He Sen: Symbols of Sorrow and Problems
In February 1989 the China Avant-Garde contemporary artexhibition opened at the China Art Gallery, and Xiao Lu’s two gunshots at that chaotic, yet energetic, exhibition signaled the end of Chinese art of the eighties. In June of that year, He Sen had just graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. Like most graduates before him, the state prepared and allocated a position for him as an art teacher at the Number Forty High School in Chongqing. At this crucial intellectually formative period, the twenty-one year old graduate already had a good understanding of the contemporary art that he had been exposed to in college, as well as in Chengdu, Kunming and other cities. He recalls that even before being accepted at the art academy he would often visit the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art, where his goal was to acquire exciting information and look at works by the artists with whom he was familiar. As he put it, ‘My reason for applying to the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts was that the graduating classes of 1977 and 1978 had produced many of the influential Chinese artists I respected, including Luo Zhongli, Cheng Conglin, He Duoling, Zhou Chunya and Zhang Xiaogang’. For a young artist like He Sen, this background more or less determined his future. It is difficult for us to imagine He Sen’s future if he had not lived and worked in Chongqing and Chengdu, or if the Scar Art of 1979 and the mid-eighties’ southwestern art activities, including those of the Red, Yellow, Blue group in Chengdu, and the New Figurative Images group in Kunming, as well as the various other art groups’ activities and exhibitions, had not happened. Zhang Xiaogang was He Sen’s professor at the academy. As a representative of the ’85 New Wave Art Movement in south-western China, Zhang’s influence on his students was direct. He actively encouraged students to create freely and stage exhibitions. Like the unique climate of Chongqing and the specific environment provided by the art academy, from the end of the seventies until the mid to late eighties, contemporary art in the southwest showed great complexity. For example, the re-examination of history began with students of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, including Gao Xiaohua, Cheng Conglin and Luo Zhongli, and the direct reflection on reality in art came from such sensitive artists as Zhou Chunya, Zhang Xiaogang and Ye Yongqing. Moreover, the artistic understanding of inner loneliness started with Mao Xuhui who had read Sartre, Husserl and Saul Bellow. While they might not have been classmates, they were friends, and, because of their shared understanding of the freedom of art, they became inseparable comrades. For a young man longing to understand contemporary art, they were an indispensable spiritual resource.
By 1988, the atmosphere of reform had permeated the streets and alleys for almost a decade, but no time had seemed as filled with instability and potential as 1988. The contradictions between rapid economic growth and the slow changes in political reform were becoming very apparent. The development of market mechanisms in the economy over the previous few years had destabilized the established social order. Various disturbing social phenomena accompanying the reforms began to emerge. Tens of thousands of people from rural areas began to abandon agricultural production and flow into the large metropolises to pursue their dreams. Many factories faced bankruptcy, there was insufficient work and there were rumors that massive unemployment loomed. Incompetent management in the railway system led to an incessant string of accidents. On university campuses, a spirit of absurdity, indifference, superficiality, dispiritedness and chaos filled the air. This was accompanied by inflation and a call for toppling corrupt officials and nepotism in the bureaucracy. These factors resulted in unbearable mental and psychological pressures. He Sen focused on personal issues and tried to effect small changes in his life. In May 1989, the clash between society and politics reached boiling point, and his psychic reaction was even more complex.
