Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

By the time of the Moscow show, Russia was in the throes of glasnost, and the decision to show art that, even in the West, has provoked hostile comment for its cultural, political, and sexual radicalism—some of it highly homoerotic—fit with a general agenda of “nothing’s too extreme for us.” In China, many things are considered too extreme, and the decision of the Chinese government to host an exhibition of Gilbert & George seems at first glance to be startling. Gilbert & George’s last major exhibition was called New Democratic Pictures, and though this title was not used in China, the meaning of the work was quite clear to anyone literate in the language of contemporary Western art.

Though Chinese officials were won over in part by Birch’s enthusiasm, economics carried the day. Not only did Gilbert & George and their London dealer, Anthony d’Offay, rent the gallery, but they also promised to bring Westerners for the opening, to stage banquets and television presentations, and to pump money into the local economy. According to one participant in the exhibition, the total bill ran close to ₤1 million. Further, the government was naïve about these images. “You don’t imagine,” said Lao Li in an amused voice, “that these officials understand what this work is about? It’s famous from the West, and that’s as much as they know.” Then, the Chinese needed to appear open before the Olympic Games site was chosen. Additionally, with a “what the West says doesn’t affect us” mentality, the Chinese knew that by controlling what happened at the opening they could control the media image of Gilbert & George.

The exhibition was opened with high pomp on September 3 by the British ambassador and the Chinese minister of culture. About 150 people had come from the West; myriad high Chinese officials flocked to the event. Gilbert & George felt that the flowers arranged for the opening were insufficiently opulent, and they went out themselves and bought gorgeous arrangements that bedecked the exhibition hall—to the immense amusement of the Chinese, who knew, as Gilbert & George did not, that these were funerary bouquets. Gilbert & George made a point not only of hanging the exhibition but also of speaking at the opening and at the seven or eight banquets associated with it. They gave interviews to the press and to television. It should be noted that very little of what they said to the press was printed; that the show had, within China, relatively modest publicity; and that the speeches they made were substantially altered and toned down even in simultaneous translation at the events.

The British got in touch with Lao Li, who was given invitations to distribute to artists, but the Chinese avant-garde found the jet-set glamour of the opening obnoxious, imperialist, and self-aggrandizing. They deplored the tolerant enthusiasm with which Gilbert & George basked in the attention of officials. At the opening banquet, someone looked at them at the head table and described them as “a pair of blockheads among the rotten eggs.” In the eyes of the Chinese, the opening almost defeated the meaning of the work. It had the same aura of hypocrisy that might be noted if Mother Teresa came on a goodwill mission and spent her whole visit with Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley. The Chinese officials knew that by arranging the opening as they did, they could castrate the work in the eyes of the radical element in their own society.

Most Chinese artists have seen Western contemporary work primarily in books. In the painter Ding Yi’s studio, I leafed through a volume called Western Modern Art, which included one of Gilbert & George’s monumental color photomontages, which are often twenty feet long or high, reproduced as a scratchy black-and-white plate two inches square. During their tour, Gilbert & George said repeatedly, “Our art fights for love and tolerance and the universal elaboration of the individual. Each of our pictures is a visual love letter from ourselves to the viewer.” What higher message could there now be for Western art in China? “I think,” Lao Li said, “that what is important in this work will get through to the people who are interested in understanding it.” The opening was only like bad static.

East Meets West