One day in 1990 when the artist Wang Guangyi was sitting in Purple Bamboo Park, he picked up a rock from the ground and commented, ‘Civilization is just like this rock. People first wrapped it in many layers of golden paper, until eventually nobody removed the wrapping. The stone became a myth, art eternal’.
Ten years later, the young artist Yin Zhaoyang referred to his story:
My rock is the even more common variety that can be found anywhere, like the rocks farmers place on roads to prevent vehicles getting too close to their houses. Because I happened to glance at it or took more notice of it, I felt impelled to carry it home one night. Thinking of that shakes up memories of my past! The only comfort is that the reality of those memories is something I no longer search for. A ‘myth’ had emerged, although it was perhaps based on a lie.
There is no connection between the rock and the ‘stone’ referred to by these two artists. The rocks were very different in size and weight, yet these artists, who had not met, had a similar understanding of existence, a sensitivity that saw them make the same unconscious logical leap from a rock to myth.
In 1996, when Political Pop and Cynical Realism had become influential, these two art trends ushered in more complex artistic phenomena in their wake. In the mid 1990s, contemporary art was about to move in a new direction. The old ideological basis of art was being rocked by its collision with the first stirrings of commercial consumer society and the market ideology. Following the rapid opening of international art circles to Chinese contemporary art, new standards emerged, although they were usually regarded as Western standards. At that time, for a school student, the structures of the planned economy had no way of controlling one new freedom, the freedom to choose a lifestyle and be responsible for it. In 1996 Yin Zhaoyang had just graduated from the Graphic Design Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Leaving college and entering society, Yin Zhaoyang faced the personal responsibility of supporting himself. Like so many other young artist ‘bums’ (mangliu) from 1990 onwards, he moved into a farmhouse on the city fringes. In 2001 he described that life to his friends:
Because I lived near the road, the noise was deafening when I was working. Every morning, for example, there were the typical noises of China’s city fringes: trucks racing by, loud horns, tradesmen hawking their services, and the weird interminable cries of rag and bone men calling out for used goods. There were kids screaming outside. There would be an argument, then fighting. The cops would come and arrest people.... if you opened the door, you could see the police van, with a dozen people sitting inside it. You couldn’t tell from their faces whether they were stunned or bored, but all the parties were convinced that they were in the right. This happened often. Of an evening, the only entertainment was playing billiards. I didn’t know whether this was my reality, or the reality of village life. At times I really wanted to change my environment, but the truth was that I had no choice.
Yin Zhaoyang said that he had no choice and could not break away from the influence of that environment, but, as a painter, Yin Zhaoyang had two clear backgrounds. One was the knowledge of painting and the techniques acquired from art school, the other was the unbearable daily life he now led. This dichotomy in his background can be seen clearly in his painting titled Distant Youth (Qingchun yuanqu). Yin Zhaoyang had painstakingly perfected the techniques he learned at college in this figure painting, but he was also prone to anxiety and this anxiety can clearly be seen in the expressions on the faces of his figures. Perhaps because of the ghastly environment in which he found himself, he did not place his figures in any particular environment, and the artist’s inner world was reflected in his violently spasmodic brush strokes. ‘Distant youth’ is a concept of beauty, and Yin examined the theme in the conventional manner, but treating such a nostalgic theme only a few years after graduating expresses the artist’s disappointment with his own life and the sense that he had been dealt many blows. His image of ‘distant youth’ is filled with images of a scorching sun, mindless youth, purposeless gestures and hellish smog. In expressionist works of the 1980s we can see images of repression and suffering. In Mao Xuhui’s works, for example, anxiety is a psychological response to ideological control and it expresses the desire for freedom, but in Yin Zhaoyang’s paintings the figures are not that desiccated and the characters appear stocky and fleshed out. The psychological sense of having been physically wounded distinguishes this anxious and lost young artist from China’s earlier modernist art. His characters must endure the cruel sunlight, and scorching itself becomes an element of anxiety and vexation. The shadows only delineate the fullness of the figure’s skull, which is also a way of depicting how the person and his mentality must endure the test of light. The light creates shadows which break up the familiar facial features, and for students used to sitting for long periods in class rooms learning to draw, this technique must have seemed incorrect and perverse. But Yin Zhaoyang decided to use strong light with the intention of having it ruin the images (or sculptures) he was creating so his early figures appear ugly to the viewer or unbearable for the artist. Sunlight readily evokes warmth, but in Yin Zhaoyang’s painting, the burning sun approximates coldness, and only the red color of the bodies reminds us of the warmth of light. Clearly, the distortion of the figures heightened the expression of the vexation and anxiety of the artist. Usually, in the composition of his paintings, the artist used some invisible technique to carefully retain some unconscious brushwork, so that the chaos and uncertainty can be retained but ‘tidied up’ in the places where the hair meets the shading or in the props that serve as the background.
