Zhan Wang: The Story of a ‘Stone’
At dusk on 2 May 2000, 12 nautical miles off Lingshan Island, which is located in Lingshan Gulf at a distance of 5.5 nautical miles from the coast of Shandong province, the sky was colored by the setting sun, the ocean grew dark green, and the sea breeze blew stronger. A motorized fishing boat was floating on the ocean. At the command, three fishermen hurled a twinkling hollow stone into the water. Hitting the surface, the stone made a metallic ‘plopping’ sound. Then the boat left the stone which floated with the waves on a long journey home. The person supervising the throwing of the stone, the observers and the fishermen all watched as the stone floated then disappeared from view on the surface of the boundless ocean. It was a hollow stone made of stainless steel intended to float forever because of its tightly enclosed casing and polystyrene interior. We do not know when or where this stone will be discovered or by whom, but it is not a nameless stone since its fate is connected to us by our awareness of its existence. The stone was, in fact, an artwork of the sculptor Zhan Wang. Through his work the artist made people aware of the stone’s existence even though it could no longer be seen, and it had never been exhibited in the manner of most other works of art.
The artist has said that he was fond of sculptures from childhood onwards, but only after graduating from technical secondary school did he focus on stone sculpture. In 1981, Zhan Wang graduated from the Beijing Industrial Arts School (known today as the Beijing University of Technology, College of Arts and Designs), and then went on to work at the Beijing Jade Articles Factory, which was affiliated with the school. Zhan Wang spent a whole month grinding at the raw stone, but the process of grinding stripped away any enjoyment of the beauty of jade. Several years later when Zhan Wang recalled the years he spent at the jade factory, he had not changed his point of view: ‘Grinding jade in a factory is so boring. A worker has his lathe and a pool of water. You drip the water onto the stone, ply the drill and grind the jade. It’s terrible and incredibly boring’.[1] But the meticulousness and skill of this early handicraft work experience planted the gene for Zhan Wang to be later able to painstakingly and arduously hammer out the thousands of steel slices that were used in the production of his well-known ‘artificial stones’, including the ‘floating stone’ he flung into the sea.
Born in Beijing in 1962, Zhan Wang had no special knowledge or background and, although his grandfather was an amateur Chinese ink artist, his parents worked in a state factory. He said he lived between these two different environments; his grandfather might have been an unconscious influence on Zhan Wang, although this influence did not emerge until later. Zhan Wang has discussed how he studied painting as a child:
It was in the year of the earthquake in Beijing [i.e.1976] that I begun to study painting on silk from my grandfather. At the time, I was enchanted by paintings of pagodas and pavilions, and imagined going into them. Then with the help of my grandfather, I began to learn sketching using a primer of J. D. Harding as a reference. At middle school, I was responsible for the blackboard bulletin and my first work was a portrait of Lei Feng.[2]
In 1978, Zhan Wang was studying at the Beijing Industrial Arts School. During March and April of that year, the exhibition ‘Rural Landscapes of 19thCentury France’ was shown at the China Art Gallery, now known as the National Art Museum of China. This was the first exhibition of French art since 1949 and it displayed more than 80 works by 60 artists of the period. Chinese artists, being familiar with Soviet socialist realism, finally saw a type of realism that had been obscured since the 1950s. Before this exhibition, people were only familiar with the acculturated socialist realism which in its Chinese interpretation focused on what was ‘tall, magnificent and abundant’ and suffused with ‘bright shining red’. But in this exhibition, people saw earthy farmers, sunny skies and rural landscapes. French realism totally refreshed Chinese artists’ aesthetic experience. The critic Li Xianting’s description of Jules Bastien-Lepage’s Haystack in that exhibition made a deep impression on his readers:
Haystack impresses us deeply. We have never previously seen such meticulous technique. Prior to Rural Landscapes of 19thCentury France there had been no large-scale exhibitions of Western art in China, added to which very few Chinese had ever been abroad and, because seeing the original works was so different from only seeing reproductions, visitors were totally moved by the works in the exhibition.
The highlights of this exhibition were not the magnificence or the colorful scenery in the paintings, but their depiction of the lives of commoners, earthy country couples resting in the grey shade under trees beside their fields in the foregrounds of some of the works.
1978 was a significant year in China, following the publication on 11 May of ‘Practice is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth’ in Guangming Daily. The next day, the article was reprinted in People’s Daily. The article sparked off a nationwide debate and the Chinese people again took the first steps towards ideological emancipation. On 11 August, Shanghai’s Wenhui Bao newspaper published a novella called The Scar (Shanghen) by Lu Xinhua, which became widely influential due to its openly skeptical treatment of the Cultural Revolution. The novella initiated a trend called Scar Literature (shanghen wenxue). Scar Art also emerged, exemplified by paintings such as Why (Wei shenme, 1978) by Gao Xiaohua, Snow on an Unrecorded Day in 1968(1968 X yue X ri, xue, 1979) by Cheng Conglin, Spring (Chun, 1979) by Wang Hai, and Father (Fuqin, 1979) by Luo Zhongli. These works, which depicted real life and history, electrified audiences. The theme of the painting We Once Sang This Song (Women zeng changguo zhe zhi ge) by He Duoling and several friends depicted the lives of the ‘educated youth’ sent down to the countryside. Its melancholic nostalgia and sympathy did not conform to the official criteria governing the content of art. The most decisive event of 1978 was the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11thCentral Committee CCP in December, at which the Communist Party resolved to focus on the construction of the economy, which meant ending the previous focus on political development. This also meant that the official ideology and the political basis that had prevailed since 1949 were seriously challenged. The changes in people’s thinking, brought about by renewed relationships with the West, became an important resource for future social change.
It is hard to say whether or not these events had any direct effect on Zhan Wang, but he now had the opportunity to understand art more freely. In his early years, he gathered information about art from national art exhibitions, restored after 1972, and from journals, such as Workers, Peasants and Soldiers Pictorial (Gongnongbing huabao). When he was studying at the Beijing Industrial Arts School, he came across more resources in the form of the journals Fine Arts (Meishu), which resumed publication in 1976, Art Research (Meishu yanjiu) and World Art (Shijie meishu), in which Western art was gradually introduced. He not only came to know the artists who could be readily appreciated such as Auguste Rodin but also Henry Moore with his abstract sculptures. Zhan Wang mentions Henry Moore many times in his memoirs, and this suggests his instinctive interest in abstraction rather than any direct interest in social issues.
Studying at the Beijing Industrial Arts School offered him the opportunity and time to awaken his artistic potential. In this school, four majors were available: Industrial Design, Logo Design, Dyeing and Weaving, and Specific Crafts. Zhan Wang had no interest in the former three because he thought they were not related to human figures and offered less scope for creativity. Nevertheless, studying specific crafts at school only entailed carving ivory or jade figures, but even though the themes were limited to traditional mythological topics, such as ‘The Celestial Beauty Scattering Flowers’ (Tiannü sanhua), Zhan Wang felt that there was some scope for creativity in this. At least he could work on some figures he liked, such as Li Zicheng, the peasant rebel, or knight-errant characters. At the same time, there were more resources available to him. Residual images from the Cultural Revolution and new art information fused in Zhan Wang’s mind and, as a result, he perfected the basic ability to capture a figure through the extensive training in sketching, as well as in producing animal and figure paintings, that the school provided. His excellent works convinced his teachers that perhaps he was more suited to studying in the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
The two years he spent working at the jade factory were an unforgettable experience for Zhan Wang. After a whole boring month spent grinding jade stone, he worked his way into the design office and there he carved some figures from bone and other materials, then was assigned to teach the workers art to raise their artistic level. It was a rudimentary art education for the workers designed to increase their ideas and quality of work, but there were still some young people who dreamed about entering an art academy from there. At that time, Zhan Wang encouraged his students and himself by relating incidents from the life of Vincent Van Gogh. Several of the workers in the factory were handicapped. Zhan Wang likened himself to Vincent Van Gogh, who taught coal miners for a time. Before he entered the academy in 1983, Zhan Wang had already learned something about Western modern art and was passionately interested in the spirit of this art that he revered; he has described himself at that time as an ‘idealist’ teaching his fellow workers.
Working in a factory, however, made Zhan Wang increasingly irritable, and he grew tired of living with the workers’ gossip and rumors. He did not think he could remain there; he wanted to improve himself by increasing his knowledge of art, and was eager to study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, which for him was the pinnacle of achievement in the history and politics of the Chinese art world. The mere possibility strengthened his determination to leave the factory, but there was nobody at the factory to help him with his art career. In 1983, Zhan Wang, together with some of his students, took part in the examinations to enter the art academy. Prior to then, he could only glean what he could from magazines, such as Fine Arts, Art Research (Meishu yanjiu) and World Art, and three years earlier, when he was at art school, there was only limited information available. His great interest in sculpture was only based on limited knowledge of Rodin, Michelangelo and Henry Moore, but when he succeeded in matriculating to the Sculpture Department he could also continue his interest in carving ivory figures, jade stones and sculpture from his days at the factory. Zhan Wang’s understanding of sculpture was limited and rather similar to the views reflected in the movie The Eighth Bronze Statue (Di ba ge tongxiang), but he had a thorough grounding in the craft of carving.
There were several professors in the Sculpture Department, including Qian Shaowu, Sun Jingbo and Situ Zhaoguang, but they were enthusiastic about the socialist realism of the 1950s and 1960s, and their ideas about art were of little help for students in the new era. ‘I was very disappointed when I went there. No one discussed art. They only talked about scale, anatomy and purely technical questions; it was depressing. Every day we would only study aspects of technique, and so I even wanted to quit. I told my classmates that if there was a master sculptor, I would like to go and study by working for him in his studio. I could learn technical things from him and discuss art every day. There was one relatively well-known teacher, Liu Huanzhang, but none of the others were famous. Qian Shaowu was also well-known, but he only carved sculptures of figures. Anyway, it was disappointing’. The daily courses were about scale, construction, movement, the center of gravity, the relationship between the left and right eyes, the relationship between the head, neck and chest, and similar questions. Zhan Wang complained that he was not hearing anyone talking about the art in which he was really interested. The reason was simply that most of his professors were steeped in Soviet art ideas, and had no knowledge beyond that. But this did not prevent Zhan Wang from developing his own understanding of art. In his diary entry of 7 June 1984, he discussed his travels in Inner Mongolia and what he wrote represented his natural interest in sculpture and his understanding of art at that time:
Everyone is moved by the herdsmen when they see them for the first time. Compared to them, Han people are insipid and have no presence. Because of the difference in living conditions, we find some primal quality in these people. When a mature herdsman walks, his neck and head lean forward a little, like an animal. This is exactly what the sculpture needs: heaviness and primal qualities that look statuesque. The herdsmen shown on TV were born and grew up in the city. They are well educated and smile and walk as though they are acting in a play; they have lost their uncivilized qualities and their pure straightforward feelings.
Seeing the real herdsmen, you realize that another unique characteristic is their concept of family. On the boundless grasslands one often sees a herdsman and herdswoman leading three or four children riding in an ox-drawn wagon, as they ‘wander’ around. I think their love is the purest you’ll ever see. Between them, there are rarely love affairs. If I say they are sexually open (in certain areas), this is only limited to their instincts; emotionally, they very rarely leave their families.
At that time, Zhan Wang’s focus was on ‘purity’ and ‘nature’. Since the ‘life- stream’ (shenghuo-liu) paintings by Chen Danqing and his friends became popular in 1980, the general aesthetic atmosphere was concerned with the representation of reality, nature and purity as the creative criteria, which strongly distinguished this new style from earlier revolutionary themes and paeans of praise. The artist agreed that he was influenced by the theme of ethnic minorities and he enjoyed the warmth and authentic elements in the treatment of this theme by Chen Danqing and others like him. At variance from painters, Zhan Wang instinctively sought to transfer those figures to sculptural images. He therefore declared, ‘Sculpture has heavy and primal qualities, and that is why people feel that it is statuary’. At the same time, he was thinking about the relationship between civilization and the primitive, and after explaining his appreciation of primitive purity, he asked himself: ‘Being uncivilized, a herdsman represents something lovable. When a natural person is civilized, where does that lovable quality go?Does civilization devour it?’He continued: ‘I would rather abandon this civilization, and bury my head in the grass and ignore society. I’d rather be lovable than ridiculous’. (12 June 1984)From 18 September to November, Zhan Wang spent time in hospital with pneumonia and this affected his schoolwork, but he had developed the conviction that it was not important to replicate techniques, especially those of Soviet art, and he should concentrate more on art issues. When he left hospital, he visited an exhibition of Canadian art in Beijing, at which the works of Alex Colville greatly impressed him:
The entire painting is a dusk brown color and a horse is running along the train tracks into a beam of light, which comes from a locomotive at the head of an oncoming train. In the dusk, the light looks terrifying, indicating that a disaster is about to unfold. There will be loss, death, damage and unhappiness for the unlucky family…but the image is tranquil and quiet and there is total harmony between the layout and colors; even the gait of the horse is poetic. The name of the picture was naturalistically philosophical, Horse and Train. (23 November 1984)
Before writing this, Zhan Wang had discussed the plotting of important themes in great detail, although he was obviously concerned mostly with psychological plot. As soon as he discovered the specific point of view of Alex Colville, he realized that the sequence of art could be used to formulate standards for ‘life with indeterminate movement’. He thought that this was a discovery and proposition of Cezanne, but his discussion of Alex Colville’s work indicated that Zhan Wang was thirsting for new art visions, was tired of the Soviet model taught at the academy, and felt that Colville represented a fresh artistic atmosphere. In his analysis, Zhan Wang went on to discuss the more abstract relationship between nature and civilization, but did not limit himself to personal emotions, because what he was concerned about was the inner contrast between the horse (a natural animal) and the train (a machine of civilization). In the process of analyzing Colville’s A Women beside a Table, Zhan Wang stressed the importance of ‘control’ and ‘order’, noticing that Colville concentrated on important areas in his work in order to abstract the essential observation. The development of order provided the abstract conception with an exact and well-balanced geometrical design, which was a rational structure blending the complexities of experience, memory and emotion. The essential thing was not Zhan Wang’s explication of the meaning of the work of this Canadian artist, but what the analysis revealed about the inner qualities and future possibilities of Zhan Wang’s work: endowing things with rationality, analysis and abstraction.
Illness provided Zhan Wang with more time to read and feed his thirst for knowledge about art history. In his diary, he wrote a lot about his views on art, and while these do not necessarily directly relate to his future art practice, they supported the artist’s thought processes in his acquisition of an understanding of art and of abilities in aesthetic judgment.
