The V&A’s spring exhibition, China Design Now, is a brave move by the museum to move the old-fashioned, general perception of China from people in Mao suits manufacturing cheap children’s toys to the reality of this dynamic and rapidly changing country by showing the wealth and diversity of China’s creative energy.
The exhibition aims to explore the recent explosion of new design in China and an attempt to understand the impact of this rapidly growing economy on its people, environment and to question in which direction this great energy will take China. New buildings and ambitious projects are taking a huge toll on the country’s traditional lifestyles, changing how the country looks through the urban sprawl of new cities, the knocked down and redeveloped areas of existing cities. It also highlights the ever-growing urban middle-class that has an avaricious appetite for a ‘modern’ lifestyle. The affluent classes are amongst the fastest growing in the world. This exhibition explores how some individuals and groups are rising to that challenge.
When Deng Xiaoping famously declared that ‘to get rich is glorious’ and China began to open its markets to the world in 1992, there was a great deal of catching up to be done. This exhibition is a visual display of China’s enthusiastic embrace of capitalism and the cult of brand names from that time. From Mao to Market, to borrow the title of John Gittings’ recent book, is what this exhibition is all about. And the effect of the political transformation of China is fundamental not only to this exhibition but also to how the world reacts to China’s headlong growth. It is just 15 years since the Chinese population have been allowed to establish their own creative practices - from design and advertising agencies, websites, furniture, fashion, film and photography. Huge growth industries on their own - without consideration to the phenomenon of Chinese contemporary art.
There are three main sections in the exhibition, each focusing on a modern and changing area of China: Shenzhen, Shanghai and finally Beijing. On show is the work of Chinese and international designers – around 100 are featured – more than 95 per cent of whom are Chinese. The exhibition starts with Shenzhen: Frontier City. Shenzhen is a long-established manufacturing centre, where the average age is younger than 30. The focus here is on graphic design, advertising and visual culture. The graphic design industry took off in China in the mid-1980s following the introduction of Special Economic Zones. The young designers of this generation are represented here, including China’s post-Mao design pioneers and new generations of designers experimenting with the latest technologies and global design trends; Products aimed at China’s design conscious youth - album covers, skateboards, designer toys, mobile phones, t-shirts and trainers; The recent wave of creative consumer and lifestyle magazines. However, this is a fast-moving story: a new generation has already emerged that has reacted against the formal purity promoted by figures like Wang Xu. Boisterous, street-smart individuality is now the order of the day, shot through with humour and nostalgia for the trappings of childhood. Presenting a collection of fanzines, CD covers, comic books, club fliers, T-shirts and toys, the exhibition shows the close relationship between the work of these younger designers and the country’s developing youth culture.
Shanghai has been associated with glamour for a very long time.
It is this section that concentrates on the hopes and dreams of Chinese urban population and the rise of a consumer society. And in this second section, the character of the city, home to the Chinese fashion, music and film industries., is featured. The scene is set by a scene from Wong Kar Wai’s film In the Mood for Love (2000). Boasting one of the most glamorous series of costume changes in cinema history, it paints a seductive picture of a Chinese culture that has long been dismantled. In the Sixties, Chinese aspiration stretched not much further than ownership of ‘The Four Great Things’, a bike, a radio, a sewing machine and a watch. These days, the Four Great Things are a house, a car (preferably a BMW), a mobile phone and the internet. In a recent survey two-thirds of young Shanghainese were said to be active bloggers.
That attraction to the glamour of an earlier age also informs much of the fashion now emerging from Shanghai, such as the work of Xie Feng, who last spring became the first Chinese designer to present work at Paris Fashion Week, and Han Feng, who designed the costumes for Anthony Minghella’s staging of Madama Butterfly. Fashion by some of China’s leading designers such as Han Feng, Lu Kun, Ma Ke, Wang Yiyang and Zhang Da produce designs evoking 1930s Shanghai chic to avant-garde styles.
It is there in the architecture too: in the rapid gentrification/modernisation of the oldest parts of the city and also in a private dining club like Yongfoo Elite, which offers socialites a fantasy vision of Shanghai and its 1930s glamour, as it was before the ravages of the Second World War. Not all this return to nostalgia, however, has been greeted with warmth - many of the city’s oldest, historic housing areas have been demolished and family networks destroyed by a forced move to the suburbs. To balance this, other new sometimes ‘Disneyfied’ communities with names such as Thames Town - a recreation of a typical English country town complete with chiming village clock – has been built in the Chinese countryside.
In many ways, the most exciting and current section is the last. Beijing: Future City. This section is not about individuals, rather the governments response to the new China. Its need for new and exciting buildings to house China’s ambitious projects and dreams. Architectural projects explored include the National Stadium in Beijing (the ‘birds nest’) by Herzog & de Meuron, as well as Digital Beijing, the information centre by Chinese architect Zhu Pei; The China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren (OMA); Foster + Partners’ design for the new Capital Airport extension in Beijing; Other smaller projects by China’s leading young architects are fascinating, these include work from Ma Yansong, Wang Hui, and the Commune by the Great Wall, a boutique spa hotel on the Great Wall of China comprising twelve pavilions designed by Asian architects.
China Design Now places exhibits in the context of China’s social, cultural and economic reforms over the last 25 years, providing both a critical survey and a narrative that enables people to see how China’s new design and consumer culture has developed, what its driving forces are and where it is going. The choice of objects and the way the exhibition has been presented may raise a few eyebrows and not be in everyone’s taste, but it is certainly showing us a Brave New World.
Until 13 July at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, www.vam.ac.uk
