In the past three years, Shi Benming has painted almost one hundred oil portrait sketches, and he said that he himself did not count them.Those paintings are densely piled up in his small studio in Beijing's Hongxing Hutong—the studio and his residence have been demolished this year—walking through the door, the room is full of life-size faces on the walls.Look at them one by one, and you will see many pairs of eyes staring at you on the canvas.If you have been in the Central Academy of Fine Arts, you will recognize a few familiar faces from this portrait camp: most of them are adult students in advanced classes and teaching assistant classes, from all over the country, and they don’t look like art. Students or professional painters are not very like the so-called scholars, farmers, businessmen.The classes, identities, and even personalities of these characters are vague and secondary, but each face is clearly painted very similar, so they are completely different from each other, only like him (she) themselves.

In terms of painting and painting, these works themselves seem to be nothing like: they are not "portraits", do not draw bodies, gestures, postures, let alone the environment and props that set off the characters, but are just big faces occupying the canvas; It is not the "creation" of figure painting, there is no theme and situation, and each face has no other meaning except to prove that it is a face; they are very similar to the most common classroom avatar sketches. Completed in the class, the students sit in turn and draw a picture almost a day.Anyone who has studied oil painting for a few days has painted this kind of "sketch head", but we can't regard these oil paintings hanging side by side as "classwork": Is there anything more boring than classwork? ?

This is a group of majestic works: majestic like every human face. But is Shi Benming's painting really a human "face"?I have stared at them for a long time many times, and found that these portraits can be regarded as the "text" of the "five senses", which is close to the "face record" in the anthropological sense, the demeanor, expression and "spiritual world" of the characters , I am afraid that they are not the gist of this batch of works.During the few hours of being depicted, these characters seem to have suspended their inner activities, between a daze and a trance, unconsciously and unreservedly handing over their faces to the observer and the portrayer, or in other words, the author deliberately erased the faces Any illusions and phantasms of expression, so that the human face is a human face, even if the models have their own unique "features" that we usually call "face", in Shi Benming's pictures, there is no deduction or It is reflected in the "vividity" and so-called "artistic quality" we expect from figure paintings: they are just "faces", just like Bresson asked his non-professional actors not to "perform", don't think about " role", only abide by the director's admonition during the filming process: "Don't say anything, don't do anything, don't think about anything."—Whether Shi Benming knows it or not, to be precise, he is not painting a "portrait" , but to describe the "face" of a person, and use the thorough appearance of the face as the basis for deep description. This depth makes his paintings not look "beautiful", or as Benjamin said: "Everything that is properly called The paradox of what is beautiful is that it appears as appearance."

This is the aesthetics of photography.The faces in Shi Benming's paintings are reminiscent of police population files or passport photos; this is also the aesthetics of serious paintings in the 20th century that deal with human figures after getting rid of romanticism, and it is the desire of modern people to know themselves ruthlessly and sincerely. Naturally, therefore, this batch of works raises the following question in an imperceptible way to our tired and undirected realistic painting, especially figure painting: Why do we still paint realistic figure painting today?What other possibilities does figure painting have?Is it its descriptive function or cognitive value?If the former, is it about "drawing technique" or "way of seeing"?If it is the latter, what we can know is about "people" or about "painting"?To each of the above questions, Shi Benming answered with continuous practice and implicit provocation—although he only used the simplest method: sketching on the spot.And its process is from the practice leading to the understanding of figure painting; its effect is not for the "appreciation" of painting, but for the "reading" of physiognomy. When these sketches are juxtaposed and arranged Afterwards, a completely different way of viewing goes beyond the "practice" of a single head: as Benjamin said when describing Proust's literary methods: he is showing, not reflecting.

As a viewer, Shi Benming displayed a large number of faces. As a viewer, I got a chance to reflect: In the tradition of figure painting in Chinese realistic oil painting (if we can barely call it "tradition"), we can't find many authentic figure paintings. Yes, "figures" seem to have always been the protagonists of Chinese oil paintings, but during the Republic of China, except for a few large-scale creations such as Xu Beihong and Jiang Zhaohe, which can be called outstanding "figure paintings", "people" are usually models Appears in sketches or beautiful portraits.After the founding of the People's Republic of China, a large number of workers, peasants or leaders appeared in the creation of theme oil paintings. They were assigned the roles of the theme, just like actors, not the true colors of people.Excellent characters are not absent, but subject to ideology, those who are inferior are reduced to graphic symbols.In the past twenty years, the awareness of "figure painting" has been gradually awakened in the creation, but the right way and genuine products of figure painting are still elusive: or blindly follow the so-called "exploration" of the form, and lose the true flavor of figure painting; Salon-style exquisite portraits or pseudo-style paintings composed of a few figures have become exclusive to the market. Among them, outstanding figures are not absent. However, the most precious true realm of figure paintings is the so-called "humanistic atmosphere", "humanistic However, if you look around, there is still a lack of important works-painting figures is not the same as "figure painting". Figure painters like Repin only talk about the genre of "figure painting". In fact, we still lack even professional portrait painters, let alone master craftsmen whose works are equivalent.

