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The Construction of Intercultural Temporal and Spatial Atmospheres in Sino-Italian Art Exchange Exhibitions: The Exhibition “Forms of Time” as an Example
Rui Ji
Abstract
Since the 1990s, Sino-Italian art exchange exhibitions have achieved fruitful results. They juxtapose and integrate different heterogeneous cultures of the two countries, forming an intercultural spatial and temporal atmosphere. This paper analyzes one of these exhibitions, “Forms of Time,” and explores how to build the atmosphere. A joint exhibition between the Chinese artist Tong Yan Runan and Italian artist Giorgio Morandi was held at the Bologna City History Center in 2017. Combining the intercultural origins of Michel Foucault’s heterotopia and the principle of “heterotopias/heterochronies,” this paper discusses two significant aspects. First, it analyzes the “heterogeneity” constructed by the two artists in the exhibition from the level of the deep intercultural perspectives of Italy and China, by exploring the commonality of heterogeneous cultures and presenting a dialogue in intercultural space with a contemporary perspective. This paper then analyzes the combination of different art spaces with regard to time and space at the level of different spatial histories. It deconstructs the various areas where the artworks are located, such as the urban space of cultural heritage, art gallery space, and painting space, and also discusses “heterotopias/heterochronies” characteristics of these spaces. These understandings are conducive to the intercultural atmosphere breaking through the limitations of country, regional culture, and time and space. Instead of recognizing the creation of an aesthetic atmosphere from the level of time and space belonging to a broader historical and cultural context, they provide practical ideas for intercultural communication.
Key Words
intercultural temporal and spatial atmospheres; heterotopia; “heterotopias/heterochronies”; “heterogeneity”; Tong Yan Runan; Morandi
Introduction
China-Italy art exchange has a long history. After Chinese contemporary art formally participated in the Venice Biennale in Italy for the first time in the 1990s, it gradually triggered many scholars to think about the intercultural exchange between China and Italy and the way to construct exhibitions. A series of high-quality exhibitions has emerged. The British historian Michael Sullivan (1916-2013) pointed out in his book, The Intersection of Eastern and Western Art (1989), that the intersection of Eastern and Western art is one of the most significant events in world art history since the Renaissance.[1] Sino-Italian exchange exhibitions have already succeeded in China, exemplified by the 2018 exhibition, “Embracing the Orient and the Occident—When the Silk Road Meets the Renaissance,” at the National Museum of China, which explores the impact of Sino-Italian exchanges on the Italian Renaissance. In 2021, the M Woods Museum in Beijing collaborated with the British Museum to organize a group exhibition of Italian Renaissance works on paper and Chinese contemporary art. These two exhibitions present the phenomenon of the mutual influence of Chinese and Western art by revealing the intercultural art history of the intermingling and coexistence of multiple cultures in creating civilization, and by presenting the intercultural atmosphere of the crossing of Chinese and Italian cultures in the exhibition space.
The construction of Sino-Italian art exchange exhibitions in Italy is different from the exhibitions mentioned above in China. From June 8 to September 2, 2017, Galleria d’Arte Maggiore G.A.M. (Major Art Gallery G.A.M.), Bologna, in collaboration with Chinese artists, successfully organized the exhibition, “Forms of Time.” The exhibition sheds light on exploring the dialogue between two artistic cultures and building an intercultural spatial atmosphere. The selection of works in the exhibition covers different periods in both artists’ careers. For example, works by Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) are still lifes from his forties to sixties, whereas works by Tong Yan Runan (b. 1977) are portraits he painted around the world over the past fifteen years, from 2002 to 2017. This is the first time that Morandi’s paintings are exhibited together with Chinese artists, the first time that the gallery holds an exhibition with Chinese and Italian artists as a common theme, and the first solo exhibition of Tong Yan Runan in Italy. Tong Yan Runan has already participated in numerous worldwide art events. In the last decade, his unique 41 by 33 cm portrait series has become the calling card for exchanges between China and abroad. The gallery’s founder, Franco Calarota (1943-2022), started to think about the exhibition proposal in 2009, namely, how to present the two artists’ exploration and presentation of time and space. After careful preparation by the gallery and curation by Flaminio Gualdoni (b. 1954), a key Italian art historian and art critic, the exhibition opened with critical remarks about time, the group exhibition, and a tribute. The ten rarely seen treasures of Morandi and more than forty works by Tong Yan Runan, painted as a tribute to Morandi including portraits of the gallery director Franco and Roberta Calarota, Giusi Vecchi, director of the Morandi Museum, and the designer Barabara Cuniberti, constitute a cross-cultural, geographical, and temporal contrast exhibition, which presents reflections on the issue of time and space.