He Sen’s graduation paintings show a heaviness of visual habit. He maintained the depth and strangeness of space in his Shattered World (Canque shijie de zhujie). He had quite clearly been influenced by ideas of surrealism, but, in terms of its construction, the strangeness shared similarities with earlier Scar Art. For example, the obscurity in this work seems to have been derived from Cheng Conglin’s Guards’ Morning of Execution (Jin Weijun xingxing de zaochen), and the fear seems to come from expressionist paintings, such as Zhang Xiaogang’s Sick Bed (Bingchuang). Such influences were subtle and unconscious, yet they were also completely natural. The ’85 movement provided all the resources of modernism, and any young artist could have adopted them. His graduation pieces were completed between April and May 1989, which in that year was a chaotic and anxious time, but the busy young art student was able to subsume his intense feelings about political issues related to the state and the individual within the more general context of sheer exhaustion. The artist offered up a conjectural setting, a space perhaps close to his own living environment and habits. However, this space appeared only on paper, which proves that the artist was unwilling to consider it an actual reality, but rather a type of conjecture. In the period until 1991, another classmate, Shen Xiaotong, was also interested in effects on paper, and Guo Wei also produced similar surreal environments. Such works embody a psychological contradiction and a questioning of the environment. Having left college and entered society, He Sen completed many works that revealed similar sentiments. In works like Still life and People (Jingwu he ren, 1990), he incorporated everyday familiar objects, such as bags, clothes, cups, ashtrays and cigarette butts in his compositions. These objects symbolized the chaos of his personal life after leaving school, and their existence provides evidence of the artist’s attention to his own life and his breakaway from the pursuit of the essentialist principles of the ’85 movement. Until the end of 1991, He Sen used his friends and classmates as subjects of his work, but, at variance with the Scar Art tradition, they were not focused on a particular problem or goal. Even though his compositions are similar to the works of that movement, there is no relationship between the facial expressions and actions of his figures, as we can see in two works of 1991, Two in a Chair (Yishang de liangren) and Joyful Years (Yukuai de nianhua). He Sen overlooked the psychological details of essentialism, even though his application of complex brush strokes betrays a deep-seated nostalgia for his professor, an artistic bond not readily severed. Whether his sentiments aroused a new consciousness, or whether it was the influence of the art of the new generation, He Sen’s feel for reality in this period reveals similarities with what artists in Beijing were doing. In 1996, He Sen told the editor of Gallery (Hualang) magazine:
The series of works between 1991 and 1992 are basically a compilation of personal experience, an accumulation of culture and a synthesis of many years of undefined urges. I endowed familiar people, friends and personal belongings with sacred meanings. The expressionist language that I made my own naturally became my mouthpiece. Through those images, proximity in the unlimited expanse of personal sentiment perfectly matched the techniques of the new generation of artists in Beijing, later categorized as pop in the Post-89 Exhibition.However, in my opinion, the atmosphere of heroism and expressionist language ran counter to the attitudes of Cynical Realism. Apart from releasing personal emotions, these works lack broader social meaning. Thus, in 1993, the only adjustments I made were in my subject matter, for example, excursions through the social panorama and the symbolic copper bird.
He Sen’s self-description reveals similarities with the new generation of artists, and he even admits that ‘apart from releasing personal emotions, these works lacked broader social meaning’. However, his emphasis on the atmosphere of heroism demonstrates a keenness to preserve his unique sentiments, which he believed would win the approval of his professors in the southwest. In 1992, He Sen painted Two Artists (Liangge yishujia) based on a photograph of Zhang Xiaogang and Chen Weimin. He Sen applied anxious brushstrokes and a grayish tone to his interpretation of his two professors. In the top corner of the work, He Sen wrote, ‘Erected in honor of the venerable Zhang and Chen’. This shows his respect for professors who disagreed with artistic ‘irreverence’ (xipi xiaolian). Indeed, in Life Triptych (Shenghuo sanlianhua, 1992), even though the subjects have upturned lips, their smiles are forced, and in Centered Landscapes (Fengjing juzhong de lianhua, 1992) the smiles on his female figures are not enough to alleviate the heavy hearts or anxiety of the male figures.
