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The Chinese Experimental Ink and Wash Seen from
the Angle of the History of Art and the History of Ideology
Pi Daojian - Professor at Huanan Normal
University, Art Critic
I. The academic
contention about the problem of ink and wash which has gone on
for almost a century and the unceasing innovation of ink and wash
parallel with it are two of the most thought-provoking phenomena
in Chinese culture in the 20th Century.
When in 1910 Jin Shaocheng founded the Researching
Society of Traditional Chinese Painting which was opposed
to doing anything unconventional or incorporating Western techniques,
and in 1917 Kang Youwei appealed to the public in his "Preface
to the Catalogue of the Collection of Wanmu Caotang"
that "if we still stick to old ways and refuse to make
a change, Chinese painting will surely become extinct"
and maintained that "we should open a new epoch of painting
by combining the Chinese techniques with the Western ones",
the prelude to the debate about traditional Chinese painting in
this century started. From the 1920s to the 1940s, the contradiction
and conflict between the so-called schools of "back to
the ancients", "making new creations"
and "eclecticism" never ceased. During this
period Xu Beihong's proposition of "reforming
the traditional Chinese painting" and Gao Qifeng
and some others' view about the "New Chinese Painting"
were put forward successively and were put into practice. In the
1950s, soon after the founding of the People's Republic of China,
the discussion about the reform and innovation of traditional
Chinese painting occurred. When this discussion became in the
1960s the debate about the catharsis of Shi Lu, the key person
of the "Chang'an School", with the ink and
brushwork as the media, characterized by "roughness,
weirdness, disorder and blackness", people began to
think about the modern transformation of the language of ink and
wash. Thus the debate about the problem of ink and wash started
in the first half of the century in response to the impact of
the Western culture began its substantial progress from the external
to the internal, from the social political level to the cultural
and psychological level. It is a pity that the "unprecedented"
"great cultural revolution" broke off this
discussion about the problem of the brushwork and ink-applying
technique of traditional Chinese painting which was gaining in
its academic level and theoretical value.
The heated contention about the future and the destiny of traditional
Chinese painting aroused by the publication of Li Xiaoshan's
"Contemporary Traditional Chinese Painting in My Opinion"
in the 1980s was an debate about the problem of traditional Chinese
painting in an unprecedented scale in the historical situation
of opening up. It deserves of attention that in this debate the
concept of "Chinese painting" or "traditional
Chinese painting" which had been used for nearly half
a century began to change to that of the "ink and wash
painting". It seemed that more and more people believed
that the concept of "ink and wash" conforms to the actual
situation of the modern transformation of traditional Chinese
painting better than that of "traditional Chinese painting".
It is generally believed that this debate, like that which occurred
at the beginning of the century, is the result of the impact of
the Western culture on the traditional Chinese culture. Seen from
today's viewpoint, just like the discussion about the problem
of brushwork and ink-applying technique broken off by the "great
cultural revolution", its real impetus comes from within
the Chinese society and the Chinese culture: art has shouldered
the mission entrusted to it by the changing era. For the new trend
of ink and wash concurrent with this debate, the ideas and manners
of the modern Western art are nothing but the means and instruments
it has borrowed. The same is true of the "new literary
painting" which appeared shortly later in response to
the '85 new trend art. They are a kind of self adjustment of the
modern Chinese art which began in the mid-1980s, or a partial
self adjustment of the Chinese cultural tradition in its modernization
drive. Their impetus of evolution still comes from within the
Chinese society and the Chinese culture.
Thus it is not difficult to understand why the last climax of
the debate about the problem of ink and wash in the 20th century
——the rise of the experimental ink and wash artists
in mainland China and the academic contention and theoretical
exploration around the creation of experimental ink and wash——becomes
a cultural problem in China at the end of the century. That is
to say, the art of experimental ink and wash, consisting of abstract
ink and wash and expressive ink and wash, which was active in
the art circles in mainland China in the 1990s, was both the logical
result of the development of art history and the result of the
interaction between the modernization drive of the Chinese society
and the modern transformation of the Chinese culture. The reason
why it becomes a present cultural problem lies in the fact that
the appearance of the experimental ink and wash is connected both
with the modern transformation of the traditional Chinese culture
and with the means and the way through which the contemporary
Chinese culture may enter the pattern of world culture. It is
interesting that the subject of the debate about the problem of
Chinese ink and wash in the 1990s was neither the "traditional
Chinese painting" nor the "ink and wash painting",
but the "modern art of ink and wash". Here
we can see something of the change of the cultural situation.
The traditional boundary between "traditional Chinese
painting" and "ink and wash" becomes
more and more indistinct, and more and more Western artistic modes
(installment, performance, ideals, videos) have been adopted by
some young avant-garde artists; the infiltration and transplant
of the ideas and manners of the Western modern and post-modern
art into the traditional Chinese ink and wash is no longer unimaginably
queer. Only that the media of "ink and wash" still take
root steadily in contemporary Chinese art circles as a symbol
of the spirit of the traditional Chinese culture. It may be said
that the "ink and wash complex" latent in Chinese art
circles becomes so strong in the special cultural situation at
the end of the century that it seems indissoluble for ever.
II. When we glance in retrospect over the Chinese
culture in the past one hundred years at the turn of the century,
we can see not only many thought-provoking points in the debate
about the problem of ink and wash painting, but also unprecedented
gigantic achievements due to the transformation and development
of Chinese ink and wash in the 20th century. These achievements
are mainly embodied in two important aspects:
1. A group of great masters of ink and wash have emerged who are
closely associated with this century. The name of each great master
represents a splendid artistic achievement, and these achievements
constitute the history of the modern transformation of traditional
Chinese ink and wash painting in the 20th century.
