Jan. 10, 2025

中译

The Flies*

Go to the Venice Biennale, Art Basel, or contemporary art museums like MoMA, Guggenheim, Tate Modern. You might ask: How did we get here? Who decides what counts as Art? 

Two forces loom large: Ideology and Market—in other words, Power and Money.

1. Ideology

After World War II, a U.S.-led Liberal outlook guided Western art. It aimed to democratise art: bring art to everyone. By the 1970-80s, this began to shift. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Neoliberal tide––”free the free market”––swept across the globe, widening the wealth gap while intensifying the commercialisation and commodification of the art world. Today, market trends like ESG and DEI set our cultural “zeitgeist.”

Meanwhile, in China and Russia, Communist doctrine held sway, reducing art to what the West rightly dubbed “Propaganda Art.” Both nations eventually had to adopt market economies. Since the 1990s, under U.S. hegemony, their art followed the “free world,” grudgingly and blindly. 

Now, as U.S.-centred neoliberal power wanes, art is bound to shift again. To where, though? Does the rise of a China–Russia-led Global South—and the newly emergent multipolar world—truly herald an alternative capable of challenging Postmodern hegemony in the arts?

2. Market

Under Liberalism, there was at least an attempt to keep aesthetic or cultural value separate from monetary price. Neoliberalism has effectively merged money and ideology—making price the only measure of worth. As a result, art is transformed into a financial product, operating on rapid turnover and high returns—or regarded as a financial instrument for securing other gains. In today’s art market, the real consumers are rarely the general public; rather, wealthy collectors and corporations shape demand.

Beyond market trends, the tastes and cultural sophistication of collectors decide which works thrive. Historically, this has always been the case: in the great eras of art, patrons were highly cultivated—refined and devoted—spurring humanity’s finest creative achievements.

In short, the interplay of Ideology and Market continues to define contemporary art’s direction, from the democratic aspirations of mid-century Liberalism to the commodification and global power plays of the Neoliberal present. As geopolitical tides shift, so too does our collective vision of what art should be—and who gets to decide.

Nevertheless, I want to look beyond Power and Money and take a guess at how we got here, philosophically.

I always thought Art was meant to stand for our civilisation. There’s a verse I love: “人可生如蚁而美如神 (Man may live like an ant yet be as beautiful as a god).”

If Modern Art was about individuality, then perhaps Postmodern Art is all about ephemerality.

Modernism’s focus on the individual traces back to the Romantic ideal of the creative self—“I.” Through a Hegelian lens, the “I” is the concretised universal—a synthesis of the universal (thesis) and the particular (antithesis). That universal element once forged an “I–You” bond between artist and viewer, letting them meet on shared ground.

Postmodernism shatters that link. Sartre introduced the concept of “l'être pour-soi,” suggesting that everything exists solely for me. Beyond myself lies nothing, highlighting both the individual’s absolute freedom and profound isolation. When Being (thesis) meets Nothingness (antithesis), synthesis is impossible. The artist and viewer no longer seek to understand each other; it becomes an “I–It” relationship. The artist sees the viewer as “it,” and the viewer does the same. The universal dimension evaporates, along with any shared bond. Nowadays, only the artist can truly comprehend the work; once that alienated “I” disappears, the piece is stripped of meaning, leaving behind only its “price”—how much it sells for and where it’s shown. As a result, Contemporary Art becomes a fleeting phenomenon—temporary at its core.

“God is dead, everything is permitted.” “It’s art if I say so, because I’m the artist.”** We’ve finally arrived at “absolute freedom”…

…Thereby, the opposite must be on its way, according to Taoist wisdom.

*Stealing the title from Sartre’s existential play—for fun. No offense intended.

**More accurately, “It’s art if I say so, because I’m the artworld.”