He Sen loves music and even says that music is ‘more enriching and energetic than paintings’. However, even in his compositions related to music, the music we feel is very heavy. This is the soul in the tradition of the Southwestern artists. Rough and repetitive brushstrokes and towering compositions, as well as the grayish tone denote He Sen’s obvious distance from the new generation. This situation is related to his understanding of his experience; an expressionist vocabulary often appears in the painting of artists who feel depressed or having difficulties, and, indeed, in the works of his close friends of this period, such as Zhang Nengzhi, Yin Ruilin and Du Xi, anxiety, anonymous violence and oppression comprise the tenor of their art works, even though each has his own style. Such a phenomenon also explains what led the artist to depict the highly symbolic ‘copper bird’: the chained bird which expresses the artist’s helplessness. The reason why the artist selected this particular bird as an image is quite unclear, but, since the he uses heavy strokes and colors and piles a thick layer of material on the image, it would be best to view the bird as a convenient construct. It has nothing to do with the portents of Western mysticism, and relates even less to orientalist concepts of auspiciousness, but merely serves as a record of his state of being, a kind of diary entry that, when recalled many years later, will occasion melancholy and sorrow. After completing this work, He Sen rediscovered his optimism and imagined that he was breaking the chains and flying away. Consciously or not, he had created a link with society. In his own words:
The experience of being a guest on a TV program in Chongqing allowed me to feel the power of the media. Combine this with my exaggerated ideals from an earlier period, my rebellion against doctrines, and so I was ready, in 1994, to paint the Staginess (Biaoyanxing) series. This series was intended to unveil the social reality of contemporary conscious or unconscious ‘acting’, as well as the interactive influence of the media. At the time, I overemphasized the artist’s reaction to his immediate environment. But as your choices become limited when you enter a particular setting, the overly direct and determined model, along with my relatively introverted character, was locked in a serious dichotomy. (Gallery magazine, combined issues of 5, 6, 1996)
The artist here touches on the popular Cynical Realism and Political Pop art of the period, as well as the Gaudy Art that had branched off from these two. He Sen’s description is honest in ascribing his interest in expressionism to his introspection but his immediate environment is also telling him that society is undergoing marked changes. The Staginess series is He Sen’s break away from an overemphasis on the self, and marks his entry into a period in which he paid greater attention to social change and hoped to more accurately express his feelings. He recognized the problems created by exaggerated idealism and ideology, having witnessed the despair of the late eighties. He no longer believed that idealistic clamoring was either appropriate or meaningful. On the basis of his memories, his reality and his particular environment, He Sen set himself up with a new stage, microphone, television and media studio, as well as his memories and street banners. However much He Sen attempted to effect a relaxed and dissipated guise, traces of expressionism and complex composition led viewers of his work to make a connection with recent history, through the contemporary nature of his ‘scars’ and romanticism. As the new generation’s clean and neat compositions became popular, He Sen, living in the city of Chongqing but working in the smoggy and oily Huangjiaoping district, could not get involved. This unique environment prevented He Sen and his other friends from using the flat advertising techniques favored by artists from the north.
In December 1994, He Sen collaborated with his friends and classmates Yin Ruilin, Chen Wenbo, Du Xia and Zhao Nengzhi in presenting the exhibition Slices. The exhibition was held during hard times for He Sen and his friends. They put together a very simple exhibition catalogue. Not only were the photographs of the works printed in black and white, but they were also very unclear. In this catalogue they expressed their sharp and opinionated views. In the section titled ‘slice selections’ they expressed their views on art. Yin Ruilin warned that ‘the colors in our paintings are becoming brighter . . .it is not a direct release of emotions and personal sentiments, but is delivered from outside the works and, in a relatively objective fashion, narrates a shared and common inheritance’; Zhao Nengzhi noticed that ‘most of our works have elements of documenting and reporting, we are careless and unwilling to clearly show overt criticism or other attitudes’; and, Chen Wenbo noticed the influence of pop, although he subtly despised direct expression in pop works, such as the popular songs of Mao Amin. Confronted by the influence of popular mass culture, He Sen expressed his own complexity:
Everyone knows that what’s most contemporary is most direct. Popular films, for example, all set out to confront and shock. However, the more contemporary people become, the more complex is their psychology. This contrast will only intensify, and inner complexity will become impossible to discard. As we put it into the form of art, we can express this complexity, but the directness will naturally be diminished. This is a contradiction.
In other words, the hesitant psychological state that became dominant in the mid-1990s could not generate memorable images and symbols. As the Northern painters directly spoke of their boredom and helplessness, He Sen used popular images to warn people that neither stage or actual life were real any more. Fabrication itself needed to be pointed out, but He Sen seems to opt for authenticity:
The entertainment value of the stage: people see truth through fabrication.
The danger of the stage: people see fabrication through truth.
The seriousness of the stage: people see invincible strength through concise logic and work cycles.
The comfort of the stage: everything staged is unreal.