Zhan Wang began to focus more on the study of history, and he learned much about Soviet history from reading the memoirs of the musician Dmitri Shostakovich, which had been given to him by a friend. Understanding the thoughts of an artist not adhering to the precepts of socialist realism helped him to begin to review his own ‘creative’ work: ‘Recently, I always think about my own art work. These works are actually not the product of thinking; only when you make a work do you gradually connect one idea with another’. He also began thinking about tradition: ‘There were originally no Chinese indigenous traditions of Buddhist art. When Buddhism was introduced to China during the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, the Buddhist grotto art of that period had nothing traditionally Chinese about it, as you can see by comparing the Chineseterracotta warriors from Qin Shihuang’s mausoleum with the Longmen, Yungang and Dunhuang Buddhist grottoes that preserve early Buddhist sculptures. There is no need to go into the details; one only need compare Qin-Han statuary with sculpture from these early Buddhist caves. Yet nowadays people think that art produced during the Tang dynasty, especially the Buddhist art of that time, is related to Chinese traditional art. Without the introduction of Buddhist art into China during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, how could Buddhism have developed during the Tang dynasty in a Chinese context?’
Zhan Wang at this time was also beginning to discover abstraction:
During my leisure time, I suddenly became interested in the changes of the seasons. Perhaps you remember the nameless tree in front of your house?Or perhaps back in the past in front of your school there were two tall rows of white poplar trees or a nice shaded path formed by other kinds of trees!Every time you left your house, or felt you had no other choice but to walk down that road towards the school, did you notice the changes brought about by the change in the seasons?Do you remember how you felt when autumn came?When did you start to feel sense of floating desolation with the advent of autumn and no longer hear the laughter of childhood nor feel the weary yearning for autumn once evoked by paintings? Oh, perhaps you still sigh with praise for the deep colors of autumn as though your thoughts are as deep and as calm as the autumn. (29 November 1984)
This passage reveals the purity of Zhan Wang, but many entries in his diaries outline more complicated emotions and issues to which he himself draws attention. The white snow seems utterly pure but, once you sweep it away, ‘black grime is concealed beneath the white snow. It’s disappointing; illusions, hopes and excitement all disappear with the melting of the ice and snow… And me! I just listen to the crunching sound as I walk in the snow’. (29 November 1984)Zhan Wang even wrote that although spring is invigorating, he can sense it ‘abandoning us’ very quickly. This attitude led the artist to distance himself from surface appearances; the attempt to find perfection was a mentality pervading society during the 1980s, and Zhan Wang was obviously part of that Zeitgeist.
It was after reading Edward de Bono’s Teaching Thinking that Zhan Wang wrote how he agreed with one of that author’s insights:
People need to learn how to ‘fantasize’. One should consider every possibility, even if it seems irrelevant or unbelievable; it is still worth a try. First, one shouldn’t be afraid to think of the things that one previously feared; secondly, after thinking about them, one should seriously experiment with them. One should never restrict one’s thoughts for any reason. (30 November 1984)
This psychological need for rebelliousness was a youth phenomenon of the 1980s.
1985 was the year in which what would later be called the ’85 art movement (or the ’85 New Wave) began. In January of that year, the art theory bi-monthly Art Trends (Meishu sichao) had already started publishing in Hubei. At this time, the journal continuously introduced and propelled the modernist trend. In May, the Progressive Chinese Youth Art Exhibition, held at the China Art Gallery, displayed 150 art works, of which the surrealist work Towards the New Century (Zou xiang xin shiji) and many other pieces showed the spirit of realism, further paving the way for the ’85 Movement. In June and July, the first New Figurative Images Exhibition was held in Shanghai’s Jing’an Cultural Center and the show then traveled on to Nanjing, where it was staged in a local health education center. The expressionist art pieces of Mao Xuhui, Pan Dehai and Zhang Xiaogang became symbols of the art of that period. In July, the 7th issue of Jiangsu Art Monthly (Jiangsu huakan) published Li Xiaoshan’s article ‘My Thoughts on Chinese Painting’ (Zhongguo hua zhi wo jian), which critically and directly questioned traditional Chinese art. In October, the Jiangsu Youth Art –Modern Art Exhibition was held in Nanjing’s Jiangsu Art Museum. The art pieces by Ding Fang, Shen Qin, Chai Xiaogang and Yang Zhilin pushed the concept of ‘surrealism’ in a new direction, in a way different from that in which Meng Luding and Zhang Qun had passionately promoted their understanding of this concept at the Progressive Chinese Youth Art Exhibition earlier that year. The most important exhibition of 1985 took place in November and December in Beijing and Lhasa, and this was the International Touring Exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg’s Works. This exhibition did much to deepen the understanding among Chinese artists about the change in meaning from modern to contemporary. At the end of the year, the ’85 New Space Art Exhibition was also held in the Jiangsu Art Institute’s Exhibition Hall. This was an early experiment in transcending modernism. Of the artists that participated, Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi totally ignored the enthusiasm for modernism. In all, during 1985, modernist exhibitions and modernist groups appeared in every Chinese city and, compared to those non-central cities, Beijing displayed little that was perceptively acute. Beijing simply used expressionism as the theme for the November Painting Exhibition in the capital, in which participating artists included Xia Xiaowan, Ma Lu, Ding Yi, Shi Benming, Cao Li, Liu Quan, Tan Ping and Li Baoying.
In 1985, Zhan Wang was still a student actively developing his understanding of art. Like most young modernist artists, he questioned the role of art and the veracity of what art expressed. He suspected there are problems associated with the meaning of the commonly used phrase ‘serve the people’ because the concept of the people ‘includes you, me and him’. Zhan Wang also suspected the ‘popularization’ of culture. ‘Popularization is necessary, but the real value of popularization should be that when any advance cannot be readily accepted or understood, this advanced idea should be popularized in order that it is better understood’. This meant that only things that are unique or special are worth studying. The modernist texts that Zhan Wang read were familiar to everyone. As he wrote in his diary entry of 15 April 1985: ‘Significant form: remember this phrase. Everyone’s views on aesthetics are the same on this point. There may be people who still won’t admit it, but significant form can move people, and only it can do this’. Even though Zhan Wang definitely could not look at Clive Bell’s aesthetic thought with a critical eye, he did quote him: ‘It is crucial to be far from commonality’. At this time, he admitted his own perplexity: ‘My art truly wants to come out but when I see the master’s artworks, I find that they are too similar to what I want to express. Others have already done it, so of course I’m not interested in that, but what is the right way of going about it?’(15 April 1985)In Zhan Wang’s diary of 1985, we do not see any evaluation of the vigorous art movements taking place outside academic circles. He only examines issues related to the realization of his own art, and he treats the matter of changing the way he feels about sculpting with great care. He examines and re-examines problems related to sculpture and drawing.[3] But in his diary entry of 26 May 1985, he reveals the disgust and weariness occasioned by the conservative atmosphere within the school:
There are a bunch of teachers here in the department who always think they are right, as if they are right even before any situation arises. There isn’t any creative space for the students. Their annoying faces, with their hands behind their backs and their eyes half-closed, as if to say: ‘I am always right, you are always wrong’. … We happily arrive at this school and work hard for five years and then sadly leave. … Traditional concepts, traditional philosophy... [4]
Zhan Wang persevered with his own chosen method for understanding art. From reading Herbert Read’s History of Modern Sculpture, for example, he re-examined the basic characteristics of sculpture. Read’s artistic direction was obviously modernist rather than realist, and so was quite different from the teaching Zhan Wang had received at school. By focusing on the study of Western artists’ ideas, Zhan Wang kept at a distance issues concerning society and politics. He patiently and carefully recorded Paul Klee’s ideas:
To piece together the perfect harmonious picture able to move us: outsiders believe that the whole harmony comes from each part being harmonious, and this conclusion is wrong. This effect cannot be more delicate, (pay attention) because once the first part and the second part are harmonized and synchronized, the third part is no longer needed. It is only when the first and the second are rough and obscure that the third can come in to transform the roughness and obscurity into harmony. Therefore, it’s the tripartite harmony that is most convincing.
The above statement is profound, penetrating, and should be remembered.[5]
As for Zhan Wang’s future artistic ventures, the usefulness of a text that only focuses on formal issues and psychology is suspect, but the artists who subscribed to such an art trend kept a distance between themselves and social issues from the beginning. At the same time, even if some teachers showed contempt towards and spurned modern sculpture, Zhan Wang rejected them:
If academic teaching does not change, it runs into a dead end. In our faculty, we describe this state of things as ‘roguish and reactionary’ (wulai, fandong). Some dying people try to maintain their position until their very last breath, but do nothing except remain ignorant and conceited.[6]
As a student at the academy, Zhan Wang was already very clear about what his future direction would not be.
In 1985, a new element entered Zhan Wang’s art practice through his discovery of the theory of Alberto Giacometti. He focused on the openness of Giacometti’s ‘shape’ theory and realized that his theory did not stem from reality and from mere visual experience, but from listening to the heart and from sudden transformation: ‘I’ve never seen my own human image as an enriched entity, but rather as a clear composition’. Zhan Wang revered Giacometti’s vision. From this understanding, even if Zhan Wang believed that surrealism had made no contribution to the question of form, he still recorded the definition of surrealism given by André Breton: ‘Actions of a purely senseless spirit’.[7] These elements played a seminal role in Zhan Wang’s future artistic career and exerted a subtle influence on his work.
During his third year at the academy, Zhan Wang was exposed to the new concepts introduced by Professor Situ Jie, Situ Jiao’s younger brother, who had previously studied in Canada. Speaking about this teacher, Zhan Wang wrote, ‘he has traveled the whole world, and now he wants to open a contemporary national studio to bring together the essence of modern Western art and traditional Chinese art, mix them together and thus give shape to his own modern art. Mostly importantly, since this studio is different from the Soviet model, I decided to move there’. Zhan Wang now directly experienced an artistic environment conducive to study and over the next two years he received a ‘completely Western-style’ education from Situ Jie, who focused on the physiological aspect stressed by Western art practices and on the spiritual aspect emphasized by Chinese culture. This teaching method left a deep impression on Zhan Wang, who believed that listening to Situ Jie’s ideas about art and engaging in discussions with him on the subject during daily classes were formative experiences. These discussions also focused on traditional aesthetics. As far as traditional aesthetics was concerned, Zhan Wang had some basic knowledge because during his time at the Beijing Industrial Arts School, he made himself familiar with ancient stone sculpture. During his early school years, he regularly visited the Forbidden City, museums and Buddhist grottoes; he had copied a great number of ancient artworks from many sites with examples of traditional sculpture. The copies that Zhan Wang has kept to this day show that the artist was very familiar with traditional sculpture and could produce a copy on the spot that was comparable to the sculpture in situ.
According to Zhan Wang, the ’85 New Wave did not greatly influence the students. Although most students accepted the ethnic minority theme, Zhan Wang saw this as the result of Chen Danqing’s influence. However, the ’85 New Wave in fact was exerting a great influence in the art world. Zhan Wang not only took part in the First Exhibition of Young Artists organized by the China Art Gallery, his first participation in any exhibition, but all the participants belonged to the generation greatly affected by the ’85 New Wave. From then on, he too also became more willing to accept new ideas and concepts. He actively contacted the chief editors of Fine Arts in China and Fine Arts because he understood the importance of these two critics. However, from the artist’s diary it would appear that Zhan Wang was suspicious of ‘movements’, preferring ‘meditative thought’:
I read a copy of Fine Arts in China. I had never picked up this publication before nor have I ever written about my ideas and feelings on contemporary art, but had always believed that everyone should figure out their own path, then go forward and gain more experience. Movements are only transitory and this is not my style. I acknowledge the influence that art movements have on society, but I also believe that there should still be some practical artists who understand what is important. I believe that the achievements of only these people will become increasingly important. (18 February 1987)
Zhan Wang later decided to travel all over China to fully understand the country’s various local customs. He started from Shandong, then travelled to Beijing, Dunhuang, Xi’an, Nanning, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and as far as Hainan Island. By doing this, his real purpose was to understand China:
Just after the beginning of the Open Door policy, I made a point of going to Shenzhen. It is very near Hong Kong and I wanted to see Hong Kong, to go to the casinos and experience the life there. Then I realized that China is very big. There is a vast difference between the Southwest and Northwest of the country. China is not a balanced country. It is totally different from west to east. Then I started to consider my own orientation. Did I belong to the Northwest, the South, or Shenzhen?
In answering these questions, Zhan Wang realized that the basic content of his work was the city. ‘I belong to the city. I am a city dweller. In other places, I am just a passer-by, with no deep attachment, but I am deeply impressed by the people who surround me. The topic of my graduate piece is the street; it expresses my feelings towards what is around me’. But Zhan Wang was unclear that these feelings may be produced under the influence of existing ‘patterns’, ‘modules’ or ‘examples’. After the mid-1980s, some sensitive artists, such as Wang Guangyi, realized that it is was impossible to produce so-called ‘original’ work. The iconographic theories of E.H. Gombrich changed people’s ideas about art practices. Zhan Wang’s graduate work was influenced by the work of Western sculptors like Marino Marini; the artist’s acceptance of Western theory was the result of his lack of interest in the Soviet style. Zhan Wang wanted to give up such basic forms of expression and widen the dialogue of his art, but also insisted that only by accepting his logic could one acquire a wider understanding. Although some professors were distressed by Zhan Wang’s graduate piece, Cao Li evaluated his work highly, according to Zhan Wang. However, the artist’s emotional motivation in producing his graduate piece, titled The Streets (Jiedao), came from deeper concerns:
In 1988, I traveled across half of China, north to Maijishan and south to the southern tip of Hainan Island, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. When I returned, I felt that there was nothing I could do to deal with the massive imbalance that existed between the western and eastern parts of China. I discovered that I had lost my bearings and this provided me with the resources for producing my first major work, The Streets.[8]
Until his graduation in 1988, Zhan Wang was trying to understand the arts, especially sculpture, by reading, studying and experimenting. In fact, from 1983 onwards, he had already produced very exact and stable sketches, which technically held up to any academic criteria, but most of the techniques he had mastered could not be transformed into what is required by art. For a long time, Zhan Wang thought about the work of Rodin, Picasso, Marino Marini, Alex Colville, Aristide Maillol and Alberto Giacometti, as well as Chinese traditional sculpture. He searched for new possibilities; when the artist Xu Bing had already hung his Book of the Sky (Tianshu) in the China Art Gallery, Zhan Wang, who had just graduated from the academy, was still at an unsure and primary experimental stage.
