughter.

At this moment in time,
hostilities between China

and its great enemy, Japan,
were deepening.

What he's done is he's painted
a collective portrait of China

facing this solemn, sad,
difficult moment.

A new kind of art...

for a new sense
of national emergency.

In this climate,

Xu Beihong's art struck a chord
for the Chinese.

But he wasn't the only artist

importing alternative
Western ideas.

Lin Fengmian also went to France
during the early 1920s,

falling under the spell
of a very different

and rather more modern tradition
of painting.

The tabletop Cubism
of Braque and Picasso.

Cezanne's still lifes
also enthralled him.

And you can see their influence
everywhere

in Lin Fengmian's homages
to his heroes.

He also painted Chinese versions
of the odalisques of Matisse.

For all its modernisation,

China wasn't ready for
Western-style avant-garde art.

Fengmian's work was seen
as weird, outlandish,

and it was deeply unpopular.

Chinese politics was
so frenzied during these years

that the Chinese artists
were virtually,

and then literally, compelled
to take political sides.

A new political force
had emerged

and was vying for power
with the Nationalists.

The Chinese Communist Party
had found its inspiration

in the Russian Revolution.

During the 1930s,

the Communists began
to challenge the government.

But internal strife was then
overshadowed by disaster -

a second major war with
imperialist, expansionist Japan.

July 7, 1937, this bridge,

once admired by Marco Polo
for its 500 carved lions,

this bridge separates
Japanese garrison over there,

a Chinese town over there.

Silly little dispute
over a missing soldier,

but then it escalates.

Shots are fired.
It escalates again.

It turns into full-blown war.

20 million Chinese dead.

95 million refugees.

The country is rocked
to its foundations.

In 1941, the death, displacement
and atrocious suffering

caused by
the Second Sino-Japanese War

roused Xu Beihong

to create one of his most
enduringly famous images.

A work still much reproduced
throughout China today.

I met the artist's son, who
kindly agreed to show it to me.

Merci pour...

[speaks French]

Like his father,
Xu Qingping studied in France.

So we had one language
in common.

Narrator:
No 100 horses here, just one.

And it's surely significant
that, adapting his medium

to his patriotic
Chinese message,

Xu Beihong went back to
the traditional Chinese scroll.

It's a beautiful image.

Merci, merci.

The Sino-Japanese conflict
fused into the global melee

of the Second World War

and Japan's eventual surrender
in 1945 left China free

to resume its bloody
internal power struggle.

Four years later, in 1949,

the Communist Party
finally took control.

After four decades of chaos,

the Chinese breathed
a collective sigh of relief.

There were high hopes for
their new leader, Mao Zedong.

The saviour began
his radical reforms immediately.

Although Mao claimed to despise
the imperial past,

he used art and architecture

to proclaim
the legitimacy of his rule

with every bit as much
determination

as the emperors
of China's dynastic history.

So this is Tiananmen Square

and it still perfectly reflects
Chairman Mao's idea

of how the new Communist state
and its powers

should be expressed

in the form of architecture
and sculpture.

'Tiananmen' means
'heavenly peace gate'.

And there is the gate.

It marks the border

between this space
and the Forbidden City,

the old arena of imperial power.

In fact, this used to be
part of the Forbidden City,

but Mao took it over
and made it his own.

At one side you've got
the Hall of the People.

And here...

with its great blazon
of Communist power at the top,

what used to be the People's
Museum of the Revolution -

it's now the National Museum
of China.

This is the architecture
of 1950s Communist Russia.

With its rectilinear, seemingly
endlessly repeating columns,

its daunting scale,

the individual is nothing,

the communal is everything.

It's impressive.

But more than a little
forbidding.

Mao's new state buildings
had to be huge

to accommodate the teeming
masses of the Chinese people.

But having built
this enormous stone box,

his next problem was
what to put in it.

Now, they call this

the Hall of Chinese Classical
Modern Painting.

But I think
what it really represents

is Mao's almost frenetic attempt

to fill the void
of all that imperial history

he'd done away with at a stroke

and to commission new paintings
of his era, his time,

his party, his China.

There he is,
Mao with his comrades,

gathered around a table

discussing the works
of Karl Marx.