2. The diversified artistic pattern in the development of ink
and wash has been formed. Beginning from the 1990s, the field
of ink and wash consists of three types: the brushwork and ink-applying
technique school which purely follows the tradition, the academic
school which uses the Western realistic painting and modern language
of painting for reference, and the experimental ink and wash which
appropriates the Western modern and post-modern artistic experience.
It should be said that the latter aspect is more important. It
has made the contemporary field of ink and wash a modern system
of ink and wash with the internal impetus that unceasingly pushes
it toward modern mode. In this system, the three types or orientations
have by no means formed a situation of tripartite confrontation.
The traditional brushwork and ink-applying technique school is
declining, the academic school holds a central position and becomes
the mainstream, and the experimental ink and wash has just entered
the margin from a disreputable position. The boundaries between
them are not very distinct and there is something of each in the
other. However, their differences are obvious, and it is these
differences that constitute the internal tension of the system
of ink and wash and endow it with an internal impetus which pushes
it toward the modern mode: the brushwork and ink-applying technique
school is connected with the traditional culture and conveys the
cultural resources; the academic ink and wash, incorporating things
at all times and in all lands, is the most important cultural
vehicle of the spirit of traditional ink and wash at present;
the experimental ink and wash, though seemingly alien to the traditional
ink and wash, is in essence still within the Chinese cultural
tradition, and it is through its antagonism against the purely
westernized artistic mode that it has won for the art of ink and
wash its status and position in contemporary art and makes it
possible for the spirit of the ink and wash culture to be handed
down in contemporary art.
III. Since
the experimental ink and wash of the 1990s is the last of the
important links of the modern transformation of the Chinese ink
and wash in the 20th century and is the artistic expression, based
on local culture, of the rich content containing the psychological
structure and the collective unconsciousness of the contemporary
Chinese society, criticism should be directed straight at the
works of the experimental ink and wash themselves instead of merely
quibbling over such nonessential problems as that of the experimental
ink and wash and its cultural status. As a matter of fact, so
long as we treat the works of experimental ink and wash seriously,
it is not difficult to realize that, as a kind of modern discourse
in present China, many works of experimental ink and wash indeed
reflect the great changes of the relation between man and nature
and between man and society in present China and the profound
changes at the level of individual psychology brought about by
these changes.
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Liu
Zijian
Wings and Feathers Flying in the Cosmos No.2
2002
Ink on Rice Paper
485 x 176 cm |
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As
what is said above, seen from the logic of the development
of art history and its internal connection, it can be said
that the Chinese experimental ink and wash (including expressive
ink and wash and abstract ink and wash) in the 1990s started
from the "Chang'an School" in the 1960s.
When looking back at its place of departure Chang'an, the
modern ink and wash of the 1990s immediately found that
it had already traveled a long way from there. Among the
experimental ink and wash painters of the 1990s, Shi Guo
was most directly connected with the "Chang'an
School" which had ruled the domain of ink and
wash in the 1960s. Although seen superficially the works
by Shi Guo are still quite different even from some works
by Shi Lu in the 1970s in which abstract factors are already
remarkable, it is not hard to discern the "blood relationship"
in art between them. We have every reason to say that this
is a typical instance of the assertion that "the
Chinese experimental ink and wash in the 1990s started from
the Chang'an School in the 1960s". However, Shi
Guo is representative of experimental ink and wash artists
of the 1990s not so much in that the black and white images
he created distinguished by the thick and broad black frames,
incomplete ink strokes and masses of ink and wash are distinct
and not substitutable in style and systematic and complete
in its language of techniques as in that the "pure
personal ultimate pursuit" (according to the painter's
notes) he devotes himself to through his experiments in
ink and wash with a clear aim involves both the fondness
of the value of native traditional culture and the curiosity
about the possibilities of the cultural characters opposite
to those of the native culture. It should be said that the
latter has the more profound internal character of culture
and times. Compared with his father, the famous painter
Shi Lu's depressing, abnormal, unrestrained
and fantastic expression in ink and wash, Shi Guo's
new schemata of ink and wash obvious possess much wider
field of vision of the world culture and more profound and
complex historical and cultural connotations.As far as the
originality of the abstract schemata of ink and wash is
concerned, Liu Zijian and Zhang Yu are,
like Shi Guo, conspicuous in the field
of experimental ink and wash of the 1990s. However, they
are different in the schemata of ink and wash and the language
of techniques. In Liu Zijian's dark space,
the combination of large areas of spilled ink, collage and
rubbing results in the soul-stirring dynamic feeling and
whistle of the objects floating in disorder. On the contrary,
in his Divine Light Series, Zhang Yu
depicts the suspending broken squares and the floating incomplete
circles with subtle variations of ink and wash in the hope
that the appearance of divine light would lead the mortals
to attain holiness. |
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Wei
Qingji
Object and Image No.8
1999
Ink on Rice Paper
58 x 52 cm |
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Wei Qingji is
representative of the youngest generation of abstract ink
and wash painters. In his abstract ink and wash paintings,
he uses some non-ink-and-wash instruments and materials with
facility to express his experience of life and so proves to
us the openness and limitlessness of the language space of
modern ink and wash.
Obviously, we have no reason to allow the fear of the subversiveness
of new art some people have to affect and hinder the dialogue
between new criticism and new art. On the contrary, since
experimental ink and wash has already become a real language
event in the present cultural context, and since the discourse
of ink and wash is no longer the prescriptive speech and the
speech of appraisal, but is full of various possibilities,
we have every reason to encourage the dialogue and exchange
between new criticism and new art, and establish jointly the
modern character of our culture through this dialogue and
exchange. |
Thanks to Red Gate
Gallery - Beijing
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