2.
In 1988, Zhan Wang graduated in a state of confusion, but had still not written his graduation paper. After graduation, he entered the Sculpture Research Institute attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. His experience in the Students’ Union during the previous years as wellas that of running the school’s wall bulletin earned him the recognition of the leaders in the institute. Since Zhan Wang was not given any teaching assignments in the institute, he could commit himself to full-time art practice. After 1976, the Chinese system in general was in a delicate state. China’s reform and opening to the West combined with the obstinate existence of the old system and old concepts as its basis made people’s judgments and behavior complicated issues. Although the Sculpture Research Institute was organizationally associated with the Central Academy of Fine Arts and its leaders were appointed by the state, given the creative nature of this organization, the institute enjoyed relative freedom and its members could engage in activities closely related to the outside society and the market. Therefore, although Zhan Wang was an employee of the Academy of Fine Arts, he spent most of his time gathering with other artists and taking part in different exhibitions. Zhan Wang thought that although he was a ‘member of the system’, he had the duty to think about issues going beyond the system. As far as the artist’s art practice and the artist’s ideas are concerned, Zhan Wang was deeply influenced at that time by the tides of modernism and even post-modernism. In 1999, Zhan Wang was elected by most of the members of the Sculpture Research Institute as its director for three years (until 2002), as well as serving as one of the managers of the institution. However, he continued to spend most of his time carrying on his art practice. The main difference from the past situation was that the artist could henceforth use the little power he had gained to do something beyond the limits set by the system. He kept on doing so until, after providing exhibition space for the show ‘Infatuated with Injury’, he was forced to quit his position by the authorities of the academy.
As Zhan Wang affirms, ‘everyone was quite depressed’ after 1989, and this feeling of gloominess was universal. One day in 1990, Zhan Wang suddenly realized that he had to start afresh to re-address the problems he had been facing to date in his art practice. His series Super-realism (Chaoji xieshi) represented an important step for Zhan Wang’s re-examination of the concepts of sculpture and of art. With this series, the artist gave up the academic style, and radically distanced himself from ‘spirituality’ (jingshenxing). For him, the basic task was ‘to create something which was purely real, just like making candles’. Zhan Wang needed to dispense with the sculpting techniques ranging from the Soviet style to Western modernism with which he was familiar, and devote himself to genuine replicating reality as he saw it. Through his efforts, the artist hoped to create something different from the concept of sculpture to which everyone was accustomed. It is difficult to ascertain whether this idea was sufficiently purist, but if we look at the Super-realism series of works, we can clearly see that these realistic, life-like works are filled with the artist’s strong emotions. The subjects of these works are always precariously position or are inclined; they seem to feel uneasy and emotionally confused. His colored sculpture portraying a young girl was displayed at the New Generation Art Exhibition in July 1991. If we compare this sculpture with the paintings in the same exhibition, we cannot help but notice that all these works are filled with the same emotions and concepts. The Super-realism series of works was not a simple experiment in the field of ‘super- realism’, although Zhan Wang had conceived of them this way. Driven by his personal needs, Zhan Wang portrayed the male and female figures in a very nervous and spasmodic way. As far as technique is concerned, he did not fully adhere to the principles of super-realism, but allowed the traces caused by chance, their forms and emotions remain visible on the sculptures. As a matter of fact, these works all depict an inner trepidation. Are the posture and the emotions pervading the figure wearing the Mao suit, employed for the first time ever in a work by Zhan Wang, really normal? Whether Zhan Wang realized it or not, he was portraying the environment around him. Just as the artist himself had observed, he belonged to this city, Beijing, or in other words, only what is deeply related to the city really mattered for him. A feeling of numbness and sadness pervaded Beijing after 1989. The city’s harsh winters and dry summers were all reflected in the people’s moods. The artist’s efforts to re-examine the concept of sculpture are embodied in the series titled Sidewalk (Renxingdao xilie), which he completed for Beijing’s Asian Games Complex in 1990. Sidewalk comprises five sculptures portraying either relaxed or bored young and old people and it was displayed at the National Olympic Center. The inspiration for this work came from the artist’s understanding of public sculpture, so he decided to place these lifelike young people on one of the major promenades in this public space. Even if these sculptures had to meet the architect’s aesthetic demands, Zhan Wang used this series of works to carry on his personal experiments in going back to the basics of art practice. If we reconsider Beijing’s art scene of the time, we discover that the emotions and moods expressed by Zhan Wang are similar to the sense of ennui characterizing the art of the New Generation and to the indifference expressed by his series Super- realism and embodied in the paintings of artists like Wang Hao and Wei Rong operating mainly at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. No-one at that time knew how to go on living: life was a process of vain waiting. Ancient Chinese scholars and intellectuals, who went through periods of adversity, sought comfort within a Chinese iconographic tradition. For example, they could find spiritual comfort in the symbols of the plum, the orchid, the bamboo and the chrysanthemum. However, in a country where traditional culture had been swept away after 1949 and spiritual comfort could not come from Western theories, it should have come from an inner world but there the dust had been dyed with the colors of ideology. When the tide of Western theories spreading throughout China during the 1980s became the target of doubts raised by different intellectual factions, people could find refuge only in their inner self.
However, an inner self that has never undergone cultural training can easily feel at a loss. This psychological state formed the basis of the New Generation and Cynical Realism phenomena. Under these circumstances, we can easily understand why people could feel a psychological affinity when viewing the works exhibited in the ‘Liu Xiaodong: Oil Paintings Exhibition’ held in the art gallery of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in May that year and An Exhibition of Paintings by Zhao Bandi and Li Tianyuan held in September. The traditional Chinese wayward attitude and Western symbolism (see for example the clear influence of Lucian Freud on Liu Xiaodong’s paintings) were indispensable, and any trivial detail of daily life could probably become the subject used by an artist to express ideas and emotions. If we understand that period from this perspective, then it is undeniable that the Group Exhibition of Chinese New Literati Painters held in September 1990 in Beijing’s Chinese Painting Research Institute played a seminal role in artists’ research into their inner self. If Western resources did not help solve these specific problems, perhaps this was evidence that the Chinese tradition could be trusted again. Zhan Wang may have his own idea about the ‘grand soul’ (da linghun) once debated in Chinese artistic academic circles, but the impassioned cry for help from the soul had proved to be a failure. New Generation art was born in response to this vague and empty soul. Therefore, for Zhan Wang, ‘super-realism’ was not merely an artistic concept imported from the West; it had to be regarded as an issue artists set themselves, in order to understand their roots.
Sometimes the feeling of lightness is a mere simulation, as shown in Zhan Wang’s work Weightless Woman (Shizhong de nüren) which portrays a female figure who is about to fall. The feeling of ‘lightness’ comes from the sense of bewilderment and perplexity caused by the changes undergone by society. Zhan Wang placed this ‘weightless’ woman at a demolition site, thus demonstrating that the feeling of ‘lightness’ expressed through this work was deeply related to the abrupt changes taking place in reality. However, Zhan Wang still believed that this effort was not the kind of art that could best express his feelings. At this time, Zhan Wang was still going through a period of uncertainty. The work which best exemplifies his state of mind is Qu Qiubai, a work the artist completed in June 1991. This complex and extraordinary work was a new starting point for the artist’s subsequent career:
I chose to represent Qu Qiubai because he had the greatest moral integrity of the Communist Party’s historical personages and was the most faithful adherent of the original ideals of Communism, while all others seemed opportunistic. He was the only one of them with the moral character of a traditional scholar. This was my personal understanding of his personality. He died young and in a very pitiable way. From the articles he translated, we can see that he was the only member of the Communist Party who had ever translated texts about Western literature and politics. When a Kuomintang firing squad executed him, he showed great moral integrity, conferred on him by the traditional literati values that provided him with spiritual support. When facing death, he even wrote a poem for his enemies.
Zhan Wang created a faithful portrait of Qu Qiubai, but what he wanted to emphasize was Qu’s intellectual strength and moral character. The same moral character had been witnessed many times in history, being the positive quality it was felt that a Chinese intellectual should possess. Here we are no longer discussing an artistic issue: we are discussing the viewpoint and the attitude towards the life an intellectual should lead. This attitude was usually expressed by ancient artists through deflected symbolism. But why did Zhan Wang suddenly want to return to such an understanding of art, as if the artist wanted to pay homage to figurative sculptures and memorials of the past? Zhan Wang used neither an academic style nor the style of the Super-realism series he was using at the same time to create this particular work. Busts portraying historical figures are familiar to sculptors, but what relationship did the sculpture of this historical figure have with the artist’s creation at that time? The work Qu Qiubaiwas exhibited in July during the First National Art Exhibition and collected by the National Art Museum of China, which seems like an interlude rich in meaning and filled with a sense of justice, at variance from the other topics Zhan Wang’s works addressed in this period.
Zhan Wang had perhaps unconsciously combined realism with his own personal ideas about art. In 1993, Zhan Wang had begun to travel the path leading him towards abstraction, by rendering his ‘super-realistic’ images (both people and objects) increasingly abstract and by preserving only their outer appearance, as in the case of the highly symbolic Mao suits. At the same time, the artist thought that the standing figures he had created to date could not fully reveal his feelings; in reality these figures could not stand up. The title of the artist’s new series of works was Empty Soul: Emptiness (Kongling: kong):
After the ‘Tiananmen Incident’ I felt extreme disquiet and had the feeling that China was hopeless, a place that resembled hell. This is the reason why I depicted people in contorted shapes. My original idea was conceived like some Western designer who must fill an exhibition hall with clothes, but I finally did not do so. I transformed the human torsos into contorted forms. These bodies could not have undertaken normal actions, because in reality people cannot be contorted to this extent. I also put clothes on the figures. Since these contortions could not be performed by real people, I had to experiment directly on the sculptures. I imagined that if the movements of these sculptures could be performed by real people, I would not allow them to perform these actions, so I decided to create eighteen basic postures for the figures. The sculptures were contorted only after they were finished. Once completed, I was not satisfied with the result and so continued to contort them on the easel until they fully expressed my ideas. Then I emptied them, turning them into hollow shells and placed clothes on them. This work was very complicated and exhausting, and as demanding as the work that now goes into my Artificial Stones (Jia shanshi). The process was like this: I first used clay to prepare the bodies, then prepared the moulds to retain only their outer shells, and then made the shells hollow and very light. After that, I put clothes on them. Sometimes the clothes did not fit them, so I cut the clothes, put them on the sculptures and sewed them up again.
The action of ‘emptying’ the figures was the result of the combination of Zhan Wang’s artistic experiments and his inner feelings about reality. It is very difficult to separate clearly the inspiration that drove the artist’s experimentation from his feelings towards reality. At that time, the art practices of Zhan Wang and his colleague and friend Sui Jianguo were quite similar. Willingly or not, social issues had become the focus of their artistic practices. Who would have suggested that the action of ‘emptying’ was pure carefree play? Why is the Mao suit, which is so familiar to most Chinese, presented in so many contorted shapes? Why do these artists have to emphasize complexities that are barely perceived in real life? We can readily appreciate that as a result of his long-term study and understanding of Western art, Zhan Wang encountered no more obstacles along his path towards the realization of his own ideas, and so now he could naturally conceive and execute his own projects. He was no more touched by the uncertainties implied by the concepts of ‘sculpture’ or even ‘art’. At this point, Zhan Wang began to reveal an artistic liberation. His thought was not simply Western-oriented, like that of most Chinese artists of the 1980s, but he had begun to pay attention also to the importance of the reality he was immersed in, as well as to the history with which he was familiar. He was able to abstract entire periods of revolutionary history in order to express a common standpoint and in order to point out a problem. For example, he drew the inspiration for the eighteen empty shells in his sculptural work from the eighteen young pines in the revolutionary Beijing Opera Shajiabang, with which people were so familiar during the period of the Cultural Revolution. The artist did not avoid saying that they could be also interpreted as symbols of martyrdom.
Milan Kunderais a novelist familiar to Chinese intellectuals, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being became a milestone for a generation eager to understand the political and spiritual dilemmas affecting socialist countries. The cultural resources Chinese artists rely on are obviously different from those of the Western artists whom Chinese artists sincerely admired at the beginning of their careers. Zhan Wang followed a very complicated train of thought when producing this series of works. He had thought of the cicada’s abandoned exuviae after it had metamorphosed into a more complex life form, the bird-trap toys with which he played as a child, the hopelessness of life, and how art should be conducted. He even pondered the concept of ‘hell’. All these elements were not merely the main elements at the basis of the artist’s complex artistic motivation; they are also the multifaceted key to interpreting these works.
Although Zhan Wang later emphasized that this work represented his way of disclosing issues related to the nature of sculpture itself which led the artist from going back to the basics of sculptural practice and moving instead towards abstraction, at that time art critics interpreted and analyzed the issues revealed by this work only from the point of view of the symbolism of the formal and material effects created by the sculptures:
Facing these hollow shells, we are forced to reflect on an ancient theme: which is more real, the soul or the flesh?(Yin Shuangxi)[9]
These empty shells resemble ghosts. Their twisted forms and their moldy colors make these ghosts appear more frightening. But the artist passionately focuses on describing the deplorable human condition. (Liu Xiaochun)[10]
These hollow human torsos, the use of the Mao suit, the distortion of these bodies and their display, all these elements engage a social problem. The brilliant aspect of this work lies in the relationship it creates between the real and the absurd, thanks to the combination of a material feeling realistically conveyed by the texture of the clothes combined with a feeling of emptiness. (Li Xianting)[11]
The Mao suit in Zhan Wang’s sculptures is discarded both psychologically and physically. Thrown into a desolate setting, among ruins, the Mao suit is no more a psychological and ideological symbol of control: on the contrary it reflects the loss of its social power. (Zhu Qi)[12]
It is very difficult to give a meaning to symbols and images once they are separated from their historical context. Why did the artist not use a Western suit? Why did he not use the traditional long gowns worn by Chinese intellectuals? Actually only the Mao suit we are familiar with since childhood constitutes an everlastingmemory. It is a favorite symbol, a device that explains problems more clearly because, through the use of this symbol, we can conduct the most effective and insightful analysis, and so its use was very natural. The Mao suit discloses a myriad of social and political issues. Known in Chinese as the Zhongshan-zhuang, the Mao suit was originally named for Sun Yat-sen and so, from the Revolution of 1911 to the end of the Cultural Revolution, the image of this garment underwent abrupt changes: from a sublime subject it became transformed into an unnecessary object replete with complex meanings. Its evolution has made it a persistent memory. Artworks displaying the Mao suit as the central subject, including Sui Jianguo’s Legacy Mantle (Yibo) and Zhan Wang’s Empty Shells (Kongke), have a common characteristic: the Mao suit is linked to memory, even if the Mao suit in different artworks has been created from different perspectives. The difference between the two artists in using the Mao suit lies in the fact that the former maintains the seriousness typical of ‘grand narratives’ as well as the will to re-question history; the latter departs from individual memories and has tried to put an end to any historical associations. Zhan Wang is much more interested in expressing his personal feelings regarding daily life. However, even if Zhan Wang hoped to confront this issue merely from the point of view of sculpture or art, it was very difficult for the artist to extricate himself from the materials, the symbols and the forms he used. People will more probably understand the work as an expression of the psychological state following an action to get rid of all bondage. As Karen Smith correctly noted, ‘the distorted suits are tangled up with an empty pain’. However, more importantly, Zhan Wang had freed the notion of sculpture. He combined issues related to sculpture with issues that art in general should face. He dispensed with the superfluous boundary between sculpture and installation art.
