Wang Chuan: Moving to the Start of the Beginning
Prefatory Remarks
Everyone has their own history. In terms of cultural history, if an individual’s history is told or written for a particular group of people then it becomes a part of mankind’s mythology. Viewed from a Taoist perspective of ‘quiescent non-action’ (qingjing wuwei), it is unimportant whether an individual enters this mythology or not, because in fact any individual’s history, even at its most inflated, is only the most infinitesimal part of the nominal mythology of mankind.
In the context of cultural history, it also needs to be pointed out in advance that history is recorded using written language, images or other media, and its logical relationships and evolution are in the final analysis the later explanations of those who write history. History is usually regarded, whether by philosophers, aestheticians or even by historians, as the result of an a priori essence and the constant rewriting of history demonstrates that those things called its ‘essential laws’ by most thinkers and philosophers are constantly unfixed and floating, if indeed they in fact exist at all.
These two points are essential for clarifying the two prevailing views on the art of Wang Chuan. One view is that, after bidding farewell to his moving work titled Goodbye, Little Path (Zaijian ba, Xiao Lu) and entering the cultural desert of Shenzhen, Wang Chuan’s job moved to a peripheral cultural area. Although newspapers and periodicals often contained news about Wang Chuan, he seemed to be trying hard to give people the impression that he had no direct connection with mainstream cultural events and developments. This view reflects an attitude of cultural essentialism, which confines contemporary and classical culture, so that contemporary mythology is positioned as a risible centrist coordinate for scrutinizing all cultural phenomena, resulting naturally in a dissociation from contemporary cultural problems.
The second prevailing view is that the phased changes in Wang Chuan’s artistic style seem to lack a logical connection and this has led to disputes regarding the value of his art. The problem is that this view reflects an ineffective classical historicism and its philosophical basis remains essentialism. The latter view is founded on the belief that history is the material evidence of linear time and any cultural phenomenon is determined by logical certainty. The predicament of this kind of view is obvious in the face of contemporary culture. Breaking from the simple ‘either .. or ..’ logic and moving towards a multivalent ‘both… and …’ logic is a characteristic of pluralistic post-modernism. As a general statement, fragmentary and unregulated contemporary cultural phenomena require us to change the languages that state the game rules, and connect, in an unfamiliar yet thoroughly familiar way, incidents that could not originally have coexisted. In describing the many meanings of art, the impossible becomes possible and that which could not be narrated now can be narrated. This is the attitude described as transforming philosophy and history.
Wang Chuan last year organized an exhibition called Black: Dots. As I described it, this exhibition marked the end of a stage for Wang Chuan. In other words, it signified that he was ‘moving towards the start of the beginning’. Wang Chuan returned to Chengdu from Shenzhen in May of this year. I do not think there is much point is trying to look for any essential link between these two events, but I do know that when Wang Chuan moved back to Shenzhen in April, a tragic event had occurred in his apartment, intensifying the grief that shrouds the generation to which Wang Chuan belongs. I would prefer to quote from a letter from Wang Chuan in Shenzhen dated 15 April this year rather than resort to the language of philosophy to describe his sadness:
I arrived in Shenzhen at noon on the 12th. I entered my apartment and saw that it was flooded. It may be fate that I am more unlucky this year. The broken water pipes sapped my energy. All the books and albums (tied up and ready for the planned move) were rotting in the water and the video tapes were moldy. It had been like this for more than a fortnight according to the landlord, but the door of the apartment was locked, and so on and so forth. In fact, the landlord never shut off the water at the mains.
At this point I would like to go back ten years. Thinking of his emotional state means that I must go back to the beginning if I am to genuinely describe what brought about these emotions. The letter only relates in the most ordinary way the reasons for this state which are so difficult to describe.
1. History of the Emotions
It is hard for audiences today to imagine what audiences felt ten years ago when they looked at Wang Chuan’s painting Goodbye, Little Path which deeply moved large audiences as much as the following works of that time: Luo Zhongli’s Father (Fuqin), Cheng Conglin’s Snow on an Unrecorded Day in 1968(1968 nian X yue X ri xue), Wang Hai’s Spring (Chun, 1979), and He Duoling’s We Once Sang This Song (Women zeng changguo zhe zhi ge). Today’s audiences lacking the social experience and emotions which Goodbye, Little Path reflected will perhaps only regard it as an ordinary, unfamiliar and distant oil painting. At best, the image of the girl with delicate emotions and an enigmatic mood may trigger some free associations, but these are easily dispelled by advertising images outside the exhibition space. After all, for those who lack particular historical knowledge of a situation, there is ‘nothing behind the picture’.
I can still remember my mood when I saw Goodbye, Little Path exhibited back then. I stood facing the work, unable to speak. This was not simply because art appreciation is often a silent activity. In fact, many works in this exhibition were being praised loudly and vocally.
There are two ways of looking back at history. One is through documentation (text, pictures and even material objects); the other is through memory. Persons with no experience of history must have adequate documentation before they can understand history, but for those with personal experience, recall itself is the documentation, and if they subject memory to later rational introspection then their memories will provide a cultural critique with cultural significance.
Art history teaches us that the stability of an image over a long period of time is determined by whether the discourse that supports new images has legitimacy, which is confirmed by the fact that if new images lack legitimacy, then old images will continue, like many examples of medieval and ancient art. Three years prior to September 1979, when Wang Chuan finished painting Goodbye, Little Path, the stereotyped art on a single theme that Chinese audiences saw from the Cultural Revolution period was similar to the art of the Middle Ages. The Cultural Revolution’s artistic forms were constructed on the basis of the principles of ‘the three levels of prominence’ (san tuchu), being the prominence of outstanding characters among ordinary personages, the prominence of heroic characters among positive characters, and the prominence of the main heroic figure among the heroic figures. The artistic images erected on these foundations were very distinct and easy-to-understand. Over the decade of the Cultural Revolution period, images prevailed because they were general, simple, lively, uniform and direct. The reason for the popularity of such images can be found in the text on the first page of the journal Fine Arts (Meishu) when it resumed publication in 1976: ‘The proletariat must implement overall dictatorship over the capitalist class in the superstructure comprising each field of culture’. In this way, it can be easily seen how art became a direct tool with a political purpose. In that particular situation, direct and personal experience becomes for artists the most accurate and reliable bases for judging actual life:
I, like so many persons sharing a common fate during the Cultural Revolution period in China, had personal experience of my house being searched and belongings confiscated, as well as of wandering and being banished.
I remember that at the beginning of Cultural Revolution in 1966, my father was criticized and denounced for being ‘a member of a black reactionary gang’, while I was a child of the ‘the five black categories’. It seemed that in the space of a single night a storm had shattered my childhood dreams
In junior middle school, because the sons and younger brothers of ‘reactionary gang’ members faced total discrimination at school, I was verbally abused nearly every day and had to sit on a stool away from my classmates listening to the teacher. Like someone tossed aside in ‘those fiery red times’, I lived in the humiliating shadows and felt that the bright future I should have had was wrecked so soon. My home had been smashed up and there wasn’t a single pane of glass intact in any window. The floor was littered with stones and bits of tile ….[1]
Wang Chuan’s father was one of hundreds of thousands of other ‘capitalist roaders’ during the Cultural Revolution, and it was inevitable during that period that his children were implicated in his crimes and accordingly punished. Persons with no historical sense perhaps find it difficult, from today’s historical perspective, to really understand this extremely ridiculous and sad historical reality, but after 1979 the phenomenon of ‘Scar’ literature and art sprang from this historical background dominated by a dictatorship in which rich and varied ideas and emotions were uniformly depicted in stereotypical ‘red, glowing and bright’ images.
The year 1976 signaled a major turning point in China's political reality, even though culture and ideology were still subject to a pervasive inertia. Two years after the political clique known as the ‘Gang of Four’ fell from power, the Shanghai newspaper Wenhui Daily on 11 August 1978 published Lu Xinhua’s novella The Scar (Shanghen). This dramatic fictional work with little ideological depth won universal sympathy from readers because of its sentimentalized and wounded description of the dark aspects of history. The appearance of this novella inspired the creation of many other literary and artistic works denouncing the Cultural Revolution.
Of the many works of Scar Art, Goodbye, Little Path is one of the few important works. The painting depicts a young woman, one of China’s many ‘educated youth’ sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, who is about to leave the rural area in which she lived for so many years. At the moment of her departure, she hesitates, suddenly discovering that this dark land has an eternal grip on her and embodies a stretch of her history that while desolate and miserable will be cherished by her as a memory for all time. For her, history is something that she cannot bear to look back on, but it also exerts a force that compels her to glance back involuntarily as she says good-bye. This young woman has bafflingly deep feelings for a history that cannot be excised and which contaminated her generation. The future would seem to be filled with sunshine for this woman, but perhaps it is the afterglow of the setting sun but she, like the other members of her generation, is unable to see whether the setting sun in the distance represents hope or whether more suffering lies ahead in the indiscernible future. Wang Chuan later wrote an article discussing this foreboding titled Expecting That She Will Walk on the Main Road (Qiwangzhe ta zou zai dalu shang):
When I stand on a path like this, I think of the dim recesses of the soul at the back of the sad eyes of this young woman and wonder how many bitter tears she has wept and what humiliations she will endure in the future. I want to wipe away her tears, but I cannot wipe away those that have fallen into her heart’s abyss and deprive her of the courage to bid farewell to that mountain path, even though she has already awakened. I gradually begin to experience unavoidable agony in exploring her soul, as I try and grope for her future in the riotous colors of the setting sun...[2]
In this passage, there is no basis for the statement that ‘she has already awakened’ and this is probably the self-comforting idealism of the artist. To what has she ‘awakened’? This sentimental painting provides no clues, but in this realistic work there is an accurate and full depiction of human nature regardless of what oppression and torture the girl has emotionally endured for so many years. We no longer see the healthy and excessively happy expressions that typified figure paintings in previous years, nor the rosy dawn over the motherland filling the beautiful sunny skies, nor the scenes of struggle in which the enemy is relentlessly and courageously pursued. Now we see frail figures, impoverished landscapes and sad emotions. The characteristics of such images form a new and truthful language that is narrated in a non-pictorial key and, in its distinctive thought and outstanding themes, it forms a total contrast with the simplistic and easily popularized forms of Cultural Revolution art.
Wang Chuan painted Goodbye, Little Path in only three days. At variance with his practice of painting other thematic realist works, Wang Chuan did not draw draft sketches in advance, and did not even have a galley proof for the overall composition. The composition with its cinematic obscurity was painted directly and decisively onto the canvas almost without hesitation. The artist’s creative passion was so true and energetic that space for the girl is well accounted for and forms a relationship of equilibrium that very naturally supports the hillock in the distance. The sad atmosphere evoked by the tone of warm colors demonstrates an apt and rousing feeling of romantic melancholy, even though the tone is colder psychologically. Wang Chuan later recalled that the image of the young woman’s obscure mood appeared when he began the painting. To ensure that the final work retained this mood, he took a series of photos so that he would not lose her glance through some careless brush work. ‘The photos became my draft sketches, and as I constantly revised the painting in the course of working, I could always use to photos to restore my original conception’.
The college did not at first want to allow Goodbye, Little Path to be included in the school’s exhibition, but the artist managed to cram it into the truck taking all the paintings to the exhibition venue. Because of the work’s genuine emotions and far-reaching symbolism, it met with general empathy:
The girl filled with sorrow in the painting seems to be saying good-bye to her life as an educated youth in the rural work team, as well as to the decade of catastrophe that destroyed a generation, but in saying good-bye she also seems reluctant to leave because in leaving her steps on that path she leaves behind happiness as well as grief..[3]
Goodbye, Little Path is a profound reflection on the complex thoughts of young people on the path of life’s tribulations. She is pondering, remembering and exploring.[4]
.. One has encountered this girl countless times on this path, and in deciding to one day leave this path covered with her tracks, sweat, and even tears, she is overcome by an indescribable reluctance to leave, affirming the philosophical truth that ‘life is suffering but worth cherishing’. I believe that every youth who has been through these experiences will be able to understand these emotions.[5]
Wang Chuan’s Goodbye, Little Path is an excellent work that appeared soon after the ten-year catastrophe ended. In it he depicts ‘millions of youth who bravely fare-welled their past lives and advanced into the future’, successfully capturing their emotions.[6]
In the newspapers and magazines of that time, we can find many other positive critical comments about Goodbye, Little Path and other Scar Art works exhibited at that time. However, these realist works were produced in response to changes in political reality, and the luxury of discussing them in relatively independent artistic terms may have seemed absurd when their language of affirmation was, in fact, a political statement, and statements from this stance of simplicity represented passing approval for a new political reality seen through the medium of art.
