The Revival of Tradition:
New Literati Painting and Experimental Ink and Wash
New Literati Painting
According to the explanations of its participants, the phenomenon called ‘new literati painting’ (xin wenren hua) began in the mid- to late-1980s, just when theoretical circles were engaged in an all-out assault on ‘tradition’. The despair occasioned by Li Xiaoshan’s conclusion about the future of Chinese painting filled most new wave artists, however, with a sense of exultation, even though they had not at this time yet completed any conscientious, or intellectually rigorous, ‘clean-up’ of the ‘tradition’. Up until 1989, avant-garde artists and critics did not pay sufficient attention to traditional painting.
The ability to freely discuss and expound ‘new literati painting’ which approximated traditional literati-artist painting (or literati painting) in its artistic ‘interest’ obviously came about because of the space and conditions provided by the movement of intellectual emancipation in the 1980s. Before 1976, any fresh new discourse or veneration concerning traditional poetry, calligraphy, painting and seals could readily be construed as a manifestation of decadent and moribund thought, and painters in this tradition faced the real possibility of being branded as ‘enemies of the people’, a basic fact demonstrated by the tragedy of Pan Tianshou. After the reform and opening-up, painters won the possibility of being able to create freely and, in cultural thought and ideology, such ‘old’ aesthetic concepts as ya (‘refinement’), qu (‘taste’), qing (‘purity’), gao (‘loftiness’), yi (‘ease’), qi (‘breath’), gu (‘detachment’) and ji (‘lonely’), which related to spiritual states and had once being condemned, were now instinctively assessed as positive virtues by some painters, who in that period of confusion created by the new wave artists, also began to wield brush and ink with little hesitation.
Bergson’s concept of ‘duration’ might have effectively encapsulated the reasons why ‘new literati painting’ emerged, this being a country with a long tradition of calligraphy and painting, but there was only the most slender possibility that a tradition dating back to the Five Dynasties and Song periods would continue. Assessing the ages and experience of the painters regarded as being in the ranks of the ‘new literati painters’, we find that almost none of them had been undergone any formal training in traditional calligraphy and painting or in traditional knowledge systems, and the shared background of painters engaged in ‘new literati painting’ was the history of political and ideological critique from 1949 onwards. However, political life and the social life that went with it could still not erase the gaps in feeling, enquiry and interest, yet at any moment it was possible that, to some degree at least, those youths in whose veins the blood of their ancestors coursed might recover something of the old feelings and interests. Zhu Xinjian pointed out that in that age of political struggle, although some traditional Chinese ethical standards such as loyalty, filial piety, and righteousness might have been discarded and classics such as the Four Books, Five Classics, The Three Character Primer, and One Thousand Character Primer were no longer reading material, traditional culture always continued to be perpetuated through the minutiae of social life and to exist in the traditions of folk life. He had this to say in discussing Qi Baishi:
Perhaps his paintings are not sufficiently ideal in perpetuating the contextual lifeblood of the tradition. But this is his very strong point because he opens up another road, by relying mainly upon his own feelings, and not on perpetuating the traditional context of brush and ink. I was used to seeing Qi Baishi’s illustrations on spittoons, exercise books and pencil boxes, and his paintings in jet black ink of shrimp larvae, crabs and morning glory plants made me feel that he could create a painting with just several brush strokes. I remember that the magazines we read as children, such as Childhood, Little Friend, and Juvenile Literature and Art, generally had works by some older painter on the front and back covers, and this actually also functioned at this time as a mode of cultural transmission. [1]
Such absorption of elements of traditional culture tended to provide the basic background shared by all these ‘new literati painters’.
