相思
兰正辉的体量水墨
Robert C. Morgan 罗伯特 C. 摩根
从传统角度而言，中国书法艺术通过审美和精神上的精确结合提供了一种视觉交流的语法规则。这已从唐代朝臣官员，文人墨客遗留下来的书画作品中得到印证。多年后，在林中习禅的僧人们，笔下的线条不规则而又始终如一，通过空间产生回响。无论在上述的哪种情况下，第一笔不言自明。问题是：这第一笔是否真正如此神圣抑或只是故弄玄虚？如果这番起步确实蕴含着力量，那么第一笔则真正主导着作品从开头到收尾的发展方向。它以为表意的草书开始，最后成为一首触景生情的诗，或者形成一抹山峦，一片雨云，抑或松林间的小溪。由此可见，中国书法的形式涵盖了具象和抽象的双重性，使其在书法和绘画之间的转换成为可能。
中国艺术史中，书写与绘画之间的关系密不可分，视觉上彼此重叠，同时又互为灵感来源。一位画家或艺术家或诗人，当他用作品向天空致敬时，也许会随手写下一首诗。而有时，原本可辨的书法可能会忽然变得抽象而无法辨认。这一传统上溯到八世纪唐朝的张旭和“醉僧”怀素的狂草作品中。他们那力量十足而奇特迥异的线条构成法，在产生抒情意境的同时，也体现了深刻的思想精髓。在进入令人痴迷而韵律十足的时空之境时，其笔下独特的书法，成为了书写和绘画之间一架具有喻义的桥梁。虽然源于非理性，这一狂草却饱含了优美又具有表现力的内容，充满了智性与超然的特征。此后，中国风景画中，从十世纪晚期北宋的水墨大家作品到五百年后明代的大师画卷，在构图上讲，线条的变化可谓万变不离其宗。
在当代水墨画中，一些学者将其与中国的“85新潮”联系在一起，这样的线条特征（也许比抒情更为古怪）在体现艺术家的精神状态上，作为具有标识性的元素，起着重要的作用。四川出生的艺术家兰正辉，其作品形式上的庄严纯粹体现了水墨画的表现主义美学，令人从中感受到十足的生命力。画家通过对空的冥想，去探索大自然的美，这一传统沿袭于早先几个世纪前的禅宗画家们。这样的空饱含了大型水墨画中的力量，且展现了空间上的无限意味。兰的“体量水墨”（评论家刘骁纯说法）最终回到了中国当代艺术的前沿。在泼墨于水的过程里，兰的这些精制而又粗粝的浓墨画面以时间上的相对性转换了我们的空间意识。这些画具有一种玄奥的似是而非性。尽管他的大型水墨画面向的是未来，但依然与古老的老子思想密不可分。道家告诉我们人与自然是息息相关的，当人们的视野进入光学真空中，则会在片刻内被画作中的黑暗所吸引。在我们通过感知发觉自己的意识之际，那片黑已经过浓墨的洗礼变成了光的表面。在《道德经》的25章开篇（译者，Stephen Mitchell, 1988），这样写道：重为轻根，静为躁君。
蓝正辉目前的水墨梦想 依然具有一种不可逾越性，就如早期那些直接表现大自然、风景或自然现象，或季节的水墨画一样。近期展览中的大多数作品，如相思，矗立，跳跃系列，更加关注的是存在的精神和情感状态。纵然早期的画作是大自然的隐喻，如曾经的“狂雨”展（2009年，雅加达举办），而近期的画作更关注的是视觉上的转喻。这一特质非常重要，尤其是想到兰在过去几年里所创作的画作规模，更是如此。虽然比喻表示的是画作中的具体之物，转喻作为与另一种感觉相关的平行符号而存在，但却并不等同于那种感觉。在两幅大型横幅宣纸水墨画（裱在布上）名为跃式系列1和跃式系列2, 也许对跳跃的指涉存在于艺术家的意识中，但水墨本身作为绘画具有其特质性，与题目具有模拟性的关系。《相思I》《相思II》《相思III》在形态上彼此相关，但它们与题目的关系也许和观众对画作的感想并不一样。通常而言，画作与题目之间的呼应上，关于意义的问题在绘画中比在文学里更为复杂，尤其是如果绘画在视觉上从真情实感中抽离出来之时。
人们同样会这样评价《觉系列》，这个题目指的是佛教禅宗的醍醐灌顶。这些画作的庄严感也许意指被启蒙的意识状态抑或是“无意识”，但要重申的是，笔墨、规模和构图这些绘画上的元素在此具有其独特性，与意识的启蒙悄然呼应。这些画作的题目，令艺术家和观众心神荡漾，尽管是以不同之径。当然，这也是美学上的一个论点。对这位艺术家而言，这一题目具有个人意义，承载着他的灵感之力量，在那一刻，他深深沉迷于绘画的创作之中。对观众而言，也许打开了一扇门，从而得以欣赏画作，这种欣赏更多地是通过某种情感的力量形成。在美学领域内，这一切以及任何的一切，都是令人信服的。观众们可以与他们感同身受，这点无可否认。另一方面，画家们会忙于自己的事物。倘若绘画走向抽象，对于它的接受，也许是更为个人化的体验。但即使是这点却也无关紧要。对于一件艺术作品，没有准确的情感回应，也没有什么要被证实。在兰正辉的作品中，重要的是深刻的情感。他在川美受过科班训练，具有二十多年的经验，这些成就了今日的他。最终，他将情感付诸于体量水墨画中的本领，令作品产生了分量。无论是沉浸于墨色烟雨还是为高山峻岭所倾倒，介于存在于非存在之间的这种模糊性（道家的处世方式）也许造就了他，但最终决定他的则是作品的品质。从这场展览以及近期其它展览中看出，兰走上了一条合适的创作之路，并未偏离轨道。
