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Should naked human body be used as an art symbol?
(Beijing Review)
Updated: 2005-07-20 11:26
Becoming More Aware of Our Bodies
Li Gongming (Professor with Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts): Discussions
about performance art has been ongoing since the 1990s. But this time, the
debate is unparalleled and more heated than ever before. Now, it is probably
because these were a group of art students and the photos of their performance
spread rapidly over the Internet. Adding to the debate are issues of morality
and ethical behavior of the naked human body.
The whole thing in essence is an issue of nudity. In this case, I’d rather
believe that disputes over the exhibition of the human body is just the struggle
between enslavement and emancipation. As a result, the re-discovery of the
significance of the body has become one of the most valuable achievements by the
new wave of thinkers and artists.
Obviously, the major unavoidable concern in performance art where the body is
naked is sex and sexual behavior. Some people even believe that every form of
art is pornographic. But modern art views the body as the fundamental problem of
existence. As humans, our inner desire, instinct and will, continually clash
with the ethics of the body in the name of art, exploring the visual domain of
sociology of body. Young students, especially those from academies of fine arts,
are desirous, emotional, impulsive, outgoing and nomadic. In a word, their
bodies are just like the post-modern image text. The 41 students display a game
spirit vividly and naturally in the @41 project.
In this performance, we see a bunch of playful youth and their simulated
activity. In the process, there is no rigid traditional value and the
performance is a game full of aesthetic pleasure. The spirit is pure, free and
illusionary, leaving nothing but the sheer joy of youth.
The presence of the body in social activity is independent of the mind. It is
because of this, we are in pressing need for research in the fields of sociology
of the body, ethics of the body and philosophy of the body.
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