In April 1989, the Chinese New Literati Painting Exhibition was jointly staged by the Institute of Fine Arts of the China Art Research Academy and the Hong Kong International Culture Science and Technology Exchange Centre in the China Art Gallery, and 125 works by 25 painters from Nanjing, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and Guangxi were exhibited. At a time when new wave art appeared to be somewhat enervated, this traditional-style Chinese painting with its interesting use of brush and ink seemed fresh. In the seminar on Chinese new literati painting held in conjunction with the exhibition, critics recognized the phenomenon that saw a large number of painters rediscovering the artistic interests of the ancients as ‘a cultural phenomenon within contemporary art’. In his article surveying the field and titled ‘New Literati Painting: A Cultural Phenomenon Reflecting Widely Differing Views’, Yin Shuangxi evaluated the different views of the trend offered up by critics.[2] According to Shui Tianzhong, it could be imagined that at a time when the term ‘tradition’ had come to indicate something that was psychologically unpleasant, critics were obviously unwilling to regard the painting of this time as well as traditional ancient painting as things which were of no difference and they warned painters that they must conscientiously develop a historical consciousness regarding Chinese society and its cultural development and that on the conceptual and ideological levels they were in the front ranks of the entire culture. Even so, critics still found it difficult to indicate the demarcation line distinguishing ‘new literati painting’ from traditional ‘literati-artist paintings’. The history of using traditional tools to conduct a reform of painting realism began with Xu Beihong, even though many painters before him had to varying degrees altered traditional painting. It was from after 1949, with the beginnings of ‘the transformation of Chinese-style painting’ (gaizao Zhongguo-hua), until the Cultural Revolution that realist Chinese painting made advances in terms of skills and techniques. However, the reflection theory and the stance of reproduction which had both sustained ‘realism’ had lost their political basis after 1976 and ‘realist’ traditional Chinese painting declined rapidly. In the vigorous ’85 movement, avant-garde artists used traditional materials to engage in experiments with abstract ink and wash, even though completely disregarding the traditions of brush and ink, by seeking to unflinchingly combine abstract ink and wash expression and Western painting. Such attitudes and expression seemed improper to persons familiar with traditional painting. In this way, ‘new literati painting’ also came to be regarded as a rigorous review of the tradition, and a search for the temperament of the tradition. Critics such as Liu Xiaochun regarded the emergence of ‘new literati painting’ as a recalibration of realist ink and wash and as a supplement to ink and wash painting. In the works of Chang Jin, Chen Ping and Jiang Hongwei, the critic Lang Shaojun could discern ‘consummation’ and ‘refinement’, and he even regarded the ‘new literati painting’ as ‘an intellectual reform that entailed a return to the ancients’. Obviously, the older art historian Xue Yongnian (b.1941), in expressing praise for the trends exemplified by ‘new literati painting’, stressed that with the ‘new literati painting’ art must ‘embody the realization of spiritual freedom’, which distinguished it from the strong political utilitarianism that characterized much of the art of the ’85 new wave. In this way, he readily came to acknowledge the ‘leisurely’ states expressed through ‘new literati painting’ and saw this state of mind as ‘one of the means for realizing spiritual freedom’.
The main defender of ‘new literati painting’ was Chen Shouxiang (b.1944), although he was unwilling to regard paintings generally regarded as having traditional artistic interest as a spontaneous or superficial phenomenon. He noted that, even though ‘new literati painting took shape within the Chinese contemporary art scene and received wide recognition after the mid-1980s, the ideas and enquiries of new literati painting had been held in check and delayed in various ways for more than half a century. Particularly after the last stage of the reform of Chinese society which took place in the last quarter of the century, new literati painting served as an advocacy of painting and a cultural quest, making it ‘one of the most sober and outstanding mainstreams in the development of Chinese painting’. In his article titled ‘The New Synthesis’, he reviewed the characteristics of the evolution that had taken place in China from the time of its invasion by the Eight Power Expeditionary Force 1900 to the contemporary reform and opening-up. Through this historical retrospective of the basic background of painters in the traditional Chinese style faced, he concluded:
If we simply summarize the nature of the four periods of development in Chinese painting and Chinese social change in this century, we can label them as ‘revolution, war, political movements and reconstruction’. From the perspective of the basic attitudes towards Chinese painting and Chinese culture, we discern the inevitability of history as the shift from overthrow to transformation and from restoration to development.[3]
This was a determinist and cyclical historical description and Chen Shouxiang who was the representative of ‘new literati painting’ in both theory and practice was convinced that a glorious tradition was about to be reborn. At the same time, in this historical narration, we can see that Chen was little satisfied by the results of the practice of traditional Chinese painting in any particular period of history and, moreover, he expressed approval for the ‘ethnic nature, mass nature and temporal nature’ of Chinese painting in its period of transformation. In general, he sought to express how Chinese painting has not ‘come to a dead-end’ and is again ‘on the ascendant’.
