The Rijksakademie as an Artists’ Playground in the Age of Globalization

(1)

by

Ke Ma

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts and Culture

In

Graduate School of Humanities

Comparative Cultural Analysis

The University of Amsterdam

Instructor: Daan Wesselman

(2)

Rijksakademie’s open day stood out for its unique way of exhibiting: 50 resident artists opened their studios to present their finished/unfinished works, where the audience – art lovers, journalists, scientists, collectors, curators – could directly change the ideas with these artists. While I was there, I talked to one Chinese artist Feng Chen, who has been the

Rijksakademie’s resident artist since 2013. From him I know that this once-a-year open day is a rather thin presentation of what this artist-in residency really about: the research,

innovation, experiment, communication hidden behind the exhibition itself makes the Rijksakademie not only an ordinary art academy where artists can learn further knowledge and skills about art, but also, by applying its unique concept into practice, it provide artists from different cultures a relatively autonomous and independent playground where the hegemonic power of the global art world and society is to some degree rejected, which allows certain criticalness generates not only within the Rijksakademie, but also towards outside.

(4)

1. The Gate of the Rijksakademie

Artist-in-residence is a kind of platform that runs programs to provide artists, academics and curators with a space where they can be away from their usual working environment and focused on their researches. The programs vary in different aspects: speaking of the mode, some are deeply involved with the communities or providers, some are secluded; regarding the financial supports of artist-in-residences, they can be foundations, institutes, governments and so on; in terms of application, some are only by invitation whereas some are open to the public. The first artists-in-residence “Lydia Shackleton” emerged in 1884 in Dublin (Nelson 41-51), and since then, the programs of artist-in-residence started to evolve along with the change of time. In the 1990s, the programs of artist-in-residence witnessed a proliferation around the globe because of the formation of global market, or in this case, the beginning of the construction of global art. The Rijksakademie was founded by the act of Parliament in the

(5)

Netherlands in 1870. In the mid-1980, the academy went through an extraordinary reform that made itself from a conventional art school converse into a post-graduate art institute (“Rijkskademie van Beeldende Kunsten” 6). This drastic change also echoed the development of the global art world, because from that time, the Rijkskademie started to select some 25 artists among thousands of candidates around the world each year and provide these artists with personal studios, working facilities and seminars for no more than two years for free. Not only that, funded by different organizations, artists who work in the Rijkskademie can also receive a certain amount of living and material allowances each year.

Art has had an long-standing relationship with globalization that has become visible since the 1980s, when the “visibility of globalization process was greatly enhanced by electronic communications and economic deregulation.” (Bydler 201) Since then, globalization has become a “buzzword” that appear in all aspects of life: economic

management, governance, social science, media, cultural studies, art studies and so on. Marx perceives globalization as stages “in the expansion of capitalism on a world market.” (201) More specifically, the inherent contradiction of capitalism drives the nonstop economic development because “the conditions of production cause alternating phases of expansion and crisis on the market.” (202) The global expansion of the capitalist market manifests on the extension of transnational corporations and transnational exchanges, meaning that usually the productive finances, services, or manufacturing are from more than one country. Art,

(6)

unavoidably, as part of “culture goods”, also witnesses a drastic trans-national exchange since the 1980s. However, with only the self-contradiction of capitalism, it would still be

impossible for this rapid development of the globalization, since the production sites, services, and labors are not as mobile as financial capital: the accelerating speed of the invention of the means of communication – telecommunication – also build the bridge for the eager of this exchange and circulation around the globe. (206) With the emerge of the

globalization, “novel concept of the global have been shaped by post-colonial theories (…) this cluster of concepts substantially emerged in academic discourse in the USA, Latin America and north-western Europe in the mid-1980s, typically in the fields such as Comparative Literature, History, Cultural Studies, and Anthropology.” (206) The

globalization of art, too, has been articulated within the past two decades with debates and multiple voices in the context of post-colonial theories.

The discussions about the globalization of art mainly critically question the fundamental categories of art history, art concept, the material archives, etc. in the Western art system. When the normative Western art system met the heterogeneous art forms and art logics from the non-Western countries, then suddenly, all of them, under the influence of the global capital circulation, started to be articulated and exchanged in the global context. However, “the globalization of contemporary art has been conceptualized in a contradictory way”, for “ the experience of mutual understanding and shared artistic values has underpinned an image

(7)

of expansion and homogenization of the art world-system, on the model of a particularly art world.” (215) Clearly, this model is what it is usually called a “western art concept”, which, to a large extent, derived from institutional art theory. Driven by this hegemonic system and other unequal international exchanges that are based on this system, the globalization of art has not radically democratized as what it has wished for – an inclusion of heterogeneous art forms and narratives.

Now, let’s come back to the case of the Rijksakademie. Feng Chen, a Chinese artist, did his bachelor in New Media Art in China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Later on, he was selected by the Rijksakademie to participate in their artist-in-residence program from 2013 to 2015. According to the interview, like most of the young artists, Feng has been struggled making art after the graduation, because to be fully focused on art, one needs to obtain supported financially and technically. According to Feng, “particularly in the market-driven Chinese art scene, an artist has to try really hard to listen to his inner voice and fight with himself instead of yielding to the force and attraction of the art market.” (Feng Interview) Indeed, due to the drastic political and economic turn in the 1990s, the current Chinese art institution is, on the one hand, economically booming, on the other hand, controversially market-driven. Fortunately, because of Feng’s outstanding video artworks and innovative creativity, he was accepted by the Rijsksakademie to be its resident artist for two years. Having been a resident artist in the Rijkskademie since 2014, Feng has learned a group of

(8)

artistic techniques in the institute and created interesting works such as Pirate (2014, Single-channel video with sound HD, 1920x1080, 6’41”), Moon (Single-Single-channel video with sound HD, 1920x1080, 5’41”) and Single Eye (2013-2014, Two-channel video with sound HD, 1920x1080), which are all related to his research on the limitation/edge of human beings’ vision ability. According to Feng, “the studio and the atmosphere in the Rijksakademie give me inner peace so that I can be very focused on my interest, for the institute guarantees my freedom of expression, work space and financial support. Also, I learned various techniques containing video editing, welding and printmaking from the workshops in the Rijksakademie, now I can use them doing different experiments in my studio. I’m glad about it. Because when I was working in Wuhan, China, I didn't have such a space and materials to work with: I had to break some administrative rules so as to approach the facilities I was curious about. It really wasted a lot of energy.” (Feng Interview) From Chen’s case, we can clearly see that the open of the global market and the global circulation, on one hand, undermines Feng’s

independency and freedom of exploring art in the market-driven Chinese art institution, on the other hand, endorses the international art institutes like the Rijksakademie to recruit international artists, so as to enables Feng to get the chance to work abroad. Hence, the globalization of art is a double-edged sword that simultaneously benefits as well as

conditions artists like Feng. The Rijksakademie hereby plays an important role, for it offers a space where the impacts of the hegemonic power of globalization can possibly be, in some

(9)

way, refrained temporarily. Moreover, this stance of the Rijksakademie that is distant from the factual institution, namely, the provision of independency and autonomy in the

Rijksakademie, might scatter its potency not only on individual artists, but the art sphere related in the resident artists’ later careers.

