Narrative identity of the possible author: a tertiary narrativization of Chinese realist art of the 1950s–1990s

In: Chinese Semiotic Studies, Band 18, Heft 4, S. 515-562

Abstract

Abstract
From a narratological perspective, this essay reinterprets the development of Chinese realist art under Western influence in the second half of the twentieth century and explores the narrative issue of the possible author that is transformed from the integral reader. As a crucial response to Western influence, realist art in China developed from imitating to appropriating Western art and continued from taking inspiration from Western art to participating in the international arena of conceptual art with certain renovations. In this essay, the narratological notion of "possible author" is proposed to discuss the issue of narrative identity. While some scholars declared the death of the reader, this essay introduces a new reader to art historical narrative. This is a tertiary reader that transforms into a possible author who re-narrates the story of art history in the possible space between the secondary narration and tertiary narrativization. In this space, the three layers of the first-hand fabula, secondary narration, and tertiary narrativization work together in defining the possible author's narrative identity as re-interpretive and critical.