Naturally, the fact that artists were ‘conducting experiments in the creation of realistic paintings’ itself represented a break with the past, and artists who were emphasizing ‘experience’ were also stressing developments and changes in the thinking on future artistic creation: ‘We should proceed on the basis of our true feelings for life and present all our emotions to our audiences so that they can truly experience and feel these things in their world, giving our work vitality… How do I convey my hope to more young people and how do we cherish our own lives? How do we safeguard the dignity of the lives we have today?’[7] Wang Chuan was not one of the ‘educated youths’ sent down to the countryside and, although he did not share in their unique experiences, his own early life had much in common with them:
At the outset of the 1970s, my only opportunity was to go to the hills and valleys of Guizhou, Guangxi and Hunan where I labored on the railways and worked as a miner, which was probably toil as hard as that of the educated youth in the countryside and remote mountainous areas. Apart from the desolation and poverty in those areas, I could see the sun set behind the mountains every day. My living costs were 22 yuan every month, and I could only rest for two Sundays in a month and eat meat once a week. We had to queue up in enormous lines at the canteen to buy food and carry it back in a washing basin, which helped to work off our anger. I once had the rare opportunity to travel more than 20 kilometers to see a film in the nearest county town, and played on a harmonica as I walked the great distance which I found a source of consolation. Because I spent such long periods of time underground, I was not used to being outside the mine for long. I lived in temporary sheds with sixty other workers. The huts had no doors all year round and every bunk was demarcated by a mosquito net, but the jokes flowed thick and fast. I often squeezed in time to draw portraits of my fellow workers, and whenever I got the likeness right, I would think that I wanted to become a painter in the future, and not spend forever in this gully.[8]
While his work might have been different, the life style was very similar to the collective life lived by the educated youth. (This reminiscence of Wang Chuan recalls my own experience as an educated youth when we would take advantage of having a rest from our labors on the mountain to do sketches of the peasants we were working with.) Indeed, people’s experiences can never be completely the same, but when everybody is reduced to an existence that tests the limits of endurance, the capacity for holding onto life and the call for liberation are feelings identical to all. This was why Father, Spring, We Once Sang This Song, Wang Chuan’s Goodbye, Little Path and other Scar works could arouse such basic humanistic sympathy.
We earlier mentioned the inertia of history. Historical inertia is retained deep within people’s thinking, so that even if the objective conditions that gave rise to a particular kind of thinking have already disappeared, the memory can be roused by the language in which it was originally couched. Goodbye, Little Path was not approved for exhibition by the judging panel of the institute, and the reason for this was that the figure in the painting appears ‘depressed’ and lacks the conventionally advocated appearance of robust health. Anyone familiar with history questioned the conceptions of what was classified as positive and healthy. In the preamble of my collaborative work with Yi Dan titled The History of Modern Chinese Art: 1979- 1989 (Zhongguo xiandai yishu shi: 1979-1989) there is a passage I would like to quote here:
[China’s] modern artists are criticized for moving towards degeneration and losing their ideals to various degrees. But what constitutes healthy behavior? And how will a foundation for ideals again come about? For artists, the purity of art’s spirit moves from unity towards abundance, and once the empty deity no longer exists and various lies have already been mercilessly exposed, perhaps the truth of one’s own destiny gradually finds real support and this is an effective critique of real degeneracy.
Wang Chuan himself commented: ‘I knew that this painting was only a result of the times and it had nothing to do with painting nor did it relate to any trends in art itself. At that time, many people were already producing expressionist works in Beijing’. But, what were the trends in art? And is there any painting which is not a result of its times? This is of course a complex academic problem. But we can affirm that if Scar Art had not searched for some new ‘truth’, then the entire ’85 ideological trend in the fine arts of several years later and the entirety of Chinese contemporary art’s pertinence would have been totally different.
Admitted in 1978 to the Chinese painting department of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Wang Chuan in September 1981 completed his widely praised piece titled Lucky Survivors (Xingcunzhe). The work began as a sketchy gongbi style painting, but it was a work with revolutionary subject matter that took the concept of heroism as its background. The work is a paean of praise with sentimental color extolling the generation of the artist’s father. The artist has commented: ‘The reason I painted this picture sprang from insights gained through looking at photographs of my parents’. Because this ‘photograph’ was of the new post-revolutionary historical period in which his parents’ generation of political personages in China were acquiring political authority, it would undoubtedly win the praise of the judging panel of the institute. So, when Wang Chuan handed the gongbi sketch of the Chinese realistic painting to the school, he was automatically reimbursed for the 30 yuan spent on materials used in the work. This sum of money seemed to be enough to turn the work into an oil painting, because this ‘yellowed’ history did not require too much color, and for an enormous oil painting ‘a few colors would suffice, although it ended up being a fairly monochrome work’. Regarding this painting, what should first be discussed is not the work itself, but its title. Only a slight change in the title of this picture reflects the ideological cultural background of that time.
The work was first titled Lucky Survivors. Wang Chuan wrote: ‘The photograph and the images of the couple in it had both been partly destroyed and that made two lucky survivors. History had seen them torn up, and history now returned them to history. This was an encapsulation of China’s recent decades’. In fact, the reason why Wang Chuan named his painting Lucky Survivors is very simple. The people in the painting survived two periods of turbulence - the war years and the Cultural Revolution, and the contrast between the experiences of the revolutionary war and the Cultural Revolution enabled people to make meaningful associations. However, there was too great a distance between the connotations of ‘lucky survivor’ and the optimism of the revolution and, in the context of faith in the victory of the revolutionary cause, for that generation of revolutionaries who took power after the revolution, the term ‘lucky survivor’ seemed to intensify the sorrow of the picture, so the school later changed the title of the work to Photograph of Newly-Weds (Xinhun zhao), and that is the title under which the painting was published in the 1st issue for 1982 of the journal Fine Arts. But this only increased the misunderstandings. The photograph of what appeared to be a peasant and an intellectual wife hinted that after the revolution the male revolutionary peasants abandoned their former peasant wives and married educated urban women. It could, of course, also be interpreted to mean that when the peasants threw off their feudal chains they resolutely advanced along the road of revolution in their pursuit of freedom and liberation. Such associations and interpretations of the work did not come from the general public, but from the famous art critic He Rong:
The two people photographed by the painter are typical, though very individualized. The husband, it seems, has peasant origins, while his wife appears to be an intellectual, suggesting that when the photograph was torn, burnt and then pieced back together the two people had suffered a similar fate, possibly at the hands of leftists during ‘the decade of catastrophe’. Or had the two people, whose feelings were not compatible, themselves torn up and burned the photograph, and ended the relationship? The painter feels that relationships of love filled with revolutionary friendship should not be torn asunder and so the painter reunited the fragments of the photograph in his painting, hoping to restore the spirit of the revolutionary tradition. If this painting also includes a critique, then this criticism was undertaken in a friendly and comradely fashion.[9]
This is the type of art criticism that could only have been written in China. Doubtless, such judgmental moral comments formed the main type of art criticism at that time. Characteristic of it is that anyone who lacked specific knowledge of Chinese contemporary history would find it difficult to participate in such criticism and discuss it. Even so, ‘the inertia of history’ also made it difficult to tolerate the vulgar sociological criticism that the critics maintained that the painting represented, because in the eyes of these critics, the revolutionary’s image in art should be eternally typical and without blemish. So, to avoid giving the impression that he was tarnishing the heroic figures in these works, the painter finally again changed the title to Cherished Memories (Huainian). A destroyed yellowing photograph arouses memories of the revolutionary years, a title that is far more pedestrian and difficult to accept than Lucky Survivors. Thus, as Wang Chuan said: ‘The original theme no longer exists and has been emasculated’. The abundant content of history was now far removed from this naturalistic photograph.
If we say that the experience of the character in Goodbye, Little Path is close to that of the artist, at the least they are members of the same generation, but the experience of the characters in Lucky Survivors is distant from that of the artist and the times that the work reflects were not personally experienced by him. Wang Chuan intended this work as an affirmation of the history of his father’s generation, so the work itself is almost naturalistic. Perhaps the artist did not realize that at that time, even though he brought similarly rich and simple emotions to his painting of Goodbye, Little Path, a new consciousness was imperceptibly taking shape in his thinking, and that makes the style of his paintings interesting. Comparing Goodbye, Little Path and Lucky Survivors, both have a stylistic tendency that includes traces of dissembling. Indeed, the plot of the works requires the detail that the original photograph was scorched, so that the audience can return to distant history together with the artist. But the painting reflects the artist’s interest in an aestheticism focused on incoherent details, as the artist manipulates the stereotypical feeling created by these remains of history. A one point the artist also entertained the idea of using a burnt frame to display the work in order to embody the meaningful historical sense but, because of the trouble making the frame entailed, he gave up the idea.
Today, it is obviously unreasonable to judge this oil painting in terms of anatomy, but realist art makes this demand; Lucky Survivors is simply not as good a work as Goodbye, Little Path. The composition of Lucky Survivors creates a situation in which the depth of history begins to thin out, and while the literary associations of the work helped audiences further articulate its significance their words could also only embellish the explanation of the images. The conception of Lucky Survivors from the outset did not go beyond that of the stages of thought revealed in Goodbye, Little Path.
The concealed dissimulation one can detect in Lucky Survivors is more pronounced in two later oil paintings, Old Man and Child (Laoren yu xiaohai, 1982) and Wheel (Chelun, 1983). This is not to say that the artist has adopted finer techniques in his treatment, but the old man, the child and the night worker with the enigmatic expression in these paintings provide us with no new spiritual information, and so these works naturally tend to conceal something.
During Wang Chuan’s time studying at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts (1978- 1982), Chinese realist art was undergoing a revival of its critical spirit. The artist said of himself: ‘At this time, our generation of painters must be a social force opposing the falseness, aggrandizement and emptiness that swept art circles in China’. Indeed, in the context of this history, we are unable to use the language of style to analyze the new works that artists present to us, and we cannot appreciate their wonderful and moving images, but need to listen attentively to their accusations about history. These were instinctive, spontaneous and ethical, and they were certainly emotional. In this period, the thinking of Chinese artists was still germinating, and Wang Chuan, an artist with emotional memories of history etched into his mind, was gradually moving from his early simple joy towards new perplexity and fears.
2. Metaphysical entanglements
After graduating, Wang Chuan was assigned to a work unit where he was engaged in propaganda work. ‘I felt as if I had left the large and enclosed Grand View Garden of The Dream of Red Mansions and returned to my original starting point, and I was perplexed and fearful to feel that I had really never had a way out, and that life was indeed depressing’. At this time, Wang Chuan recalls that the excitement and promise he felt with his friends as students at the academy of fine arts, and his initial sense of success now seemed to disappear in an instant, and life felt utterly cold and uninteresting. From 1982 to 1984, before Wang Chuan went to Shenzhen, he felt that he could almost paint nothing, the only work being an assigned piece of 1983 which was titled Wheel, entered in the 1984 National Railway Fine Arts Works Exhibition. His unit arranged for Wang Chuan to run an amateur fine arts training class for workers. This was a flat time for Wang Chuan and his friends, and so he often invited He Duoling, Ai Xuan and other artist friends to come along to the classes, for which they were paid two yuan per hour. Because he was a permanent staff member, Wang was only paid fifty cents a night for running the classes. Of course, Chengdu at that time was still undeveloped economically and the cost of living was very low. The key problem for Wang Chuan was that replicating emotions on canvas and transforming social experience into artistic content involved a complex process of introspection. At this time, the artist faced the dilemma of not knowing what to paint next and how to paint it.