He Sen’s way of thinking came from the tradition of his professors, and that tradition began with Scar Art’s questioning of history, and was later influenced by principles drawn from Western essentialist philosophy. Until the first half of the nineties, artists working and living in the southwest maintained their understanding of issues related to reality.
After 1989, the logic of essentialism had lost any reason for its existence, and people no longer agreed that were any actual collective issues. A social life produced by unique political events provided people with a clear warning: there is no actual point in the pursuit of truth. Not only do exciting events happen naturally, but people can set up a stage at any time and in any place and act out a moving performance. It is not a matter of willingness. If each person does not take on a role and participate in it, it will become worthless, and so the complex suffering in one’s heart is of no significance. In the eighties, pain and loneliness became the artists’ resource, and they provided evidence of the necessity of resistance in preserving one’s life. This was the common subject matter of works by Mao Xuhui and Zhang Xiaogang in the ten years prior to 1992. But now this type of mental state was being questioned and the relationship between the individual and society was once again being taken seriously. In 1994, Zhang Xiaogang had already painted the mature Big Family (Da jiating)series. Mao Xuhui’s Paternalism (Jiazhang) series of paintings had already evolved into scissors that had made the transition from acute disquiet to a sense of ease. Ye Yongqing had also begun his ‘graffiti’ (tuya) works that distilled a literati attitude, and Zhou Chunya, inspired by the ancients, was enchanted by his studies of the Rock (Shitou). These developments were all part of an overall change, although compared to the art scene in northern China, it was a change that did not involve total derailment. Nonetheless, He Sen had accepted the influence of Political Pop; not only did he borrow the red flags, merit certificates, red scarves and other images, but he also documented historical memories and realities. As He Sen combined symbolic meanings draw from politics, history and society, when freely combining different details, he was also attempting to resolve historical and actual issues raised by the New Generation, Cynical Realism and Political Pop. Having been steeped in modernism, He Sen’s compositions are expressive and surreal, and show the influence of collage, advertising and photography. Naturally, like most other Southwestern artists, He Sen has maintained a vigilant guard against the entry of post-modernism.
The relationship between emotions and rationality is difficult to explain, and, the same time, the influence of a region on an artist is not limited to matters of style. An artist’s style is guided by internality and wariness, but to what extent is this appropriate in terms of trends? For He Sen this was an issue. Clarity and simplicity allow us to distinguish and remember images, why is why Gaudy Art succeeded in becoming so popular. This situation made He Sen anxious, and so until 1996 He Sen moved between expressionism and his own hesitant complex world. He focused on internal things, but was well aware that one’s being is not everything. He was concerned with reality, but also realized that art is not reality. He also longed to be acknowledged, but realized this was not really a genuine artistic problem. How did He Sen deal with these various issues?
In 1996 He Sen clarified his views in the answer he provided to the following questions put to him by Huang Zhuan: ‘Since the mid-1990s there has been a trend toward conceptualization in Chinese visual art. What is your opinion of this trend? Do your works have this sort of character or pursuit?’
He Sen replied:
This tendency to conceptualization provided a new point of entry for figurative artists in their search for new areas in the wake of pop art and Cynical Realism. We also benefited from the impact of the stimulating and vibrant installation and performance art movements. If paintings no longer served as bearers of meaning, then they could not take their place beside installation art, performance art and video art as authentic media of contemporary art. This transformation is a distancing from the old model provided by reflection theory. But this is only a premise, because, it has itself already become another beginning, and it is only on this basis that the artist can begin to re-explore and reconsider issues of interest, enabling the artist to adopt a more resolute artistic method and cultural direction. In this way, new artistic strength can be born. Do we still have imagination? That question premises an artistic dead-end, but I have a lot more work to do on this.
By re-organizing my compositional structure and basic language, I am hoping that my painting will no longer be a simple reaction to the outside world. In my basic artistic language I must shield my more expressionist language from the danger of my own indulgences, and then setting this in a rational structure, getting rid of visual chaos, and not adding meaning through the process of painting or through the brushstrokes themselves. Otherwise, the concept will be squandered completely. Presence, typicality and plot have no function, so the question is how do I minimize relations of inheritance and create images.
