Song Zhuang is an artist village, located in Tong Zhou District (eastern suburbs of Beijing), and is the most famous and biggest artist community in Beijing. Now nearly more than 2,000 artists live in Song Zhuang, which is seen as synonymous with the Chinese avant-garde not only in China but also in other countries.
From the beginning, most of the residents in the village have been avant-garde painters. Now the area accommodates one of the largest artists' communities in China, drawing painters of varying styles; ranging from the avant-garde to the academic. Sculptors and photographers also call the area home.
The Birth and Phenomena of Songzhuang Arts Village
How ironic it is that the previously institutionalized and socially motivated art system produced many of the initial artists of the Chinese avant-garde. Were it not for the breakaway radicals of the last two decades, there simply would be no artistic community in Songzhuang, even if now concerns are perhaps sometimes more of a monetary rather than a sociological nature. With a shift catering more towards the foreign market occurring in the 1980s, and the rise of the nouveau-riche at the beginning of the new century, today it is both the growing upper middle class in the cosmopolitan cities as well as foreign collectors and galleries that have become the prominent collectors of contemporary art in China, though one would have to be über-cynical to suppose that the creative process has become wholly money-orientated to the modern artist living here. Far from it ~ in fact, a spirit of idealism, a “Songzhuang spirit” well and truly exists, and can even be examined from a historical perspective, where the roots of the artistic community can be traced back to Yuanmingyuan, the grounds of the old Summer Palace in the north-east of Beijing. It was there that in the 1980s, like-minded free spirits congregated, living relatively poorly, though freely, escaping from the rat-race and pressures of modern society. Artists arrived from all over China, celebrating a creative community and period of intense artistic exploration. This fertile artistic ground produced artists later to find international recognition and fame, most notably Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun and Yang Shaobin.
A trend was established for artists to migrate away from the cities, to form their own communities ~ the famous Beijing East Village being one ~ bringing far-reaching consequences for the Chinese avant-garde scene, as focus shifted away from the emerging capitalistic distractions and political pressures and opportunity was given in a tranquil environment for inner reflection and deep contemplation. However, inevitably problems arose once the community began attracting attention / notoriety from the media, gallery owners and other quarters, making artistic life more difficult as the once relaxed and free atmosphere came under an ever-closer scrutiny. If anyone can find a copy, it would be well worth watching the documentary ‘Seeking Dreams on the Verge’, made by the director Zhang Jiarui in 1993. Thus, in an effort to preserve the spirit of the avant-garde, Fang Lijun, Zhang Huiping and Yue Minjun took the bold initiative in the spring of 1994 to relocate from Yuanmingyuan to the farming area of Songzhuang Township, located between the Chaobai and Wenyue rivers in Tong County, 20 km away from central Beijing. Liu Wei, Zhang Huiping, Wang Qiang and Gao Huijun completed this first wave of artists to move, their having been joined by Yang Shaobin, Ma Ziheng, Zhang Jianqiang, Shao Zhenpeng, Liu Fenghua, Zhang Mingqiang, Wang Qiuren and Yao Junzhong before the end of the year. With the accompaniment of renowned art critic Li Xianting, later to be known as “ the Godfather of Songzhuang ”, a quite formidable group of talent had succeeded in keeping the flame burning for Chinese avant-garde art.
Here, the old style farmhouses, many with a small front courtyard / garden, proved an ideal living and working space for the artists, more of whom would subsequently arrive following the official closure of the Yuanmingyuan community in 1995, this being in some part due to the latter’s proximity to Beijing’s university district. Thankfully, the communal artistic lifestyle and essence of the avant-garde was preserved and remained intact amongst the tribulations, albeit by transplantation to Songzhuang.
Fast-forward to the present day, and who could possibly have imagined the impact that those few initial artist pioneers and renegades could have produced both on the physical area and on the modern art scene in China? Simply put by the famous native artist Cheng Da Qing, “ The future of Chinese fine art is in Songzhuang ”. The artistic community has flourished to nearly one thousand artists, centered mainly in the village of Xiaopu and spreading throughout Tuanli, Liuhe, Daxing, Xindian, Lamazhuang, Renzhuang, Beisi, Baimiao and Xiaoyang. Painters, sculptors, photographers, writers, conceptual / new media artists and dreamers live side-by-side, the largest gathering of contemporary artists certainly in China if not in the world. As Barbizon is to France, Soho to New York, and Dachau and Worpswede are to Germany, Songzhuang is to China. To quote the Songzhuang Party Committee: “ let hundreds schools of thought contend, and hundreds of flowers blossom ” .
October 2005 saw the successful inauguration of an annual Songzhuang Art Festival, under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Culture, the Songzhuang Township Government, and the Songzhuang Art Promotion Society, when over six hundred works were shown along the 2 km main road in Xiaopu, which gathered both international praise and speculation, tourists and buyers, collectors, critics and curators visiting alike. The subsequent year’s festival, being able to utilize the newly constructed Songzhuang Art Museum and the East District Artistic Centre capitalized on that initial success, strengthening the already famous reputation of Songzhuang as being a truly unique phenomena for artists and art lovers from both inside China and around the world. For foreign artists wishing to truly immerse themselves and stay a period of time in the area there is a residency program in the Artist Village Gallery in Renzhuang. Travel to and from Beijing is convenient with local transport or taxi capable of making the journey in under an hour. (article by Alexander Crowe)