The psychological spirit manifested in Distant Youth has something in common with Cynical Realism, and the artist even finds situations similar to those in his works in incidents in novels written by Wang Shuo, but Yin Zhaoyang is not interested in adopting a fancy pose on questions of philosophy or ideology. He found that the issues he had to confront on a daily basis occasioned sufficient anxiety, and he could only examine this anxiety by directly placing it in his painting. His figures and their modeling keep Yin Zhaoyang’s art within the bounds of realism, and the emotion in his paintings is fully expressed. What sets his work apart from expressionist paintings that depict death and struggle is that the artist retains the possibility of hope through the subtle emotions of his characters. His characters facing the viewer or turned away are unclearly unhappy about their existence and have not resigned themselves to the present. After all, the lives with which the artist is familiar are those of his friends, not concepts derived from existentialism or the ideas of Schopenhauer. The painter explains:
The series Distant Youth were all painted from photographs, which indicates my turn from technique to subject. I liked a somewhat forbidding style which in the painting should be hidden, so that it provides an explosive inner restraint. My breakthrough in technique was in summarizing shape. Another was color; I was after unusually strong and solid colors. I didn’t work with models, but painted the people around me. The photographs were not taken specifically with paintings in mind. I took lots of pictures, and was always snapping shots. I used my camera for keeping a record of my ideas, like a sketch pad.
In fact, this feeling and conjecture can also be seen in Yin Zhaoyang’s subsequent Stone (Shitou) series. Obviously, unconscious actions occupy much of an individual’s time, and it is very dangerous to search for inevitability of content in every work of an artist:
One afternoon during the year before last, I found a large rock on the road on my way home. It quietly lay at the side of the road. It was silent, pale and hard. At that moment, I felt suddenly moved, and returned home with a heavy heart. That evening, after it was completely dark, I got two people to help me carry the rock home. I guess we were stealing the rock. The process of bringing the rock home had nothing romantic or weird about it. I don’t remember the name of the philosopher who said that the human being is an animal who searches for meaning, but I felt compelled to give ‘meaning’ to this rock.
This frank statement prepares the audience psychologically for viewing the artist’s work; we need to be alert to the extension of the meaning of his paintings. Those with background knowledge of Western culture will easily make the connection between the artist’s ‘rock’ story and Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, and readily take on board his philosophical propositions. The artist denies that this connection exists, but he nevertheless discusses the myth of Sisyphus. It is impossible for a person to live for any period of time in a spiritual state without purpose or direction, and as soon as a person acknowledges the need to go on living, then he must find a reason for doing so. So the special character of civilization impinges on the artist, who is aware that knowledge can supply the reason and meaning for the existence of all things. Perhaps it was the street lamp (the light source at the scene) or the time (at night), which created the psychological state and invested the ‘hard, pale’ rock Yin saw on the road with a magical quality, so that ‘silent’ rock absorbed the painter’s feelings and acquired a ‘meaning’ echoing his own ardent hopes, as he would remember and explain them. This state of conscious reflection separated him from his earlier confusion about meaning. If intense sunlight could provide no rationality, then maybe this encounter on a road at night could arouse his deeper thoughts? His Stone series is a story of expressionism and symbolism. This series of works demonstrates the artist’s concern for ideas and content. In fact, he knew the ending of the Sisyphus myth, and he also understood the meaning of the story, but the artist but no alternative but to re-enact that absurd tale. In these works he ardently reconsiders the role of psychological chance in the resolution and meaning of the human story. The colors in the paintings are very warm in tone, and the heavy brushwork signals the resolution of his expressionist phase. The Stone series of paintings are different from the Distant Youth series in many ways, but hurried brush strokes are the major representational technique structuring the topic in the new series. Is this a genuinely logical development?
Perhaps it is mistaken to search for any significance in the image of the ‘stone’, and that it is only a psychological projection based on chance, and that this hypothetical question led the artist to new techniques of expression. In the artist’s earlier panicked arrangement of color, his spiky brushwork and his sharp shapes, we see he was having trouble realizing what he set out to achieve. Abstracting the question revealed the development of the painter’s logic, namely that he must find a cause or reason for the question itself. In the act of moving the rock, the artist demonstrated that he was looking for a cause or reason, and this is different from what we saw in the Distant Youth series, where only things from a ‘distant past’ cause the artist to ponder.
