Yu-Chieh Li, Author at post https://post.moma.org notes on art in a global context Sat, 12 Apr 2025 17:40:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://post.moma.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cropped-favicon-32x32.png Yu-Chieh Li, Author at post https://post.moma.org 32 32 Xu Bing’s “Series of Repetitions” https://post.moma.org/xu-bings-series-of-repetitions/ Tue, 17 May 2016 18:14:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=7716 In 1975, near the end of the Cultural Revolution in China, artist Xu Bing relocated to the countryside for two years. The 1987-8 woodcuts in MoMA’s collection reflect this pastoral atmosphere while anticipating the artist’s later turn to Conceptual art. The set of woodcuts by Xu Bing (Chinese, born 1955) in MoMA’s collection depicts rural…

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In 1975, near the end of the Cultural Revolution in China, artist Xu Bing relocated to the countryside for two years. The 1987-8 woodcuts in MoMA’s collection reflect this pastoral atmosphere while anticipating the artist’s later turn to Conceptual art.

Xu Bing. A Big River. 1987. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 20 13/16 x 29″ (52.8 x 73.7 cm); sheet: 26 1/8 x 35 11/16″ (66.4 x 90.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing

The set of woodcuts by Xu Bing (Chinese, born 1955) in MoMA’s collection depicts rural scenes. It was printed in 1987 and 1988—exactly the time that Xu turned from pictorial representation to repetition through printing techniques. Since it constitutes the first series of conceptual prints that he developed, it yields a key to understanding the artist’s larger transition from his early print works to his later conceptual art practice. Xu Bing is often associated with the grandeur and sacred space of his signature work Book from the Sky (1987–91), which presents thousands of printed pseudo-Chinese characters in the formats of scrolls and traditional books, but he is also well-known for his cultural critique in the performance Cultural Animal (1994), in which a pig, tattooed with false Chinese characters, reacted in a sexual manner to a life-size, tattooed (with invented English words) mannequin in human form. Works such as these have made Xu a representative figure of the “Chinese avant-garde.”

Xu Bing. A Mountain Place. 1987. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 20 13/16 x 28 13/16″ (52.8 x 73.2 cm); sheet: 26 1/4 x 33 9/16″ (66.7 x 85.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing
Xu Bing. Black Pond. 1987. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 19 7/8 x 27 3/4″ (50.5 x 70.5 cm); sheet: 25 1/2 x 34 15/16″ (64.8 x 88.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing

The titles of the prints in MoMA’s collection, Black Tadpoles, Haystack Reflection, Moving Clouds, Life Pool, A Mountain Place, and Cropland, to name a few, recall the rural life that Xu experienced before he entered the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Like many young students who sought out the countryside as a result of Mao’s rustication, Xu volunteered in 1974 to work with peasants after finishing high school.1 Besides a youthful utopian affinity for socialist ideals, there were other reasons for this decision: Xu’s father was on the faculty of the Department of History of Peking University and his mother worked in the library. As a result, the family was attacked during the Cultural Revolution for being part of the bourgeoisie who are enemies of the communist society. In hopes this designation would not become a stumbling block when he applied for admission to the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Xu conformed to Mao’s policies. He was admitted into the Academy, but his family history kept him cautious throughout his time there. Haystacks, fields, farm cottages, and crops were dominant motifs in his prints from the early 1980s, a series he later named “Shattered Jade.” These works are smaller in scale, with determined lines, and they sometimes represent an analogous relationship between the natural landscapes and hieroglyphs. They are no doubt drawn from Xu’s personal iconography, but, more importantly, they are politically correct and echo Chairman Mao’s 1942 announcement that art is made for the people.

Xu Bing. Cropland. 1987. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 21 3/4 x 28 9/16″ (55.2 x 72.6 cm); sheet: 26 5/16 x 35 5/8″ (66.8 x 90.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing
Xu Bing. Black Tadpole. 1988. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 21 9/16 x 29 1/2″ (54.8 x 75 cm); sheet: 26 5/16 x 35 13/16″ (66.9 x 91 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing

The series of ten prints in MoMA’s collection show a similar abstracting of the landscape into flat, textured fields, but the contour lines are less determined and attempts at correcting earlier marks are visible. For example, the square in the bottom right of the first print seems abrupt and the strokes that constitute the fields decenter the composition. The characters which stand for common Chinese names — Zhao, Qian, Sun, and Li that appear in the ninth print — are rendered in a rough, absent-minded manner, as if produced by a poor calligrapher. The freedom in the compositions and indelicate draughtsmanship give the set a straightforward beauty—a quality more characteristic of sketches than of prints — due to the fact that Xu used his carving knife to sketch directly into the block, rather than working from a tracing. Although there is repetition of motifs such as fields and tadpoles within the series, the size of the blocks and the paper used differ from one print to the next, indicating that the ten prints were not originally conceived as one unit. Rather, they were selected from experiments and studies for Xu’s Five Series of Repetitions (1987–88) and were only grouped together later on.

Xu Bing. Dry Pond. 1987. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 21 9/16 x 28 11/16″ (54.8 x 72.8 cm); sheet: 26 3/16 x 35 5/8″ (66.5 x 90.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing
Xu Bing. Field. 1987. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 21 9/16 x 29 1/16″ (54.8 x 73.8 cm); sheet: 26 5/16 x 35 13/16″ (66.8 x 91 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing

Originally the complete set of Five Series of Repetitions illustrated the process of woodblock carving in its entirety, starting with a bare block and ending with an almost completely carved-away surface. Xu made prints at regular intervals during this process, recording the gradual reduction of the woodblock and its corollary additions and deletions on the printed page. Five Series of Repetitions is usually displayed in a sequence that emulates a long scroll, and so the work unfolds as a process from nothing to something and then back to nothing again.

Xu Bing. Life Pond. 1987. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 19 7/8 x 26 15/16″ (50.5 x 68.5 cm); sheet: 26 1/4 x 35 5/8″ (66.7 x 90.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing
Xu Bing. Haystack. 1988. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 18 11/16 x 28 3/16″ (47.5 x 71.6 cm); sheet: 26 3/16 x 35 5/8″ (66.5 x 90.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing

Although the ten prints in MoMA’s collection do not illustrate this process, their abstracted landscapes nonetheless illuminate the artist’s attempt to move away from representation. From 1987 to 1988 Xu was exploring the possibilities of printmaking, and specifically what could be termed conceptual printmaking. The conceptual aspect is reflected in the exploration of repetition in the printing process—basic elements such as dots and lines are repeatedly carved with subtle differences. It was during this exploration that Xu developed the method for creating Book from the Sky, in which he created thousands of pseudo-Chinese characters printed from wood letterpress type. The characters were based on his study of traditional fonts and the radicals (different elements of Chinese characters) that are conceived as part of an overarching composition. According to this modular system, certain elements, such as a stroke, recur and enter into new relationships with elements in other characters. Through this repetition, Xu created around one thousand characters for a room-size installation that is unreadable yet nevertheless prompts viewers to attempt to decipher it.

Xu Bing. Moving Cloud. 1987. From Series of Repetitions. One from a series of ten woodcuts. Composition: 20 1/2 x 28 1/4″ (52 x 71.8 cm); sheet: 26 x 35 13/16″ (66 x 91 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund © 2014 Xu Bing

In “The Path of Repetition and the Imprint,” written in 2009, Xu retrospectively concludes that it was during the act of making the woodblock for Series of Repetitions that he really came to master the woodblock process.2 This set of prints also marks his turn toward conceptual art—a turn from nothing to something and back to nothing again.

1    Most schools and universities were shut down during the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976. In 1968, Mao announced that urban youth should be sent to the countryside for reeducation. They became important labor help.
2    See Xu Bing, Xu Bing Prints (Beijing: Culture and Art Publishing House, 2010), 6–11.

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行動繪畫不是書法: 楊詰蒼訪談 https://post.moma.org/a-conversation-with-yang-jiechang-ch/ Fri, 15 Jan 2016 17:22:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=9611 “A Conversation with Yang Jiechang” is available in Chinese and English. Yang talks about his “art education” during the Cultural Revolution, when he served as a Red Guard in a small village, and describes how the study of calligraphy extinguished his enthusiasm for revolution and political propaganda. Read the English translation here. 巴黎楊詰蒼工作室 24 June 2014…

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“A Conversation with Yang Jiechang” is available in Chinese and English. Yang talks about his “art education” during the Cultural Revolution, when he served as a Red Guard in a small village, and describes how the study of calligraphy extinguished his enthusiasm for revolution and political propaganda.

Read the English translation here.

巴黎楊詰蒼工作室 24 June 2014

第一部分: 一個藝術家的遺囑

李雨潔: 我們剛才在聊你的《遺囑》(1991),你身後的那件作品,你要不要談一談,你為什麼做這個《遺囑》。

楊詰蒼: 我八八年十二月離開中國,先到了海德堡,八九年四月來到巴黎,參加龐畢度藝術中心《大地魔術師》的現場創作,到了六月三日北京長安街開槍,我作為大學老師、知識份子不敢相信這是真的。你們年輕人知道我說的天安門這件事情嗎?當時非常絕望啊。我們從八十年代過來,認可人文熱情、知識救國、解放思想的教書人,眼睜睜地看着這種災難性的結果,就不知道自己是人是鬼了……有一段時期都很無望。

我88年12月9日來到德國海德堡,是Martina (Köppel-Yang 楊天娜) 請我出來,主要原因還是為了《大地魔術師》這個展覽,當時以個人名義申請簽證出國參加文化活動政府不批的。要做展覽屬於文化交流性質,在1988年,文化國際交流還必須要公派,公派的話不會是我,辦個護照還要個人申請,學院批准,上報省高教廳後還要中國文化部批准,哪輪上我。

Yang Jiechang in his studio, June 2014.

《遺囑》是1991年的時候為日本福岡「城市博物館計劃」裡的《非常口》展覽所創作,策展人是費大為 。當時的困惑也就是天安門那件事,就是怎麼樣也解脫不了,精神一直被綁住打不開,是教書人一夜成了流浪漢的那種失魂落魄。在日本想起一件日本國寶《玉蟲櫥子》(Tamamushi Shrine) ,櫥子表面描畫著佛本生《薩埵太子捨身餵虎 》的故事,是日本家喻戶曉的,我想,那就利用日本人家喻戶曉的這件事來進入日本吧!我用的二件形式也是日本人拿手戲,一是禪宗知識,二是陶藝技術。我是隨手撿了個已燒過的陶罐子在上面再加了一筆白釉再燒的。這只是存放一坨老虎大便的陶罐,不漏屎就行了。 當你把這個居高臨下的所謂文化人的態度一下放到你只是這坨老虎拉的屎,你整個人就腦門開竅!從這個作品開始我重新定位,重新做人,所以我以後就把政治看的很低級, 我覺得自然自在更有意思, 藝術有意思,藝術經常救我命。

這個作品展出的時候背後牆上有幾行字:「有日我非自然死去,把我拿給老虎吃掉,保留老虎此次排泄物。楊詰蒼。」禪是當下、是行動、是生命,禪宗是宗教。

Yang Jiechang. Testament. 1989-1991. © 2015 the artist.

第二部分: 行動繪畫及繪畫中的行動

李雨潔: 剛剛天娜帶我們去看了你的美院畢業創作,《殺人》跟《放火》[1982]。非常表現主義。

楊詰蒼: 很直接。

李雨潔: 能不能講一下你那時候在嘗試什麼?

楊詰蒼: 美術學院招收我們文革後第一批學生的時候,還是沿著文化大革命的那套審美取向,革命藝術表現的人必須是勞動人民和健康身體的人,有高、大、全,紅、光、亮等等程式。我們要經常練習畫人物頭像,我考廣州美術學院時最重要的素描考試也是畫解放軍頭像,我們這一代藝術家進入美院以前,已經有過長時間畫頭像的訓練了。進美院讀書這四年,很多時候還是頭像課,我們下鄉寫生還是畫工農兵頭像,整個藝術教育裡面的這個頭像,畫到你頭都爆:頭都是工農兵人頭,要求微笑的這個正面像,或者是四分之三的這個角度,到了畢業時候感覺頭像已經太煩人 。我以為畫頭像我是拿手了,但是畫死人頭還有第一次,想到有了傳承又有挑戰就興奮,《殺人》就是這樣來的。當指導老師太多,就連畫組花畫棵樹也會有意見的,我完成了水墨「死人頭」,人人批評,我又畫了另一幅工筆重彩《放火》,就是你現在看見的這兩組六大屏組合。今日來看當時學校不讓通過也是好事,作品就是我的了,每次看它都心情年輕。最後我竟然還被留下來當了學院助教!

李雨潔: 如果想要改革你學到的畫頭像的那種死板方式,為什麼要用一定要用暴力或者是負面的方式來畫這兩張畫呢?殺人畢竟就是一個負面的題材。

Yang Jiechang. Massacre. 1982. Ink and mineral colors on Xuan paper, 330 x 320 cm. © 2015 the artist.
Yang Jiechang. Setting Fire. 1982. Ink and mineral colors on Xuan paper, 330 x 320 cm © 2015 the artist.

楊詰蒼: 做過紅衛兵,讀了幾行尼釆或維特根斯坦,我們這代學生總是要找一個對立面。微笑的背後是哭,是吧!生命的對面就是死亡⋯⋯當時很簡單只是找一個對立面來表述,當然今天我們也可以找到第三第四個可能性是吧!當時那個環境裡面,找反面是比較有把握的,我當時被這個簡單方式所激動,屠殺本身是鮮活的,永恆的,天天發生。當然你也可以不這樣,其他同學都是認真地畫好他們的真善美畢業的。

李雨潔: 這是一張你1986年在工作室的照片以及85年畫的畫。好像你畫的是潑墨或者抽象。

Yang Jiechang in his studio in Guangzhou in 1986. Image courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

楊詰蒼: 不是抽象的,是解構具象。我的解構很簡單,還是具象的,每個東西都有來源。我當時喜歡明代徐渭的畫,徐渭的瘋狂。我臨摹放大他的畫的局部!比如他畫的荷葉,我把荷葉一個局部拿了出來放大臨摹,現在我工作室還有一張大畫正是他的爛荷葉, 這張大畫是用三把掃把綁在一起當毛筆畫成的,因為畫太大了,又沒那麼大的筆,更沒錢買大筆,我自己做工具,就拿掃馬路的那個椰衣殼掃把,再用開水煮,煮爛好打軟,出來的筆達到的效果都不是傳統裡面的那些羊毛筆能做到的,也與傳統文人案頭不同,我的工作地點都很髒,畫氊是窗帘布亞麻布,積聚有很多墨屎和灰塵在上面,所以潔白的宣紙在上面一用水用墨就正面背面都有效果,沒法控制的畫面。

當時不知道有Mark Tobey和日本禪畫 。結果沒想到一來到巴黎來到紐約,人家說你是學這個Mark Tobey,那個又像Robert Motherwell。我們當時根本就沒有這種現代藝術知識,我們上美術史課從來都不教現代藝術。 在牛津曾經有記者問,你的東西是不是Malevich,我以為Malevich是以前蘇聯的電影《列寧在十月》裡一個開汽車的人呢。準確講Mark Tobey也好Jackson Pollock也好,他們還是學東方的,當然有一些激情在裡面。有意思是東方的藝術家真正從自己的土埌發生出來的時候,西方人就說我們是在學他,學美國的,為什麼不是他們學我的呢?可能年齡不一樣,但是我們的淵源是自己的血脈,血裡面就有這個龍騰虎躍東西,我從三歲爺爺教拿毛筆就已經有這種行動(action),這種意識態。中國毛筆文明有中國文人幾千年積聚的意識體,生死與共,朝夕相處的一種行為方式。傳統中國文人看你品藝術的趣味,看你寫個毛筆字,就知道你是誰了,幾筆墨線就能給你稱骨算命, 就是觀念藝術了。那個Jackson Pollock玩身體的,玩尺寸,黑白灰,點線面,玩材料,他的抽象很平面的。在中國毛筆裡面還不僅僅講材料,有很多是意識型態,很多修養的東西,還有程式模範的對象。而且隨著你的年齡的增長,隨著你的對於社會的那種參與,和朋友們的交往,你的整個的眼光喔帶着你的趣味和審美甚至人格提高,整個人也高尚起來的,藝術是特別立體的。

李雨潔: 所以你這個時候已經把紙放在地上畫畫了。

楊詰蒼: 我從來都沒有在桌子上畫畫,從小就這樣。老師總是告訴我們練書法的時候就不能用手按著寫,要提腕,平腕豎鋒,腰要直,這樣筆桿的力氣就灌進紙去,而且要有距離,如果你一提起這個手腕啊,筆與紙之間馬上就有了距離,如果你手按著寫字,這個距離一短的話你看不到整體的,容易進到局部去了。放在地上寫畫距離就更遠了,這時觀察很整體,整個畫面你容易控制,不往局部裡鑽,儘管你每一筆都是局部,其實古人三千年來都這樣完成字畫的。

李雨潔: 你什麼時第一次賣出第一張畫的?

楊詰蒼: 問得好,當時來了一個德國西門子公司的工程師,他是研究助聽器的,在廣州考察市場。大概是1986年的夏天,一個做翻譯的熟人帶他來廣州美院參觀。他特別喜歡我的大畫《殺人》,畫太大,我給他們看了一批素材,一張一張的那個死人頭,是我搞創作前的一些習作,他要買一張習作,記得太深刻了,有人要買我的畫!那個翻譯還叫我把價格提高,我從來沒賣過作品,都不知道怎麼提高價格,我就要了100塊外匯券。當時很感動,能賣100塊啊!60乘1米高麗紙畫的素材死人頭,一感動我跟着還送給他另外一張!那個翻譯還說我怎麼這麼傻。要知道這一張「素材稿」比我的一個大學老師工資還多呢 (講師九十六元月收),我的這種藝術有人喜歡就不錯了。

我就覺得研究「85新潮藝術」應該多從一些個人現象來研究,不要老是研究那種群眾組織、藝術群體。個體很鮮活有生命,飯都吃不飽還掙扎著搞藝術,搞出來又不允許公開發表和沒地方展出,一堆破爛疊在角落,有時送都沒人要啊。當時藝術家都很浪漫,通過努力學習和創作在超越自己,這個個人的「85」卻沒人提呀!蔡國強、陳箴、汪建偉、徐冰、陳侗、楊詰蒼,丁乙⋯⋯太多個人的現象,這些個體藝術家對組織或者扎堆沒有興趣,在痛苦的折磨裡面走出來的 。

李雨潔: 嗯,有一些資料說你在八十年代初的時候,就開始創作抽象書法,你認同這個概念嗎?還有你真的在做抽象書法嗎?

楊詰蒼: 書法很玄妙的,書法也是具象的,漢字本身就是圖像,有形象,所以是具象的是吧!一個字裡面有形的指示,有能量,所以書法不抽象,抽象是外國人說的,因為他看不懂,看的懂的話,「木」這個字就是一棵樹,「人」這個字就是站著走,都是象形的。當我寫書法,寫一個人的名字的時候,這個人就活生生在筆下,對我來說很具象,我不把書法看成抽象的,哪怕是我寫成鬼畫符像張旭、像懷素一樣,我覺得還是具象的。

書法裡面有很多規範也叫法,教你怎麼活,怎麼看藝術看世界也有法,怎麼把握法度,經由你的實踐來探索,都要時間。實際上這根毛筆隨著時間可以帶出你整個人生的貴氣來,你就能夠把握住你自己的人生和你每一個階段的那些變化,增加判斷力,這種美學原理交織在每日的這一筆該拉多長,那一劃要壓幾重之中。毛筆特別有意思就這樣,而且它很便宜,人人可以是藝術家只要他拿起毛筆。波依斯的話還差一句,「只要你以為自己是藝術家你才是。」拿起毛筆,你差不多就是文化人了。以前不是誰都可以拿毛筆的,三五年一個族群鄉村裡面只能夠選出三兩個所謂比較有靈光的孩子,讓他去讀書識字,科舉及第,衣錦還鄉。整個族群與泥土辛勤耕耘就是為了這個孩子讀書可能帶來的攺變。能夠掌握毛筆的這三兩個人,或許就是族群的未來了,毛筆有擔當的,毛筆不是每個人都可以拿。

第三部分: 當代藝術以及文化大革命

李雨潔: 文革對你的藝術有什麼影響?

楊詰蒼: 怎麼說呢,我當時還很小,只能夠就事論事談,當然按照現在的正確政治,文革就是這樣了。文革有幾年不用上學,所以我的知識大多不是從課堂來的,是從社會實踐上來的。作為軍屬和紅衛兵糾察隊成員,罷課期間我住在學校看屋,工作是將全校一千多同學交上來的家裡的書區分出香花和毒草,以便歸還或銷毀或賣去收購站。1970年的時候, 我的工作就是在晚上看着那一條高高的電話線,半夜三更在一個農田的一個點看管這一段電線,保證這幾百米裡的這條電線不受人破壞。莫名其妙的課堂,沒有任何道理, 你就是半夜看著這條電線。我們學校挑選出來的紅衛兵就這樣一段一段被分進去看著這電線,他媽的無釐頭,當代藝術吧!那種經驗比波伊斯、白南凖觀念多了。

李雨潔: 所以你文革的時候沒有斷過練書法是因為你寫大字報。

楊詰蒼: 實際上我沒抄寫過大字報,因為我很幸運遇上個好老師。 我原來學書法是為了抄寫好大字報,我這個老師也知道我來學習書法的目的,他好像不讓我那麼快達到目的。這種老文人有意思,中國的那種教育方法是很奇特的,他首先安排我明窗淨几、磨墨裁紙等雜七雜八工作, 考你的耐心,如果你覺得沒東西好學你就走了就算了。我是父親走了後門讓我來的,總得堅持。可能後來老人覺得這個小孩有點耐性,他要我選一份碑帖作為範本對臨來學習寫字,我選了那本《泰山金剛經》,練了幾個月發現這字體寫的不好看,不能抄大字報的,我想換成唐代歐陽詢的「九成宮」書體,結果老師不給換了,他說我選了就選了,學書法不是光為了學有用的東西,學書法是既學書更是學法,他一下子就把我們那一種想去參與文化大革命、抄寫大字報的那種慾望,通過他的教育方式壓制住了。

李雨潔: 你在八四年到八六年去學道,為什麼?

