Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

In the early 1980s, Ding Fang’s earliest sketches still carried the characteristics of social realism. With the influence of Western culture in the “New Enlightenment”, he has transformed into the practice of modernist oil paintings and turned to be an active figure in the ‘85 Art New Wave. Differentiated from most contemporary artists who applies urban experience and formulates their works substantially with Western culture, Ding Fang has established his own modernist style by “journey to the northwest”. He has built an isomorphic structure based on Loess Plateau- traditional Chinese cultural symbol, and Christianity, breaking the single narrative of nationalist perspective with the integration of Western and Eastern cultures. Ding Fang’s practice reflects not only the multiple developing path of Chinese contemporary art, but also the collective attempt to reconstruct the subjectivity of Chinese contemporary culture in the 1980s. Therefore, the exploration of Ding Fang’s artistic practice in the 1980s can help us unearth and understand the complexity of constructing the contemporary art subjectivity in China.