Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This paper argues that the aesthetic systems of the East are different from the West, and culturally significant meaning can be lost under a universalising, de-contextualising Western semiotic engagement. The argument is introduced with a comparison between Russian and Japanese art in the 17th century. The paper then examines the nature of Western Formalism and the role of European philosophy in German art, and analyses Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian ideas that contribute to a Tam-Giao aesthetic. This aesthetic is sensuous and embodied in everyday lived experience in Vietnamese and Chinese arts practice. It can easily be missed in formal art historical analysis that frames the world through a Western chronological lens. The author has used qualitative methods and an ethnographic approach to explore the use of aesthetic canons, (formalism from the West and the Tam-Giao aesthetics of the East) used in appreciating artworks. Seven case studies are presented through works by the German artists Anselm Kiefer, Thomas Schutte, Neo Rauch, the Chinese artists Yue Minjun, Fang Lijun, and the Vietnamese artists Truong Tan, Vu Dinh Tuan and Hoang Tuong who deal with the subject of individual and cultural traumas. The author argues that despite the similarity of their content, its aesthetic treatment reflects very different perceptions. The Tam-Giao art of expression develops globally today, therefore this research provides a Western audience with an aesthetic tool to explore in depth the subtly of meanings in the Eastern art of expression.