Beginning with the first exhibition of Chinese new literati painting in 1989, painters annually held exhibitions and provided classical conceptual themes for these: ‘the way is beneath our feet’ (dao zai zuxia); ‘self-strengthening without cease’ (ziqiang-buxi); ‘travelling to old zones’ (zou xiang laoqu); ‘familiarity with the past and understanding of the new’ (wengu-zhixin); ‘begging for survival and enduring suffering’ (zitao-kuchi); ‘seeing with one’s eyes and achieving understanding in one’s mind’ (yingmu-huixin); ‘listening comprehensively and achieving enlightenment’ (jianting-zeming); ‘deriving from personal existence’ (zi you wo zai); and ‘art with no final realm’ (yi wu zhi jing). Regardless of the intentions of the organizers of these exhibitions, this vocabulary seems to have no relationship to the social conditions in different periods of the 1990s, and related only to the phrases used by traditional scholar-painters to describe the states of existence in which they found themselves; the ‘new literati painters’ regarded the painting brush in the hand as an aimless tool for play. In December 1997, the ‘97 Exhibition of Chinese New Literati Painting opened in Beijing and 390 works were included in the show. The ranks of ‘new literati painting’ appeared to have dramatically swelled: Fang Jun, Liao Lu, Chen Shouxiang, Ji Youchen, Long Rui, Cheng Dali, Zhao Junsheng, Huo Chunyang, Wang Mengqi, Liu Ergang, Qian Xiaochun, Wang Yong, Zhou Huajun, Wang Heping, Zhu Daoping, He Jianguo, Chang Jin, Xu Lele, Zhu Xinjian, Yang Chunhua, Tian Liming, Yu Shui, Zhang Weiping, Jiang Hongwei, Li Laoshi, Bian Pingshan, Hu Shi, Liu Jin’an, Zhou Yaming, Liu Wenjie, Zhou Jingxin, Zhao Wei, He Saibang, Chen Ping, Lu Yuxin, Li Tong, and Lin Haizhong. People noted that of these painters the oldest was 55 and the youngest, 27.
The achievements of ‘new literati painting’ were described as follows:
Most new literati-painters were not only able to create an endless personal and individual language in their grasp of the various vocabulary systems of Chinese painting that could be found in ‘poetry, calligraphy, painting and seal carving’, but even created influential expression and style in different fields, which were especially distinctive in calligraphy and seal carving. At the same time, many new scholar-painters, when touching on other genres within the fine arts, also achieved success in expression; in all fields, from design to the picture-story book, from the cartoon to stage arts, from ceramic art to cinematographic fine arts, and even from animation to script writing, as well as from art research to illustration binding, new literati-painters registered substantial accomplishments. These defined the main characteristics of the group of new literati-painters.[4]
Many painters and critics in their disputations and explanations revolving around ‘new literati painting’ made use of much highly ambiguous vocabulary, and they recycled the metaphysical concepts of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, to the point where they often finally evinced spiritual fatigue. Chen Shouxiang, in defending ‘new literati painting’, also encouraged painters to refer to aesthetic formulations of the traditional culture such as ‘technique modes’ (jiqiao fashi), ‘the perfect harmony of breath quality’ (qizhi-yunzhi), ‘color concept of the shape’ (xingse-guannian) or ‘mood realm’ (qingxu-jingjie), and to devote themselves to painting in an explorative way under the influence of Western art and to rely on the experience drawn from their own self-cultivation. He also attempted to explain that, even though ‘new literatus’ painters were distinctive in style, each painter should maintain inherent consistency.
Taiwan’s painters in the 1950s became once more involved in the question of the crisis facing traditional painting. At that time, painters made use of the characteristics of the language of abstract expressionism to justify the existing reasons for their search for the ancient civilization which eventually resulted in the abstract ink and wash paintings of Liu Kuo-sung and others. Although Taiwan did not have a history of literati-artist painting it was influenced for a long time by Japanese painting and it easily evaded the disputes around traditional literati painting brought to Taiwan from the mainland by Pu Xinyu and others. However, when in the 1980s painters on the Chinese mainland acquired the conditions for free artistic understanding and expression, they began to seek to work in the lost traditions. They discovered a love for the taste and delight of traditional painting and, even though many critics and painters constantly muttered that the ‘new literati painting’ had to be distinguished from the old literati-artist paintings, they did not believe that there was anything inappropriate in the style created by the preceding generations or the ancients. Yet their efforts to imitate the older generation and the ancients within their own environment were utterly forced and they even attempted to resume the refined gatherings that defined the creative milieu of the traditional scholar-painters while their writings and statements in the traditional style of metrical composition were mawkish. On many occasions, the ‘new literati painter’ – if he used such a term – invariably exhibited different behavior and style than the ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’ artist. The ‘new literati painters’ discussed ‘ancient paintings’ (guhua), made enquiries about cultural relics, praised brushwork and even regarded themselves as noble-minded artists, yet in their works it was very hard to discern any of the ‘clarity and far-sightedness’ (qinggao-yuandan) to be found in the paintings of Bada-shanren, Ni Zan, Jianjiang or even the ‘Four Wangs’.
