Other Modernism——Modern Oil Painting Invitation Exhibition

　　Modernity is a characteristic reflected in the transition from traditional agricultural society to modern industrial society. The term is deeply embedded in every aspect of modern society, marked by the comprehensive alterations in production modes, social systems and thinking models. Rich as the content conveyed by modernity may be, what lies at the core of the term is a substitution of rational categories for divine integrity.

　　It is an indisputable fact that human society constantly evolves into modernity. However, the process of modernization varies across different contexts, thereby rendering the experience of modernity distinctive in different corners of the world. From the perspective of world history, the first step into modern society was taken in Europe, where the original version of modernity was established. China’s late emergence to modern society released another version of modernity. China and Europe share much in common, insofar as both are modern societies. Yet the priorities and focuses in China and Europe are different, owing to the disparity in their versions of modernity. Struggles to combine authentically the ancient and the modern, the Chinese and the foreign, have always accompanied China’s modernization. China’s long cultural tradition, one that contains profound Chinese wisdom of life, contributes to a mindset that “stresses the past, not the present”. Our endorsement of the past offers us a necessary recognition of the limitations in the evolutionary view of history stemming from the process of modernization. Furthermore, the Chinese way of life is quite unique, and our confidence in it helps us to avoid the pitfalls of identical thinking in modernization. The unique cultural traditions and living styles in China promote a distinctive road towards modernization, a modified version of modernity, which provides other developing countries and regions an alternative in their process of modernization.

　　Art has been a product of modernization and modernity. For a long time in human society, art did not distinguish itself from all other branches of human activity. The self-conscious practice of artmaking, for the sake only of art, dates back to the 18th century. Despite the fact that this phenomenon observed by Western aestheticians and art historians has applied to most cases in human society, Chinese art is nonetheless different, due to a unique cultural context where no clear boundary between the self-discipline and other-discipline of art can be found. Chinese art had a degree of self-discipline in pre-modern times, when art was merely an entertainment for men of letters, while Chinese art has a degree of other-discipline in modern times, when art served a social purpose. The particularity of Chinese modernity gives Chinese art a completely different face and fate. The modernity in Chinese art lies not in creating the new, worshiping the foreign, or indulging in its own legacy. Conversely, it has a sharp awareness of the ancient and the modern, the Chinese and the foreign, self-discipline and other-discipline. Hence, Chinese art has an inimitable way of answering questions in our time. The distinctive character of modernity in China and the inspiration it has bestowed upon Chinese artists today render Chinese art a significant member in the worldwide art family.

　　Ever since China stepped into modern society, all branches of art in China are confronted with the challenge to accelerate and sustain the transition to modernity. Oil painting, among all the forms of art, is faced with the greatest urgency. In the field of oil painting, much more heated debates have been triggered, much deeper considerations taken, and much more outstanding achievements made. Through the display of oil paintings, we attempt to introduce a Chinese version of the modernity of art and further reveal a Chinese version of the modernity of society, in order that broader discussions and more in-depth thinking can emerge with respect to modernity, the destiny of art and the historical development of human society.

　　Peng Feng

　　August 3, 2008

　　別樣的現代性

　　對於現代主義的意涵，一直以來人們莫衷一是。現代主義模糊的意義源於它的語言鼻祖——“現代性”：我們既不理解我們經歷過的東西，也不明白應以何種方式詮釋20世紀（現代主義的決定性時期）的惶恐、動蕩、物質的增長和心靈的流浪。50年後的世界是什麼樣子？每當這樣的遐想縈繞于腦際，那不確定性的隱痛便會莫名襲來。作為視覺藝術的一場運動——儘管有些人傾向於把它視為一種情緒而非一場運動——現代主義的特點是令人眼花繚亂的各式看法和各樣衝動。馬奈筆下女人冰冷的凝眸，畢加索心頭錯位的剪影，波洛克眼底飛濺的畫布，杜尚挪用日常的物品，馬列維奇手中純粹的抽象，所有這些都被歸入現代主義的範疇。然而轉念思忖，它們不過是對一個世界的回應，這個世界被瘋狂的驕傲驅使，步履蹣跚地走向混沌的未來。著名的藝術史家提摩泰•克拉克把現代藝術視為對一種新型的社會秩序的回應，“這種社會秩序背棄了對祖先和古老權威的崇拜，轉而追求對未來的規劃，這規劃滲透進商品、娛樂、自由，以及各種對自然和資訊無限性的控制形式當中”。