In modern art history, we see some artists, such as Monet, Klee and Francis Bacon, who continuously follow a particular style and develop gradually without any gap in the continuum of their work, while other artists develop by changing constantly, Picasso being the most typical example. These two different phenomena guide the making of an artist. Rapid and inconceivable changes in an artist’s output often relate to an artist’s psychological history. When Wang Chuan realized that he found the realist style difficult to sustain, he began to try expressionism. He Duoling once joked: ‘Wang Chuan, your expression’s a bit colored, this realism doesn’t agree with you’. He Duoling’s statement revealed his self-confidence, as well as his perspicacity about his friend. Wang Chuan’s painting of October 1983 titled Thirst (Kewang) exemplifies this tendency. From 1984 to the present day, Wang Chuan’s painting style has radically changed, but he has never returned to realism. Even though Wang Hai, who attracted attention equal to Wang Chuan in the Scar Art period and has characterized that generation as being ‘the products of experience, limited by history’, still only paints in a realist style, Wang Chuan’s art has developed and he has never returned to either ‘experience’ or ‘history’.
One day in 1984, Li Mei, the editor of Shenzhen’s Modern Photography (Xiandai sheying), travelled to Chengdu on an editing assignment and from her Wang Chuan learned that the publication needed an art editor, and the possibility of finding something new impelled him to head off excitedly to Shenzhen. After preparing the third and fourth issues of Modern Photography, Wang Chuan moved to an interior decorating company to become associate editor of their journal Modern Decoration (Xiandai zhuangshi). After several months of exhausting work, with the job involving not only editorial work but sundry tasks like transport and distribution, Wang Chuan felt trapped in a new dilemma: if he did not go on working then he would have to give up painting, and if he went on painting, ‘he would soon hit the skids’. At that time, the problem that Wang faced was no longer that his father was being criticized and denounced, nor the news about nude paintings, but something that involved scrutinizing personal values once again. Several years previously, Wang Chuan and his friends had been calling for emotions that evoked humanitarianism stamped with a simplicity that could not be obliterated. But as social reality changed, the properties of emotions themselves seemed to change. Perhaps we should acknowledge that emotions do not have value and immortality because they are emotions per se, but because they find a sympathetic response from other persons. But reality had already cut into individuals’ experiences and living environments, and the questions of the culture had already moved onto more complex areas; at this juncture, emotions were no longer a cultural consideration. In addition, the innocence of several years previously had been affirmed, and it would have been naïve to imagine that now those precious emotions could be re-created and their evocation re-affirmed. However, innocence is a simplification, and if this simplification precludes the question from re-emerging, then it is effective. Yet if the question is affirmed out of innocence then it can only lead to a temporary cover-up of the question, and after the idea is produced, the most basic questions remain: What produced that bitter phase of history? After the emotions are reproduced on canvas directly, what was the internal support for this kind of reproduction? What do ideas about the value of these emotions prove? After 1984, there was an objective possibility that these kinds of questions could be answered, and so from the time of the Progressive Chinese Youth Art Exhibition of 1985, Chinese audiences began to see a new and unprecedentedly rich stage in the development of art, which was the age of rational critique. Reviewing this phase of history known as the ’85 ideological trend in fine arts, audiences could clearly see ideological weapons changing hands among the young artists of China. The ’85 period was when China’s economic reform was making obvious progress and, with the introduction of advanced technology, products and experience of management from the West, many works of Western modern philosophy, aesthetics and other aspects of culture were translated into Chinese and published. Everyone in art circles became familiar with the names of Nietzsche, Sartre and Freud. There was diligent attention to literary matters, whether mediocre or lofty, and young Chinese artists felt a breath of fresh air among the often stiff and lumpy translations that were available. At this moment the young artists of China obtained theoretical verification of the spirit that they could have only felt in the past, and they seemed to be able to further define many of the questions concerning life itself: God might not exist, but everybody was able to verify his or her own existence for personal satisfaction, even if God’s existence was impossible to verify. There was a general feeling that everybody must understand the dignity of the individual and realize that history was not created by an intelligent being; everyone needed to maintain a skeptical and critical spirit. Everybody had the responsibility to save mankind, and that required independence, initiative and freedom of thought. At the same time, many young artists began to erase the paternalism that underlay the phenomenon of Scar Art and to depict undisguised love and ‘the essence’; Freud’s vocabulary now provided the theoretical foundation for young artists to give free rein to their imaginations.
Although Shenzhen was regarded as a ‘cultural desert’, Wang Chuan had not broken away from the heady atmosphere of the Chinese art world of the time: ‘After reaching Shenzhen, I began to recall that in the paintings I completed at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts I reproduced emotions on the canvas directly. I had not yet excavated my subconscious, and our imaginations had not yet found their expression, so what was creativity? I felt empty and believed that my own imagination was blank at that time’. For Wang Chuan, Shenzhen was unique for having no hinterland and in this environment governed by a doctrine of material desire, there had not been the time to clear away feudal historical problems; it was subjected to the full onslaught of terrible trends of commercialization, and for Wang Chuan, this represented a fresh attack on a member of ‘the generation whose souls had been twisted’:
In October 1984 I went straight to Shenzhen to look for a way out, but I found life there exhausting. It was a very bleak and desolate place for culture at that time. Cultural people who went there had to destroy their notions of personal experience and values, adopt the tough determination needed to survive, accept that they had been smothered by a culture now reduced to weeds and accept the challenges for development presented by money. But a lot of people who proclaimed a cultural mission disappeared in the money.[10]
At this time, the relationship between traditional culture and Western thought, and between historical experience and present reality, were only issues about which Wang Chuan had vague feelings, and these were complicated by his own morbidity, anxiety and blindness; ‘I thought at that time that human values had collapsed and I had the feelings of an animal, as I continued to edit, earn money and eat, in an endless cycle. In my harassed state, I painted a figure and placed it in a suspended coffin. At the time I felt that my life was simply suspended over an enormous precipice and that I could go plummeting down at any moment’.
The oil painting titled Thirst which Wang Chuan completed in October is related to the batch of expressionist works he mentions completing in Shenzhen in 1985. The composition of Thirst is very succinct, and the positioning of the characters and the barren land in the picture, recall Goodbye, Little Path, in that several enervated trees are growing in that depleted land. The sky is gray and has absolutely none of the lyrical color of sunset that we see in Goodbye, Little Path. The girl in the foreground looks unwell and the color of her clothing is close to that of the desiccated land. She seems to be gazing at the tree above in hope, perhaps simply desperate to find some slender threads of tender green in the leaves of the tree, but we at least know from the composition that her thirst is not slaked. The core of expressionist language adopted in painting is immediately apparent and, obviously, the language of the work is apt for the direct expression of the mood of the work. But we can see that, after four years, the artist’s vision has so obviously changed, and the exquisite emotionalism and atmosphere of Goodbye, Little Path have disappeared. In that lens of history, we could savor a thread of beauty in the girl’s mood, as well as a self-sustaining pastoral spirit. Although the earth was barren, it retained a primitive simplicity and, although the distant sunshine was mildly alarming and harsh, it symbolized possibility and it was the sunshine that year that aroused the hopes of people who believed the future could not be as dark as in the past.
Thirst does not show us a new darkness, but demonstrates an altogether different scene. The gray sky neither displays hope, nor signifies death; it is neutral and has no relationship with either darkness or brightness, and it has gone far beyond the classic ‘either-or’ dichotomy. The feeling that the trees symbolizing life give to us is similarly neutral; although the trunk is thick, it is an image of withering. Such a contrast is unpleasant, the trees neither symbolize life, nor do they show decline. Although the earth is unusually solid, it is barren, except for several withered trees and they appear to be unable to regenerate. The spirit of the entire composition tends to cold detachment, numbness and paralysis; there is no history to savor and no future to hope for. The feeling is one of life held in suspension, and has a direct relationship with Wang Chuan’s artistic life in Chengdu during the two years after his graduation.
But there is nothing mystic about the word suspension, and everyone is free to use whatever words they choose to describe his or her personal situation. From the perspective of society, this psychology of Wang Chuan is individual, and it is certainly the result of cultural coloring in the artist’s thinking. The vocabulary of idealism with which the artist was familiar but has now tired of had already been replaced by a vocabulary which was abundant and penetratingly powerful, and this was the result of the impact of Western culture and thinking. As regards artistic language, Chinese artists could access and appreciate the various modern arts of the West which had been extensively published and exhibited, and the overall trend of the entire culture and ideology was now symmetrical with the large number of Western philosophical and aesthetic ideas pouring into China. The new ideas brought about a change in the way Chinese artists thought about issues, and these issues no longer entailed the clarification of historical facts to win ground for simple emotions, but one question remained: What is life about? The era had affirmed human values, but what were human values? And how was human value directly realized? What was the relationship between the experiential world (life) and the metaphysical world (death)? These issues demonstrate that the questions that concerned Chinese artists had already risen from the level of experience to the level of philosophy. The realist language used to reproduce visual reality could no longer easily accommodate artists’ questions of the soul. A new language was required to express intuition and the subconscious, and the concept of ‘truth’ shifted from the material to the spiritual domain. Non-reproductive and non-descriptive language was adopted naturally by young artists, and ‘suspension’ was a concept mirroring this new trend.
The expression in Thirst is unnatural, and represents the artist’s preliminary attempt to express his new feelings. It was only after he went to Shenzhen that his anxiety reached such a level of intensity, and it was in his small apartment in the Yuanling Housing Estate in Shenzhen that he expressed it in a batch of paintings which are the products of anxiety, alarm, loneliness and depression.
Self-portrait (Zi huaxiang) is a work in which the artist analyzes his ‘self’. The composition presents what is almost a dreamscape and against a background of what are almost abstract symbols we can discern the ugly portrait; the material outer form of the figure has almost disappeared, while the soul’s ‘self’ is broken up into multiple images, broken pieces that almost cannot be restored. Human visual experience usually provides us with general ideas that accord with cultural history, but this portrait can in no way provide either joy or comfort, and can be seen as symbolic of a depressed, anxious and paranoid psychology. However, when transferring these psychological elements to wood, most of these paintings having been done on board, they did not take on a general significance but also served as the author’s introspection achieved through painting. The ‘self’ was far from possessing the strength of the originally imagined self, but possessed sufficient strength as required by divided selves and so, through the transformation of the artistic language, anxiety, alarm, loneliness and depression are transformed from simple psychological states into cultural attitudes that realize the affirmation of the self through the development of artistic language. Although the perfect ideal of life had disappeared, the reality of the new images had resulted, and this was far more tangible and verifiable than what had been an ideal, and it provided the basis for the artist’s faith in life:
I wanted to try and escape from the reality of running a magazine. In my protracted search I discovered that the things that isolate people from one another and the ignorance about culture that exists between people led me even further from the freedom I contemplated. I wanted to become an independent painter which meant that I had to start with myself. I realized that this way of life had chosen me; I could walk by myself and, if I turned back, the road opened up. In this regard, I felt contented with the larger space I had here than back in the hinterland.[11]
The composition of Suspended Coffin (Xuanguan) demonstrates that the artist’s mood was not unnecessarily restless, and in the painting we see an imaginary world. The moon and incomplete sun have symbolic meaning and the coffin suspended in the air contains a ‘living’ corpse, and the child-like modeling of the work imbues it with playful properties. This work with its tendency to analogy and symbol includes elements of mischief and meditation.
The notion of a ‘suspended coffin’ conveys the sense of psychological suspension and the image in the painting corresponds to that. What is interesting is that the artist’s friend, the poet Ouyang Jianghe has written a long well-known poem, with the identical title Suspended Coffin. This work re-arranges collocations of regular language so that extremely weird meanings and an imagistic modern incantation are created:
So, lucky survivor, in the instant that you find yourself suspended before your body plunges, what luck is there to celebrate in this? Surrounded, hands don’t hold you tight and eyes don’t fix their target; apart from you and generations of the blind, what is there that can be harvested and dazzles?
The artist discussed with his poet friend philosophical questions of existence and the suspension of life. The artist was extremely interested in discussing the position of life and the meaning of authenticity touched on by Suspended Coffin. However, comparing the language of poetry with the language of art’s images, the expression of philosophical fine points seems limited; if the expression of the idea of suspended life as expressed in literature is very ponderous, then in the artist’s oil painting the symbolic image of ‘suspension’ has a light and playful quality that is more difficult to subject to philosophical scrutiny.
