Dialectics of blandness: the contemporaneity of Su Shi’s aesthetics

ABSTRACT

Western modernity has been said to embrace accelerationism. This article posits a contrasting trend, whereby silent transformations and ‘blandness’ gestures gain prominence. François Jullien’s In Praise of Blandness and Peter Sloterdijk’s Eurotaoismus present an alternative modernity centered on ‘blandness’ and ‘silence’. In this paper the terms are traced back to the work of Su Shi from eleventh-century Song Dynasty China, whose unique expression of the tension between ‘blandness’ and ‘splendor’ reveals blandness is not merely a passive and negative force but rather an inner vitality. Resurfacing in Chinese contemporary art, explored here with the work of artists Xu Bing, Qiu Shihua, and Liang Shaoji, such a view offers a response to violent aesthetics. The work of these artists can be said to reactivate the power of blandness with respect to contemporary understandings and materials, prompting specific artistic language and practice that warrant more critical attention.

KEYWORDS:

• Su Shi
• blandness
• daoist dialectics
• taste without taste
• void-taste
• infra-mince art

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Hereafter all translations of Chinese classic texts are mine.

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xihou Ji

Xihou JI graduated from Southwest University for Nationalities and holds a master's degree in philosophy. He is the editor of the Humanities and Art series, a liberal writer and art critic.

Kejun Xia

Kejun Xia is a philosopher, art critic and curator. He is a Professor in the School of Liberal Arts at Renmin University of China, Beijing, and a visiting professor of Freie Universität Berlin. Xia Kejun has published more than a dozen works, around the key concept of ‘useless’. As an influential critic and curator of contemporary art, Xia proposed the concepts of Infra-mince Art, Infra-image, and Enchorial-topia, and curated a series of related exhibitions in China and Europe.