At the end of 2009, I was editing Amnesia and Memory: Zhang Xiaogang’s Correspondence (1981-1996). For me this work was a professional reminder of the most basic work (conducting research into the life and work of an artist, as well as gathering together and editing an artist’s correspondence and other casebook archival materials) that had been required for producing The Correspondence of Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin which I had edited and translated more than twenty years previously for the publication of its first Chinese edition by Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House in 1986. In the early 1980s, Zhang Xiaogang had embarked on his eventful art career, the all-encompassing journey of an acutely sensitive Piscean through painting, reading, and writing that at different times drew on the convoluted and darkest anxieties and intellectual dilemmas which determined that Zhang Xiaogang’s personal artistic journey also has significance as a symbolic landscape of the history of his times; the artistic practice and thought of Zhang Xiaogang encompass the many significant changes China’s art history has undergone since 1978.
I have not known Zhang Xiaogang for as long as I have known many of his friends. During the decade from 1966 and 1976 that is described as the Cultural Revolution decade, Zhang’s father worked in the Southwestern Bureau under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and young Zhang Xiaogang moved with his parents from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, the two most populous, and politically significant, provinces of south-western China. The Southwestern Bureau of the CPC was an enormous body set up in 1963, the year when Zhang’s father was transferred from the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee to the Southwestern Bureau. Because a large number of cadres were compulsorily relocated to Chengdu at that time, the Southwestern Bureau required extensive housing in Chengdu. Among the housing compounds allocated to the new government body, the main ones were scattered widely across the city - at Tongzi Street, Drum Tower North Third Street (Gulou Beisanjie), Sanhuaishu, Neibei Lane, Yongxing Lane, and Yihaoyuan. Zhang Xiaogang’s family lived at Drum Tower North Third Street. My father was also a cadre in the Southwestern Bureau, but we lived at Sanhuaishu, far from the other housing compounds. The children from the different compounds also went to different schools so I had little contact with children from other compounds of the Southwestern Bureau. In 1973, the Southwestern Bureau was dissolved; Zhang Xiaogang’s father was reassigned back to Kunming, and Zhang Xiaogang moved with his family back to the city of his birth.
During the period from early 1978 until the spring of 1982 when I was a university student, Zhao Liaoyuan, who had been my neighbor in the Sanhuaishu compound in Chengdu before he too returned to Kunming with his parents when the Southwestern Bureau was disbanded, happened to come on an excursion to Chengdu and told me that a companion of his who originally lived in the Drum Tower North Third Street compound called Zhang Xiaogang was now his neighbor in Kunming. Zhao told me that Zhang Xiaogang was “quite a good painter” and, knowing of my passionate interest in art, said that he would introduce Zhang to me. However, it was not until 1985 that Zhou Chunya brought Zhang Xiaogang to my home, when I was living at 168 Hongxing Fourth Road in Chengdu, which was where some of the Chengdu staffers of the Southwestern Bureau had been relocated after the organization was disbanded. Zhou Chunya introduced me to Zhang as one of his classmates who painted well. That’s how we met. Later Zhang Xiaogang married Tang Lei, who lived in the apartments assigned to the Zouma Road Post Office employees, not far from my parents’ apartment. Thereafter, Zhang Xiaogang was in Chengdu for a long time and we were both part of a group of artists and friends who called in on each other and invariably drank, socialized, and engaged in intense discussions together.
My art history studies began when I was at university and throughout the 1980’s, my attention was focused on the translation of works on the history of Western art. At that time, because of my interest in the history of artistic style, I was little interested in the “new wave art” then emerging in China, and in order to learn more about European art, I was quite content to have only a basic knowledge of modern art in China. Nevertheless, artists in Chengdu and other cities in China’s South-west, such as Mao Xuhui in Kunming and Ye Yongqing in Chongqing, were already regularly exchanging information and ideas about Western philosophy and art, and recording tapes of Western classical music for each other.
