Imperatives Under Chinese Monochrome Art: Revisiting “Magiciens de la Terre”

“Les Magiciens de la Terre” has long been hailed as the first international contemporary art exhibition including both artists from Europe, Africa, Tibet, China, and other non-western places. Yang Jiechang, Gu Dexin, and Huang Yong Ping were the only three Chinese artists to participate in this exhibition. They made their debuts in front of unfamiliar overseas audiences, in which their art practices were rearranged, and Yang started his familiar series of “100 Layers of Ink.” My paper shifts the attention away from the single monochrome artwork of Yang’s 100 Layers of Ink at the Smart Museum, recenters it on the original context of the inception of this series at “Les Magiciens de la Terre,” and examines the general imperatives of those three artists’ first debuts — “distinct originality” and “being well-prepared.” The heightening emphasis on originality had already surfaced on the contemporary Chinese art scene and culminated in the curatorial plan of the exhibition’s curator, Jean-Hubert Martin. On the other hand, because of the importance of the debuts, “being well-prepared” underlined every aspect of their art-making for the exhibition, including enlarging scales, complicating the artistic concepts, and increasing working time. All those factors contributed to the sudden shifts in their art practices and shed new light on the imperatives under Yang’s monochrome art and his reflections on colors.