In April 1994, Zhan Wang displayed his works in a series of solo exhibitions held in the gallery of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. His works reminded people of ‘those young people whose lives had been destroyed in the Tiananmen incident’, and this worried the audience. The clothing on the sculptures, which appeared very dirty but was only resulted from the use of a rusting agent, made people wonder whether the artist’s works could be considered art. Headless, handless and bodiless Mao suits hung suspended as they appeared to fall from scaffolding or rested writhing on a mound of dirt. The twists and turns of these sculptures, which no person could make, puzzled audiences, naturally evoking the harshness of real life.
Zhan Wang used the words ‘empty soul’ and ‘empty’ as titles of the works, and concepts of ‘emptiness’ and of the ‘soul’ have resisted the assaults of post-modernist theories like structuralism and deconstructionism. Even if the soul has already left the body, the bodies continued to writhe. Confronting these works, the concept of ‘absence’ that post-modernists describe as ‘emptiness’ looks like mere word play.
In his diary entry of 14 July 1994, Zhan Wang outlined his ideas about his distorted Mao suits:
I like to transform actions into meaningless grotesque states. These hollow shells represent a state between that of the human and the animal, and they intended to create a dual effect that stands between human nature and social nature. Even if these actions are contorted, they are somehow rational. Contorted actions reflect the existence of another world.
I like the effects obtained with the folds of the clothes that are unlikely to exist in reality. Everything is so real, but gives people a surreal feeling. All these absurd scenes produced by people’s fantasies, however, embody something real which exists in people’s minds.
Zhan Wang also placed a mound of dirt and scaffolding in the exhibition hall, in order to transform the sculptures into an installation. After 1992, artists and critics began to widely discuss the possibilities extended by installation art, which became a fashionable term during the mid-1990s. In drawing closer to popular art trends, Zhan Wang was demonstrating a greater interest in approaching issues of art itself. However, the artist cautiously avoided discussing directly and comprehensively issues regarding the nature of sculpture and installation. He simply placed his works in the exhibition hall and hoped to have feedback from the audience. However, as a consequence of the lively, but dramatic, situation caused by the exhibition China Avant-Garde, sometimes named for its logo the ‘No U Turn’ Exhibition, in February 1989, once the art world returned to a state of normality, it became extremely difficult for artists to create works able to move people, stir their curiosity and attract the requisite attention. Therefore, exhibitions by Zhan Wang and some other artists were sometimes labeled as ‘academic avant-garde art’. Only Zhan Wang himself was well aware that these distorted empty shells were the record of his own psychological state during a peculiar period of time. They also represented the artist’s own understanding of art and his own contradictory and painful reactions towards reality. Zhan Wang thought about the relationship between the tragedy of reality and its relationship with art and the individual. He also wondered how one entered a new artistic stage after dispensing with all burdens. In a certain way, the distorted Mao suits do not simply represent the artist’s memory but also his own sense of helplessness.
However, his feelings made the artist realize that the past no longer existed, because everything that existed in the past has disappeared. Everything in reality can be reclassified using simple concepts - realistic, personal, spiritual or ideological. Zhan Wang later also placed the empty shells he had created among trees, ruins and in other natural settings. Zhan Wang thought that these contorted bodies were the visual record of his real thoughts, which were obviously deeply related with the multi-faceted reality in which the artist was immersed. The artist hoped to bury history that had been distorted, get away from those painful shells and vanish into a new world. At last, relying on his natural disposition, Zhan Wang decided to get away from ideological history, rather than be tangled up in it, by going back to a process of distancing himself from his work via abstraction.
After a number of years, Zhan Wang finally realized his wish and displayed his work during the Guangzhou Triennial, then buried it under the ground at the Guangdong Art Museum:
I wanted to let them rot and once they had decomposed, dig them up and place them in a transparent sealed container, so that they could become a cultural relic. I think that any period of time is transitory, because we have no direction. My future works will show me and my spirit a way, a path to follow. I do not want to feel constantly puzzled. This is only a transitional period, as is the Mao suit I have worn since childhood. Therefore I want to explain what it means to me. I want to take off the Mao suit and become a new person. My analysis of the ‘June 4th Incident’ is also based on these considerations. It is my basic idea that traditional ideology led to that tragedy. This is not my complaint, but it represents my way of finding a solution. I will not reveal my pain, but my thoughts.
However, in 1994, attention to social issues was still on Zhan Wang’s artistic agenda. The Ruin Cleaning Project (Feixu qingxi) which he initiated with three other artists was a new type of social investigation. If the distorted Mao suit represented a solution of the artist’s personal problems, imbued with a sort of silent protest against ideology, then the Ruin Cleaning Project represented the artist’s concern for issues generated within commercial society.
After 1992, ideology was no longer at the core of Chinese society: Deng Xiaoping enjoined Party’s members as well as those outside the Party not to spend too much time questioning the differences between capitalist and socialist society. As a result, under the influence of economic development and the market economy, people shifted their attention towards the material world. When Zhan Wang and several friends, Zhu Yu, Yu Fan and Ke Jianshi, learned that houses around Wangfujing were to be demolished as part of a real estate development project, and a family living nearby had insisted on not relocating, thus trying to preserve a building which combined Chinese and Western styles of architecture, the artists decided to create an art work on the site. They attempted to express their ‘real understanding of society’ using painting, sculpture and performance art, but this art project failed to prevent the family’s home from being cleared out.
Ruin Cleaning Plan: Proposals and Results (1994)
Time: 12-14 October 1994
Place: East Relocation Zone of Wangfujing Street, Beijing
Overview of the plan:As the urban construction and reconstruction tide approaches, Wangfujing Street, the most flourishing street in Beijing, has also become the target of reconstruction work. Although there are beautiful buildings combining Chinese and Western architectural styles, they must be demolished, because the capital needs a modernized commercial district. Therefore we decided to decorate this demolition site for just one day while the workers involved in the demolition work take a break.
The decoration and cleaning process is as follows:
2. Clean the remaining half of the white door frame, then repaint it with white paint;
3. Clean a strip of decorative ceramic tiles with cloth;
4. Decorate a remaining wall with indoor coating materials.
Cleaning tools: Brushes, detergent, oil paint, and interior coating material.
On the same evening, the bulldozers will resume clearing the house and a few days later all the nearby houses will be razed to the ground. Several years later, new buildings will have been erected here.
Only in China do cities have such as enormous number of construction sites. In the so-called process of modernization, most of the traditional buildings existing in old urban districts are being rapidly cleared away. Compared to the teachers of the academy who protested against the demolition plan, Zhan Wang and other artists expressed their ideas as artists; they acted in a composed and deliberate manner. The artists cleaned a corner of the house and coated the remaining walls with oil paint. However, everyone was curious to know why they had taken on the task so, within a very short space of time, bulldozers finished off the job and the work of the artists disappeared into thin air. However, photographic images bear witness forever to this paradox: a serious warning demonstrating that warnings were useless. Zhan Wang later wrote:
This performance greatly moved me but I could sense the helplessness. The tangible experience of this cruel situation reminded me of the social role of art and artists. The confirmation of this role seems to provide proof that art, from a conceptual point of view, is only a temporary phenomenon.[13]
The work of the artists was cleared away in a very short time and they sent the pieces they salvaged to the Fifty-five Degree: No Reason Exhibition. After this episode, Zhan Wang, Sui Jianguo and Yu Fan set up the Three Man Studio. The group often discussed art and social issues, and although each artist maintained his independence they also attempted to work together as a team. Given the rapid changes occurring in Beijing, they launched another project titled Development Plan (Kaifa jihua) to be carried on within the debris of the former Central Academy of Fine Arts buildings which had just been bulldozed. Zhan Wang contributed to this project by using modeling clay to fire bricks and then scattered the broken fragments of students’ old class projects through the debris. When the artist’s own studio was about to be demolished, they observed a silence to express their grief at the ‘loss’. The Three Man Studio subsequently organized the Beijing Women’s Space (Nüren xianchang) exhibition in the contemporary art gallery attached to the high school where the National Women’s Congress was being held in Beijing. The artists put together the resumes (including various certificates and photographs) of the women with whom they were most familiar, vividly portraying the real lives of these women, thus revealing the start difference between the real sufferings of women in daily life and the abstract concept of ‘women’ fueling the congress. The artists regarded their cooperation as a tool reflecting their relationship with a society in a state of constant change.
In 1994, Zhan Wang developed a new view on art; he decided to employ the theories and art language with which people were most familiar. However, he felt that this issue should be analyzed from another perspective. He began to reject the concept of ‘aesthetics’. Even if in the past he had already realized the illusory nature of ‘aesthetics’, he had avoided negating ‘aesthetics’ directly and affirmed that ‘the definition of the aesthetic function of art should be left to our successors’. He also paid attention to the therapeutic effect of art and its ability to cure spiritual problems, affirming that ‘real art has the function of solving the spiritual diseases of humankind’. He then equated art with wizardry, but what he really wanted to say was that, ‘in our present age, art should bear the responsibility for solving problems’. Perhaps Zhan Wang really thought, as he recorded in his diary entry of 14 July 1994, that ‘there is no need to trouble ourselves searching for the meaning of aesthetic values, because people in the next century will certainly highly appraise the arts of our epoch’. In this way, the artist provided himself with a broader platform for his own artistic experiments and activities. Zhan Wang also wrote that he hoped that he himself, as well as other people, would agree that art is a miracle. At this moment in his career, Zhan Wang’s aesthetics were sufficiently mature to guide the artist in any possible direction, and this ability led him towards a more mature approach and to artistic and creative breakthroughs.
3.
Zhan Wang has described how his idea of making ‘artificial rocks’ was born:
Several friends had come to my house for a party. While chatting with them, I was fiddling with some discarded foil from a chocolate wrapper and noticed that the chance arrangement of the foil resembled an artificial rock, a new project I was planning for the future. My friends thought that this was the inspiration for my work, but it was at that time that the revelation catalyzed an ongoing chain of musings I had been having about my rocks.[14]
It is not only difficult, but more or less impossible, to prove that an artwork is not born in a casual way, but is the inevitable product of a process. Being an artist who looks at things from the perspective of sculptural art, Zhan Wang’s ‘artistic will’ would have led him in that direction in any case, as culture is in a constant state of percolation. Zhan Wang had been exposed to traditional culture as a child:
From the age of two to four, I had been sent to live with my grandparents, who inhabited a typical Beijing courtyard home. Their compound included the main room, a small annex, the side rooms, a pottery tank for the goldfish and a jujube tree. The rooms were furnished with ‘old Beijing style’ furniture: a square table seating eight people, a long narrow table, a central scroll hung in the main room (painted by my maternal grandfather), traditional couplets (written also by my maternal grandfather), as well as flower vases. Every night the paper curtains were drawn up and covered with wooden boards to make the place safer.
In the year when the big earthquake hit Beijing, I began to learn traditional Chinese painting from my grandfather. Observing the charming ancient pavilions, the terraces and towers encircled with mountains and water, I really wanted to step into the paintings.[15]
This experience alone cannot, of course, explain why Zhan Wang committed himself to ‘artificial rocks’. However, practical experiences can provide an artist’s soul with the inspiration he always longs for. Zhan Wang copied traditional landscape painting and understood the uniqueness of Chinese brush, paper and ink. The landscape paintings which Zhan Wang completed until the mid-1980s show the shading and texture of the rocks and mountains highlighted by light ink strokes. This involvement with traditional art, whether long or short, planted a cultural ‘gene’ in Zhan Wang’s mind, and it remained waiting to be later developed.
At the very beginning, Zhan Wang did not realize that artificial rocks are one of the most symbolic elements in traditional Chinese culture. He decided to focus on them simply because he wanted to experience the process of copying natural objects using modern materials. After receiving permission, he went to a stone factory to look for the stones for himself. He did not search for ‘interesting’ stones as people with traditional interests would do. He merely made a random selection among the rejected stones described by the workers as ‘triple-pointed gourd-shaped’ stones.[16] Zhan Wang thus hoped to realize his conceptual and logical transformation using any stone available in nature.
The experiment of making artificial rocks from stainless steel evolved out of a business project assigned by a Hong Kong-based company to the city of Nanjing. This assignment consisted of making a relief for the wall in the lobby of a recreational center. At the time, for technical reasons, Zhan Wang did not choose complex stones. Moreover, from the beginning, Zhan Wang could not rely on the support of any experienced assistant so he decided to personally experiment with this somewhat absurd idea: how to transform tough stainless steel sheets into a form that reproduced every minute undulation on the surface of a natural stone. Zhan Wang’s feelings towards this experience are as follows:
The deafening sound of hammering was so extraordinarily loud that we usually put cotton wool in our ears in order to avoid any possible damage. When ordinary workers hammer steel sheets, they usually knock out a fairly rough surface; but I found out that with the help of a tool similar to a chisel, I could reproduce precisely every minute undulation on the surface of a stone. In this way my artificial stones resembled real stones. The visual effect is far more striking if someone with an artistic background works on the stone. The way in which the undulations on the surface of the stone are achieved shows the level of craftsmanship of the worker.[17]
Finding a solution to technical issues like polishing sheets of rough stainless steel and obtaining a glittering, mirror-like surface took Zhan Wang two years. A question gradually emerged: What did these empty stones made of stainless steel mean? Zhan Wang had some ideas suggested by developments in Chinese art in 1995. At that time the so-called Gaudy Art movement was very popular in China; vivid reds and greens suddenly became extremely fashionable in contemporary art circles and the ‘kitsch’ style of American artist Jeff Koons had instilled new confidence among Chinese artists.