It was out of a sense of responsibility and sorrow triggered by the tragic events of June 4 1989 that Yi Dan and I took more than three months in the latter part of 1989 to write a history of modern Chinese art from 1979 to 1989, and this marked the beginnings of my documentation of the history of Chinese art, including China’s contemporary art. At that time, my background knowledge of art history was limited to my reading of books treating Western philosophy during my time at University, as well as of a series of translations of foreign fine arts books published by the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (today’s China Academy of Art) that included Vasari’s Lives, Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, and art histories by Ernst Gombrich, Herbert Read, and H. Harvard Arnason, as well as of many other translations of Western studies of art and literature.
Beginning in 1990, and based on my reading of works by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, my view of history underwent an enormous change, and I largely abandoned my earlier essentialist thinking. This was at the time when Wang Guangyi’s series of paintings titled Mass Criticism made its appearance. I returned to Chengdu from Wuhan in Hubei province, and found the atmosphere in Zhang Xiaogang’s cramped apartment on Zouma Road extremely oppressive because he was still steeped in his Expressionist angst. At about the same time, around 1991 or so, in the Yuanmingyuan painters’ village on the outskirts of Beijing I saw Fang Lijun “bald heads” for the first time and wondered whether Chinese modernist art and thought were in fact facing a dilemma. Some time before that in 1987, I had been startled by the paintings of Zhang Peili and, more especially, by those of Geng Jianyi, and did not quite understand the articles being written by the members of the small critical art groups I met in Beijing. At that time I was somewhat slowly becoming aware of the problems posed by the essentialism that had long been central to China’s newly re-emerged modernism. However, from around 1990 to 1992, Zhang Xiaogang and his friend Mao Xuhui were still endlessly discussing questions regarding the soul and the spirit; yet at the end of 1989 Zhang Xiaogang had completed his Black Trilogy and by 1991 had produced his series of powerful Expressionist oil paintings titled Private Notes.
After 1992, the market economy was coming to play a greater role in Chinese daily life and the art world was forced to give time-consuming consideration to money problems. It was around 1996 that I was present when a group of people, including Ye Yongqing and Li Xianting, were locked in a protracted discussion in the hostel of the China Literature and Art Federation in Beijing on the topic of the American dollar price of works by different local artists; the atmosphere was completely different from that of the 1980s when everyone would have been discussing issues of philosophy and art. I was extremely troubled by the conversation, as I was still obsessed with what I felt were the overriding historical problems of this period. Yet by 1998 I felt a new clarity regarding the artistic issues in the China of the 1990s. A year later I finished writing my History of Chinese Contemporary Art: 1990-1999. Starting with the 1995 Venice Biennale, Zhang Xiaogang’s work became known to, and exhibited by, art galleries and institutions in a number of countries, and in 1999 his solo exhibition Les Camarades in the Galerie de France in Paris became the first one-man show of a contemporary artist from mainland China staged by that gallery since it held an exhibition for the remarkable émigré artist Zao Wou-Ki in the 1970s. At that time, many Chinese artists and critics had conflicting views regarding the relationships between modernism and post-modernism, or what was called “contemporary art”, yet Zhang Xiaogang’s series of works titled Big Family seemed to provide a sound solution to this dilemma.
After the year 2000, I had the opportunity to study for my doctorate under Fan Jingzhong and to immerse myself in the history of ancient Chinese painting. My resulting thesis was published as Pure Views Remote from Streams and Mountains: Chinese Landscape Painting in the Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries (Chinese People’s University Press, 2004). During this time I often heard the view expressed that the new wave, modern, or contemporary art of China that emerged after the country’s economic reforms began can only be appreciated as an artistic experiment, and the question was how art history could accommodate such experiments. To address this question, I began writing History of Art in China in the 20th Century (Peking University Press, 2007, first edition), and I was clear about why I was writing this work: the many artistic phenomena in China, ranging from the “Scar Art” beginning at the end of 1978 to the Cynical Realism and Political Pop of the 1990s, should all be included in the scope of the study of art history. Simply put, the modern art and contemporary art of the two decades from 1978 onwards were an integral part of 20th century Chinese art history. Through the many drafts of this book, Zhang Xiaogang remained an artist I felt to be especially deserving of analysis and study.