　　過去的世紀經歷的苦難告訴我們（約一億八千萬人因政治衝突喪生，這一數字超過了1500年的人口總量），許多東西都在這種對未來的新式崇拜中被放逐天際。藝術家們無一例外地從這股19世紀樂觀主義的驚人逆流中獲得了力量。與此同時，藝術家們也敏銳地捕捉到了深居於現代主義圓滿成功之中的模棱兩可：財富、安定和洋溢著西方自由民主氣息的城郊生活帶來的舒適，滋養出一種麻醉了感受的生活。現代藝術於是便成為將人類的想像力從新型社會秩序的“虛化”和“凈化”中拯救出來的嘗試。現代繪畫的核心是新奇的形式、題材、色彩原理和組合手法。藝術再現的危機最終發展為歷史和道德的轉捩點。警醒自鳴得意的資産階級和承認社會生活的破碎成為燃眉之急：我們的價值觀與我們自身發生衝突，與他人的價值觀發生衝突，與我們實踐價值的努力也發生著衝突。模倣論框架內的現實主義是一個謊言（看一眼現實吧！）。畢加索畫中面孔的分割暗喻了主體的破碎。達利的超現實主義並置道出了更為清晰的真相。三維僅僅是舊世界的幻象。畫家們為了更為純凈的、平面的和堅定的美學明智地告別了這個幻象。抽象在很多層面為我們指明瞭出口。蒙德里安以抽象評點技術理性生活的誘惑與威脅；羅斯科將抽象視為通往不可表像的內心世界深處的方式。在馬克思•貝克曼和契裏柯等畫家的包含人體的作品中，人體只有通過強烈的扭曲才能被識別。只有真正抗拒人們對之施以安逸理解的前沿藝術，才能觸碰到現代生活裏殘酷的不確定性。

　　中國正在自己的現代性中闊步前行，這片土地上日常生活方式正經歷的改變在老一輩的人中是不可想像的。藝術家們堅持著現代藝術的風格和情緒。這個展覽陳列了26位畫家的作品。所有畫家都以迥異而奇特的方式吸納了現代主義的元素。20世紀80年代前的中國藝術深受社會主義現實主義的控制，孫廣義的抽象發展出一種新穎的觀看方式。安琦的嘉年華場景以強烈的著色和不受拘束的身體塑造了今日世界中不羈的心靈。龍全的黑髮女人畫像使人想起契裏柯懸置透視法後展現的奇異空間。同樣，程晉華的畫作中不太絕望的現代主義娛樂性——想想畢加索的街頭賣藝人——統攝著構圖形式。不論本次展出的作品在多大程度上與西方現代主義大師的作品産生共鳴，中國畫家對獨特的中國傳統文化的繼承都將以無與倫比的啟迪力量證明，中國藝術家已經開始以新鮮而非凡的方式詮釋你眼前的世界。

　　雷達裏 美國

　　Other Modernisms

　　The meaning of modernism, as an idea and a word, has always been contested. That ambiguity belongs to its parent word, “modernity”: we can’t understand what it is we’ve lived through, or what we should make of the horrors, upheavals, material gains, and spiritual losses of the 20th century (modernism’s defining period). We feel the sting of this uncertainty whenever we try to imagine what the world will be like in 50 years. As a movement in the visual arts—and some would call it more of a mood than a movement—modernism is characterized by a bewildering variety of looks and impulses. The cold gazes of Manet’s women, Picasso’s broken images, Pollock’s splattered canvases, the appropriation of everyday object by Duchamp, the purity of Malevich’s abstraction; all of these fall under the rubric of modernism. Clearly, however, they are all reactions to a world that has staggered proudly and crazily into a troubled future. The great art historian T.J. Clark defines modern art as work that responds to “a social order which has turned away from the worship of ancestors and past authorities to the pursuit of a projected future—of goods, pleasures, freedoms, forms of control over nature, or infinities of information.”

