After the concept; Art and Criticism

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1. From Creation to Meaning: Art and the Intellectual
Art and the intellectual have never seen a form of art like conceptual art become a utopian dream. It declares art as the alienation of society and frankly states that if art is no longer potential, it would rather give up art. In the age of conceptual art, Hegel's prophecy—that art will be replaced by philosophy—should rather be reversed: philosophy will be replaced by art. Philosophy relies on visual entities, which will make philosophy more direct, stimulating, conflicting, and oppositional, expressing the potential behavior of intellectuals. As long as the visual defense line remains defending the inherent nature of psychological experience, there is an attempt by art to overturn this defense line, so art is disruptive. Perhaps it can be said that art and philosophy are not about who replaces whom, but rather the dual death of art and philosophy. This is an era where art is redefined by intellectuals, where art is stripped of its painterly nature and forcibly embedded with intellectualism. When art is placed in the continuity chain of Chinese art past and present, art resists the intrusion of intellectuals. The Chinese art discussed here is the dominant literati art (literati calligraphy and literati painting). The reason is that intellectuals are its gravediggers. There is no independent concept of Chinese art in a visual sense. From the perspective of art categories, it is subordinate to literature (literati art's literaryization), and culturally, it is dependent on Taoist culture (regulating the dominant Confucian culture). The characteristics of Chinese artists are literati, not intellectuals. Art is the refuge of the literati, eliminating behavioral involvement, and there is no spiritual connection between art and society. He (the literati) is considered dependent, and he brings this dependence to art. Only in this way, once society has intellectuals, in the judgment of the intellectual court, the literati become the most powerful witnesses of this servile personality, and their art theory documents are also their most sufficient confessions. This scope of judgment on Chinese art is far from over. Since modern times, the introduction of Western painting genres has added complexity to examining art, but this complexity quickly dissipates like smoke in deeper examinations of art. The materials of Western painting are similarly constrained within the unconscious cultural system of literati art. Here, the value judgment of the "literati" is still considered valid—art is never spiritual, art becomes a means of adaptation, that is, art is dependent. It is not difficult to imagine the decline of dependent art because it abandons the potential rights of the artist. Of course, there is something more challenging, which is that it has always existed, descending from the heavens. The potential rights are born around the tombstones of intellectuals—in a context of negationism, he buries the past and hopes to bury his next generation. This is a rewritten history of art, it is just a fragment of space because it cuts off the time chain, every fragment protests the spiritual loss in the flow of time, the history of art is the history of the combination of protests in moments.
The "form" of art ("form" in "formalism") has had a great encounter in the context of intellectuals today—art's negationism ends its history, and entrusts it to the "negationist archive" designer. The "negationism" invested in society is not only ideological but also visual, that is, thought and vision have a common spiritual orientation, the depth of art is shown on the spiritual scale, only the "deep" is "art." The basis for the existence of negationist art is the fact that the history art faces is a history of oppression. Humans (in the full sense) have created things (order) and environments (culture) while oppressing themselves, and humans are essentially "libidinal." If art does not take on "negationism," it will remain in a state of oppression, watching, silent, and numb. Art is a sickly refuge, the spiritual connection between art and society has died in art's suicidal tendency, and it does not want art to fully express spirituality through its form, so art becomes a means of oppression, and the artist becomes a shameful traitor to spirituality. Only conceptual negationism finally strips away the mask of the literati and literati art—usually considered spiritual (often described theoretically in this way), but it simply cannot pass the test of intellectuals because the spirituality of intellectuals is—negationism. The spirituality traditionally understood is similar to understanding the "yi" theory in traditional art, so it is natural to hope to find the answer to spirituality in the "yi" in the relationship between "yi" and "xiang" (image), and to imitate this language pattern). In this way, "spirituality" becomes an ancient great tradition, while completely unaware that "spirituality" is being humiliated by "yi." The purpose of saying this is, of course, to clarify the difference between "yi" and "spirituality." The value of all traditional categories is under suspicion, "yi"—the gatefold of literati art—only carries an art history without spirituality. The current situation remains the same: when art sets up a neoclassical banquet, the "yi" sustained by neoclassicism revives as a deity and is invited to the seat, people cry out for the arrival of spirituality while indulging in the consumption of spirituality. This is a strange banquet of our time, the cultural nature of "yi" is recognized as elite, and neoclassical "heavenly book" is also manufactured as an artificial cloud, trying to cover the spiritual dawn of contemporary art. If it is true spirituality, it must be critical rather than descriptive, spirituality exists in specific relationships and forcibly demands that it make an unambiguous answer in this relationship: willing or unwilling. In this way, "yi"—neoclassicism has become the object of spirituality's negation in this relationship, if you identify with this object, there is no spirituality. People are unwilling to separate the two fundamentally opposing concepts of "yi" and spirituality because they mistakenly believe that "yi" is spirituality. In this way, "spirituality" is no longer the concept of "negation," without a universal and abstract "yi," the "yi" described today only exists in the inherent cultural magnetic field—Confucian culture and Taoist culture, believing in "yi" is believing in the culture within "yi." Art is forcibly identified as "conceptual," and it will no longer be detached from the inherent art concepts. It expresses the spirituality of conceptual art through its destructive form media, like Bois when he burned the crown symbolizing authority in front of the public—such burning needs to be repeated again and again, endlessly. In this