楊詰蒼: 八十年代前期, 西方的哲學思潮還有文學小說翻譯進來很多。以前沒書看就像肚子空太餓了,越餓越飢不擇食,後來書進來了看多了糊塗,著急,亂七八糟的讀,東方、西方、機械、宗教、性知識、哲學、戰爭、小說⋯⋯什麼都有。我這個人的性格容易激動,我想還是要學一點方法看怎麼安靜自己,覺得學一點宗教知識或許有幫助。我通過主持的管家藏智進入了廣州的著名禪院「光孝寺」想學禪,當時廟沒什麼香火的,特別是沒有知識分子進去的。我當時的佛教基本知識就是從書本來,也讀過日本鈴木大拙的書,讀得特別高雅,哲學,結果進去了那個廟裡面生活的時候發現是兩回事。我當時覺得廟裡面的等級比現實社會多多了,釋迦不是講平等嗎?我不到兩個星期就跑掉了。不久我又去了博羅縣羅浮山的衝虛觀,隨黃陶道長「學道」,這裡的山大而且風景太美了,不遠處還有給林彪蓋的別墅。當時那個道長也無聊,大山大嶺諾大一個著名道觀就他一個人和一書僮而已,他願意讓我留下來,我覺得我住下白吃也不好,看見觀裡有一些清朝的民間壁畫有些剝落,有空的時候我幫助修補一下,在那我斷斷續續待了兩年,當時我只是助教少課。可是這住山的兩年黃陶道長什麼都沒教我!他職位很高,是廣東省道教協會主席,中國道教協會副主席。他應該是有料的,但是他不教,他只讓我住下來,我從來沒有碰過這種老師,奇怪的是隨著我的知識越來越多,我就以為他越來越重要。他的手法非常玄,真是玄學。

第四部分: 千層墨系列

李雨潔: 你是怎麼開始創作千層墨系列的。

楊詰蒼: 我在大陸畫的那些所謂的抽象實驗水墨裡面已經有這個影子,除了解構傳統繪畫,八六年之後的一段時期我借用過甲骨文,金文和刻石墨拓,畫到最後成了幾筆甚至一筆成畫,簡化到這地步真不知怎麼畫了,這批畫我還有幾十張留了下來。然後為了《大地魔術師》展覽我出國,馬爾丹(Jean Hubert-Martin)八七年在廣州選的一大卷畫在我離開中國過境香港時被扣在中國深圳海關,事實上我來到法國展覽時是一無所有,就只帶著幾支毛筆。我來了歐洲以後,真不知道畫什麼,而且天娜說我在龐畢度展場位置周邊的人都很有名,我和白南凖(Nam June Paik)挨著,圍着我們一大圈的有Anselm Kiefer、 Ilya Kabakov、On Kawara 、Alighiero Boetti、Sigmar Polke,Sarkis不遠還有Jeff Wall,如果我再畫畫,再畫那種抽象水墨的畫,就是馬爾丹原本選的那些,那我就這樣了。沒辦法,我想到了後退,我的文化告訴我,不進就退,往往退比進好,以退為進。退的方法很簡單,就是不再畫了。但我還是用毛筆,還是用墨,還是用宣紙,卻「不畫」了,以塗墨來記錄我這幾十天在巴黎的勞動, 每天都在第一筆的位置上乾了以後再塗墨水,宣紙一碰水墨就會吸收就變形,我就繼續跟著它來填墨汁,填了百多遍墨以後就有意思了,那張宣紙已經不是那麼平平滑滑的這種,已經皺得密密麻麻,這時候的墨已經不黑了,墨色有反光了。只要很簡單地每日重複一件很簡單的事就可以創造奇蹟,這時候新生命出來的,墨黑的反面出來了,見到了白色,那已經不是畫,是一個多月時間的記錄,記錄著我的生活我的記憶,也成了我的空間。這團方塊墨色成了一個空間,後來把它掛起來的時候,我覺得不能夠按常規那樣掛了,它既然是個空間嘛,就有距離,有一百幾十層記憶,在我心裡這張宣紙不再是平面了,我就把它懸空裝置起來,離牆一段距離來掛,墨塊的尺寸巨大,觀眾站在它們前面的時候感到是個空間,可以走進去一樣,這千層墨就是這樣來的,用的就是簡單的墨汁。

Yang Jiechang. Hundreds Layers of Ink: Voyage en Mexique. 1990. © 2015 the artist.
Yang Jiechang. Hundred Layers of Ink. 1989. Set of four paintings, ink on Xuan Paper, each painting 420 x 280 cm. Installation shot at Silent Energy, Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1991. Photo courtesy Yang Jiechang.

李雨潔: 但是這是一種加法嗎?

楊詰蒼: 你每天重覆一個很無聊的工作是吧!那也就是一種減法,我使用宋人繪畫裡面最基礎的「三矾九染」技法。你明白這個動詞嗎?「三矾」就是上膠矾多次,「九染」是反覆多次渲染。這是大概的數,比如畫一種紅顏色出來,不是直接塗完一個紅色就是紅色,這個紅色是要通過層層反覆罩染很多次的紅來達到的,跟油畫調配出來一個紅色一筆畫上去的方式是不一樣的。這個所謂的「千層墨」中,我用了宋人工筆畫的基本原理,「三矾九染」,最後結果看到的墨色已經不是黑的了,有神奇的「暗光明」。

第五部分: 中國城現象

李雨潔: 剛剛談到你們這一群藝術家 剛好趕上後殖民理論的班車,九十年代初有一些海外的大的展覽都是中國當代藝術的群展, 比如說柏林中國行為藝術, 還有其他在威尼斯的,在牛津的。可能大家對中國藝術家的興趣,最開始來自文化, 你對這件事情有什麼看法, 你覺得九三年開始的這一批海外展覽,改變了你們的創作方法嗎?

楊詰蒼: 壞就壞在都是喜歡中國、去過中國、甚至是當年毛派的歐洲人做的展覽。我比較欣賞費大為早期做的展覽, 例如九一年在法國南方Pourrières那個《獻給中國的昨天今天明天》(Chine Demain Pour Hier (Pourrieres, 1991) 。 當時費大為目標還比較明確,他覺得中國當代藝術是不存在的,當代藝術怎麼看也是很個人化的,如果用「大團圓」或「中國城」的方式來呈現中國當代藝術這是一種誤導。中國當代藝術還是剛開始,不可能給大家看得全整個形貌,也說不清楚,他說他更有興趣的是做一些菁英個體。當代藝術是菁英文化。 那個柏林的展覽就出問題了,影響不好,那三個策展人都是做中國生意的人,荷蘭佬Hans van Dijk 賣中國舊傢俱沒賣好,德國人Andrea Schmidt是剛從杭州淅江美院畢業, 另外還有Jochen Noth。 豐富多姿登大雅之堂的中華各種菜式,被這三個喜歡中國的人搞成如中餐館的炒飯,一大盤端上了柏林世界文化宮的桌子上,這跟法國人龐畢度館長馬爾丹用了三年籌備,八九年五月在巴黎他的蓬皮杜藝術中心舉辦的那個《大地魔術師》百人大展完全相反的意識形態。馬爾丹把中國當代藝術家與國際當代藝術處在一種平衡! 隨後牛津的David Eliot的在接了柏林的那個中國展之前,他也親自策劃了一個有九位中國藝術家的現場製作展覽《沈默的力量》,質量很好。以後大家都看見的,栗憲庭的玩世現實主義來了,香港舍尼畫廊來了,漢雅軒張頌仁來了,比利時的尤倫斯來了,瑞士的希克來了,許江招安來了,教授巫鴻來了⋯⋯中國當代藝術場場滑鐵盧,成了金錢和社會學戰場。

李雨潔: 你有被審查過嗎?

楊詰蒼: 監控的時代,當今沒人逃得掉!

Yang Jiechang. Hundred Layers of Ink. 1989. Set of four paintings, ink on Xuan Paper, each painting 420 x 280 cm. Installation shot at Magiciens de la terre, 1989. Photo courtesy Yang Jiechang.

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Action Painting is Not Calligraphy: A Conversation with Yang Jiechang https://post.moma.org/action-painting-is-not-calligraphy-a-conversation-with-yang-jiechang/ Fri, 15 Jan 2016 07:17:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=5344 For the artist Yang Jiechang (b. 1956, Foshan), there is a certain similarity betweencontemporary artists and China’s Red Guards of the 1970s: namely, their performance of arbitrary tasks. In this conversation, Yang talks about his “art education” during the Cultural Revolution, when he served as a Red Guard in a small village, and describes how…

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For the artist Yang Jiechang (b. 1956, Foshan), there is a certain similarity between
contemporary artists and China’s Red Guards of the 1970s: namely, their performance of arbitrary tasks. In this conversation, Yang talks about his “art education” during the Cultural Revolution, when he served as a Red Guard in a small village, and describes how the study of calligraphy extinguished his enthusiasm for revolution and political propaganda.

Although Yang has been living in Europe since 1988, the Chinese brush remains an essential tool in his experimental painting practice. He discusses Hundred Layers of
Ink,
a series of abstract paintings he developed for the exhibition Magiciens de la terre (1989, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), combining Chinese ink, Zen philosophy, and the surrounding space. He views calligraphy and abstraction as neither the same thing nor as contradictory. For Yang, the central value of calligraphy lies not in the aesthetics of the written signs but in the methods used to achieve them —methods that can be applied to other art forms and mediums, and even to life. Yang takes a dim view of the fashion for group shows of contemporary Chinese art, calling it “the Chinatown phenomenon,” and an even dimmer view of art censorship in China. These trends have strengthened his conviction that more research remains to be done on contemporary Chinese art.

The conversation published below was held in Chinese in Yang Jiechang’s Paris
studio on June 24, 2014. The Chinese version of the interview can be accessed at the bottom of this page; the transcript has been translated by Yu-Chieh Li.

Read the interview in Chinese here.

Part 1: The Artist’s Testament

Yu-Chieh Li: We were talking about your work Testament [1992], which is right
behind you. What inspired you to make this work?

Yang Jiechang: First I must explain what led up to it. I left China in December 1988,
came to Paris in April 1989, and started to create work in situ for the exhibition
Magiciens de la terre at the Centre Pompidou. On June 3 that year, there was a gun
shot on Chang’an Street in Beijing [the Tiananmen incident]. As a university professor, I was confused and couldn’t believe what had happened was real. You know what happened, right? As a person educated in China in the 1980s, when the spirit of the times was so romantic and optimistic—all about humanity, enthusiasm, knowledge, and saving the nation—I found the situation extremely hopeless. I didn’t know whether I was dead or alive after learning about this disaster. I suddenly lost my goal in life.

On December 9, 1988 I had traveled to Heidelberg at the invitation of Martina [curator Martina Köppel, now Yang’s wife]. The real reason for my trip was the show Magiciens de la terre. Participation in cultural events of this kind was usually treated as an official cultural exchange and was supported by the Chinese government.1 The government wouldn’t consider me for an official cultural mission, which would have had to be reviewed by my school and reported to the office of education of the province as well as the central government.

Yang Jiechang in his studio, June 2014.

The work Testament was made for the exhibition Emergency Exit [1992] in Fukuoka,
Japan, curated by Fei Dawei. I had a hard time thinking about how to unburden
myself of the past. I felt like an intellectual drifting abroad. In Japan I was inspired by the [seventh-century] Tamamushi Shrine, which is decorated with a painting depicting the story of Prince Siddhartha feeding himself to a tiger, one among multiple stories of the Buddha. The story is well known in Japan, so I thought, why not cite this wellknown story so that my work could be well received by the Japanese? I made use of two Japanese traditions, namely Zen Buddhism and ceramics. I simply applied white glaze to a found ceramic jar and fired it. Since it is used for storing tiger shit, didn’t have to be finely made.


I wanted to present the idea of an intellectual turning into tiger shit one day and filling up this ceramic jar. It makes me think that my pride in myself as an intellectual is now deconstructed. When this pride is turned into tiger shit, I am liberated. From there I adopted a new life philosophy. I didn’t care about politics that much anymore, and I wanted to free myself. Art is more interesting. Art has often saved me.

Testament includes a wall text, which states, “One day I will die an unnatural death.
When I die, my corpse should be fed to a tiger, and its excrement should be
preserved.” Zen is the present. It is action, life, religion.

Yang Jiechang. Testament. 1989-1991. © 2015 the artist.

Part 2: Action Painting vs Painting with Action

Li: Martina took us to see Massacre and Setting Fire, two oil paintings you did for
your graduation show [1982]. They are very expressionistic.

Yang: Very straightforward.

Li: What were you experimenting with?

Yang: I belong to the first generation of students that attended China’s art academies when they reopened after the Cultural Revolution. During the revolution, art was produced solely as political propaganda. It had to portray human beings as healthy and positive—tall, big, glowing, and complete. By the time the art academies
reopened and started admitting students in the late 1970s, applicants constantly
practiced drawing heads of Liberation Army soldiers, knowing that portraiture was a
standard subject on the entrance examination. After we were admitted, we had to
continue drawing heads; the whole curriculum was about that. Those heads have no
personality—they are portraits of workers, farmers, and soldiers, all smiling, viewed
frontally or in one-quarter or three-quarter profile. By the end of my studies at
Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, I was sick of it: I realized that I was very good at
drawing heads, but that I’d never painted the heads of dead people. I thought of that
project as both a continuation of our tradition and a challenge. I was very excited—
that was the background of Massacre. But I had too many professors on my
graduation committee, and each one had a lot of opinions. My ink painting with heads of dead people was criticized, so I painted another work, Setting Fire, the six-panel painting you saw. Now I think it’s good that they were both rejected—at least they belong to me. Whenever I see them I feel that I am young again. And in the end, after graduation, I managed to get a job as a lecturer at my school.

Yang Jiechang. Massacre. 1982. Ink and mineral colors on Xuan paper, 330 x 320 cm. © 2015 the artist.
Yang Jiechang. Setting Fire. 1982. Ink and mineral colors on Xuan paper, 330 x 320 cm © 2015 the artist.

Li: If you wanted to reform the old-fashioned way of drawing heads, why did you
adopt violence and negative ways to work on the two paintings—killing is a negative
theme after all.

Yang: After serving as a Red Guard and reading works by Nietzsche and
Wittgenstein, our generation was always looking to the opposite side of things. I
believe there can be tears behind smiles. Behind health there is death. I was simply
looking for something negative to express my feelings. Of course today I am more
capable of thinking of other possibilities [for reforming painting]. But at that time I
thought I could effect change by transforming the head. I thought killing is eternal and it happens every day. Other students worked with subject matter that was positive and beautiful.

Li: This is a photograph of you in your studio jn 1986 with some paintings done in 1985. It seems that you did splash ink and abstraction.

Yang Jiechang in his studio in Guangzhou in 1986. Image courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

Yang: Not abstraction. I was deconstructing the figurative. My deconstructions are simple: they remain representational, and every form has concrete origins. I like Xu Wei’s painting,2 and I imitated some of the details I found in his work. For example, I magnified a detail of an image he did of rotting lotus leaves in a big painting that I made using three brooms tied together as my brush. There wasn’t a brush big enough for a painting of that scale—not to mention the fact that I don’t have money to buy brushes. The brooms had to be boiled and softened in water. The effect they produced is very different from that of the traditional brush. Unlike traditional literati, I have a very dirty workplace. I place my xuan paper on an old curtain or a piece of linen soiled with ink and dust, and that creates special textures on the painting field.

In the 1980s I didn’t know anything about Mark Tobey or Japanese Zen paintings. Artists in China didn’t have that kind of knowledge. When I studied art history at school, modern art was missing from the curriculum. I was surprised when people in Paris and New York said I was imitating Mark Tobey and Robert Motherwell. I didn’t know about them. A journalist in Oxford asked me if I was imitating Kasimir Malevich. I didn’t even know who Malevich was; I thought he was a fictional character—the driver in the film Lenin in October. Tobey and Pollock got their inspiration from East Asian art, adding some romanticism to it. When there is an artist from East Asia doing something similar, it is interpreted as imitation. This is wrong. Why not say those artists imitated me? There are Chinese artists of many different generations, but our roots are ours, deep in the blood. Starting from the time I began learning calligraphy at the age of three, I was learning this kind of action painting. Chinese calligraphy is a discipline immersed in this kind of action. You can judge artists by looking at their calligraphy or their comments about art. It is very conceptual. Jackson Pollock plays with body, size, black and white, with dot, line, surface, and material. By contrast, Chinese brush painting is not only about the medium. It is also about ideology, and a lot about self-cultivation, so that your taste in art and aesthetics improves as you get older. It depends on your participation in society as well as on your circle of friends. Chinese art is multi-faceted.

Li: Were you painting on the floor at the time [of your graduation]?

Yang: Yes. I never painted at a desk. My teacher taught us not to rest our wrists on the paper [writing surface] while practicing calligraphy. You have to raise your wrist, sit upright, and channel your energy into the brush so that you keep a distance from the writing surface. You keep a distance and at the same time you still have good technique and control precisely where the brush goes. If, on the contrary, you write
calligraphy while resting your wrist on the paper, you are too close to the writing surface and won’t be able to pay attention to the larger view of the writing area; you will be too immersed in the details. You are able to maintain only a short distance from the writing surface if you sit at the desk to write; if you place the paper on the floor, you get a longer distance. You will be able to observe the entire picture surface and see the whole composition. You control the painting in your mind without limiting yourself to the details—although each stroke is based on the detail. Your power is good. The Chinese have been doing that for 3,000 years.

Li: When did you sell your first painting?

Yang: Good question. A Siemens engineer who was producing hearing aids came to China to do market research. He visited my studio with a translator in the summer of 1986 or 1987. He was particularly interested in my preliminary sketches for Killing —not the final painting, just the sketches. I have a vivid memory of that because someone was buying my work! His translator told me in Cantonese and Mandarin that I should raise the price. I didn’t know how to, so I asked for 100 RMB. He paid in FECs [foreign exchange certificates]. The painting was about 60 centimeters by 100 centimeters, and I gave him another work as a gift. The translator thought I was stupid. I was merely being thankful, because the price was higher than my monthly salary. I simply felt so grateful that someone appreciated my art. I think research into the ’85 New Wave phenomenon should start with personal stories instead of concentrating on group activities initiated by the idea of revolution. Artists found the energy to struggle with their art at a time when they were not even able to feed themselves. When they were able to make art, they had nowhere to show it, and so they piled it up in the corners of their places. No one wanted their works, even as gifts. Artists were very romantic, and they aspired to go beyond the self. I can name a few who initiated the personal practices of the ’85 New Wave: they include Cai Guoqiang, Chen Zhen, Chen Tong, myself, and Ding Yi. We weren’t a collective and were not interested in organizing collectives. We all went through very painful personal struggles.

Li: According to some sources, you took up abstraction in the early 1980s. Is this
true? Were you doing abstract calligraphy?

Yang: I think calligraphy is mysterious, smart, and concrete—just like Chinese characters. There is energy in each character, and this point is rarely discussed. Foreigners think calligraphy is abstract because they don’t understand the meaning of the scripts. For us, the character for “wood” is represented by a tree 木, the character for “person” is a man walking 人—they are pictograms. When I write a person’s name, this person seems to live under the brush—it’s very concrete. I never think of calligraphy as abstract. Even if I write cursive scripts in the style of Zhang Xu or Huaisu,3 they are still concrete and legible.

In calligraphy there are lots of rules—we call them methods [fa]. The methods can be compared to world views. I think the brush is very interesting in that it is inexpensive, however, it can add value to your life as long as you master calligraphy over time. By practicing calligraphy, you can control your life in its different stages and improve your judgment. You even learn about aesthetics through writing the strokes. Everyone is an artist as long as he or she holds a brush. I think Joseph Beuys’s statement can be revised as, “Everyone who thinks of himself as an artist is an artist.” If you hold the brush, you feel as if you are a cultivated person. In the past, not everyone was privileged enough to hold a brush. Only one or two smart children in a village had the opportunity to be educated. The whole family would work hard to support the education of this child. This child held the brush and held the future of the clan. The brush embodies a kind of elite. The brush means a lot of responsibility, and not everybody can take it.

Part 3: Contemporary Art and the Cultural Revolution

Li: How did the Cultural Revolution influence your art?

Yang: It was a great and wonderful influence. I don’t criticize the Cultural Revolution
because I experienced it when I was young, so I always try not to be too subjective in my comments. During the Cultural Revolution we were unable to go to school for years, so we acquired our knowledge from “social practices.”4 When I was a member of the Red Guard, my job was to supervise school buildings and to censor bookscollected from schoolchildren—some of the books had to be destroyed or sold. In 1970 I served in a rural area where my job was to guard a telephone cable located in the fields.5 I even had to stand watch at midnight to be sure the line wouldn’t be harmed. In retrospect, performing this duty helped me understand the nature of contemporary art: it’s very arbitrary, and there is nothing to argue about—you just have to watch the cable and make sure nobody comes to cut it. All the students in our class became members of the Red Guard, and each was responsible for a section of this cable. It was very absurd! The action was even more conceptual than the art of Joseph Beuys or Nam June Paik.

Li: Did you continue practicing calligraphy during the Cultural Revolution because you had to write big-character posters?

Yang: In fact, I never wrote big-character posters. I was lucky to have a good
calligraphy teacher. In the beginning I studied calligraphy because I wanted to write
big-character posters. My teacher knew that, so he held me off. Traditional methods
for educating literati are very weird. At first he wanted me to be some sort of
apprentice, wiping the table and windows, grinding ink and cutting papers. My father used connections to get me into his studio, and the teacher wanted to test my aptitude for such studies. I was very interested, so he started to teach me calligraphy styles on bei and tie.6 I began copying the stone inscriptions of the Diamond Sutra on Mount Tai. A few months later I found out that this particular calligraphic style is not suitable for big-character posters, so I intended to switch to the style of Ou Yanxun’s inscription at the Palace of the Nine Perfections, which was similar to the Song font used in book printing.7 My teacher said calligraphy is not a practical discipline—you just study the methods. Through his teaching method he suppressed my desire to participate in the Cultural Revolution and write big-character posters.

Li: You studied Daoism from 1984 to 1986.

Yang: In the 1980s, translations of many Western books of philosophy, theory, and
fiction were published in China. I read a lot about the East and West, mechanics,
religions, sex, philosophy, wars, novels, etc., but I felt that the more I read, the more
confused I became. My mind was very unsettled, so I wanted to learn a method to
calm myself through religion. A friend, Zangzhi, introduced me to a famous Zen
temple—the Guangxiao Temple in Guangzhou. At that time there were almost no
pupils in the temple, and no educated person would go there. I was annoyed by the
hierarchy there, because Buddha talks about equality, right? I fled after two weeks. At that time my knowledge of Buddhism came from books by writers such as Suzuki
Daisetzu, who presents a philosophy that differs totally from Buddhism as it was
practiced at the temple. Not long after, I went to the Chongxu Temple on Mount Loufu and studied with Master Huang Tao. It was a place with very beautiful scenery and fresh air. Nearby was Lin Biao’s villa. Master Huang was bored and maybe lonely. He lived with one assistant in the big temple, so he accepted me. I felt that I was taking advantage of them by boarding there, so I started to restore some of the temple’s Qing dynasty murals. I stayed there on and off for two years mainly to talk to the master and restore the murals. At that time I didn’t have to teach much as a lecturer at the university [Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art]. The experience I had on the mountain was actually a disaster because the master didn’t teach me anything! I
thought Huang Tao knew a lot because he was the chairman of the Daoist association of Guangdong Province and vice-president of the Daoist association of China. Strangely, as my knowledge of Daoism increased, I considered him more and more important. I think his teaching methods come from abstruse Daoism.