‘New literati painting’ was neither a movement, nor a style, nor a school; it was not a new philosophy that was not widely known, but was simply an attempt by its participants to fan the dying embers of the tradition and of the spirit of literati-artist painting back to life. In the intermittent sparks of light, we Chinese audiences were meant to discern, simply because this tradition belonged to the Chinese, something of the traditional spirit which these sensitive painters regarded fondly and were reluctant to reject. Speaking historically, the existence of ‘new literati painting’ remained a source of consolation, and it made some contribution in providing Chinese with a temperament on which they could rely in encountering the culture of the future.
Experimental Ink and Wash
In closely examining the tradition, another group of artists adopted a different strategy. This was the experimental use of ink and wash painting that also began in the 1980s, and which was simply referred to as ‘experimental ink and wash’.
Included within this very open concept of ‘experimental ink and wash’ were works described using a range of terms: ‘abstract ink and wash’ ‘modern ink and wash’, ‘figurative ink and wash’, ‘expressive ink and wash’, ‘conceptual ink and wash’, and ‘avant-garde ink and wash’. Critics and painters for a long period in the 1990s discussed the meanings of these concepts and the differences and connections between them, hoping that by distinguishing between the differences in the meanings of each term they would be able to formulate each different characteristic of the phenomenon.
The critic regarded as having been the first to use the concept of ‘experimental ink and wash’ was Huang Zhuan (b.1958), who in 1993 edited a book titled Guangdong Artists: The Experiment Ink and Wash Volume in which he included twenty painters whose work he described as ‘experimental ink and wash’, although their style of expression and techniques were totally different, and of whom seven painted abstract compositions. In this way, those artists and critics concerned with ink and wash were presented with a dilemma: was ‘experimental ink and wash’ a limitlessly open movement or was it the particular style of a particular period?[5]
As early as the late 1950s, painters in Taiwan had already drawn on abstract expressionist trends to attack and transform traditional ink and wash painting, in order to facilitate some harmonious connection between traditional painting and modern art. On the other hand, the destructive experiments of Gu Wenda, as a significant artist of the 1980s, were a prelude to ‘experimental ink and wash’, and the formalistic efficacy of Gu’s works, which made cavalier use of traditional materials and presented a lack of ‘respect’ for traditional Chinese characters, became the earliest model for the ‘experimental ink and wash’ of the 1990s, at least insofar as the freedom of attitude and temperament of Gu Wenda’s abstract ink and wash were very close to that of the later abstract ink and wash artists. Similarly, in the modernist trends of the 1980s we can find experimental ink and wash works that confront the tradition in, but in that open-minded period the focus of interest was Western art. To a very great extent, the ‘experimental ink and wash’ of the second half of the 1990s can only be regarded as the result of constant practice in using traditional tools and materials conducted under the guidance of ideas of improvement or reform.
Wang Chuan (b.1953) should be regarded as one of the earliest Chinese artists to pay close attention to the unique characteristics of ink and wash materials and to conduct experiments in ink and wash directly inspired by the language of Western abstract art. In 1985, after experimenting with expressionist oil painting, Wang Chuan began experimenting with abstract expression using ink and water. ‘Chinese painting’ unconsciously influenced and Western trends stimulated the young artist to render concrete his understanding of the key elements of the two civilizations. After quite a long period, Wang Chuan, confronting the artistic contradiction between Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, subsequently asked, from the perspective of opening up a path of language, what ultimately were the differences between abstract ink and wash and abstract Western painting? In any case, Wang very much wanted to believe that his own experiments were different from the abstract painting of the West.
Another painter in the 1980s to use ink and wash in abstract expression was Wang Gongyi (b.1946). Like many modern artists of that time, her starting point was her fresh understanding of traditional thought that followed in the wake of her study of Western artists. In comparing art from East and West, she discovered that ‘Marcel Duchamp was closer than any Eastern artist to Laozi’s concepts of “concealing one’s true features or intentions”, quiet contemplation and intelligence of life even more than any modern oriental, a view similar to that of Huang Yongping. Even so, in terms of ink and wash, the starting point of her linguistic experiment was related to the abstraction of calligraphy. Later, she was influenced by Buddhist ideas expressed as ‘color is emptiness and emptiness is color’. In 1989 she embarked on a course of quiet contemplation in order to meditate on the realm referred to by such characters, and in this mental space she acquired an understanding of ink and wash or perhaps it might be said that she acquired an understanding of life through ink and wash.