Deformity is more apparent in Wang’s work titled Female Body (Nü renti). The twisted torso and asymmetrical legs suggest an agony beyond expression: The body lacks what would logically be a head and the red lump brings unwelcome associations, because the two inexplicable brush strokes hanging down from the red lump echo the unhealthy arms, and the red color is clearly related to the ‘suspension’ of life. The distortion of the body and the brush strokes greatly weaken the materiality of the body, creating the symbol of a twisted soul.
Inner Complications (Neixin de jiuchan) has almost dispensed with images and approaches an abstract composition. The cold tenor of the work and the abrupt appearance of panicked red brush strokes are disturbing and the disquieting psychological elements are even more excessive. No doubt, the problems in the artist’s actual life have not been resolved in the artist’s thinking on the experiential level, but have become entangled in the depths of the subconscious. These entanglements seem to be caused by modern skepticism derived from Western culture, namely that life is an eternal quest. This was an important philosophical and cultural phenomenon of the ’85 art movement, and the images expressed in this batch of Wang Chuan’s works seem to be his private articulation of the issue, but they must also be products of the cultural atmosphere of this period, because it is inconceivable that such works could be produced in isolation from the macro-cultural structure of the time.
In 1985 there was a proliferation of young artists’ groups across China, and the most important groups and group exhibitions were the Northern Youth Art Group from Harbin, the Jiangsu Youth Art Week: Large-scale Modern Art Exhibition in Nanjing, the ’85 New Space Exhibition in Hangzhou and the Southwestern artists New Figurative Images. However, it would be a mistake, and even laughable, to think that these various young groups and art exhibitions throughout the country were coordinated in advance. The ’85 period was active in culture because it was spurred on by reforms and developments in the economic field. In this loose political environment, young artists from across the country began to organize small groups and exhibitions spontaneously, and to search out possibilities for their own art work because the opportunities to participate in official exhibitions were extremely limited. It was against this background that Wang Chuan and several other young artists in Shenzhen organized the Zero Modern Art Exhibition as a street event in January 1986. Wang Chuan, in the 40th issue of 1986 of the periodical Fine Arts in China (Zhongguo meishu bao) in 1986 introduced the idea behind these artists staging their exhibition at that time:
Everybody agreed that Shenzhen differed from other places in China because there was no background in traditional culture, no restrictions on culture and no cultural venues. If people from cultural circles came to Shenzhen, they felt isolated and cut-off and it was so difficult to interact and help each other. Against this cultural background, most painters were puzzled, and some said: ‘The artists are acting alone and in isolation’. But everybody did agree finally that ‘the ultimate goal of art was to be independent and save oneself’, and so art itself pressed everyone to go to the limit.
From today’s perspective, the idea of artists participating in a street exhibition of paintings that only went on for two days seems innocent and immature. In a social reality with a specific cultural tradition, the idea that art could provide salvation also seems delusional. Moreover, what was the limit that the artists expected to reach? In any case, the more than twenty artists who participated were symptomatic of the Utopian artistic thought that formed the mythology of the ’85 period in art, and at least it enhanced the sentiment of the artists that they had the support to go on painting.
Several months after the Zero Exhibition, Wang Chuan, together with Wang Guangyi, an important young artist from Harbin’s Northern Group of Young Artists (who was at that time still a painter at the Zhuhai Painting Academy) and several other artists from Zhuhai, including Li Ziren, Wang Guojun and Wu Shixiong organized the Chinese Special Economic Zone Artists Alliance (Zhongguo Tequ Yishujia Lianmeng), but this alliance in fact had few activities. After several months, Wang Chuan participated in the ’85 Young Arts Ideological Trend Large-Scale Slide Show Exhibition in Zhuhai organized by Gao Minglu, Wang Guangyi and Zhang Peili.
From 1982, when he graduated from college, until 1986, Wang Chuan had continued to move away from realism. If we overlook Wang’s personal character, his ideas on metaphysical issues would have been the important reason for his change in style. Unlike his friend He Duoling, who had a way of viewing reality as a stranger, Wang Chuan placed emphasis on transcending experience and addressing abstract problems. However, at the end of 1985 Wang again adopted Chinese brush and ink and traditional tools and artistic vocabulary, and announced that he would ‘open himself up from the East’ and pursue a realm in which ‘he could forget external things and the self, and find the life that is in nothingness’ (wu wo liang wang, wu zhong sheng you). But his works demonstrate that the entanglements of metaphysics were still dominant in his thinking. This state was not only reflected in his expressionist works, but also in his ink and wash paintings of 1985 - 86. What merits attention is that, as Wang Chuan gained strength in traditional brush and ink, he was beginning to be drawn into another field where rejecting Western culture was the ultimate expectation and saving mankind was imbued with a sense of mission.
3. Deconstructing Brush and Ink
In July 1985, Jiangsu Art Monthly published Li Xiaoshan’s essay ‘My Views on Contemporary Chinese Painting’ (Dangdai Zhongguo hua zhi wo jian). Taking the view that ‘Chinese-style painting (Zhongguo hua) had already reached the end of the road’, the article created an uproar in art circles and aroused general opposition. From today’s perspective, removed from that time, we can see clearly what prompted the article and also why there was such a widespread negative reaction to it. Although Li Xiaoshan touched on traditional style Chinese painting, whether or not he was aware of it, the core issue in his article was calling on artists to adopt an attitude of thorough-going critique of traditional culture and thought. This was in fact the basic attitude of the ’85 ideological trend in fine arts, and it was as a result of this criticism of traditional culture and thought by young artists that there was a disintegration of the ‘rules’(guifan) governing traditional Chinese painting. Perhaps the author of ‘My Views on Contemporary Chinese Painting’ did not realize at that time that Chinese-style painting was carrying out a silent revolution in the wake of the introduction of Western culture and ideology.
To a great extent, the word ‘revolution’ can be easily misunderstood in the context of Chinese culture, and the entire historical development of Chinese culture is a constant process of alternating division and subsequent regrouping. It is inconceivable that the introduction of modern painting, which is Western painting, could lead Chinese-style painting (Zhongguo hua) to ‘the end of the road’. However, the radical thought of the ’85 period did reflect one thing: Chinese painting faced a new deconstruction.
From the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods when ‘the hundred schools of thought contended’ down to the Song dynasty’s Neo-Confucianism of the Cheng Brothers and Zhu Xi, Chinese philosophy developed through the constant division and regrouping within a syncretism of three major philosophical strands - Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, the latter beginning to be influential in the Tang dynasty. The dispute between China’s ancient schools of philosophy is not relevant here, but these philosophies all had complex and far-reaching influence on China’s traditional painting theories. Although the philosophy of painting was influenced in different periods by new schools of philosophy and influences from outside China, by the Ming and Qing dynasties, Chinese painting was in an unhealthy decline because of the exhaustion of philosophy. This is not to say that Chinese painting was in its final days, but it required ‘a basic change of outlook’ (Li Xiaoshan), which is to say that it needed to draw up new language ‘rules’ (guize).
Few people have observed that while there are obvious differences between Chinese traditional philosophy and Western philosophy, they have essentialism in common. Even the mere word ‘way’ (dao) has attracted the explanations and glosses of countless scholars from ancient times to the present. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat translated the concept of dao as ‘Logos’. Within the parameters of the conceptual pair shen (‘spirit’) and xing (‘shape’), shen was regarded as the reality of the essence (benzhi), what might be called ‘the origin’ (yuanshi) or ‘the ultimate beginning’ (taishi), while xing was the material object delegated by the dao. Thus, ‘the way gave rise to unity, unity gave rise to duality, duality gave rise to three, and three gave rise to the myriad things’. The xing was thus the outer skin of the dao, and was the non-essential reality. The theory thus arose that ‘spirit and form both exist in full measure’ (shen xing jian bei). In addition, the philosophy of the ‘harmony between man and nature’ (tian ren he yi) was an affirmation of nature itself; xing (forms) were fixed within the visual range of the world and there could be no arbitrary ‘formless’ (wuxing) brush and ink painting. Perhaps in many scholar-artist paintings we can see this contempt for ‘forms’ (xing). The painter Ni Zan (1301-1374) commented: ‘The superior brush moves without restraint, and does not seek to resemble forms’ (yibi caocao, buqiu xing si). Yet, pure abstract ink and wash paintings are not to be found in the history of traditional Chinese painting. The works in which ‘the superior brush moves without restraint’ that have come down to us today have a remarkable naturalness that does not appear contrived.
The strategic core of the Western modern art that influenced young Chinese artists in the’85 period was not the replacement of the concept of essentialism. When young Chinese artists were criticizing traditional Chinese formulations such as ‘the culture must propagate the way’ (wen yi zai dao) and the injunction to ‘enlighten by example and help human relations’ (cheng jiao hua, zhu ren lun), they were in fact using their own works to illustrate various concepts of ‘human essentialism’ (renbenzhuyi). The young artists were, however, tearing down the barriers erected around ‘forms’ (xing), acknowledging that painting could never totally break away from the view that nature can be observed, and wanted to extend limitless possibilities to the range of ‘forms’. The old brush and ink tradition was deconstructed, and a new brush and ink style arose in this process of deconstruction. It is necessary to appreciate this background before examining Wang Chuan’s ink and wash painting.
In 1985, closing a chapter in his personal language of expressionism through oil painting, the artist was plunged into a new spiritual crisis, and felt that emotionalized direct revelation was limited, yet nihilistic psychology was, in fact, a state of mocking inaction:
I remember one night in November 1985. I was waiting for someone and no ideas came to me. I happened to be painting on Xuan rice paper which is a space that provides no opportunity for thought. I had put everything in my mind to one side and was making a fresh beginning when suddenly there was an unconscious flow like a rushing in of air and it was like a primal life-force transforming into flesh and blood and this force of life seemed real and tangible. This was the first time I directly perceived this world and I regarded it as a realization of life and an acceptance of nature. My state of mind changed with this and attained a basis for studying art. The conditions were now ripe for participating in the game by relying on my own interests, even though this was probably a type of inaction. This experience seemed to suddenly enrich my impoverished life, at the same time as it enabled me to actually paint.[12]
This diary entry by Wang Chuan of 31 December 1989 lends weight to his later explanations of his art, because in his situation at that time, the artist’s return to painting with traditional brush and ink seems to have only been initiated by a chance experience.
The first ink and wash painting created because that friend he was waiting for did not come was Untitled (Wuti). This is not a purely abstract painting in ink and wash, and the shape of a head can be clearly seen. (The head suggests the portraits in ink and wash of Yi ethnic people that he had painted three years previously.) However, the new strength from whatever source was proclaimed by the artist in a non-object through the medium of brush and ink, and the ink and color in the painting form the unconscious tracery of his inner mind and feelings. The artist’s psychological condition at this time is certainly very different from that of several months before when his anxieties about life were stated in expressionist language, and this new work seems like an attempt to invest social concerns with metaphysics as an abstract sense of mission. Yet several months later, the anxious elements in his compositions are weakening, and a mental state of inaction (wuwei) is arising. The artist has described his psychology at that time:
The ancient sages (zhenren) did not know the joys of life or the evils of death. Being born was not a joy and dying was inevitable. We come without encumbrance and we leave without encumbrance. They never forgot their origins and never sought to know their fate. When things came, they received them with pleasure. They forgot that death and life will return of their accord to nature, and that there was no use in devoting intellectual effort because this would harm the Way, and it was useless for man to try and assist in whatever was natural. This was the definition of a sage or immortal.
