Chinese Painting in a Multidimensional World - Tsinghua Art (Volume 2)

Author: Du Dakai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: Diversity, as an inherent condition of this era, cannot be avoided, and it cannot be avoided. Blood relations, clans, nations, regions, religions, beliefs, history, culture, customs, gender, age, occupations, knowledge, experience, temperament, interests, wealth, and other factors have historically been the foundations of diversity, and they are also the prerequisites for understanding, judgment, and choice. Today, they remain the same. The difference is that what originally stemmed from natural attributes has now been socialized. The essence of diversity is a social choice. Diversity arises from differences, and differences are the fate of human society. An undifferentiated world is unimaginable. It must be admitted that the roots of diversity, as mentioned above, lie in differences, because differences have historically been the causes of misunderstandings, conflicts, hatred, and even wars. The establishment and confrontation of various value systems are all aimed at enduring and upholding differences. Justice and evil also stem from differences. Social development continuously creates the multiplicity of differences, and at the same time, it complicates the value system. We cannot change the fact that differences exist in human society, and at the same time, we abhor misunderstandings, conflicts, hatred, and wars. Faced with this dilemma, we have only one choice: to reinterpret differences and end the historical misinterpretation of differences. In this context, diversity is not only an encounter but also a realm, a transcendence of traditional value rules, a challenge to human weaknesses, a concern for human well-being, and a contemporary spiritual destination. Faced with diversity, people must discard many historical memories associated with ignorance, prejudice, hegemony, and violence, while also constructing rationality, tolerance, understanding, and kindness. Discarding and constructing must proceed in tandem. The choice regarding differences is to embrace them, that is, to acknowledge and accept the reality of differences; next comes understanding differences, without which there can be no identification with them; and then comes finding common ground between differences. The mutual integration of differences is not only possible but also a driving force for human progress. As a community, human society has always relied on absorbing positive factors from heterogeneous civilizations as a means of self-development in its historical pursuit of progress. Without such absorption, there would be no human society as we know it today. However, this alone is not enough; we even need to appreciate differences. Without an appreciation for differences, embracing, understanding, and integrating them may be forced, temporary, unconscious, and reversible. Of course, all of this presupposes a moral belief in treating others with kindness. Without this belief, the so-called embracing, understanding, integrating, and appreciating differences would be nothing more than castles in the air.
The existence of differences in the real world still imposes constraints on diversity. So far, human society has not yet developed a force capable of effectively weighing the interests of different differences. The current power structure of the international community still lacks effective constraints on powerful forces, and diversity remains a vision, fragile, full of uncertainties, and often arbitrarily interpreted by vested interests. This is the limitation of human society at this stage, which is also why people, on the one hand, actively respond to postmodern, and on the other hand, question postmodernism, making it a challenge to postmodernism. However, as a contemporary choice for human society to address conflicts and contradictions, diversity is full of hope. We cannot view diversity as a modern utopia. Except for diversity, is there any path more hopeful than diversity? Nature has always been issuing kind warnings to humanity. Biodiversity has become the highest criterion for evaluating ecological quality in the current stage of human society. In this regard, people no longer doubt that this consensus was hard-won—it was only after millennia of human behavior without restraint, leading to ecological crises, that humanity finally achieved this awareness. Biodiversity is the most sensitive indicator for assessing ecological quality. Diversity stems from respect for the survival dignity of every individual's free development. It has more social and ethical attributes than biodiversity and follows a completely different causal path. Biodiversity in nature depends on the overall quality of the environment. Without a suitable overall environmental quality, the extinction of species cannot be halted, just as we are currently experiencing the continuous extinction of species. A diverse society, however, is based on the free development of every individual. Without the free development of every individual, there can be no truly meaningful diverse society. Diversity tests how each member of society faces the weighing of common interests and regulates personal behavior. From this perspective, diversity is a genuine social revolution in human history. Cultural diversity is a part of social diversity and also a driving force behind it, while it may also be a pioneer of social diversity. Culture has always harbored the richest aspirations for goodness in human society. Their vivid and charming expressions are weapons that turn swords into plowshares, and they are angels in the process of social diversity. It is particularly important to affirm that cultural differences are often people's basic expectations for culture. In this sense, the difference in culture and cultural creativity are homologous.
For the present, we still need to maintain judgment regarding some extreme and grotesque behaviors in art, just as we should have a fair judgment of the tendency toward value flattening under postmodern. When human society faces diversity, it cannot completely ignore the bottom line of values. Once the bottom line of values collapses, diversity will also lose its basic order due to the generalization of values. In the past century, various discussions about Chinese painting have been the result of a monolithic ideology, during which periods of ethnic nihilism and ethnic superiority were clearly outdated. The argument that "Chinese painting is at its end" and the claim that "the 21st century is the century of Chinese ink painting" are both far removed from reality. With the rise of China as a major power, the Chinese nation should have the courage to examine all past values. Some say that China's rise is the most profound change in human history. Clearly, the future of Chinese painting should keep pace with this change. At this moment,'s "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let the old be discarded and the new be created" still has practical significance. It can be affirmed that even if we gather all the wisdom left by our ancestors, it may not be enough for the future. We still need innovation. China's future lies in innovation, and the future of Chinese painting is also entrusted to innovation—innovation in language, style, tone, and context.