Part 4: Hundred Layers of Ink

Li: How did you start to work on the Hundred Layers of Ink series?

Yang: I started to do experimental ink painting when I was still in China. At first I tried to deconstruct traditional painting. Around 1986 I took my inspiration from oracle bone scripts and rubbings of stone inscriptions, and gradually I turned to a minimal style. I still have about 10 of the minimalist paintings. Jean-Hubert Martin selected works from that series for Magiciens de la terre, but they were seized by customs in Shenzhen. When I arrived in France I had only a brush with me. My problem was that I really didn’t know what to paint after coming to Europe. Martina told me how famous the other artists in Magiciens de la terre were. My work would be shown next to Nam June Paik’s, and then there was Anselm Kiefer, Ilya Kabakov, On Kawara, Alighiero Boetti, Sigmar Polke, Sarkis, and Jeff Wall was not far away. I thought that if I showed abstract ink works, it would look as if I was following a path initiated by other, better known artists. My culture has taught me that sometimes it is better to step back than to progress. In Paris I was using brush, ink, and xuan paper not to paint but to express a notion of action. Every day I repeated the process of applying layer upon layer of ink to xuan paper after the previous layer had dried. When xuan paper is soaked with ink, it deforms slightly. I applied about 100 layers of ink so that the paper was no longer flat and smooth, but wrinkled. The end result was not painting but a record of my work over time.

Since I had created space and distance between the layers of ink in those paintings, I hung them in the exhibition at a distance from the wall so that spectators would feel as if they were entering another space.

Yang Jiechang. Hundreds Layers of Ink: Voyage en Mexique. 1990. © 2015 the artist.
Yang Jiechang. Hundred Layers of Ink. 1989. Set of four paintings, ink on Xuan Paper, each painting 420 x 280 cm. Installation shot at Silent Energy, Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1991. Photo courtesy Yang Jiechang.

Li: Is this a kind of addition?

Yang: Well, if you repeat this boring gesture every day, it becomes a means of
reduction. I studied a technique fundamental to Song and Yuan dynasty painting in
which colors and glue alum solution are applied repeatedly to achieve the saturation
of color: three layers of glue alum solution and nine layers of color. For example, the
red would be a bit transparent but it has many layers and differs greatly from when
you apply it only once. Hundred Layers of Ink employs a similar technique. Black
became not just black; there is light in it.

In 1999, a huge storm swept over Europe. Many trees in Germany and France,
including those at Versailles, were uprooted. At that time I started to prepare for Paris pour escale (2000) at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, so I started to work in the refined gongbi style that in the past was used in figurative and bird-and-flower painting and which I studied through the Huizong emperor’s painting style. It seemed to elicit a more direct audience response. I mean, my Hundred Layers of Ink is a kind of abstract art that requires intelligent interpretations, but non-abstract painting can be more powerful in engaging the audience.

Part 5: The Chinatown Phenomenon

Yang Jiechang. Hundred Layers of Ink. 1989. Set of four paintings, ink on Xuan Paper, each painting 420 x 280 cm. Installation shot at Magiciens de la terre, 1989. Photo courtesy Yang Jiechang.

Li: You have said that artists of your generation hopped on the bandwagon of postcolonial theory. In the early 1990s there were many group shows overseas, including exhibitions in Berlin and Oxford in 1993, that labeled you and all the other participants as Chinese artists. Many people were initially interested in Chinese artists because of their passion for foreign cultures. Can you comment on this, and do you think the exhibitions in 1993 affected your practice?

Yang: The unfortunate thing is, these exhibitions were mostly done by people who
loved China, who had been to China, or even Europeans who believed in Maoism. I
preferred two exhibitions curated by Fei Dawei. One of them was the show he did in
southern France, Chine demain pour hier [1990,Pourrières].

Fei had some experimental ideas. He thought contemporary Chinese art had not yet
come fully into existence and that presenting a group of artists as representative of
contemporary Chinese art—taking the Chinatown approach—was misleading. Since
contemporary art in China was just emerging, one shouldn’t try to present the whole view. He was more interested in showing art of the elite because contemporary art is a form of elite culture.

The show in Berlin in 1993 was problematic—I think it had a negative influence
because it was curated by people who know nothing about art. Hans van Dijk, Jochen Noth, and Andreas Schmid were businessmen: Hans sold old Chinese furniture; Andreas, the German guy, had just graduated from the China Academy of Fine Arts. Chinese cuisine is diverse, but they didn’t cook it well and turned it into fried rice sold at Chinese restaurants overseas. They served it in Berlin at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.8 Their approach was not at all like Jean-Hubert Martin’s in Magiciens de la terre (1989). Martin spent three years working on that exhibition, and he put Chinese art and art from around the world on the same platform. Fifty well-known masters and 50 artists from third-world countries were represented on the same platform so that we could be in dialogue on the same level. David Elliott, the director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, totally understood that concept. He didn’t take over the entire content of the Berlin show but instead re-curated it, adding nine works when he presented it in Oxford as Silent Energy: New Art from China, which was of high quality. After that, contemporary Chinese art became a battleground of capitalism and theories of sociology, involving people and institutions like Li Xianting, who coined the term “cynical realism;” Shoeni Gallery in Hong Kong, Johnson Tsong-zung Chang from Hanart TZ Gallery, Guy and Myriam Ullens from Belgium, Uli Sigg from Switzerland, Xu Jiang, Professor Wu Hung.

Li: Were you ever censored?

Yang: Everybody is monitored today!

1    Jean-Hubert Martin, the curator of the exhibition, did not go through Chinese government channels when he invited Yang to participate. This created difficulties when Yang applied for a passport to travel abroad.
2    Xu Wei (1521–1593) was a Ming dynasty painter known for his expressionistic style.
3    Zhang Xu (659–747) and Huaisu (737–799) were renowned Tang dynasty calligraphers.
4    Schools in many regions were closed during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).
5    During the Cultural Revolution, many urban youths responded to Mao’s call for them to move to the countryside and work with farmers and rural workers.
6    The Chinese used to carve great works of calligraphy on stone slabs (bei). The rubbings (tie) were circulated as models for students.
7    Ou Yangxun (557–641), a Confucian scholar and calligrapher, developed a script admired for its dignified harmony and structure.
8    In the exhibition China Avantgarde.

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Yu Youhan’s Personal History with Chairman Mao https://post.moma.org/yu-youhans-personal-history-with-chairman-mao/ Fri, 23 Oct 2015 10:32:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=9354 Yu Youhan (b. Shanghai, 1943) is widely considered the father of abstract painting and Political Pop in China. A longtime teacher of art in Shanghai, Yu has no wish to pursue an interdisciplinary or international practice, as many artists of his generation do. In this conversation, he talks about his life during the Cultural Revolution…

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Yu Youhan (b. Shanghai, 1943) is widely considered the father of abstract painting and Political Pop in China. A longtime teacher of art in Shanghai, Yu has no wish to pursue an interdisciplinary or international practice, as many artists of his generation do. In this conversation, he talks about his life during the Cultural Revolution and the impact those experiences have had on his art. In the 1980s he began an ongoing series of circle paintings relating to the Dao concept of the universe. His Pop-style paintings from the late 1980s have a decorative aspect derived from folk art, and his figurative paintings represent both the history of China and his own personal history.

Here, Yu reveals how intertwined personal and national histories can be. Perhaps it is fair to say that Yu’s work comes out of a single conviction: namely, that art should reflect societal change.

The interview was conducted in Yu Youhan’s Studio, Shanghai, June 28, 2014. Edited and translated by Yu-Chieh Li. The video interview in Chinese is available here.

Part I: Images of Mao Zedong

Yu Youhan: Depicting or portraying Mao Zedong is still taboo in China.

Yu-Chieh Li: Really? So your paintings of Chairman Mao have never been shown in China?

Yu Youhan. The Waving Mao. 1990. Acrylic on canvas. © 2015 Yu Youhan

Yu: The Yuan Space in Beijing showed my solo exhibition Yi Ban (One Spot). To avoid censorship and crowds, one room [hung with paintings of Mao Zedong] was open only to special guests who had made reservations.

Yu Youhan. A Packet Western Art History about Mao—“Foreign Mao” Series. 2000–2005. Acrylic on canvas. © 2015 Yu Youhan

Li: Why did you join the People’s Liberation Army?

Yu: It was the Difficult Three Year Period [the Great Chinese Famine, 1959–61] and we had nothing to eat. I was in poor health. I was growing, but I was as thin as a soybean sprout. At that time I was preparing for university entrance exams and I heard that my family background might have a negative impact on my application. My family belonged to the middle class, which was not the worst rank. The five least favored categories under the socialist system in China were landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists. My family ranked somewhat above those five lowest ranks.

Li: You were not in such misery as they were.

Yu: Right. However I still wouldn’t have had the chance to study at a good university. Even if I was admitted to a good one, I would probably not have been able to graduate because of my bad health. At that time I also heard there was a new policy to send young people to the countryside to perform physical labor. These circumstances were not very promising for me.

My mother had psychological problems and required medication to control her disease. There was a period when the employees in my father’s factory all had to undergo socialist re-education. My father was so busy that he didn’t have time to get my mother’s medicine. Afterward, her condition deteriorated. In 1958 or 1959, she wanted to pay me 50 cents to mop the floor. I refused, saying I wasn’t able to do it. It wasn’t about the money. I was dizzy the whole time and couldn’t do that kind of work. I thought if I were sent to the countryside in this condition, I wouldn’t survive. Mainland China and Taiwan were engaged in a cold war at that time. The Taiwanese Chiang Kai-shek planned to liberate the mainland. About then a friend of my neighbor’s was visiting. He was serving in the Liberation Army. I asked him how life in the army was, and he said it was not bad. His description made it seem better than mopping the floor at home. I was interested because I thought I wouldn’t get into a good university, and I couldn’t withstand physical labor, so the only way out was to join the army. This decision was half opportunistic, half forced by life. I served in the army for three-and-a-half years, from August 1961 to January 1965. Afterwards, I was admitted to the department of ceramics at the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts.

Li: How did you prepare for your entrance exams?

Yu: I practiced with a good friend, who was my neighbor. His father painted very well, basically in the style of Fauvism. Furthermore, he was from Sichuan, so he incorporated motifs from folk art and Chinese culture in his art and combined them very well. And he was an autodidact. Later on he became a Communist underground worker. Of course we didn’t know anything about it—not even his family knew. On the surface he appeared to be a painter.

Li: So you studied painting with his son?

Yu: Kind of. The son was my friend and his father’s paintings hung on the walls of their house and inspired me a lot. My friend was labeled a counter-revolutionary. Since the father was an underground Communist, he couldn’t prove that his family was innocent. We hung out a lot together before I served in the army. I loved painting and he did too because he was influenced by his father as I was. He played violin and studied English. So he was a good teacher to me. I remember that we both visited good exhibitions together in Shanghai. I was also able to read books from his collection.

Li: You went to the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts in Beijing from 1965 to 1973. You were criticized in a big-character poster. What happened?

Yu: It was just slander. The poster’s message accused me of proclaiming “Long live the Chinese Nationalist Party [Guomingdang]” while wearing the yellow soldier’s uniform [a uniform of the People’s Liberation Army]. This was not possible.

Li: And you were sent to a labor camp?

Yu: No. I still lived a normal life. I ate in the school cafeteria—this was during the Cultural Revolution, so we didn’t have classes—but I was alone and I felt very wronged. I didn’t do anything that I was accused of—such as “Using Madame Maria Skłodowska-Curie’s theory to stand against Communism.” Do you think these two things are connected at all? These people just want to ingratiate themselves with the chiefs, so they made all kinds of absurd accusations.

Even Chairman Mao recognized that there was a problem with the Criticize the Bourgeois Reactionary Line campaign. That happened when Mao realized that the party leaders were at fault and were screwing up the Communist Party.

Li: You also did some propaganda paintings in Beijing. Did you want to prove your innocence?

Yu: I did that because I admired Chairman Mao back then. Some artist friends and I went to Tiananmen Square and made propaganda paintings there. There were two concrete walls used for propaganda slogans—they were usually written in white on a red background. We attached 55 sheets of paper together, creating a huge surface on which we painted Chairman Mao and Lin Biao standing in a tower on Tiananmen Square. Mao was leaning against a white fence and seemed to be waving; Lin Biao was holding a copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong. We used a bamboo ladder to attach the big poster on the wall.

Li: It seems that you greatly admired Chairman Mao. Did you stop admiring him later on?

Yu: We were disappointed by him. My father read in the newspaper that many cadres were taken down, including Liu Shaoqi, who was the president. He told me he had heard that Mao thought everyone was bad, including Premier Zhou Enlai. What he said to me actually represented public opinion: why would Mao take down all the Party leaders? Hadn’t we been taught how good the Communist Party members were, so much better than the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomingdang)? We were very confused by the fact that the Communists could not even explain to their people why the party was good. And then the Gang of Four, including Jiang Qing, stood against Zhou, and we thought things were getting weird.

Li: Has your art been influenced by your experiences during the Cultural Revolution?

Yu: Of course! I revealed many issues implicitly in my work. For example I painted a red flag that is dirty.

Li: Didn’t you paint in a decorative way?

Yu: Yes.

Li: But isn’t that a way to depoliticize?

Yu: To depoliticize is to politicize. Actually our people were very ignorant of our social and political conditions. For example, we learned only much later that the Great Famine was caused by humans, by the leader’s bad policies. You know this disaster that we sometimes call “emitting the satellite (fang weixing)”? Government officials exaggerated the abundance of the harvest—Mao believed that our country was rich. He planned to give two hundred thousand tons of grain to Albania—this is totally infeasible. Mao wanted to become the leader of the International Communist Movement, so he supported the Great Leap Forward.

Li: When you use colors, are different colors equal to you? Is red as important as blue, or does red symbolize anything?

Yu Youhan. Mao’s Birthday. 1994. Oil on board. © 2015 Yu Youhan.

Yu: You cannot say red means nothing. It’s the color of celebration, it creates a positive atmosphere. Mao’s Birthday is greenish, so it might get me into trouble. The color red dominated the Cultural Revolution’s visual culture. When I painted Mao’s Birthday, Mao would have been 100 years old if he had still been alive. I added lots of flowers to show he was powerful. In Mao and the Statue of Liberty, I used very simple lines. Although the colors are harmonious, they depict two figures representing Eastern and Western values, socialism and liberalism, which represent the two political systems nowadays.

Yu Youhan. Mao and the Statue of Liberty. 1994. Oil on board. © 2015 Yu Youhan

Look at this one—a collage of various colors with red flowers and a thermos bottle. Remember that in the 1950s we were very poor. The annual bonus you received was not money but a large red flower or a drinking mug. Those are the kinds of gifts people received from their work units. It’s merely a memory. I am neither nostalgic nor bitter about it.

Yu Youhan. The 1950s. 1994. © 2015 Yu Youhan

Li: It’s your personal history.

Yu: Yes. Or you can say, a history of our republic.

Yu Youhan. Thermos. 1988. © 2015 Yu Youhan

Li: This is your first work in the style of Pop art. When did you do this?

Yu: In 1988.

Li: Is this earlier than your paintings of Chairman Mao?

Yu Youhan. We Will Be Better. 1995. Acrylic on canvas. © 2015 Yu Youhan

Yu: This is probably earlier, from a transitional period when I turned from abstraction to Pop. Look. In this painting you see gifts sent by farmers to our leader: tobacco, pears, and a big pumpkin. Written on this piece of red paper are the words “for Chairman Mao.” The slogan says, “We will become better and better, while our enemies become worse and worse.” This contradicts reality because we were really poor and wouldn’t be able to achieve Mao’s great goals. At that time there was even a slogan saying that if we possessed food and steel we could achieve anything—which was very absurd. The whole country misunderstood modernization and had unrealistic hopes.

Part 2: Abstraction

Li: Was Chen Zhen one of your students?

Yu: Yes, he was in my first class. But I didn’t teach him much. I merely discussed with him. He wrote me a letter after graduation, when he was teaching at Shanghai Theater Academy. He said he respected me a lot at Shanghai Academy of Arts and Crafts.

When I did my circle paintings in the 1980s, he was developing another kind of abstraction consisting of an expansive field of energy that we call qi. My abstraction was based on a square or round motif. He debated with me, arguing that his abstraction was better than mine, because an energy field is flexible and can be extended beyond the canvas. I thought, okay, maybe you are right, but my circle represents the universe. It is as if I am observing the world through a magnifier. In China we have a proverb that says you can imagine the appearance of a leopard by observing one of its spots. When we had this discussion, Chen was already sick.

Yu Youhan. 1986–5. 1986. Acrylic on canvas. © 2015 Yu Youhan

Li: Yes, he did Qi: Flottant after he became ill.

Yu: That’s right.

Li: You started to paint abstractly in the 1980s, and you began the circle series in late 1984, right?

Yu: Yes. Because I used Laozi’s theory.

Li: If the circle symbolizes something, maybe it’s not abstract, since there are representational meanings attached to it.

Yu: Right, this painting, for example, is not totally abstract. It depicts an orchestra performing a symphony. I wanted to depict music.

Li: As Wassily Kandinsky did.

Yu: Right. You can feel it? This is my early abstraction. It has something to do with representational painting, doesn’t it?

Yu Youhan. Concert. 1980. © 2015 Yu Youhan

Li: It’s interesting that you were able to make abstract paintings during that time. Does that have something to do with the loosening of censorship after the Cultural Revolution?

Yu: Right. Chairman Mao passed away in 1976. There was a transitional period from 1976 to 1978. The Party leaders were in conflict with each other. The lower-ranked leaders clung to Mao’s teachings and policies. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping started his open door policy, which meant that we started to adopt capitalism.

Li: Right. Afterward, you and a group of friends did the Ou Tu exhibition in Shanghai. There was a second Ou Tu show in 1988, at which you presented The Singing Ms. Teressa Teng, a sculptural assemblage composed of a stool and other found materials. Why did you stop making sculpture after that?

Yu: Because I love painting more. I think that after the invention of bikes, cars, and airplanes, people still need to walk. Walking is always normal and legitimate.

Li: What kind of role did you play in the so-called ’85 New Wave. Do you consider yourself one of the participants?

Yu: You might say that. I have a theory about grass: every spring new grass grows in the garden. But don’t take yourself as the leader of grass. The grass is there because of the good timing, suitable temperature and the earth’s rotation. I think two to three years after Mao passed away, all painters in China wanted to experiment. So the ’85 New Wave artists did not actually create anything new. They were involved in a natural development.

Li: You made some paintings about the Tiananmen incident after 1989?

Yu: Right. Two: one is the bike; the other is Q.

Yu Youhan. Q. 1989. Acrylic on canvas. © 2015 Yu Youhan
Yu Youhan. Flowery Bicycle. 1989. © 2015 Yu Youhan

Li: Both the Flowery Bicycle and Mother (Q) present a pessimistic feeling. Can you talk a little bit about the bike?

Yu: It’s an old bicycle. We Shanghainese call this type “the old tank.” It’s an older type of bike, made of rough iron, not very well constructed. It was mostly used by immigrant workers, who would ride it to go grocery shopping or transport goods. There is a cynical meaning in it, because I decorated it with flowers. In other words, I think this bike symbolizes the socialist system: in socialist culture you have all kinds of propaganda comparable to those flowery motifs.

Li: In 1993 you participated in several big international shows, including the Venice Biennale, China Avantgarde in Berlin, and China’s New Art, Post-1989 in Hong Kong. How did the curators of those exhibitions find you?

Yu Youhan’s painting Chairman Mao in Discussion with the Peasants of Shaoshan (1999) on the cover of China Avantgarde

Yu: I think this had something to do with Li Xianting and some other art critics of his generation. When foreign curators came to China, they asked Chinese curators to make introductions. Hans van Dijk and Andreas Schmid both did a lot of research in Shanghai. After the show in Berlin, Hans opened a gallery in Beijing.

Li: Do you think it’s adequate to describe you and other artists as avant-garde artists?

Yu: I think it’s fine. The concept of contemporary art comes from Western thought. At a time when contemporary art theory was already well developed in the West, we were still doing traditional landscape paintings.

Li: So you think it’s fine that you are categorized in the art world as avant-garde, abstract, or Pop?

Yu: I think these terms are all fine. I think of myself first of all as an art lover; secondly I am a painter.

Li: Does your art have to reflect society?

Yu: My art should reflect society and my mind. My mind is inspired by society. For example, I might feel sad, but I cannot articulate it explicitly. I can implicitly present some of the pessimistic feelings in my painting process, but not too much. I want to be faithful to my art. I don’t have to pay attention to new trends in New York when I paint each stroke. The merging of civilizations is a slow process. Although I have lived from the 1940s until now, I have mostly painted China’s social memory of the 1970s and 1980s. What I paint has to be natural and make sense of my life experience. That’s it.

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毛的圖像與余友涵的個人歷史 https://post.moma.org/yu-youhans-personal-history-with-chairman-mao-ch/ Fri, 23 Oct 2015 10:06:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=9351 Read the english translation here.

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Read the english translation here.

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The Archival Impulse: Collecting and Conserving the Moving Image in Asia https://post.moma.org/collecting-and-conserving-the-moving-image-in-asia/ Wed, 07 Oct 2015 17:43:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=9328 Since the 1950s, there has been an active production of experimental film, animation, and video art in Asia. Yet, much of this work has not been consistently conserved or shared with the public due to the lack of accessible archives or organized collections dedicated to its preservation and dissemination. The conference “The Archival Impulse: Collecting…

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Mariam Ghani. Still from What we left unfinished. In progress. Research project, installations, and feature film. Shown: discarded scraps from the feature film Gunah (1979), and newsreel (1978). Courtesy of the artist

Since the 1950s, there has been an active production of experimental film, animation, and video art in Asia. Yet, much of this work has not been consistently conserved or shared with the public due to the lack of accessible archives or organized collections dedicated to its preservation and dissemination.