This nature was very close to the ‘quietude and non-action’ (qingjing wuwei) of Laozi, and we can see it as a description in modern language of ‘flowing with nature’ (shun hu ziran). In addition, we can easily associate it with the convergence of Confucianism and Taoism in scholar-artist paintings (wenren-hua), and with the stance on art of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou. But when we look at the several dozen works of ink and wash that Wang Chuan completed during that evening, they fail, almost ludicrously, to fulfill any of ‘the four important criteria’ (si yao su) of scholar-artist paintings set out by Chen Shizeng (1876-1923): Firstly, evaluation of a person’s character (renpin); secondly, learning and knowledge (xuewen); thirdly, talent and feeling (caiqing); fourthly, meditation and thinking (sixiang). We also find that Wang Chuan is playing some game caught in the ‘compromise’ (zhongyong) between conception (yi) and expression (jing) if we apply the Taoist criteria of the 8th century painter Zhang Zao (‘externally study creation and internally grasp the source of one’s heart’) which exerted such a long-term influence on Chinese painting, and, in terms of seeing the works as either an actualization of the formlessness of Laozi’s way (dao) or an attempt to seek the shen (spirit) only in nature. If an artist expressed any extreme in either conception or expression then he was regarded as ‘having overstepped the bounds’ and subject to ‘malaise’, and therefore unable to enter the supreme realm in life. Wang Chuan did not have the ‘air of easefulness’ of the ancients, and the ethical dimension of ‘the evaluation of a person’s character’ (renpin) had nothing to do with this batch of paintings. Nor did they come from a realm in which the artist ‘keeps to oneself without worldly desires’. They are the product of the experience of a disappointment in expectations at the time they were painted. But the more important thing is that Wang Chuan as an artist did not expect to savor the existence of the ‘spirit’ (shen) in nature, and so the learning and knowledge (xuewen) and the meditation and thinking (sixiang) were also not important for him. The move in the direction of using traditional brush and ink was the only important thing that can be verified. The artist did not experience any ‘sudden enlightenment’ (dunwu) about inspiration (yi), which he then joyfully depicted; on the contrary, the artist’s thought and feelings became clear gradually in the course of using ink and wash. Although the Tang dynasty artist Wang Mo (Wang Qia) is said to have initiated the technique of splattering the paper with ink like an inebriate until the artist is drenched with ink, in the resulting work one could nevertheless see the mountains and the rocks through the clouds and the rain. Even though it is said of Zheng Banqiao’s work that ‘the bamboos in the hand are not the bamboos in his heart’, the bamboo in his painting is nevertheless unmistakably bamboo and not an abstract representation. In this batch of ink and wash paintings of Wang Chuan there are indistinct traces of the natural world, but the artist has already quite obviously abandoned the traditional brush and ink form, and compressed visual objects to a degree where they might or might not exist. The painting titled Woman (Nüren) is an abstract ink and wash work, but the composition retains images suggestive of a woman’s lips and other parts of the female form, but in the composition we cannot see the relationship of these to any central theme. As for Male (Nanren), because the brush and ink are excessively individual in their symbolization, the work has totally become an abstract creation.
The interest in Lao-Zhuang Taoist philosophy that the artist reflects in his writing is only the speculation of a modern idealist. Like most people of his generation, the psychological incompatibility brought about by the turn of history made any trifling minor matter of life a possible cause of psychological injury. Thus, the philosophy of ‘quietude and non-action’ could become escapism or a Utopian construct. The desire to become an immortal ‘sage’ (zhenren) was an undoubtedly immature idea, and we might regard this as a ‘pre-existing structure’ (qian-jiegou) or a ‘prior understanding’ (qian-lijie) of the artist, but brush and ink paintings cannot be created on the basis of such a ‘premise’ (yushe). An artist born in the 1950s cannot have the spiritual training and ‘ethical character’ of an ancient artist, but only the experience of poverty, lifelessness, boredom and prejudice. So, the ‘indomitable temperament’ and ‘the real soul’ in scholar-artist paintings could never be apparent in any works of Wang Chuan.
The batch of ink and wash paintings that Wang Chuan completed at the end of 1985 belong to the artist’s psychological documentation of a particular period. What is interesting is that the abstract inclination of his brush and ink came directly from Western modern abstract painting (even though he had no prior knowledge of Western abstract painting), instigated by courtesy of the writings of the ancients. Only after the paintings created by ‘going with the flow of nature’ eventuated did the artist acknowledge this fact. Just as the ancients used their Zen paintings to instruct, Wang Chuan used his own ink and wash works to re-explain traditional theories. At this time the ‘way’ (dao) became an action in itself and a word that could be manipulated in unconscious brush and ink games. He could use an entire composition to embody the traditional concept of ‘the flavor of the breath’ (qiyun) at the same time as this ‘flavor’ could be embedded in any corner of a work. The concepts of ‘the flavor of the breath’, the ‘spirit’ and ‘easefulness’ (yi) drawn from traditional Chinese painting became wandering, dislocated and shifting terms, and in the context of this group of ink and wash paintings by Wang Chuan they are terms we can frankly either use or discard.
From 1986 to 1987, Wang Chuan continued his experiments in ink and wash painting, throughout the course of which we still see the replay of earlier psychological elements. For example, in Suspended Coffin completed in December 1986, the painting is still inscribed with a line from a long poem of the same title by his friend and poet Ouyang Jianghe: ‘All death is the same death’. But his ink and wash work is now increasingly abstract. What is different from his earlier ink and wash paintings is that the works in this latest stage have already begun to reflect the artist’s conscious creation of his own mythology of ink and wash, even though this mythology does not yet have a consistent plot.
In Ink and Wash Painting 86, #1 (Shuimo hua 86 1 hao), we can see an unordered world of thick black ink as the subject. According to traditional aesthetic rules, with the total rejection of ‘shape’ (xing), which is really a trace of reality, it is difficult within the overall arrangement to evoke a sense of space, and abstract symbols are often only able to break up the surface space. However, it is a special characteristic of black ink that the thickness of the layering of the ink and the interweaving lines can create new spaces before our eyes and so we do not rely on visual and natural physical relationships but on the changes brought about by the artist’s brush. If the space does not require our geometric consciousness it is at the same time given limitless depth with the help of our imaginations. Perhaps a kind of Western three-dimensional aesthetic tradition is overriding possible doubts in our imagination and, yet, both accidentally and contingently, Chinese ink produces depth or shallowness, symbols interweave and the unfocused composition comes into focus, making us unable to give up our understanding of the inherent depth of space of the painting as we look at it. The traditional materials of Chinese painting (Xuan rice paper, water and ink) determine the specificity of the movement in this work, but in a composition in which we cannot see any natural rules, the flow of the brush and ink brings rich movement and change. In the space of ink and wash paintings of this type, we cannot find the limits of the space and we are unable to logically sum up each section of the space, as we can when looking at a Western panoramic work. Although we can say that Chinese painting has a tradition of using focal points of perspective, in the abstract ink and wash paintings of Wang Chuan the idea of using the traditional method of ‘scattering points of perspective’ (sandian toushi) is nonsensical. Changes in the brush and ink work itself can create interlocking and overlapping space at any time, and a random intrusion can result in the complexity and mysteriousness of interlocking and overlapping spaces. We should especially pay attention to those blank places which not only become separate parts of enrichment in the changes in the space of the composition, but also make us feel that some brush and ink symbols seem to be ‘suspended’ in a larger space, so that the spaces created by the ink and this larger space form a contrast rich in philosophical contrast: Beyond forms, there are no forms. If the imagination is agreeable, then the world created by brush and ink can be regarded as advancing towards a ‘Taiji’ (Supreme Ultimate) maze; the ‘way’ (dao) in the hands of the artist provides us with a visual hypothesis of a game that could be tangible.
Ink and Wash Painting 86, #2 (Shuimo hua 86 2 hao) (1986) demonstrates another face of ink and wash; the very obvious brush and ink is obviously reduced and the composition is almost only a black ink movement. We should point out that this work does not have the spatial complexity of the previous painting. The artist seems to be simplifying the complicated psychology. In #1, we can still see an anxiety, but in this composition the artist is possibly setting out to achieve pure expression and to establish a temporary ideal.
In Ink and Wash Painting 86, #3 (Shuimo hua 86 3 hao), also painted in 1986, a new situation has appeared. The artist has not set out to use oppressive heavy black ink; on the contrary, two burnt black strokes close to the center of the composition not only have no weight, but demonstrate a sense of floating. The black framework has been removed and several spacious but light sections of color and lines of black ink intertwine in a relationship of pleasant play. This painting reflects a light psychology. On several heavy clusters of black ink and patches of color there are several dots of light cinnabar which form an interesting contrast, somewhat like decorative music. They function like fine lines of black ink tempering the discordance brought to the entire structural analysis.
In Ink and Wash Painting 87, #5 (Shuimo hua 87 5 hao), painted in 1987, we see the imagistic hypothesis of a metaphysical Oriental question. The semicircles that appear in the composition are necessarily the result of brush and ink play but have a conceptual tendency and even symbolic color. At the centre of the semicircle is an incomplete black dot, and this leads to the first point of the application of brush and ink (later we can see that the artist’s adoption of this simplified measure is intended to convey absolute meaning). The lower part of the semicircle is the artist’s temporarily constructed framework. Although the distinctly visible yin-yang square echoes the semicircle and black dot at the top, we are willing to regard it as a space with mystic significance. Among the ‘dry brush’ (kubi) thickets created using thick black ink, this yin-yang square cannot only be a simple formal element and it very readily arouses abstruse thinking. It is interesting that the red and yellow lines that ‘climb’ up from the bottom of the composition arouse our suspicions because they are distinct: they seem to be invasive or to be threatening the square shape at the top. In this composition in which the fundamental key is almost all black and white, the sudden appearance of two distinct colors lacks atmosphere and seems somehow incongruous. The direct consequence of this incongruity destroys the seriousness that the square has set up in our minds. This is a complicated and self-sustaining spiritual world, with transient, accidental and periodic characteristics; it is a psychological narration of ‘the mystery of mysteries’ (xuan zhi you xuan) at the same time as it is the visualization of a derisive attitude. In the ink and wash paintings of a year previously the artist had allowed the anxieties the outer world brought to him to sometimes be revealed and at times he manifested an obvious state of ‘deadlock’ (jiaozhuo), but in Ink and Wash Painting 86, #5 the artist establishes an opinionated realm for himself, one in which it is difficult to distinguish his spiritual edge and which arouses a rich intension that requires explanation. The quintessence of the work is contradictory and ambiguous, and it is filled with a tension that is not easily released.
Ink and Wash Painting 87, #10 (1987) shows a simplicity and purity unlike his other works. In this painting, the artist seems not to make the abstract expression of profound realms his aim, but instead uses the brush and ink to control and cut off a space within the composition. Between the black area at the top which occupies almost half the space and the small black ink groups at the bottom, a pale red group is suspended and creates a richly playful tension. The relationship thus established is also imbued with the characteristics of a game, and so we can rest assured about the non- materiality of the red group: Nothing can happen because this is only brush and ink play.
For a period during 1988, Wang Chuan weakened the space occupied by the black and allowed several spots and lines of interference to float in the blank space. In the batch of ink and wash paintings completed from January to February we can see continuities. For example, the brush and ink movements are often extended beyond the edge of the composition and, although the symbols in the painting are self-sustaining, the entire composition seems to only capture a section of the artist’s symbols that are dispersed and scattered through the boundless cosmos. The incompleteness of such an overall arrangement embodies two cultural tendencies: Firstly, it diminishes the social element of ‘easefulness’ (yiqi) in which traditional Chinese ink and wash paintings (scholar-artist paintings) are steeped, and this alters the nature of the content of the painting, changing its direction to a higher-level philosophy. We can go so far as to say that, even if in the application of the brush and ink the strength of the subconscious still has function, the sediment of the historical spirit (which we can possibly designate using Jung’s concept of the collective unconsciousness) does not float to the top in this dark and vast ocean. Instead we hear a more remote sound that immediately evokes a sympathetic response in Western philosophy: Existence, if such a thing really exists, just like the ancient Chinese ‘way’, is also boundless and has no center. Therefore, ‘totality’ or ‘completion’ (wanzheng) is a meaningless word, and ‘non- totality’ or ‘non-completion’ is a critique of the traditional concept of ‘totality’, being its Aufhebung (overthrow) of sorts. Regarding the second cultural tendency of the incompleteness of such an overall arrangement, we can place it on the level of language for investigation and deconstruct the ink and wash.