Figure painting used to be the backbone, main thread and pinnacle of Western art.Drawing people is hard.And our contemporary art is always advancing and retreating in the repeated dislocation of history: in the past two decades, Chinese art has continuously lifted restrictions and breakthroughs, the level of depiction of "human" in literary works has gradually deepened, and the exploration of the realm of oil painting and figure painting , together with the painting itself, under the agitation of the new art and the new trend of thought, became out of balance and almost lost.As an "education industry", painting plaster statues and portrait sketches are still technical bargaining chips for applying to colleges. As a creative theme, "figures" still seem to be reserved items, but the realistic level of figure painting is actually losing on a large scale. Already lacking a reason to grow, an inherent vitality that by itself detracts from the value and dignity of the genre.

At such a time, Shi Benming sat down, without any other consideration or thought, face to face with the living people he met at any time, stroke by stroke, one by one, earnestly and honestly painted "people "——He has long experienced the stylization of creation and the hesitation of the theme, following the trend instead of drifting, going retrograde in vain in fashion, and painting a group of grotesque images (including his self-portraits) with vague and suspicious concepts of "modern art". "ism" figurative painting, accumulating and wasting realistic skills at the same time, finally to no avail.In such a situation, the artist either lost his way, or woke up and looked back. In the late 1990s, he was hired as a substitute teacher and began to paint these batches of head portraits that were purely "demonstration" or "practice": at this time, all "creative Let go of everything, his eyes and paintbrush only face people's "face" directly.

At first, the shape and color of several portraits inevitably brought out the deformation and exaggeration of the previous works, but in the process of sketching the "object" from a model to a "person", in the increasing number of pages, the face of the person led him Entering the intuitive and simple work, gradually, his search among the five senses unknowingly leads to a state of "no self", or pure "externalization" as defined by Schopenhauer's artist nature. As you can see, As it is, plain and unpretentious, it is secretly shocking-this may be the work that most reveals the essence of "sketching" among the figure paintings I have seen in China: not because of the identifiable "similarity", but because Faithful to "appearance"; this may also be a figure painting that is far from the purpose of sketching with the act of sketching: they have surpassed the "artistic quality", and may be more direct at human nature than the "creation" of a figure painting.These painting skills are impressive, and it is difficult for any painter who has painted figures from life to ignore its difficulty;

But their charm does not belong to the category of skills, let alone a model of "techniques".I don't remember that there have been such simple works in our figure paintings for decades, neither the subject nor the description are refined, so simple that they are visually offensive, like a series of blurted out foul words; The figure paintings I have seen have given me such complicated feelings, even with a slight embarrassment: it is not because of the expressions of the characters in the paintings, but because they have no expressions.When I look closely at each face, it's not like looking at a painting, but a person facing a person.

I reviewed it repeatedly, and found a gratifying paradox: this group of works, which obviously avoided any suspicion of modernism, used the most conservative method of classroom sketching, adopted an unpredetermined juxtaposition and arrangement, passed through, and seemed to go around It opened a stage that Chinese figure painting has not completely crossed over, and achieved the display effect of integrating visual experience in postmodern art. This effect opened up the re-viewing and re-viewing of the old traditional visual samples (including figure painting and figure photography) that we are too familiar with. Possibility of cognition: they are arranged side by side, overlapping up and down, forming the universality of the crowd in this era with increasing space, nameless, we may be able to find ourselves and see ourselves in it, and every face in it is like The cover of an autobiography.