The conference “The Archival Impulse: Collecting and Conserving the Moving Image in Asia” took place on September 10, 2015 in the The Celeste Bartos Theater at the Museum of Modern Art. Co-organized by Asia Art Archive in America, Collaborative Cataloging Japan, and MoMA’s Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP), it brought together archiving initiatives that have emerged in recent years across Asia, presenting an opportunity to rethink and share methods, philosophies, and challenges to archiving moving image and time-based media works. The event is divided into three panels.

In the first panel Developing Collections, Hiroko Tasaka, Farah Wardani, Fang Lu, and moderator Stuart Comer introduce collection strategies and compare archiving techniques at their respective organizations in Japan, Singapore, China, and New York. Keeping in mind the different regional contexts, the panel will explore the following issues: What was the impetus behind the development of these collections? What are the urgencies to which these collections respond? How do these collections expand upon existing art historical narratives? Complicating these questions is the complex nature of moving image and media works, which often blurs the boundary between disciplines and requires ongoing reevaluation of the organizational categories within institutions. Hiroko Tasaka introduces the collecting practice at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, covering 19th century film and film production, film history of Japan and Asia, and international artists of today. Recognizing the discontinuities and missing links in the field of Southeast Asian art historiography, Farah Wardani discusses the collection strategies taken at the National Gallery Singapore Resource Centre, where she serves as Assistant Director. Fang Lu talks about how Video Bureau, an artist-run video archive founded in 2012, structures the archival process, and how this project is situated in the Chinese contemporary art world.

Archiving is never just about collecting and safeguarding materials; it is also about how to share and circulate these materials, and bring them into a rhizomatic network of knowledge. With the rise of digital modes of access, archiving initiatives are faced with a plentitude of possibilities, as well as new challenges, such as the privatization and commodification of information. In the second panel, Opening the Digital Vault, archivists Sen Uesaki, David Smith, Alf Chang, and moderator Ben Fino-Radin explore the transition from a static physical archive to a digital infrastructure that is open, nonlinear, web-like, and constantly evolving. They will also share their experience in emerging technologies, examining different ways to effectively digest, preserve, and distribute media works in the digital age. Taking a cue from the discussions on collecting practices in the first panel, Sen Uesaki reexamines the physical and digital natures of archival and artistic material by questioning its physical existence in the first place, exploring its function as information. David Smith discusses Asia Art Archive’s digital presence and the motivations behind its current restructuring efforts, looking at the relationship between the archivist, the collections, and the public. Alf Chang will introduce the history and archive of ETAT, an ongoing experiment started from 1995 to create an autonomous platform for sharing, interaction, and preservation.

In the third panel, Transforming Stories, Mariam Ghani, Go Hirasawa, Huang Chien-Hung, and moderator Jane DeBevoise discuss research projects that develop out of archival materials. Pointing to diverse sources of information, from personal archives to commercial and state-sponsored media production, these projects represent efforts to expand and add nuance to ways of thinking about history, politics, and collective memory. Mariam Ghani will present What we left unfinished, a long-term research, film, and dialogue project centered around five unfinished films commissioned, produced, and canceled by various iterations of the Afghan state. Go Hirasawa introduces his research, preservation, and curatorial projects focusing on two Japanese filmmakers—Masao Adachi and Motoharu Jonouchi—in order to examine how established narratives about certain works or artists may be reconsidered and reconstructed. Huang Chien-Hung presents Liu Asio’s documentary project that traces the life of an anti-communist hero, proposing a possibility to think of a topological Asia, an Asia not based on geography, nations, or races, but on interrelations between events, media, persons and the production of images.

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從行為到抽象: 訪談丁乙 https://post.moma.org/conversation-with-ding-yi-ch/ Wed, 23 Sep 2015 20:34:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=9315 Read the english translation here.

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Read the english translation here.

A Conversation with Ding Yi, Part 1: Growing up during the Cultural Revolution
A Conversation with Ding Yi, Part 2: Performances in 1986 and 1987
A Conversation with Ding Yi, Part 3: The ’85 New Wave and the Painting About Crosses
A Conversation with Ding Yi, Part 4: Exhibitions Overseas in 1993

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From Performance to Abstraction: A Conversation with Ding Yi https://post.moma.org/a-conversation-with-ding-yi/ Wed, 23 Sep 2015 17:07:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=9318 The name Ding Yi is associated with the cross, a symbol the artist, designer, and educator has used since the late 1980s in his investigation of abstraction. Ding’s allover painting fields are built from the manual, systematic repetition of horizontal and vertical strokes across a flat, canvas surface. Ding grew up during the Cultural Revolution,…

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The name Ding Yi is associated with the cross, a symbol the artist, designer, and educator has used since the late 1980s in his investigation of abstraction. Ding’s allover painting fields are built from the manual, systematic repetition of horizontal and vertical strokes across a flat, canvas surface.

Ding grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and the art education he received in Shanghai was largely unsystematic and can even be described as “experimental.” This unique, nonlinear “curriculum” included drawing propaganda posters, making bricks for bomb shelters, studying interior design and Chinese ink painting, and performing in public spaces. In this conversation, he talks about his trajectory and explains how he came to abstraction. His participation since the 1990s in a series of overseas exhibitions about contemporary Chinese art has solidified his conviction that experimental contemporary art from China has a long way to go. Today, although his eyesight has weakened, he still insists upon painting each stroke himself as a way to resist the commercialization of art.

Part 1: Growing Up During the Cultural Revolution

Yu-Chieh Li: Professor Ding, you studied in the art program at your middle school, where you mentioned that you were required to paint political posters. Later on, when you entered the Shanghai School of Arts and Crafts, you majored in interior design . . .

Ding Yi: Decorating design . . .

Li: Yes, decorating design. Later on you worked in a printing house and a toy factory, and you majored in Chinese ink painting. In 1988 you began the Appearance of the Crosses (Shi Shi) series, and recently you have been doing environmental art. It is interesting to see how you began by making art for practical purposes, then moved to abstract painting—or to making art for art’s sake—and now, more recently, combined art with life and the environment. Perhaps we can begin by talking about your early art education; some of our audience did not live through the Cultural Revolution and so might not be familiar with political posters. Could you describe what it was like to work on political posters in middle school? How were they made? And what was the education like at that time?

Ding: I attended middle school in the 1970s. At that time, the artistic environment was bizarre; there was barely a true educational system, though there were programs that nurtured talent in the arts and crafts. I remember some senior classmates at my school—they were talented in painting, and so when they graduated from middle school, they were assigned to factory jobs. These could be at carpet factories or jade-carving factories. Both types of factories were actually part of the country’s attempt to generate foreign income through the exportation of Chinese arts and crafts. Carved jade, woodcarving, carpets, and tapestries were all exported at the time. Within this context, all of the arts served the state and its political goals.

When we were growing up, the only art that was available to us was political in nature. This is why the Shanghai Museum of Art, which was called the Shanghai Art Exhibition Center, didn’t count as a museum of art—it held annual exhibitions centered on themes related to the national holidays. For instance, on January 1st there were exhibitions about the New Year’s celebrations; on May 1st there were exhibitions about Labor Day; on June 1st there were exhibitions about Children’s Day; on July 1st there were exhibitions about the anniversary of the Communist Party; every August there were exhibitions about the anniversary of the establishment of the military; and every October there were exhibitions about National Day. All of China’s state-run exhibition centers held these exhibitions on a regular basis. Therefore, the art we were exposed to in our younger days was whatever was presented in these exhibitions. This is why the artistic education back then had limited scope and perspective—the art world was confined and small.

I grew up on the second floor of a building across the street from a cultural center. Through my windows, I could see the cultural center plaza. What appealed to me most was the iron-sheet billboard on the plaza—now it is used for advertisements, but back then, it was used for the display of political posters. Every year professionals would repaint it. Their huge, iron-sheet displays usually had two sides. On one side, there might be political propaganda, that is, big, printed words—or maybe something Chairman Mao had said. On the other side, there would be a painting. I was fairly young then, probably in elementary school, and every year when someone came to repaint the painting, I would be so excited. I would go downstairs, cross the street to the plaza, and stand in front of the cultural center and watch them paint—sometimes for half a day. At that time, because our perspective was so limited, I thought that this was art and that they were artists—and I wanted to become like them.

Later on, when I became interested in art and had improved my artistic skills, my classmates elected me to the propaganda committee. The committee’s main task was to produce wall posters and blackboard posters. The blackboard posters had to be updated weekly; for instance, we would choose the best student journals of the week and copy entries from them onto the blackboard. These appeared on the blackboard at the back of the classroom; generally speaking, the blackboard in the front was used for teaching purposes while the blackboard in the back was for political discussion or student politics, including students’ ideas, thoughts, and so on. Since, among my peers, I was the one with talent in art, I was in charge of doing illustrations for the blackboard. At the time, the only thing that made me believe I had talent was the fact that I had learned the job really fast. The average elementary or middle school student would find a reference and then copy it, and I quickly learned to do this—that is, I memorized all the established references. Every semester there was a blackboard poster evaluation, and for many years in a row our class blackboard—my work—was voted the best, and so eventually I was recommended to the grade blackboard poster committee. Each grade had a blackboard poster, as did the school. When you walked through the main entrance to our school, you would see blackboard posters on both sides of the aisle, along with some display windows. The display windows contained things like award certificates and the works that had been chosen from each class for the school blackboard posters. I remember feeling privileged back then, because it took quite some time to decorate these blackboard posters—both the grade blackboard posters and the school blackboard posters.

At least once or twice a week we would have political broadcast class, and the whole school would listen to a political broadcast. These classes took up two class sessions or sometimes even the whole afternoon. My teacher would often assign me to blackboard poster duty during this time, and so I was exempt from attending classes about political education; instead, I would get to paint posters for the blackboard. It was good for me, because I had a legitimate excuse not to attend classes. Later on I became somewhat famous for my blackboard posters, and when the school art program began recruiting, I was recommended for it. Once I joined the art program, I took foundation courses and began to develop technical skills. The course was mainly painting. Students would take turns modeling—then we would sit around whoever was modeling and sketch; other times we would do studies of jars and other objects, practicing our still-life drawing skills. And just like that, little by little, I felt like I was finally onto something fundamental about painting.

Li: So you had sourcebooks or prototypes for the images on the blackboard posters, is that right? Where did those come from?

Ding: They were published all across the country; there were collections of what we called “newspaper masthead posters” or “compilations,” along with all kinds of images and patterns published together as books of reference. These books were filled with bizarre political symbols—that is, from the perspective of today’s young people, they would seem bizarre and inconceivable. For instance, there would be an image of the five-star emblem from the national flag in the middle, surrounded by something traditional, such as a piece of an award certificate, or there would be ocean waves or a picture of Chairman Mao wearing an octagonal hat . . . but more often than not, there were huge fists pounding down someone or something . . . symbols like that.

Li: So your memories of the Cultural Revolution are different from those of other artists, who remember spending time in the rural areas? Instead, you spent your time in school, learning and painting blackboard posters?

Ding: I was only four years old when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, and so I didn’t experience much of it firsthand, but I do have memories of that time. For instance, I remember a neighbor who was a factory director; he was persecuted and then paraded down our lane. I also remember physical struggles [wudou].1 As a kid, I was especially attracted to fire trucks, and I have vivid memories of one scene in particular—it involved two groups of people in Shanghai who fought against each other in a violent struggle. One group sat on a fire truck, sounding the siren, and then they drove the vehicle into the other group. Our house overlooked the street, and so I could clearly see and hear what happened. The noise of the siren was alarming to a kid, and so I rushed to the window to see what was going on. The first physical struggle I remember seeing was when I stepped out into the street. I saw more fire trucks rushing through, one by one, and everybody on the trucks was letting out battle cries.

During the latter half of the Cultural Revolution, criminals were publicly tried and then paraded through the streets before being executed by a firing squad. There was always an announcement beforehand, including details of when the “parade” would happen; many locals would come out to watch. There were huge military trucks that carried criminals who were held down by soldiers wearing steel caps; the criminals bore signs that said “Bring [Somebody] Down.” The soldiers would announce their crimes through handheld bullhorns.

As a kid, I was sensitive to many things. For instance, we were told that we were going to war with Russia, and so every household was required to make the bricks needed to build bomb shelters. Each household would receive instructions to submit a certain number—thirty bricks, for example. My father had to make those bricks; he and all our neighbors made bricks on the cement sidewalk outside our building. Kids get really excited when they see mud, and so I played in the mud. I remember making a coffin and then a person to put inside the coffin, and then a coffin lid . . . my childhood was filled with such stories, many of which are related to art.

Li: Hearing these life experiences and visual memories . . . it seems that these formal images have never appeared in your mature work. Would you mind commenting on whether these memories have influenced your work at all?

Ding: I don’t think there is a direct correlation. Perhaps as I age, though, these memories will surface in some way. But growing up in such a highly political environment . . . you get tired of it, and consequently, you feel like you would rather not express that environment. Instead, you want to get as far away from it as possible. I think this is why I want my art to be devoid of content—because the earliest symbols in my paintings were meant to be devoid of content, as opposed to directly related to daily life.

Part 2: Performances in 1986 and 1987

Li: You did performance pieces in 1986 and 1987 that seemed to echo your memories of the Cultural Revolution. After that you ceased to perform. You have actually mentioned in some of your interviews that you were involved with a group of friends, which included Qin Yifeng . . .

Ding: Yes, and Zhang Guoliang . . .

Li: You did this performance piece in 1986 . . . I think you even did it twice, once in the Wusong estuary . . .

Ding: In the Wusong estuary, and in the newly renovated Shanghai Museum of Art.

Li: Yes. And the material you used was silk, is that right? Was that what you used?

Ding: No, it was just regular cloth.

Li: It was cloth, and you wrapped yourselves in it. I’m not sure how long the performance lasted. What was the audience’s reaction?

Ding Yi, Qin Yifeng, Zhang Guoliang. Cloth Sculptures II. 1986. Performance. © 2015 the artists

Ding: There were two performances, one in 1986 and one in 1987. The first one wasn’t meant to echo childhood memories. I had established two spots for the piece, one of them was in the Wusong estuary—along the shore, where there was an abandoned pier and some abandoned pillars; someone had recut the pillars and piled them up on the shore to serve as a flood bank. In fact, now that place has been turned into a forest park. But back then, it was the wilderness and filled with trees, and it was a secret spot we often visited for fun. Because it was far away and in the middle of nowhere, it would take us hours to get there by bike, and the whole journey would feel like an expedition, with the destination being a special, private place you went with your friends. At that time, when we set up the spot, it was on the one hand a communication between nature, the ocean, and the forest behind—and on the other, a very natural and realistic environment.

The other spot was in Shanghai. The first exhibition at the art museum in Shanghai was of work by Ren Bonian, Xu Gu, and Wu Chaoshui, three of the main artists from the school known as the “Flowers of Shanghai.” We did our performance right under the exhibition poster. We also did it in what was the trendiest place back then—the “People’s Fast Food Restaurant,”2 which had opened beside the Dafeng movie theater. Fast food restaurants were very popular in 1986; they were high-end places, and so we did our piece there, too. We also did it in some places with billboards, such as the Hongqiao area, train stations, and so on. Back then, to the general public, performance art was an all-too weird phenomenon, because it was unfamiliar—it was never covered in the newspapers. So when you did a performance in in the Shanghai metropolitan area, it would generate a lot of discussion. Back then, when we were performing, we would hear people saying, “What does this mean?” “Are they making a movie? Or are aliens coming?” Anyway, there was a lot of exclamation, confusion, and doubt expressed. I wouldn’t say that any of this was directly related to my childhood memories.

Yet, in 1987, I did another piece, this one at school; at the time, I was majoring in Chinese ink painting at Shanghai University. This piece was somewhat related to the Cultural Revolution—since it used red paper and some slogan-like texts. But, in fact, those “slogans” were more common catchphrases of the time as opposed to language used in the Cultural Revolution—but the scene created did resemble the Cultural Revolution period a lot. For one thing, it included slogans and, for another, it was wrapped in red paper, and so it did seem to echo aspects of the Cultural Revolution. However, our original intention was to dispel meaning, and so we chose everyday statements—for example, “Have you eaten yet?” or “I need to finish my homework.” These were colloquial, regular phrases from everyday life, but we used them as slogans. All in all, the two pieces had distinct intentions—and they addressed different social contexts and systems.

Li: Yes. But in both performances, you wrapped yourselves in cloth. So it seemed more like a display or pose than a dramatic performance. Did you encounter police interference the first time you performed in a public venue?

Ding: The police were watching us . . . but they didn’t understand the concept of performance art. In fact, they were clueless; they assumed we were shooting a commercial for some government institution. This was because back then, even for a commercial shoot, the police felt obligated to maintain order, and they rarely saw anything on the streets like what we were doing. The truth is we didn’t encounter any problems with the police. Both of these performance pieces were covered in Fine Arts in China and the Jiangsu Art Monthly. There was a newspaper called Shanghai Culture and Art Newspaper, and it featured them on its front page. I really didn’t see it coming—how this performance would get so much media attention. Some newspapers even did significant pieces on it. I remember there was also the Youth Daily of Shanghai and the Young Generation, which was a magazine targeting a younger audience, such as college students. I remember a more interesting case with the official newspaper of Shanghai, the Wen Wei Po. A young journalist from Wen Wei Po got our phone number from somewhere—I had no idea from where—and called us directly, hoping to get an interview. We didn’t have an independent studio yet, nor did we have another venue or money to go to a place like the People’s Fast Food Restaurant, and so we ended up doing the interview in a park. We sat on the grass and chatted for a whole afternoon; it was quite amazing.

Part 3: The ’85 New Wave and the Painting about Crosses

Li: So the situation back then was that you organized exhibitions with some friends, along with doing performance pieces. What sort of role do you think you played in the ’85 New Wave Movement?

Ding: The ’85 New Wave Movement happened at a pivotal time for art in all parts of China. Although there were art activities across the country, the number of people who participated in the ’85 New Wave wasn’t large—and though some of the activities could be deemed contemporary art, many of them didn’t look so much like contemporary art. Sometimes certain work would be included in the art system merely because it stood out a little. We know that the political language of the seventies started to move toward liberalization in the eighties. The ’85 New Wave artists were not at all in the majority in terms of the art scene. I studied at the Shanghai School of Arts and Crafts from 1980 to 1983, and then I went on to major in Chinese ink painting in the art program of Shanghai University from 1986 to 1990. I was a student during this time, and due to my interest in contemporary art, my own artwork was closely related to what was going on with it. I also sporadically took part in some exhibitions in 1985 and 1986; back then, there weren’t many exhibitions held in China. What I mean to say is . . . there were no boundaries back then. That is, being a member of the ’85 New Wave . . . there was no distinction with regard to age, qualifications, or experience, because the art groups were loosely bound, and the teachers and students were essentially starting from the same place.

This is why our artwork—including the performances in 1986 and other pieces—ended up being covered in the best journals of so-called contemporary art. This is also why when we interacted with certain older artists, such as Yu Youhan, who was already a teacher when I was a student at Shanghai School of Arts and Crafts, we were able to do so outside of school. He did not think of himself as a teacher and I did not think of myself as a student; we were friends who belonged to the same small group of liberal artists and so we would get together. We had an ordinary friendship. I could stop by his place whenever I wished, and he would come over whenever he felt like it; we would see exhibitions together, or when I was free, I would stop by his dorm and chat all night. This is what it was like back then. I was not just a participant in the ’85 New Wave, I was also its beneficiary. Through marketing in art media, a lot of information was gathered together and published, for instance in Meishu magazine, and especially Fine Arts in China magazine, Jiangsu Pictorial, and a magazine in Wuhan called Art Trends. There were also some journals from Shanghai and academic publications, such as the Foreign Art Material of China Academy of Art.3 I had subscribed to it in 1979, even though its content wasn’t very systematic. It would at one point introduce Russia, and at another introduce Impressionism; nevertheless, it satisfied the needs of many who yearned to see more. These information platforms provided constant—albeit chaotic—artistic information.

Li: What I find interesting is . . . we just talked about the ’85 New Wave, and then how, soon after you did performance pieces in 1987, you came up with the first work in the Abstraction of the Cross (Shi shi) series, which you began in 1988. You have mentioned repeatedly that although the Chinese character shi [which is exactly the form of a cross, used repeatedly in the painting] is a loaded symbol, it is, to you, meaningless. For instance, when block printing, the symbol of the cross is used as an alignment mark. However, I find it interesting that many artists from the ’85 New Wave generation mention “emptying the content.” Many have said that after being passionately involved in the ’85 New Wave, they decided to take a step back. I wonder what your inner journey was like when you developed the artwork for the Abstraction of the Cross (Shi shi).

Ding Yi. Appearance of Crosses. 1991. Acrylic on Canvas. © 2015 the artist

Ding: I guess I could say that the development of the Abstraction of the Cross was related to the ’85 New Wave. When I look back at the ’85 New Wave, I can see that it actually had great impact; it was a political movement with incidents that sprung simultaneously, without any plan beforehand and without a specific leader. There were small art groups, but never a powerful leader. The leaders of the government used these platforms—such as Fine Arts in China —for announcements. After the ’85 New Wave, I believe every artist was reflecting on what to do next, on how to proceed, and on how to evaluate the art-related activities of the time. I, too, was trying to figure out how to deal with such an overheated, disorderly situation. Why was it called the “New Wave”? Because it felt like a continuation of the later part of the Cultural Revolution; it resembled a movement or a trend.

My overall opinion of the ’85 New Wave is that it stemmed, in fact, from one of two inclinations. One of them is Expressionism in art. We know that many people were politically suppressed and so adopted an Expressionistic style as a kind of outlet; some of this work corresponded directly with Western styles, such as German Expressionism or Neo-Expressionism. The other is Surrealism. I believe there are several reasons why Surrealism was compatible with the political atmosphere back then. One reason is the fact that Freud’s theories had become available through translated works, which helped advance Surrealism. In addition, Surrealism was perfect as an extension of academic art. Back then in China, many people were trained in the academic system, and so they had great drawing skills and could make realistic paintings; more often than not, it only takes a change of theme or content to turn a realistic work into a Surrealistic one. This is why many artists could easily make the transition. Furthermore, I think that Surrealism offers a broad path in that it can be extremely abstract and filled with imagination. Examples include the Yunnan Painting School of the time, which I believe is actually Surrealistic—the way it presented the exotic was best expressed through Surrealism. I believe that these two tendencies are the most important things about the ’85 New Wave. In reflecting on them, I felt like I should become a rational artist, one who distances his artwork from such a foundation or background. I also started to consider more individual concepts of creation. For instance, I claimed at the time that I wanted to make my paintings as un-painting-like as I could. And so I incorporated design techniques. At first the results were difficult for the public to accept, because the work seemed less like painting and more like wallpaper or other non-art images. I wanted to use transformations such as these to open up art’s possibilities and to broaden artistic expression; these were my principal concerns back then.