In 2014, the revised third edition of History of Art in China in the 20th Century was published by Nova Publishers, and at the same time I completed a condensed version of my work titled The Story of Art (the first edition of this abbreviated version was published in 2010 by Peking University Press). In September 2014, I organized a conference in the northern Chinese city of Yinchuan, significantly an important node on the ancient Silk Road linking China with Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe, which examined East-West cultural and artistic exchanges in the centuries following mankind’s Age of Discovery. This conference, titled The Dimension of Civilization: International Symposium, provided a unique opportunity for scholars to present and publish an historical review of aspects of research on nineteenth and twentieth century Chinese art history, among other cross-cultural interactions. Now, I believe that I should put aside writing comprehensive art histories for a time and re-examine case studies of individual artists, something I had previously undertaken which resulted in the publication of my two-volume work titled Artists in Art History: Case Studies of Artists in Art History and Art Criticism by Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House in 2008. Writing about contemporary art led me realize some time ago that historical research requires a layered dissection of individual case studies. In fact, researching the art history of one particular artist is the study of a span of art history, and one artist’s life and work involves social, political, cultural, and emotional problems, all of which are related to history as a whole. It can also be said that the case-books of artists are essential building-blocks for the edifice of art history, without which art history is untenable; artists can represent or symbolize a period, both its glory and its maladies. Hermann Hesse, Zhang Xiaogang’s favorite writer at one time, explained in his preface to Steppenwolf why he wanted to publish Haller’s autobiographical writings:
I see them as a document of the times, for Haller’s sickness of the soul as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only, but rather those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.
I personally believe that no one has ever written history simply “for history’s sake” – even though the narration of past events can satisfy a personal love of writing. Beginning in 1949, mainland China’s historical writing has been limited to a narrow range controlled by the official ideology, and choices and judgments about history have been shackled and tormented by the political system. I can cite one example that suffices to clarify this situation. In 2014, the painting Bloodlines: Big Family No. 3 (1995) had a reserve price [CHECK] at auction of HK $ 83 million, and the final auction price climbed nearly HK $ 100 million (including the auction fee), yet up to that time the National Art Museum of China in Beijing had not collected a single work by Zhang Xiaogang. Over the past few years, however, many works on the history of art published abroad have, to varying degrees, introduced Zhang’s art and his significance in art history. For example, the English art historian Edward Lucie-Smith, familiar to artists and critics in China, included Zhang Xiaogang in the section of the revised edition of his Lives of the Great Modern Artists (2009) titled “The Artist Not the Artwork” together with Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Eva Hesse, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. However, mainland China’s official art research or educational institutions have no involvement with China’s own contemporary art. Zhang Xiaogang and other important contemporary artists (such as Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, and Yue Minjun) are still criticized and reviled by official art institutions. This situation is not the result of “academic caution”, but is ultimately the result of the fact that Chinese contemporary art lacks legitimacy in the country where it originates and is produced; the basic working criterion of value for official art institutions to this day remains Mao Zedong’s Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art. Thus, since 1978, the basic thread and issues in Chinese art history can only be identified once academic research has shaken free of the system of political control. Broadly speaking, as was my aim in writing The History of Art in China in the Twentieth Century and other works treating the history of contemporary art, my purpose in writing this book has been to take part in effecting a real change in the Chinese practice of writing art history, by allowing others through writing to bring to fruition a “contemporary” author’s view of history. I know that my own writing falls short, but a book can provide a basis for readers to argue for the historical legitimacy of the art of a particular period. In this age of material desire, intellectual devaluation, cultural decline, and loss of faith, persistence in historical writing requires an intelligent will and a critical understanding of the past and of reality; such a spirit and understanding are essential throughout the entire process of historical writing. This is my fundamental attitude.
