Counterpointing Time and Space: Polyphonic Artistic Thinking in Li Zhanyang Vendor: Selling Bread

Polyphonic is a musical term that denotes a type of multi-voice musical texture. Soviet literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin introduced the term “Polyphonic Novel” in Problem of Dostoevsky’s Poetics to illuminate the multi-vocal character of Dostoevsky’s novels. Furthermore, Bakhtin introduced polyphonic artistic thinking as a basic aesthetic principle. Polyphonic artistic thinking can be adopted across a range of art forms. This article attempts to summarize the two-pronged characteristics of polyphonic artistic thinking (material structure and structural arrangement) based on counterpoint technique, and apply them to analyze the performance artwork Li Zhanyang Vendor: Selling Bread, in order to offer an example of polyphonic artistic thinking in a different art form.