Li: I find it interesting that you say that you wanted to make art that wasn’t art-like. You weren’t thinking of abstract painting as falling into this category, though. Is that correct?

Ding: Yes. In fact, after the performance piece in 1987, I did wonder whether I should continue doing performance. Meanwhile, I was painting; and I wondered if I kept on painting, how I was going to paint. At the time, I had started experimenting with abstraction, but I hadn’t developed a clear style. Thus, I needed to decide which path I was going to take. In fact, the making of Abstraction of the Cross in 1988 was the result of careful consideration. I was determined, assured that that was what I wanted, and so the first and second pieces in that series were almost of a declarative tone—an announcement to the world that “I want it to be this way.” For instance, the first piece was The Three Primary Colors —red, yellow, and blue—and the second piece was The Seven-Color Spectrum. Whether structure-wise, color-wise, or from the perspective of painting method, this work was a declaration; it declared, “I want to take this path,” and it started me down it.

Ding Yi. Appearance of Crosses. 1988. Acrylic on Canvas. © 2015 the artist
Ding Yi. Appearance of Crosses. 1987. Mixed mediums on paper. © 2015 the artist

Li: Yes. But several of the works from that time seem to be flatter in terms of technique, and you used rulers to paint them. Interestingly, it seems that your work from the early nineties on possesses obvious brushstrokes, and in some of the paintings, the margins are blurred, almost as if the line between the world inside and outside the painting isn’t clear. But take the black-and-white painting behind you as an example . . . in it, we can see that you clearly defined its boundaries. I wonder what role “margins” or “boundaries” play in your work?

Ding: I handled margins differently for different materials and during different phases. Take materials like chalks and charcoal, for example . . . I usually leave an unpainted area on the edge because these materials need to be fixed with glue when finished, and the glue is applied over and over again. As a result, the powder bursts, blurring the margins naturally, giving them a little character. These were more technical considerations. Or, in 1997 and 1998, when I used cloth, I also left some unpainted areas on the edges. These margins were meant to provide contrast between the original part and the later, covered part, and so I wanted to leave them. Such emphasis was needed at first, but if, after two or three years, it was not, I would remove them. Meanwhile, the base color of the Abstraction of the Cross works had changed; the original background was the color of the cloth, but in 1998 I had to repaint the color of the cloth completely. All in all, the way I handled margins depended on the materials I was using and the ideas I wanted to convey.

Ding Yi. Appearance of Crosses. 1996. Pencil, chalk and charcoal on paper, 57 x 76 cm. © 2015 the artist

Li: I see, too, that crosses appear in your works in various patterns, and also, depending on your materials, the brushstrokes are visible. The style of this more recent work is different from the colder abstraction of your earlier works. People would quickly identify the Abstraction of the Cross series as “Ding Yi’s work.” In recent years, crosses have appeared in your sculptures as well, making the symbol almost your signature. The series has indeed been through a lot of changes, and now it has a personality all its own; I wonder what you think of this.

Ding Yi. Appearance of Crosses-Ru Yi. 2006. Cooper. © 2015 the artist

Ding: Well, I have never really given any thought to the idea that the series has its own personality. When I work three-dimensionally, I often feel torn because sculpture necessitates a different working method. Should I continue with the cross, or should I abandon it? Sculpture can be two things at once—that is, it can be a functional object and it can also be art, which is why I love it. For instance, when designing a bridge, I see the design itself as art, and the bridge as art. In the big studio next door to this one, there is a model of a bookshelf, which I am using as a pillar; so now the pillar can hold books as well as be a work of art, and it might even subtly express the concept of piling up precariously. Therefore, this object can be a lot of things at the same time. This kind of sculpture is most compelling to me.

Ding Yi. Book Pillar. 2010. 450x70x70cm. © 2015 the artist

Li: We were just talking about creating a painting that is a not painting as well as rational paintings. What intrigues me more is that today, many artists, since about 2000, have hired assistants to help them with their work, and yet you still insist on painting all your works by hand and by yourself. Why is that? If it is a purely rational way of working, is it possible to accomplish it without being personally involved?

Ding: I have two reasons for working independently. The first is that I enjoy the process. I have enjoyed painting ever since I was a kid, and so I think of making my work as an experience that is close to living my life. An artist is not an architect, or someone who comes up with an idea and then has a construction company realize it for him. Art creation, especially painting, is connected to your emotions. I believe that when it comes to painting, the ultimate pursuit is the communication within and how you try to make work that will, in turn, make your audience feel something. If an artist doesn’t devote himself to expressing his ideas through his artwork, or if he proceeds without emotion, then it would be very hard for him to communicate with his audience emotionally. The other reason is that I believe that art today is much too commercial and too focused on short-lived impacts. I think that given this situation, as artists, we should perhaps more carefully consider which artistic paths we take. This is why, though everyone else uses assistants, I choose not to. I believe that that there are some things that one must do oneself.

Li: I noticed that you use a lot of colors. Sometimes clean colors and murky colors might appear in the same painting. Do different colors rank differently to you? Are the colors symbolic of anything?

Ding: Hardly ever. There are no symbolic meanings in my choices. In fact, I like colors and think I’m good at using them. But for many years—twenty years or so—I have rarely relied on a palette. In fact, I don’t mix my colors; I apply them directly. Be they tube colors or canned colors, I just apply them directly. I don’t know; I just never thought of using a palette; I’ve abandoned the one I had from my school days. In any case, I think that color is just one means through which artists express themselves, and so as long as you believe that you have expressed yourself, it is enough. This is my approach. Now, the colors from different phases were related to the ideas, themes, and concepts that I wanted to express. For instance, this creation with fluorescent colors was, in fact, related to the denseness of Shanghai City. Yet sometimes colors can create problems. For instance, the phase when I used fluorescent colors was the twelve years I was closest to society and reality; I went from being full of ideals, joy, and hopes for this city to being a little pessimistic about it, and so then I stopped using them. Another reason may be the degeneration of my eyesight; because the colors were so stimulating and I was working at such close range to them, they may have affected my sight. I sometimes needed mediation or a pause, and I would use the pause to prepare myself for the next transformation or to reflect on my next theme. I often resort to a method of my own—I go back to black and white and adjust my pace. Nevertheless, I cannot hold back my love of color. Within two years of adjusting, I went back to colors—never to fluorescent colors, though, because it was impossible to work with them again, but to others.

Ding Yi. Appearance of Crosses. 2003. Acrylic on tartan. 140×160 cm. © 2015 the artist

Part 4: Exhibitions Overseas in 1993

Li: I would like to talk about how in the eighties and nineties, there were changes in the way people made art in China, or more, changes in the reception overseas of art from China. I know that you took part in the 1989 China Avant-Garde exhibition in Beijing. You also took part in a series of overseas exhibitions in 1993, including the Venice Biennale, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, China Avant-Garde in Berlin, and China’s New Art, Post-1989 in Hong Kong. Would you mind sharing your experience of going abroad for the first time, and how it has affected the way you work and/or what you think about art?

Installation shot of the 45th International Art Exhibition (Venice Biennale), showing Ding Yi’s painting hanging on the wall. Photo courtesy Ding Yi

Ding: After China Avant-Garde, many artistic activities, artistic ideas, communications, and platforms were restrained for political reasons. But if you look at the situation from a historical perspective, this situation was beneficial for artists as individuals. This is because, without access to the outside world’s activities, many artists returned to their own studios, calmly and quietly sat down, and reflected on their artistic paths. So from the perspective of the history of Chinese contemporary art, between the years 1989 and 1993, many artists matured. I also matured during this time; I had time to focus on my own work, which led to the overseas exhibitions. I remember that among those overseas exhibitions . . . Hans van Dijk was the first to come looking for Chinese artists, for the China Avant-Garde exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Weltin Berlin. He was among the first to visit Chinese artists in China in 1992, and he selected fourteen of us to take part in his exhibition in Berlin, which later toured. Not much later, Johnson Chang came looking for artists and he ended up doing the China’s New Art, Post-1989 exhibition. Meanwhile, Brisbane came looking for artists for the first-ever Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art; Venice Biennale was last. These exhibitions were the first round of events in the international advancement of China’s contemporary art. I went to the Venice Biennale, and since I had never had a chance to see such a big international exhibition on contemporary art, I was very excited. I got to see a lot of things, and it was also my first trip abroad. I feel like this trip was a miracle, because I got to catch up on all of Western art, in the most basic way. I just walked into any building that said “museum” on it—whether it was classic or contemporary art, I saw it all. I think I visited about twenty cities in Italy; I visited museums in all those cities and saw art from ancient Rome and the Renaissance, as well as contemporary art. It was an extraordinary experience.

Li: When those four groups of curators came looking for artists, did you feel they had different approaches toward contemporary art in China?

Ding: I didn’t at first. But about six months after each of the exhibitions took place, I received copies of the media coverage. Two packages were more thorough—the ones from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the China’s New Art, Post-1989 exhibition. The curators of these shows sent me a lot of press, because the media reported on their shows most frequently. When I first received those clips, I was really excited. There were copies of articles from of all kinds of newspapers reporting on contemporary art. Soon enough I realized that in that big pile of copies, my name came up once in a while, but images of my works rarely appeared. I understood that, from a professional perspective or from the art museum curator’s perspective, abstraction was necessary to enrich the diversity of the exhibitions. There were multiple schools of Chinese contemporary art back then, with very different approaches. However, the media seemed to want to present a more homogenous picture of China. From their perspective, it didn’t make sense to talk about China through abstract art, and so they generally left it out. They just didn’t report on it at all—nor would they place an image of abstract art on their more important pages. All the images were about Mao Zedong, of baldheads, or of other images of the rogues, because these were the images that the audience could relate to and recognize as having come from China. This also made me realize that my art is, in fact, a marathon; it is not a single symbol or one spot on the timeline or a leading force; it is indeed a type of art that requires effort over a long period of time.

Ding Yi’s Studio, Shanghai, November 25, 2014

Translation by Lina Dann. Edited by Yu-Chieh Li. The video interview in Chinese is available here.

1    Wudou are physical and/or violent struggles. During the Cultural Revolution, many people who were classified as dissidents faced struggles of all kinds. Verbal struggles included public humiliation, severe criticism, abuse, harassment, and such. Physical struggles included imprisonment, torture, and even seizure of property. Such “struggles” were encouraged and executed throughout the country.
2    The piece Cloth Sculpture on the Street (1986) was performed by Qin Yifeng, Zhang Guoliang, and Ding Yi. They wrapped themselves in cloth and showed up in public, without performing a specific, choreographed scenario.
3    China Academy of Art was called Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts back then

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Chen Zhen’s Personal Art Conservator: An Interview with Xu Min https://post.moma.org/chen-zhens-personal-art-conservator-an-interview-with-xu-min/ Tue, 28 Jul 2015 12:10:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=9208 Chen Zhen’s death in 2000 did not stop his art from living on, thanks to the hard work of Xu Min—Chen Zhen’s widow, who continues to organize his solo shows and also to restore his artworks. Xu was trained as an artist in Shanghai, but she has dedicated herself to supporting Chen’s art since the couple…

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Chen Zhen’s death in 2000 did not stop his art from living on, thanks to the hard work of Xu Min—Chen Zhen’s widow, who continues to organize his solo shows and also to restore his artworks. Xu was trained as an artist in Shanghai, but she has dedicated herself to supporting Chen’s art since the couple reunited in Paris in 1989, three years after Chen moved there. Chen, a diligent thinker, lived for only forty-five years. Though he left an abundant body of work and many interviews related to it, his life story, especially how he turned from painting to more a conceptual practice, and how this process related to his illness, has remained a mystery. In this interview, Xu Min speaks from her perspective as Chen’s life partner, assistant, and conservator; she discusses his life and career—from his early art training, his sudden illness, and his subsequent move from Shanghai to Paris to his philosophy toward work, life, death, disease, and the human condition. Though Chen succumbed to death, his multifaceted art remains vital.

Paris, June 24, 2014. Translation by Lina Dann. Edited by Yu-Chieh Li.

Xu Min (left) and Chen Zhen (right) working on Inner Body Landscape (2000). Photo courtesy of Xu Min.

How did you and Chen Zhen meet? What was your early art training in Shanghai like?

I met Chen Zhen when I was seventeen and he was eighteen. Both of us had been studying painting long before that; Chen Yifei was my sketch teacher and Chen Zhen studied with Yen Guoji [a portrait artist at the Shanghai Chinese Painting Institute]. At the time my father and Chen Zhen’s parents all worked at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai; one day, his parents brought him to Chen Yifei’s class, and that was the beginning of our relationship. My uncle was the director of the Oil Painting and Sculpture Studio at the Shanghai Chinese Painting Institute. He had introduced me to the studio, and I was well acquainted with the people there. However, at that time, I wasn’t interested in drawing and painting; I was all about dancing—I even auditioned for the Shanghai Opera. My uncle was concerned. He told me that dancers have brief careers, that most of them retire early—in their twenties or thirties. He persuaded me that visual artists, on the other hand, mature as they grow older, benefiting from the experience accumulated with aging. Therefore, I gave art a shot, starting with sculpture and then shifting to painting. My first-ever sculpture lesson was with Zhang Chongren.

Soon after, Chen Zhen was admitted to the Shanghai School of Arts and Crafts. He boarded there and came home on weekends. He would often drop by my house and tell me fascinating tales about school. He convinced me to apply as soon as I graduated, which I did. And, just like that, we became schoolmates. At school, we pretended not to know each other, and for three whole years, we had everyone fooled. He majored in ivory carving, while I chose jade carving. I might have chosen ivory if it had been offered in my year, but it wasn’t, and so I chose jade.

By that time, Chen Zhen had already mastered sketching. At school, he was close to Yu Youhan, a teacher whom he admired for his personality and the way he understood and applied colors. Upon graduation, he wished to continue studying, and so he did a postgraduate degree program, which took another four years, and he majored in stage design through the drama department at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. He learned many oil painting techniques there from Professor Chen Junde, and he developed a better, more systematic understanding of space.

When was Chen Zhen diagnosed with his disease, and how did he end up going abroad?

Chen Zhen got sick the year he graduated from Shanghai Theatre Academy. It was a sudden attack. Now that I think about it, he never was a detail-oriented person, and he would overlook subtle signs or warnings from his body. He would do things like ride a bike in the rain to go sketching from nature and then come home having spiked a fever. At times he would stay up late working and then fall asleep in his clothes. As a result, he was often troubled by colds and flus, and would self-medicate with sulfonamide drugs. When he was twenty-five, a drug allergy caused him to have an endocrine disorder, and he was diagnosed with hemolytic anemia. His limbs went limp and he struggled for breath when he climbed the stairs. His brother and sister-in-law were both hematologists, and they could tell right away that there was something very wrong with him. They urged him to get examined at a hospital, which he did, and hemolytic anemia was the diagnosis—a disease that is hard to target and cure. The doctors told Chen Zhen’s parents that he might have only five years to live.

From where I stand, I can say that Chen Zhen was an extraordinary man with great perseverance. His mind never stopped working, and so even when he was lying sick in bed, he still accomplished a great many things. He used to be physically fit, a proud young man who was a good swimmer, who played center forward for his basketball team. He was alive and active in school. He served as the chairman of the student council and later became a teacher. Yet this disease really brought him down. The many rounds of hormonal treatments took a physical toll, and he grew less handsome. But personally, I preferred Chen Zhen in his later years, because his mind and will were stronger than ever and his personality was much more mature and stable. After eleven years of dating, we finally got married. He was hospitalized while I was pregnant, and we had rooms on opposite ends of the same hospital. When our child was born, he came by my ward to visit, and we were both wearing hospital gowns.

Chen Zhen left the country in 1986. It was a winter—six months after our son was born. I had a hard time understanding how his parents could let their son—a patient—travel so far away and alone! At the time, his brother and sister-in-law were doing their PhDs in Paris. His brother thought about how his younger brother might have only five more years to live, and how he wished he would have a chance to at least take a look at the rest of the world, and especially at European art and the original artworks in the Louvre. He knew that Chen Zhen had read about them in catalogues—and that the catalogues were all worn out. So Chen Zhen’s brother applied to the Paris art academies for him. Chen Zhen was over thirty years old, and it was tough finding a school that would take him. Luckily, there were teachers at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts who didn’t mind having older students—and Mr. Bingas was one of them. He admired Chen Zhen’s oil painting technique and accepted his application to study color theory. Bingas recognized Chen Zhen’s skills in oil painting. He knew that for the Chinese students, the purpose of studying abroad is not necessarily to attend lectures; a lot of times, these students yearned for a legitimate reason to extend their visas. So after a while, Mr. Bingas told Chen Zhen that he was only required to go to the studio twice a week, and he also offered to teach him French. Chen Zhen used his spare time to visit galleries in Paris, to immerse himself in the artistic atmosphere and gather as much information as possible on local modern art, which was definitely easier said than done, for he had no clue how to proceed. Huang Yong Ping, who would later become his friend, hadn’t yet come to Paris, and Chen Zhen hadn’t met Yan Pei-Ming yet either; the only contacts he had at the time were a few Chinese friends who were working as street painters.

It is said that the grass is always greener on somebody else’s land, which to me, was Paris. I thought it must be paradise there! The weather in Paris suited Chen Zhen. His body wasn’t made to endure the hot, humid climate of Shanghai. When we were students, we had to fight the summer by staying inside from sunup to sundown, studying in the air-conditioned library. Knowing that Chen Zhen would do so much better in the mild climate in France was a comfort to me.

At the time, I was working as a teacher at the Shanghai School of Arts and Crafts, and I also was taking classes in bird-and-flower painting and traditional Chinese design patterns. I stayed in China with our son, and we were separated from Chen Zhen for three years. We didn’t communicate much. Phone calls were a luxury, costing 100 RMB for three minutes; at the time, I was making 36 RMB a month as a teacher, and so that meant a short phone call cost three months’ salary. Every time we talked, it had to be short and the ending was always abrupt; it was so distressing, almost too much to bear, and often it felt worse than not calling at all. At the beginning, I had no idea Chen Zhen was living a tough life in Paris. When our son was two, I wrote Chen Zhen a letter. I told him, “Our son is almost two years old. I have been showing him pictures of you and he keeps uttering ‘Daddy.’ Could you come home, even if it is only for a short while? It’s okay if you want to return to Paris, but then at least our son will have had a chance to know you and connect with you.” Upon reading my letter, Chen Zhen decided to come home for a visit, but he didn’t have much money to spare; he had to spend all he had on the plane ticket.

When he came home, he brought us a box of chocolates and a small wooden toy. He couldn’t stay long in Shanghai because of his visa issues. One night, when our son was asleep in his little bed, I walked out of the shower and into the room, and for the first and last time in my life, I saw Chen Zhen crying. Chen Zhen had never shed a tear during his sickness and he was strong until the very end of his life. But that night, he cried very hard. I asked him what was wrong and said, “You should tell me everything.” He said, “Xu Min, I don’t know when I will be able to reunite with you. I can’t see it coming. The future is so grim.” I said, “But isn’t life in Paris great? Your brother and sister-in-law are there, too.” He said, “No, Xu Min, it’s not how you think it is. It’s not like I’ve struck gold there; things are difficult, and I don’t know when I will be able to bring you both to Paris.” So I said, “Chen Zhen, if this is the case, then I should go with you. Two is always better than one.” To this he said, “But it’s so comfortable here at home. You have a maid to help you with everything. Over there, you would have nothing and nobody!” I said, “If that is the case, all the more reason I should go with you.” He agreed. I waited a whole year for the visa. In 1989 I was finally reunited with Chen Zhen in Paris, but I had to leave our three-year-old son in China. We weren’t able to see him until he was four, when Chen Zhen’s parents took a chance by bringing him over en route to an international endocrine conference.

After I came to Paris in 1989, we started street painting, trying to save up some money. Each morning we would go to the Plaza Pompidou; we’d spend afternoons at the Eiffel Tower plaza, and finally end up at night at the Champs-Élysées. Our customers were the wealthy—oil tycoons and rich Arabs. They would exit the theater at around twelve or one o’clock and ask us—almost jokingly—to draw them. They didn’t even glance at the paintings when we were done; they just paid up, sometimes double, and left. I remember the first time I ever did a street drawing. I never got paid for it. When the lady was about to hand me the money, the police came by and stopped her. I ended up giving her the drawing. “Since it is you I drew, you should keep it,” I said. She almost burst into tears. Not only did I not make any money, Chen Zhen and I ended up at the police station. We were released later that night, after the subway had closed, and so we had to spend a fortune on a cab to our faraway home. We were living in a single room in a seventh-floor walkup; it couldn’t have been bigger than 90 square feet. When we got home, we were so exhausted we could barely make it up the stairs.

How did Chen Zhen start working on installations?

When Chen Zhen first came to Paris, he took part in a few group exhibitions. Sometimes they were exhibitions of work by Chinese artists, and those shows featured small-size paintings. After 1986 he did some other group exhibitions of the work of young artists, which is when he met Jerôme Sans. At first Jerôme was interested in Chen Zhen’s personality, and when he asked Chen Zhen what he did for a living, Chen Zhen said he was a reporter. This is because Chen Zhen was studying art all alone, and he felt that claiming to be a reporter would get him more and better opportunities to socialize, because it would be easier to keep a conversation going. He drew a lot of sketches, and little by little, he went from working on the wall to working within three-dimensional space; he went from paintings to installations. He was a very upbeat, optimistic person. When he was by himself in Paris, he did whatever he felt like doing. It was a fairly precious time; he had absolute control of his time, which he used feverishly to learn French and do all kinds of analytical and academic work on Parisian art exhibitions. The day I arrived in Paris—in February 1989—I realized that his fridge was completely empty and that we had nothing to eat. I had to go to the grocery store and buy food before we could sit down and have a meal. Chen Zhen, on the other hand, was more eager to show me all the sketches he had done in the past three years. He showed me—excitedly—the notes that he had written down whenever he could. Those notes started in Chinese, progressed to some French scribbling on the side, and then gradually were all in French. A while later, our life in Paris consisted of going out to do street paintings. Around this same time Chen Zhen revisited his handwritten notes. We hoped to put together some money to buy tools so we could make some installation pieces. By the end of 1989 we had accumulated around 2000 francs, and so we leased a shabby little house in District 20 and made it our studio. We even had to install the door ourselves. We bought an electric welder and some very basic tools, and we made Chen Zhen’s very first installation piece.

Chen Zhen. Light of Confession. 1993. 250 paintings from the Museum’s collection, wood, objects, clay, 2000 x 400 x 350 cm. Installation view: Centraal Museum Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Photo courtesy Xu Min.
Chen Zhen. Light of Confession. 1993. 250 paintings from the Museum’s collection, wood, objects, clay, 2000 x 400 x 350 cm. Installation view: Centraal Museum Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Photo courtesy Xu Min.

