In Wikipedia, authenticity is concerned as the truthfulness of origins, attributes, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions. But I don’t totally approve this explanation, the reason is in my opinion, there is nothing which is 100 percent true. In one side, everyone might have their own different ideas and feeling to one thing, in the other side, a lot of things themselves are double-sided, you can not give it a specific definition. Take my favorite Chinese photographer Ren Hang as an example, he killed himself because of depression but I think he was best at using the film camera to shoot the human body. He stands out for queer and female through his photography and poetry works. But the truth is there are only a few Chinese appreciated his work, because some Chinese people’s understanding of sex and the human body still remains in a very traditional stage. This is why all the record and revaluation about him and his career can not be defined as authenticity. And it’s impossible for anything to be truly authentic.

Moving to the principles of modernism and contemporary practice, I do think that principles of modernism hold value in contemporary practice. Modernism means the movement of art and design. And those principles are the experience of old artists, it is certainly helpful for us to practice contemporarily, but what we need to do is using it as a reference, then adding our own ideas to create something new.

Liu Xinyi

Bibliography

1, Authenticity, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity, 29/10/17

2, The Core Principles of Modernism (overview),

https://charlotteroe.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-core-principles-of-modernism-overview/, 29/10/17