Using expressionist methods to replicate an object several times brings out a level of refinement at which there will be contradictions within the meaning of this body of language. These contradictions with the unique spiritual meaning render what is signified, ambiguous. In the end, that which stands out is the effect and the images. We are no longer simply dealing with the dregs of emotional release, but are subjecting meaning to historical observation.
In his answer to these questions, He Sen is obviously quite clear about his future work. He is beginning to question the danger of using accustomed methods of expression to create contemporary art works, and so he has entered a new period in his artistic career.
Perhaps there is no great significance in an individual’s psychological uniqueness, but once this uniqueness is transformed into language, there is the possibility of producing meaning. As early as his 1990 work Space Inside (Shinei Kongjian), He Sen had begun placing ambiguous spots in the upper corner of the background. There was no particular meaning attached to these spots, and they were only an effect of the artist’s treatment of the composition. Looking at the spots in psychological terms, they could perhaps even be regarded as points of reverie placed there by the artist. But in his 1991 Still life (Jingwu)series and his work on figures, these indistinct clumps create a tone of melancholy expressionism. What is interesting is that other artists of the same period, such as Shen Xiaotong, Xin Haizhou, Guo Wei and others, also presented these floating clumps in different forms. Under what circumstances would these ambiguous feelings become a type of language, rather than a spontaneous expression? We don’t know the particular circumstances, but one day in 1996 He Sen transposed these indistinct masses onto figures and succeeded in basically altering their ‘form’. The clumps started to appear rigid, as though the forms were fossilized, and they began to take on the appearance of stone. As the artist grew fond of this effect, even heads began to resemble artificial stones. His works completed in 1996 are uniformly allusive. They have internal contradictions, and produce the heaviness and responses demanded by reality. In these fossilized works, the daily life of He Sen’s characters seems to be fixed, like the victims in Pompeii, even though the stones created by He Sen’s brush more readily evoke Chinese mountains. Regardless of the artist’s efforts in styling or linguistics, his stylistic tone still tends towards expressionism in its complexity, incomprehensibility and serious reasoning. Such a style clearly distances He Sen from other artists. Yet the effect achieved only with special techniques prevents the artist from clearly conveying his stance. Is he relying on modernism, or is he attempting to make a clean break from the entanglement of psychological details? To a great extent, he had reached the watershed between modernism and post-modernism pointed to by the critics, and had allowed his metaphysical individualistic stance to be effaced.
On the basis of his ‘fossilized’ aesthetic, the artist began to relax, and the complexity of his thoughts gave way to a probing for imagery and interest. Among works done in 1997, rigid objects, including people’s heads, suddenly emitted light, in sharp contrast with the lifeless rocks he previously painted. Who or what allowed his ‘fossilized’ objects to emit light?
What He Sen was truly focusing on were not ‘sticky things’, nor were images that appeared to have been carved by a knife also necessarily what he was attempting. Only constant experimentation could clarify what he was trying to create on the basis of his techniques and enlightenment accumulated over the years. If repetitive manipulation failed to achieve a break with the past, then perhaps completely discarding all this could lead him in a new direction. He began to reduce the complexity and layering of his images, and perhaps the source of light gave him the clue. If soft lighting could diminish the complexity of the image and bring out other possibilities, then he might find an effective path for discarding his expressionist details. He Sen began to recall his own artistic history and even returned to his experiments of 1990. In works completed in 1998, such as Girl Biting Her Hands (Yao shou de nühai), Wandering (Panghuang), Scream (Jiaohan) and Self-portrait: Hiding Face (Wu lian de zihuaxiang), we see a summary of his previous works: a return to paper and the cleanliness of realism, as well as expressive brushwork. However, the artist began to calmly study his compositions, courageously discarded complex and unclear content and reduced his expressive brushwork to a minimum. Light became a crucial element in his compositions, especially the harsh light that makes people’s pupils disappear. This was an era in which digital photography replaced film, making free and random use of the camera possible. It is not important when He Sen began to pay attention to the special effects of lights on images and photographs, especially in situations without specific manipulation, but this provided the artist with important clues. We also are unclear when He Sen began paying attention to the work of Gerhard Richter, but he mentioned that he really enjoyed the art of this German artist. Obviously, the Western artist’s experience also provided encouragement and inspiration for He Sen’s experiments. Overall, among all the possibilities, He Sen chose the effects of photography, just as Richter had once said, ‘photography once attempted to achieve the effects of paintings, but today works on canvas are beginning to learn from photography’. Such an opinion was also supported by Duchamp’s observation that images painted in the form of photographs can produce new conceptual compositions.The Girl Lying on a Sofa (Tang zai shafa shang de nühai) became his earliest bold attempt to use photographic effects. Completed in 1998, the work was shot without planning and it was a spontaneous flash. This coincidental discovery was of great assistance to He Sen up until 1999 and he completed a large number of works of this type. He completely abandoned expressionist techniques, convinced that adding coincidental elements onto the canvas directly would suffice. This was a new turning point for He Sen.