The global art world was therefore forced to accept an abrupt transformation that led to the dismissal of ‘aesthetics’. What boundary was to be set between the meaning and the function of art? Did art still belong to a few privileged people, like outstanding curators and critics? During his process of experimentation, Zhan Wang had to make decisions while proceeding with his work: What kind of stones should he use? Should they be elegant, interesting from the historical point of view, or terribly normal? Why? It is believed that artists can gradually answer and solve these questions in their art practice:
In my opinion, ancient cultural relics were brand-new when they were created. It was the chemical reactions caused by the passing of time that made them seem very old. Herein is the origin of the appraisal of the beauty of antiquities. Yet this is a romantic aesthetics, not a conceptual one. Although I did this kind of work before, I needed to first break away from this notion of aesthetics when conducting my experiments in conceptual sculpture.[18]
Stones as natural objects stand as metaphors of culture and history. While pondering these issues, Zhan Wang realized that life and human history in general provided a kind of reference for his work. At this moment, Zhan Wang suddenly remembered the experiences he went through in his early days when, after assembling a few stones, he had arranged them on the wall to create his own ‘wall sculpture’. He named this piece Happiness (Yu) and this work had been a source of restlessness in the artist’s early years.
Zhan Wang soon decided that ‘the fantasies hidden beneath the glittering surface of these empty rocks is my comment on today’s reality’ (1995). This was Zhan Wang’s new starting point which, combined with the artist’s individualist approach and the opportunities he had to conduct research, created the premises for his experiments. The artist soon began to study how to create artificial rocks with holes. Although it was very difficult to sculpt ‘holes’ into the rocks, it seemed essential to use the traditional cultural concept of ‘holes’ (dong). Although he had been influenced by the work of Henry Moore, Zhan Wang felt that the ‘holes’ he wanted to sculpt were not totally identical to those on Moore’s sculptures. His idea of ‘empty holes’ represented a departure from the feeling of emptiness and hollowness expressed in the artist’s work Empty Soul: Emptiness. If the glittering surface of his sculptures presented an intellectual temptation, then the contents and ideas within the works were meaningless. Zhan Wang began to look to history and tradition in order to find support for his new ideas. Stainless steel stands as a metaphor for modernization, so Zhan Wang did not worry about the risk of copying ‘tradition’ or ‘natural objects’ at all. He finally came to this conclusion that ‘stones should have holes’:
There is only a hole in the stone. It should be a minuscule section on a huge stone. Although small, almost all the elements of artificial rocks are presented in my work. In addition to the hole, there are undulations. I carried out various experiments to see if I could make this type of hole. However, there were technical problems to be solved: due to the limits of my tools, the hole had to have a diameter ranging from 4 cm to 6 cm, otherwise ordinary polishing tools could not enter it. Soldering inside was also impossible. So I was wondering, firstly, whether the inside of the hole and its outside could be identical, and, secondly, whether I could create undulations using a hammer.[19]
When after a long period of experimentation the ‘hole’ was finally completed and copied, Zhan Wang felt that a miracle had happened. From this moment on, he could begin to synthesize, analyze and explain his work. He began to provide a conceptual base for his ‘artificial rocks’ thanks to the historical and cultural background he had accumulated. Zhan Wang presented his analysis of the concept of the ‘hole’ beginning with early art history and examined how stones were considered in general; he analyzed art works ranging from those of Arp to Henry Moore. He discussed the symbolic meaning of stones in the context of the cultural frame of mind developed during the Song dynasty. In addition he referred to the metaphorical meaning of ‘holes’ narrated in Chinese folk stories about fairies living inside caverns. He used the ‘metaphysical’ (xuanxue) expression ‘hidden but beautiful’ (bie you dongtian) to describe the secret beauty of these caverns. But other questions soon arose:
Was making a hole in the sculpture with the use of technologically advanced equipment and stainless steel copying the mindset which shaped traditional stones? Was polishing the inner bore of the hole a way to infuse new spirit into the stones, while the imagination of observers could be hindered by the technical deficiencies of the piece? [20]
His first stone with a ‘hole’ was displayed in the exhibition ‘Open Your Mouth Close Your Eyes: Beijing-Berlin Contemporary Art Exchange’, which was curated by Huang Du in 1996. In this exhibition, Zhan Wang’s ‘experimental stone’ was installed on a stainless steel support instead of a plinth, so as not to convey the feeling that this was a traditional sculpture:
Scattered under the artwork were stone fragments. It was a pity that these fragments of stones continued to be hammered into pieces after being completed, obviously counter to my original intention: reproducing something does not go against nature, but it is a way to let workers respect nature. In conclusion, even if at that time my art practice was still immature, I decided to record it.[21]
Zhan Wang soon began his conscious production of traditional ‘rockeries’. Even if at the beginning of his experimentation, history provided him with the inspiration for his stainless steel rocks, once the artist focused on new concepts, he situated his artistic practice within a broader context and so his works disclosed new meanings. This constitutes the value of Zhan Wang’s work. While producing his stainless steel stones and artificial rockeries imitating traditional shapes, Zhan Wang was also borrowing traditional symbols and icons. The peculiar shape of these stainless steel stones reminds us of the past, of the lives of numerous intellectuals, officials and noblemen. We know that artificial rockeries have their own tradition, which originates from the ancients’ understanding of nature. From ancient times to the present day, the Taoist injunction from the Daode Jing (The Classic of the Way and the Natural Virtue) states: ‘Human beings follow the law of earth, earth follows the law of heaven, heaven follows the law of the way (dao), and the way follows the law of nature’. [22] This has become a formulation used throughout Chinese history to discuss issues related to nature even if everyone has a different understanding of the concepts of the ‘way’ and ‘nature’. However, the ancients tended to agree that human beings should embrace nature. As stated in Zhuangzi: ‘A mountain and a forest come together! A river bank and soil come together! These things occasion happiness and joy! But when happiness wanes, sorrow comes along’. [23] Zhuangzi also warned that nature hides aspects that can frighten people, and the only escape is to flee into introspection. Under these circumstances, people cannot rely on the authenticity of nature. Emperor Gaozu of the Han dynasty, after achieving social harmony by lightening taxes and levies, began to consider how to keep society stable and prosperous and at the same time prolong his own life. The First Emperor, Qin Shihuang, sent expeditions to the legendary three Fairy Mountains, namely Penglai, Fangzhang and Yingzhou, to find the elixir of immortality. The Shanglin Garden built by Emperor Wudi of the Han dynasty was thematerialization of these legends and myths, and this emperor also implicitly believed in the existence of the three Fairy Mountains. The ‘Taiye pool and the three mountains’ he constructed for the Jianzhang Palace inside Shanglin Garden were intended as the material embodiment of the celestial environment, an imitation of the place where immortals dwelled.[24] During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, a Chinese character read ‘you’ specifically referred to the imperial garden, and during the Han dynasty, the function of gardens was also a metaphor for Yaochi (Jasper Pool) where, according to legend, the Queen Mother of the West lived, or for Xuanpu Garden where the Yellow Emperor dwelled. Gardens also provided a refuge from natural catastrophes, and proclaimed the life and authority of the emperors. The pursuit of paradise became the ideal underlying Chinese landscape painting.
Ancient intellectuals also found refuge in forests. It is recorded in ‘Biographies of Hermits’ (Yimin liezhuan), Chapter 73 of History of the Latter Han Dynasty (Hou Hanshu) that after Wang Mang usurped the throne, intellectuals felt ‘very indignant’ because of the political oppression they faced and countless officials escaped. Nature was their shelter. Intellectuals also began to look for pretexts to escape, so natural rockeries began to be imbued with symbolic meaning as refuges.
‘Landscape poetry’ developed during the Wei-Jin period. People began to imitate nature in a more realistic way, and the appearance of private gardens and temple gardens testifies to the Chinese deep and practical understanding of nature. Reading the poems of this period, one notices that gardens became synonymous with ‘excursions’ undertaken for pure pleasure. This is the rationale behind the following poem of Cao Pi (187-226):
Mine is not the long life of Song or Qiao;
Who can hope to be immortal like them?
With pleasures I will ease my heart,
Take care to live out my hundred years!
The essay ‘Preface to the Painting of Landscapes’ (Hua shanshui xu), by Zong Bing (375-443), has as its theme ‘taking pleasure in the way’ (mei dao). In this essay, the artist proclaimed how taking pleasure in the ‘way’ may be embodied by the practice of landscape painting. According to his statements, loving nature is an approach to the ‘dao’. Because only immortals can live forever in the mountains and it is very difficult for old and infirm people to continue climbing mountains to find communion with nature, the same feeling can be derived from landscape painting.[25] This was the original conceptual basis for the transformation from real mountain rocks into ‘artificial rocks’.
Jing Hao, for whom we have no details regarding his dates, was a painter only barely mentioned in the official histories of the Five Dynasties (907-960) period. He believed that people liked to ‘take emotional delight’ in nature and thought that the role of landscape painting was to ‘provide a substitute for chaotic desires’. Through his grotesque stones, ancient pines, mosses, bizarre rocks and plants, Jing Hao broke away from Xie He’s ‘six principles’ (liu fa) governing Chinese painting and made the ‘depiction of reality’ (tu zhen) his aim. The painter explained the most crucial word, ‘reality’ (zhen), by affirming that the basic method in its depiction was measuring objects, suggesting the fundamentals and rules of realism. However, he added that ‘reality’ did not mean ‘likeness’ (si). The energy (qi) conveyed by objects or their nature determined whether objects were ‘real’, because the energy of the objects also determined their ‘authenticity’. Here the word ‘energy’ is close to ‘spirit’ (jingshen) in meaning, and this is how people today interpret his ideas. Jing Hao’s theory about the ‘depiction of reality’, which appears in his Record of Brush Methods (Bifa ji), relied on a macroscopic perspective by activating the artist’s imagination, which according to people in the Song dynasty could be achieved through looking at artificial rockeries. By activating his imagination, the artist could see things from an overall perspective, so that the use of figurative elements like the clouds and fog and the sense of atmosphere, could contribute to the creation of a completely natural composition. The artist did not create a pictorial world in which elements were pieced together at random, but one in which every object was assembled in order to convey a feeling of unity.
Guan Tong (n. d.) lived almost as a hermit. His works expressed his interest in strange and grotesque natural forms. The text Appendix to Renowned Paintings of the Five Dynasties (Wudai minghua buyi) contains a description of the paintings of Guan Tong: ‘Above protrude the towering peaks and the bottomless ravines plunge below; all this soaring magnificence can be captured with a single stroke. Then the details can all be added: scattered protruding peaks, emerald mountains and rocks, forests and stones; a bottomless valley with an endless zigzagging of climbing roads, bridges, villages and fortresses’. The strange shapes of natural rocks became the focus of the artist’s interests, and expressed the painter’s respect for nature. The protruding peaks resembling bizarre stones in the middle of the composition of the work Travelers at the Mountain Pass (Guanshan xinglü tu) create the effect of being a single immense rock. This protruding rockery is not in harmony with the surrounding environment; it is too strange and out of proportion.
The Song dynasty painter Fan Kuan ‘loved the way’ (hao dao) and often sat in solitude in the forests. Although Fan Kuan was the disciple of Li Cheng, he had a saying often quoted by others, ‘The predecessors’ methods are all about approaching various objects, but my teacher and I think that we should learn from objects when painting people and should learn from what people think when painting objects’.[26] Fan Kuan’s Travelers Among Mountains and Streams (Xishan xinglü tu) focuses on a central majestic mountain, thus expressing the importance of mountains for this hermit. Mi Fu in his History of Painting (Hua shi) quotes the work of Fan Kuan: ‘Dense forests are painted on the top of the mountain to show its venerable age, and jutting boulders are painted by the water to show its force’.
Wei Xian (n. d.) was a contemporary of the 10th century painter Dong Yuan, and worked under the last ruler of the Southern Tang dynasty. His painting Eminent Scholars (Gaoshi tu) shows the impact of Confucian precepts on the artist, in particular the story from the Han dynasty of Meng Guang, the wife of the hermit scholar Liang Hong, who treated her husband politely and honored him as a distinguished guest. The story of husband and wife treating each other with courtesy has been eulogized as exemplifying morality. However, the natural landscape, trees and rocks are the real subjects of this painting because the artwork focuses mainly on the description of the protruding peaks. The roughness of the rocks and their structure are depicted in a detailed manner. The painter even showed a strong interest in expressing the texture of mountains and stones. Wei Xian used mountains, rocks, bamboos and trees imbued with symbolic and moral meanings to express his Confucian theme of the virtuous scholar.
The history of the art of stone appreciation goes back to the Qin and Han dynasties, like the history of painting, and reached its peak during the Song dynasty, developing in an increasingly systematic manner with the passing of time. However, due to the different criteria observed in rock collection in different periods, the art of stone appreciation and stone collecting became increasingly complex and focused on the curious. Initially, scholars’ rocks were natural rocks, but given the great demand, people were forced to gradually use artificial methods to produce them: after selecting and engraving a stone, craftsmen steeped it in water for a long period of time to polish it. This practice began during the Song dynasty.
With the passage of time the aesthetic standards that formed the basis of stone appreciation also changed. Reflecting the shift towards stylization in painting during the Southern Song dynasty, the art of stone carving was characterized by close attention to minute details. Despite the cultural changes, ‘artificial rocks’ continued to be imbued with physical and spiritual characteristics inherited from traditional culture. The various types of rocks with their different shapes and textures, whether they were Taihu Lake stones, Lingbi stones or coral, all clearly acquired their own distinctive cultural heritage, but also symbolized the concept of ‘tradition’ together with other cultural and artistic forms.
We can understand the evolution of the history of the art of stone appreciation also in the context of the history of painting. Literary sources confirm that these cultural stones were regarded as a product of the human love for truth. When reality itself could not satisfy the demand, the quest for truth became a part cultural process. However everyone has a personal idea of what truth is, and this idea is imbued with personal prejudgments. Natural truthfulness also became the target of many critiques. These symbols of truth polished intentionally using water or created artificially disclose issues which remain to be solved. If we approach the history of these Chinese stones in terms of Western post-modernism, we can more effectively establish a definite boundary between what is ‘true’ and ‘false’, and so achieve a richer understanding of traditional Chinese culture.