When people discuss 20th century Chinese art history, they often refer to such names as Xu Beihong, Liu Haisu, Lin Fengmian, Yan Wenliang, Huang Binhong, Fu Baoshi, Pan Tianshou, and Li Keran. However, time can inform people, if they are able to heed from below what is occurring, that Zhang Xiaogang is an artist of this generation who not only serves as his nation’s historical memory, but is also an integral part of world art history. By upholding a particular historical viewpoint required to bring this project to completion, I attempt to apply critical analysis to the contradictions and conflicts constantly raised by the work of Zhang Xiaogang and his generation and to provide a multidimensional narrative and analysis of Zhang Xiaogang’s art career, so that readers can acquire an understanding of the genuine history and complexity of his artistic thought, art practice, and emotional life, as well as a better understanding of what constitutes the historical value that our era and future civilized society require.
Writing artists’ case histories is the emphasis of my study of the history of contemporary art, but only when I was involved in editing Amnesia and Memory: Zhang Xiaogang’s Correspondence 1981-1996, did I realize that it was possible to write a history of Zhang’s personal artistic path. Historical writing firstly requires information and documentation, and with the continuing efforts of the artist himself, his friends, and his assistants in sorting through the vast number of documents assembled, the writing of this book became a reality.
This book is limited to research on Zhang Xiaogang’s artistic career prior to 1996, the year in which the artist perfected the style we see in the Big Family works. At the same time, an improvement in his income enabled Zhang Xiaogang to open The Little Bar at 55 Yulin West Road in Chengdu, which was managed by Tang Lei, now his ex-wife. By spring 1997 The Little Bar became the venue where local artists and their friends often gathered and met up with