The experiments of Yan Binghui (b.1956) in ink and wash also began under the influence of Western modernism, and the physical characteristics of brush, rice paper and ink determined this artist’s natural inclinations to adopt expressionist methods. Yan Binghui seems to have been alerted to the existence of conceptual painting to some extent, and he did at least acknowledge how he more highly valued receiving this experience when he wrote, ‘I personally set out from emotional depths and various experiences, proceeding also from an aspiration to create and ponder ink and wash painting by myself. This was not a rational choice, but sprang from an emotional need. And it was an intense emotional need’. Unlike the formalists, Yan Binghui did not think that images on paper had no connection with history and thought, and he believed that brush and ink could express ‘the sense of the vicissitudes of history and reality’. Such an understanding was not a borrowing or explanation using the simple symbolism or designs of the 1980s avant-garde artists, and as soon as the tip of his writing brush with the water and the different dark or light Chinese inks touched the paper, there was a directness, one which the painter saw that other arts did not possess in that it had the advantage of being ‘directed at the heart’.
Liu Zijian (b.1956) is also regarded as one of the important artists of experimental ink and wash. From the perspective of Liu’s personal psychological history, he was drawn from childhood to gaze at the black starry sky at night and meditate which led him to develop ‘black painting’ (heise huihua) many years later.[6] Liu Zijian’s fresh recognition of ink and wash began in the 1980s, and under the influence of the pioneering painter in the field of ink and wash Li Shinan, Liu believed that by liberating or opening up the theory in Chinese traditional ink and wash painting which maintained that the ‘line-work is central’ free experimentation could be carried out through understanding the properties of water and ink. With imaginable results, the painter influenced by Western modernism began to flee completely from ‘the brush and ink’ trap and attempted to use ‘ink images’ (moxiang) instead of ‘brush and ink’. ‘Ink images’ was a term coined by the painter, and through the term he expressed his idea that there was virtually no connection whatsoever between those experiments that broke completely with traditional brush and ink and the ink and wash with which people were familiar. Moreover, in discussing the summation of meaning, Liu Zijian created images using the ‘hard-edge’ and ‘destroyed edge’ effects of brushing, rubbing and printing, collages with ‘hard edge’ and ‘ragged edge’ effects, symbolic signs of crosses and circles, and his automatically accumulated and splattered black ink technique which provided the background spaces in his compositions; these can all be regarded as classic works of ‘experimental ink and wash’.
As one of the major experimental ink and wash painters, Zhang Yu (b. 1959) clearly demonstrated that he did not want experimental ink and wash to be interpreted as ‘abstract ink and wash’. In his ‘Plurality and Reconstruction: A Discussion of Experimental Ink and Wash’, 2000), Zhang argued: ‘In our non-figurative ink and wash works there are no purely abstract works – only an abstraction, abstract elements or a particular abstract state. We are not at all concerned with the Western concept of abstract art. The use of the term abstract to characterize these experimental works is far too simple and superficial and, more importantly, the word abstract cannot convey the meaning of our present experiments in ink and wash’.
In terms of general visual experience, what is important is whether or not visual forms in themselves exert influence. Zhang Yu, in a semi-technical and semi-analytical description, has related how his innate spirituality is reflected:
The Halo series uses a simple compound technique of expression, but the process is both simple and complicated. The terms simple and complicated refer to the various techniques of applying ink with the brush which are repeated from the start to the completion of the process. Of course, these all fulfill the needs of expression, and only in this way can the abundant expression and irreplaceable nature of ink and wash fully appear.
Encouraged by modernism, Shi Guo (b, 1953) began artistic experiments confronting the tradition in the 1980s, but his ‘anti-tradition’, to use the language popular in that period, specifically referred to his ink and wash experiments, in which the artist adopted the techniques used in making rubbings. The painter drew support from his understanding of space or three-dimensional concepts as he plied ink and wash into his own ‘metaphysical’ world. According to his understanding of the world of ink and wash, we can readily apply such terms as ‘heavy and serious’, ‘anxious’, ‘conflicted’, ‘confrontational’, ‘mechanistic’ and even ‘wilful’ in analyzing his work.
Among those ink and wash artists whose works readily suggested the label ‘abstract’ were Liang Quan, Li Huasheng, Fang Tu, Wei Qingji, Hu Youben, Chen Xinmao, Wang Tiande, and Chen Tiejun. However, it is very dangerous to categorize the works of all these artists as falling within the range of the ‘abstract’ style. Liang Quan (b. 1948) was an artist who dared to place the concept of ‘emptiness’ in his ink and wash experiments. Such a position or starting point could readily push his experiments in the direction of historical problems. Liang Quan even set out to explain some naturalist symbols, stating that the democracy of the inner world provided today’s experiment ink and wash artists with a rational space. All his work progressed under certain controls, and such controls perhaps also encompassed his traditional training, because his doodles which occupy little space do not at all disturb the quiet ordering of his works. Liang Quan’s early collages retained reflection on issues of reality and his technical meticulousness can be appreciated in his experiences in the realm of printmaking.