Unlike other artists who use photographs in their painting, He Sen remained cautious. He had noticed the effects of light, by highlighting those effects and especially highlighting the simplification of forms caused by the flash. In this he creates a unique mood. Therefore, if we check the photographs He Sen to which refers, we discover that his reliance on visual inertia led to the simplification of form so that he purposefully removed the eyes of his human subjects. He Sen once said that ‘the previous Accumulation (Duiji) series was inspired by stone sculpture, and that stone sculptures have no eyes. So, when I switched to girls, they also had no eyes’. So, in fact, this is not necessarily because when ‘the flash goes off, people’s eyes become undefined’. The artist has only appropriated a visual understanding of the flash’s effect in intentionally erasing the eyes. Such manipulation is very important, because through it He Sen has an opportunity to underscore his constant fear that this kind of mental state has directly revealed his earlier expressionism. Now, the artist further explains his images, ‘the girls in my paintings don’t have eyes because I believe there is an unreachable distance between people, making them unable to clearly recognize reality. They are confused and cold, and see reality without actual attention’. (Ke Ning, Female Portraits, Social Projection? June 2006)
He Sen had finally discovered an experimental path, with which he felt comfortable, and the concept of painting photographs allowed him to apply his solid realist techniques and abilities without any obstacles, and the subject matter and its content allowed him to distance himself from the endless caricaturing of ‘beautiful’ subjects. With such conceptual support he embarked on had begun the endless depiction of young women: their poses are listless and disinterested, they seem to fulfill no particular purpose and even their unwillingness to answer the telephone gives a viewer the impression of an unbearable boredom. They also lack class and elegance in public situations and seem to do the type of work which is sleazy and unthinking. Under many circumstances, He Sen’s compositions could easily attract voyeurism. At the same time, we notice that even as decorative props have been taken out of the photographs, the artist has kept or added large stuffed toys, usually white, which are placed on the ground, on sofas or held by his subjects. He Sen, answering a critic’s questions published in an article titled ‘My Work Is to Understand Others and Myself through Art: Interview with He Sen’ (Wo de gongzuo jiushi yong yishu de fangshi liaojie bieren he renshi ziji: He Sen fangtan lu), explained his reason for using the toys, ‘Everyone’s growth is accompanied by a sense of loss. The eyeless girls I paint, as well as the toys on the sofa in the confined spaces, all convey the emotions of childhood’. This is, of course, a personal view. What needs to be emphasized is that everyone has their own understanding of growth and time. Fear is relevant to aging and one’s situation in life, regardless of the artist’s life.
In 1999, He Sen moved from Chongqing to Chengdu, and he had always longed for the excitement of the Chengdu art world. Most of He Sen’s important paintings were done after that year, when he realized that his art was moving towards a greater clarity and he needed a new environment and more opportunities. After 2001, his women with blinded eyes begin to have clear eyes. On the basis of previous experiments, He Sen began to paint subtle hints of sadness on his subjects’ faces and bodies. With the abrupt brushstrokes he used to accomplish this effect, he seems to be saying that even the most attractive image or form can be empty or feel injured. There is no fundamental difference from the artist’s previous expressionist attitude, and he has only changed his channel of expression. In the years following, he gave full expression to life and youth, all of which were related to time and to the constantly renewed understanding and probing of personal existence. Even though critics have papered over these questions with post-modern terminology, the works of the artist still reveal these things. As he said in the same interview:
Women and the external appearance of the world in which we live are rather similar in appearance. To put it simply, girls nowadays are prettier than before and they seem to get even more beautiful. The actual society we live in is also more beautiful; even the architecture and streets are more beautiful. But our hearts are far less fulfilled than in the past, and the current view of beauty and progress is entirely illusory. In fact it is only an empty shell, an appearance covering a void. Idealism is diminishing in actual life, as society becomes more realistic and cool.