way, art moves from the "representational" art to the "conceptual" art, the key to the logical transition is that art not only needs subjectivity (subjectivity is often the purpose of representational art) but also needs to be placed in the context of conceptual negationism. In this way, art no longer resolves the long-standing debate in traditional art theory between subjectivity and object (tending toward the imitation theory of object and the representation theory of subjectivity). Conceptual art, as a conceptual form (where concept and material form cannot be separated), opposes the elevation of established concepts, in the stage of "art is representation," art undergoes a transformation from object to "simplification," simplification ultimately breaks free from the object to become elements, art becomes the relationship between sensibility and elements. Conceptual art exists between concepts and concepts, that is, the negationist concept of art, how to penetrate the negated conceptual object, in this way, "spirituality" becomes the weapon of the potential path of conceptual art, and the ontology of art is liberated, as we often say, as long as you give form (all resources that can be used in art) a concept, anything can become art. No form of art can ally itself with intellectuals as truly as conceptual art. Of course, the name of the artist is not ancient, in the initial era of "art is imitation," he could only be a painter, not an artist, only in the era of "art is representation" is the artist the symbol of genius and passion, of course, art is sensualized under genius and passion, that is, it becomes the "sensory" art, the call of sensibility has been used as the synonym for the artist, as if any sensibility in any field must yield to it. Although the form of art has changed today, sensibility still remains in art. In conceptual art, the concept is crucial, but we cannot simply think that art has abandoned sensibility, rather, sensibility has been spiritualized by the concept, it breaks through pure sensibility and makes the artist a cultural critic of society, that is, it transcends the sensibility of "art is representation." Only a "spiritual" sensibility makes art the entity of conceptual art, so conceptual art becomes the conceptual interpretation in the kingdom of all materials (form), because once art becomes spiritual, its negationism—otherness, criticism, transcendence—becomes the theme of art, that is, the further art is from affirmation and description, the more valuable it becomes, so the entity of conceptual art exists and is verified by spirituality in the setting and deduction of concepts. The connection between intellectuals and conceptual art is spirituality, and negationism is the fundamental guarantee of its concept. Here, art becomes "the art of refusal," that is, the artist gives specific materials a spiritual sensibility to become a visual entity, using this entity to refuse the obligations forcibly imposed by established concepts, new concepts will soon become old concepts, and spirituality means eternal refusal. The idealism of the sensory age is poetic, but it is, detached from (or basically detached from) the direct relationship between art and society, conceptual art intentionally brings art back to the society it wants to negate, so art is the art of intellectuals, not the art of painters. Only conceptual art turns art upside down to understand it, art needs intellectuals because art needs spirituality, not just sensibility, but this is an unparalleled demand on the literati. To sacrifice the literati for the intellectuals is undoubtedly cruel, because even intellectuals are in danger of being literati. We have been moved into the intellectual crisis of postmodern society, as Marcuse criticized, a society that has lost its revolutionary subject, unless we re-cultivate the ability to doubt and gain the ability to negate, but this is always a double increment of hope and despair—when the intellectual crisis enters the literati society. Chinese intellectuals are caught between the cultural crises of the East and the West, spirituality—negationism not only has no market but will also be mocked, because the literati society has never given birth to negationism, and it has a phobia of negationism, this is the tragedy of conceptual art. But culture will eventually wake up from the crisis, the future of culture depends on the revolutionary subject; the negationist intellectual, when intellectuals walk to their front—hell, conceptual art becomes the staircase for intellectuals to descend into hell.
From creation to meaning in conceptual art (this is a general term for this form of art, not just conceptual art), the form culture examines art, art has moved from creation to meaning, art has been meaningized, art is subjected to conceptual examination, this examination will expose the dark side of the current trend of contemporary Chinese art, that is, the current art, whether in practice or cognition, is contrary to this conceptuality. Conceptual art has changed our perception of art, on a global scale of art, what makes artists lose confidence is—visual similarity, the visual of artworks cannot avoid similarity, which is undoubtedly a fatal blow to artists who believe in creation. Perhaps the modernist era, which was once seen as the age of creation, has come to its end, artists have also changed their ambitious creative mania, replacing it with none and no creation. So, today, if anyone still promotes the art direction with creation, they can only be laughed at rather than respected, because trust in this view has become ignorance of art, art can no longer be without similarity, this similarity has led to a change in the artist's purpose, art has become an expansion movement, that is, it breaks out of the of creation, letting art find its new place to stand. Art brings its disaster in expansion—art leaves the throne of creation and dissolves into every corner of life. In the past, artists were always tempted by the heroism of romanticism and the theory of style (fundamentally, modernism is also romanticism, or the romanticism of the "superman") to not only break out of the constraints of art but also to use all art resources, making these resources the code of the artist's creativity. This is a story of entropy in the history of art, that is, when artists greedily seize these spoils, they are like seizing all the enemies, making it impossible for artists to seize new spoils. With this art event, the victory of the sensory art (I still consider this part of the art history as the "representational" art and the "conceptual" art, replacing the form of art history division of romanticism, modernism, postmodernism) is complete. Art has fulfilled its duty, art and creation are like a tautology, this makes it truly taste its evil fruit—creation exhaustion. This makes art have no way out and no way forward, unless art is introduced to the transformation of form. "New Dada"