　　Much has been lost in this worship of futurity, as the suffering of the last century proves (more people died violently as a result of political conflict—roughly 180 million—than were alive on earth in 1500), and artists were uniformly energized by this shocking disproof of 19th century optimism. They were also quick to notice the ambiguity of modernism’s crowning success: the wealth, stability, and ease of Western liberal-democratic suburbia, which fosters a numbing and narcotized way of life. Modern art was therefore an attempt to save the human imagination from the “emptying” and “sanitizing” effects of this new social order. The search for radically new forms, subject matter, color principles, and compositional methods defines modern painting. A crisis of representation played out the crisis in history and ethics. The need to shock the complacent bourgeoisie and register the fracturing of social life—where our values clashed with themselves, with each other, and with our attempts to realize them—was paramount. Imitative realism was a lie (just look at reality!). Picasso’s carved-up faces registered our subjective incoherence. Dali’s surreal juxtapositions told a clearer truth. The illusion of three-dimensionality was old-world nonsense, which painters were right to renounce in their struggle for a purer, flatter, more uncompromising aesthetic. Abstraction was an answer, in more ways than one. Where Mondrian used it to comment on the allure and danger of our techno-rationalized lives, Rothko saw abstraction as a way into the depths of our unrepresentable interiority. And in cases where painters preserved the human figure, as in the work of Max Beckmann and de Chirico, that figure could not be known except through its wild distortions. Only an art on the edge, one that resisted easy comprehension, could capture the vicious and bloody uncertainties of modern life.

　　As China accelerates through its own modernity, altering the patterns of daily life in ways unimaginable to the older generation, artists continue to appropriate the styles and moods of modern art. This exhibition showcases the work of 26 painters, all of whom borrow from modernism in different and surprising ways. Sun Guangyi’s abstractions advance a mode of seeing that is relatively new in China, where socialist realism dominated art until the 1980s. The carnivalesque world of An Qi, with its violent coloration and wild bodies, gives form to the unrestrained spirit to today’s world. Long Quan’s portrait of a black-haired woman recalls the volumetric weirdness of de Chirico, where the laws of perspective have been powerfully suspended. This description could also apply to Cheng Jinhua’s paintings, where a playfulness characteristic of modernism in its less despairing modes—think of Picasso’s saltimbanques—presides over the compositional form. But however much these painters echo the work of the great Westerner modernists, their inheritance of their own Chinese tradition is still a potent and illuminating force, proving that they have interpreted in new and singular ways the world they’ve been called to confront.

　　Tully Rector

　　藝術現代性之於中國當代架上繪畫的思考

　　藝術的發展與現代化的進程有著諸多的關聯。無論是在傳統的基礎上進行拓展抑或是以批判性的背離傳統而反其道行之，很大層面上，這種變革、突破與創新的意識都是現代性社會發展理念與時代背景下的精神思想所達成的某種默契。社會大環境造就時代背景下的思維表達方式，文化大背景影響著文化藝術的發展方向與表現形式。如何依託于這樣的時代與文化背景展示中國版本的藝術現代性則是個值得深入探究的問題。

　　毋庸置疑，中國版本的藝術現代性在社會進程與當代文化大繁榮的背景下有著更多的機遇與挑戰。單以架上繪畫來看，我們在短短的三十年裏便將中國幾千年來禁錮思想解脫束縛之後的文化反思化為一種力量放逐到這種藝術語言的訴陳之中，並從而異軍突起成為世界藝術陣營中最強大的一個分支。人文主義思潮的過分氾濫或多或少的讓我們在假定的空間裏找尋到了突破口，但與此同時我們也深陷其中而尋不到真正的方向以及所要表達的真正思想主旨。