Up until the latter half of the 1990s, Li Huasheng (b. 1944) could have been regarded as a ‘new literati painter’. The influence of Huang Binhong and Chen Zizhuang made him extremely familiar with the taste of traditional brush and ink, and he confidently worked and moved among those traditions with which people are familiar. The problem was that he was not satisfied with limiting himself to things with traditional taste and he later began to conduct experiments in abstract ink and wash, until his linear matrices made their appearance. Liang Quan who at that time was constantly attempting to intuit ‘emptiness’, but Li Huasheng’s ‘abstract’ frames were a sudden realization that came from his daily environment. Li Huasheng soon moved to his random ‘inventory-like’ arrangements of linear grids. After the grids which he observed were transferred to grids on paper, the artist used the changes in the ink lines and the relationships within the composition to begin to throw up richer concepts. Perhaps only those familiar with Chinese cultural tradition could understand why a painter could ceaselessly arrange layers of lines on rice paper. As a symbolic technique of tradition, the line is a key element; as a philosophy that influenced Chinese painters, the words of Laozi and Zhuangzi were an enduring source of strength, and the statement that one could use ‘the attitude of the void to focus one’s mind on experiments with the void’ can provide some explanation of this. Li Huasheng retained traditional materials and the use of line-work, although his new lines were not intended to express ‘ease of breath’ and, of course, they did not express a type of disciplined effort. His lines were arranged and arranged again constantly over time, and while it is very easy for us to discover the mental states of the ancients in them, the scenes which they manifest were something the ancients could have never envisaged and they also express uniqueness in the realm of experimental ink and wash.
From the 1980s onwards, young Chinese artists were familiar with such Western artists as Ernst Muench, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Francis Bacon, Franz Kline, and Willem De Kooning. Art described as ‘expressionist’ made the visual contents of reality a last pretext, and artists hoped to express some specific psychological content through its spiritual enticements. In the view of some artists, expressionist language to some degree looked more or less similar to the attitude and method of traditional calligraphy, and even the signifiers and symbolic content produced by the brush strokes in Chinese painting and calligraphy could totally transcend any leitmotif. The space for expression was opened up in the 1980s by modernism and the use of Western materials altered the expressive content of traditional materials. All content related to life and reality could become subjects of painting and people saw how, under the influence of different experiences, temperaments and feelings, artists could produce works in different styles exhibiting different artistic taste, as with the work of Li Xiaoxuan, Liu Qinghe, Tian Liming, Hai Rihan, Liu Jin’an, Wu Yi, Li Jin, Zou Jianping, Nie Ganyin, Zhu Zhengeng, Liu Yiyuan, Zhang Hao, Huang Yihan, Shao Ge, and Zhou Jingxin. In the entire field of expressive ink and wash painting, methods drawn from modernism were used at will by painters, but in using these methods they tended to give greater consideration to the actual physical properties of ink and wash. The widespread appearance in the works of ink and wash artists of linguistic symbols, signs, abstraction, distortions and exaggeration, as well as techniques such as teasing the paper, spray painting, drip and splash application, traditional rubbing, and the use of splayed brushes, all demonstrated that the core issue with ‘brush and ink’ was being naturally eroded. Because of the richness of style and personal characteristics, expressive ink and wash painters made the dangerous decision to simply use the term ‘expressionism’, or ‘expressive’. By way of contrast, their subject matter, artistic interest and pictorial differences created a richness of ink and wash painting, and what was later called ‘conceptual ink and wash’ was merely a transformation in the temperament and attitude of aspects of the figurative and abstract composition.
The efforts of experimental ink and wash artists were wide-ranging and varied, and they constantly expanded the influence of their art through publishing, exhibitions, and academic research.
In 1991, the artist Zhang Yu edited and published Chinese Modern Ink and Wash Painting, and at this time the ink and wash artist hoped that the experimental field of ink and wash would acquire an extensive range. Thus, this first monograph of ‘modern ink and wash’ included works by thirty-eight ink and wash artists following different routes of experimentation.