The cross-cultural theme of the exhibition stems from the simultaneous study of the expression of the timelessness of time in Morandi’s work and the commonality of the temporal dialogues found in the work of the Chinese artist Tong Yan Runan. Can this intercultural exhibition on the exploration of time in space be combined with specific theories, and how does the creation of an intercultural spatial atmosphere manifest itself in this exhibition?
1. Analysis of the intercultural origin and the principle of “heterotopias·heterochronies” of heterotopia thought
Since the exhibition objective is related to intercultural themes and the exploration of time in space, it is useful to bring in Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, which is rooted in the same topic. This exhibition can draw on heterotopia’s exploration of these two factors.
In the mid-to-late twentieth century, the famous French scholar Michael Foucault (1926-1984) used the term ‘heterotopia’ to define and describe a heterogeneous space. Heterotopia as a spatial idea helps to provide an understanding of the heterogeneous space that breaks the previous laws of time and space, and an understanding of the commonality between different cultures through the breakdown of order. In contrast to the many ideas that Foucault studied in depth, the idea of heterotopia was not widely explored by him. Foucault only explored the idea of heterotopia in the front part of his 1966 book, Les Mots et Les choses. Une archeologie del sciences humanines (The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences), in the 1966 radio program “Utopia and Literature,” and in the lecture Des espaces autres (Of Other Spaces) in 1967.[2] However, its openness and reflection on the present have provoked a continuous debate.
The intercultural origin of the idea of the heterotopia is mainly related to a particular classification in Les Mots et les choses une archeologie del sciences humanines that provoked Foucault to think about the damage to the order. This classification is based on the classification of animals in “a Chinese encyclopedia” cited by Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (1899-1986).[3] The disruption of the original order of statements by the peculiar classifications in the Chinese encyclopedia made Foucault “laugh,” which he saw as the beginning of a rift in thinking, a reflection on the non-homogeneity of uncommon sense, that is, on the homogeneity (le Même) and the difference (l’ Autre) of the order of ideas, times, and geographical features. At the same time, Foucault’s reflection has triggered academic discussions on the intercultural origins of heterotopia. Intercultural reflection is highly controversial; establishing a new order induced by the destruction of an earlier order has prompted intercultural exchange. In the alteration of the old and new orders, the new is opposed to and implicitly connected with the old.
Heterotopian thought on time and space is reflected in the principle of “heterotopias/heterochronies” in “Des espaces autres.”[4] This principle intends to show that in the heterotopia space, time is heterogeneous: time is presented in absolute boundaries or heterogeneous time is accumulated, overlapped, and juxtaposed. We can continue to add suitable examples of heterotopia ideas. As a specific space for temporary display of artistic and cultural achievements, the exhibition has a certain similarity with the two cases of museum and exposition in the principle of “heterotopias/heterochronies,” which can exist in a museum or an exposition and have a specific temporality like an exposition. Thus, the exhibition becomes a heterotopia in heterogeneous time and space. The exhibition will be detached from the real space of contemporary society and the historical and cultural space implied in the exhibition, and this contrast gives the viewers infinite associations. The contemporary exhibition will reflect the idea of contemporaneity all the time. It is a representation of the idea of contemporary society in a heterotopic space after the museum and exposition marked by Foucault.[5]
The characteristics of the intercultural exhibition about time and space are mainly reflected in the infinite accumulation of heterotopic space and heterochronies interweaving with different real spaces of intercultural regions, such as the space created by artworks in the exhibition, the art space where the exhibition is located, and the historical city space where the art space is located. In addition, an intercultural exhibition combines two cultures and two temporal spaces; it more clearly highlights the “heterogeneous culture” that breaks the established order in different cultural exchanges and the characteristics of heterogeneous time. Therefore, an intercultural exhibition can gather different times and spaces on a larger scale and accumulate things more “greedily,” completely detaching from the influence of time in the heterogeneous space but accumulating time faster. Its negation of linear time and even space is very thorough.