artists from other parts of the country, while Zhang Xiaogang became increasingly busy staging exhibitions both in China and overseas. In 1997, Zhang Xiaogang had his first one-man show in China, in the Gallery of the Central Art Academy in Beijing, a large space with an international reputation in contemporary art circles. The show, titled Bloodlines: The Big Family, was significant as a full exposition of the typical and representative style of Zhang Xiaogang’s work. Weng Ling, the director of the Gallery who was also responsible for curating the show, justifiably regarded this show as one of her major contributions to art history for many years to come. Two years after that show, Zhang Xiaogang moved his studio to Beijing and this change in his environment ushered in a new stage in the artist’s life. A description of Zhang Xiaogang and his art from 1997 onwards warrants a volume of its own, and that may well be a project for the future.
Here I would like to thank ...
Wednesday, 3 December 2012, Biyun Shenchu
2009年底，我参与了《失忆与记忆：张晓刚书信集（1981—1996）》的编辑工作。这是基于20多年前我翻译出版的《塞尚、梵高、高更书信集》（四川美术出版社1986年第一版）的一次专业性提醒：对艺术家的研究，收集并整理书信写作和相关文献档案是最基本的工作。从上个世纪80年代初，张晓刚就开始了他富于探险性的艺术历程，这位双鱼座的卓越敏感者作画、阅读、写作以及不同时期对挥之不去的内心焦虑与思想困境的深深卷入，使得他的艺术历程构成了一个具有象征性的历史景观：这位艺术家的艺术实践与思想包括了1978年之后中国艺术史中不断发生的数次重要变迁。
与张晓刚的一些朋友不同，我与他的认识并不算早。“文革”期间，张晓刚的父亲在中共中央西南局工作，他随父母从昆明迁往成都。中共在西南地区的这个庞大机关于1949年成立，1954年4月撤销，以后又于1960年恢复，张晓刚的父亲是1963年从云南省委抽调到西南局的。由于机关干部数量众多，西南局宿舍有若干个，主要有桐梓街大院、鼓楼北三街大院、三槐树大院、内北巷大院、永兴巷大院以及一号院，各个大院之间的距离不短。张晓刚的家住在鼓楼北三街大院。我的父亲也是西南局的干部，家住在三槐树大院，距离其他宿舍大院很远，所以，不同大院的小孩如果没有在同一个学校读书，之间就几乎没有什么来往。1973年，西南局撤销，张晓刚因父母被安排回昆明工作而随家回到他出生的这个城市。大学期间（1978年初—1982年春天），之前曾住三槐树大院、西南局解散后也随父母回到昆明的赵燎原偶尔到成都玩，告诉我说：原来住在鼓楼北三街大院的一个画画的伙伴，叫“张晓刚”，他现在是我们在昆明的邻居，画得很不错，有时间让你们认识一下。可是，直到1985年的一天，周春芽才将张晓刚带到我在成都红星路四段168号（西南局撤销干部安置房）的家。周春芽说，给你介绍我的一个画得很不错的同学，叫“张晓刚”。从此，我们才认识，之后，张晓刚与唐蕾结婚住在离我家很近的走马街邮局宿舍，有很长的一个时期，在成都的一帮艺术家和朋友经常串门、喝酒、聊天，没有间断。
我的艺术史学习开始于大学时期，整个80年代，我的注意力都放在西方艺术史著作的翻译上。那时，基于对风格史的兴趣，我对发生在国内的“新潮美术”并不十分关心，同时也为了解一些欧洲艺术，尤其是现代艺术的基本知识而多少有些洋洋自得。尽管如此，与成都和西南地区其他城市的艺术家（例如昆明的毛旭辉、重庆的叶永青）交流关于西方哲学和艺术的看法，用磁带相互翻录西方古典音乐，却是经常的事情。