In November 1993, the first volume of Artistic Trends in Chinese Modern Ink and wash Art at the End of the 20th Century, hereafter called Trends, was published. This was the first part of a series called Contemporary Ink and Wash Art, which Zhang Yu had decided to edit in 1992 when for most of this year he was teaching in Russia and doing research. More critics were involved in the project at this time and they included Liu Xiaochun, Li Zhengtian, Huang Zhuan, Deng Pingxiang, Pi Daojian, and Wang Huangsheng. Up until 2000, four volumes of the serial collection Trends were published, and the number of participating artists and critics constantly increased. By the year 2000, the themes of the collection began to move completely out of the trap of essentialism, and themes related to ‘the escape from ink and wash and the problems of experimental ink and wash in contemporary art’ were more freely discussed by critics who had previously conceived of the strange contradictions and relationships that existed between ‘ink and wash’ and guohua, but who were now agreed that such conceptions needed to be abandoned and that they were entering a completely new and opened up realm.[7]
What merits attention is that the editors and authors of Chinese Experimental Ink and Wash in the 1990s, published in 1998, limited ‘experimental ink and wash’ to ‘non-figurative’ works, and the inclusion of only a dozen or so artists, such as Liu Zijian, Shi Guo, Zhang Yu, Chen Tiejun, Wang Tiande, Wei Qingji, Fang Tu, and Yan Binghui, ensured that some later critics and artists seemed to provide explanations of why ‘experimental ink and wash’ was limited to the field of ‘abstract ink and wash’.[8]
In fact, by the mid-1990s, ‘experimental ink and wash’ seemed to have become a relatively stable concept in the writings of critics and painters, but the question of whether or not experimental ink and wash was simply another term for abstract ink and wash seems to have never been resolved. However, when we discover that artists in the 1980s had already broken away from traditional brush and ink to conduct bold experiments, that there were many bold experiments in using ink and wash to depict any subject matter, and that even the ‘expressionist’ ink and wash artists who share ideas with traditional xieyi ink and wash also created works rich in results makes us realize that ‘experimental ink and wash’ was a fairly free-form open concept and was simply part of the constant changes occurring over a century with the reform of Chinese-style calligraphy and painting, the ‘revolution’ of new Chinese painting and the incorporation of the materials and tools of Chinese painting in contemporary art practice, and that in the different subject matter, techniques of expression and styles of experimental ink and wash it was only in the pictorial aspect that works of pure abstraction were far removed from traditional expression, and that such experiments were utterly removed from the traditional logic which judged paintings to express ‘the seeming and the non-seeming’ and ‘the ideas beyond the image’.
In the annals of art history, experimental ink and wash was a collective effort that took place in the wake of Li Xiaoshan’s pessimistic prophecy, and the characteristic of these efforts did not look much like an effort to rescue ‘Chinese-style painting’ as many traditionalists who held a new attitude of opening-up liked to explain. The importance of experimental ink and wash was that in different ways artists and painters using ink and wash were able to liberate the painting materials and tools that could be described as ‘traditional’ and yet freely and in a completely changed way express themselves to contemporary society. Whether or not experimental ink and wash used three-dimensional space or other comprehensive materials was not the crucial question, in the same way as the narrow criticism or excessive emphasis was irrelevant for the experimental ink and wash artists such as Wang Tiande who made installations of ink and wash. It was generally accepted psychologically that if there were no mental restrictions placed on any arbitrary behavior from the outset then the results would be free, and culturally it was generally believed that in real life the works completed by an artist in any specific historical period or against any specific cultural background must have some relationship with ‘the past’. Speaking sociologically, an artist’s individual character and room for uniqueness seemed limited. Therefore, the traces of history, social environment and free behavior of history provided possibilities for artists. Even for some artists who were not oriental, continuing to use traditional Chinese painting materials and tools rather than the spirit of ‘Chinese-style painting’ was a useful perpetuation.
In contrast to ‘new literati painters’, experimental ink and wash artists freed up the scope of the application of materials and tools, while discarding the issue of ‘brush and ink’. Subsequently, it was difficult for anyone to deny the usefulness of these materials and tools, and no one could any longer maintain that historical change determined materials. On the contrary, the effective expression of human thought is possible with any tools, and this possibility is not an essentialist idea because the richness of thought permits limitless expression. On this point, experimental ink and wash artists proved that all free and positive expression is equally legitimate.
Finally, experimental ink and wash ended the protracted debate that had surrounded ‘Chinese-style painting’ and ‘Western painting’, ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ and ‘national’ and ‘international’ character. People gradually realized that maintaining a dualistic attitude was already invalid in the field of art. In the 1980s critics were already using the word ‘work’ (zuopin) as a substitute for ‘oil painting’ in order to signify a contemporary painting, and now people were free to use the word ‘zuopin’ to describe an ‘ink and wash’ painting. In promoting the revival of the vigor of an ancient civilization, ‘experimental ink and wash’ may have played an important role.
