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Sex show brings art into question

By Earle Gale (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-24 07:57

Debate over performer's controversial work says more about society than he does

Advertisers use beautiful women with come-to-bed eyes to sell everything - from waffle-makers to come-to-bed eye makeup. Pop stars populate their music videos with beautiful people in sexy clothing doing eye-opening things, just to get the listening public to pay attention for long enough to hear their songs. And no one wants to see a movie without a heavy dose of sexual chemistry between actors.

Adding a generous sprinkling of sexual excitement to any project seems to be a recipe for success, so it's not really surprising that some people think the more sexual content they add, the more success they will have.

Enter artist Cheng Li, who recently took the idea to the extreme and got down and dirty in Beijing's Museum of Contemporary Art in Songzhuang in front of an invited group of sensitive souls - all in the name of art.

The performance artist was arrested several days after his act and was subsequently sentenced to a year in a labor camp for "disturbing public order". The Internet has been abuzz ever since about whether it was right or wrong to throw Cheng in the slammer, and about whether what Cheng and his female assistant did was art or a crime.

I wasn't at the historic happening but I have tracked down one or two photos online. From what I saw, the pair's awkward coupling certainly was not beautiful, but I guess no one ever said art has to be beautiful. The most useful contribution the cavorting couple made was to - once again - open up that thorny old chestnut of a question: "What is art?"

We might as well ask ourselves what came first, the chicken or the egg? Or, which is the one true god? It's an unanswerable question.

I've been kicking the can around myself, trying to figure out how I feel about the whole thing. I'm a big believer in consenting adults being left alone to do whatever floats their boats, as long as it doesn't harm others, but performing a futon flamenco in front of a bunch of people would get you arrested pretty much anywhere in the world. Something similar happened in liberal, artsy Vancouver in Canada when I lived there. They dragged that guy and his assistant off to the lockup as well.

While the debates about the nature and definition of art that followed the show have been moderately interesting, if non-resolvable, one thing that makes this spectacle worth paying attention to is the amount of high-brow talk that has been flying around and the whole question of just how much BS a human being is capable of dishing out and receiving. Basically, it doesn't matter what you do if you have a good spiel, a good rationale, a good explanation; some people will always buy it.

In this case, the 57-year-old skinny and unspectacular-looking performance artist told his wife and the world beyond that he was nailing his colors to the flag, so to speak, to highlight the over-commercialization of art. What he did, he didn't do for fun, cheap thrills or publicity but to make a serious statement.

It sounds like the kind of thing artists would say and his wife certainly bought it. "He talked to me about his plan beforehand," Cheng's wife told METRO. "From what I was told by other people, I can't see that he did anything that crossed the boundary from art into crime. I understand him." His understanding wife was not the only one who could see beyond the pulsating mounds of flesh and perceive the art. Many in the invited audience, mainly artists and art critics, praised Cheng for his efforts.

What is also really interesting about this episode is the different way everyone seems to be looking at the two people involved in the artistic statement. So far, Cheng's assistant, the woman who worked under him on the project, has flown under the radar. She wasn't criticized by Cheng's wife as an adulterous exhibitionist or praised by the art critics who saw the show. It seems that while Cheng was either producing wonderful art or a heinous crime, his partner was effectively not there.

The fact that this young lady is not really being discussed is interesting. I wonder what it says about the world. Feminists among us might claim men get to dictate and declare the importance of what they are doing, while women just get to go along for the ride.

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The author is a copy editor for China Daily. To comment, e-mail metrobeijing@chinadaily.com.cn. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of METRO.

(China Daily 05/24/2011)