If we temporarily put metaphysical questions such as the ‘spirit’ (jingshen) and ‘temperament’ (qizhi) of art to one side, and only discuss the works themselves, we discover that it is extremely difficult to find the formulae (chengshi) of traditional brush and ink in this batch of works. The materials determine the cultural identity of the works, but, so far as the history of ink and wash painting is concerned, Wang Chuan totally casts aside the old language rules, and within a larger system, the artist has opened up a new game space. In this space, what is called ‘abstract’ is no longer a question and, more importantly, the artist, in re-reading brush and ink (which coincides simultaneously with the process of creating the works), allows the brush to move freely with the ink of its own accord and without a fixed location (meaning) thereby cutting the usual connection between ink and wash and the concepts of ‘feeling’ (qing) and ‘conception’ (yi). Ancient painters emphasized the use of objects to convey their meaning and their emotions. This is expressed in the Song dynasty work, A Register of Paintings of the Xuanhe Era (Xuanhe Huapu) as follows: ‘Therefore in painting the peony among flowers and the phoenix among birds one must endow the work with the sense of rich nobility, and when one paints the pine, bamboo, the prunus and the chrysanthemum, or cranes, herons, geese and dusks, one must be gentle and serene’. The words of Xuanhe Huapu go without saying, but in the period from the late 19th century to the end of World War II we see that those artists who reject visual reality in their works have an obvious secular tendency and their works reflect no ‘transcendental’ spirit or attitude. Piet Mondrian might be a bad example, but his concept of maintaining a concept of ‘universal beauty’ led to an obvious attempt to control sensual enjoyment (asceticism). The rectangles symbolizing ‘eternal concepts’ have no freedom, and are only a visual expression of a mechanistic excision of the spirit of the individual. Yet, when we confront this batch of Wang Chuan’s ink and wash paintings, we are unable to distinguish clearly what ‘regulations’ (guiding) he intends with his ink and wash images, and at the same time it is difficult to simply call them decoration. The ink and color and their hierarchy, encompassing the artist’s special effects, guide our vision into an unordered field. We do not comprehend the intended meaning of the ink and wash, and it is also difficult to find regularity in the movement of the brush and ink, so that we have no common yardstick for understanding the ‘rhythm’ or ‘meter’ of the work or the ‘relationship’ between the dots, lines and surfaces. Therefore we face two dilemmas: If we want to impose a pre-existing structure or a prior understanding of the culture on these works, then it is difficult to prevent ourselves from reaching unfavorable judgments of them, resulting in a loss of judgmental authority. If we believe that the ‘dots, lines and surfaces’ conform to their own laws, then when we attempt to summarize the work and classify it, we fall into a deep abyss from which we cannot return. The history of art clearly demonstrates that the rules of what is called artistic language are only suitable for textbooks.
The critic Peng De wrote as follows regarding this batch of ink and wash paintings of Wang Chuan:
Firstly, the succinct visual language in the works, the spiritual space of quietude and the ingenious equilibrium form a classical beauty; secondly, the indeterminate abstract symbols provide a deep visual stimulus produced by the disturbing emotional tension. The sense of corresponding stillness and movement forms an obvious visual concentration, and like the ends of two magnets, opposites attract and similar charges repel. It is in the inner life of these works that Wang Chuan’s images convey a sense of cultural reflection and a cultural critique on human history, but at the same time they are a symbolic panorama of a wondrous cosmos into which the insignificant self is blended. Such an artistic trend I will for the time being call cultural abstractionism.[13]
Such a later explication of Wang Chuan’s symbols may obscure the appreciation of the work but the term ‘cultural abstractionism’ covers all possibilities. So, if we must be responsible for our own intuition, then we emulate the artist and simplify. In other words, we too should reject ‘cultural prior understanding’, and let our intuitive feelings give rise to a new cultural consciousness. In fact, in terms of the traditional rules (faze) governing Chinese painting, Wang Chuan at that time was finding it very difficult to do ink and wash paintings worthy of the name. Further confirmation is provided by Ink and Wash Painting 88, #6 (Shuimo hua 88 6 hao) completed in September 1988. In this work, the overall arrangement seems extremely arbitrary, so that it is difficult for us to make associations rich in artistic interest and our attention remains close to the surface of the paper and not on what lies behind the brush and ink. This was undoubtedly an omen, although perhaps one of which the artist himself was not conscious.
It is difficult to say why, before strengthening the arbitrariness of the brush and ink, with his characteristic behavioral traces, Wang Chuan made a return to metaphysics. This is reflected in the works he exhibited in the Black and Profound exhibition organized by the Hanart 2 Gallery in Hong Kong.
In Ink and Wash Painting 89, #1 (Shuimo hua 89 1 hao), we see a mystic world that is difficult to judge. Indeed, Laozi’s notion that ‘the mystery leads to further mystery and to the door of all mysteries’ can be used as a metaphorical explanatory note for this painting. In terms of what it reveals, this profound work has a more captivating appeal than earlier works beckoning us to enter its realm, and the brush and ink has created symbols that are filled with a strength that can ‘call back the spirit of the dead’ (zhaohun). This strength is something lacking in works that comprise only pure dots and line play. In fact, this is the vast ocean of the subconscious, and it is difficult to make logical judgments about the images that float on its surface, and for us, the audience, we have no hesitation in accepting such a mysterious world that cannot be replicated.
Riddle (Mi), completed in February 1989, is a painting with a symbolic inclination that we associate with a corner of a vast turbulent sea, but it also rolls out as a boundless mysterious fog formed by a complex hierarchy of Chinese ink and, if we throw ourselves into the work, we might encounter the spirit of perplexity and alarm the artist brings to the work. We have no way of holding onto this world, and can only entrust ourselves to the work’s heightening mystery.
In his ink and wash paintings of 1989, the most outstanding are works in quite another style. These works we easily associate with some of the oeuvre of R. Motherwell, Francis Kline and Pierre Soulages. The black paintings construct formal relationships, the weight of which greatly diminishes the hierarchical function of the black. Prior to these works, the artist sought assistance from the darkness and lightness of the black to seek the ‘interest’ (quwei) in his works. Although the results produced by his pure brush and ink are different from that achieved by most Chinese ‘freestyle’ (xieyi) ink and wash paintings, they do depend however on the subtle changes in the depth and lightness of the ink to establish the basic effect of the composition, and this is well within the traditional aesthetic range. Without a doubt, the artist, at this time, obviously felt the limitations imposed by the traditional aesthetic interest, and as soon as the artist addressed the heaviness and lightness of the ink and the accidental effects of the medium, he could easily fall into the trap of indulging himself in what would be essentially a game, something that every genuine artist must be on the watch for.
Ink and wash xieyi work has a symbolic and metaphoric history but, as we have already seen, the brush and ink move in the direction of abstraction, eliminating the potential basic symbolism and accordingly floating in the space which could have contained meaning. Now, the contingency of brush and ink are further weakened, and if we say that the artist must contain ‘contingency’ (ouranxing) within strict confines, by accepting the intensified purity of the ink and not depending on the allure of the darkness or lightness of the ink, then this is a frightening invasion, clearly subverting the traditional rules governing ink and wash work and directly resulting in our ready experience of the strength that the artist brings to the act of painting. We can see that the artist, in indulging his painting in order to deliberately avoid the spirit of cultural critique and in avoiding excessively private traces of ‘interest’ in his works, has stressed the prime initiative of black ink and assaulted our visual senses.
Here we encounter a true aesthetic problem, namely the symbolic meaning of color. In the same way in which Kline’s use of black has a psychological relationship with the industrial civilization of his hometown and R. Motherwell’s use of black was a metaphor for ‘the conflict between life and death’, Wang Chuan in the black worlds created by his Chinese traditional painting materials is attempting to emphasize the mysterious and inconceivable nature of existence. Work No.1 (Zuopin 1 hao), created in 1989, was not like the black impression of a city railway as in Kline’s conception, but was a direct narration of the ‘profundity’ in black ink itself. In a space that is almost entirely occupied by black, what we experience is not the vividness and liveliness created by the black ink, but the cage of mystery that plays a covering function. Ink and Wash Painting 89, #7 (Shuimo hua 89 7 hao) resembles a close visual effect created by the black framework. The black area seems to be reduced, but emphasizes the arbitrary structure and through the reiteration of the many zigzags, triangular compositions of different sizes are created. In Ink and Wash Painting 89, #8 (Shuimo hua 89 8 hao), completed in 1989, the symbols are enlarged and the black structures formed by the zigzags are also enlarged and emerge as the major motif of the work. The work itself is denied by the revealed emphasis of this interest in the ink, and this readily produces the impression that performance art or abstract expressionism arouse.
In any case, this batch of ink and wash paintings by Wang Chuan show obvious advances in meaning. They reflect the excavation by the artist of the results of using these materials. In terms of traditional Chinese art, we see in calligraphy extreme freedom in the pursuit of beauty. In calligraphy’s development in the direction towards painting we see how images disintegrate pictographs and handwriting becomes the visualized signifier of an artist’s inner monologue. Oriental calligraphic art has in fact inspired many Western contemporary artists. Of course, Wang Chuan was never intending to ‘paint’ calligraphy and his starting point was the mystique aroused in the soul by the purity of black ink painting. Ink and wash is absolutely different from oil or acrylic, and its sensitive relationship with paper makes the world of images created by this Chinese artist very different from abstract expressionism. The contingencies that Chinese ink creates on paper make these works different in their important characteristics from the work of Kline, Motherwell and Soulages, and this ‘contingency’ is also not the result of a classical leisurely and carefree mood, but derives from true feelings expressed with initiative. Black shrouds the human collective unconscious and its unordered treatment further enhances the mysterious characteristics of this shroud. Wang Chuan boldly exaggerates this characteristic which is rarely seen in the field of contemporary Chinese ink painting.
This batch of ink and wash paintings also reflects the simplification of brush and ink, but it might be mistaken to interpret this simplification as refinement, because these works created in ‘a breath’ on sensitive rice paper do not reveal the inside workings of brush and ink. Rather, they only serve to conceal. Therefore, although Western contemporary artists played a role in stimulating Wang Chuan’s artistic language, the artist’s ‘simplification’ represents a tendency to return within. This is similar to us returning to a metaphysical ‘beginning’ or pursuing ‘the way’ from a particular level of experience. These paintings of the artist have no problem in their refined use of brush and ink. In aesthetic terms, the excessive use of Chinese ink runs the danger of leading people to think that the ‘noumenon’ of the works is too superficially rendered as image. For an artist who is completely conscious of the dire consequences of this type of ‘game’ (bawan), such a criticism is in fact an affirmation. As we mentioned previously, Wang Chuan several months previously was still trying to experiment with playing up a type of mysticism, but the artist soon undertook a critique of his own work, and came to the conclusion that he needed to search again for a new starting point so that he could move forward.
The year 1989 marks a line of demarcation in China’s cultural and artistic development. After this year, we see the dissipation of the search for a metaphysical essence, and ink and wash as ‘pure play’ (bawan) was obviously intended for commercial purposes. This atmosphere raised a new question for the artist: In what sense does art have a reason to continue to exist? Until the beginning of 1989, Wang Chuan’s basic attitude was to indulge his imagination and experiment with the energy of the subconscious, in order to find the opportunity to establish unique symbols in the course of this creativity. Although Wang Chuan was deeply committed to his indulgences and experiments, he was also well aware that ‘this unbounded consumption is not the same thing as building and constructing a new culture’. Where are the foundations for an artist today to be able to build a new culture? Perhaps Wang Chuan had no theoretical answers to this question, but he was self-confident, and his deconstruction of Chinese traditional brush and ink painting had established the foundation for establishing his own next cultural starting point. If cultural development is only a mythology created by people, his tactical deconstruction work can naturally also be regarded as the logical premise for his painting and, in this regard, by ‘patrolling for his prerequisites’ (xunji qianti), he must be given cultural credit for his artistic work. One year later, we see the visual evidence of his cultural affirmation.
4. Tactics of Language
In September 1989, Wang Chuan finished the two meter-square acrylic work Red Tactics (Hongse de celüe) for the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center. The style of this painting relates to hard-edge and minimalism, especially as the artist in August of the following year reproduced and altered the work for the Taiwanese Li Chien-t’ung, and we readily associate the work with that of Burnett Newman. However, in the same way that we cannot discuss this work in the same context as hard-edge painting and works with geometric panels of color or classical abstract paintings such as those of Piet Mondrian or Kasimir Malewich, we also have no way of classifying Wang Chuan’s works as any recognizable style. In terms of contemporary culture, vulgar classifications are of no help in studying cultural phenomena and can even bring crisis to the culture. We are limited to a microcosmic approach within a constantly enlarging time-frame.