Briefly, the history of painting and of the art of stone appreciation fully discloses the rich and complex symbolic meanings hidden in these artificial rocks. Artificial rocks are a starting point; once history and culture are projected onto these rocks, these elements become equally rich and multifaceted. Because of his cultural and academic background Zhan Wang discovered ‘artificial rocks’, and from the moment of his discovery, the artist was inextricably fascinated by the infinite potential they conceal.
In 1988 Zhan Wang traveled to Hainan Island, and was amazed by the sight of the local coral. He brought back several different types and placed them in his home. What did these natural objects evoke? At that time, Zhan Wang was familiar with the work of Henry Moore, and perhaps associated these natural objects with the artificial ‘holes’ in the British artist’s sculptures. He was also quite familiar with the irregular shapes of stones portrayed in traditional Chinese paintings, and perhaps also had a vague feeling that one day these objects might awaken his artistic vision. When the artist transformed human bodies into empty shells which seemed to possess a soul, he realized that once stones filled with historical meaning were emptied they too could go on expressing their original meaning. Once stainless steel was used to replicate historical symbols or something which stood for tradition, the artist could analyze the meaning of artificial rocks from a broader perspective, thus being able to undertake a fresh discussion of related issues from a contemporary perspective.
Are artificial rocks genuine or false? History witnesses how these stones stand as a metaphor for nature. So what is the meaning of ‘artificial’? The ancients could perfectly express the meaning of the natural spirit, but how can we explain the meaning of ‘real rockeries’ (zhenshan)? Is there any real difference between the artificial rocks of today and those of the past? Has the metaphor for which artificial rocks stand changed because of the different materials employed?
Since ‘form’ has its own history, perhaps the artist’s artificial rocks made of stainless steel have lost their symbolic meaning, and Zhan Wang’s glittering artificial stones are, instead, a metaphor for today’s modernization and culture.
In ancient Chinese painting, stones were placed in different settings: in mountain forests, e.g., Five Dynasties period, Wei Xian, Eminent Scholars (Gaoshi tu); within nature as a favored scholarly setting, e.g., Sun Wei, Portrait of an Elegant Hermit (Gaoyi tu); in elegant environments, e.g., Five Dynasties, Zhou Wenju, Intellectual Garden (Wenyuan tu); in courtyards of mansions, e.g., Song dynasty, see Su Hanchen, Children at Play in the Autumn Courtyard (Qiuting xiying); in imperial palaces, e.g., Song dynasty, anon., Bent Balustrade (Zhekan tu); and, inside ordinary family courtyards, e.g., Qing dynasty, Chen Mei, Yueman qingyou ce. Obviously, as required by intellectuals and officials, stones were also independent objects which expressed a symbolic meaning and had special characteristics as in the following classical paintings: Song dynasty, Su Shi,Scroll of Ancient Woods and Grotesque Stones (Gumu guaishi tu juan); Yuan dynasty, Zhao Mengfu, Scroll of Exquisite Stones and Sparse Forests (Xiushi shulin tu juan); Ming dynasty, Xia Chang, Scroll of Gayu Qiusheng (Gayu qiusheng tu zhou); and, Qing dynasty, Zheng Xie, Scroll of Pillar Stones (Zhushi tu zhou).
This list already partly explains the function and meaning of ‘stones’. Zhan Wang knew perfectly the social context in which he lived, and so he had no choice but to place his own ‘artificial rocks’ in a modern city ambiance. In 1997, he proposed his own ‘stones’ for a public sculpture project to be located in Beijing’s West Railway Station Square. In a city like Beijing where countless building projects are carried out at an incredible pace, people are naturally concerned about the cultural and aesthetic tendency of any public project. In a country characterized by its own special system, ‘aesthetics’ or ‘style’ is always closely related to authority and ideology. During the process of learning from the West, people can find it difficult to explain what a particular ‘style’ really means. What is modernism? What is post-modernism? What on earth is the relationship between traditional style, Western style, modern style and post-modern style? Even if these issues seem to be merely academic concerns, they show the complex relationship with the authorities’ political attitudes, ideological standpoints and cultural interests. To a certain extent, Chinese public buildings and projects of public sculpture are not regulated by any academic standards or criteria.
It is hard to define to which academic style the Western Railway Station in Beijing belongs, even though public projects always conceal similar problems. Zhan Wang has discussed it:
The design of the Western Railway Station in Beijing has been criticized by many specialists. The standards and criteria on which the designers relied were Western aesthetic standards. This may be seen from articles published at that time. The two main standards in architecture are, on one hand, the modernist standard, and, on the other, so-called post-modernist or anti-modernist standards. The leaders in charge of the project completely ignored these standards, and only paid attention to ideological requests. They wanted to use the so-called national symbol of a small pavilion located at the top of the building.[27]
The result of this indescribable style gave birth to today’s ‘Chinese characteristics’. Zhan Wang has provided an aesthetic explanation to support his idea of placing his work in front of Beijing’s Western Railway Station:
By placing the stainless steel artificial rocks in front of Beijing’s Western Railway Station, these sculptures will signify that my own awareness of the absurdity of combing Chinese and Western elements. I am aware of how reality looks, so I made the building look like this on purpose, because it stands as a metaphor for reality. My rule was to install something which represents reality during this stage of social development. It may be ugly, but at least it is not the rule, the standard of an epoch we have not yet attained, even if the future might be much ‘more advanced’ than we are.[28]
What Zhan Wang wished to communicate and the real purpose of the decision-makers who made the selection of the public sculpture project were completely at odds. So it was not surprising that Zhan Wang’s project failed to be accepted, because in terms of public projects, the inspiration of the artist may have been derived from something in opposition to the requirements of the decision-makers. This incident may also serve as a metaphor for our ‘moralizing epoch’. Post-modernist theory stresses the fact that no one can prove that his or her aesthetic viewpoint is correct, either artistically or politically. One of the many objections to Zhan Wang’s work was whether his work was, in fact, sculpture. However, the core of the issue was knowledge of what the Western Railway Station really required, and this apparently simple task evaporated under the influence of various factors.
Post-modernism obviously gave rise to the spread of interest in ‘satire’, which was a salient characteristic of the mid-1990s. ‘Satire’ attracted universal interest and an aesthetic standpoint. Within such a context, what kind of phenomena did Zhan Wang’s ‘stones’ underlie? If these glittering ‘artificial rocks’ were set in different public environments, what did they represent for the public space? Most Chinese people are familiar with ‘artificial rocks’. But once ‘artificial rocks’ are created with the use of an industrial material, can the ‘artificial wonders’ interact with the stones? And what kind of interaction can they establish? Do the stones evoke national spirit, or are they just the superficial proof that national spirit can be seen everywhere? People are aware of the ornamental nature of ‘artificial rocks’. But does this constitute an obstacle for the appreciation of these glittering ‘stones’?What is the relationship between the atmosphere created bygreen glazed tiles on a typical Chinese roof, bright neon lamps and the inner beauty of a traditional artificial rock? In 1997, Zhan Wang committed himself also to a project titled New Pictures of Beijing, Today’s and Tomorrow’s Capital: The Rockery Remodeling Plan. He transformed a map of Beijing in 1996 into a new map showing the plan of the city reconstructed with artificial rocks. The artist chose shopping malls specializing in selling computers, department stores, schools and residential areas to create seven new ‘faces’ of Beijing. These buildings were examples of ‘Western-style buildings made in China’. Zhan Wang was attempting to stimulate a dialogue between these ‘new faces’ and his own artificial rocks.
Reconstructing today’s environment with his own artificial rocks was Zhan Wang’s artistic starting point but, despite this, the artist was always well aware that his reconstruction plan was just symbolic and impossible to realize. Nevertheless, he did want to convince people that his ‘stones’ were valuable. In an article on the subject dated 20 August 1997 and titled simply ‘New Picture of Beijing: Today’s and Tomorrow’s Capital: The Rockery Remodeling Plan’, Zhan Wang described the characteristics of stainless steel:
1. After stainless steel has been polished it has the unique quality of never rusting; thus it will fulfill the people’s most idealistic expectations of a material.
2. After being polished, stainless steel reflects the colors of its surroundings so that it has essentially no color of its own, changing according to alterations in its environment.
3. Following polishing, the stainless steel combines a mirror surface with the texture and contours of natural stone. Everything reflected on its irregular surface appears twisted and broken. The merit of this lies in its ability to inspire in people all kinds of fantasies and new hopes.
4. In comparison to gold and silver, stainless steel is a relatively cheap material . . . yet so glittering as to appear exorbitantly expensive; you get twice as much for half the price.
5. Stainless steel is much lighter than stone, it is empty, so it can easily float on water. Finally, and most importantly, because stainless steel is able to change with its surroundings, it will never again encounter the problem of not keeping up with the changing times.[29]
These words are clearly ironic. Do people really want the polished effect? Do the distorted images reflected onto the stones really bring new hope? What changes will these glittering ‘stones’ witness?Here, ‘artificial rocks’ provided a starting point for critical analysis, and by reconstructing these traditional symbols, Zhan Wang puts together complex issues which we could analyze from many different perspectives. The artist’s subsequent plan, ‘Replicating Famous Mountains: Urban Potted Landscapes’ (1998), was similar in intent.
Zhan Wang’s Artificial Rock Series: Imperial Garden (Jia shanshi xilie: Yu huayuan) was an imitation of the traditional focus of landscape painting. Artificial rocks made of stainless steel, more than two meters high, were placed in a spherical glass bowl and gold fish provided the evidence of a restoration of ancient taste. This provoked speculation regarding the connotations of the ‘misleading’ objects and whether they reflected contemporary aesthetics or were a material embodiment of questions raised. They were both, and Zhan Wang succeeded in challenging people’s mental habits, forcing audiences to either consider or accept the artist’s viewpoint. In terms of social consciousness, this kind of ‘art’ which imitates ancient pastimes using modern materials will possibly become a documentation of the contrast between nature and industrial civilization. ‘Artificial rocks’ naturally direct people’s imagination towards ‘tradition’ and ‘the ancients’, while stainless steel points in the opposite direction. The resulting tension constitutes the energy and the absurdity imbuing stainless steel ‘artificial rocks’. If both of the above assumptions are correct, then artificial rocks can legitimately appear in any place, and so absurdity becomes a curiosity that can be explained.
Zhan Wang employed a ready-made object, which time and culture had endowed with a wide range of meanings. However, the artist imitated and produced this ready-made object in a way that people in ancient times could not have even imagined. Among the different technologies they employed were stonecutters and the power of running water to portray ‘nature’ as they understood it. Zhan Wang decided to preserve the spirit of ‘artificial rocks’ which continued to be present in people’s minds; the preservation was hypothetical but people recognized the hypothesis, because time had endowed the shape of ‘artificial rocks’ with an everlasting meaning. Although Zhan Wang used the most modern material that had nothing to do with the interests of the ancients, people still prefer to preserve the ‘everlasting meaning’ revealed by his artificial stones, comparing them to modern civilization. The ‘artificial rocks’ of Zhan Wang stressed the origins of the results of post-modernism and the conditions under which the traditional spirit might resume its energy. From the perspective of cultural interpretation, this may be one of the most important characteristics of the ‘artificial rocks’ of Zhan Wang.
Although Zhan Wang did not plan at the outset of his experiment on the type of rocks he would focus on, once he selected ‘artificial rocks’ as the core of his experiment, the historical and cultural issues revealed by this theme were permanently related to his experimentation. We can therefore observe the different effects of these rocks in different environments and at different times of day. The rough material of these glittering ‘artificial rocks’ has also provided sentimental and evocative associations. Although the tradition of stone appreciation is related to a rich variety of interests, some of them morbid, all transitory things deserve to be maintained and remembered especially when the tradition related to these interests is brutally destroyed. Perhaps only stainless steel can make people feel nostalgic about their tradition and cherish memories of past things. ‘Nature’ has always been the core of Chinese cultural interest, and the ancients regarded the stones with which they amused themselves as a metaphor for nature. No matter how ‘tough’ and ‘superficial’ stainless steel is, it appeals to our soul, spirit and disposition, which in turn endow stainless steel with a meaning going beyond its practical uses. This material bears the responsibility for connecting the past to the present. When Zhan Wang’s ‘artificial rocks’ stand or float in various places around the world, it is because of their cultural strength that they interact with their new environment, testifying to the power of history and culture. In this sense, Zhan Wang’s ‘artificial rocks’ have become one of the most important items in contemporary art.
4.
As the person responsible for a research institute, Zhan Wang believed that as long as he used his power for the sake of art then his actions were legitimate and ethical. He also tried to further understand and practice art with the participation of other people. On New Year’s Day of 1998, Zhan Wang went to a storage facility in the eastern suburbs of Beijing to participate in an exhibition where the audience could change the art pieces and the theme was ‘Traces of Existence’. Here Zhan Wang created for first-timers a ‘New Art Quick Training Workshop’, at which each participant could use clay to change the image of classical sculpture and then use conventional procedures to make it into an actual sculpture. These new interpretations were intended to get new results. Zhan Wang wrote a small introduction to his activity and also stated his own intentions.[30] This activity of Zhan Wang was more or less stimulated by pop art, especially Andy Warhol’s concept of fifteen minutes of fame. The notion of quick training was intended to be ironic. Under what circumstances could a person become a ‘master’ within a short period of time?
I used some sculptures that I had bought off the street and the tools that I had used while in school. I invented a new technique, which was to directly add clay to the exterior to make a sculpture, just one layer being enough. I wanted the audience to participate so that I could show them how to master the technique within five minutes, which was why the project was called the ‘New Art Quick Training Workshop’. I felt at that time that avant-garde art is not a question of mastering basics; it is as though once you get an idea, you can quickly enter into that state of mind. It’s a bit ironic. Pop art is ironic; it taunts itself. At the same time, it’s about idols and scoffing at time. The work was intended to be humorous and ironic.
Actually, this was a conceptual work or group performance in which the audience could participate through the use of the materials. Zhan Wang recorded this event through writing, pictures and video recording. After the initiation of the concept, Zhan Wang speculated on the nature of art with greater breadth and depth. The work titled Floating Rock on the Open Sea (Gonghai fushi) is an example of this concept. On 2 May, before the rock was thrown into the open seas, Zhan Wang had the following text in Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean and Spanish carved on it: ‘This is a work of art on exhibition in the open seas. If you are lucky enough to pick it up, please return it to the ocean. The artist deeply thanks you for your actions from a faraway place’.