Clearly, this stance – this artists’ independent and autonomous playground – isn’t as simple as it sounds. Instead, it is constructed by complex concept and detailed practice. Thus, bringing the term of “stance” with me, I looked into the Rijksakamide’s actual concept and practice in the angle regarding to its selection, education and art activities. Surprisingly, I found out that within the global art world, the Rijksakademie itself and its participants indeed can, to a large extent, gain certain autonomy and independency. Some aspects of these stance may still confirms the contradictions of the globalization of art, but some can certainly critically call for the democracy of the global art, namely, interrupt the circulation of hegemonic power in the global art world.

Thus, in this paper, I would like to discuss the Rijkskademie and its resident artists against the background of the globalization of art by asking a group of questions: while the literatures, narratives and arguments of global art focus mostly on the “reception”, how does art producers influence the global art scene? To which extent are art producers– in case of the Rijksakademie – benefit from or conditioned by the globalization of art? Can the

(10)

playground-like art “utopia”? What are the significances of this “utopia” in the global art world? Moreover, how to view the Rijksakademie’s enormously financial reliance on the state, art foundations and other types of organizations? In other words, this paper will examine in what aspects does the Rijksakademie reject or confirm inequality and the ideology of hegemony in today’s global art scene by analyzing its concept and practice towards both the inside and outside: the resident artists and the global art world.

To approach the theme and the research questions, I will therefore divide the analysis into three parts. First, I will give a brief overview of the global art discourse by bringing the three main subjects that are closely related to the concept of global art – the institutional art theory, the expansion of the global market and the post-colonial discourse – into discussion. After understanding the background and the historical paradigm about the globalization of art, the concept and the practice of the Rijksakademie and their impacts towards both the artists and the global art world will be explicitly contemplated. Next, I will speak about the relationship between the Rijksakademie and its historical past as well as the outside art world. The contradictory vulnerability of the Rijksakademie – its close stance with the Western-canon concept of art and the risky collaboration with the art market – will be discussed and rethought. In the end, based on the theories and facts in terms of global art and the practice of the Rijksakademie that have been argued, I will answer the questions that have been asked in the introduction.

(11)

2.Global Art Discourse

As Julian Stallabrass wrote, “the global events of 1989 and after—the reunification of Germany, the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, the rise of global trade agreements, the consolidation of trading blocks, and the transformation of China into a partially capitalist economy—changed the character of the art world profoundly” (Stallabrass 10) Certainly, art since the 1990s has been challenging the traditions and breaking the lineage of the Western art history in various aspects. Along with this phenomenon, the theoretical arguments about the globalization of art have been correspondingly constructed over the last two decades based on the overlapped political, economic and cultural discourses. Among the arguments, the concept of global art appears as an ambitious attempt to interpret and theorize the phenomenon of art globalization by “transgressing the possible expertise of any academic context” (Hartle and Chang 28), which shows its cautiousness to avoid any specific definitions that might favor any specific artist practice. Hence, despite of its over two

decades’ history, we are still not fairly clear about how to read this concept due to its multiple involvements of different disciplines. However, this discourse has challenged our way of thinking, for it opened a door of revolution and innovation in the territory of art. Hans Belting, the German art historian who is also one of the protagonists in the discussion of global art, states that “art on a global scale does not imply an inherent aesthetic quality which could be identified as such, nor a global concept of what has to be regarded as art. Rather

(12)

than representing a new context, it indicates the loss of context or focus and includes its own contradiction by implying the counter movement of regionalism and tribalization, whether national, cultural or religious.” (“The Global Art World” 13) Though its lack of clear-cut definition, this “counter movement” is meant to decrease the inequality and advocate the heterogeneity in today’s global art scene, which is already highly favored by a variety of activities and institutes such as biennials/trennials, museums of modern and contemporary art, touring exhibitions, galleries, art fairs, auction houses, private buying and collecting, art journals and so on. Honorable as the goal of global art it is, some factual practices, however, produce the opposite outcomes that go against to its original claim. The Rijksakademie, manifesting on its concepts and practices, unexceptionally interacts with the discourse of global art. The year of 1984 in Amsterdam witnessed a transformation of the Rijksakademie as Members of Parliament in the Netherlands campaigned for the free space for artists in the Rijksakademie against Ministry of Culture’s proposal of disbanding the institute. (“Shifting

Map: artists’ platforms and strategies for cultural diversity” 36) At the very beginning of the

program, the main concepts (or ambitions) have been stated as below:

1. Individual development of and by artists with “on-call advice”; by internationally active artists, curators and others with respect for the artists as (craftman-like) creator, player within the art world with an individual artistic position and

(13)

conscious member of society. No dominant ideology imposed from above about meaning, content or forms of visual art;

2. International orientation involving artists as resident artists or as advisors, as well as supporting new developments in the (art) world without forgetting national position and roots. (36)

By setting its goal to encourage the artists’ free creativity, to try to avoid any dominant ideologies and to include more international artist, this concept reflects the Rijksakademie intention to participate in the globalization of art with its own characters. For two decades, echoing the changes in art world, these concepts have kept developing and being polished to precise policies and practices. To fully understand and accurately examine the Rijksakademie’s concept and its practice in the context of art globalization, specific measurements are needed. Hence, in this chapter, the globalization of art will be discussed by exploring the concept of global art as an academic discourse. By lifting up the globalization of art from a level of phenomenon to the theory, the innate characters of the phenomenon can therefore be clear recognized, identified and analyzed.

To start the construction, some basic questions regarding global art need to be asked: what is the concept of global art? How has the discourse of global art been constructed in different perspectives? What contradictions do global art produces when it comes to the factuality? As it is stated earlier, the concept of global art still remains relatively vague.

(14)

Hence, to answer these questions, it is better to dissect this concept into the main discourses that overlay on it, which are the development of art theory, global capitalist market and post-colonial discourse. There are two advantages to approach global art in this way: firstly, we shall see the reason that the global art discourse remains relatively ambiguous and debatable because the different discourses are simultaneously constructing the concept, which uncertain approaches and understandings may occur; secondly, by dissecting the concept into the three aspects, the complexity can be decreased when the specific case – the Rijksakademe – is under analysis in the following part.

