L: Liu Feifei, anchor of Dialogue, CCTV-9
K: Nicolette Kwok, founder of the Red Mansion Foundation1
O: Prof. Chris Orr, British artist
X: Xing Danwen, Chinese artist
L: Welcome to Dialogue. First let’s talk about the Red Mansion Foundation. What is the purpose of this organization that you started in 1999?
K: I set up the Red Mansion Foundation in 1999. I am married to a Chinese man. I’ve been asked strange questions like "Isn’t it difficult to be married to somebody from such a different culture?" because they thought we had nothing in common and there must be so many differences and fights. We wanted to show that people from all over the world have a lot of things in common. It doesn’t matter where you come from. We have the same ambitions, the same desires. We like looking at beautiful things. We’d like our children to be happy and to do well. So we wanted to stress what people have in common rather than the differences. And we thought it would be really nice to do that through art, which is a non-political way to do that. And so we have devised a couple of exchange programs, on which Chris came to China. And we sent quite a few students out every year and Chris was part of a program for established artists.
L: Prof. Orr, you are with the Royal Academy of Arts2, so tell us a little about the history of this amazing institution?
O: Ok. The Royal Academy of Arts is a very venerable and ancient establishment of London, founded in 1760. It’s really established to promote the arts of all branches. We were established under George III. Now our aim is to put on exhibitions and to kind of run the schools for young students. And we are the eighty artists who are elected. Each year we add them and make a kind of a group of people who represent British art. We are actually an independent organization.
L: Sponsored by the Royal family?
O: No. The Queen sends us a few letters. We get a nice, lovely certificate when we get elected and it’s got Her Majesty’s signature on the bottom. But we don’t get any money from the Royal family. All our money comes from the works sold at some of the exhibitions and through industrial and private sponsors. So we are very interested in a kind of relationship with all sorts of parts of society including the business community.
L: And to you, our Chinese artist here, how did you become a video artist?
X: Well, I started as a painter. But then I happened to see a picture when I was seventeen and fell in love with photography. I started to collect pictures from magazines until I had my own camera and started working with it. So I was self-taught.
L: Is it really necessary for an artist to go through the fundamental steps and learn all the basic, traditional skills before they start trying revolutionary modes of artistic creation?
K: I think actually it is, because the techniques and skills are your vocabulary. And then what you do after that is to express yourself with that vocabulary. But what’s happening in European art college is that the skills are considered a bit pass(过时的). It’s a bit old-fashioned now to do a natural drawing and to be skill-based. Just go right into the concept and express yourself. And I think that China is probably on the right track, because they are still emphasizing that you first have to learn the skills before you can express yourself. You first have to know how to use the pen and ink on paper before you can do something with them. So I think we should try to learn a little bit in this case from China and maybe take one step back.
O: I think something like painting,< |