As Chen Zhen’s partner and assistant, do you see yourself as a second author?

The later part of my life was spent working on Chen Zhen’s artworks. When we worked together, it was always harmonious and joyful, which is why after he was gone, a large part of my grief had to do with the loss of this happy part of our relationship. Every artwork’s creation was like the birth of a new baby. I was aware that the works were the presentation of Chen Zhen’s ideas; I helped him realize those concepts while aiding in resolving technical difficulties. Because we were so in sync, I could always understand what he had to say or wanted to present. We rarely ever fought over work.

The first piece we did with candles—Beyond the Vulnerability (1999)—was done in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. France Morin, the curator, had artists work together with a local children’s foundation to create artworks. The children there were underprivileged, living in poor conditions; more often than not, their houses consisted of nothing more than a few pieces of cardboard thrown together, or anything that would keep out the rain. Chen Zhen wanted these kids to be able to build the houses of their dreams, and so he searched and searched for the right materials for them to work with.

Chen Zhen. Beyond the Vulnerability. 1999. Photo courtesy Xu Min.

One day when Chen Zhen was walking down the street, he saw some beautiful candles and sticks of wood; they were so beautiful that he instantly decided to use them. Now how do you make candles stick together? He came up with the idea of using the heat from an electric cautery to melt the sides of the candles so that they could be stuck together. After that, he did his second piece with candles and chairs—A Village Without Borders (2000).

Chen Zhen. A Village Without Borders. 2000. Chair, candles. Photo courtesy Xu Min.
Chen Zhen. A Village Without Borders. 2000. Chair, candles. Photo courtesy Xu Min.

This series consists of ninety-nine little candle houses. To Chen Zhen, the number “99” represented “infinity”; “100,” on the other hand, implied “a stopping point.” This was a village without borders, and his dream was to have all ninety-nine houses exhibited together. This piece has traveled worldwide, and each house is in the hands of a different collector, and so in a sense, it really has become “a village without borders.” However, it would be logistically challenging to exhibit all of the individual houses together.

In retrospect, in 2000 when Chen Zhen was sick, he insisted that I finish these candle pieces. He would say, “Make them by my side while I sleep in my bed.” I never really understood what he meant. Now that I think about it, though, I think he wanted me to continue and finish this project for him, which is why he had me practice while he could still be there to watch. Each and every one of these houses is an impromptu piece—there was no way of planning or sketching beforehand. When he was hospitalized, he took care to tell me, “Xu Min, these pieces are really nice, but burning the candles harms the lungs, and so you shouldn’t finish them all. Just make half of them.” After Chen Zhen died, some friends encouraged me to finish the project, and so I hired an assistant and finally finished it two years later. I felt like I had fulfilled a very precious dream of his, while honoring his last words.

Chen Zhen. Floating Qi—Fragment. c. 1985. Oil on canvas, 190 x 135 cm. Photo courtesy Xu Min.
Chen Zhen. Floating Qi—Fragment. c. 1985. Oil on canvas, 190 x 135 cm. Photo courtesy Xu Min.


How did Chen Zhen handle his disease? Did coming from a family of doctors affect his work as an artist?

Floating Qi was painted after Chen Zhen got sick in 1985. Sickness undoubtedly hit him hard. He was a person who shone in his energy, and yet he was confined to bed rest. He wanted to strengthen himself from within, and so he read many books on philosophy. We even traveled to Tibet, where the blue sky and the white clouds felt like they were within reach, and we were awed by the greatness of nature. He would constantly tell me, “One must concede his spirit to nature, so that one may overlook trivial personal problems.” He had to set aside his sickness, his pain, and his individuality in order to devote himself completely to creating art. After that, he painted The Birth (1983), The Deceased (1983), and The Pilgrimage (1983).

Chen Zhen. The Birth. 1983. Photo courtesy Xu Min.
Chen Zhen. The Pilgrimage. 1983. Photo courtesy Xu Min.
Chen Zhen. The Deceased. 1983. Photo courtesy Xu Min.

Coming from a family of doctors and scholars, Chen Zhen certainly faced some objection when he announced he wanted to pursue art. But the truth is, there weren’t that many options available during the Cultural Revolution; you either went to work at a factory or you went to the only school available—Shanghai School of Arts and Crafts. Chen Zhen loved sports; he was a fast runner, with an impressive track record of 11 seconds for 100 meters—that was close to the world record at the time! But he hurt his ligaments in a race, and the doctors declared him unfit to run anymore. This was the end of any prospects of a career in sports, and so he learned how to paint. At first his parents felt like he was fooling around, and so they weren’t quite supportive, but they weren’t too against it either. They would often ask Yen Guoji, his sketch teacher, behind Chen Zhen’s back, “Does our son show any talent in this field?” They had always felt that Chen Zhen didn’t work as hard and as seriously as his brother, and yet he continued to perform well in school. He earned high grades in all of his subjects, and especially in math. He was the youngest, smartest kid in the family, but also the one who fooled around the most. He used to sneak out of the house after coming home from school, which often got him into trouble. In a sense, he had always felt that he wasn’t understood; when we were dating, he would constantly say that he was sure he would achieve something great someday. After he left for Paris, he made Round Table (1995)—and that piece of art shocked his father.

Chen Zhen. Round Table. 1995. Photo courtesy Xu Min.

His father understood this piece immediately; it brought him closer to his son, and the two of them started communicating about art. His father said, “You have a really nice piece of art here. Its visual language is simple, but addresses ambitious, universal themes about equality and peace.

Chen Zhen’s works were often infused with a persuasiveness, raising societal questions like, “Have you ever thought of what the consequences of this will be?” He enjoyed analyzing the relationship among humans, nature, and objects. His theory was that people are so filled with desires that they create an overflow of material objects, harming nature on the way, and that as a result, nature fights back, which creates a vicious cycle. He was also interested in “identity issues.” This came from his constant reflection: “As a Chinese artist living in Paris, how do people see me? When it comes to identity, what ground do I stand on? What am I giving up, and what should I give up so that I may become a liberal on this worldwide stage, or stand like a proud nomad who isn’t confined to any homeland?” He felt blissful to have been alive in this era of globalization, and thought of Paris as a mere stop along his way across the great world. Deep down, he admitted to harboring the arrogance of a man who comes from a great country like China. In addition, he deeply admired Mao Zedong’s poetry, believing that no other leader has ever had the kind of broad mind required to write such poetry.

Chen Zhen. Musical Library. 2000. Photo courtesy Xu Min.

The day before Chen Zhen died, there were no signs at all that the end was near. He didn’t utter a word; he never bid farewell, nor did he leave any instructions. After he passed away, I had to deal with many things based on my own ventures, especially since he used to be the one handling most of our external affairs. He had always been an optimistic man with strong survival instincts; when we lived together, I hardly ever felt like I was living with a sick man. But in 1999 he told me, “Xu Min, I feel like I’m slowly killing myself with all the pills I must take every day. I think perhaps science will never catch up with my disease, and there won’t be a cure found during my lifetime. Perhaps the only thing left to do is to treat my body as a lab for experiments, to find some shaman or sorcerer to try to treat my body. Is it possible that in this world there is something still unknown to us that may be the cure to my sickness?” He had the idea of a medical project—he wanted to communicate with the world through traveling and interviews, and to heal the sickness within our society, the sickness of human mentality, and even his own sickness with it. He did the project In Praise of Black Magic in 2000, in Turin, Italy. There was a lady whose leg pain wouldn’t go away; on the day of the opening of the exhibition, she stood in the gallery for two hours and her leg just magically stopped hurting. I almost doubted the miracle, but there she was, thanking Chen Zhen elatedly. I did a retrospective exhibition based on this theme in 2005, in Greece. Unexpectedly, many medical school students lined up to buy tickets to see the show.

Chen Zhen. Crystal Landscape of Inner Body. 2000. Photo courtesy Xu Min.

How did Chen Zhen present “time” in his works? Did his awareness of his sickness impact his works at all? Did his works reveal a sense of confinement by “time”?

I am sure this was a theme on his mind, but he wouldn’t obsess over it; he poured all his energy into art. He was well aware that his was walking on thin ice when it came to health and that he was fighting against time. He wouldn’t explicitly say it, but you could tell from how he made sure he cherished every minute of each day and worked hard. He spent time dining out with our family, but sometimes he would say, “Xu Min, you know, I could have replied to ten e-mails during this time.” After all, he was a very busy man. Other times he would be lost in thought, and then turn around and ask me, “Xu Min, do we eat to work or work to eat?” I would say, “What do you think?” He would say, “Well, I certainly eat to work!” When I said, “But many people think that you work so you can eat better and dress better,” he would reply, “For me, I would love to not have to eat. Imagine all the extra time I would have!” To Chen Zhen, the only thing that brought him happiness and meaning in life was work.

Chen Zhen. Daily Incantations. 1996. Night stools, wood beams, steel, electronic debris, sound mix of the ritual cleaning of the stools. Photo courtesy Xu Min.

How did Chen Zhen’s last solo exhibition come about?

In 2000 the Italian art gallery—Galleria Continua—bought a movie theater that became the venue for Chen Zhen’s last exhibition while he was alive. It was a complex space, with hallways, stairs, the box office, and so on. Chen Zhen analyzed the space and said, “It is pretty hard. I either have to utilize all the space or give up on this idea all together.” The task was strenuous. By that time, it seemed to me that he was overwhelmed and losing his grasp of things. He began to postpone everything, and I didn’t understand why. This project started with clay sculpture, which meant a lot of work in plaster molding and making small models, and so I said, “If you keep on going like this, we will run out of time. Why don’t we just pick it up and do it? Don’t overthink it.” However, I felt like he was passive and reluctant. In retrospect, by that time, the cancer had already spread to his whole body, and so I was basically pushing and coercing a sick patient. The process was really hard on him; he had to paint on his knees, and he was barely able to hold up his back. I thought the pain was from all those years of hormone treatment finally catching up with him, making his body uncomfortable during the exhibition. His parents sent us packages of Chinese herbal medicine and I helped him apply it; we never thought it was cancer—we just assumed it was osteoporosis or a neck and back injury. During the installation, Chen Zhen went to the emergency room twice for pain medication. After the injections, he would say, “Xu Min, I can jump up and down like a kid again!” And yet four hours later, the pain would again be unbearable. He couldn’t sleep lying down—he often slept standing up. I would fall asleep due to exhaustion, and I would wake up in the middle of the night and see him standing in his sleep. I wondered what he was thinking. He told me, “It hurts right to the core!” And, in fact, it was his spine hurting.

The day he was told he had cancer—he was the one who answered the phone. The doctor who called gave him the news bluntly. Artist friends Wang Du and Yan Pei-Ming had come over to visit him, because they had heard he was suffering back pain. I told them, “It is dinnertime already, and so why don’t you stay? I will make us dinner.” Meanwhile, Chen Zhen was napping alone in a room upstairs, and he got the call from the doctor. We didn’t even know about it. Afterward, he came down for dinner—acting aloof and casual—and simply said, “Let’s eat.” I was quietly wondering why the doctor hadn’t called yet—for he should have already—and I wanted to call him. Chen Zhen stopped me and said, “Don’t. The doctor has already called.” I was shocked and wordless, for instantly I knew there was something wrong. So I said, “What did the doctor say?” He said, “Xu Min, just imagine the worst case scenario.” I thought to myself —it must be cancer! What could be more devastating? And so I asked, “Is it cancer?” He replied calmly, “Yes.” Wang Du and Yan Pei-Ming were astonished, and I couldn’t help but burst out crying. But Chen Zhen tried to pacify me; he said, “Don’t cry. There’s been so much medical progress. I’ll make it through.” After our friends left, I said, “Let me go buy you some pain-killers. You are running out of those.” Chen Zhen replied, “Wait, I’ll come with you. I don’t ever want to leave you again.” It was an utterance filled with such emotion! I helped him to the car, and we drove to the pharmacy to buy pain-killers. Then I told him, “Chen Zhen, there will be a miracle for you, I can feel it. Others might not make it, but you will.” In a sense, I guess I was naïve, always caught up in wishful thinking. That night, we slept particularly soundly, holding hands in our sleep. The next day it was time to battle. Our assistant came to work as usual, to burn newspapers for a project we were doing. I told the assistant, “I have to drive Chen Zhen to the hospital, and so why don’t you go home? But before you leave, could you take a few pictures of us?” I had a feeling Chen Zhen was not going to be returning home again. And just like I feared, Chen Zhen passed away three weeks later. The staff from Gallery Continua was there by my side all the way. They had come to know Chen Zhen, and they felt it was a blessed friendship. They felt truly sorry that Chen Zhen had left us before the exhibition was even over. They were devastated by his death, too, and since then, they have never given up on Chen Zhen’s legacy, helping me to arrange several retrospective exhibitions, helping with the installations and all. I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t sell a single piece of Chen Zhen’s legacy for five years. I spent the first three writing books, and also focused on restoring his works and arranging his retrospective exhibitions.



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洗書,占卜,捕蟲: 與黃永砯對話,第二部分 https://post.moma.org/a-conversation-with-huang-yong-ping-part-ii-ch/ Tue, 19 May 2015 19:58:00 +0000 https://post.moma.org/?p=9065 Nantes, Huang Yong Ping’s Studio, June 22, 2014 Yu-Chieh Li 李雨潔 Huang Yong Ping黃永砯 2014年6月22日,巴黎南特黃永砯工作室。 文稿整理: 陳聆 與談人,編輯: 李雨潔 Read the english translation here. 讓工具控制自己的藝術家 李雨潔: 1981年年底你有一個畢業創作是《噴槍系列》, 你那時候的各種實驗還是專注在繪畫上面,沒有放棄繪畫,你當時還想要探索新的繪畫方法? 黃永砯: 那個時候可能很難說,當時目標都還沒有完全確定,正處在一個過渡。雖然我們是在美院的這種傳統系統裡面,但是同學都不太願意遵照傳統教學的方法作作品。 李雨潔: 那時候《噴槍系列》受到一些批評了嗎? 黃永砯: 這個繪畫談不上什麼大批評,但他們就是覺得比較離譜嘛。 因為油畫系畢業的,你不用油畫顏料?學了四年,竟然完全沒有體現基本功還有技巧。所以當時這麼做很冒險,但是他們也沒有完全地否定。老師只不過是說,「哎呀你這個有點簡單啊」。 李雨潔: 你在自己的筆記裡面提到要讓工具處在無意識的控制中,「工具由主動轉向被動」。這個要怎麼達成呢?你覺得自己成功了嗎? 黃永砯: 這個語言上表達不是非常精確。 工具本身是一個死的東西,它不存在主動跟被動的問題,這裡是指人—使用工具的人轉向被動。我用的工業噴槍是什麼樣的一個東西呢? 是很小的噴槍, 帶了一個機器,就是空壓機, 這個東西不是來作畫而是來噴顏色的。譬如說你要把這個桌子塗成黑色的,這個嘩——就這樣噴,就完了,是吧?當時為什麼會提這個問題呢,主要也是因為工具對我們來說變得非常新鮮,我不能完全控制它。不像筆,筆我如果向左就向左,而且從我們的角度來說,以前對繪畫的認識,所謂的顏色都應該是微妙的,應該有變化的,這個工具不存在這個問題,一下子在幾秒鐘就是一大灘的顏色, 速度是很快的,沒辦法讓你去慢慢改變。所以在這個意義上來說,我就提了這個所謂無意識的問題還有被動的問題:就是人處在一個被動的狀態,而且這個被動的狀態不像我們一般意義上說被動就是不好的,它開了一個天地,就像潛意識的時候做作品。所以說我的主動性是很小一部份,被動性是很大的一個天地 。 李雨潔: 你由主動轉向被動的原因很大一部分是是這個工具太難控制了,而且你不熟悉這個工具?這個系列雖然是有這個「無意識」這個元素在裡面,話說,有一種新具象或者某種抽象這樣子的風格在裡面,風格是很強烈的。 黃永砯: 對,風格很強烈。我覺得如果是當時的一些作法呢,可能就接近所謂的冷抽象或者硬邊抽象。因為你靠剪紙噴出來的東西,噴出來的都是硬邊的,硬邊的形狀是比較冷的,所以歸為冷抽象。 其實當時在我們的班裡面,就是其他同學也有類似的作法, 他們是用手畫的。我這個是工具造成的一個更極端的效果。比方說當時非常出色的一個同學查立,他畫的東西我覺得跟後來耿建翌或者張培力他們當時早期的繪畫都有類似於這方面的東西。不是說一種表現的,也不是印象主義的,而是屬於一種比較冷的,比較硬,半抽象的 。 李雨潔: 浙江美院在85新潮開始之前,已經有很多人都有一種對於所謂「冷抽象」的探索, 或者是嘗試去掉個人風格的對於作品的影響,你覺得是為什麼? 黃永砯: 我現在很難說是為什麼,但是覺得這個隱含所謂繪畫從屬於一個政治的目的或者是功能裡面去慢慢解脫出來的一個辦法。就是所有的繪畫,所有的工具,都是一個工具性的,都是要表達一個什麼。但你一旦出現一個比較冷的或者說比較半抽象的一個東西,那他就會游離這個固有的概念。 廈門達達與杜象 李雨潔: 1983年的時候,你跟一群朋友組織了《廈門五人現代藝術展》,這個是內部觀摹的,當時要辦一個展覽有哪些先決條件呢?你們是在群眾美術館,像這樣子的展覽場地要怎麼樣申請,或者租?當時沒有所謂策展人這種角色,這具體是怎麼做的呢? 黃永砯: 也不存在租用,只不過是說, 我在廈門認識了一些人,譬如說有個中央美院畢業的老師,他是在群眾藝術館工作的,我們跟他很熟,他也很支持年輕人做一些東西,他自己也在改變他自己。所以我們就提出可以搞個展覽,就幾個年輕人,他也很支持,說,「就做嘛!」所以很簡單,也不存在什麼問題,只不過當時不是公開展覽,叫做內部觀摩,所謂內部觀摩就是說空間也不大,群眾藝術館大概有幾個大概一百坪米或者可能一百多坪米這種空間, 就是很一般的空間。然後不存在什麼策展人,就幾個經常交流的朋友就在裡面搞,所謂觀摩展就是他們發了一些油印的邀請函,發給有限的,廈門的一些文化圈子的人像老師啊,讓少數的人來看。 李雨潔: 有邀請函才能看? 黃永砯: 所謂邀請函也是非常好玩的,就是一個油印的,差不多那麼大張的一張紙蓋了一個紅章。這些東西我現在還留著。後來還開了一個研討會,所謂研討會就是大家發表了一些意見,還有會議記錄,就這樣。展覽和研討會總共大概三天的時間吧。 李雨潔: 展覽中有很多是抽象畫還有實物拼貼這樣子的作品。你好像覺得這個展覽是重要的,就是跨出了一步嘗試。參加者後來的「廈門達達」是同一群人? 黃永砯: 其中有一個後來不再參與的,其他四個人留下來。所以為什麼有意義?就是說為什麼這個展覽會歸類到廈門達達的活動裡面,是因為差不多是同一批人,移到廈門達達展以後,擴大了活動而已。…

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Nantes, Huang Yong Ping’s Studio, June 22, 2014 Yu-Chieh Li 李雨潔 Huang Yong Ping黃永砯

2014年6月22日,巴黎南特黃永砯工作室。

文稿整理: 陳聆

與談人,編輯: 李雨潔

Read the english translation here.

讓工具控制自己的藝術家

李雨潔: 1981年年底你有一個畢業創作是《噴槍系列》, 你那時候的各種實驗還是專注在繪畫上面,沒有放棄繪畫,你當時還想要探索新的繪畫方法?

黃永砯: 那個時候可能很難說,當時目標都還沒有完全確定,正處在一個過渡。雖然我們是在美院的這種傳統系統裡面,但是同學都不太願意遵照傳統教學的方法作作品。

Huang Yong Ping. Spray Gun Painting. 1981. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping.

李雨潔: 那時候《噴槍系列》受到一些批評了嗎?

黃永砯: 這個繪畫談不上什麼大批評,但他們就是覺得比較離譜嘛。 因為油畫系畢業的,你不用油畫顏料?學了四年,竟然完全沒有體現基本功還有技巧。所以當時這麼做很冒險,但是他們也沒有完全地否定。老師只不過是說,「哎呀你這個有點簡單啊」。

李雨潔: 你在自己的筆記裡面提到要讓工具處在無意識的控制中,「工具由主動轉向被動」。這個要怎麼達成呢?你覺得自己成功了嗎?

黃永砯: 這個語言上表達不是非常精確。 工具本身是一個死的東西,它不存在主動跟被動的問題,這裡是指人—使用工具的人轉向被動。我用的工業噴槍是什麼樣的一個東西呢? 是很小的噴槍, 帶了一個機器,就是空壓機, 這個東西不是來作畫而是來噴顏色的。譬如說你要把這個桌子塗成黑色的,這個嘩——就這樣噴,就完了,是吧?當時為什麼會提這個問題呢,主要也是因為工具對我們來說變得非常新鮮,我不能完全控制它。不像筆,筆我如果向左就向左,而且從我們的角度來說,以前對繪畫的認識,所謂的顏色都應該是微妙的,應該有變化的,這個工具不存在這個問題,一下子在幾秒鐘就是一大灘的顏色, 速度是很快的,沒辦法讓你去慢慢改變。所以在這個意義上來說,我就提了這個所謂無意識的問題還有被動的問題:就是人處在一個被動的狀態,而且這個被動的狀態不像我們一般意義上說被動就是不好的,它開了一個天地,就像潛意識的時候做作品。所以說我的主動性是很小一部份,被動性是很大的一個天地 。

李雨潔: 你由主動轉向被動的原因很大一部分是是這個工具太難控制了,而且你不熟悉這個工具?這個系列雖然是有這個「無意識」這個元素在裡面,話說,有一種新具象或者某種抽象這樣子的風格在裡面,風格是很強烈的。

黃永砯: 對,風格很強烈。我覺得如果是當時的一些作法呢,可能就接近所謂的冷抽象或者硬邊抽象。因為你靠剪紙噴出來的東西,噴出來的都是硬邊的,硬邊的形狀是比較冷的,所以歸為冷抽象。 其實當時在我們的班裡面,就是其他同學也有類似的作法, 他們是用手畫的。我這個是工具造成的一個更極端的效果。比方說當時非常出色的一個同學查立,他畫的東西我覺得跟後來耿建翌或者張培力他們當時早期的繪畫都有類似於這方面的東西。不是說一種表現的,也不是印象主義的,而是屬於一種比較冷的,比較硬,半抽象的 。

李雨潔: 浙江美院在85新潮開始之前,已經有很多人都有一種對於所謂「冷抽象」的探索, 或者是嘗試去掉個人風格的對於作品的影響,你覺得是為什麼?

