Speech entitled “Bie-Modernism and Modernity in Literature and Art”

On the evening of March 30, 2022, at the invitation of the School of Letters of Northwest Normal University, Professor Wang Jianjiang, an outstanding alumnus of Northwest Normal University and a doctoral supervisor of the School of Humanities of Shanghai Normal University, made an online speech entitled “Bie-Modernism and Modernity in Literature and Art”. Associate Professor Xu Xiaojun from the Faculty of Arts presided over the report. More than 200 teachers and students inside and outside the school gathered at the Distinguished Alumni Forum of the Faculty of Arts and listened to the lecture online.

Professor Wang Jianjiang’s report focuses on four parts: the basic concept of Bie-modernism, Bie-modernism and literature and art, aesthetic modernity in China, and the future of Bie-modernism. Professor Wang Jianjiang first clarified the social form foundation of Bie-modernism, the connotation of core concepts and its logical starting point, and pointed out that Bie-modernism is a new theory born in a new context, which has generated great repercussions at home and abroad. Afterwards, Professor Wang Jianjiang used a large number of literary works, film and television dramas, paintings, sculptures and architecture to distinguish between Bie-modernism art and Bie-modern art, and elaborated on the inherent characteristics of different modernism and its identification path. In the third part, Professor Wang Jianjiang analyzes the connotation of aesthetic modernity, and expounds the inherent necessity of China moving towards true modernity. In the end, Professor Wang Jianjiang concluded with “Zhuangzi·Xiaoyaoyou”. He expects that Bie-modernism can open up a new theoretical space for the future of Chinese local aesthetic thought and literary theory.

In the dialogue and exchange session, Ph.D. supervisor Professor Yang Guangzu exchanged his experience and insights on Bie-modern theory, and believed that Bie-modern theory has a great inspiration for re-understanding Chinese contemporary literature and art phenomenon.

Professor Wang Jianjiang then gave in-depth and detailed answers to the questions raised by the participating teachers and students, such as the determination of the modern social form, the starting point of the times, artistic identification and methodology, which benefited the participating teachers and students a lot.

Associate Professor Xu Xiaojun concluded that Professor Wang Jianjiang has clarified the realistic basis, theoretical basis and artistic symptoms of other modernism for us between the ancient and the modern in China and the West. This theory promotes the new thinking of the current cultural and literary phenomenon in the ideological and theoretical circles, and opens a new path for the development of Chinese aesthetics and literature and art.