This type of melancholy that can often be seen among Southwestern artists; we can see the same sense of contemporary tragedy in works by Zhang Xiaogang, Mao Xuhui, Zhao Nengzhi, Xin Haizhou, Zhang Xiaotao, Xie Nanxing and others. Time is ‘beautiful’, but this ‘beauty’ is a symbol of degeneration and problems.
Just as a few years earlier He Sen had moved from Chongqing to Chengdu filled with hope, and in 2003 he moved to Beijing. In the capital he attained the success he had long been hoping for. He spent two years producing his degenerate ‘beauties’ until 2005, when he again began to reflect on his art. Having gone through many art history books, he has returned to history. He attempted to use the medium of oil painting to express ancient flower and bird paintings. Did he really want to explore the flavor and tone (qiyun) of ancient Chinese painters? Obviously not. He Sen has even abstracted the Song dynasty artist Ma Yuan’s twelve images of water, and dissected areas of his compositions using completely different manners of expression to complete the same work. He Sen used paintings by ancient scholars as a given, and edited them, not in order to achieve some kind of visual illusion, but rather to make an observation. When historical images are set in front of us, what should we be thinking? In fact, we see a conceptual expansion through this difference in compositional expression. As an artist, He Sen is quite familiar with the uniqueness of images in Chinese art history and, as many artists use densely ideological images to explicate contemporary issues, He Sen has moved even further on and thrown out all allusions to political issues. He has abandoned the habit of ideological reflection and political allusion by creating a direct rapport with the ancients. This is the new direction for art in this century, and it signals the return of many sensitive artists to Chinese art history, whether it is in Zhou Chunya’s peach blossoms or Zeng Fanzhi’s landscapes. These artists have discovered an eternal quality in the works of China’s ancient painters, and they have sensed that this path of exploration can perhaps provide a distinct contrast with Western art and culture. In today’s era of accessible global information, looking for genuine originality and uniqueness has once again become an artistic goal. This requires that concepts be combined with sensitivity and that the contemporary be married to history. In the thirty years from the beginning of Chinese new art in the eighties to today, apart from the concept of the freedom of enlightenment, every other concept has at some time been negated. For He Sen, New Art has only just begun, but his instincts are healthy, and he has already identified problems in conceptual trends brought about by wanton cynicism.
Obviously, among He Sen’s works of different periods, we can sense the artist’s early loneliness and his present melancholy. A person spends his early life pursuing something, but when he achieves what he has pursued, he feels that he has then lost what he once held to be innocent, beautiful and eternal. Ma Yuan’s son Ma Lin has a painting titled Holding a Candle Roaming at Night (Bingzhu yeyou tu), an image derived from an elegant and refined ambience. It depicts candlelight at night illuminating a garden in full blossom as if it is daytime, and there is a figure, sitting in the midst of the garden. It is difficult to determine whether this person is enjoying the seclusion or feeling melancholic longing. We know that this work was painted early in 1279, in the very final days of the Song dynasty, before the Mongols invaded Hangzhou later in that year and drove the literati into hiding. The quiet in each of their gardens would soon come to an end. These miniatures by Ma Lin and other anonymous artists of the Southern Song are records of the complexity of their mindset. Similar emotional states might also appear in today’s works, in a period of drastic transition, and perhaps symbolic melancholy can better remind us of existing issues. He Sen and other artists have already realized the importance of sympathizing with history, and this is also a crucial characteristic of the new art.
Tuesday, 9 December 2006
Translated by Dr. Bruce Gordon Doar