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

　　别样的现代性

　　对于现代主义的意涵，一直以来人们莫衷一是。现代主义模糊的意义源于它的语言鼻祖——“现代性”：我们既不理解我们经历过的东西，也不明白应以何种方式诠释20世纪（现代主义的决定性时期）的惶恐、动荡、物质的增长和心灵的流浪。50年后的世界是什么样子？每当这样的遐想萦绕于脑际，那不确定性的隐痛便会莫名袭来。作为视觉艺术的一场运动——尽管有些人倾向于把它视为一种情绪而非一场运动——现代主义的特点是令人眼花缭乱的各式看法和各样冲动。马奈笔下女人冰冷的凝眸，毕加索心头错位的剪影，波洛克眼底飞溅的画布，杜尚挪用日常的物品，马列维奇手中纯粹的抽象，所有这些都被归入现代主义的范畴。然而转念思忖，它们不过是对一个世界的回应，这个世界被疯狂的骄傲驱使，步履蹒跚地走向混沌的未来。著名的艺术史家提摩泰•克拉克把现代艺术视为对一种新型的社会秩序的回应，“这种社会秩序背弃了对祖先和古老权威的崇拜，转而追求对未来的规划，这规划渗透进商品、娱乐、自由，以及各种对自然和信息无限性的控制形式当中”。

　　过去的世纪经历的苦难告诉我们（约一亿八千万人因政治冲突丧生，这一数字超过了1500年的人口总量），许多东西都在这种对未来的新式崇拜中被放逐天际。艺术家们无一例外地从这股19世纪乐观主义的惊人逆流中获得了力量。与此同时，艺术家们也敏锐地捕捉到了深居于现代主义圆满成功之中的模棱两可：财富、安定和洋溢着西方自由民主气息的城郊生活带来的舒适，滋养出一种麻醉了感受的生活。现代艺术于是便成为将人类的想象力从新型社会秩序的“虚化”和“净化”中拯救出来的尝试。现代绘画的核心是新奇的形式、题材、色彩原理和组合手法。艺术再现的危机最终发展为历史和道德的转折点。警醒自鸣得意的资产阶级和承认社会生活的破碎成为燃眉之急：我们的价值观与我们自身发生冲突，与他人的价值观发生冲突，与我们实践价值的努力也发生着冲突。模仿论框架内的现实主义是一个谎言（看一眼现实吧！）。毕加索画中面孔的分割暗喻了主体的破碎。达利的超现实主义并置道出了更为清晰的真相。三维仅仅是旧世界的幻象。画家们为了更为纯净的、平面的和坚定的美学明智地告别了这个幻象。抽象在很多层面为我们指明了出口。蒙德里安以抽象评点技术理性生活的诱惑与威胁；罗斯科将抽象视为通往不可表象的内心世界深处的方式。在马克思•贝克曼和契里柯等画家的包含人体的作品中，人体只有通过强烈的扭曲才能被识别。只有真正抗拒人们对之施以安逸理解的前沿艺术，才能触碰到现代生活里残酷的不确定性。

　　中国正在自己的现代性中阔步前行，这片土地上日常生活方式正经历的改变在老一辈的人中是不可想象的。艺术家们坚持着现代艺术的风格和情绪。这个展览陈列了26位画家的作品。所有画家都以迥异而奇特的方式吸纳了现代主义的元素。20世纪80年代前的中国艺术深受社会主义现实主义的控制，孙广义的抽象发展出一种新颖的观看方式。安琦的嘉年华场景以强烈的着色和不受拘束的身体塑造了今日世界中不羁的心灵。龙全的黑发女人画像使人想起契里柯悬置透视法后展现的奇异空间。同样，程晋华的画作中不太绝望的现代主义娱乐性——想想毕加索的街头卖艺人——统摄着构图形式。不论本次展出的作品在多大程度上与西方现代主义大师的作品产生共鸣，中国画家对独特的中国传统文化的继承都将以无与伦比的启迪力量证明，中国艺术家已经开始以新鲜而非凡的方式诠释你眼前的世界。

　　雷达里 美国

　　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

　　艺术现代性之于中国当代架上绘画的思考

　　艺术的发展与现代化的进程有着诸多的关联。无论是在传统的基础上进行拓展抑或是以批判性的背离传统而反其道行之，很大层面上，这种变革、突破与创新的意识都是现代性社会发展理念与时代背景下的精神思想所达成的某种默契。社会大环境造就时代背景下的思维表达方式，文化大背景影响着文化艺术的发展方向与表现形式。如何依托于这样的时代与文化背景展示中国版本的艺术现代性则是个值得深入探究的问题。