2.1 Western Art Theories: the Shift from a Romantic Approach to an Institutional Approach

The concept of art of the Western modern time has witnessed a shift from a romantic theory to an institutional theory. In other words, the definition of art is altered from a matter of “creative origin” towards a matter of “institutional reception” (Philipsen 82). What’s important about the shift in terms of global art is that this shift offers the possibility that any objects can be art, which backs up the validity of including art from all cultures. However, controversies in relation to the theory itself also arise: despite its feature of being open, its ontological existence sets up a normative framework that leaves aside the concept of art from other cultures.

(15)

According to German literary critic Peter Bürger, “not until the eighteenth century, with the rise of bourgeois society and the seizure of political power by a bourgeoisie that had gained economic strength, does a systematic aesthetics as a philosophical discipline and a new concept of autonomous art come into being.” (Bürger 38) In other words, developed from the Renaissance, art in the 18th_{century has been theoretically singled out as an} independent discourse that was not interwoven with sacred or courtly discourses anymore, and this change was identified in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement in 1790. In his book, he argues that art is the outcome of the distinction of nature and artificial object, and there is a difference between art with a purpose and without a purpose. This art without purpose (pure improvisation or decoration) during the 18th _{century in Europe has been}

developed as the definition of art. (Philipsen 81) This kind of art, as Kant argued, was created by “genius” that has special connection to nature. That is to say, “nature speaks through the genius without letting the genius understand the purpose of or any objective rules behind the work of art that the genius itself creates.” (81) Art objects, which were passed by artists from nature, therefore could be sensed instead of understood by the viewers. This notion of art later in the 19th_{and 20}th_{was altered and enhanced in various aspects. However, the core} quality of art of that age stayed within art itself.

This union between art and aesthetics broke up in the 20th_{century. The classical} avant-garde opened up “ the infinite horizontal field of all possible pictorial forms, which are all

(16)

lined up alongside one another with equal rights.” (Groys 14) Since then, art of all forms in terms of media and material and even daily objects have all acquired certain recognition and legitimation that everything is guaranteed to own the right and possibility of becoming an artistic masterpieces. More specifically, “the images of mass culture, entertainment, and kitsch have been accorded equal status within the traditional high art context.” (19) In this circumstance, consequently, art theory, or a gazing eye to distinguish art and the daily objects becomes essential. American art critic Arthur C. Danto’s concept of “artworld” on the level of logic explains this distinction. The term “artworld” firstly emerged in 1964 in Danto’s essay “The Artworld” in The Journal of Philosophy. In the essay, he defines the term “artworld” as “cultural contexts” or “an atmosphere of art theory”. To take an example, he argues that what makes Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box (1964) a piece of art that distinguishes from the daily objects is because his Brillo Box consists of “a certain theory of art”, and “it is theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is.” (Danto 583) Specifically, instead of deriving from an artistic object’s inner quality, it is through the confirmation of the “artworld” that an artwork becomes an artwork. In this sense, ‘the art institutional apparatus alone has the power to designate an object status as art, through the use of a defining “is”: This is art.’ (Philipsen 82) The institutional theorist George Dickie deeper developed Danto’s arguments into more specific theories in his book

(17)

artifact (2) a set of the aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the artworld).” (Dickie 253) Those persons who represent this certain social institution are, in today’s art world, art theorists, art critics, galleries, art museums, etc. These “persons” who have already gained the knowledge of art have the right and responsibilities to distinguish, recognize and ensures “this is different from an daily object”. And only by this way, an artwork is endorsed with artistic value that is valid within the art institution.

Though the institutional approach of the concept of art has stimulated criticisms, we can still see a fairly obvious shift in terms of the definition of art from “creative origin” to

“institutional reception”. Specifically, an artwork itself can no longer define art: is it the art institutional apparatus defines art. This shift of art theory is vital for the concept of global art, for it claims that in nowadays’ art circle, or in Danto’s term “artworld”, the institutional apparatus plays a decisive role on validating an artwork. For instance, modern art museums’ function of collecting new artworks manifests its potency to act on behalf of “artworld” to historically define which artwork is something that hasn’t been collected. Borrowing German art critic Boris Groys’ words, “the museum gives us a very clear definition of what it means for art to look real, alive, present—namely that it cannot look like already museographed, already collected art.” (Groys 30)

(18)

This shift towards the institutional theory of art thus, in the circumstances of

globalization, suggests “all objects, regardless of their geographical or cultural origin, can, in

principle, be admitted into the art institution as works of art.” (Philipsen 83) Therefore, the

Western institutional art theory is highly relevant to the concept of the global art’s goal of dismantling discriminations in forms of medium, content and origin of the work.

However, we cannot forget that institutional art theory has very limited power to solve the problems existing in the global art world in factuality. For “that art has such an autonomy does not mean that the existing art institutions, art system, art world, or art market can be seen as autonomous in any significant sense of the word.” (Groys 1) Indeed, the institutional art theory guarantees the equal aesthetic right of any object in a theoretical level, but as the market, the factual art institutions have already gained the preconditions and exposed its hegemonic control over various territories such as art prices, preferences, origins, etc., the institutional theory certainly fails to solve the factual problems in the real art scene.

Moreover, although as it is argued above that the Western art theory has a supportive role in the construction of global art, completely using it as theoretical approach to global art can be still questionable. Even though the specific arguments in the Western art theory principally open the access for all objects and confirms their potential to be artwork within the art

(19)

This canon of viewing art is problematic regarding global art because it leaves aside the narratives of the concept of art from other cultures. This “ as if ” widening of the field of art in the Western art theory, concersely, de-differetiates and de-specifies the concept of art. For instance, in the 1990s, easel painting in a naturalistic style is popularly taught in a number of art schools in Nigeria, which makes ‘a clean break from their past by taking up a Western “traditionalism” left behind by modernists.’ (Nicodemus 96) However, this “avant-gardist movement” in Nigeria was underestimated in the global art platform since in the eyes of the Western audience, this wasn’t “new” or “contemporary”, for the similar break already had occurred in their own contexts. As Belting says, “the shadow of the West, inescapable for the time being, lies over them.” (“Art History after Modernism” 195) And this shadow is

disputable what is “revolutionary” for an non-Western culture might already have been institutionalized in the Western art institution and society for a long time, but it is precisely the paradoxical responsibility and potency for the Western-mode art institution to identify what is “new”, which can undermine the legacy of non-Western art in this institutional apparatus.

