The Trap of Pseudo-abstraction: Re-evaluating Li Xiaoshan and the Ethical Crisis of Chinese Painting

This essay revisits Li Xiaoshan’s seminal 1985 critique, My Views on Contemporary Chinese Painting, in the context of the forty years that have passed since its publication. Despite the passage of time, the field of Chinese painting remains trapped in a cycle of conformist mediocrity and rigid traditionalism. This study argues that the “abstraction” found in Chinese painting is a “pseudo-abstraction” lacking modern rational reconstruction. By employing Kant’s concept of “purposiveness without purpose” as an analytical lens, the essay deconstructs how the traditional aesthetic of “suspension” has been alienated into a mechanism of social stasis and ethical posturing. It identifies three layers of decay within the system - aesthetic suspension, suspended reality, and the cruelty of purposiveness as control, and concludes that a radical theoretical revolution, rather than mere technical reform, is necessary to recover the spirit of freedom in Chinese art.