Zhan Wang said that, henceforth, the artificial stone on the ocean that he had modeled on a weathered goose egg-shaped stone found in the Badao River in Beijing’s Huairou county, ‘will no longer belong to any country or nation, nor any culture or collector; it will forever be part of the open seas’. At the end of this declaration he left his address and telephone number. Zhan Wang tried to place this work in a place that no-one could ever find in an attempt to strip away his cultural background, cultural direction or any social objectives, and to let it float into the ‘infinite’-feeling sea. This art event recalls the separation of art and non-art by Marcel Duchamp, the Dadaist pioneer in abandoning civilization; when art becomes the artist, the possibilities of art open wide. For Zhan Wang, with a background influenced by the philosophy of Zhuangzi, there were no materialistic or realistic obstacles to understanding art and its possibilities. The open sea was just a game of human civilization, being in actuality a part of civilization, a part of society and connected to our lives at every minute. When there are boundaries between countries and nations, it does not mean that they are no longer interconnected, or that this boundary is a ‘middle ground’; on the contrary, the ‘boundary’ raises questions as well as awareness of the possibility of attack and conflict. Human civilization is extended on the basis of this awareness, and Zhan Wang studied the historical issues associated with this particular artistic starting point.[31] As Wu Hung stated, Floating Rock on the Open Sea‘is our new perspective on the central concepts of ‘boundary’, ‘circulation’ and ‘public space’. As for boundaries, the new field of boundary studies often connects the concept of the boundary to individual or national ‘identity’. The ‘boundary’ is seen as an isolated layer and transitional gap between political, philosophical and cultural fields. Therefore, regardless of whether the boundary is tangible or it exists only in thought or culture, leaping over boundaries is seen as an overthrow and risky undertaking, because the crossing of boundaries symbolizes a change in identity, and recognition of the politics, thought and culture outside of the boundary.[32] Zhan Wang wanted to point out civilization’s possession or existence, what it ‘has’, as well as what it ‘does not have’, but there are countless interpretations and understandings of these two states. His friends tried to convince him not to throw his works into a traceless zone that does ‘not have’, but Zhan Wang insists that this is civilization’s greater possession. He extended ancient Taoist concepts on possession and non-possession or existence and non-existence, having and not having, to contemporary times. As he put it: ‘The open sea is free, but there are no roads’.[33] Zhan Wang claims that there has never been another civilized object that has been thrown into unknown ‘time’ and ‘space’, even those objects that have been buried for countless years, as long as humans plan to find them within a century; that is still a short time to wait. But Zhan Wang wants to wait, he wants the people who may find the stone to throw it back into the sea, so that it will forever float in time and space, and for this, he has made full preparations and plans.[34] When Zhan Wang describes the meaning behind his ‘floating stone’, he uses words like ‘uncertain’ and ‘forever’. Here, ‘uncertain’ and ‘forever’ are not related, because the relationship between the existence of ‘uncertainty’ and the length of time cannot be analyzed together because here ‘uncertainty’ is related to the concept of ‘not having’ rather than to the material meaning of ‘having’. But, because of our understanding of the history of humankind, we naturally face the predicaments of the future, and this gives us the possibility of knowing and feeling the pain of time and space, because as beings of the flesh, our lives are limited. So, even if Zhan Wang says that he placed the stone in the open sea because ‘that is the only place on earth that is not claimed by a civilization’, this is only a temporary phase. Floating Rock on the Open Seahas already sparked ‘conjectures’, ‘anticipation’, ‘imagination’, ‘recollection’ and even ‘concerns’. By placing the concept of history in his work he has transformed this work into a perpetual question.
The stone was created in 1999. In the middle of that year, Zhan Wang began to think about his plan to place the stone in the open sea. This thought finally came to fruition in May 2000, when the Qingdao Sculpture Museum hosted the ‘Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Sculpture’. In September 2000, Zhan Wang exhibited his ‘Floating Stone’ with the title Floating Rock on the Open Sea by showing the video recording at the Shanghai Art Museum’s biennial Shanghai-Shanghai exhibition. Zhan Wang aroused people’s curiosity, as he has described:
During that time, almost all the friends I met asked me: Where did your stone float to?Some imagined it floating to a nameless island where the natives discovered and worshipped it; others thought it was shot at by passing troops; some thought it would be swallowed by a large fish; relatively moral people liked to think of it saving someone in the wake of a shipwreck. …different people had different ideas. Therefore, I have created postcards for everyone to answer the question: ‘Where did my stone go?’In other words, the question that everyone was asking me, I decided to ask. I did not want to place a satellite tracking device on the stone, because if I knew that if it got stuck somewhere and I could not save it, this might be just too ‘real’ for me. In my imagination I was hoping that the stone would naturally break apart and the bits would float on forever.
Right now, I stand at the same level as the audience, because that stone has already left me and it is no longer mine. I am the same as all other spectators.[35]
Zhan Wang placed his stone, his concept and his thought, into an eternally uncertain time and space. He was the same as everyone else. He has a picture of the ‘stone’ from that time, but has neither the stone itself nor its future. He has left and allowed that imagined ‘stone’ to become the connection between his past and future. In the same way in which artists can never divorce themselves from the relationship between what is ‘empty’ and what is ‘real’, the accidents the ‘stone’ may encounter are also inevitable. In this situation, what is important is not the interpretation or even the meaning of the explanation of the stone; what is important is the impact of the questions raised by the forever unbounded stone. This is an interesting feeling, a feeling that does not only belong to humankind. Later, Zhan Wang would extend the plan of the ‘stone’ to many different places, but those extensions would only be symbolic because we would be able to find the ‘stone’, for example, the Swedish Stone (Ruidian fushi) completed in August 2001, although on that occasion Zhan Wang kept the original stone. He placed the stainless steel ‘stone’ and the original stone in the one place so that people could experience, what he termed, ‘the conversation between a real stone and a man-made one’.
A plan to export a ‘floating stone’, as a product of Eastern civilization to the West, began with the 21st century in Shanghai and from there went on to the Americas, Europe, Japan and other developed countries. This work was designed to represent ‘the fruit of the connotation of the previous century’.[36] His motivation and cultural starting point in this project were clarified in the sub-title of the work: ‘A plan to export Eastern civilization to the West’. He travelled to Sweden to work on the piece. Zhan Wang is familiar with Chinese idioms, such as ‘the mountain does not change, the water does’, ‘for thirty years, the river flows east; for forty years, the river flows west’, and so on. For young Chinese born in the 1980s who have borrowed extensively from Western culture, such Chinese expressions are not simply irritating, they are insufferable. Changes in society also change people’s psychology, habits and non-habits, as well as changing the relationship between what language can be used for and what language actually stands for.
As for the art that needs society and the efforts of the public to be effective, the artist often needs to trust opportunity, because opportunity is not only capital, but also presents the possibility of realization. As with many roles in society, the pivotal moment for an artist’s starting point may be different. In early 2001, twenty-two of China’s most prominent scholars, including Zhou Guangzhao and Jia Lanpo, formed the PRC’s Environmental Protection Group and initiated the Green Great Wall Project. This project had no ideological meaning and was touted as an action on behalf of humanity. The actual work was rapidly drafted and the members decided that on ‘the first day of spring of the new century’ they would plant ‘the Great Wall Millennium Forest’ on 30 mu [one mu is 666.67 square meters] of barren land along the Badaling Great Wall. They were asked to add ‘cultural content’, a phrase often used in a commercial context, to the event and to highlight the long history of such a representative Chinese symbol as the Great Wall. The members, of course, had hoped that the tree planting event would be sufficiently influential, but, in their eyes, art could perhaps also be used for ‘cultural content’. Zhan Wang conceived the idea of ‘using a brick made of stainless steel to repair the Great Wall’, and has described his conception and its starting point:
In the past, when a person’s tooth decayed or fell out, they liked to use a gold tooth to replace it. Firstly, gold is more flexible than other material, so it is suitable for chewing. Secondly, it represents wealth. Thirdly, and most importantly, it signifies a person’s identity, because gold means respect. Gold teeth are mostly intended to be flaunted, so the nouveau riche people were once fond of having gold teeth fitted, even if their own teeth were fine. A short story describes how, when a wealthy man smiled, he revealed a mouthful of gold teeth, and the Great Wall has a face just like that man, acting as though its teeth will go on forever. Repairing the Great Wall is the same as repairing teeth.[37]
Zhan Wang decided to use this opportunity to realize his project titled Fixing the Great Wall (Xiang Changcheng). He took two months to examine the topography of the land and measure the site, and then he used stainless steel to create gold bricks. When these were being inserted in the Great Wall, ‘the sunlight reflected off these gold bricks dazzled the eyes, and it looked as though the Great Wall really did have two gold teeth, flashing in the sunlight’. The intention of the artist in using shiny gold-colored stainless steel to repair the Great Wall was to ‘allow this theme to reflect the absurdity of today’s society’. On the early morning of 3 June, a group of migrant workers each carried five ‘golden bricks’ up the Great Wall, as Zhan Wang observed: ‘From far away, watching thirty migrant workers form a line marching up the Great Wall is like watching a re-enactment of the First Emperor Qin Shihuang ordering the construction of the Great Wall’. What was really ironic about this scene was that this artistic activity was described as the ‘Great Wall Annals’ by the local government. Of course, this had nothing to do with protecting the historical or cultural heritage, but who could guarantee that ‘repairing the section of the Great Wall at Badaling would raise environmental awareness and patriotism’? In any case, the work exposed a number of social issues. The Great Wall is, of course, a complex historical symbol. The emperors of the past have consistently repaired it in order to protect the country, but today it takes an artist, his friends and thirty migrant workers to performthe deed. The irony of this art work echoes the way in which contemporary art adjusts ideology and history.
Zhan Wang is not opposed to the environment in which he resides and, as he says, he is a person within the system working outside of the system. He was open in his understanding of art and also tried to support contemporary artists who lack financial support. At 3:00 PM on 22 April 2000, Zhan Wang’s sculpting studio at the Central Academy of Fine Arts hosted the exhibition titled ‘Infatuated with Injury’. The curator was Li Xianting and the participating young artists were Sun Yuan, Peng Yu, Qin Ga, Zhu Yu, Zhang Hanzi, Xiao Yu and Da Zhang. Since the artists in the exhibition mainly used the body, body-related materials and animal corpses, the show aroused controversy. This exhibition, inspired by a British artist, was regarded as infringing serious ethical issues and sparked off a broad discussion on performance art. Zhan Wang faced a risk in allowing the young artists to borrow his studio for their exhibition and when he agreed to allow Li Xianting to use the space for the ‘corpse exhibition’, he could no longer use the little authority he had gained to protect contemporary art. Zhan Wang’s ‘excessiveness’ and an inspection from the security departments added to the seriousness of his ‘problems’, prompting criticism of Zhan Wang and the future of exhibitions from the school’s director. In 2002, Zhan Wang lost his position as ‘responsible person’ for the research institute. His daring and free inner spirit prevented him from changing his own values. In the eyes of the people running the institute, organizing this ‘terrible’ exhibition within the school was illegal and immoral.
After creating artificial rocks, Zhan Wang experimented with other uses of stainless steel. In 2002, Zhan Wang participated in Gao Minglu and Wang Mingxian’s ‘Good Harvest: Contemporary Art Exhibition’ with his piece called Urban Landscape (Dushi shanshui). This piece was made from pots, bowls and wooden ladles. That year, while Zhan Wang was moving, he looked down over the city, and felt very sentimental. All the tall buildings that made up Beijing made him feel lost. He thought of the feelings that he and his companions had for the city’s lost architecture in the early 1990s. Beijing was undergoing a rapid process of change from an agricultural society to an IT society. This change had occurred so quickly that it was fearsome and unimaginable. Zhan Wang had reached a new starting point for his art, and he combined his nostalgia for the agricultural society with the achievements of the modern city to create a piece of work that could not be simply limited to what appears in the installation, revealing the complexity of the artist’s inner spirit at this time:
We are traditional people. The scholarly environment that I grew up in is a kind of tradition. Facing the modernists of Western culture and industrialization, we are also being transformed or sustaining the impact. It can no longer be the same as when you were a child. We were not born to be flung into an industrialized city. We were born in a very traditional city, but now I’m completely modernized and everything has been turned upside down.
The ‘artificial rocks’ reminded Zhan Wang of how people in ancient times worshipped rocks, but he also thought of how modern people worship certain objects:
Originally, my idea was to use a huge rock, then stick dining utensils down one side of it; I wanted to make a totem, a totem to be worshipped. Most people worship idols, but this was the worship of the object. I think that artificial rocks were a totem in ancient times, and so they were a worshipped object. Mi Fu worshipping a stone is the miracle of the worship of artificial stones…… I want to make an object, the religion of worshipping objects is to materialize artificial stones, then add more dining utensils….. by adding dining utensils the resulting scene is similar to ancient landscapes, but it is a materialized landscape. It is the opposite of what the ancient scholars tried to describe. It is an extremely materialized city, related to today’s cities, so I am calling this work Urban Landscape, but prior to that I had called it Big Meal Landscape (Shanshui dacan).
Zhan Wang subsequently exhibited this work in various countries, including the USA and the UK. He used local eating utensils and materials to express his understanding of particular cities and to create a fetishist’s image of sparkling, flashy materialistic life.
As a contemporary artist, Zhan Wang is motivated by the desire to go beyond boundaries, and he grew increasingly unrestrained in his concepts. After the Floating Rock on the Open Sea project, he even thought of placing his works in outer space, sometimes inspired by ancient mythology. The tale of the goddess Nüwa repairing the heavens provided the motivation and starting point for his project titled New Plan to Fix the Sky (Xin butian jihua) (2003). He used Lu Jie’s ‘Long March: A Walking Visual Display’ as an opportunity to bring his ‘meteorite’ to the Xichang Satellite Center in Sichuan. At that time, he wanted to convince the workers at the space center to fire his ‘rock’ into the sky, but he has described how Chinese aerospace technology was limited. Possibly due to the fact that the windows on spacecraft could not yet be opened, astronauts could not stop in space to place an object there.[38] Later, Zhan Wang contacted a mountain climbing group about the possibility of taking one of his ‘rocks’ to the summit of Jomolungma (Mount Everest).