Another interesting example is that in many Western art museums, such as Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, divides its categories of exhibitions into “Modern art” and “Asian art”, as if these two are not overlapped. In other words, the dominant western articulation of the concept of art, though open up the equal opportunity for all objects of

(20)

various kinds, possibly blinds its own eyes to “recognize any other revolution in art than its own kind”. (Philipsen 55) In this way, it will be interesting to see how the Rijksakademie, as a Western art institution, deals with the disputable two sides of the institutional concept of art.

2.2 Art market as a Controversial Ally of Global Art

In this part, I would like to analyze how is the global market, in other words, the mechanism of the global economic circulation significantly relate to today’s global

contemporary art world. The global art market in many senses can be perceived as an alley of global art, but at the same time, the market itself also generates pitfalls that undermine the equality and heterogeneity of the global contemporary art world. But before I start, it is important to be aware of differentiate the term “globalization” and the term

“internationalization”. According to Herman E. Daly, “internationalization refers to the increasing importance of international trade, international relations, treaties, alliances, etc. Inter-national, of course, means between or among nations.” (Daly 31) Specifically, basic unit of internalization still remains the nation while the relations among them are becoming more important. Globalization, however, emphasize on “global economic integration of many formerly national economies into one global economy, mainly by free trade and free capital mobility, but also by easy or uncontrolled migration.”(32) From here we can see that in terms

(21)

of globalization, the unit as a nation has been eliminated though the power global capital. This choice of term already reflects how relevant the capitalist market is to the construction of global art. Yet, against the background of globalization, how does the art market become a controversial alley of global art?

“The discourse and the politics of cultural diversity and difference cannot be seen and interpret correctly without being related to the market-driven practice of cultural

diversification and differentiation in the last decades of the twentieth century.” (Groys 150) Apparently, the construction of global market in the last 30 years can be seen as an executive premise and driven force in the discourse of global art. In Karl Marx and Friderich Engels’

The Communist Manifesto, they already stated that “national differences and antagonism

between people are daily more and more vanishing, owning to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.” (Marx and Engels 34) It is worth noted that when talking about the uniformity, Marx and Engels used the word “mode” instead of “product”, which suggests that the global capital has the power to “reduce

everything into the same thing,” (Hartle and Chang 44) meaning that this power not manifests in the appearances of the products, but the inner logic of being commodities. This

institutional recognition guarantees all forms of art from different geographical regions, by following the capitalist logic, have the equal terms to enter this inclusive platform. In Friedric

(22)

Jameson’s essay “Culture and Finance Capital”, he responses this argument by comparing this platform to a “new ontological and free floating space, one in which the content (…) has definitely been suppressed in favor of the form, in which the inherent nature of the product becomes insignificant.” (Jameson 153) In Jameson’s view, the driving force of capitalist market turns the objects into the same commodities with different visual outcomes. To take a simple example, in a shopping mall, a dress is presented with price, design and material, but without the information about worker’s feeling when making the dress, on which mountain does the cotton of the dress grew. In other words, the context and the inner logic of a commodity are always rooted out: only the outcome of the production remains. This also applies to the art market: the very existence equal access lies in its de-differentiation of the logic of being a commodity, which can be seen as neutral and equal.

This market system itself can be seen as a neutral mechanism to include art of different cultures equally, but one shall not forget that the neutrality of mechanism does not ensures the neutrality of the factual circumstances. For example, the prices for contemporary Indian art is increasing because of the economic development of India that provide middle-class have the capacity to purchase domestic artworks, while contemporary Nepalese art is not experiencing the same increase in market value of art. (Phillipsen 78) What should be noted about this example is that this difference is the outcome of the global art market’s neutrality and autonomy instead of the ideology and cultural discrimination. But on the other hand, we

(23)

shall see the manifestation of the ideological pre-condition in the global capital, and neutrality and autonomy of the global market, in this respect, sharpens the conflicts of inequality. Take Chinese contemporary art market as another example, in 1989, a drastic and regretful turn1_{occurred in China that abruptly discouraged Chinese people, especially}

scholars, students and artists’ passionate craving and passion for cultural enlightenment and opening-up. Right after that, when the market economy and the global capital started to take over the former system, both of them simultaneously brought in materialist value in terms of people’s logics of evaluation. This value therefore immediately prompted Chinese people embraced functionalism and pragmatism. In the art world, similarly, “newly developed and unconstrained art market took over the Chinese art world as it was still in its infancy, before it had achieved the institutional diversity that characterizes longer-established art

infrastructures in other countries.” (Lu web) Consequently, market value has become almost the only value in the circulation of art in China. Instead of value of concepts, terms such as “size”, “production budget”, “market value” and “collector’s preference” are often overly emphasized in the Chinese art world. It proves that the market has the potency to accelerate and exaggerate the inequality in global art world, despite that the primary reason of the unequal status is not caused by the global art market, but the unequal historical and ideological preconditions.

1_{The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, commonly known as the June Fourth Incident (“}_{六四事件”) or '89 Democracy Movement (八九}

民运) in Chinese, were student-led popular demonstrations in Beijing, which took place in the spring of 1989 and received broad support from city residents, exposing deep splits within China's political leadership. The crackdown that initiated on June 3–4 became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the June 4 Massacre as troops with assault rifles and tanks inflicted casualties on unarmed civilians trying to block the military's advance towards Tiananmen Square.

(24)

Apart from the historically grounded precondition of each culture/country, another deficit is manifested in the global market’ undoubtedly embraces of various aesthetic forms, but merely the visual outcomes. As Johan F. Hartle and Chang Tsong-Zung argued in “Three Parallel Art World: the Case of China”, in the process of the expansion of the global art market, “a specific aesthetic of type of imagery” is gradually replaced by “performative originality and imaginative experimentation”. (Hartle and Chang 44) To be more specific, while the global art market absorbs all forms of visual language, the original social functions in terms of the way of art production, reception, display, authorship and so on are hardly remain. For instance, Chinese literati art2_{, due to its unique discourse of producing, would be} inappropriate to be exhibited in a Western standard gallery, namely, the White Cube, for in that way only a small aspect of its value can be presented. For instance, Chinese artist Qiu Zhijie (邱志杰) created a piece of art called A One-thousand-time Copy of Lantingxu

(1990-1995). In this work, Qiu repeated writing 1,000 times on one piece of paper of the scripts of

Lantingxu3_{, one of the most classical texts in Chinese traditional calligraphy. At first, the} copy of calligraphy could be identified as Chinese characters, but after 50 times of copying, the paper turned to sheer dark. This artwork might firstly seem absurd. Nevertheless, copying in the traditional Chinese literati art world is seen as a process of self-cultivation, a

2_{The traditional literati art is a form of art that water and ink painting is drawn on the painting scroll combined with calligraphy, on which}

the content is usually Chinese poetry. What's special is that the creative process happens at the same time as the viewers get together and view the painting – often in the private occasion such as literati’s gathering. During the process, the ideas, comments and emotions between the artists, or literati, are recorded on the painting. The painting thus becomes a witness of creation, appreciation and critique.