Very serious expressions
on their faces.

There he is, the young scholar,
with a vision,

standing on top of a mountain.

Here, planning the great victory
against the Nationalist Party,

the victory that will seal
Communist success.

See how he's represented -

in a simple room,
in plain clothes, in drab light.

This is the victory

of absolutely the opposite
of ostentation,

it's the triumph of the simple.

This wall reaches its conclusion
with...

..a moment of perfect unity.

This is the moment
when the pincer movement,

the two forces of the Red Army,
met,

the moment when they felt sure

they would get victory
over the enemy,

the Nationalist Party.

And everybody,

every single person,
without exception,

has got a beaming smile
on their face.

Collective unity,
Communism, happiness.

Sadly, the reality would not
turn out to be like that.

[crowd cheering,
joyous band music]

Mao saw himself
as the great moderniser,

a man whose mission it was
to drag China

from the feudal, imperial past
into the modern world.

He did some good,

emancipating women from the
harshly patriarchal Confucianism

that had restrained
their ambitions for millennia,

and allowing peasants
to own their own land.

But he also did
an awful lot of bad.

The Great Leap Forward

was meant to accelerate
industrial progress.

Farmers were encouraged
to produce steel

in so-called back yard furnaces

instead of tending their crops,

with catastrophic results.

Food production plummeted.

Between 1958 and 1961,

around 30 million Chinese people
starved to death.

And as the country
lurched into chaos,

what did the great leader do?

He did what so many
20th-century leaders have done.

He cranked up
his propaganda machine.

Some 2.2 billion images of Mao

were created during
the Communist era.

That's why...

the stalls of today's
street markets

are full of Chairman Mao
propaganda.

These must be among the least
rare collectable objects

in the entire world.

In 1966, to galvanise
his waning support,

Mao called on
his young Red Guard

to join him in a new mission -

a 'cultural revolution'.

Old scrolls, old paintings,
old porcelain,

anything from the imperial past
or the decadent West -

all were condemned, their owners
liable to be tortured...

or worse.

Countless millions
of works of art

and literature
were smashed or burnt.

Nine out of ten artists
were put on trial.

Many were jailed,

or 're-educated'
in the countryside.

Lin Fengmian
was a case in point.

He was subjected
to forced labour and torture,

despite destroying most of
the evidence of his wrongdoing -

namely, his own paintings.

- What we see here
is almost all what they have

about him from that era.

- Wow, c'est tout?
- C'est tout.

- Terrible, huh?
- That is terrible.

- Terrible, terrible.

You cannot imagine Picasso
destroying his own painting.

Or Matisse, you know, even.
It's quite amazing.

It's something
very specific about...

..what happened for Chinese
artists in the 20th century.

- It's truly awful that when
he was actually in, you know,

the work camp, all they gave him
was a brush to sweep.

And when he was sweeping...

sweeping the leaves, or whatever
he was doing with his brush

to clean, he would paint
pictures in his imagination,

'cause it was the only way
he could paint pictures.

- It's terrible.

But the problem we have

is destruction of the biggest
part of the artwork,

the problem for China, which is
a problem for art historians

because we have to guess what
they have done

before, for example.

- Well, I'm used to that
with ancient Chinese art.

You know, there are only
73 pieces of Ru ware left.

Archaeological, archaeology.

- It's the archaeology
of the recent past.

It reminds me of
a phrase of Andre Malraux.

"Le musee imaginaire."

Sort of like a terrible Chinese
version of the imaginary museum

where you have to remake
the pictures

that you've painted in the past.

I just still can't really
get my mind around

the horror of that situation.

When Mao died in 1976,

the government scapegoated
other senior figures

for the worst of his policies,

preserving Mao's reputation

and ensuring the survival
of the Communist Party.

In 1978, the new leader,
Deng Xiaoping,

made a symbolic journey to
America, even donning a Stetson.

The Wild West photo opportunity

meant that China was open
to the West once again.

The impact on art
and artists was immense.

And it can still be felt today,
for better and for worse,

here at the 798 Art Zone
in Beijing.