2. The combination of heterotopia thought and exhibition practice
The specific practice of this exhibition can be analyzed on the basis of two aspects: the characteristics embodied in the theory mentioned above of interculturalism and the principle of “heterotopias/heterochronies.” Firstly, the exhibition analyzes two different painting cultures. There is a certain commonality between them: both are heterogeneous cultures in their worlds, and this “heterogeneity” provides the possibility of intercultural exchange. Secondly, the presentation of time in this exhibition takes place through the interplay of different spaces, including urban spaces, museum gallery spaces, and spaces within artworks. These spaces break the boundaries of time and provide an inter-temporal atmosphere for the exhibition. At the same time, this very cultural-historical spatial atmosphere helps to highlight the creation of an intercultural spatial atmosphere between Chinese and Western cultures.
2.1 The “heterogeneity” of artists in an intercultural context
The object that Morandi painted is the seemingly ordinary still life, which seems too “anachronistic” in the history of the mid-twentieth century, when Western art was unpredictable and diverse. Morandi spent his life collecting, observing, and depicting small, insignificant objects. He painted small-scale works in a seemingly uniform manner, an approach many have seen as ascetic or a crazy fetish. Morandi’s heterogeneous work was admired by art historians such as Roberto Longhi (1890-1970), one of his contemporaries. Its “heterogeneity” was based on establishing a new order of the traditional self.
Morandi’s art is intrinsically related to the development of European art. This connection breaks the limitations of classical painting themes and painting techniques and is mainly reflected in the influence on Morandi’s art of the European “Return to Order” movement’s view of traditional painting, the form of painting, monumental representations, and thoughts on the cognition of works. Andre Derain (1880-1954), a representative figure of the European “Return to Order” movement in the twentieth century, advocated a return to tradition and it particularly influenced Morandi’s art. After declaring this crisis of painting, Derain disagreed with Fauvism and Cubism that were prevalent at that time, and he advocated the correlation between painting and things, that is, the possibility of transforming the existing stuff into a picture through formalism based on classic works. Derain’s affirmation of the classics, the relationship between the image and the thing depicted, and the promotion of formalism all influenced Morandi’s art.
For the relationship between Morandi and the classic paintings, the dissertation, “Intuition, Zeit, Anzeige: A Research on Morandi’s painting methodology,” is a resource. It analyzes the relationship between Morandi and the Italian tradition in five aspects: a return to visual reality, mathematical and geometric space, monumental grandeur, clear and pure colors, and the trembling of light and air.[6] First, one of the most outstanding contributions of Renaissance art is the scientific way of observing real nature. Moreover, this sort of observation was not the mere depiction of nature, as in ancient Greece and Rome, but the intention to reveal the inner. This was precisely the experimental approach to painting to which Morandi devoted his life, namely, to explore the nature of images from the physical objects of nature. Second, the concept of geometric space developed by the Renaissance fresco significantly influenced the geometric composition in Morandi’s paintings. The planning of positive and negative shapes particularly highlights Morandi’s art. Thirdly, the paintings of Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337) and Masaccio (1401-1428), to express the monumental grandeur, were simplified, focusing on the structure of forms, the sense of volume, and emphasizing the purpose of order. Morandi’s minimalistic expression and the formation of still life compositions highlight the tremendous sublime importance. Fourth, the early Renaissance wet frescoes are oxidized to give a subtle grey tone. Most of the Renaissance works use natural light sources to create light and darkness and then to shape the form. Morandi paintings use a similar treatment of unfocused light sources, presenting a poetic elegance polished over time.