There are many ways to observe things. In early 1997, Zhan Wang reproduced a natural rock; he put it in front of the natural rock which had been copied, which then became a kind of mirror. During the art experiment conducted in Guilin, the artist discovered the reflective quality of stainless steel and discovered that ‘reflection’ could be put to good use. After the opening of China, many newly constructed buildings used glass walls and under the light, the reflection of the sun against the glass walls became a type of visual or optical pollution. This kind of environment for Zhan Wang, who is sensitive to life in big cities, naturally left a deep impression, and so he wondered whether his ready-made ‘artificial rocks’ could become a mirror to reflect changes in the environment:
I remember that one of the early new buildings in Beijing to use glass walls was the Great Wall Hotel on the Eastern Third Ring Road. Its exterior walls were almost entirely made from glass. From that point on, reflective glass confronting the blue sky, white clouds and the surroundings almost became the symbol of China’s modern cities. In the past, people thought of wide open spaces in the mountains near water as an ideological living place, but now people see glass walled architecture as the ideal. Within this short time span, such massive changes have taken place.[39]
The late Qing novel The Fate of Flowers in the Mirror (Jinghua yuan) by Li Yuzhen has no relationship to Zhan Wang’s video of artificial rock mirrors of a similar title, The Garden of Flowers in the Mirror (Jinghua yuan). The artist was merely thinking of a connection between a certain perspective and methodology for looking at the new century. Zhan Wang filmed his first video at the Grave of Prince Gong in Beijing’s far western suburbs, and he was interested in ancient and old influences. In his work a rock that was once associated with ancient tastes became a mirror for today’s society, not the other way around. This was an extremely interesting experiment. Chinese people are familiar with the artistic interest triggered by traditional painting, but the patterns on Zhan Wang’s ‘landscape slab’ (shanshui ban) were now reflected by stainless steel and a ‘natural’ result came from the reproduction of this type of traditional ‘artificial rock’. The patterns were not created by natural changes, but by social change and they were human designs. Zhan Wang later took the mirror to the United States to reflect the cityscapes in that country. This reflects the ‘distortion’ and ‘misinterpretation’ made available by his work, and ‘misinterpretations’ were no longer the result of using Western artistic languages. People familiar with traditional Chinese gardens know that the ‘landscape slabs’ made from stone produced with ‘artificial rocks’ belong to traditional culture; they evoke sorrow and memory. Just like stainless steel ‘artificial stones’, they seem to connect the things that cannot be connected and from this perspective, Zhan Wang’s The Garden of Flowers in the Mirror was not simply a matter of design but also a ‘reminder’ of the absence of the modern person for the ancient person; the rock seems to say, ‘We really did abandon you’.
Even if the value of ‘artificial rocks’ has been widely recognized, it is not accurate to identify Zhan Wang as an artist trying to support symbolism and stability. Zhan Wang does not believe that one kind of symbol can endlessly explain an artist’s issues and he does not use unrelated issues as starting points. At the outset, Zhan Wang accepted the figurative concept of sculpture; he accepted socialist realism and even the Soviet art style, all in the service of politics and ideology. Despite this, there was always some leeway in the sculptor’s themes and methods. After 1976, this function of art quickly vanished as the political environment changed, which also meant that artists could rethink the concept of sculpture and could especially think about the question of what art is. Zhan Wang started his rebellion at that time. He started to rethink the meaning of the process of reproduction and tried to go back to an unadulterated idea of sculpture. This was exemplified by his super-realist pieces. He then rejected the entity of sculpture. For example, if there was a statue of a person wearing clothes, he would chip away the person and just keep the ‘clothes’. This was the beginning of Zhan Wang’s abandonment of the clear concept of what sculpture is and his entry into the trap of artistic issues. This logic related to his future ‘artificial rocks’. Zhan Wang also discovered that cultural symbols were also a trap. When the artist used the Mao suit he retained only the outer shell of the stone, but this outer shell was not part of the original ‘stone’ but rather the creation of the artist. WhenZhan Wang discovered the inverted nature of this logic, he wanted other people to copy famous pieces, and in the end, rejected them by retaining only their ‘entity’. Leaving only the ‘shell’ and the ‘entity’ is hypothetical, but they are held in a hypothetical but nevertheless undeniable relationship, and if this relationship is used willfully, then the ‘shell’ and the ‘entity’ will become two concepts that become completely unrelated. Obviously, this inner logic penetrated his work at the ‘New Art Quick Training Workshop’. Even if the materials and copying methods were different, the logic behind the works was the same.
After 2004, Zhan Wang’s works involved religious issues. In 2004, he started the Buddhist Medicine (Foyao) series; these works related to mythology and revealed his openness to artistic issues. Even if the artist did not use stainless steel, he clearly expressed his artistic ideas through scientific software. His early work Bucolic Utopia (Tianyuan Wutuobang) not only does not reveal his emotion, but it further expresses the artist’s orientation towards the other ‘world’. For example, he agrees with Christianity’s rationality, but disagrees with Christian hegemony and believes that Asian polytheism will eventually resolve the world’s problems. Zhan Wang expressed his view of religion as follows: ‘I think that each person, in his or her heart, has the right to choose a personal god and have his or her own explanation for God’. Even though Zhan Wang looks for starting points within history and culture, he also naturally connects his art with today’s human issues. When he heard the Christian proclamation that God only has one son, Jesus, thereby denying the existence of each separate person’s sacredness, Zhan Wang felt he needed to use his work to respond to this breach of civilization. Just as he must face city life every day, information constantly reveals the problems of the world; issues like the war in Iraq sparked by the conflict between Christianity and Islam are topics that the artist ponders. He hopes that people will use his own ‘deity detector’ (soushenji), a pun on the title of an ancient collection of supernatural tales, to look for their own deities and find their own ‘utopias’.
People, especially in the West, are surprised at China’s rapid pace of change. Only several years ago, the Chinese people were still living in a political autocracy. Their lives were poor, the economy was backward and the culture had only retained fragmentary and unhealthy traditional concepts. After thirty years of opening up, compared with the centuries capitalist societies of the West required to develop, Chinese people and Western people are now similar in that many inhabit modern cities that utilize science and technology. But the reality is that this country and nation still remain very different. Among the artists who express and address this difference, Zhan Wang does not simply use Western logic; at the same time as he keeps an open mind, he also looks for the possibilities of contemporary art within the classical Chinese garden culture. Chinese people have always believed in the power of nature and in the importance of what nature has entrusted to mankind. Western thought uses a bottomless chess-board to form the belief in the essence as with Kant and Hegel, while Chinese people use only the dialogue with nature to free themselves from traditionalism.
Zhan Wang’s art sets out to express this, regardless of the materials or tools the artist uses. Westerners and Chinese both have traditions of the art of stone appreciation, but the difference is that Westerners believe that each rock in nature receives the shining light of creation, while Chinese people believe that each rock in nature is its own ray of light and has its own world, because in an equal natural world, people have already placed their energy and spirit into every piece of ‘stone’.
NOTES:
[1]From an unpublished interview with Zhan Wang of November 2007. Subsequent quotations not sourced in this paper are taken from this interview.
[2]Fine Arts Documentation (Meishu wenxian), issue 8, no.1, 1997.
[3]‘My present method of sculpting is similar to sketching for a painting. I first plan out the accurate interrelationships within the entirety of the work, and mark out the sections. Because the work is three-dimensional, I consider the spatial relationships and the volume at the same. I always feel this work is not sculpture but doing a sketch, except that it has a three-dimensional feel, but people with a natural feel for working in this way have a great advantage. Sculpture requires some method of observation and working, and while there might be an outline it might also not be very clear. The most important point here is being able to conceive and memorize something in the round and transfer that round concept to the material. If someone can observe things in this way then I feel it is quite different from working from sketches. For someone without adequate training in sketching then this other method of working is easy, but if someone has been incorrectly trained in this method, then it’s difficult and it still seems as they cannot get away from a flat method of observation’.(23 April 1985).
[4]26 May 1985.
[5]2-5 July 1985.
[6]Ibid.
[7]17 August 1985.
[8]Fine Arts Documentation (Meishu wenxian), issue 8, no.1, 1997.
[9]Jiangsu Art Monthly (Jiangsu huakan), February 1995.
[10]Art Trends (Yishu chaoliu), no.1, 1995.
[11]Beijing Youth Daily (Beijing qingnian bao), 14 June 1994.
[12]‘Wearing and Discarding: How the Mao Jacket Came to be Art’ (Chuan he tuo: Zhongshanzhuang shi ruhe cheng wei yishu de).
[13] An Explanation of Recent Works by Zhan Wang (Zhan Wang jinqi zuopin shuoming, 1990-1998).
[14]Xinsu Yuan shi pu: Juan zhi yi (Catalogue of Rocks in Xinsu Garden, Fascicle One).
[15]Fine Arts Documentation (Meishu wenxian), issue 8, no.1, 1997.
[16]‘These triple-pointed gourd-shaped stones were so named by the quarry workers because they have no function and cannot be used in construction. They are shaped like gourds that taper at each end and are of medium size, with at least three points over the surface. There is no way in which they can be shaped into a cube, and if they are turned into squares then they are too small. It is not economically feasible to shape them either by hand or machine. They are tossed aside at quarries and it is not even economically viable to move them to another place. So when I asked the workers at the quarry to find me rocks of this type, they quickly told me that these triple-pointed gourd-shaped stones would not cost me anything and they would collect them for me for nothing. That’s how I came to get these rocks free of charge’. Xinsu Yuan shi pu: Juan zhi yi (Catalogue of Rocks in Xinsu Garden, Fascicle One).
[17] Xinsu Yuan shi pu: Juan zhi yi (Catalogue of Rocks in Xinsu Garden, Fascicle One).
[18]Ibid.
[19]Ibid.
[20]Ibid.
[21]Ibid.
[22]Laozi, Daode jing, ch.25.
[23]Zhuangzi, Wai pian, Zhi bei you.
[24]In fact this provided the basic tradition for later landscape gardening plans.
[25]Zhan Wang once asked an ordinary Beijing resident why he would never went to see scenery in natural settings but was happy to go and see artificial landscapes and rockeries constructed in urban settings. The resident answered: ‘The material conditions aren’t good. Travelling is expensive and troublesome. (20 May 1997)
[26]Xuanhe Huapu.
[27]Xinsu Yuan shi pu: Juan zhi yi (Catalogue of Rocks in Xinsu Garden, Fascicle One).
[28]Ibid.
[29]Ibid.
[30]‘What is provided below is the simplest and easiest way to become a great artist and, by rapidly making art work by a great master using these short-cuts, you get five, but not fifteen, minutes of fame, and can bask in the artist’s reflected glory:
Operational Procedures and Points to Notice.
This should not simply be regarded as doing sculpture or becoming a great sculptor, because you can kill two birds with the one stone.
Select a number of works in any material by the master you most respect, but if the pieces are plaster of Paris or some other absorbent material, then you should first steep the pieces in water, otherwise they will not be easy to knead.
Apply adhesive clay, water and paste directly to the original sculpture, but you must apply the clay thinly to the contours of the original. Feel free to choose the thickness of material you want, but if the original work is no longer recognizable, no one will recognize you.
Although you cannot give any further consideration to the modeling, anatomical analysis or figurative aspects, you can still use your own style and methods, as long as they do not depart from the original work but you can practice re-creation on the surface of the work.
You do not need to totally conceal the identity of the original piece under your work, but you are not required to reveal the truth if asked and you can act dumb and say nothing.
It is extremely important to master the appropriate labor. For example when applying the clay and adhesive to the original work, it is best to attend to that task personally using your own hands. This leaves your stamp on the work and proves that it is your work.
Do not forget to photograph your work.
You can, of course, keep your work forever, as though it is your own work. The best method is to use gypsum to prepare a mold and later recast the work in gypsum.(10 December 1997)
[31]‘This is a small independent island that is at the farthest distance from the body of the mainland and it is used as a maritime coordinate. Following the fierce competition in the modern period to divide up the mainland, they moved in on the oceans. However it was difficult to draw definite boundary lines at sea. In the 19th century these were determined by firing cannons out to sea; the cannon was set up at edge of ocean, and wherever the cannon ball landed was the maritime boundary. The cannons at that time could only fire cannonballs for three kilometers, and so that became the boundary. In the 20th century many countries began to regard their maritime boundary as determined by the edge of the continental shelf, but this was opposed by those countries with a narrow continental shelf and a plunging sea bed off their coasts. At present many countries now subscribe to the view that the boundary is two nautical miles from the coast, but this has led to disputes with offshore islands, and this has become a focus of contention in the new century. China’s Lingshan Island has this strategic problem, for which reason the Chinese army long stationed a base on it and it was heavily garrisoned, to prevent people making a landing on the island. With the reform and opening, the island became a tourist destination’. Xinsu Yuan shi pu: Juan zhi er (Catalogue of Rocks in Xinsu Garden, Fascicle Two).
[32]This is a paraphrase of Wu Hung. Wu Hung, ‘Zhan Wang’s Artistic Experiments: The Floating Breakthrough’ (Zhan Wang de yishu shiyan: Piaoliu de tupo), Art World (Meishu jie), May-June issue, 2000.
[33]Goteborgs-Posten Mandag, 10 September 2001, pp.38-39.
[34]‘From what I learned at the Ocean Institute in Qingdao, the floating rock would most likely follow one of three trajectories: (1) it would flow north along the East China Sea to the Sea of Japan and then enter the Pacific; (2) rather than enter the Pacific off Japan, it would enter Japan’s Inland Sea; or (3) it would be carried by coastal currents southwards into the South China Sea. See the map for details of these projected trajectories. In light of these possibilities, I prepared text in those particular five languages, so that whoever discovered the rock could reach the information’. Xinsu Yuan shi pu: Juan zhi er (Catalogue of Rocks in Xinsu Garden, Fascicle Two).
[35]Xinsu Yuan shi pu: Juan zhi er (Catalogue of Rocks in Xinsu Garden, Fascicle Two).
[36]Ibid.
[37]Xinsu Yuan shi pu: Juan zhi yi (Catalogue of Rocks in Xinsu Garden, Fascicle One).
[38]The idea of reproducing meteorites was even earlier. In 1999 Zhan Wang noted that he had the idea of reproducing rocks from the ocean floor and in 2000, encouraged by the critic Zhang Qing, he decided to make a large meteorite for an exhibition. In October of that year, he reproduced a meteorite from the Jilin Planetarium that is said to have fallen to earth in the year that Mao Zedong died and this was later displayed at the Shanghai Biennale. In 2001 Zhan Wang convinced the director of the Beijing Planetarium to allow him to reproduce another meteorite and this was entered in The Long March: A Walking Visual Display (16-21 August 2002) and placed in the exhibition hall of China’s Satellite Launching Center.
[39]Xinsu Yuan shi pu: Juan zhi er (Catalogue of Rocks in Xinsu Garden, Fascicle Two).
9 December 2007
Translated by Dr. Bruce Gordon Doar