This contemporary art playground

was dreamed up
in the late 1990s,

in a complex
of obsolete factories,

once the epicentre of Mao's
industrialisation programme.

Artists set up their studios.

Galleries opened for business.

The place is still lively

but rather commercialised.

Much of the art on display
is eclectic,

often positively manic.

But while it delivers a frisson,
there's rarely a real shock.

But away from the 798 Art Zone's
sea of white noise,

there are a number of artists
creating work

that speaks eloquently

about the predicaments
of modern China.

One of them is Xu Bing,
whose 1988 installation

'Book from the Sky'

was created from block-printed
scrolls of calligraphy.

Ancient technique, modern twist.

Xu Bing's writing was gibberish,

a bitter parody
of Communist propaganda.

A lament for the decades
when all of China

had to live inside
a world of nonsense,

the loopy proclamations
of Chairman Mao.

Xu Bing's work
made such an impact,

it even spawned
a range of nonsense clothing.

But it was criticised
by the Communist Party

for expressing
'unacceptable sentiments'.

Shortly afterwards
came the crackdown of 1989,

the brutal suppression of
protests in Tiananmen Square.

Since then, there's been
little room for doubt about

the true nature
of the modern Chinese state.

It remains what it's been
for thousands of years -

a highly-centralised machine

for controlling
untold millions of people.

The soldiers marching
in Tiananmen Square today

are just the modern
flesh-and-blood versions

of the first emperor's
terracotta soldiers.

Artists can still get in trouble
if they overstep the mark.

Ai Weiwei, and all that.

But most are left to get on
with their work.

Xu Bing's still working

in a hybrid of oriental
and western styles,

looking back to the art
of China's past,

even as he addresses
the issues of the present.

His new work is
the 'Tobacco Project',

a sardonic reflection
on global capitalism

and China's new cult of money.

Bing.

- Hey.
- Hey.

I've never seen
so many cigarettes in one place.

What does it symbolise to you,
or what does it say to you?

- You seem to be implying
that there's something

not entirely healthy
about all this,

that it might be bad
for our health.

[both laugh]

- Yeah, yeah!

The 'Tobacco Project' strikes me
as a very traditional Chinese

work of art, in sentiment
if not appearance.

After all,

what could be more Chinese
than worrying about materialism?

Chinese thinkers
have been worrying about that

for more than 2,000 years.

And the tiger economy
is hardly new.

Capitalism's not a Western
import, but a Chinese invention.

Visit the financial heart
of Shanghai,

gaze up at
its towering monuments

to getting and spending,

and what do you see?

A bold new skyline, yes.

But expressing an ancient
Chinese impulse to make money.

Modern Shanghai
is just another version

of Emperor Huizong's
city of Kaifeng

immortalised
in the Qingming Scroll,

where paper money changed hands
back in the 11th century.

It's just another version
of Emperor Qianlong's

prosperous Suzhou,
with its 260 shops.

Perhaps someone should paint
a scroll of modern Shanghai.

There is, of course,
a flip side to all this wealth,

this economic miracle,
this new modern China.

Yu Hong was born during
the Cultural Revolution

and trained in Western-style
oil painting

at Beijing's
Academy of Fine Arts.

Reacting against
the hollow cheer

of the Communist propaganda
paintings she grew up with,

her new works focus on
those who've been

psychically disturbed
by China's gold rush.

A lot of your work seems
to be about...

the state of anxiety,
particularly among young people.

What do you think
will happen in China?

What do you think
the future holds?

You can see in the newspapers,
it is a change every day.

Many people move from
the countryside to the city.

Apartments are very expensive.

The living costs
are very expensive.

And the people everyday want
to earn money. It's a pressure.

So I have painted this series.

- So, it's about the pressures
faced by young people?

- Yes.

- About the problem
of depression

or melancholy
in contemporary China?

- Yes, yes.

This is my close friend.
She's a writer.

She had tried suicide two times.

Oh, dear.

- And she had burned her face.
- Oh, no.

- That's why she wears
the glasses.

- Dear, dear.

When I interviewed her, she said
that when she feels depressed,

she always has a feeling
she was in a hole.

Nobody knows she was there,
nobody can help her.

So I want to paint the...

the deep pond
as something like a hole.