I would like to say that these figure paintings are respectable works.What will be their fate when they come out one day?Their semantics are ambiguous, and their content is too straightforward, just like the faces in the paintings - Duchamp said that every thirty or forty years, people will automatically "rehabilitate" the neglected works.The fate of Shi Benming's works may be even more obscure: they have not yet received the "treatment" of being viewed, just like the people in the paintings, unknown - I am not sure whether these works appeared too late or too early, but they are certainly not suitable for today Fortunately, they have been completed and are lurking, ready to annotate and question the inexplicable fate of Chinese figure painting at any time. April 4, 2001 I shouldn’t have any opinions on traditional Chinese painting, because in recent years, I opened the album of Ni Zan, Shen Zhou and Dong Qichang to make a few oil paintings from life, tracing them stroke by stroke, and then I seemed to see "Chinese painting" with my eyes open, but as a young Chinese painter Peng Wei showed me her colored ink flowers and asked me to write a few words, but I couldn't say anything. Feelings are naturally there. For example, the author was born in the 1970s. She should be regarded as the so-called "new new human being", at least the new generation and new face of the Chinese painting circle, but her painting style, at first glance, is traditional, or even It is somewhat "old-fashioned": the bright and bright colors are a bit like Chen Daofu and Zhao Zhiqian, and the frugality of the painting is a bit like Wu Changshuo and Qi Baishi, but if you really want to compare them, there is nothing left.There are a few of them that are quite eye-catching, the ink color is plump, the flower branches are full, the scene is simple to just right, although the brushwork is too weak, it is full of female heart.Among the various kinds of "experimental" Chinese paintings at present, these works have attracted my attention because they have no "new ideas".There seems to be some news here. The Centennial Chinese Painting Exhibition, which has just concluded, finally gave us a chance to review the accounts that should have been settled long ago.The general impression is: in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, there were only two ways of "conformity" and "revolution". In the past 20 years, the "new Chinese painting" has been so new that it imitates the heavy light, shadow and details of European and American surrealism, and it is so new that it distorts the image arbitrarily and is close to design, just like decoration, like an enlarged cartoon or graffiti on rice paper..." "New" is the collective ideology and general program of several generations of Chinese painters in New China. Regardless of whether the gains and losses are right or wrong, it is the so-called "New Literati Painting" that was born more than ten years ago, abandoning the "new" and drawing the "old". Stopping at the unconstrained borders of the Chinese painting revolution, going back to the ancestors, searching for patterns from the ancients, and pieced together a batch of works that are both "old" and "new", although the refinement and formatting of cartoons and graffiti However, as the "New Party" of the older generation of Chinese painting gradually withdrew from history, and the early "New Chinese Painting" finally appeared to be both "new" and "old", "New Literati Painting" at least partially awakened the memory of traditional Chinese painting, and many The author is talented and assertive. It is the calmness and introspection after the revolution. It is a ray of light from the tradition reflected from a long distance when the revolution is at the end of the road. This is the new party material of traditional Chinese painting Unexpectedly, what the ancients did not expect-tradition, whether you call it a burden or a legacy, it is still there, it is still powerful, it can be a shadow, or a light, depending on the authors of different eras , how to look at it with different eyes. The debate over the century of Chinese painting revolution is beneficial but not beneficial.When it comes to painting by hand, practice and words, rules and opinions are two different things after all.Pen and ink equal to zero?Pen and ink are everything?Reasonable or unreasonable, you can't escape the word "pen and ink" in the end, and when the pen and ink fall on the rice paper, it will always melt away. This is something that no one can do anything about.I have tried what I can, and I have seen what I have to see. The landscape of a century-old Chinese painting is not a painting, but the headstrong, naive, groping, and struggling of several generations in the past century... As for Huang Binhong and Qi Baishi, they are calculated according to the rounding method. The rest of the posthumous pages that should be included in the traditional account are only because their talent is like a bucket, and the