Tsinghua Art. Volume 2: Chinese Painting in a Diverse World

Author: Du Dakai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: Diversity, as an inherent experience of this era, cannot be avoided. Blood relations, clans, nations, regions, religions, beliefs, history, culture, customs, gender, age, occupations, education, experience, temperament, interests, wealth, and other factors have historically been the foundations of diversity and the prerequisites for understanding, judgment, and choice, just as they are today. The difference lies in that what was originally natural attributes have now been socialized. The essence of diversity is a social choice. Diversity stems from differences, and differences are the fate of human society. An undifferentiated world is unimaginable. It must be admitted that the roots of diversity lie in differences, as differences have historically been the cause of misunderstandings, conflicts, hatred, and even wars. The establishment and confrontation of various value systems are all aimed at tolerating and upholding differences. Justice and evil also stem from differences. Social development continuously creates multiple layers of differences, while simultaneously complicating the value system. We cannot change the fact that differences exist in human society, yet we also abhor misunderstandings, conflicts, hatred, and wars. Faced with this dilemma, we have only one choice: reinterpret differences and end the historical misinterpretations of them. In this context, diversity is not only an experience but also a state of being, a transcendence of traditional value systems, a challenge to human weaknesses, a concern for human well-being, and a contemporary spiritual destination.
Facing diversity, people must discard many historical memories associated with ignorance, prejudice, hegemony, and violence, while simultaneously building rationality, tolerance, understanding, and kindness. Discarding and building must proceed in tandem. The choice regarding differences is to embrace them—acknowledging and accepting their reality. Next comes understanding differences, as without understanding, there can be no identification with them. Then comes finding common ground between differences. Mutual accommodation among differences is not only possible but also a driving force for human progress. As a community, human society has always relied on absorbing positive elements from heterogeneous civilizations in its pursuit of progress. Without such absorption, there would be no human society as we know it today. However, this alone is not enough; even more so, we need to appreciate differences. Without appreciation for differences, tolerance, understanding, and accommodation may become forced, temporary, unconscious, and reversible. Of course, all of this presupposes a moral belief in treating others kindly. Without this belief, so-called tolerance, understanding, accommodation, and appreciation would be nothing more than castles in the air.
The existence of differences in the real world still imposes constraints on diversity. To date, 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, making diversity a vision that remains fragile, uncertain, and subject to arbitrary interpretation driven by interests. This is the limitation of contemporary human society, which is why people are both actively responding to postmodern thought and questioning it, turning it into 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. Beyond diversity, is there any path more promising than diversity? Nature has always been issuing kind warnings to humanity. Biodiversity has become the highest criterion for evaluating ecological quality in contemporary human society. In this regard, people no longer doubt this consensus—it was hard-won, the result of humanity’s realization after centuries of unbridled behavior leading to ecological crises. Biodiversity is the most sensitive indicator for assessing ecological quality. Diversity stems from respecting the survival dignity of every individual’s free development, and it carries more social and ethical attributes than biodiversity, with entirely different causal pathways. Biodiversity in nature depends on the overall quality of the environment. Without a suitable overall environmental quality, species extinction cannot be halted, just as we are currently experiencing the continuous extinction of species. In a diverse society, the freedom of every individual’s development is the premise. Without such freedom, there can be no truly meaningful diverse society. Diversity tests how each member of society faces the balance 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 its driving force, potentially becoming a pioneer in social diversity. Culture has always harbored the richest aspirations for goodness in human society, and their vivid and charming expressions are weapons that turn swords into plowshares. They are angels in the process of social diversity. It must be emphasized that cultural differences are often people’s fundamental expectations for culture. In this sense, cultural difference and cultural creativity are homologous yet distinct.
For the present, we must maintain judgment regarding some extreme and grotesque behaviors in art, just as we should have a fair assessment of the tendency toward value flattening under postmodern thought. When human society faces diversity, it cannot completely ignore value boundaries. Once value boundaries collapse, diversity will lose its basic order due to the generalization of values. In the past century, discussions about Chinese painting have been dominated by monism, with occasional manifestations of ethnic nihilism and superiority that are clearly outdated. Both the argument that "Chinese painting is at its end" and the claim that "the 21st century is the century of Chinese ink painting" are far removed from reality. With China’s rise as a major power, the Chinese nation should have the courage to re-examine all past values. Some say that China’s rise is the most profound change in human history, and clearly, the future of Chinese painting should align with this change. At this moment,“，” still holds practical significance. It can be affirmed that even if we gather all the wisdom left by our ancestors, it may still not be enough—we need innovation. China’s future lies in innovation, and the future of Chinese painting is equally dependent on innovation—innovation in language, style, expression, and context.