出于一种责任与悲情，在1989年的下半年，我与易丹用三个多月的时间完成了《中国现代艺术史：1979—1989》，开始了中国艺术史的写作。这个时候，我的艺术史知识背景限于大学期间对西方哲学著作的阅读，浙江美术学院（今天的中国美术学院）编辑的《外国美术史资料》、《美术译丛》杂志，断断续续读到的瓦萨里（Giorgio Vasari）的《意大利艺术名人传》(LE VITE DE PIU ECCELLENTI PITTORI SCULTORIE ARCHITETTORI)、布克哈特（Jacob Christoph Burckhardt）的《意大利文艺复兴时期的文化》（The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy）、贡布里希（Ernst H.Gombrich）的《艺术发展史》（The Story of Art第一版中文书名，天津人民美术出版社1986年出版）、里德(Herbert Read)的《现代绘画简史》上海人民美术出版社1979年版(A Concise History of Modern Painting,FREDERICK A.PRAEGER NEW YORK)、阿纳森(H.H.Arnason)的《西方现代艺术史：绘画、雕塑、建筑》(History of Modern Art:Painting.Sculpture.Architecture,天津人民美术出版社1983年版)以及几本没有翻译过的西方艺术史英文著作和文献。大致从1990年开始，基于对德里达（Jacques Derrida）和福柯（Michel Foucault）的阅读，我的历史观发生了很大的变化，大脑里的本质论思维模式很快消失了。这正是王广义“大批判”系列出现的时期，我从武汉回到成都，在张晓刚走马街的小房间里非常纳闷，因为他仍然陷于表现主义的焦虑中。与之同时，大约在1991年左右，我在圆明园画家村看到了方力均的“光头”作品，我当时想：中国的现代主义艺术与思维方式是否真的出了问题。之前，早在1987年杭州的张培力、尤其是耿建翌完成的那些画让我吃惊，在北京我见到了解析小组成员的文件多少有些不解，那时我似乎对现代主义本质论的问题多少还是有些迟钝。不过，在1990年到1992年左右的时间，张晓刚与他的朋友毛旭辉也还在无休止地讨论灵魂和精神性问题，1989年底张晓刚完成了组画《黑色三部曲》，1991年他又完成了仍具有强烈表现主义风格的油画系列《手记》。
1992年之后，日常生活中市场经济的空气越加浓厚，艺术界已经频繁地讨论金钱问题，大约在1996年左右，叶永青、栗宪庭等一帮人在我文联宿舍的家坐了大半天，大家讨论的话题就是谁谁谁的画卖了多少多少美金，与80年代大家讨论哲学与艺术问题的空气迥然不同，这给我极为深刻的记忆与焦虑，什么是这段时期重要的历史问题，一直困扰着我。直到1998年，我才清楚地意识到应该如何看待90年代的艺术问题。之后的一年我完成了《中国当代艺术史：1990—1999》的写作。从1995年参加威尼斯双年展开始，张晓刚的艺术开始为不少国家的画廊和机构所知晓并给予展览，到了1999年，他在法兰西画廊举办的个展《同志》是该画廊继70年代给赵无极做个展之后第一次为中国大陆当代艺术家举办的个展。这个时候，关于现代主义与后现代或者所谓的“当代艺术”之间的关系问题，在许多中国艺术家和批评家的大脑里大致有了不同角度的判断，而张晓刚的“大家庭”系列似乎是这个问题的一个典型的解决方式。
2000年之后，我借读范景中老师的博士研究生的机会，学习中国古代绘画史，《溪山清远：两宋时期山水画的历史与趣味转型》（人民大学出版社2004年版）是我的学习作业。在此期间，我听到一个意见：改革开放以来的新潮美术或者现代艺术或者当代艺术，只是可以理解的艺术实验，艺术史会将这些实验容纳其中吗？针对这个问题，我于2004年开始写作《20世纪中国艺术史》（北京大学出版社2007年第一版出版），我的写作目的很明确：从1978年底开始的“伤痕美术”到90年代的玩世现实主义、政治波普等不少艺术现象，都应该纳入艺术史的考察范围，简单地说，从1978年起二十年来的现代艺术与当代艺术就是20世纪中国艺术史的一部分。而在我若干次修订中，张晓刚都是我特别分析与考察的艺术家。