time is not far away, as if adding glory to the "new Chinese painting" in this century. In fact, it is just the result of the longevity of a few old people. After all, we are living on the other side of the "Chinese painting revolution", and the later revolutionaries did not come from behind, and they came out of the blue, and the Chinese painting revolution finally reached the other side of Chinese painting - only "this side", but no "Chinese painting". Although the "Chinese painting revolution" may be due to historical necessity, there are still a few works handed down from generation to generation. The consequences are like the various revolutions in China in the past century, which cracked the numerous faults in culture and art. At this end of the fault, the first batch of newcomers to Chinese painting , is the "New Literati Painting" community.Most of them were born in the 1950s and 1960s when they clamored for revolution, but they naturally became the "reactionaries" of the "Chinese painting revolution".They prefer to paint old-fashioned talents and beauties instead of workers, peasants and soldiers, and they prefer to paint landscape paintings beyond the times instead of the new world of new China.In fact, they should still belong to the "revolutionary" generation: revolutionize the "Chinese painting revolution"... But there is no need to talk about it. If we continue talking, we will fall into the quagmire of Chinese painting debates. We still look at the paintings of young people. By the time of Chinese painters born in the 1960s and 1970s, their revolutionary consciousness was tired, indifferent, and even alienated.Although the so-called "generation gap" is disturbing, it is actually better to have a generation gap than to have no generation gap.The Chinese painting revolution at the beginning of the century was nothing more than a generation gap, otherwise the traditional Chinese painting would have no interest in life, and now the Chinese painting revolution has been raging for a hundred years, and there is still a new generation gap to break through this muddy water. This is the so-called cultural cycle. The laws of history.The new generation of literati painters deliberately wants to do the opposite, because they still have a fresh memory of the Chinese painting revolution, and they are like "father and son" in the same family; today's young Chinese painters no longer obey the orders of the previous generation. Right and wrong are like "grandfathers and grandchildren" separated from generation to generation.The theoretical discourse of the Chinese painting revolution has little effect on them. They paint Chinese painting and play with ink and wash, and they don’t necessarily have to do something, and they don’t necessarily have to do something different, just like the new generation of oil painting has got rid of the "nationalization of oil painting" The spell, oil painting is one of the tools that break away from ideology and return to painting.Today’s newcomers of traditional Chinese painting and their peers of the new generation of other painting genres have no basis for creation. They let go of depicting the romantic affairs of today’s era, but they no longer deliberately flaunt the sense of the times; It is derived from the ambition to expand the expressive power of Chinese painting; they use paper and ink tools to create various conceptual works that escape the realm of Chinese painting, and the result is farther than the older generation of Chinese painting revolutionaries. Why, because they don’t care about "Chinese painting" at all In addition, there may also be extreme "private" cases, who are not interested in the various popular labels or experimental styles of contemporary Chinese painting, and enter into the practice of brush and ink with the standpoint of "no standpoint", that is, as they see in front of their eyes Peng Wei's paintings: She just painted a few flowers, matched them with a few leaves, signed and stamped them, and hung them up for a look. She was not disturbed by the "revolutionary" complex and the "old and new" style of work, but with the ancients rather than "tradition". ——God meet and meet, as if they are in parallel: the ancients' painting enthusiasm at the beginning was just a whim, and they were happy to write, how could there be so many delusions of later generations... The revolution is far away.Today's young Chinese painters paint Chinese paintings, I am afraid they are only for fun, even if anyone wants to deliberately admire the ancients and imitate the ancients, this generation that has been cut off for a long time still wants to inherit but has no teacher, and there is no reason to follow. I am afraid that it is the finely printed albums of classical Chinese paintings that have been published frequently in recent years. With this belated publication, "tradition" has restored cultural memory in printed matter. According to my guess, Peng Wei's painting style and painting style are actually