　　大眾審美環境的不夠健全與大張旗鼓的市場運作行為催生出了許許多多五花八門的藝術表現形式，讓很多依附於某一藝術語境下而實則無計可施又手段拙劣的藝術家也能位列高堂步入主流。過分依賴內容、過分依賴形式、過分依賴符號化的所謂當代藝術充斥在我們過於單純的審美環境之中。這樣的藝術表現手段與形式也一時因著輿論傳播的誤導、市場價值的誤識、藝術價值的誤判、習慣性審美所導致的誤斷等因素而成為不健全的大眾審美意識下頌揚的主體。其實這些藝術作品在現代性語境的表述上還只停留在表面，同時更缺乏有實質意義的文化創造力。只是一種對西方反藝術流派所進行的“超級模倣秀”之後而形成的慣性思維而導致的文化現象而已，已然脫離繪畫藝術應有的最寶貴品質！缺失了繪畫的本質、缺失了藝術的真美所在、缺失了藝術本源與文化精神的作品不過是一件件皇帝的新衣。

　　什麼樣的藝術作品是真正具有藝術價值的作品？什麼樣的藝術作品是真正具有中國版本藝術現代性的作品？從藝術發展的角度講很難為這樣的問題制定出有效的標準與尺度對其進行量化分析。但究其根本，於此命題之上我們或多或少的也能夠從中抽離出具有實質性的價值判斷標準。作為視覺造型藝術的繪畫是否已然無需繪畫性？未來藝術的發展是否一定要從否定傳統中而來？形勢與內容是否真的決定其藝術價值與審美價值？觀念性的表現是否已然不需要藝術性作為支撐？所表現的主題是否依舊將遵循對真善美的頌揚？作為文化主體的藝術是否應具有其文化的延續性？一旦這些具有實質性的問題得到答案之後，我們的價值判斷標準自然清晰。對於架上繪畫而言，內在的藝術表現與外在的社會層面及精神層面的表達得到有效結合之後，其所構成的藝術作品才能夠更具藝術價值與深度。藝術離不開技術的支撐，丟掉這個支撐點，繪畫也便沒有其存在的意義！

　　技術層面的考量之於繪畫其實並非只是一味的強調手段與技巧，而實則技術應是一個全面的、寬泛的體系。內在的構圖、色彩、結構、佈局、筆法以及對媒介與材料的運用等等都是技術的表現，而精神性、思想性、批判性、觀念性也同樣是技術外在表現的類別。只有內在技術表現得到有的放矢之時，外在的技術表現才更能具有較高的精神品質。我們的很多藝術家往往忽略或缺失這種內在表現而著力於尋求外在因素的表達，以至於他們的作品更多的流於各種符號化與概念化之中。表現極為張揚、思想過於極端、觀念刻意疊加的作品過分的追求外在藝術表達而放棄繪畫的主體本質，當外在藝術表現淩駕於藝術內在主體之上，這種丟棄了其精神品質的畫面已經喪失了藝術的靈魂與生命力。

“讓藝術回歸藝術”！看似只是一句簡單的口號，但實際上它是厘清藝術本質後對當下藝術現代性所做出的一種有價值的判斷。只有通過內在的藝術表現與外在思想與理念的表達還原其藝術的真美，將文化內涵與社會現代性進行緊密結合，以全新的圖式樣貌充分展現東西方藝術的共性，這樣的藝術作品才具有藝術的真正價值，同時也是藝術的真正回歸。它並非是缺乏現代性思考而對固有形式語言所做的因襲，也更不是過分苛求突破而丟棄藝術主體與文化本源的全盤否定，它應是建立在創新意識下對藝術否定之否定後所做出的具有當代性價值判斷的藝術再現。

　　¬——劉梓封