黃永砯: 我現在很難說是為什麼,但是覺得這個隱含所謂繪畫從屬於一個政治的目的或者是功能裡面去慢慢解脫出來的一個辦法。就是所有的繪畫,所有的工具,都是一個工具性的,都是要表達一個什麼。但你一旦出現一個比較冷的或者說比較半抽象的一個東西,那他就會游離這個固有的概念。

廈門達達與杜象

李雨潔: 1983年的時候,你跟一群朋友組織了《廈門五人現代藝術展》,這個是內部觀摹的,當時要辦一個展覽有哪些先決條件呢?你們是在群眾美術館,像這樣子的展覽場地要怎麼樣申請,或者租?當時沒有所謂策展人這種角色,這具體是怎麼做的呢?

黃永砯: 也不存在租用,只不過是說, 我在廈門認識了一些人,譬如說有個中央美院畢業的老師,他是在群眾藝術館工作的,我們跟他很熟,他也很支持年輕人做一些東西,他自己也在改變他自己。所以我們就提出可以搞個展覽,就幾個年輕人,他也很支持,說,「就做嘛!」所以很簡單,也不存在什麼問題,只不過當時不是公開展覽,叫做內部觀摩,所謂內部觀摩就是說空間也不大,群眾藝術館大概有幾個大概一百坪米或者可能一百多坪米這種空間, 就是很一般的空間。然後不存在什麼策展人,就幾個經常交流的朋友就在裡面搞,所謂觀摩展就是他們發了一些油印的邀請函,發給有限的,廈門的一些文化圈子的人像老師啊,讓少數的人來看。

李雨潔: 有邀請函才能看?

黃永砯: 所謂邀請函也是非常好玩的,就是一個油印的,差不多那麼大張的一張紙蓋了一個紅章。這些東西我現在還留著。後來還開了一個研討會,所謂研討會就是大家發表了一些意見,還有會議記錄,就這樣。展覽和研討會總共大概三天的時間吧。

李雨潔: 展覽中有很多是抽象畫還有實物拼貼這樣子的作品。你好像覺得這個展覽是重要的,就是跨出了一步嘗試。參加者後來的「廈門達達」是同一群人?

黃永砯: 其中有一個後來不再參與的,其他四個人留下來。所以為什麼有意義?就是說為什麼這個展覽會歸類到廈門達達的活動裡面,是因為差不多是同一批人,移到廈門達達展以後,擴大了活動而已。

李雨潔: 你們1986年還組織了一個「現代美術研究社」,然後好像有小組討論, 印了一些油印的東西。是像讀書會的這樣子的嗎?

黃永砯: 沒有,不算讀書會,其實沒有一個規定的開會時間,是毫無組織的, 完全是自發的。這個研究會呢,其實也就是跟我前面提的一位先生有關係,他叫紀乃進,在群眾藝術館工作。群眾藝術館後來就搬了,搬到後來做廈門達達的那個空間,所以這些都跟他有關係。那時候我開始寫一些東西,比如後來「圖詞物」這個文章,當時有厚厚的這麼一小疊,我給他看過,然後他也感興趣,他也給別人傳閱,後來也油印,就可以散發更多。油印其實是選擇一些比較短的文章,這個基本上是跟廈門達達展覽差不多同時。

李雨潔: 譬如說你拿到了一本台灣人翻譯的《杜象訪談錄》,然後還把它影印發給大家嗎?那是1986年?

黃永砯: 應該更早。我不是直接從台灣印,很有可能是通過一個朋友許成斗,在83年的時候他也參加「廈門五人展」,他是越南的僑民,當時他在西貢,後來他回到廈門,帶了一些關於譬如說印象派的小的畫冊,油印的還是相當好的。 但是我現在不完全確定《杜象訪談錄》是不是他拿來的,有可能是通過廈門大學的一個什麼圖書館裡面找到,然後把它印個小冊子。

A copy of the Chinese translation of Pierre Cabanne’s Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp.


李雨潔: 你的筆記裡面提到, 1982年看到有關維根斯坦的書,然後1984年看到維根斯坦的傳記,那其實你是先看到維根斯坦才看到杜象?

黃永砯: 我當時沒有記錄說我什麼時候看到杜象,哪個早哪個遲,這個就很難說了。

李雨潔: 你也寫到1985年的時候《五燈會元》重新出版。但是你是具體什麼時候開始閱讀有關禪宗的東西?應該是更早吧?

黃永砯: 是差不多那時,因為在中國是這樣的,只有再版你才能夠在書店買到這個書。

李雨潔: 對,出版品在八十年代的時候是比較亂,有時候是很隨意的,沒有人知道邏輯是什麼。但是我在看各個藝術家寫的文章的時候,會覺得80年代大家談很多中國的傳統還有西方,但是很多時候可能對於所謂的中國傳統也不是那麼地了解,對於西方可能更多的是想像。我覺得好像當時的中國藝術家對於這兩者有相等的距離。你覺得是不是這樣子?

黃永砯: 是,這個話我好像也曾經說過。就是說當時其實是同時發現了—一個發現西方,一個發現傳統。

李雨潔: 有時候是藉由西方來發現自己的傳統?

黃永砯: 當然你通過西方你可以更好了解傳統,或者說從出版物來說,傳統書籍的再版,是那個時候在文革後才開始有的。當然舊版書還有,但是舊版流通性不大。因為比方說你到圖書館肯定可以找到關於禪宗,關於佛教,關於莊子或關於老子的書,肯定有,但是書店裡面不一定會有,因為書店賣的都是新出版的東西。

燒作品: 「燒作品是我提議的,但我沒有把所有的東西都拿去燒,我燒的主要是繪畫。」

李雨潔: 1986年的時候廈門達達做了一個焚燒活動,你說過是因為你們不滿意那個展覽的狀況。參加展覽的不是只有廈門達達的成員,至於這個小組的成立都還是一個問題,除了你們這群朋友之外,還有其他年輕藝術家參加。那你說過就是對於展覽狀況不滿意,具體是什麼樣的情況?

The article “Xiamen Dada—a Kind of Postmodernism,” published in Fine Arts in China.

黃永砯: 其實當時展覽的題目不叫廈門達達,叫做《廈門現代藝術展》。廈門達達的提出其實是在我那個發表在中國美術報的文章裡面,文章題目是「廈門達達——一種後現代?」 是從這個開始的。我認為廈門達達這個團體的真正的組織,真正的誕生是在焚燒的時候才開始的,為什麼這麼說呢?《廈門現代藝術展》,這個從今天來說是一個非常平庸的一個展覽題目,它什麼議題也沒提出。現代藝術在當時的語境裡面,就是說跟這個社會主義現實主義有點不一樣,就是代表受西方影響的藝術,統稱為現代主義或現代藝術。參加這個展覽的人大部份都是一些美院或是師專畢業的年輕人,他們拿出來的東西很多是抽象雕塑。我當時為什麼會認為展覽不成功?包括為什麼要做這個焚燒活動——我是覺得這個展覽的傾向不夠清楚,當時也是沒有策展的,我當時屬於召集人,那有人拿了一些東西來,你不能不讓他展覽,因為沒有什麼理由,當時還沒有一個什麼策展方針,所以,好了,都放進來了,各種各樣,裡面也有一些水墨,抽象畫。展覽的時候我開始思考一個問題,就是說展覽應該要改變藝術的性質,包括問題的提法。現代藝術我認為是非常無力的一個議題,整個的傾向性是不明確的,我希望能夠找到一個非常清楚的一條生路,所以我才明確用了「廈門達達」在文章標題裡。廈門達達當時在這個展覽裡面有一些苗頭,為什麼呢?比方說當時我展覽的一些作品,比較有嘲弄性的,有一些跟歐洲達達主義有直接關係的作品。

李雨潔: 例如呢?

黃永砯: 譬如說達芬奇的鬍子被燃燒《鬍子最易燃》。還有比方說畢卡索的三張照片被燒了一個洞,慢慢地變灰。還有譬如說《會響的手槍》,這些就帶有一種達達式的隱喻在裡面。

Huang Yong Ping. Ringing Pistol. 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and the Asia Art Archive.
Huang Yong Ping. The Beard Was Easiest to Burn. 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping.
Huang Yong Ping. The Beard Was Easiest to Burn. 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping.
Huang Yong Ping. The Beard Was Easiest to Burn. 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping.
Huang Yong Ping. The Beard Was Easiest to Burn. 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping.

李雨潔: 但是你在焚燒的時候,好像只有燒繪畫作品,對不對?

黃永砯: 對,燒作品是我提議的,但我沒有把所有的東西都拿去燒,我燒的主要是繪畫。

李雨潔: 是代表繪畫死亡了嗎?

黃永砯: 可能是。一個是畫比較大,比較起來,其他東西比方說一張照片,燒了有什麼意義呢?而且「燒」在當時的定位也很清楚,不是一個終極的手段。從當時到現在來看,「燒」只不過是一個步驟而已。因為如果終極了藝術的話,我為什麼在今天還要繼續工作呢?不是都燒完了嗎?當時也很多爭論,說「為什麼燒了以後你還要展示錄像呢?」大可告訴人家說你東西都燒了嘛,都完了嘛,那事情就做完了,可是生命還在延續阿?我還年輕啊,那接下去事情怎麼做?所以我一貫抱持這個態度,就是我們沒有一個終極的手段。我們規定藝術的一個消亡,這是我們的一個態度,一個步驟,一個方法,一個策略,絕對不是一個終極。

Documentary of Xiamen Dada Burning Event in 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.
Documentary of Xiamen Dada Burning Event in 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.
Documentary of Xiamen Dada Burning Event in 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔: 所以你才把你要燒的作品都留了一塊下來?作為證據?

黃永砯: 不,這個是另外一件事情。我剛說我燒的都是繪畫,但是繪畫為什麼要留下一塊,它是不是個證據呢?談不上證據,後來我也很少拿出來給人家看。既然一張畫被割了一個12厘米乘12厘米以後,就看不出是一張畫了,完全失去了一個繪畫的涵義,根本只是一塊材料。當時的一些照片我沒有燒掉,還有一些複印件,那些我都留著。這個是一個一樣的道理。它太不引人注目了,它不是一個複製性的東西,所謂的複製性的東西基本上都燒了。當然《會響的手槍》沒有燒,為什麼呢, 它是被人偷走的,它很小嘛,一個釘子釘在那就掛在那裡,可能有人覺得好玩就拿走了。那其他東西,譬如說有幾張關於構想的方案稿子放在塑膠袋裡面,這種就沒拿去燒,但這後來也丟掉了。我覺得留下來的東西就更屬於一種觀念性的東西,物質性的東西都燒了。

李雨潔: 這個展覽有被審查嗎?

黃永砯: 沒有。因為什麼呢,當時確實也沒有審查,而且也沒有對外開放,反正看的人也很少。

李雨潔: 這個也是內部觀摩?

黃永砯: 也沒有寫內部觀摩,但是當時出了一份報紙[圖錄],因為當時裡面的其中的一個成員蔡立雄,他在廈門日報工作,所以他有一些門路。他在裡面就用報紙的這個紙印了一下,大概印了那麼一兩千份吧。

李雨潔: 譬如說這個《解剖油畫顏料》,是不是你做的第一個行為?

黃永砯: 你怎麼來界定行為呢,其實這個作品有點像義大利藝術家Lucio Fontana,割一條的動作,這樣一個動作顏料就顯出來了。

Huang Yong Ping. Dissecting Oil Paints. 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔: 你有意識地把解剖的照片也展出了,油畫顏料的剩餘也展出了,好像是記錄一個行為事件的感覺 。但是其實它好像在探索很基本的繪畫問題,因為顏料就是繪畫的材料,就跟你用實物來做作品相似,其實實物也是一種材料。

黃永砯: 沒錯,但是應該清楚,就是那些顏料其實已經長時間不用了,因為當時我已經有好幾年不去動這個油畫顏料了。包括我早期的一些抽象畫,都不是用油畫顏料畫的,都是用油漆,其實這個是延續那種關於噴槍的那個系統來的。還有我做過一個作品,把油畫筆燒焦,當時也可能在展覽裡面把一支油畫筆燒了展出。這些作品更多的可能是在一個潛在的說明,在演繹繪畫,把繪畫的基本的,譬如說工具,顏料,進行一種處理,讓它變得不能正常使用。

「廈門達達——一種後現代?」

李雨潔: 你寫了「廈門達達—一種後現代?」 好像重新創造中式達達的門派,有點像譬如說中國南宗北宗山水畫的歷史,是比照中國禪宗的,南北宗的這種方式來寫的,這是後人杜撰的,不是真的有這件事情。我覺得你好像有在用這個方法⋯

黃永砯: 有意在用這個方法⋯

李雨潔: 那你寫到了這些人,像比方說曼佐尼 (Piero Manzoni),克萊因 (Yves Klein)和凱基 (John Cage),還有杜象 (Marcel Duchamp),都是你比較欣賞的藝術家。但是勞申柏 (Robert Rauschenberg),因為他來了中國,你把他作為一個現成品事件寫進了你的這個文章。因為其實比較之下我覺得像曼佐尼,克萊因,凱基,都比較好地表達了「藝術品是會消逝」的這個概念。但是勞申柏用了很多現成品,他是用了很裝飾性的方式來做,所以我覺得他是跟其他人有點不同。所以你是怎麼樣把他們包括進來的?

黃永砯: 勞申柏當然我還是比較注意的,這跟他在中國展覽會有關係,但我沒去看他的展覽。但是他對他對實物的應用也屬於在我的這個範疇裡面,譬如說勞申柏他是怎麼從一個平面繪畫變成使用實物?還有實物怎麼在一個平面裡面同時共存?我有一些作品的方式跟這個有點接近,所以我還是很注意勞申柏的東西。比方說他用一張床,還有一隻雞在作品裡,是吧。但是基本上,你可以說他是裝飾的,很多作品只不過是一個立體的畫,這個是一個過渡。當時我正在從繪畫想跳出繪畫,這個過程,他正好成為一個橋樑。 所以他對我來說有一定的重要性,放在這個名單裡面。

李雨潔: 你沒有去勞申柏在北京的展覽,但是你有看到那個圖錄?

黃永砯: 圖錄好像也是之後通過什麼其他途徑看到的

Huang Yong Ping. A Note to Robert Rauschenberg. 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔: 所以你做了這個《給勞申柏的備忘錄》,是備忘什麼呀?

黃永砯: 這個題目是不是跟勞申柏有真的關係?也可以說是完全沒有關係。因為當時我用各種各樣的題目,我當時已經開始把題目當作一種畫外的東西。就是讓意義增加的東西。為什麼要用禪宗,這是關於用一些完全不一樣的東西並置在一起,禪宗之於達達它會產生一些新的意義,已經有意識地把一個東方的東西跟一個西方的東西放在一起,一個公認的思想史的名詞跟一個藝術史的一個名詞放在一起。為什麼不把兩個藝術史的名詞放在一起?這也是拉開兩個概念的距離,創造更大的思考空間。這個其實也預設了我以後的工作方式,從這一點到那一點,從這個史到那個史,這個都是有一定的相關的。

把路上的廢棄物搬進美術館展覽

李雨潔: 後來廈門達達作的那個作品改裝,就是《發生在福建省美術展覽館裡面的事件展》,做的看起來好像很隨意,但其實是你們是執行了一個事先想好的計劃,對不對?其中你們還貼了一個文字,闡釋人必須去選擇什麼是藝術,好像很強調觀者參與,然後其中有一行字被館方審查貼掉了。

Installation shots of Exhibition of the Happening in Fujian Art Museum (1986). Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.
Installation shots of Exhibition of the Happening in Fujian Art Museum (1986). Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.
Installation shots of Exhibition of the Happening in Fujian Art Museum (1986). Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

黃永砯: 這個完全是一個籌劃好的。《廈門現代藝術展》展覽以後,可以說當時中國的氣氛還是比較開放的,當時我見到了福建省的美術館他們的館長,他說他們對廈門達達很感興趣,說「你是不是可以把展覽放到這裡來啊?」我們就說好啊。但其實當時燒掉了,我也沒告訴他說我燒掉了,而且我們當時已經想要做一些新的東西,所以這是一個半騙來的一個展覽機會,就是說他們同意了我們把作品搬來,但其實沒作品。我們四個人都去了福州,看了他們的空間,然後規劃了一下。時間很短,當時給了我們大概一個星期的時間,因為這個展覽不是屬於他們正式的一個展覽,是屬於比較開放,可以容納一些實驗型性的東西。我們還特地看了周圍的一些環境,而且還對那些路上的廢棄物進行拍照,都是計劃好的,之後才回到廈門。後來我們回去佈展那天,動作很快,把該運進來的東西都運進來,都指定好了,哪些東西可以用,哪些東西不用,然後還有怎麼組織人馬來抬,東西其實很重。所以佈展是非常之快,像一個突然襲擊。為什麼呢?因為你要快,在他們還沒有做出反應的時候,你已經都弄完了。包括上面出現的一些字,還有什麼圖標啊,都是在廈門做好帶過來的,所以是一個完全有次序的。只不過是今天來看,沒有留下一個平面圖。沒有一個規劃圖,都是在腦子裡。當然有很多隨機的東西:搬進來有些東西都破掉了,有些東西是不能搬的,或者說不夠,再搬,目的就是要把空間整個填滿,就這個目的。而且要速度很快。還有邊上還貼了很多像達達的報紙,有一張紙條是說這個作品是不是藝術品是完全根據觀眾來評價的,所以館方把這個給貼掉了。因為他們美術館會要承擔一些責任,就把它貼掉了。

李雨潔: 所以一開始只是有人把一行字貼掉,然後一個小時半以後,另外一個人說不行,要叫停?

黃永砯: 對,他是館長,他說要關展覽,這個展覽就很快撤了。

李雨潔: 其實之前在群眾美術館,你們焚燒作品沒有被審查?後來在福州的這個事情被審查,好像有點隨機?完全根據當地的長官決定,是很亂的一種狀況。

黃永砯: 就是啊!在中國當然是這樣。而且在焚燒的時候因為是在星期天中午,其實很少觀眾。邊上就有一些人在打球什麼的,我們也沒有通知任何人,只是一些學生過來看,有的是當時是過來幫忙的。所以觀眾是很少的。而且燒的時間也很快,大概就持續半個小時或是四十分鐘就完了。所以燒是沒有引起抗議。本來燒是很容易引起干預的,就像你今天隨便在一個廣場上燒東西,消防隊都可以看到很多的煙,他們就過來關心,因為是在公共場合。那美術館還是不一樣,美術館是他們自己害怕出事,如果他們不害怕,其實有人來看,看不懂也就算了,要等到政府有反應了,也要等好幾天。所有的審查都是自我審查,就美術館的人他們覺得他們承擔不了責任。

占卜

李雨潔: 1983年的時候你寫的一篇文章,「現代繪畫在中國命運之占卜」,好像是你第一次提到占卜這個詞。你對占卜的興趣是從什麼時候開始的?你對占卜的理解是完全從易經來的嗎?

Huang Yong Ping. House of Oracles. 1986. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

黃永砯: 這個可能真的是第一次使用占卜這個詞。但是很多事情是這樣子,當你第一次使用的時候,可能都是比較無意識的,或者說你並不知道使用這個詞的真正的意義在哪裡,那占卜這個詞到後來才變為重要。我有一個1992年的作品叫做「占卜者之屋」,後來在2005年,有一個個展就是用「占卜者之屋」這個作品題目變為展覽題目,其實這個只是說明我某種活動的一個名詞。占卜後來就變成非常地重要,一個來說就是說所謂的占卜就是超出自己的一個能力,借助於另外一個東西,可以來超越自己。而且占卜幾千年前就有了,這裡有一整套非常複雜的系統與傳統,占卜主要是警告你,或者說提出警戒,「你不要做什麼」,但他從來不會給你說「你應該做什麼」。當時我是處在一個我需要有人給我提示「我應該要做什麼」和我「不應該做什麼」。而且占卜有一個很重要的就是他不能所謂的「不二問」, 就是說你不能重複地問。重複問就不靈了,工具就不聽使喚了。就是說,讓你保持跟工具的一個距離。

李雨潔: 你真的學過占卜嗎?

黃永砯: 我沒有啊。我只不過是通過自己看一些書,自己了解一些方法。但這個方法是不是真正的方法?這個我很難說。但是我總是能夠找到一些方法。

李雨潔: 你在寫「現代繪畫在中國命運之占卜」(1983) 的時候,好像做了很多實物的實驗,並且在這個文章裡面,你提到很多門派,像超現實主義,達達主義,野獸派,包浩斯這些。有趣的是這種分門派的方式好像是美國對於歐洲現代主義的角度。這些知識,這些有關藝術史的知識,你是從哪些書裡面得來的?

黃永砯: 這個書肯定不是當時美院教的,關於藝術史,特別是現代的藝術史。但是可以說因為所有的這些信息都是從零零星星的,譬如說當時的各種翻譯,摘譯裡面得來的,所以這個知識都是零散的。

李雨潔: Herbert Read大家都讀得很多,還有Edward Lucie-Smith,你在自己的作品裡引用了這兩個人的書,是不是他們對你有特別的意義?

黃永砯: 沒有。所謂的特別的意義就是說我能得到我就有意義,因為我當時能得到的東西是有限的,所以只能在有限的字眼裡面把它變為有意義。如果當時有更多選擇,我可能會選擇其他東西。但是我覺得這兩本書已經基本上概括了某些重要的知識,是不是?

李雨潔: 後來你到法國才第一次看到杜象的作品,對不對?

黃永砯: 對。我在其他的文章裡面曾經有說過我的想法。我說,原作對我來說並不是特別的重要。所以我到法國以後看到杜象的東西,不會顛覆我對杜象的一個整體的看法。不會說我看了以後我覺得「欸,我以前看到的杜象的東西不是這個樣子的」,「我發現以前錯了」。因為我不是依據眼睛真正看到的東西或是一個真正的實物來形成一個概念,形成一個想像。特別是杜象的東西, 完全是可以通過一些語詞,他的說話,還有一些非常不清楚的模糊的印刷品,你就可以領會他的本質跟精神所在,這個點就是說,他可以游離一種所謂「原作」。當然可能從法國人的角度來看,不太同意這個,因為他們非常注重這個原作的東西跟印刷品跟特別是複製品,可能印刷的很差的,完全不一樣, 但我不看重這些微妙的感受。

轉盤系列

李雨潔: 這邊有一張照片,是1987年在你的工作室的照片,我覺得特別有意思,因為裡面有轉盤,還有一些抽象繪畫,實物。

Huang Yong Ping in his studio in Xiamen in 1987. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping.