In reappropriating tradition, Morandi is explicitly self-feeling in the face of all the infinite changes and sensations that arise during his journey through time. Gottfried Boehm (b. 1942) speaks of “Morandi not as a timid defender of the past, but as a reabsorber of traditional art in a completely different historical context.”[7] His feelings are reflected centrally in the world of the images he creates. Morandi’s landscapes are straightforward, lacking in naturalism, pure in content and structure, and they combine completely incompatible pictorial qualities: carefully verified calculations, a synthesis derived from the contemplative study of Cézanne, a composition of the mind in constant exploration, a single goal, and confidence in the choice of colors and unusual tones.[8]
The subject matter of the other artist in the exhibition, Tong Yan Runan, is the portrait. In relation to the history of Western portrait art, Tong Yan Runan’s works have constructed a heterogeneous space of the other. He translates this “heterogeneity” into a stable and structured rhetorical approach. This approach seems to be representational rhetoric entirely external to the artist. In terms of the formal layout of his works, each is of a consistent size and not of the size of a grand monumental subject. The objects depicted are all orthogonal, without any dynamic pose. The relationship between the child and the individual subject is also neutral; he has no prior contact with the Western portrait subject, and they establish only a momentary relationship. This relationship does not even have any emotional resonance because of the language barrier. The work ultimately presents a neutral relationship between the portrait and the background. This face-to-face communication of the complex flow of mind and body is a unique experience.[9]
Tong Yan Runan’s works are based on the developmental order of Western portraiture and ultimately form an antithetical order relationship with it. In his review of the exhibition, “Forms of Time,” Italian art historian Flaminio Gualdoni affirmed the intention of Tong Yan Runan’s work. The work is based on a review of the Western painting tradition of aristocratic and bourgeois portraiture that praises the subject’s virtue and social value, and this is combined with an interpretation of the ideological aspects of the self-existence of the portrait painting revolution in the twentieth-century art revolution. The portraits produced by Tong Yan Runan for celebrities are also associated with a series of photographers’ portraits of celebrities in the last century across time and space. Nada (real name Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1820-1910), Étienne Carjat (1828-1906), and David Octavius Hill (1802-1870) were all photographers who took pictures of celebrities. The “predecessors” of the same-size series of works by Tong Yan Runan include August Sander’s (1876-1964) photographic documentary series Menschen des 20. In fact, the portraiture can transform the depicted subject into a natural person and express the hidden properties of the subject. The works of Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943), Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Frank Auerbach (b. 1931), and Lucian Freud (1922-2011), for example, present a self-portrait-like perception of the self. The imitation class of portraits is like an appendage of prior art, losing itself in modernity. Although portraits are a kind of “recollection” of the object, by digging deeper, portraits present a consistency of emotional and neurological states, based on which Bacon believes that the only way to create credible portraits today is to create the appearance of the nervous system in a more radical way. Unlike the portraits and photographs mentioned above, Tong Yan Runan chooses to place his self-portraits at the extreme end of the critical spectrum, rethinking the master of representing the shape of time— Morandi—in a portrait.[10]
