Gilbert & George and the Communists
James Birch
Cheerio Publishing: 2025
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For those to whom the late twentieth century is ancient history—or perhaps just a bit of a blur—the days before the ascendancy of the contemporary Chinese art market can be almost unimaginable. Just as it was starting to emerge from the socialist realist shadow of the Maoist era, the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown ended any hopes of an artistic glasnost in the People’s Republic of China. Many fledgling contemporary artists went into self-imposed exile: to France, to Japan or, like Ai Weiwei, to the United States. Others went underground, clustering in creative communes that attempted to exist under the radar in the drab suburbs and surrounding edgeland villages of Beijing and Shanghai. Their work was often praised outside China; intrepid collectors would travel to the country even though it was tricky to actually buy anything and find a way to pay the artist for it. By the early 1990s, the global art world buzzed with talk of China, yet many artists remained suppressed, constantly fined for “indecency” and forced to write self-criticisms. For many, particularly performance and installation artists, it seemed as if nobody outside their own small transgressive communities would ever see their work.

• Tags: China, Issue 38, James Birch, Paul French