近期，另一位中国画家和数码艺术家在曼哈顿的中国艺术机构举办演讲时提出了重要两点。两个问题是：艺术是否不具备功能性呢？第二点，没有电子设备，创造艺术是否可能呢？将这些问题与兰正辉的作品联系在一起的话，这么看来，他的水墨作品似乎不具有任何功能性。人们也许会认为，它们既无功能性也无目的性。它们就存在于此，与我们对视。即使如此，它们却犹如历史的当下片刻中的作品。在全球的语境下，它们以一种不同于前朝的方式，与丰富多样的文化传统产生了关联。在媒体关于五六十年代的言论中，东西方的庸俗之作被双方反复作为谈资笑料，似乎欲掩盖经济和意识形态上的主要差异，而近日两半球的交汇点则存在于更加稳固的基础上，也许与互联网时代信息的易得有关，无论是官方还是非官方的。因此，电子产品在艺术创作中的作用被质疑，我不是完全确信，若无电子手段，兰的作品能如它们看上去那样具有广泛的文化接受度，虽然电子手段与它们的创作过程也几乎毫不相干。讽刺的是，网络的不成熟性，极大促进了物质的可取性，其中就包括艺术作品。如果说，全球化控制下的信息时代里，对精神世界日益缺乏关注，人们也许要问，将艺术看作是脱离于其物质（市场）的精神产物这种想法是否依然具有存在的可能性（当我去理解兰正辉的创作初衷时）？兰正辉的画作如今可以被东西方的人们所领略欣赏，这也说明，通过不断的公开的文化交流，两半球的划分似乎毫无必要了，发展交汇的曙光清晰可见。假设这种改变发展正在发生（虽然是在初始期），那么兰正辉的画作带给很多观众的力量和美丽，依然是某种难解之谜，同时也启开了一扇通向以精神追求为根基的原出世界的大门，而这个世界，曾被工业革命弃之门外。当下正是重新实现这些想法的可能性之时，水墨画，如兰正辉（以及其他艺术家）的作品，可以从压抑中破茧而出，而无需具有政治性或攻击性，它可形成一种新美学的基础，在这一美学中，对人类基本价值的追求超越了市场潮流的临时性诱惑，如果我们不去体会什么才是艺术中的重中之重，那么只会跟随市场的潮流重蹈覆辙。
___________________________________________________________________
Robert C. Morgan is Professor Emeritus in Art History at the Rochester Institute of Technology and is Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. He has written extensively on contemporary Chinese art and has been directly involved with Chinese artist since 1989. In 2005, he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in the Republic of Korea. In addition to his research, he functions as an artist, curator, and international critic and lecturer. In 1999, he was given the first Arcale award in Spain for his work as an international critic.
作者简介：Robert C. Morgan是纽约布鲁克林Pratt学院的访问教授，罗彻斯特理工学院艺术史荣誉教授。他撰写了大量关于中国当代艺术的文章，自1989年起关注中国艺术界，亲自参与其中。2005年成为韩国的Fulbright首席学者。同时，他也是一名艺术家，策展人，国际评论家和演讲者。1999年，作为国际评论家在西班牙获得首届Arcale奖。
原文：
Love sickness
Heavy Ink Paintings by Lan Zhenghui
Robert C. Morgan
From a traditional perspective, the art of calligraphy in China offers a visual
syntax for communication through a combination of aesthetic and spiritual
precision. This is made evident in the brushwork shown in the marks and traces
of Tang courtiers, scholars, and magistrates. Years later, itinerant artist monks
who practiced Ch'an in the their forest retreats, invented atypical and
unwavering linear formations that proceeded to reverberate definitively
through space. In either case, the first stroke on the page told everything.