Red Tactics is not a work that has been produced from a modernist stance, because of its apotheosis of the soul and intuition, as well as its belief in the proximity of absolute truth. The artist from the outset of the work accepts objective rules, namely the unchangeable nature of architectural design styles and environmental appeal, and in this case, the authenticity of absolute freedom or the soul can be bracketed within these rules, unless the artist believes it possible to open up the brackets. On this question, we can look at the work itself. This is a hard-edge work with red as the fundamental key, while a purple substratum forms a relationship that is not in tension with the red. In the duplicated work, the artist used an intense blue to form this contrast. This ‘non-tension’ is evident in the ease with which the edges of the two colors meet. In fact, this composition formed using brown is not stimulating, and the color relationships were already being used to place orders. Whether or not the work is truly self-sufficient was determined by the realization of the artist’s personal style, in other words, the artist’s inversion of available culture, even if only in part. We notice that, after finishing the basic overall arrangement of colors, the artist imbued the work with a rich and rational personal element. The irregular small red triangles that appear above the purple at the top of the composition are not merely an effective response to the large expanse of red, but also form a relationship with the mood of the artist’s private symbols. We have already seen similar irregular triangles in his ink and wash paintings, but in this composition the triangles lack any sense of thickness and can even be regarded as pieces that have broken away from the edges of the large expanse of red. Obviously, they also symbolize the characteristic invasiveness of the red and, moreover, at the top of the large red expanse, the artist has arranged a black triangle that is threatening to become a rectangle. This impression is created by the intentional application of yellow within the red zone which suggests complementarity in form. In the duplicated work, the hint of the rectangle is even more evident. In addition, within the gamut of the red, we can discern four symbolic elements and they serve to check the red within the composition. What is interesting is that in the duplicated work, the artist has eliminated the symbolic elements so that the composition seems more regular. In visual judgment, this elimination was mandatory, and so it is very obvious that hard-edge for this artist only functions as a cultural template and the individual statements he makes on this template remain essential.
Red Tactics was a public declaration by the artist: In a cultural society that
cannot be dismissed, an effective statement by an individual must make use of channels familiar to everyone, and it follows that the authenticity of soul can become an image which people can grasp. Therefore, if one wants to remove the brackets enclosing a suspended ‘absolute freedom of the spirit’ or ‘the authenticity of the soul’ then one must give consideration to tactics of language. In fact, we will quickly see how the artist implements this strategy.
In 1990 Wang Chuan painted 24 acrylic works, and the use of language in these was adroit and lucid.
Wordless Desire (Wuyan de kewang) evokes a pile of triangular shapes that seems to have been shaped and expelled from a mouth. Although the triangles possibly convey some elements of a mysterious language, we hope even more to see them as symbols from the environment of the commercial information society in which the artist lives. Firstly, they are flat and lack depth, and this situation is very different from the permeation and layering that was achieved with ink and wash, and beneath the flatness there is no meaning. Therefore, the flat triangles and the artist’s impression of a surface reality are equivalent, and to a great extent, we need not see beyond the surface, because the ‘meaning’ itself is plainly there to see. Secondly, these triangles are discontinuous and non-logical, while commercial, social and cultural information wells up, destroying the strength of people’s perceptions. In other words, knowledge is not subject to scrutiny by logic. Reality, in fact, gives the impression that it might not be connected, whole, rational or orderly. In this way, the work evokes a psychological response related to words like ‘fear’, ‘unfamiliarity’, ‘rupture’ and ‘the accidental’. In the first half of the 20th century, the study by the abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky of symbols was still imbued with idealist elements and he believed that a painting could produce joyous music. However, his works destroyed the characteristics of ‘harmony’ and these works described as ‘extempore psychology’ naturally make us think of the work of Arnold Schoenberg. Wang Chuan probably never conceived of paintings as having music, yet if we were to apply a metaphor or category to his works, then we could only see them as ‘atonal’ or ‘dissonant’, but would also have to admit that the arbitrary nature of the images in the painting was not the critical factor in this. Now, we come to examine the shape that suggests lips at the center of the composition. If we can regard this as the artist’s ‘inner voice’, to use Kandinsky’s term, what sort of ‘inner voice’ is it? Surrounded by flat planes and discontinuous and invasive triangles, this image may initially seem intact, but later it is covered and overwhelmed, until eventually there is no trace of it. The artist at least recognizes that over a very long span of time, personal integrality and importance do not exist, while personal emotions and thoughts are insignificant, even non-essential and perhaps nonexistent within the vast environment of commercial information society, and that people’s abilities are only manifested in their acceptance of this information: We must accept the burden of everything, but never need to provide any explanation. This feeling did not exist several years previously, but the artist now clearly understands things differently. The points of difference mainly revolve around the recognition by the artist that personal emotions cannot be apotheosized; there is no need to turn the pain of the personal soul into tragedy and revere it. If the soul is to survive, then we must look for the most fitting position for our selves. Thus, we see that the image of the open mouth tends to calling out ‘I yearn to exist’; this is droll and, in the context of being surrounded by the triangles, the cry for existence is not very serious, and in the tension there are mocking elements. In addition, this image and the straight edges of the flat triangles are incongruous, and so we can say that Wang Chuan has placed symbols drawn from different symbolic systems within the same composition, in order to allow the composition to demonstrate a mandatory approval of their coexistence. This naturally gives the impression of a kind of ‘juxtaposition’ or ‘patchwork’ (pincou), but here the piecing together obviously has a genuine cultural identity, and in a social environment with a multiplicity of styles and constant information, this patchwork constitutes a direct symbol of reality. His familiar stylistic language is set within a private and dense motivated restructuring and patchwork, and it removes the veil from self-proclaimed logic, good ordering and a creative environment: Existence therefore is ‘patchwork’.
Wordless Desire (Wuyan de kewang) is a symbolic work and its inner connotation is less convincing than the surface of the picture. What is interesting is that the image of ‘wordless desire’, the open mouth, has a trace of romanticism about it, giving the composition theatrical effect, but that possibly may be an element in our reception of the ‘patchwork’.
In A Child's Dark Night (Tongnian heiye), we can draw contrasts with Wordless Desire, but more of the space in this work is given to ‘history’, specifically ‘childhood’, and these memories convey a regret for the past. Wang Chuan had a sad history, and this was expressed in Goodbye! Little Path, Lucky Survivors and later expressionist oil paintings, as well as being directly or indirectly revealed in his later abstract ink and wash paintings. It should be acknowledged that materials constitute a language and even a form of thinking. Acrylic has a heavy feel on the canvas, but ink and wash do not. So, the behavior of the materials drives the artist’s work. Wang Chuan explained the batch of works titled Life’s Indicators (Shengming de zhibiao):
The background of life in these paintings serves as a public declaration of an existence roaming through the reality of life like a prodigal, living far from reality in a very remote place, sharing in the common destiny of this land, swallowing his own lies and moving like the living dead.[14]
This statement lacks continuity in general meaning, and we feel that how the artist reads his own work and experiences has no logical connection. But we can take his language and actions at face value and the artist’s words and paintings do echo each other in places. The background of the symbolic work A Child’s Dark Night raises associations with the expressionist style of his oil paintings of several years earlier. While the symbols that make up the image have been regulated, the work at least evokes a response with the grayish-white framework before us. The sky is cold and gray and the incomplete moon, an important element evoking a natural echo, provides a pellucid covering that evokes a sense of remembered melancholy. We see, in the artist’s thought at this time, that ‘a child’s dark night’ has already blurred, but that it is a passage in a ‘true’ history, a pure stage that the artist has held onto in a cold timbre. Because we examine it in an instant, the ‘history’ becomes a symbol of ‘immediacy’ (dangxia). In any case, the grayish wide framework is erected to segregate parts of the work, and the melancholy elements are limited by the calm intensity of the work. But because of the actual conditions governing the work, the revelation of excessive melancholy is not only contrived, but also untrue. Certainly, the grayish-white framework fails to convey a sense of stability, but if it cuts off that historical immediacy, it is also a direct statement on immediacy. The relationships of conflict, correspondence and separation created by the different triangles serve as a narration of the statement by the artist about ‘swallowing his own lies’. And if we really get to the bottom of the painting then we must enter ‘a bottomless abyss’. In this case, as long as we retain an appropriate understanding then we can conduct an aesthetic reading of this work. We can also play a happy game with this abstract, but so very real, painting.
The artist sheds further light on this batch of works:
Several works confront life’s journey to the other shore, and the existence of a yearning for a metaphysical life necessitates that one takes all one’s life to bury oneself inside it, while wearing a mask of perplexity and alarm and abandoning the space in which one lives. This dissolves the uneasiness created by intuitive knowledge. Social catastrophes are felt as darkly reflected light that transcends the everyday world and transforms it into a stretch of pure land, concerned for the forms of life from a higher plane.[15]
In suddenly paying close attention to metaphysical questions and revealing his specific quest for ultimate goals, Wang Chuan is making what might be regarded as a spiritual return, and we can certainly see that metaphysical themes have always been part of his thinking. However, the artist, in stating these views so clearly at this time, is making a romantic appeal that suggests a cultural strategy. The artist tells us through his works that the ‘quest’ can become an assumption or a starting point, and it can be developed on the level of language. If the language does not correspond with the subject or if the audience finds it difficult to grasp the artist’s original intention (or refuses to acknowledge it), then this will not mean that the works have lost their authenticity; quite the reverse, the new meaning will grow from the works.
Indeed, works like Basic Authority (Jiben quanli), in which the artist has arranged a drama with sharp conflict within an enormous black frame are soul-stirring. To achieve this, several arrowhead symbols under contrastively daubed expressionist brush strokes create a sense of extreme uneasiness. The ‘stage’ itself creates an atmosphere of agitation, and this atmosphere similarly also has us recall Wang Chuan’s oil paintings of several years previously, but now the strength of the straight lines, triangles and flat planes forcefully represses those expressionist symbols. However, this pressure is not relaxed. On the contrary, the original subconscious impulse is focused and clarified and, here, reason plays a role in directing the on-stage action, and the relaxed daubs rationally provide circumstantial evidence of the director’s power, because we notice that within the entire composition, the red and black have formed a relationship that is mysterious, and distinct. By ‘distinct’ I mean that the relationships in the red and black composition are not all completely careless and their arrangement is intended to be pleasant aesthetically. The title Basic Authority was possibly a reference to the relationship between the red and black and the arrowheads creating conflict. It must be pointed out that although each arrowhead in the painting points towards a ‘center’ to differing degrees, there is no obvious image of a single ‘center’, only a suggested hypothesis and for us, as the audience, it is difficult to get involved. In fact, the statement regarding ‘a concern for the forms of life from a higher level’ is dispelled by the image created by this serious thought, transforming it into a game played with linguistic forms.
Free But on Parole (Jiashi de ziyouren) suggests a cardboard mobile, and the relationship formed by the yellow area and several brush strokes have humorous imitative properties. In this picture, the triangle is still controlling the entire composition and over the gray-blue fundamental tone arrow-points from different directions have become the most dynamic element in the work. Although the area of the space that they occupy is not large, they succeed in forming a harmonious response to the black, separated off from the gray and blue. At the same time we can say that the black in the painting arouses a sense of dark immense distance in our minds; we associate the black with the black that we saw in his paintings of approximately a year previously, except that the effect of the thick and heavy black now has new aesthetic qualities. In addition, the cold tones of this work have a melancholy inclination and the strong language of the composition certainly enables this ‘melancholy’ to steer the work in a direction away from comedy. To a certain extent, there is an element of a bitter chuckle about the ‘melancholy’, as the artist steers us away from the ‘melancholy’ allowing a sneer to enable him to withstand the pressure. In this regard, Wang Chuan is different from those artists who emphasize their inner agonies and excessively play up melancholy. This is exactly the feeling that the painting conveys, enabling us to understand the artist’s cold muttering which is devoid of self-pitying sorrow:
For many years, I have remained awake all night tormented by different illnesses, and like grotesque shadows these have constructed beautiful and romantic traps that recede from me as the painting begins to gradually take shape. I praise death in the paradise of death, and then begin to descend again, to be born surrounded by many people, who for me are absolute strangers.[16]
Undeniably, as the artist stated, a work ‘in the structure of its language is utterly able to transform into a particular meaning with metaphor’. Only this ‘metaphor’ in its voice is an individual dialogue of images while the various symbols in the painting, what might be called ‘image pointers’, drift about freely forever and this also provides the arbitrary premises for our understanding.