putting some new edition albums of the ancients on the desk, making references to the game at random, the game of reference, this game, the Westerners have long had an accurate statement Now, that is, the so-called "parody" of European and American postmodern paintings on printed matter-commonly known as "ready-made products". In the modernist painting revolution of the century, after seeing through it, he came to compromise and dialogue with various traditional image resources before the revolution, such as Doyle in the United States, Nerdrum in Norway, Arcevia and Mariani in Italy, Maslov, Kuznetsov and Tobreluts in Russia , they always take ready-made images from the Renaissance to Poussin as blueprints for various "variations", and the effect is said to be "following" rather than "plagiarism"-Peng Wei's pen play must have never been similar to the aforementioned Western painters Any involvement, as long as they are also descendants of the painting revolution, the motivation for painting seems to have a dark connection. The author takes the initiative, but seems to be transformed into a complex semantic response of classical texts.If we use the word "parody" to examine Chinese literati paintings, then the aesthetics of "plagiarism" has already been present since Dong Qichang. The compounding and overlapping of texts gradually separates from the tradition, confirming its own claims and positions... But this is still a foreigner's argument. Compared with modern Western paintings, which are devoted to repainting the old and making new ones, making waves, the evolution of Chinese classical paintings has never been turbulent. Xing is a super-stable state of continuous reproduction. If there is a difference in style and painting style, it is only slightly different from person to person, and changes slightly from time to time. If the word "Yixun" is not derogatory, it is actually It is close to Taoism's doing nothing and letting nature take its course.The revival of the traditional Chinese painting revolution within a hundred years was actually coerced by the passive and violent Westernization movement. The external factors were too complicated, and the internal factors gradually lost the possibility of mechanical change. The reasons for this are unclear.In fact, the "disaster areas" and "mistakes" of the Chinese painting revolution are mostly in the figures and landscapes. The relatively closed and static space of the traditional flower painting genre seems to have little room for the Chinese painting revolution. Although it has been declining for a long time, it is not There are gaps that are difficult to bridge. Peng Wei probably didn't think of these principles at all, and she didn't care about them. As I watched and picked on these works that I hadn't finished yet, I still haven't escaped the existing routines of new Chinese paintings. All kinds of traditional "rhetoric" in the field, but what is valuable is that the bones and colors can be matched with each other, which is quite aura.Some of them depict official kilns in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. They go outside the topic and use porcelain utensils as still life settings. Outside the scene, picture-in-picture, they inadvertently touch on the concept of "ready-made products" in paintings.However, the recent ink stone and peony series, with large scale and increasing difficulty, can gradually open up the situation, and the appearance is elegant, and it is beginning to converge with the painting style of Ming and Qing Dynasties. It is obvious that the author has actively interpreted and practiced traditional flower paintings. The "stylistic" and "syntax" are rare among freehand flower painters of the same age. The whole set of rules on paper requires hard work and a long-term plan.In my opinion, since the author is a master of the painting path of his predecessors, he should look at He Lian, Lan Ying, Wang Guxiang, Sun Ai, Lu Zhi, Tang Yin, Yao Shou, Zhang Xun, Wang Yuan, and even Qian Xuan in order. If the painting environment is based on the sincerity that is impossible but longing for it, it can be absorbed from the immediate writing, and the essence can be learned through imitation. After a long time, it is unknown whether the length of the painting can be unexpected, and it depends on whether the author can suspend the difficulty from now on. , caring about character, and then visiting the source of the tradition of flower paintings in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, so perhaps it should be a right path in the opposite direction. But this is all for later. At Peng Wei’s age, the road to painting will be long. Since the Song and Qing Dynasties, a large number of jewels and jade works left behind in Chinese flower paintings have recently been revealed in the new edition of the album. The wonderful purpose urgently needs to be recognized respectfully by people today.The legacy of the traditional Chinese painting revolution is not harmful to the