3_{Lanting Xu (“}_{蘭亭序 ) is a famous work of calligraphy by Wang Xizhi, composed in the year 353. Written in semi-cursive script, it is}_”

(25)

succession of the ancient wise spirits. In this sense, the artistic value of “A one-thousand-time copy of Lantingxu”, on the one hand, is the work of art itself, namely, a piece of sheer black painting hanging in the white cube gallery, on the other hand, lies in the process of copying which manifests its traditional logic of cultural practice.

2. Qiuzhijie, A One-thousand-time Copy of Lantingxu, 1990-1995.

The discussion above suggests that the global art market is closely intertwined with the realization of global art. Though we shall discern it critically due to the self-contradictions it makes, it is still undeniable that the global capitalism itself is supportive to the goal of global art.

(26)

Post-colonial discourse can be regarded to be one of the most important postmodernist criticisms of European modernity. Since the Enlightenment, European philosophy tended to perceive the Enlightenment closely related to maturity, which is that one “ is able to take responsibility for his life and decide about his fate.” (Dziamski 224) Hence, post-colonial discourse brings the question about the voice of “immature” – the regions, people, society and culture that didn't go through the discourse modernity of European framework – into discussion, just as American post-colonist theorist Homi K. Bhabha says that the discourse ‘intervene in those ideological discourses of modernity that attempt to give a hegemonic “normality” to the uneven development and the differential, often disadvantaged, histories of nations, races, communities, people.’ (“Culture in Between” 171) Although the earliest post-colonial discourse derived from literary studies, it plays a crucial part in the construction of global art, for globalization changes the relationship between the Western art and the non-Western art so that consequently challenges and dismantles the related discourse of modernity.

When speaking about post-colonial discourse, it is important to compare it with the ideology of post-modernist multiculturalism. Some scholars believe that post-colonial discourse go beyond multiculturalism, for it “enclose the representatives of non-Western cultures in their ethnicity.” That is, multiculturalism renews the former biological racism and changes it to cultural racism, meaning that non-western artists can enter today’s art scene

(27)

particularly because of their identity. This also echoes the notion of “world art” that Belting has stressed that is distinguished from “global art”. World art, as an advocate of modernity, accepted art from different political and geographical areas under the condition of exclusion between mainstream art and ethnographic art, which manifested in Andre Malraux’s Museum

Without Walls. One typical example that illustrates this tendency is a museum that located not

so far from the Rijksakademie: the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam – one of the leading ethnographic museums in Europe. In the museum, a huge collection of artworks, cultural heritages from Southeast Asia, Oceania, Western Asia and North Africa, Africa, Latin America are nicely presented. Yes, it significantly helps the public gain knowledge of different regions. But what problematic is that the style of ethnographic museums collecting contemporary art, instead of affirming artists of their own right, assign the non-Western artists’ artworks as cultural “others” from the very beginning. In this way, these museums indicate that the reason that art of non-Western countries can be embraced by the global art market doesn't lie in artistic value of the artwork, but its “ideological and sociological revelations.”(Lu web) In this way, non-Western art has to be displaced from an artistic context to an anthropological context.

What different is that postcolonial discourse is to deal with the contemporary non-Western art that doesn’t fit in the non-Western art history, and more importantly, the approach of the focus is post-ethnic, for it “does not continue any local, ethnic artistic traditions”.

(28)

(Dziamski 227) As Bhabha mentioned in “Culture’s in Between” on Artforum that this is what called “the third culture” or “third space” of art that is suspended between the local culture and the global culture, a culture/space where immigrants/diasporas bring part of cultures from their homeland and match them with the new cultures they are in. (“Culture’s

in Between” 167) In today’s global scene, not only artists, the living-in-between become

increasingly common for everyone.

As the post-colonial discourse contributes to equality of global art, but it is not without doubts and criticisms. Some scholars see the articulation of “hybridity” and “third

space/culture” as an another idea that “clusters everything about clusters everything non-western together under the same name” and “despite their communal untranslatability, considers them to be the same.” (Philipsen 64) According to the art historian Annie E. Coombes, this notion is only a strategy that is used to “neutralize tensions between and conflicting political interests between the West and its former colonies.” (64)

However, it is undeniable that post-colonial discourse strongly influences the articulation of global art by its dismantlement of the hegemonic narratives of the Western concept of art even there are still disputable issues remain. We can see that under its influence, the non-Western or international institutes and activities keep interrupting the hegemony of the global

(29)

art world and normative western art history in various aspects such as art production, distribution, perception etc., the Rijksakademie, as later will be argued, is one of them.

2.4 Criticism of Global Art

The overlay discourse of global art has been, in multiple dimensions, posing challenges to the hegemony of western-structured global art world and to dismantle the Western-canon normative framework of art circulation, which increases interests of non-Western art in various scales. The ambition of global art is surely desirable, for the aim of equally including artworks of all cultures without bias can possibly reaches the goal of heterogeneity of arts and culture. Nevertheless, as some problematic issues mentioned above, global art, overlapped with different discourses that are still remain dubious, also it produces contradictions and self-conflicts that make the discourse still far from its original intention. Thus, hereby five main pitfalls of global art that theoretically argued by Hartle and Chang, which are also mentioned in each discourse above, will be summarized and presented.