Perhaps he was deeply influenced by Western culture and after he had succeeded in moving the rock, he still remained infatuated with modern philosophy. He named his next series of works Paradise Lost (Shi leyuan). We are still in the night, but in a tranquil garden, but this is the story of a man and a woman. Although the artist shrouded his images in a layer of light, the dramatic light and the people tearing at each other represent a howling, perpetuating his earlier psychological conflict. But is Paradise Lost really an abstract theme? Is the story depicted in the painting really part of the artist’s experience? Like the ‘stone’ story based on a chance encounter, Paradise Lost is in the same category. Yin Zhaoyang’s turn to the topic of ‘sex’ was a roundabout return to real life issues, and we can see an identity of theme in the composition of the man and woman sitting on the sofa in a work he completed in 1999. The couple is trapped in the same ennui we find in the Distant Youth series, and now, in Paradise Lost we see the same couple crazily tearing each other apart. We are familiar with Adam and Eve being thrown out of paradise for true love, but Paradise Lost has now been changed by the artist. He directly shows us the results of hatred and punishment. This Paradise Lost has a staged effect and the images are manipulated, so that the audience feels that they are following the eye of the artist.
We do not need to be literal about the painting’s themes; the point is the change in the technique of representation. The reason possibly derives from the artist’s nature, and also from the direct influence of the artist Gerhard Richter with whom Yin Zhaoyang was acquainted in1985. In the process of finishing these works, the painter needed an uncommonly high level of creativity. In fact, the way in which Richter repeatedly altered his works encouraged Yin Zhaoyang to adopt this technique and style which entailed constant reworking. He agreed with Richter’s statement: ‘I never follow any views or systems or schools. I have no plan, style, or unshakable beliefs … I have fled from all restraints. I am inconsistent, indifferent and reactive. I like uncertainty, a lack of boundaries, and constant change’.
In 2002, Yin Zhaoyang moved to a new studio, and there he finished his Utopia (Wutuobang) series. After spending time going through the remnants of social reality and history, he finally decided to concentrate on making historical monumental sculpture that took history and ideology as its background. The artist had obviously turned from the excessively personal to history and reality, but it is unclear whether this represents the excessive influence of Political Pop or whether the artist was still pondering questions that he had never completely discarded. It is risky to conjecture on the meaning of some of his images. But borrowing heritage images from history may have made it difficult for him to interrogate their source. Yin Zhaoyang forged a relationship with history, politics and ideology. ‘Heroism’ (yingxiong-zhuyi) was for him possibly a subconscious individual ideal, but when he examined the social concept of ‘heroism’ he was being driven by these subconscious sources. In fact, when Yin Zhaoyang transformed the original solid meaning of the historic heritage to conform to his personal judgment of history, was he actually able to grasp the basis of the heroism? Yin Zhaoyang once painted a lonely person with a red flag in a snowy landscape, which he named The Hero Gone (Yingxiong yuanqu). The artist seemed to be depicting a genuine heroic historical scene, but his line of vision is obscure and filled with doubt.
Heritage sites provide the basis of Yin Zhaoyang’s return to questions of reality, and the artist has discarded his bitter meditations on pure individuality. But through his discovery of historical images he was able to continue posing such questions. When Yin climbed Tiananmen Gate, he felt a special atmosphere that he then depicted: ‘The Utopia series was the engagement with the past that I needed to make, by way of serious consolation for retreating endeavors and lost ideals’. Yin Zhaoyang defined his position, but we cannot help noting that these ideals could not find expression in the context of consolation. These works suggest Political Pop, but in seeking to provide consolation for retreating endeavors and lost ideals, his photorealistic technique is quite at odds with Political Pop. His approach to historical questions is serious and unsullied by any connection with Political Pop, Cynical Realism or Gaudy Art. His artistic language demonstrates that he was respectful in treating historical themes. This seems quite peculiar, because regardless of the artist’s motivation or hopes, these heroic scenes were vague and vapid. The people scattered about Tiananmen Square have no focus. Yin Zhaoyang used a shaky camera to let us view the mirage he saw after climbing to the top of Tiananmen Gate, but it is a new Tiananmen Square reflected in the artist’s mind. The unclear and magic image actually arouses a sense of panic. In his paintings that depict Tiananmen Square by night, the light from an unclear source evokes the drama of his Paradise Lost.