There is a subtle connection between Tong Yan Runan and the history of traditional Western art. He views, reflects on, and engages with the practice of Western art traditions in relation to his own cultural identity. Filippo Baldinucci (1624-1696), an influential art historian of the Florentine Baroque period, proposed the “excavation of the image from nature,” a tradition to which Tong offers a post-modern meditation and addition with his goal being: Why does the artist depict? That is, the artist depicts his subject in an autonomous and relatively free manner and interprets the artistic responsibilities of the twentieth century as different from those of the past. The artist’s experience differs from the portraits from the past, such as the monumental, the venerable, and the depiction of the aristocratic class. Instead, the experience is from a self-programmed, subtle, and ambiguous relationship between the intervening author and the subject; a relationship imbued with stream-of-consciousness patterns and inherently emotional psychological elements. Specifically, the expression of Tong’s works lies in the relationship with the viewer, and the unique artistic ideas and methods in the inheritance of traditional Chinese art. The so-called “Chinese elements” in Chinese contemporary art have always been influenced by mainstream Western culture and have not achieved their cultural transcendence. Faced with the question of where Chinese art should go in the context of the nihilism brought about by the global crisis, Tong Yan Runan believes that the way to restore the origin of Chinese contemporary art should be by rethinking inner artistic thought and spiritual heritage. One of the essences of the spirit of Chinese art lies in the Taoist thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi. The Taoist state of life helps artists naturally integrate into the world of artistic spirit. Chinese art should seek to resolve human conflicts for change based on human creation and needs. The spirit of Chinese art is therefore the liberation and transcendence of the social spirit.[11]
Tong Yan Runan believes that his works and the way he realizes them embody the Tao and that painting can lead to the Tao. The Tao‘s starting point and final destination always lie in human life. The ideas of Laozi and Zhuangzi do not treat art as an object to be realized, but as the driving force to create the universe. In the realization of the Tao, the intention is not in art, but in an unexpected way inclined to the art that aims at sublimation. One’s most profound inquiries into religion are understood in the art. Art is a state in which one has direct access to the perfection of objects, satisfaction, a sense of connection with the universe, and the boundlessness of nature.[12]
2.2 Common ground of the “heterogeneity” of Morandi and Tong Yan Runan
Tong Yan Runan understands the actual meaning of the landscape and then shows his spiritual awakening through artistic representation of faces. The landscape becomes a medium for understanding nature, spirit, and life. Both Tong Yanrunan’s faces and Morandi’s still lifes are not just objects but a medium of spiritual support and expression. Tong Yan Runan starts from the Western art tradition, constructing a dialogical heterogeneous space in the Western heterogeneous art space. Then, presenting a kind of Western portrait space of the other, he dialogues with another idiosyncratic heterogeneous space in the history of Western art, that is, Morandi’s unique still lifes and landscape works. This series of heterogeneous spaces creates an extremely radical sense of value impact, whether from the spatial perspective of cultural heritage, the heritage of art history, the exchange between Chinese and Western cultures, or the contemporary presence, reproduction, and dialogue of humanities.
What Morandi and Tong Yan Runan also have in common is the removal of the object’s individuality, the simplification and even the dissolution of external modifications, and the highlighting of subjectivity, expressing a cultivated contemplation of the originality of the object back to the beginning of the universe. They are all unique in their contemporaneous times, and their practice is time-tested and influenced by time accumulation as time proceeds. Morandi is a vital artist of the twentieth century. He sublimated the object nature of his objects and embodied a transcendent spirituality. This spirituality is similar to the pursuit of meaningful character in Chinese artistic culture, and Morandi is widely known and revered in China. The objects of Tong Yan Runan’s works always revolve around portraits; he is not painting every face, but constructing the object of his face in a sublimated way.