tradition, but in the eyes of appreciation, it is lost from generation to generation. The annihilation of the tradition seems to be inevitable as the theory of the traditional Chinese painting revolution says. Now we can use Peng Wei's first work to discuss it from the sidelines. In order to argue the truth, just for a little surprise: the transmission of traditional painting from generation to generation is really tortuous and unpredictable. The so-called old trees and green branches, old gardens and newcomers, in front of me, even if the author has only just dabbled in the traditions of the Qing people, I I think it is also gratifying, and it can be expected. January 2002 When Mallarme proclaimed that "the world returns to books", French literature represented by Alexandre Dumas and Balzac was already at the end of the narrative tradition of "omniscient viewpoint" in novels, and modern literary pioneers like Mallarmé were no longer in their positions. Zhi uses novels to describe the "world", but he simply points out the ambition of traditional novels to construct the "world" with words. Painting, as early as several centuries ago, used the perspective method and a set of depiction techniques created in the Renaissance to declare that the visual function of an oil painting is like a "window". Looking out from this window, we see "Big Thousand Worlds".In the 17th and 18th centuries, European painters went on to invent the "viewfinder frame", which pre-established an accurate and unmistakable observation method for photography born in the 19th century. In the 20th century, the viewing tradition of Westerners relied on a series of technological inventions, from photography to film to television, which not only collected all the "world images", but also occupied the world with its brand-new visual culture--today, when there are televisions all over the world When hundreds of millions of viewers in the world are sitting at home, watching current affairs news from countries around the world, who will appreciate the "viewfinder frame" and think of the clever but outdated metaphor: "A painting is a window"?People just stare at the TV screen and let any image on it keep telling our eyes: Behold!The war in Vietnam, the famine in Somalia, the astronauts who landed on the moon, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the thick smoke of "9.11"... The laughter of family members, the ringing of the phone, and the sound of cooking in the kitchen sometimes interrupt our watching in front of the TV ceremony.According to Europeans, all modern people in front of the TV are idiots, and the TV is called "the idiot's lantern".We turn off the "lantern" at will, and in an instant, we return from the world of TV to the world of daily life, eating, chatting, turning off the lights and going to bed, or the TV remains on, just as we continue to live.The American painter Fisher once described such a scene: a pair of lovers who are turning over and making love stretch out an arm towards the TV and change the channel. Make a serious look around the counter and the entire home environment? TV is one of furniture, and furniture means life.We are shocked by the disaster thousands of miles away on the TV screen, but the TV always reminds us that we are in our own living room, and the living room is safe.And the terrorists who created the disaster—such as the planners of the "9.11 Incident"—deliberately reserved corresponding time in the attack plan of the World Trade Center Twin Towers, so that the media could spread the disaster images to the whole world, through the TV screen— —Isn’t the screen like a window—to inform the billions of eyes of human beings, which are the billions of eyes that have been subdued by media culture for more than half a century. Now, the painter Weng Yunpeng's "Image and Landscape" series actually touches the eyes in front of the TV, just like moths fluttering close to the eyelids. Our eyes are slightly distracted by it, so we see the surroundings of the TV screen. During the highly mature period of painting history, interesting "picture-in-picture" appeared in both Chinese and Western paintings. In the 14th century, Zhang Yu's "Title of Ni Zan's Picture Scroll" painted exquisite landscape paintings on the screen behind Ni Zan. The meaning of a high-lying celebrity of the previous generation is naturally to show the long-standing tradition of celebrities in the painting and the picture in the picture, but it unintentionally involves the relationship between painting and painting itself.The "picture-in-picture" that was popular in Europe in the 17th century aims to reveal the relationship between painting and viewing.It was a batch of works depicting the magnificent interior of the palace gallery. In the pictures, famous European paintings at that time were placed layer by layer on the walls, floors, and ceilings.The significance of these works does not lie in the exquisite depiction skills of the "picture-in-picture", but to imply and confirm