In his paintings of Chairman Mao which provide a historical judgment that he cannot make because of his lack of experience, there is a sense of the absurd. But in talking about his childhood, Yin Zhaoyang maintains that his experience of Mao was very important: ‘The painting titled The Day I Saw Chairman Mao: Thunder, Lightning and Driving Rain (Kanjian Mao Zhuxi de natian dianshan leiming, fengyu jidang) was a highly successful attempt at stitching together memories’. A child with no capacity to judge history has retained the awesome authority of a deity that he feels he must respect, and twenty years later this force dictates that the young artist must depict it. We can never know the real basis for this, but we do know that the artist regards Chairman Mao as awesome. He wants to be close to this great man, whether beside the Yellow River, on Mount Lushan, or on the path to Anyuan. Thunder, Lightning and Driving Rain depicts a personal experience of the painter. The work takes its title from images in poetry by Chairman Mao, but of course art inspired by the historical themes these words evoke continues to be produced in China, and in an altered form continues on in the political slogans we see in alleys, and it lives on in newspapers and different media. In fact, the socialist ideological structures created by Chairman Mao have never disappeared.
The artist has described how he became infatuated with these themes of history and reality:
From my childhood to the present day, I had read almost everything written about Mao, and what I really love derives from Mao’s poetry. The poems full of passion and tremendous imagination still excite me today. When I finally had an artistic skill and could use this skill to express things, I wanted to show Chairman Mao walking along the path to Anyuan again. From being a student in the mountains, Mao would later become the hero I admired. He is surrounded by an aura of light and the flash of lightning in the distant clouds, and this image let me feel fear again, because I know, from now on, there will be no torrential rain, only Chairman Mao walking in my memories…...
Regardless of whether the artist initial point of departure and position is correct, when the artist dresses himself as the Chairman, silently follows the great man, or sits beside him, the images are ludicrous and irreverent. The structure of his painting is completely different from that of the painting of the iconic Chairman with whom everyone is familiar, and the dramatic light and clouds leave the viewer feeling anxious. The artist depicts his respect for the Chairman, but the great man pays no attention to the young artist.
The paintings evince photorealism, but his sculptures have the feel of ceramics. The shining stars disturb our emotions, and the works only succeed in arousing a sense of impending doom. The painting of Chairman Mao waving his hand to lead the people onward is especially disturbing, because we can only think of the red flags diminishing beyond the horizon. In history books, this was described as ‘a sea of red’, but this image of Yin Zhaoyang only evokes fear and terror. The lights from the side make Mao’s arm cast a shadow across the face of the great man, and prompt us to ask where at night was the source of this cold light. Regardless of what the artist might say, his assessment of history and the great man fundamentally alters his own work.
The content of Yin Zhaoyang’s art is a continuation of the content of the art of the 1990s, because the environment in which artists live and work today is fundamentally the same as it was then. Even though the old ideology is in dramatic retreat it has not completely gone. Yin Zhaoyang dislikes visually grotesque or totally harmonious forms, as he sets out to independently and seriously examine the issues of history and reality. Therefore, in his topics and themes Yin Zhaoyang keeps a distance from that type of art. In the same way, his deep interest in painting itself does not permit him to entertain any feeling for excessive signifiers or set logos. In his ideas and techniques, he is like Duchamp or Powys. He understands the cruel behavior of this city, but he is upholding the importance of painting. In the same way in which the artists of the 1980s borrowed from Andrew Wyeth, Salvador, Dali, Edvard Munch and Robert Rauschenberg, the artists of the 1990s studied Lucian Freud and Andy Warhol, and Yin Zhaoyang also borrowed the views of Gerhard Richter. This was at a time when unique styles emerged from a sense of enlightenment. We can see in the works of Zhou Chunya, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaotao and other painters how insights led by chance to surprising results. Only personal perseverance led to the emergence of quite divergent styles of new painting in the late 1990s. Yin Zhaoyang’s unique psychology provides the basis for his understanding and observation of the world, and at the same time, he became a resource for his paintings that cannot be articulated. He confidently expresses his feelings and experiences of issues of his choosing with his brush and color, and knows that he is doing a heroic thing. This is the basic reason why he is an integral part of the new painting in China.
Tuesday, 10 October 2006
Translated by Dr. Bruce Gordon Doar