　　毋庸置疑，中国版本的艺术现代性在社会进程与当代文化大繁荣的背景下有着更多的机遇与挑战。单以架上绘画来看，我们在短短的三十年里便将中国几千年来禁锢思想解脱束缚之后的文化反思化为一种力量放逐到这种艺术语言的诉陈之中，并从而异军突起成为世界艺术阵营中最强大的一个分支。人文主义思潮的过分泛滥或多或少的让我们在假定的空间里找寻到了突破口，但与此同时我们也深陷其中而寻不到真正的方向以及所要表达的真正思想主旨。

　　大众审美环境的不够健全与大张旗鼓的市场运作行为催生出了许许多多五花八门的艺术表现形式，让很多依附于某一艺术语境下而实则无计可施又手段拙劣的艺术家也能位列高堂步入主流。过分依赖内容、过分依赖形式、过分依赖符号化的所谓当代艺术充斥在我们过于单纯的审美环境之中。这样的艺术表现手段与形式也一时因着舆论传播的误导、市场价值的误识、艺术价值的误判、习惯性审美所导致的误断等因素而成为不健全的大众审美意识下颂扬的主体。其实这些艺术作品在现代性语境的表述上还只停留在表面，同时更缺乏有实质意义的文化创造力。只是一种对西方反艺术流派所进行的“超级模仿秀”之后而形成的惯性思维而导致的文化现象而已，已然脱离绘画艺术应有的最宝贵品质！缺失了绘画的本质、缺失了艺术的真美所在、缺失了艺术本源与文化精神的作品不过是一件件皇帝的新衣。

　　什么样的艺术作品是真正具有艺术价值的作品？什么样的艺术作品是真正具有中国版本艺术现代性的作品？从艺术发展的角度讲很难为这样的问题制定出有效的标准与尺度对其进行量化分析。但究其根本，于此命题之上我们或多或少的也能够从中抽离出具有实质性的价值判断标准。作为视觉造型艺术的绘画是否已然无需绘画性？未来艺术的发展是否一定要从否定传统中而来？形势与内容是否真的决定其艺术价值与审美价值？观念性的表现是否已然不需要艺术性作为支撑？所表现的主题是否依旧将遵循对真善美的颂扬？作为文化主体的艺术是否应具有其文化的延续性？一旦这些具有实质性的问题得到答案之后，我们的价值判断标准自然清晰。对于架上绘画而言，内在的艺术表现与外在的社会层面及精神层面的表达得到有效结合之后，其所构成的艺术作品才能够更具艺术价值与深度。艺术离不开技术的支撑，丢掉这个支撑点，绘画也便没有其存在的意义！

　　技术层面的考量之于绘画其实并非只是一味的强调手段与技巧，而实则技术应是一个全面的、宽泛的体系。内在的构图、色彩、结构、布局、笔法以及对媒介与材料的运用等等都是技术的表现，而精神性、思想性、批判性、观念性也同样是技术外在表现的类别。只有内在技术表现得到有的放矢之时，外在的技术表现才更能具有较高的精神品质。我们的很多艺术家往往忽略或缺失这种内在表现而着力于寻求外在因素的表达，以至于他们的作品更多的流于各种符号化与概念化之中。表现极为张扬、思想过于极端、观念刻意叠加的作品过分的追求外在艺术表达而放弃绘画的主体本质，当外在艺术表现凌驾于艺术内在主体之上，这种丢弃了其精神品质的画面已经丧失了艺术的灵魂与生命力。

“让艺术回归艺术”！看似只是一句简单的口号，但实际上它是厘清艺术本质后对当下艺术现代性所做出的一种有价值的判断。只有通过内在的艺术表现与外在思想与理念的表达还原其艺术的真美，将文化内涵与社会现代性进行紧密结合，以全新的图式样貌充分展现东西方艺术的共性，这样的艺术作品才具有艺术的真正价值，同时也是艺术的真正回归。它并非是缺乏现代性思考而对固有形式语言所做的因袭，也更不是过分苛求突破而丢弃艺术主体与文化本源的全盘否定，它应是建立在创新意识下对艺术否定之否定后所做出的具有当代性价值判断的艺术再现。

　　¬——刘梓封