those "people" who are not in the picture: they are the viewers and owners of those famous paintings. The "world" in these paintings is divided into several smaller "worlds", and the "painting" in each painting is a "window" in the "windows".The definition of the window is "four sides". The so-called pictures of the world—whether it is past paintings, or modern photography, film, and television—are all framed, demarcated, and intercepted by these "four sides", and then presented as " a corner of the world.And the viewers in front of the TV are nothing more than sitting in billions of corners of the world, thinking they have seen the world and sharing the images of the world. Only when the TV is turned off, we bid farewell to the "world" temporarily and return to respective corners. Painting cannot be "closed", unless we look away, painting is always "looking" at us.In all the pictures of Weng Yunpeng, every TV is turned on, and our eyes are focused, and our eyes are all confronted with double worlds and double problems in these works: are we watching TV programs or Looking at the scenery around the TV?Is the author inviting us to watch TV, or to look at a painting? ——On the side of the deserted road in the suburbs of Beijing, Samaranch is about to announce the city that successfully bid for the Olympic Games; in the shabby boats in the water town, smoke billows from the World Trade Center in New York; Thighs out – we’ve already “seen” or “learned” all of this from a TV show, it’s just a public image already stored in the public memory, it’s not news at all, so these images are not works themes and protagonists.Who are the protagonists? They are invisible "characters" in the painting. They are both absent and present. They are us standing in front of the painting and casting a glance.The author deliberately arranges for us to encounter those images of the world again, and recognize ourselves and the world around us and under our feet from these familiar images.He erased everything, and he didn't have to draw any viewers. When we see these pictures at a glance, we are the viewers. Therefore, the author is not depicting TV, but "we are watching TV", he is not even painting a picture, but It is the painting "We are looking at the painting". Are we really looking at the painting?Out of the instinct of viewing, we will definitely focus on the TV screen, which is the "focus" of the picture, but the instinct of watching paintings immediately reminds us that the TV is just one of the "props" of the picture, and what we are facing In fact, it is a "landscape" with a TV set parked.However, if the TV is removed, these crude and ordinary scenes will lose the reason to be favored by paintings. They are really not worth seeing. People put a TV in between, just to watch programs about the world. In other words, as long as the TV Being enlightened, we are "turning a blind eye" and "turning a blind eye" to the real world we are in. Perhaps this is the theme clearly hinted by the author. But an intelligent opinion would say that photography, film, and even television productions can all deal effectively with this subject, so why should the author resort to traditional and outdated realistic painting? This is an irrefutable opinion, and it is also the profound paradox contained in the "Image and Landscape" series. We should remember that when Europeans described "picture in picture", photography and television had not yet been born, and people regarded painting as the storage place of "world". Before the 20th century, some functions of painting were equivalent to today's "world". media".In the viewing experience of today's media age, is there any value in the traditional function of knowing the world in paintings?If so, what is it?Perhaps Weng Yunpeng's works can be regarded as an answer, perhaps, he has given more complex and confusing questions. The "four sides" of the TV set are equivalent to the four sides of the old oil paintings.The TV screen has always been a "window" for disseminating world images. When the four sides of this "window" are framed by larger four sides, the news images on the screen are also placed in the same situation of "picture-in-picture".As far as I can remember, as early as the 1960s, the American photographer Friedland took a large number of black and white photos. The scene of each photo is a corner of a home, hotel, office or public place, and each photo The center of the show is always a TV that is turned on, just like the picture depicted by Weng Yunpeng. Same purpose?Wait a minute, this matter should be "different work" and "same song" - the tool in Friedland's hand is not a paintbrush, but a camera, which is a "machine" like the TV set he ingested. Therefore, his works It is the "image in the image", the tools and means of the two are homogeneous, just like the hand-painted painting with the same object and method of depiction, which produced the "picture-in-picture" in the 17th century. Many films and TV works have repeatedly