NOTES:
[1] Zhu Xinjian, Recording of Lecture in the History and Theory Department of the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts (Zai Zhongguo Meishu Xueyuan Shilun-xi shang de jiangzuo luyin), 2006.
[2] See: Fine Arts, June 1989 issue.
[3] Chen Shouxiang, ‘The new gathering’ (Xin de juhe).
[4] Ibid.
[5] ‘In “Returning to one’s garden: The cultural fulcrum of contemporary ink and wash painting” (Chongfan jiayuan: Dangdai shuimohua zhidian) written in 1996, Huang Zhuan referred to something he had written in 1993 when invited to contribute to the special issue of Guangdong Artists (Guangdong meishujia) devoted to experimental ink and wash: “If I am not mistaken, this may possibly have been the first time that the term ‘experimental ink and wash’ had been used in China. Certainly, this concept was broader at that time, unlike now, and it was almost synonymous with abstract ink and wash”. However, Lu Hong greatly extended the range of the concept of ‘experimental ink and wash’. He said: “Proceeding from the context of history, I believe that ‘experimental ink and wash’ encompasses all experiments in ink and wash painting that transcend the frame of traditional scholar-artists’ works and realist ink and wash, so that abstract ink and wash is only one branch of ‘experimental ink and wash’ and it should not be an alternative term for ‘experimental ink and wash’”.’ Ref: Liu Zijian, ‘The clean up: A testimonial from the history of experimental ink and wash’ (‘Qingli’: Wei shiyan shuimo de lishi liu yifen zhengci), 2004.
[6] ‘I was especially curious about the heavens ever since I was a child, when many a summer night I spent beneath the stars. In the courtyard of our old home in Shashi in Hubei province, I would sleep on a camp bed gazing up at the stars above, which was an experience, and as the stars revolved I had the most profound feelings’. Ref: Pi Daojian, ‘The whizzing rush of time’s fragments: Dialogue on the nature and significance of ink and wash and its criticism’ (shijian suipian de jianli huxiao: Guanyu shuimoxing, shuimoxing yiyi ji shuimoxing zuopin piping de duihua), in Artistic Trends in Chinese Ink and Wash Art at the End of the 20th Century (Ershi shiji Zhongguo xiandai shuimo zoushi), no.2.
[7] Issue no.2 of Artistic Trends in Chinese Ink and Wash Art at the End of the 20th Century (Ershi shiji Zhongguo xiandai shuimo zoushi) published in 1995 featured the artists Wang Tiande, Zhang Hao, Hei Gui (b.1957) and Meng Changming (b.1961), and the critics Lang Shaojun, Pi Daojian, Huang Du (b.1965), Wang Huangsheng (b.1956), Chen Qinqun, Wu Weishan (b.1962), Leng Lin, Pi Li, Guo Yaxi (b.1958), Li Weiming and Chen Xiaoxin.
Issue no.3 of Artistic Trends in Chinese Ink and Wash Art at the End of the 20th Century (Ershi shiji Zhongguo xiandai shuimo zoushi) published in 1996 featured studies of individual works by a number of artists: Fang Tu, Wang Chuan, Wang Tiande, Liu Zijian, Liu Yiyuan, Zhang Yu, Zhang Jin, Chen Tiejun, Yan Binghui and Wei Qingji. This issue was curated by Zhang Yu and carried articles from the Conference on Chinese Contemporary Ink and Wash into the 21st Century organized by Pi Daojian. It carried articles by the critics Wang Lin, Wang Huangsheng, Li Weiming, Chen Xiaoxin, Yi Ying, Qian Zhijian, Gu Chengfeng, Yin Shuangxi, Huang Zhuan and Lu Hong.
Issue no.4 of Artistic Trends in Chinese Ink and Wash Art at the End of the 20th Century (Ershi shiji Zhongguo xiandai shuimo zoushi) published in 2000 featured the artists Xu Xianglin (b.1974), Pan Ying (b.1962), Yang Zhilin, Hu Youben, Luo Qi (b.1960), Hang Faji (b.1946), Yang Jinsong, Liang Quan and Sun Baijun. Featured critics included Pi Daojian, Liu Xiaochun, Yin Shuangxi, Yi Ying, Zhu Bin, Zha Changping (b.1966) and Zeng Chunhua.
[8] This book was regarded as the first monograph with ‘experimental ink and wash’ in its title after Huang Zhuan first proposed the concept in 1993 in the journal Guangdong Artists (Guangdong yishujia). What differed from the former proposal was that the monograph focused on non-figural and non-bimo art. The articles in the monograph were written by Pi Daojian, Fan Di’an, Yi Ying, Yin Shuangxi and Gu Chengfeng.