First, the expansion of the field of art makes it troublesome when describing the distinctive value of art. Including all concepts and values of “art” in the world, it become problematic when defining what can be perceived as art. For example, Hans Belting defines “global art” as art that “(1) having been produced as art, and (2) by being contemporary” (“Contemporary Art and the Museum in the Global Age” 44). This definition although

(30)

contains a wide sphere of art, leave aside the question of the value of art that distinguished from other objects. Second, the descriptive approach of global art doesn't deal with the question of specific normative frameworks of western art such as Peter Bürger’s theory of avant-gardism and institutional critique, but these frameworks also manifest in today’s global art scene, meaning that both the widening perception art in a globalized canon and the Western institutional art theory exists in the factual institutional art institution, which on the one hand leaves the descriptive approach indecisive in terms of art valuation, on the other hand, the Western institutional theory dominatingly manifests in judging all artworks. Third, the unspecific focus on a variety forms of global visual production confirms certain

aestheticentrism that global art scholarship and the feature of the global capitalist market often only concentrate on the visual outcomes of non-western art without putting them into their own cultural and political context. Fourth, the expansion of the global market runs the risk of endorsing the specific hegemonic pre-conditions exist in the market. In other words, although the mechanism of market is neutral, the factual market is westernized, which bounds the art development in the non-Western countries. Last, the alleged end of the Cold War (as a start point of global art) is disputed regarding the situation of South/North Korea and the relation between China and Taiwan. (Hartle and Chang 28)

According to these five pitfalls, it is necessary to question the approach of global art, for so far the ambiguities still theoretical remain and institutional manifest. However, as it has

(31)

been analyzed, because of the concept of global art’s complicity and the vagueness, we can, in turn, see it as an access that allows different theories and practices to build, alter, critique and interrupt this concept in different angles, which again points out art institute like the Rijksakademie’s potency: not only to be conditioned by or benefit from global art, but also add new ingredients on it.

To briefly summarize what I have been trying to construct in this part: global art, though still remains ambiguous in some aspects, challenges and deconstructs Eurocentric

universalism, rationalism, progress and values as such by dismantling the universal definition of art and accepting multiple forms of art from all cultures in both theoretical and economical scales. When speaking of the interactions between global art and the concept of the

Rijksakademie, not only what global art advocates for, but also the contradictions they produce shall be paid attention. Since there are questionable issues remain, global art can be seen as a fairly open discourse. In other words, while it provides/imposes conditions, benefits and limitations for art institutes and individuals, it also allows them to add new comments, ideas and methods.

(32)

3. The Rijksakademie’s Concept and Practice within the Institute

As it is already mentioned in the introduction, the Rijksakademie was founded by the act of Parliament in 1870. The plan to recognize the Rijksakademie as an “institute for practical study” for young artists went into effect between 1984 and 1986. From then, the

Rijksakademie has stepped back from pedagogical and career-oriented way of education and change towards an independent playground where about 50 to 60 artists can have their own studios for one or two years. In addition, each of them has access to the library with a wide

(33)

range of books, regular meeting with advisors of different fields and various workshops that can facilitate their art creation. Classroom-like instruction is eliminated, and there is no fixed syllabus. The Rijksakademie, in this way, offers “something different than an undergraduate or graduate course, different than what happens in the individual, fully professional studio, and different from what is provided an artist in residence.” (Schrofer 114)

From the reform between in the 1980s till now, the development and evolvement of the concept and pratice in the Rijksakademie is hugely impacted by the power of the

globalization of art. This part will discuss the manifestations of the globalization of art on the Rijksakademie’s concept and practice. Not only that, as it is argued in the previous part, though the purpose of the global art is desirable, there are still various disputable issues in the discourse of global art that reaffirm the hegemony in the global art world. Thus, this part, besides speaking about the influences from the globalization of art in the Rijksakademie, I will also talk about how the concept and practice of the Rijksakademie give critiques on the unequal facts in the global art circulation and add fresh ingredients as well as arguments to the global art discourse.

(34)

3. Artist Feng Chen’s studio in the Rijksakademie

Before I start, it should be aware that there are a number of facets can be researched in the Rijksakademie, and it can’t be all included in this paper. But to roundly and efficiently approach the theme of this paper, I will therefore divide these aspects into two directions: the inward and the outward. The inward, namely, is about the Rijksakademie’s concept and practice within the institute, or to put it differently, the policies towards the resident artists on their art creation and artistic exchange. Hence, I will mainly talk about the selection

(admission) of artists and the art education. The outward, vice versa, means the

Rijksakademie’s practice that directly and indirectly impacts the global art world, which contains the RijskademieOPEN as well as RAIN, an international artists network that was formed by the former participants in the Rijsakademie.

(35)

3.1 Artists’ Selection

As it has been introduced, since the mid of the 1980s, the Rijksakademie started not only to recruit artists from Europe, but also the globe. Today, there are thousands of artists around the world apply for the 50 to 60 positions every year. The Rijksakademie allots

approximately half of the quota to the countries outside the Netherland, and the rest is

distributed to the artists with Dutch background and experience, regardless whether they have Dutch nationalities or not. For example, in the year of 2005, there are only 8 original Dutch artists, 17 international artists that had former studies in the Netherlands, and the rest 30 international artists are whose who attended their former art schools in their own countries or outside the Netherlands. The Rijksakademie’s attention of the artists’ cultural background and experience is thusly favored, because in this manner the excessive number of the

overseas artists who come from Dutch art education background is avoided. With nearly half of the artists who come from different education systems and cultural experiences, artists may have different points of view on art making due to their different education backgrounds and cultural experiences, which can diversely arouse discussions and makes the academy like an international “melting pot”.

There are a huge number of international artists apply for the position in the

Rijksakademie annually: there are 1298, 1260, 1522 and 1303 overseas applicants in the year of 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2014 respectively. No wonder, the selection is a difficult and painful

(36)

process, since the topics and media are very diverse and difficult to be compared. The criteria of selection are hardly to be clear-cut, but the main discussions are focused on artistic

content, professional capacity, level of professionalism and the work plan. According to the director of the Rijksakademie Els van Odijk, the Rijksakademie would like to admit an artist who has a strong commitment to art, namely, clearly recognize who he/she is as an artist, who has innovative perception of the use of media, who is mature on the level of his/her own artistic language, who is open for new discussion, whose artworks indicate that the facilities in the Rijksakademie can be fully utilized. (Odijk Interview) Already from these points, we can see that the Rijksakademie is very interested in an artist’s individual experience from the past. However, since the Rijksakademie play an international role to include artists from various cultures, there arouse debates: whether the Rijksakademie runs the risk of utilizing international artists’ cultural identities that reflect in artwork as a crucial point when selecting the candidates? In other words, does the Rijksakademie preferably weigh the particular social, political and ideological revealments of an artwork more than its individual artistic value? Does the Rijksakademie falls into multiculturalism that is introduced in previous part? Concerning this issue, the director of the Rijksakademie Els van Odijk responds,“ the

Rijksakademie is not a place for the representation of cultures, because individuals are different. Thus while selecting artists, the Rijksakademie would not consider picking artists from each country. Say, if they were 300 Chinese artists, but none of them surprised them,

(37)

none of them would be admitted by the Rijksakademie. In the mean time, if there were three Chinese artists simultaneously ‘wow’ the judges, they would all be admitted. This principle not only applies to the nationalities of the candidates, but also the media, disciplines the candidates use: if there were 100 photographers apply but we didn't find an astonishing one, no photographer would be admitted this year” (Odijk Interview)

Acting in accordance with this principle, the Rijksakademie responds to the globalization of art that is criticized in a post-colonial angle: that non-Western art can be embraced by the global art world is more often because of its social and political revelation of certain

geographical areas, which imposes the non-Western art to be displaced from an artistic context to an anthropological context. Different from this popular phenomenon in the today’s global art world, the principle of selection in the Rijksakademie’s is not focused on artists’ representations of cultures. Instead, they strongly value individual artists’ personal feature as an artists, which provides the global art discourse a unique and progressive example

regarding art perception and reception.