2.3 The spatial deconstruction and “heterotopias/heterochronies” character of the artworks
“Galleria d’Arte Maggiore G.A.M.” is located in the street Massimo d’Azeglio, one of the old gates that connect the city’s most important site Piazza Maggiore with the historic district of Porta San Mamolo in the center of Bologna. This street has been closely linked to the economic development of the city’s social life since the Middle Ages. It has been named after its Greek name, “via dicta Platea Major” or simply “Platea Major.” It was named after the famous Italian politician, patriot, and painter Marchese Massimo d’Azeglio (1798-1866). The street is not only well-preserved with ancient noble palaces such as Palazzo Bevilacqua, Palazzo Marsigli, Ex Ospedale Degli Innocenti, and Ex Convento di San Procolo, but it also attracted artists and art galleries to stay here such as the singer Lucio Dalla (1943-2012) and the important Galleria d’Arte Maggiore G.A.M. family gallery, making it one of the neighborhoods affluent in art.[13]
“Galleria d’Arte Maggiore G.A.M.” is located in a space that used to be a palace built in the fifteenth century. The palace has galleries and courtyards, and the exterior is well-maintained. Originally the palace belonged to the Gessi family, and at present the reliefs of the Gessi family’s texts can be seen on the gates and the palace’s first floor. The wooden house in the courtyard was also built in the fifteenth century and had a wooden ceiling with a painted, flat roof. The Gessi family passed the palace to the Fonontana family at the beginning of the nineteenth century, whose coat of arms depicts a large basin with a water column that appears both on the primary partition and on the various fine doorways of the first floor (1619). At the end of the eighteenth century, the building was purchased by the Gamberini family, who became nobility in 1796 and received the title of “Conto Palatino.” The courtyard has a wooden house dating back to the fifteenth century, with magnificent wooden ceilings painted lattice flat-roofed ceilings. On the main floor is the beautifully frescoed hall, with neoclassical decorations from the studio of Antonio Basoli (1774–1848) and Felice Giani (1758-1823). The gallery’s interior, however, is minimalist and modern, with white and soaring walls. In harmony with this minimalist setting, Tong Yan Runan’s works are exhibited without external frames.[14]
Founded in 1978 by Franco and Roberta Calarota, whose daughter, Alessia Calarota, serves as the current director, this gallery has been committed to building an international reputation through its permanent collection of quality works by twentieth-century masters. Over the years, it has established meaningful partnerships with museums and institutions in Italy and abroad including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, and many others. The gallery aims to showcase and highlight the influences, contrasts, and exchanges between the art of different eras. Solo and two-persons exhibitions on Morandi are essential research themes for the gallery: not only five exhibitions are currently on view but past exhibitions also include the Galleria d’Arte Maggiore – G.A.M. at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art di Londra for an exhibition of Morandi’s work in 2013.[15]
Contrasting the principles of “heterotopias/heterochronies,” time is isolated from the external environment in the above-mentioned urban space, palace space, and artwork space, but forms its own heterogeneous time internally, accumulating, overlapping, and juxtaposing with the development of history. Although the exhibition is temporary, it is situated within the museum’s former residence, making it a heterotopia within its heterotopia space. The exhibition is detached from the real space of contemporary society but represents itself through paintings, such as the portraits of Tong Yan Runan, which represent the people in contemporary society. The historical and cultural space implied in the exhibition will bring infinite viewer associations.
The intercultural exhibition embodies the interweaving of two intercultural and inter-regional spaces between China and Italy, in the real space of the gallery, with the infinite accumulation of heterotopic space and heterochronies, which are reflected in the space created by the artworks in the exhibition mentioned above, the art space where the exhibition is located, and the historical space of the city where the art space is located. This Sino-Italian intercultural exhibition combines two cultures and two time periods, which prominently reflects the notion of “heterogeneous culture” represented by the two artists who break the established order in the Sino-Italian cultural exchange and highlight the characteristics of heterogeneous time.
3. Conclusions: Methodological reflections on intercultural art dialogue
Based on the artistic practice of Sino-Italian art exchange, this paper aims to find an effective way to theoretically construct the temporal and spatial atmosphere of intercultural exhibitions. Interculture and the construction of space-time are two critical aspects of the exhibition, while the idea of heterotopia—an open and interdisciplinary conception—provides them with specific ideas and references.
The important revelation from the intercultural origin of heterotopia thought is the destruction of the old order and the establishment of a new order based on the old one. The two artists in this exhibition have broken the old artistic trend in the historical development of Chinese and Western art and established a unique art methodology based on relative tradition. Moreover, this “heterogeneity” allows both sides to disintegrate the barriers between cultures and find commonality in the theme of metaphysical exploration of time.