She is in the middle.

- Who's this here?
- He is one of my students.

He's a performance artist.

And he makes performance art

- with drawers?
- [laughs]

- The drawers are something like
a box of memory.

- Box of memory?
- Yes.

So, it's another kind
of feeling.

Maybe he wants
to protect himself.

Maybe he wants to separate from
the other part of the world.

- He wants to hide...
- Yes.

..in this sort of cabinet
of memory?

- Mh-hm.
- Huh.

- Yu Hong's works hark back
to Xu Beihong's

Beaux-Arts history paintings
of the 1920s,

but the melancholy she describes
has still older roots.

China's spent much
of the last 300 years

lurching from one disaster
to another,

from military crisis,
to crisis of identity.

Yet, perhaps because China's
past IS so full of loss,

and its future so uncertain,
many artists seem passionate

to preserve their Chinese
sense of identity.

[soft traditional music plays]

Bingyi is one of many
who keep up

the venerable
'elegant gathering',

where artists join
to practice calligraphy,

and brush-and-ink painting.

For her, it's spiritual
nourishment, reviving old skills

and subtleties of perception,

just as the literati painters
did in the 12th century

when they fled the Mongols to
create an art of disaffection.

Bingyi and her friends
see themselves as custodians

of their culture,

an idea foreign
to most contemporary artists

in the West.

In the deconsecrated
Taoist Temple

that's her Beijing studio,

Bingyi's created a no-man's land
between past and present.

Her latest piece
is a traditional scroll

smoked by abstract forms that
evoke destruction

and the beauty
that can emerge from it.

So, it's called
'The Shape of the Wind'.

Yes.

So, I'm meant to follow it with
my eye. I am the wind.

How did you create it?

It looks to me like you threw it
or you poured it.

It's got quite an
action-painting feel about it.

- Absolutely.

First of all,
you burn paper to paint this.

- Ah, so it's an image made
on a scroll of paper

created from
another burned scroll of paper?

- That's right.
- Ah! So, it's ashes?

Yes, it's ashes.

And what do you do?
You mix the ashes with water?

- And ink.
- And ink!

Yes, and ink.

So, there is a traditional
calligraphy scroll,

Chinese element, so to speak,

- lurking within it?
- Yes.

Originally, this piece
was going to be shown

in the National Cathedral
in Berlin.

That cathedral went through
a fire during the war.

So we decided to use fire
as a thematic choice.

Much of the creation
of the world,

especially
of the recent centuries,

was done through destruction,
or through catastrophe.

And this is precisely
about that.

A little bit like China.

- It's just China.
- It's just China.

It's the allegorical expression
of what we know, or what I know

of a certain time, perhaps the
perpetual time of this country.

It's interesting you say
that because I've been

reflecting on Chinese history
while I've been here.

And, on the one hand,

you have people who are
constantly emphasising

the unbroken continuity
of Chinese civilisation.

And I was thinking,
"No, hang on!"

The history of China
is full of vast,

cataclysmic moments
of destruction.

It's one of the reasons

why there are so few
historical buildings left.

It's very hard to find
a capsule of the past

that is intact in China

because it's been
repeatedly swept away.

- That's true.

We've taken away so much,
so fast...

..that we don't even remember
what we had before.

Nonetheless, we can't just
lament the loss of that.

We have to come to terms with
that by realising such powers

bear all kinds of results.

It turned us into
the possibility we are today.

China is an example
of such radicalism at work.

It's bubbly, it's expressive,
it's alive.

- If there's one moral
to be drawn

from the last 4,000 years
of Chinese history,

it's that no matter
how appalling the catastrophes

that befall the Chinese people,

they always find a way
to recover.

A long time ago,
the sage Lao Tzu wrote,

"Water is fluid,
soft and yielding.

"But water will wear away rock,
which is rigid and cannot yield.

"What is soft is strong."

Despite the cycles
of destruction and obliteration,

the creativity of China's
artists has never been stemmed

and still continues to flow,

adding to the great scroll
of Chinese art.

But how could it be otherwise

in a society so enchanted
by images

that even its language
is a form of picture making?

Captioned by Ai-Media
ai-media.tv