Another interesting point is that director Odijk suggests that the interview is a crucial part in the process of selection, for the Rijksakademie has strong curiosity about the art practices and contexts behind the visual outcomes. For example, “if there is an Asian

applicant creates similar paintings as Piet Montdrian, the Rijksakademie would not deny the artworks at first place. On the contrary, we would talk to the artists first. We would figure out

(38)

the contexts behind the artworks, which may reveal another cultural context or background that as a Western viewer might have never encountered with before. If the stories and contexts behind the artwork are totally different from Piet Montdrian, say, maybe relates to some Chinese ancient temple structure or a ancient way of thinking, we might still choose the artist even the visual outcomes is something we have seen before.” (Odijk Interview) This echoes what has mentioned about the dominance of the western concept of art. While distinguish what is “new” about art, the Western-style art institution is sometimes trapped into the blindness by its own dominant narrative and history of art so that fail to recognize other revolutionary visual forms from the non-Western countries. Different from the mode of the global art market that very often includes the aesthetic forms and visual outcomes but eliminates the “performative originality and imaginative experimentation, namely, the logic of art practice, the Rijksakademie defends for the inner logics of art production, mediation and production from other cultures. Because of the Rijksakademie’s awareness of its limited horizon of art perception, it tries to keep the eyes open for the narratives of other cultural traditions. In this way, the Rijksakademie differentiates from the normative global art value system that is merely based on and sometimes blinded by European and American art history. We can hypothesize that if the Rijksakademie encountered with the Nigerian “avant-gardist movement”, the Rijksakademie’s method of selection possibly would not underestimate its historical and artistic status. In this sense, compared to the actual global art market that

(39)

mostly narrows “art” into “visual outcomes”, the Rijksakademie, also on behalf of “certain social institution”, is more inclusive and protective to the “marginal” fields of art by offering them spaces and opportunities to build their articulations in the global art world.

3.2 The Anti-didactic Education

Discarded the traditional didactic art education system, one of the characteristics of the Rijsksakademie can be described as “ integral formula” (Odijk 12), which was based on a conviction founded since 1870 that an artist’ development need the support of creativity, theory and techniques. Although we can hardly participate in the education in the

Rijksakademie, by exploring its three educational three aspects – advisors, General Studies Department and technical workshops – we can still clearly approach the logic of the

education in the Rijksakademie.

The Rijksakademie approaches the creative guidance by providing the confrontations with international artist advisors who are specialized in different fields and have already gained certain reputation within certain fields, such as Ansuya Blom (NL), Isabelle Cornarno (FR), Jaki Irvine (IE/MX) and other 11 artists4_{in 2015. These artist advisors come into the} resident artists’ studios to give creative advice and have equal discussions with them. Depending on one’s own feature of work (such as theme, style and medium) or the personalities and characters they represent as an artist, the resident artists can decide what

(40)

suggestions to take, what articulations should be added into their artistic “vocabulary”. On 7th April 2015, I also participated a studio open day among the artists and advisors in the

Rijksakademie. On that day, all of the resident artists could open their studios to present their finished/unfinished works. I stayed in Feng’s studio to observe the discourse between him and those advisors. Usually, they walked in the studio at different times, but they were all with an easy, relaxing manner. On that day, Feng presented a video about the censor gate in the Rijksakademie. In the video, Feng used the smart key in different manners, for example, speedily or slowly reaching the censor of the door, to examine the sensitivity of the censor door in order to discuss the limitation and discrimination of today’s technology. The conversation between Feng and his advisors regarding the artwork mainly focused not so much on whether it was a valuable or favorable idea or not: the discussion was mostly on the level of the artistic language that Feng had used. For instance, if the people who have never used the sensor key would understand, or, by overly adding hints and explanations, if the artwork itself would be too conspicuous and risks a loss of aesthetic value.

Apart from the suggestions from the advisors, General Studies Department in the Rijksakademie also provides library with rich collections, chances to have discussion with theoretician and theoretical seminar that artists could attend. For example, in 2014,

philosopher Gatson Meskens, writer and evolutionary biologist Tijs Goldschmidt and performance scholar Megan Hoetger are invited to the Rijksakademie to have discussions

(41)

with the artists whose work is relevant to the subjects5_{. For example, Feng’s recent artwork is} concerning the limitation of human vision. In the aspect of 3D effect, Feng learned from Tijs Goldschmidt that, to catch the prey, some species of birds locate the prey by keep moving their necks. Feng was inspired by the fact and afterwards became more observant and aware about biology’s power to solve technical problems in his artworks. The Rijksakademie’s encouragement of interdisciplinary experiments has opened up multiple dimensions for the artist to actualize their inspirations and imaginations in a scientific level.

One facility that is strongly favored by the resident artists is the wide range of technical workshops that teach the artists about how to work with different forms of medium and materials. This availability help the participants have chance to fantasize about materials and media they have never used, so as to extend the possibilities and frontiers of these artists’ artworks. Just as Feng’s goal as an artist, “what I would love to achieve is to create a new artistic language, and these technical workshops really help me a lot, because those artists or technicians’ guidance, I can put a lot of thoughts that seems impossible to execute into actual practice.” (Feng Interview) From the timetable in the spring of 2015, the Rijksakademie offers workshops for basic electronics safety instructions, wood workshop, video camera, silkscreen printing, collections, audio editing, spray-painting booth, basic metal techniques, molds, analog photo, digital photography, welding, photo etching, Max/Msp programming

(42)

and animation6_{to the 60 resident artists. For example, artists who are specialized in painting,} if they are willing to, can have the access to acquire more about film, video, photography and computer techniques. Also, it is important to mention that artists in the Rijksakamide are not obligatory to participate in these workshops or seminars, or according to the resident Wu Chi-Yu, a Taiwanese participant who works in the Rijsakademie from 2013 to 2015, that “the Rijskademie doesn’t virtually push you to do anything, you only choose for yourself. You can just stay in your studio every day without talking to people, but you can also join these activities and workshops organized by the academy.” (Wu Interview)

