On The Social Realistic Significance Of The EarlyPerformance Art In China

In the middle1980s, China underwent a "New Culture Enlightenment Movement", in which period, the Chinese fine arts also went through an important transformation historically called as’85New Wave. During the’85New Wave, a national avant-garde art movement, lots of topics and disputes which still could not be shelved even to this day were created. In this movement, the performance art in China ignited the most intense public debates from its emergence to development, and also became a hot topic in media. Even nowadays, a performance art event in China still could cause a stir.In China, compared with other forms of art like modern and contemporary art, the performance art is strikingly particular, newsy and sensational and controversial in the event itself. With a strong sense of contemporaneity, it can cause a mighty uproar to the realistic society or the culture and art field. Looking back to the over20years’development of the performance art in China, we can see that performance art events with different valuable answers have been created in different periods, which more or less objectively reflect the realistic society and the cultural background.The performance art in China started with imitation and transplantation, then evolved to sloganized performance, and today appears at big art exhibitions in the world. Despite such hierarchical process, in the development of modern and contemporary art in China, theoretical definition of performance art is still relatively marginal, and its creation mechanism still lags behind. Especially after the financial crisis in2008, performance art events are seldom seen in China. Based on the understanding of the influence of the ’85New Wave on Chinese culture and art, the effect of the performance art in China on Chinese culture and art has been discussed. Illustrative examples demonstrate that the performance art in China is avant-garde and vanward with humanistic concern. In China, however, art critics often take performance art as the target of attack, and theoretical study of performance art is also commingled with readings of and criticisms on the performance art in China in economics, ethics and traditional Chinese morality. This is to reevaluate the performance art in China by placing it on a nonacademic platform. This paper, with the analysis method of "art in the context", attempts to analyze the different social realistic significances of the performance art in China in each stage.The change in form and content and the social effect and influence of the performance art in China which has developed for over20years objectively reflect the development context of the era and the social realistic significance of the performance art in China.