2014年，《20世纪中国美术史》第三版修订版由新星出版社出版，同时我也完成了《美术的故事》（这是《20世纪中国艺术史》的一个缩写版本，初版由北京大学出版社于2010年出版）的修订。9月，我在银川组织了涉及人类地理大发现之后几百年里东西方之间的文化艺术交流课题“文明的维度”国际学术研讨会，为19、20世纪中国艺术史的研究提供了一次特殊的历史考察与出版机会。现在，我以为我应该暂时放下通史写作，而进入到对艺术个案的研究中。较长时间的当代艺术写作让我意识到，应该将历史的研究要放在一个可以做个案解剖的层面上进行。事实上，研究一个艺术家的艺术历程，就是研究艺术的一段历史，由一个艺术家的生活与工作所带出的涉及社会、政治、文化、风格以及情感等方面的问题，都与历史的整体有关。也可以这样说，艺术家的个案是历史大厦必不可少的砖头，离开这些砖头，艺术史是难以成立的，何况有些艺术家就代表或者象征着一个时代——不是时代的辉煌而是时代的疾病。张晓刚喜欢的作家黑塞（）在他的《荒原狼》的“出版者序”中解释为什么要出版“荒原狼”哈勒尔的自传时说：
哈勒尔心灵上的疾病并不是个别人的怪病，而是时代本身的弊病，是哈勒尔那整整一代人的精神病，染上这种毛病的远非只有那些软弱的、微不足道的人，而是那些坚强的、最聪明最有天赋的人，他们反而首当其冲。
我个人认为，从来就不存在一种“为历史而历史”的写作——尽管对过往的叙事具有满足个人爱好的文学性质。从1949年开始，中国大陆的历史写作就一直被限制在官方意识形态的控制范围内，对历史问题的选择与判断，经受着政治制度的桎梏与折磨。说明这样的基本状况可以很容易地举出一个例子：2014年，《血缘：大家庭3号》（1995年）以8300万港元落槌，拍卖价格达到近亿元人民币（加手续费近亿），直到这时，在北京的中国美术馆也没有收藏一件张晓刚的作品。然而在过去的若干年里，国外出版的不少艺术史著作中已不同程度地包括有关于张晓刚艺术的介绍与历史的定位，例如在中国艺术家和批评家熟悉的英国艺术史家爱德华·史密斯Edward Lucie-Smith的再版著作LIVES OF THE GREAT MODERN ARTISTS（2009年）中，张晓刚被放在The Artist Not the Artwork部分下面，这组艺术家的名字有：Louise Bourgeois、Joseph Beuys、Yves Klein、Eva Hesse、Jean-Michel Basquiat、Zhang Xiaogang。然而，中国大陆官方艺术研究或教育机构却对当代艺术没有任何涉及，张晓刚以及其他一些重要的当代艺术家（例如王广义、方力均、岳敏君）的艺术仍然受到来自官方艺术机构的批评与指责，这样的状况显然也不是所谓的“学术慎重”的结果，归根到底，中国的当代艺术缺乏现实的合法性，是价值标准不同使然——直到今天，“毛泽东在延安文艺工作座谈会上的讲话”仍然是官方艺术机构工作的基本标准。于是，关于1978年以来中国艺术史的基本线索与问题，只能在脱离体制控制的学术研究中才可以找到。概括地说，与写作《20世纪中国艺术史》以及其他当代艺术史著作的目的一样，我写作本书旨在参与历史的真正变革，让以后的人们通过这样的写作看到一个“当代”作者描绘的历史风景。我知道，这样的写作是远远不够的，可是，一个成书的文本将为读者提供关于一段时期的艺术是否具有历史合法性的论证依据。在这个物欲横流、知识贬值、人文衰落、信仰缺失的时代，坚持历史写作需要一种有智慧的意志和对过往与现实的批判性认识，并且，这样的意志与认识需要贯穿历史书写的整个过程，这是我的基本态度。
人们在论及20世纪中国美术史时，往往会提到徐悲鸿、刘海粟、林风眠、颜文梁、黄宾虹、傅抱石、潘天寿、李可染这样一些名字。然而，时间会告诉人们：张晓刚这一代艺术家不仅是这个国家历史的记忆，也是世界艺术史中不可缺少的一部分。基于所秉持的历史观与需要完成的任务，我会将批判性分析的触觉放在对张晓刚以及他的同代人的工作所不断出现的矛盾与冲突上，试图对张晓刚的艺术历程进行一次多维的叙事与解剖，让读者能够从艺术家的思想、艺术实践以及感觉生活中了解到历史的真实性与复杂性，并进一步确认什么是我们这个时代以及未来文明社会需要的历史价值。
写作艺术家个案是我研究当代艺术史的主张，可是，直到参与编辑《失忆与记忆：张晓刚书信集 1981—1996》时，我才认为写作张晓刚的个人艺术历程有了可能性。历史写作首先需要资料与文献，由于艺术家本人、他的朋友以及助手们的不断努力，大量的资料文献被整理出来，这才使得写作本书有了现实性。
本书仅限于对张晓刚1996年之前的艺术历程的研究，这是艺术家彻底完成“大家庭”风格的时间，同时，生活的改善也使得张晓刚有条件在成都玉林西路55号开办“小酒馆”，由他的前妻唐蕾经营，很快，这个开业于1997年春天的小酒馆就成为当地艺术家和朋友经常聚会并联系各地艺术家的地方，张晓刚越来越多地忙于国内外不同的展览。三年后，艺术家将工作室迁往北京，生活环境的改变使他进入了另一个人生阶段，因此，对1997年以来的张晓刚以及他的艺术的描述需要用另外一部专门著作来完成——我想这是以后的事情。
在这里我要感谢。。。。。。。。。。。。。
2014年12月3日星期三于碧云深处