黃永砯: 這張照片其實還有一個拍攝的人,他坐在這個裡面,當時他是用慢鏡頭拍的,他變成一個模糊的黑影,辯認不出來。這個工作室當時堆放了很多東西,譬如這一個轉盤,還有很多作品已經毀掉了,比方說這是幾個酒瓶及一個塑料管在一個石膏上,後邊是一張畫。這是自己躺在那邊印出來的一個石膏吧。然後這個腳是自己的腳翻模的。

李雨潔: 你那個時候的作品都有很具象的名字。

黃永砯: 是。但很多東西都沒有留下來。

李雨潔: 你八十年代有三個重要的轉盤,第一個是1985年做的,就是做非表達繪畫的那個轉盤。你是先把畫布分成八等分,然後用也劃分成八等分的轉盤來決定現在要在畫布上哪個等分上畫一筆,這畫一筆的顏料是由骰子去選擇25種顏料中的一種,這25種顏料是你選的,然後把它們編碼?那把畫面分成八等分也是你先規定了一個構圖?

Huang Yong Ping. The First Roulette and the Non-Expressive Paintings. 1985. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

黃永砯: 對,這些都是我事先要有一定的規定性。比方說為什麼要找25種顏料呢,這25種顏料到底是有什麼普遍性或者特殊性?其實25種顏料也是我當時容易找到的。首先這裡面沒有常規的顏料,比方說他沒有油畫,他沒有水粉,大部份是一些油漆,洗筆油,還有一些看上去有點像顏色的東西,其實根本不屬於正規的顏料。

李雨潔: 這個轉盤讓我想到杜象的那個腳踏車輪,放在一個凳子上可以轉。那個原作從來沒有在美術館展過,毀掉之後他的複製品才展過。他在工作室裡面的時候常常轉著這個東西玩,然後欣賞它,所以那個東西有一個功能就是好玩。你的這個轉盤的功能就是幫助你畫畫,但是只有你用過,你沒有想說要完全地去掉你自己主觀的判斷力,讓第二個人去用這個轉盤嗎?

黃永砯: 我覺得也不太現實,為什麼呢?首先,如果有人要去做這個事情,他首先要知道這個程序,或者是說他要再造這個程序,不然他不知道要怎麼用。因為這跟自行車輪的轉動不一樣,你要知道,自行車輪的轉動你只要撥一下他就會一直轉,轉到他停下來,所以這個動作是比較容易的。但是你這個轉盤,你可以轉,他會停下來,那他停下來是說些什麼東西呢?他告訴你什麼東西呢?他幫你什麼事情呢?這個都完全是一灘糊塗的東西。所以說,首先我必須意識到說我要有一個程序,比方說我們用骰子,比方說我們要選25種顏料,這些都是我規定的,我不能否認,但是我為什麼要選25號而不選23號?這個就不是由我來決定,這就是靠我用的這個骰子。骰子他告訴我是7,我就用7明白吧?我用這個轉,這個轉盤上面有一個標誌,就是說指他停下來了,然後停下來,停在哪一個上,有一定的規定。是這個意義上。

李雨潔: 所以這個意義上就造成一種你規定的但是又與你無關的一種結果?

黃永砯:沒錯。

李雨潔: 你只有用這個轉盤做過一個作品?

黃永砯: 用這個轉盤其實是做過五張畫。但是展出過的是四張畫,還有一張是沒有完成的,後來就停下來,就不做了。

李雨潔: 為什麼沒有完成呢?

黃永砯: 不知道!當時就這樣停下來了。就四張,然後就完了,後來這個轉盤也就不再使用了。後來是展覽這四張畫的時候,同時把這個轉盤也展出。

Huang Yong Ping. Large Turntable with Four Wheels. 1987. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.
Huang Yong Ping. Sketch for Large Turntable with Four Wheels. 1987. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔: 但是從1985年的第一個《非表達繪畫》的轉盤,然後1987年的時候有帶四個輪子的《大轉盤》,《跟六走向小轉盤》。 大轉盤就比較複雜了,他有內圈跟外圈,譬如說內圈有64個條目,外圈有384個條目,內圈條目和外圈條目規定了作品的做法,他們要互相配合的。

黃永砯: 對。

李雨潔: 你大轉盤做出來的作品,標題通常都是該條目,可是你好像通常只有給一個條目?譬如說「潮濕的手段」。從「潮溼的手段」這個條目衍伸出很多個作品,但是潮溼的手段是外圈的條目?

黃永砯: 對。

李雨潔: 那的內圈條目不見了?

黃永砯: 內圈條目一般不出現在我作品的題目裡面。 當時其實是這樣子的,內圈條目是作為一個作品的創作背景條件,它是比較潛在的。那外圈是直接拿來做標題。

《西方繪畫簡史》 和《中國繪畫史》在洗衣機中洗了兩分鐘

Huang Yong Ping. Herbert Read’s The History of Western Art and Wang Bomin’s The History of Chinese Painting Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes. 1987. Destroyed. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔:你在1987年12月1號同時作了幾件作品,都叫做「潮溼的手段」因為你把赫伯特·里德 (Herbert Read)的《西方繪畫簡史》跟王伯敏《中國繪畫史》這兩本書在洗衣機中一起洗了兩分鐘,但是其實這個兩分鐘是轉盤上的條目沒有規定的。那你又用洗衣機洗了一張自己的油畫洗了五分鐘。還有一個是把沙包捆綁起來?所以你那天剛好轉到了潮溼的手段,然後就做了很多個作品?

黃永砯: 又轉到第二次。

李雨潔: 你在做大轉盤作品的時候也需要很多主觀的判斷才能完成?

黃永砯: 對,我覺得大轉盤沒有像非表達繪畫這個轉盤的規定那麼死:一個是限制沒有那麼嚴格,還有一個他範圍要寬。其實他的目的不在限制,這個大轉盤的目的在擴張各種各樣的想法,這些想法之間有沒有條理,這個是不在我關心的範圍。它不只制訂一個系統,是想要超越一些系統,應該這樣來理解。

李雨潔: 但是有沒有有些時候你轉到某一個條目,發現你今天沒靈感做不出來,你就放棄了?

黃永砯: 嗯,會有的。從一些可以找到的我的筆記裡面,關於轉盤的作品,其實不止我們看到那些,有一些是沒做的但是我有記錄。將來可能有機會的話,可能會把這些東西整理整理,跟這個轉盤一起展出,我覺得這樣可能會更有意義,但是這需要一些時間。

李雨潔: 《六走向小轉盤》有沒有做出相關的作品。

Huang Yong Ping. Roulette Wheel with Six Criteria. 1988. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

黃永砯: 《六走向小轉盤》是沒有的,這個是88年做的作品,為了大地魔術師(Margiciens de la terre)這個展覽。我當時已經被邀請,我正在考慮這個展覽的方案,所以它其實是為這個展覽作的,但是我從來沒有使用它來做作品過。而且放在一個旅行箱裡面,後來就拿去參加了一個1989年2月份在中國美術館的一個展覽。

李雨潔: 什麼時候開始停止用轉盤做作品?

黃永砯: 其實到了法國以後,92年《占卜者之屋》作品裡面還有一個大的轉盤。是一個像年曆一樣的東西,這個功能也是轉盤。樹了這個年柱,還有下面的幾個盤,譬如說夜,日,還有時間,它是屬於占卜的轉盤,可以使用八字生辰來占卜。這個作品後來發展到一個轉盤車,轉盤車另外有一個題目叫做《六十甲子車》。

Huang Yong Ping. Sixty-Year Cycle Chariot. 1999-2000. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔: 但是這兩樣東西的目的不是占卜藝術,而是占卜生活,是不是?

黃永砯: 基本上還是跟藝術有關係。當然還有一些更小的一些轉盤是一個1991年的《小賭盤》,用來談作品的價格。

Huang Yong Ping. Little Gambling Turntable. 1991. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and the Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔: 這個占卜價格的轉盤有真的使用過嗎?

黃永砯: 沒有使用過,沒有人會跟我玩這個遊戲,我覺得這個不成問題。這個轉盤是不是可以玩,我覺得問題不大。我這個作品只不過是提了一個問題,就是關於作品的價格怎麼樣才是合適的?

洗書

李雨潔: 你後來做了很多有關洗書的系列。藏書計劃裡面有些書對你來講應該是有特殊意義的,譬如說《純粹理性批判》,還有你當時在看的一些有關美學的書。你洗了很多書,那你洗書的選擇都是什麼?

黃永砯: 其實《藏書計劃》有一張照片是地上一攤書,那就是我書架上的書。我當時買了很多書,美學的書倒是沒拿去洗,美學的書很多我是用膠水黏起來的,雖然我買了很多美學的書,後來我基本上拒絕去看這些書。這些書是不是全部看完以後才被黏起來的?我不是很確定,但是有一些確實看過。一般來說,沒有用的東西洗了就沒有意義。特別是一些比較小件的,譬如說康德《純粹理性批判》,這些都是有象徵意義的,不是隨便洗的。當然後來有很多書就是作為作品的材料, 譬如說我後來也有用報紙洗,那需要很多的量,那是另外一件事情。

Huang Yong Ping. Reptile. 1989. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and the Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔: 到法國做的那個大地魔術師的作品,為什麼改洗報紙?

黃永砯: 這個道理是非常簡單的。因為它已經轉變為一種材料, 而且這個作品需要一個大量的好幾噸的紙,不是幾本書所能夠解決的問題。

李雨潔: 你好像是選擇了法國共產主義的報紙?

黃永砯: 也有一些解放報,當時沒有完全指定是專門的一家報紙,我沒有這樣指定,我是泛指當時的媒體文化。

李雨潔: 所以到這時候報紙已經變成一種雕塑的材料?

黃永砯: 裝置的材料。可這個其實已經預告了後來工作的一個方式,所有的東西都是通過草圖先探討,最後變為一個實體作品。

躲避美術館

李雨潔: 你在出國之前參加的《中國現代藝術展》,它原本是要在1987年實現的,叫做《各地青年藝術家學術交流展》。原本那個時候你們工作的程序是怎麼樣呢?你們是被組織者邀請,還是是徴件?

黃永砯: 《中國現代藝術展》 一開始沒有一個組織, 都是一些自發的,各個地方的活動。有一些人是搞理論的,他們有報紙還有雜誌。一開始他們在珠海搞了一個所謂幻燈展,後來搞了一個黃山會議,黃山會議是什麼呢?就是他們給各地藝術家,寫些信說你們能不能來參加,帶一些幻燈片來,在會場放一放。然後在這個黃山會議上,其實已經在討論說要組織一個全國性的展覽。但是這個展覽到底是怎麼做呢?這都在爭論,當然也不存在什麼徴件,因為這些人與大家都很熟,譬如說高名潞,栗憲庭,費大為,我都見過,他們都是屬於策展的小組成員,很長一段時間我們都通信。然後他們沒有規定藝術家要展什麼東西,我們廈門達達有提一些方案,但有一些方案是做不了的。他們也沒有經費,所以也不可能把作品從廈門運到北京,我們基本上捲了一些照片帶去,我把六走向小轉盤放在一個箱子裡面,這箱子原本的作用也是讓我坐火車的時候可以帶,這些東西都是輕便的。有一些計劃,譬如說在那邊要拖美術館,要撒什麼大米,都不能做的。最後能做的就是貼些照片,還有展出一些輕便的東西。

李雨潔: 你是不是有一個方案要油印空白紙,然後在廁所裡面展覽?有一個提到說要殺豬?

黃永砯: 當時是所謂的「廈門達達」小組一起討論出來的方案,但這個最後的文稿是我組織的。當時的會談的記錄也沒有,只不過是大家坐在那邊聊天,我也很難記住這個殺豬到底是什麼人提的,是誰提出這個那麼壞的主意?我覺得這些可能性都是有意義的,是不是要實施?這是另外一件事情。我覺得那個展覽所有的東西都在挑釁,是吧?但是當時的展覽,廈門達達挑釁是最少的。其實從動作上,它是最少的,倒是別人真的是挑釁的,廈門達達只是把這些有挑釁的想法放在一個文本裡面。

李雨潔: 你在一篇筆記裡面好像也有提到這種擔憂,你們為了解除展覽作為權勢之爭的遊戲,想了一些激烈的方案,但是這樣反而進入另外一種權勢之爭。

黃永砯: 所以我們的一個計劃叫做「躲避」,其實這是一個矛盾的詞,因為你受邀請參加這個美術館,卻是要躲避這個美術館,這是一個悖論。你怎麼能夠既參加又躲避?又進去,又逃出?就在談這個觀念。我覺得這個觀念在當時還是第一次有人這麼提。因為所有人都是說要挑釁,而且這個氣氛就是挑釁,所以後來才出現開槍。這個關於權勢的文章是展覽之後我寫的,另外一篇文章,有關躲避美術館,這個計劃是早一點的時候,1988年寫的。

李雨潔: 具體要怎麼躲避呢?

黃永砯: 提出了一些方案,例如在不是展覽的空間展覽,這就是一個躲避的方式。譬如說在廁所,在過道,在樓梯,不是在正廳,不是在一個引人注目的空間,譬如說你為什麼要撒米,這米是不容易被注意的,因為所有人注意的都是引人注目的東西。但是這些更多的是當時我個人當時的一些想法。

Xiamen Dada Group. Dragging an Art Museum. 1989. © Photo courtesy the artist and the Asia Art Archive.
Xiamen Dada Group. Dragging an Art Museum. 1989. © Photo courtesy the artist and the Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔: 後來選擇的是《拖美術館》的計劃?

黃永砯: 《拖美術館》計劃也沒有實現,這個拖美術館是單獨寄給展覽組織者,單獨寄給他們說需要這些材料,大概要有幾個柱子,需要什麼東西,要有一個描述,。但是這個沒有下文,也沒實現。

李雨潔: 你對肖魯開槍有什麼看法。

黃永砯: 槍響的時後我不在場,這個槍響之前已經有很多的混亂,我當時我對於在北京這個展覽,該做什麼事情我很清楚,我已經準備躲避了,遠離這個圈子。在黃山會議我已經知道這個圈子是權力慾,大家都來爭名利,有點像農民起義,爭奪座位。開槍是最極端的了,然而藝術家在關於藝術這個行當裡面,特別是這個先鋒藝術,前衛藝術,這些極端應該怎麼來界定?我覺得關於藝術的思考其實是關於更多的人的思考,關於你要做什麼,你該做什麼,你作為一個藝術家,你要達到什麼東西? 當時我也知道我很快就要去法國,我當然不至於做極端的實情,讓自己在那個時候被抓起來,但我也不知道去法國會怎麼樣,我也可能馬上就回來廈門。但是當時特別是廈門達達這些極端的行為做完以後,我已經開始思考一些極端之後的工作,關於極端化以後的出路 。《中國現代藝術展》開槍之前,譬如說有藝術家在洗腳,在孵蛋,撒什麼避孕套,已經是烏烟瘴氣了。這個中國的前衛藝術已經進入到一種主要是以騷亂為主,但是騷亂,我已經說了,達達主義一開始的目標就是要引起混亂,這方面的工作廈門達達已經做過了,我已經不要再進行新的騷亂了,我應該考慮新的工作。 藝術除了這個之外,還有沒有其他的可能性?這個已經是我在重新思考的。

李雨潔: 你是1989年四月的時候去巴黎參加《大地魔術師》嗎?在那邊待到六月初的時候發生了天安門事件?那沈遠老師呢?

黃永砯: 她是遲了一點,90年來。當時也是我們通過一些《大地魔術師》展覽裡面認識的朋友,還有當時我在Provence美院的一些關係,朋友都幫忙寫邀請信什麼的,需要很多條件,相當困難。以我個人的生活準則來說,我就是隨遇而安,因為我是個被動性的人,這可能跟我以前所謂的一些藝術上的一些想法有關係。 譬如說90年代歐洲有很多的展覽邀請我,然後我就留下來,沒有考慮太多。當我還沒有明白怎麼回事的時候,已經過去了二十幾年,事情就是這樣,是不是?譬如說到法國,也不是我的一個選擇,不是說我已經設計好了我要移民這裡,或者說是換一個社會生活,這些都是機會,只不過我順從各種各樣的機會。

黃禍:住在中國與法國的藝術家

李雨潔: 搬到法國之後,1993年你開始做有關動物的作品,例如「橋」還有「世界劇場」, 你好像一直對爬蟲,蛇還有蟲很有興趣?這種興趣是來自於這些動物象徵的涵義?

黃永砯: 從今天的角度來說,其實我用了一個最大範圍的,不同種類的動物來作作品。最早的使用活的動物是1993年在牛津《黃禍》那個作品,後來就緊接著1994年在舊金山又用了活的烏龜。 在牛津的那個《黃禍》大概用了一千隻蝗蟲,放在美術館的入口的地方。但是這個展覽沒有因為動物保護的問題而關掉,是有問題,但是這裡的動物不構成一個真正的問題,為什麼呢,蝗蟲都是爬在牆上面,只不過幾隻掉下來,地上的蠍子可以抓到來吃,他們彼此很少能夠接觸。而且我想展覽沒有很長吧,大概是一個多月。

李雨潔: 但是它沒有完全審查?就是沒有說你不能用蟲?

黃永砯: 沒有。

李雨潔: 《世界劇場》的狀況就很不同。你在一個烏龜形狀的箱子裡面關了蠍子,還有各種蟲,有蠍子,蜘蛛,蟋蟀等等,讓他們自相殘殺,引起很多爭議。

黃永砯: 第一次展《世界劇場》在斯圖加特(Stuttgartt),沒有審查,因為是在德國的斯圖加特的孤獨城堡 Schloss Solitude, 那個地方供藝術家駐村幾個月,有一個過道,藝術家有一點點小空間做一點展覽。所以是給少數人看的,不引起爭論 。 後來實現的一次在巴黎,一次在阿姆斯特丹,還有在Walker Art Center,一次在北京。有幾次叫停,出問題的其中一次在溫哥華,一次在巴黎龐畢度中心 。龐畢度那個是一個很大的集體展覽,當時龐畢度的工作人員已經知道有這麼一個計劃,他們寫了很多抗議書給龐畢度的館長,後來引起了法國的動物保護協會的反對,他們的主席是一個以前很有名的一個演員,他也寫了一封很正式的信給龐畢度中心抗議這件事情。後來巴黎市的警察局出面了,其中動物保護協會提出訴訟。這些我是不在場的,是他們的律師去弄的。關於這個事件,有一個法國的社會學家曾經寫過一本書,書裡面有一篇文章談論到這個作品,談關於藝術作品被審查的問題,很多這些也是我事後才知道。

Huang Yong Ping. Theater of the World. 1993. © 2015 Huang Yong Ping. Photo courtesy the artist and the Asia Art Archive.

李雨潔: 很多人說有些作品在中國可以做,在其他地方不能做。你可不可以比較一下這些審查制度跟當地的現當代藝術的接受度的關係?

黃永砯: 這個審查制度,分開來說,一個是屬於關於民主社會的,還有一個關於非民主社會的。譬如說以前八十年代我在中國的時候有一些審查,這些審查呢,當然有一些是涉及到關於觀念上的東西,還有譬如說意識形態上面的東西。因為意識形態規定什麼東西是可以表現的, 什麼是不能表現的。但我們今天,譬如說在民主社會,當然在意識形態上已經不存在這個東西,有另外一些安全的限制,比方說我碰到的動物的問題,他們對動物保護的看法有這麼一些界線是不能觸犯的。比方說展覽單位他們就非常小心,他們不希望觸犯這個東西。所以各種審查從總體上說對我的作品,我覺得是積極的。我們換個說法,我們必須要感激敵對者,我們經常會為了工作需要,需要製造一個對立面,這些東西都是正面的,我們不能把審查當做一個完全是負面的東西。因為就我個人的經歷,有一些審查使我產生了一些新的東西。但是我覺得應該劃分清楚,不是為了觸犯而觸犯,這個是又回到一開始我就說到關於80年代末期中國的當代藝術的一些關於要肆意挑起一些挑釁。比方說我在作品中用蟲,我並沒有想到說這個蟲真的會引起紛爭,那麼小的東西,而且也是正常途徑買來的,商店他們都在賣,只不過是方式不一樣。譬如說他們賣的是一個盒子一個盒子的,那也有人買去養啊,那我只不過把盒子變成了一個大盒子,是吧?蟲沒有跑出來, 我也沒有覺得這個蟲影響到別人的安全,也沒有說要特地造成他們的殘酷。因為在我看來,蝗蟲在商店裡面是養的,是為了給蠍子吃的,所有的小蟲是為了讓大蟲能夠活才專門在那邊賣的,只不過是讓他們吃的時候不是在公眾,不在展覽,而是在私下的方式。當時做這個作品的時候,我的用意完全不在於他們的殘酷性,而是用動物的世界來作一個比喻,他們代表很多不同種類的人,他們是不可以共同生活的,那他們共同生活情況怎麼樣? 所以叫世界劇場,這也是一個社會的隱喻。我覺得作品的意義在提出一些問題,而不是在提出向他們說的這個什麼殘酷不殘酷。譬如說龐畢度那件作品,為什麼會比展出更多的關注,因為邊上還有很多他們展出的文件。譬如說抗議書,這些抗議書,還有當時的政府的文件, 還有他們龐畢度主席跟策展人對這些的回應,他們的態度給了作品新的視野,擴大了作品 。這不是不是藝術家刻意的,而是一些意外的東西。

李雨潔: 你對你今天作為一個生活在中國還有法國的藝術家定位是什麼

黃永砯: 我的工作經常被比較的有兩個方面,一個是在中國,一個是在國外。而且經常會被這麼認為: 我在中國國內好像有很多東西可做,比方說今天的這個訪談,可能有大部分是很具體談到我中國的工作,是吧?但我在西方已經進行了25年的工作了,在廈門,你說作品從1984年開始吧,到1989年,才6年。我覺得前段部分對我來說,只不過是一個學習的過程,我們說得簡單一點,可能人家會認為是個模仿的過程。當然我的疑問在這裡,為什麼我在法國25年做的事情比較少人關心? 凡是在一個所謂的不開放的一個地方,它的意義完全是在它的背景的封閉性,才引起一個注目。是這樣嗎?還要回到我剛才說的,如果我沒有後來的工作,我難道在中國六年的東西就能夠存在嗎? 比方說廈門達達不是只有我一個人在做啊,也有五六個人在做,後來我走了以後他們也停下來了,他們沒有再繼續。為什麼他們的工作就被認為沒有意義呢? 我覺得我出國前的東西跟出國後的東西, 不能完全割離開來,有很多東西是建立在之前的工作基礎上。我為什麼今天仍然在工作呢?因為工作就是生命之所在,是生活之所在,意義之所在,因為活著,工作。

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