In the series titled Indicators of Life (Shengming de zhibiao xilie), the religious work Ultimate Care (Zhongji guanhuai) is a work with aesthetic value. The triangle in the composition has the solidity of a pyramid and, although there is some change in color and symbols around the central slopes of the pyramid, this change only enhances the mysteriousness of the pyramid as the central theme. We can see that the arrangement of this painting is extremely succinct, and the contrast between the atmosphere of the warm color and the black summit of the pyramid succeeds in arousing metaphysical associations:
The world has become variable but inevitable, with relatively no boundaries and no fantasies in which one can gain a foothold; the meaning of the world, like the world beyond, has permanent lofty principles, is governed by perfectly ordered laws and has absolute supernatural strength, its center really remaining there.[17]
In terms of metaphysical rules, we can perhaps rely on our imaginative power in agreeing with the location the artist chooses for verifying ‘meaning’. However, the psychological state for choosing to find ‘meaning’ in a world beyond is actually a classical ultimate expectation. As regards composition, we discover that the artist actually makes assumptions regarding the ‘ultimate’, but language itself seems to have enormous strength, having the possibility to lead us into an atmosphere of ‘ultimate concern’, and if we are not careful, we could regard what is false as being true. We should acknowledge that this ‘ultimate concern’ can cast a spell on us; we know for a fact that the celestial bodies in the remote sky (the main themes of the sun or moon) are only a ‘mask’ of words, but we would rather believe in their existence, in order to find a beautiful home for our aspiring strength.
Compared with the many other works in the Indicators of Life series, Ultimate Concern has swept away most of the dust of anxiety, reflecting another aspect of the artist’s complex and divided psychology; even though this complexity is intermittently and discontinuously revealed, it arouses an inner response in us, even if we know rationally that the language of the images is tactical and jeopardizes ‘meaning’, we would rather believe in its existence.
The artist has said: In the Indicators of Life series we can readily see ‘the soul as structure’. The system of symbolic language belongs to the path of Mondrian, Malewich and hard-edge art. However, because the inner world is complicated and self-sustaining, in Wang Chuan’s works, what we see is the rebuilding and re-establishment of the ready-made symbol. For those critics who believe that there is absolute creation then this kind of situation seems problematic. But in terms of contemporary society, ‘rebuilding and reestablishment’ are linguistic tactics able to produce cultural problems effectively. Because of the deconstruction and recombination of old symbol systems, we are able to see utterly different worlds of images and, as a result, we can spy on the secrets of the artist’s soul, secrets that are only expressed with difficulty through ink and wash painting.
5. Moving to the Start of the Beginning
From December 1990 to January 1991, Wang Chuan held his own exhibition called Black Ink: Dots (Hei: Dian) in the street of galleries adjoining the Shenzhen Museum. The exhibition space was created using several hundred meters of white calico covered only with extremely simple black ink marks, precluding visitors from succumbing to the familiar psychology brought to exhibition spaces: ‘appreciation’ gave way to ‘experience’, and audiences entering the space associated it with ill omens. The black spots on the ground, hanging on the walls and covering the ceiling created an atmosphere in which people felt they had possibly entered a trap. As for the visual effects of color and symbols, the artist’s spirit had already returned to the beginning of the question of art. For many years, he had been making great efforts to get far away from his beginnings and so he wanted to make this new beginning an abundant final conclusion, and so now he was returning to the starting point of his work. This starting point seemed so simple that we are apt to sever it completely from his early work. In fact, this starting point was the logical point of return for his brush and ink symbols. The black and dots were not the result of ‘cut-up’ (caijian) but were a ‘distillation’ or ‘condensation’ (ningju). To explain this, we need to examine the works he completed just before the exhibition.
In October 1990, at roughly the time when he completed his acrylic Indicators of Life series, Wang Chuan undertook another experiment including the ‘composition’ of consciousness using ink and wash. At this moment, we see two different situations: Firstly, the concept of ‘form’ is focused on extremely simplified ink and color, as in Structural Plane No.1 (Jiegou pingmian zhi yi) and Structural Plane No.2 (Jiegou pingmian zhi er), and in these paintings the brush and ink seem to be pushed or inhibited by a certain strength, but the brush and ink appear to ‘achieve mental rationality’. Moreover, the brush and ink also appear to have adopted a posture of extended refusal. In Structural Plane W (Jiegou pingmian W), the black zigzag or triangular shapes lead us to think of the works of the beginning of the year, only they are more retracted and controlled. What is interesting is that, in looking at a painting like Black Dot No.1 (Heidian zhi yi), the brush and ink have almost completely returned to a space in which there is no movement or extension, leaving the brush and ink that transcended the space of the ‘dots’ and extended their strength outwards now retreat inwards. The spots are irregular, and there are accidental traces around their edges. Above the black dot there is a smaller red dot, and as we saw in the acrylic works, the ‘roundness’ can have the function of regulating the visual effects. In addition, another situation we see is that the works the artist finished in November sometimes comprise composite materials. Clearly the artist was attempting to express the concept of form using traditional materials. But this kind of experiment did not produce the obvious new final result that was achieved with the previous experiments. Therefore, we are forced to pay greater attention to the earlier work.
It was probably on the eve of the Black Ink: Dots exhibition that the artist again very obviously simplified his work. Although Shape No.1 (Xing zhi yi) evokes some of the artist’s earlier ink and wash paintings, here the movement of the black ink has already completely stopped, and the black and the color background have formed a gentle relationship. Shape No.2 (Xing zhi er) is a simple clear-cut black square, and this further dispels the possibility of movement, the life of the black is now further regulated. Yet in Shape No.3 (Xing zhi san), the black ink has already acquired the shape of a dot in the space, and the ‘angles’ have completely disappeared. Finally, we can look at the pure black dots at the Black Ink: Dots exhibition.
The Black Ink: Dots exhibition gave people an ‘other-worldly’ experience, but we see it as more symbolic of the artistic path that Wang Chuan had travelled. The symbolic has two levels: Firstly, the exhibition formed the logical conclusion of the painter’s use of ink and wash. This ‘logic’ did not mean that the brush and ink work was predestined to move towards an inevitable conclusion, but signified that the artist has left and got back to the original starting point unconsciously during the process of constantly changing his starting point. The artist once believed that in the absolute nature of the truth and that in the pure realm in which ‘the other and the self are forgotten’ (wu wo liang wang), there is a universe of ‘structure’ (jiegou). He almost certainly also believed in eternal ‘laws of ordering’ (jingran de fadu) this universe, but the levels of language and spirit cannot truly replicate reality, presenting the artist with two dilemmas. If changes in language are excessively private in their development then the results will be regarded as hollowly risible and if, on the other hand, the images are too direct then they will create a metaphysical problem. The artist, both intentionally and unintentionally, changed the tactics of his language, but we find that only the change in behavior could become a fact with continuity, while changes in the image symbols provided little reassurance. Therefore, if we explain the black dots in excessively metaphysical or non-metaphysical terms, then we deceive ourselves. One day in December 1990, the artist stopped explaining the leitmotifs of his paintings, saying that he now felt that painting was a comforting activity like making ‘pancakes’. In an environment in which information comes from all directions, the artist adopted a resolute but succinct tactic, that of refusing to provide any information and rejecting all interfering space, in order to escape the bitterness and disorder brought by ‘the emptiness and vastness of material things’ (wanwu kongmang). This step by step retreat was a move towards a ‘tranquil halt’ (jingzhi).
But, where is any absolute tranquil halt to be found? When the ‘way’ is in its phase of ‘non-action’, then there is nothing to do. Therefore, the Black Ink: Dots exhibition revealed that when the black dots move to become pure ‘non-matter’ (wu-wu) then they approach death. We can find many examples in contemporary art of this kind of situation, but we can also see that those artists who move towards death often turn ‘death’ into an embryo of life. For example, the death of painting for Marcel Duchamp resulted in performance; in Malewich’s squares, the disappearance of the image resolved the structure; and, Joseph Beuys’ multiples including butter produced his re-interpretation of human existence. So, the ‘movement towards death’ can create joyous information and extend the possibility of reaching a new stage.
We earlier discussed the clearing away of essentialism, and analyzed the changes and complexity the artist brought about by this project of his. We usually assign the bottomless abyss of thinking to the realm of religion and to the metaphysical world that cannot be articulated, but we should remind ourselves that this traditional attitude towards metaphysical essentialism was itself only a cultural tactic, because the existence of the question is eternal. In this, Lü Liang was correct in his description of Wang Chuan’s Black Ink: Dots exhibition: ‘So, while we can say that we basically cannot answer such ultimate questions of doubt we can say that our basic existence is shaped by these questions of doubt ..’. Therefore, when we see another temple of metaphysics being built by the artist Wang Chuan, we should not be at all surprised. After all, the question exists forever.
The Black Ink: Dots exhibition represented a new starting point, and at variance with previous new starting points of the artist, this one represented a return to a primal stage of language. What he called ‘the language that cannot be articulated’ (wuyan zhi yu) and ‘zero language’ (lingdu de yuyan) can provide the expression of this starting point. Regarding this, Wang Chuan did not provide any of the conclusions he would have provided in the past, because the past was not part of it. Wang Chuan said that he hoped to ‘open it up from the East’, but in the intertwined information era, the concept of ‘the East’ has lost its geographic directionality, as demonstrated by the concepts of installation and performance brought to the Black Ink: Dots exhibition. Of course, it is very difficult to imagine that it will ‘open up by itself’ and the artist would constantly encounter problems and questions related to cultural deconstruction, including both Western and Eastern culture, such as the narration on the notion of ‘things improving with the passage of time’. Whether these are real psychological experiences or merely an infatuation with linguistic riddles can present obstacles to an artist’s own projects. Life is verified by behavior, and language must break through obstacles if it is to express the vigor of life. The ‘dots’ can only go on repeatedly expanding, if they are to realize their meaning.
The Black Ink: Dots exhibition was built on a philosophical theme and the question it raised was this: When we have returned to the beginning after having passed through so many cultural experiences, what is the first question we have to establish? At what level can it be resolved as a recognized question of existence and value? Wang Chuan had always yearned to form his own personal symbols and, now, after solving relevant and basic problems related to forming his own personal symbols, it was finally now possible to do so. And this is was an attitude of ‘moving back to the beginning’; this was a question of philosophical attitude or philosophy, as well as being a question of artistic attitude.
In conclusion, I would like to quote the lines by T.S. Eliot that Wang Chuan himself used to categorize his own career: ‘We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’.
10 July 1991
This article was originally published in A Contemporary Young Artist: Wang Chuan (Dangdai qingnian meishujia: Wang Chuan), Chengdu: Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House, March 1992.
NOTES:
[1]Central Daily News (Zhongyang ribao), Taiwan, 9 September, 1990.
[2]Fine Arts (Meishu), no.1, 1981, p.46.
[3]China Reconstructs (Zhongguo jianshe), no.6, 1981, p.33.
[4]People’s Daily (Renmin ribao), 4 February 1981, p.5.
[5]Chinese Artists’ Newsletter (Zhongguo meishujia tongxun), no.6, 1981.
[6]Fine Arts (Meishu), no.11, 1983, p.48.
[7]Fine Arts (Meishu), no.1, 1981, p.46.
[8]Central Daily News (Zhongyang ribao), Taiwan, 9 September, 1990.
[9]Fine Arts (Meishu), no.3, 1982, pp.41-3.
[10]Central Daily News (Zhongyang ribao), Taiwan, 9 September, 1990.
[11]Idem.
[12]Idem.
[13]‘A Free Artist in the SEZ: Wang Chuan’ (Tequ de ziyou zhiye huajia Wang Chuan’, Culture News (Wenyi bao), 17 September 1988, p.5.
[14]Grand Lion Fine Arts (Xiongshi meishu), Taiwan, no.8, 1990, p.208.
[15]Idem.
[16]Idem.
[17]Idem.
Translated by Dr. Bruce Gordon Doar