4. Wood Workshop in the Rijksakademie

6_{The workshops and seminars mentioned are excerpted from the Rijksakademie’s schedule in March and April}

(43)

From the three aspects of the education in the Rijksakademie we can see that this institute gives the artists a lot of space to choose for themselves rather than imposing certain knowledge or concepts that possibly either better or suppress individual artists’ creativity and style that exist in most of art schools. To illustrate, Berlin Art University, as one of the top art universities in the world, the division of the departments and subjects is also according to the traditional branches of art. The post-graduate program “Art in Context”, which is also open to outstanding artists around the world, offers four modules for the artists: Artistic work with social groups, Artistic work within cultural institutions (with the focus areas: Artistic Museum Studies and Artistic Curatorial Studies), Artistic work within the public space and Artistic work in the context of media and scientific image production (“Postgraduate

Masters Degree Art in Context” web). We can see that compared to the Rijksakademie, the

advanced studies in Berlin Art University are clear-cut categorized. Aiming at different achievements, the Rijksakademie in this sense can be seen as a “supermarket”, and one can get only the goods he needs and is curious about. In other words, from merely “offer” facilities rather than compulsorily demand the artists’ engagements, the Rijksakademie does not intend to play an instructive role: the education here is two directions: conversations and communication8. Regarding this teaching methods, we can conclude that the

(44)

an essential logic if it is upgraded to the theoretical level, particularly regarding the critically re-consideration of the subject “art history” in the age of globalization.

Art history has been re-considered and criticized since the last two decades. The reasons for the contemplation are the rise of art from North America, French post-modernism

thinking, and the shift of art theory from the emphasis on the art object itself towards to a wider field of practices with different aims such as contextualizations and interdisciplinary orientations. (Zijlmans 135) In a post-colonial perspective, “instead of seeing a multitude of sources and interconnected developments which contribute to make up the field of modern art, one single development has been isolated by Western Art History and is viewed as if it were autonomous; as if it were the sole development.” (138) What Zijlmans wants to bring up is that art has been discussed in more and more disciplinary and cultural perspectives. These emerging, heterogeneous perspectives are challenging the subject of art history, for this subject’s divisions of art concepts, styles, periods, branches are ideologically constructed in a Eurocentric view of art, leaving aside “other” narratives, such as post-modernism thinking, the interdisciplinary development, etc. This contradiction of the discipline art history is particularly sharpened in the age of globalization because of the drastically increase of the narratives of “others” in any subjects. In this sense, the term “epilogues” is referred in different contexts while speaking about the current and future condition of the discipline of art history. Hans Belting, as one of the most important narrator about the epilogues of art

(45)

history, states that “art history as a discourse originally was invented for a particular culture, in other words, for a culture with common history. By contrast, minorities that have surfaced in a given society fell that they need not to be represented in such a frame, as they do not share the others’ view on history.” (“Art History after Modernism” 62)Indeed, the history of art has been constructed in a European tradition, or to put it differently, the phrase such as “modernism” reflects the perceptions of art in art history are shaped and colored by European’s own cultural and historical experience. However, “world art is on the rise, a chimera of global culture that challenges our well-trained Western definition of art. Finally, minorities are also claiming their own place in a canon of art history from which they feel excluded or in which they were never considered.” (ix)

Hence, although the discourse of global art has been trying to enlarge the territory of art, there still exists a normative Eurocentric framework about the concept of art, which possibly eliminates and conditions the artists, especially non-Western artists’ diverse perspectives when creating artworks. When we look back at the Rijksakademie’s way of education, we can clearly see that the institute is aware of the contractions of art history on the discourse of global art. In relation to the Rijksakademie’s education, namely, the support of creativity, theory and techniques, it has been carefully avoiding leading or misleading the artists towards particularly artistic trends and theoretical methods of art creation and appreciation, for they might run the risk of forcing the ideologies of the debatable Western art history on art

(46)

producing, both for the Western and non-Western artists. Conversely, the Rijksakademie gives the artists free space, where every trends, forms and themes are equally presented and voluntarily explored, acquired by the artists.

This anti-didactic education, leaving aside the ideologically shaped traditional historic methods and prevalent trends favored by the art world, guarantees a utopian space where an artist can only focus on what he eagers to explore, and it is also sensed by the artists’ feeling: one of the former artists Ivan Grubanov said, “perhaps it could be explained as a very

immediate, vibrant, honest focus on yourself and on your practice and expression within your own cultural co-ordinates. I could make a comparison with the London art scene, where as young artists, your expression always moves along with the tendencies in the art scene, towards the things you experience as cool and exciting out there in the hippest galleries, among the hippest art crowd – and you sort of use them as a system of criteria. You are using their experience, you are incorporating their works and identities into your own body of work, in order to locate and situate yourself and finally produce something unique. The Rijksakademie enables an inward focus, which is literally your own criterion of your own frustration and insecurity, of your own geopolitical and social code.” (Grubanov 11)

From Grubanov, we can see that the Rijksakademie’s rejection of being adherent to the historic view of art making, particularly artistic trends, also allows the participants keeps the distance with the machinery of norm in the global art world for two years, which encourages

(47)

the artists to think individually and reflexively on art making. Thus, what significant about the anti-didactic education in the Rijksakademie is indirect and discursive, which reflects on participants’ autonomy that is gained from this independent stance of the Rijksakademie. And the manifestation on the artists’ temporary freedom from the norm of the Western ideological art institution can be seen as a break of lineage of the unequal preconditions of the

evolvement of global art that “culture others” are usually neglected or misinterpreted while the Western-canon art concept and history are usually overly emphasized.

Independent as it is, it is also worthy arguing that the Rijksakademie’s rejection to the hegemony of the global art world should not be interpreted as the hostility of the art market itself. Just as Olav Velthuis said that “what the many critiques of art market formulated by the humanities have in common, however, is a rather naïve opposition between the market and morality, or between commerce and culture.” (Velthuis 127) Because “what needs to be recognized and explored further is the market, not as a separate domain, but as a structure of symbolic transformation. It does not necessarily erase all the distinctions embodied in object.... It is not always the case that the market’s domination is complete: other system of value may coexist, and their meaning may be reconstructed in relation to the presence of market practice. We must imagine that commodities and commoditization practices are themselves embedded in more encompassing sphere or system of producing value. Such systems not only recognize the existence of distinct regimes of value but combine and

The Rijksakademie as an Artists’ Playground in the Age of Globalization

Contents