The principle of “heterotopias/heterochronies” in heterotopia embodies the negation of the original linear time in space and the continuous accumulation of time. Contemporary exhibitions have a commonality with museums and art fairs in representing this principle, but they are in between traditional museums and temporary fairs. Intercultural exhibitions have accumulated a more decadent “time” of different cultures and regions. In order to analyze the time-space more comprehensively, the space of this exhibition can be deconstructed into the space where the artworks are located, the overall art space of the exhibition, and the urban space where the art space is located. Due to the continuous deconstruction of the physical space, the “heterogeneity” of the artists is not only reflected in the “invisible” history of art and culture but also the natural history of various art spaces.
History and culture are significant starting points for the intercultural spatial atmosphere. The reference to both is inseparable in the specific analysis of the unique “heterogeneity” of the exhibited artists. The uniqueness of the artists is based on art history, and the commonality of the artists is based on this uniqueness. In the specific deconstruction of the space where the artwork is located, history and culture provide rich possibilities for this deconstruction. Thus, the construction of an intercultural-spatial atmosphere is inseparable from the richness of history and culture.
Rui Ji
jirui05132@gmail.com
Rui Ji finished her Ph.D. in the History of Contemporary Art at the University of Bologna, Italy. She also served as a visiting scholar at Carleton University in Ottawa. Her main research area is the history of the exhibition of Chinese artists within a global art context, from a cross-cultural perspective.
Published on December 10, 2024.
Cite this article: Rui Ji, “The Construction of Intercultural Temporal and Spatial Atmospheres in Sino-Italian Art Exchange Exhibitions: the Exhibition ‘Forms of Time’ as an Example,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Special Volume 12 (2024), accessed date.
Endnotes
[1] Michael Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art (Oakland: University of California Press, 1989).
[2] Introduction to the idea of heterotopia: The idea of heterotopia was first introduced by Michel Foucault in the first edition of “Les mots et les choses” in 1966, and its relationship to order was clarified.
Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses une archeologie del sciences humanines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 5. Descriptive definition of heterotopia: “Les hétérotopies inquètent, sans doute parce qu’ellles minent secrètement le langage, parce qu’elles empêchent de nommer ceci et cela, parce qu’elles brisent les noms communs ou les enchevêtrent, parce qu’elles ruinent d’acance la «syntaxe», et pas seulement celle qui construit les phrases, – celle moins manifeste qui fait «tenir ensemble» ( à côté et en face les uns des autres) les mots et les choses.” The English version was translated in Michel Foucault, The Order of Things. An Archaeology of Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1994), xviii. Descriptive definition of heterotopia:”Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language, because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy ‘syntax’ in advance, and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less apparent syntax which causes words and things (next to and also opposite one another) to ‘hold together.'”
In 1967, Foucault elaborated on the spatial character of heterotopia at the Cercle d’études architectuals (Architectural Studies Circle) on the theme of the idea and discussed its ideological principles concerning representative heterotopia spaces. In the presentations at the Cercle d’études architectuals, heterotopia as a spatial description appears in the plural (les heterotopies). The plural can effectively present the variety of heterogeneous spaces and the complexity of the interwoven relationships within them. The lecture was officially published in 1984 under the title “Des espaces autres.”
Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits 1984, “Des espaces autres” (Cercle d’études architectuals, 14 mars 1967), Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, n.5, october (1984): 47. The Spaces of Otherness defines the real space of heterotopia: “Il y a également, et ceci probablement dans toute culture, dans toute civilisation, des lieux réels, des lieux effectifs, des lieux qui ont dessinés dans l’institution même de la société, et qui sont des sortes de contre-emplacements, sortes d’utopies effectivement réalisées dans lesquelles les emplacements réels, tous les autres emplacements réels que l’on peut trouver à l’intérieur de la culture sont à la fois représentés, contestés et inversés, des sortes de lieux qui sont hors de tous les lieux, bien que pourtant ils soient effectivement localisables. Ces lieux, parce qu’ils sont absolument autres que tous les emplacements qu’ils reflètent et dont ils parlent, je les appellerai, par opposition aux utopies, les hétérotopies.” The English version was translated in Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 24. “There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places- places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society-which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias.”