Here the question was posed: Did the first stroke hold the energy of the sacred
shi or was it a fake? In the presence of the shi was true, the first stroke would
lead the way from beginning to completion. It might begin as a cursive
ideogram and result as an inspired poem, or it might transform into a rising
mountain peak, an gentle rain cloud, or a running stream beside a grove of
pine trees. In this way, the formation of Chinese calligraphy always doubles
between image and thought, thereby revealing its potential to move between
writing and painting.
In the history of Chinese art, writing and painting are inevitably drawn to one
another. They virtually overlap one another as they derive from the same
source. Poetry may be written in the sky of a landscape either by the painter
or by another artist or poet intent on offering a salutation or eulogy. There are
times when the legibility of the calligraphic signs may suddenly turn to
abstraction or beyond recognition. We see the genesis of this tendency in the
wild cursive script of Zhang Shui and the "drunken monk" Huai-su, who both
worked during the eighth century of the Tang. Their powerful and eccentric
linear constructions reveal a distillation of profound thought as it moves into
lyrical feeling. Their unique calligraphy functioned as a kind of metaphysical
bridge between writing and painting in the process of entering an ecstatic and
rhythmical sense of time/space. Although irrational in origin, this wild cursive
script resonates with elegant and expressive content, filled with spiritual and
metaphysical intonations. In the later genres of Chinese landscape painting,
one may detect traces of these linear motifs in the compositions of the great
ink painters from the Northern Sung Dynasty of the late tenth century and
eventually in the masterful scrolls of the Ming Dynasty five centuries later.
In contemporary ink wash painting, which some scholars associate with the
"1985 New Wave" in China, this quality of line -- perhaps more eccentric than
lyrical -- also plays a pre-eminent role as a discerning factor in representing
the state of mind of the artist. Here the emphasis on an expressionist aesthetic
through ink wash painting as shown in the sublime forms of Sichuan-born artist
Lan Zhenghui reflects energy made visible. The task of the painter is to
discover nature through contemplating emptiness of mind as in the tradition of
the Ch'an painters several centuries earlier. This void (or sunyata) harbors not
only the force and momentum within these large ink paintings, but also
informs the work's infinite feeling for space. Lan's "heavy ink" paintings --a
term coined by Chinese critic Liu Xiaochun-- come full circle into the
foreground of contemporary Chinese art. Through the process of layering ink
on water, Lan's densely refined and bristling surfaces of black ink transform
our awareness of space through the relativity of time. There is a profound
paradox resident within these paintings. While Lan Zhenghui's large ink wash
paintings point toward the future, they remain equally close to the ancient
teachings of Lao-tse. Whereas the Tao shows the way to our destiny with
nature, our optical entry into the spectral void is momentarily absorbed by the
darkness in Lan's paintings. As we become aware of our consciousness through
the act of perception, the darkness is transformed into a reflective surface of
light through the density of the ink. We read in at the outset of Chapter 25 in
the Tao te Ching (Trans. Stephen Mitchell, 1988):
• The heavy is the root of the light.
• The unmoved is the source of all movement.
The calligraphic paintings in Lan Zhenghui's current Ink Painting Dream
continue to possess an insurmountable presence, as did the earlier ink wash
paintings that referred more directly to nature, such as the landscape, or to
natural phenomena, such as the seasons. Most of these paintings in the recent
exhibition, including the Lovesick, Leap, Standing, Hesitation series and Satori
series, are more concerned with mental or emotional state of Being. Whereas
the earlier paintings function as metaphors of nature, such as those shown in
the exhibition, titled Mighty Rain (Jakarta, 2009), the recent exhibition is more
concerned with visual metonyms. The distinction is crucial, particularly given
the scale in which Lan has worked over the past few years. Whereas a
metaphor represents something specific in a painting, a metonym exists as a
parallel sign in relation to another kind of feeling. In the case of a metonym,
the painting carries its own independence in relation to a feeling, but does not
intend to be that feeling. In the two large horizontal ink paintings on rice
paper (mounted on silk), titled Hop series 1 and Hop series 2, the reference to
hopping may be within the artist's mind, but the ink wash itself has its own
qualities as a painting apart from having a mimetic relationship to the title.