[3] Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses une archeologie del sciences humanines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 3.
[4] Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits 1984, “Des espaces autres” (Cercle d’études architectuals, 14 mars 1967), Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, n.5, october (1984): 48.This principle is the fourth principle of heterotopia:” Les hétérotopies sont liées, le plus souvent, à des découpages du temps, c’est-à-dire qu’elles ouvrent sur ce qu’on pourrait appeler, par pure symétrie, des hétérochronies; l’hétérotopie se met à fonctionner à plein lorsque les hommes se trouvent dans une sorte de rupture absolue avec leur temps traditionnel.” The English version was translated in Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 26. “Fourth principle. Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time-which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time.”
[5] In response to this feature, Foucault first uses the cemetery to explain the severance of heterotopia from the traditional linear time of the nineteenth century. The heterotopia of the cemetery allows for the continued superimposition and placement of heterotrimer at the end of the traditional lifetime, and life thus has the possibility of immortality in heterogeneous space and time. In the present society, Foucault sees heterotrimer and heterotopia as more complex. He thus takes museums, libraries, carnivals, fairs, and resorts as examples, arguing that these places negate linear time more thoroughly. Among them, museum space is filled with an infinite accumulation of heterotopic space and heterotemporal interweaving, accumulation, overlapping, juxtaposition, and never-ending. Foucault also composes the concept of heterogeneous space in museums from the perspective of intellectual archaeology. He argues that museums in the seventeenth century were personal. In the nineteenth century, in modern society, museums were driven by a desire to “accumulate the idea of things,” pursuing the ideal construction of an unchanging heterotopic space free from the effects of time but constantly accumulating time. The essence of the museum as a heterotopia space is that it is to a certain extent detached from modern society but constantly and permanently reflects the idea of modernity. It is a representation of ideas, and the language that characterizes it also represents our modern society. Unlike the heterotopia above constituted by this accumulation of time, the negation of the traditional notion of time can also be reflected in the ephemeral indeterminate opposition to time. The adequate space mostly appears in the urban fringe, and this large-scale trade event keeps appearing as another form of carnival in different civilizations in human history. Zhang Jin, A Study of Michel Foucault‘s ‘Heterotopia‘ Ideology (福柯的 “异托邦” 思想研究) (Beijing University Press, 2016),139-140.
[6] Jiang Liang. “Intuition, Zeit, Anzeige: A Research on Morandi’s painting methodology.(直观·时间·显现-莫兰迪绘画方法研究)” Doctoral Dissertation, China Academy of Art, (2010): 45.
[7] Ibid., 52.
[8] Bandera, Maria Cristina and Renato Miracco, Giorgio Morandi 1890-1964 (Milan: Skira Editore S.p.A. 2008).
[9] Flaminio Gualdoni, “Forms of Time: Tong Yanrunan and Giorgio Morandi,” in Tong Yanrunan: Forms of Time (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017), 9.
[10] Ibid., 7.
[11] Tong Yanrunan. “Through painting, life will get the intrinsic transcendence of the awakening of integrity,” in Tong Yanrunan: Forms of Time (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017), 11.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Information on the history of Bologna’s streets and galleries comes from the author’s field trips and visits.
[14] Overviw of Galleria d’arte maggiore G. A.M. in Art Basel. https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1399/Galleria-d-Arte-Maggiore-G-A-M?lang=zh_CN.
[15] Morandi exhibition in Galleria d’arte maggiore. https://www.maggioregam.com/it/artists/25-giorgio-morandi/exhibitions/.