Lovesick series I, Lovesick series 2, and Lovesick series 3 are all in some sense
morphologically related to one another, but their relationship to the title may
also suggest something different that what the viewer actually feels in the
painting. In general, the problem of meaning in the correspondence between
paintings and titles is more complex in painting than in literature, especially if
the painting is visually abstracted from the actuality of the emotion being felt
or observed. One might say the same about the vertical Satori series
-- a title referring to sudden enlightenment in Ch'an Buddhism (Zen). The
feeling of dignity about these paintings may refer to an enlightened state of
mind or "no mind" (wu nien), but again, the painterly qualities within the ink
wash, scale, and format of the painting have their own qualities, which may
correspond obliquely to enlightenment.
Titles given to paintings have the advantage of creating a spur both for the
artist and the viewer, but in different ways. This, of course, is an aesthetic
argument. For the artist, the title may have a personal meaning that carries
the weight of his inspiration during the time he is deeply immersed in the act
of painting. For the viewer it may open another threshold in order to gain
access or appreciation of the painting, less in formal terms than through some
kind of sentiment or provocation. Within the realm of aesthetics, any and all of
these are valid. Viewers will feel what they feel, and there is no way to deny
this legitimacy. On the other hand, painters will go about their business and do
their work. If the paintings tends toward abstraction, the psychology of
reception may be felt on a more personal level than if they are "realist." But
even this claim is negligible. There is no single correct emotional response to a
work of art and there is nothing to be proven. In the work of Lan Zhenghui, it is
a matter of profound feeling. His training as an artist at the Sichuan Academy
of Art and his experience over more than two decades have taken him to
where he is today. Ultimately, his exorbitant ability to project feeling into
these heavy ink paintings is what gives his work importance. Whether he is
soaked in the black rain or feels fever in the high mountains, the internal
equivocation between Being and Non-Being -- in essence, the way of the Tao --
may contribute to his legacy, but quality of the works themselves will give him
the verdict. Given the work in this and other recent exhibitions, it would
appear that Lan is clearly on the right track.
In a recent lecture given by another Chinese painter and digital artist at the
China Art Institute in Manhattan, two important points were raised toward the
conclusion of his remarks. There were stated in the form of two questions: One,
does art define itself as something that has no function? And two, is it possible
to make art without electronics?
In reflecting on these questions in relation to the work of Lan Zhenghui, his ink
wash paintings would appear to have no function. One might argue they are
they are both functionless and purposeless. They have nothing to do other than
stare back at us as we engage in the process of starring at them. Even so, they
feel like works from the present moment of our history. Somehow they
connect with diverse cultural traditions within the global environment in a
way quite different from what might have been the case in the previous
century. In contrast to the media rhetoric of the 1950s and 1960s where "East
and West" clichés were bantered back and forth on both sides as if to conceal
major economic and ideological differences, the meeting point between the
hemispheres today appears to stand on a firmer ground, perhaps, related to
the accessibility of information from Internet sources, both official and
unofficial. Therefore, when the role of electronics is questioned in terms of
making art, I am not entirely convinced that Lan's heavy ink paintings would
have the open cultural reception they appear to have today without
electronics, even though electronics has little to do with how they are made.
Ironically, the immateriality of the Internet has, if anything, promoted a vast
acquisition of material, including works of art. Given the absence of spiritual
concerns among those who have matured during the informational age of
global entrepreneurship, one might inquire as to whether is was still possible
to think of art as a spiritual phenomenon -- as I understand the intentions of
Lan Zhenghui -- removed from their material (marketing) function? The fact
that Lan's paintings can now be shared by populations both in the East or the
West suggests that some glimmer of evolution has become apparent where the
separation of hemispheres appears unnecessary through the perennial
exchange of open cultural ideas. Assuming this evolution is happening (though
in a nascent stage), the energy and beauty that many viewers ascribe to Lan's
paintings retain an ineluctable mystery and qualitative assurance capable of
opening doors to a primal world of basic spiritual understanding that was cast
aside at the outset of the Industrial Revolution. Now is the time to regenerate
the possibility of such ideas -- that paintings, like those by Lan Zhenghui
(among others) -- can lift the lid from repression without being directly
political or offensive and form the basis of a new aesthetic where the
embodiment of basic human values overrides the temporary seduction of
marketing trends that are likely to repeat ad nauseum unless our experience
with what is significant in art begins to take the upper hand.
___________________________________________________________________
Robert C. Morgan is Professor Emeritus in Art History at the Rochester Institute
of Technology and is Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
He has written extensively on contemporary Chinese art and has been directly
involved with Chinese artist since 1989. In 2005, he was a Fulbright Senior
Scholar in the Republic of Korea. In addition to his research, he functions as an
artist, curator, and international critic and lecturer. In 1999, he was given the
first Arcale award in Spain for his work as an international critic.
|
[复制链接]
发表于 2011-1-6 13:44:53
楼主
发表于 2011-1-6 14:38:40