shown televisions and people "watching TV", regardless of the concept and subject matter, it is still "an image within an image".Now, Weng Yunpeng has forcibly incorporated "media images" into paintings, and has drawn a group of works that can be called "images in paintings". So far, the concepts of hand-made paintings and media images have been at least visually confused or even stolen. Changed: In his paintings, the "television images" are all fake, painted with oil paints, but they are real, because there is indeed a "television" in the picture, our eyes will not Recognize it as something else, just as we "recognize" faces in portraits and "smell" the fragrance of fruits and flowers in still lifes. Here, once again Magritte's famous formula—"This is not a pipe"—is confirmed, and then challenged: our eyes still "believe," or, more precisely, "agree" that it is A "television", with which we still acquiesce and cooperate with the old painting tricks. It's an intimate and eerie picture.When Weng Yunpeng brought heterogeneous media images into paintings, the "media" seemed to be "depreciated": after being reduced in the scene depicted by the author, it became the "code" of the picture and the "copy" of itself, which is different from the Painting is "equalized" and is only a part of it; but painting does not seem to be "appreciated" because of this. The situation may be as Roland Barthes said: painting in the media age has become a visually suspicious thing.Due to the intervention of television, these paintings confirmed the hegemony of media images: in the landscape, it is so small, so abrupt and ridiculous, but it is still the main, even the only "speaker" in the picture, and the surrounding scenery cannot Sharing its sense of superiority, we move our eyes between the scene and the TV, and finally admit that every scene the author chooses—rough, familiar, trivial, intimate, and full of evidence of our lives inscribed everywhere—depends on the TV Otherwise, these scenes can hardly claim to be a "painting". The author should be grateful to the "media", it is the TV that made him "discover" the "landscape" around us: this is a batch of landscape paintings in the media era, the difference between "world" and "local", "time" and "current events" The overlapping of each other is in a state of both negation and affirmation in the picture. This state completes this batch of landscape paintings, and the masters of this landscape are us. 我们应该感谢“绘画”，当电视机的四边被框定在绘画的四边之内，我们得以从绘画的立场解读“媒体”的传奇与虚幻。这批作品生动而有效地将媒体影像置于绘画图像的空间——那不过是杂物与空地上的一束光亮，要不是绘画使之收敛，我们的目光就总是被电视屏幕所支配，成为媒体影像的无条件的俘虏，现在，我们在这批风景画面前，重又成为观看的主人。 而绘画也该感谢媒体：当它接纳了媒体的影像之后，便不再有理由被认为是失效的视觉文本，它因此确证了自身的价值，这价值，就是绘画依然能够调节或校正我们的观看本能，使之不至于在媒体时代过度迷失；媒体，自然也该感谢绘画：提供“真实”原是媒体的承诺，唯在它被绘画“贬低”之后，这才凸显了不同世界之间的真实的距离，这距离本身，反而要比电视屏幕所能提供的“真实”来得更真实。 遥远的世界与我们的世界，媒体的世界与绘画的世界，在翁云鹏的画面中交相重叠了，“世界”，经由二者的重叠同时向我们呈现各自的幻象与真相，提醒着我们与世界、世界与我们的关系。我们应该对“观看”抱以适度的怀疑，以便维持我们对自己的眼睛的信赖，因为绘画仍然值得信赖——这批作品可能还在提醒另一项连作者也可能忽略的事实：绘画的诞生始终取决于我们的双眼，而所有摄取影像的高科技镜头，即便再精确，至少到目前为止，还是“单眼”的器械。 2002年2月2日 series 欧洲还是老样子。欧洲的老样子，我何以知道呢——从巴黎经比利时进入荷兰，行程半天，火车穿越国境，景色变，居然天色也变：法国壮美、比国沉郁、荷兰旖旎。到得阿姆斯特丹，看那雨光云翳，竟与17世纪当地风景画毫无二致。数日后造访哈尔斯终老的哈勒姆郡，唯见旧街俱在，屋舍俨然，卵石路间的青苔，酒馆瓷砖的幽光，还有北欧少男少女腴白面颊上的两团赤红，无不十足“荷兰”。 一方水土养一方人。徜徉北欧才几天，我就想：这样的国度不出霍贝玛维米尔，实属天理难容，也才感悟两百年前丹纳写在《艺术哲学》里的论见，实在质朴而有洞见。 董其昌的“南北宗”说，与丹纳艺术论不是一个意思，但山水画的吴派皖派浙派，及扬州八怪金陵八家，也还以地方入论，大致名实相符的。前数年去看烟波浩渺富春江，想黄公望若放逐陕甘宁，谅必技穷。纽约博物馆藏宋人《胡笳十八拍》，那作者要是发配闽粤，则描绘北地大荒的笔意，也将损失净尽了。 不过以上意见在当代中国画坛谁人要听？虽则华夏九州至今方言喧哗而民风犹存，可是中国艺术家岂肯落后于“时代”。短短二十年，美术圈时风异变之速，犹甚于光阴：莫说“绘画”早经落伍， 便是“装置”之类，近年也为“行为”艺术家所耻笑。去年的成都双年展号称“架上架上”，分明呈露“绘画”的据守之状，而今秋广州三年展，绘画仅占小半，再过六年九载，绘画的比例谅必更其削减吧。 也好，变化速，证明活力盛，只是中国本土艺术家成千上万，能够与“世界接轨”而握手言笑者，毕竟是少数中的少数。散在各地各省的“绝大多数”，想来仍在“架上”或桌面低头涂抹吧。落伍是太落伍了，而且画什么？怎么画？画成之后，又如何讨得当代评论家一句半句的敷衍或说法？虽然单是“绘画”一项，今亦多有似是而非的分支：表现，抽象，观念，卡通，玩世派，唯美派，工夫派，极简派……唯“反映生活”的“写实”一路，即前半个世纪中国油画的正源与大宗，颓然失势了。 “坚持现实主义”之类叫嚣余音，偶或听闻，岂知事物而须“坚持”者，情形已经不妙。How to do it?官家的期刊展览固然仍是一方地盘，连这地盘也难攀附挤入而竟兀自“坚持”者，就大约是格外老实迂阔的傻汉，最近给我撞见的四川美院陈安建，正是这样一位憨人。 事情从头说起：今春，罗中立同志将我叫到川美捧场，所捧者，即昔年川美77、78届诸位英雄儿郎——重庆，是我旧游之地，川美好汉，更是多年故交，我于是慨乎其行。抵达当夜，纪念展开启。正厅作者名姓一律如雷贯耳，可是几幅当年的旧作仅以照片展示，近作则件件面目全非，同我们所熟识的四川油画风调，难以衔接对照了。惊艳之际，意下不免有所失落：我是来怀旧的，怀那川美80年代初叱咤风云之旧，但墙头的新作提醒我：二十多年过去了——我自己的新作不也面目全非，使当年谬赏的若干同好大失所望么？亦且川美老兄毕竟在本土一路变化，我在域外的涂抹，何足道哉。 到得二三楼展厅，作者名姓渐次陌生。游目四顾，就看见了陈安健色浓味咸的系列，不料这一看，好比酒席间尝一口当地土产的榨菜，我这才感觉自己分明到了四川。 论资格，陈安健是属“前辈”，与77、78级川美弄潮儿同届同窗；论现状，则除了一大堆画作，了无功名——这些，原不可怪，我所诧怪者，是在当年川美风云际会而风流云散后的今天，这位老兄居然将自己反锁在二十年前四川“乡土写实”的美学藩篱内，冷饭热炒，孜孜。那天，我仔细观看他的每一幅画，不禁有所感动，有所感慨了。 不消说，这批作品触目地过时、次要、边缘，画面平凡晦暗，休想给当代评论话语提供耸动新颖的说法，即便在二十年前，也必淹没在同代作品中——这些画既不见武斗现场的戏剧性，也没有青春主题的诗意：老茶馆、老茶具、老茶客，加上“照相写实”手法——如此而已。当年由罗中立率先取用的“照相写实主义”，在系列中熄灭了宣言般的英雄气息，作者仅以傻瓜机式的快照摄取茶客姿影，同时，以“照相写实”忠实而琐屑的技术，一五一十描摹着他们的面相与神态。 过时了，“照相写实”即便在中国也过时了，一如老茶馆正被无情而有计划地逐出都市的历史。陈安健的“照相写实”画面，就像在新城区映照之下更其寒碜的茶肆旧楼，又好比隔宿的茶水，余温寡淡，与茶主同其凉热——系列的斑斑细节，一望而知乃出自当地熟客的目光：人们饮茶、打牌、逗鸟，或者躺倒酣睡，没人注意他，偶尔，是一位女孩与作者隔座打量，半边脸融化在屋梁投射的天光中，状若发呆，稚气的面庞与老茶肆适成对比，这女孩的在座，暗示着古老茶馆的岁序延绵至今，而那少艾的目光也就迎对着画前的观众，使我们一时也成为座中的茶客。我们可能会同意：国中零星可见的“风情画”，大抵是矫饰的，低层次的自然主义，陈安健笔下的茶客百态则无不蒸发着真的市井气，因他自甘于做一位蜀乡的市井——茶客就茶，并非钟情于饮，而是与老茶馆世世代代朝夕旦暮的日常氤氲相厮守；重庆茶客陈安健，就是这样一位无可救药的地方画家。 丹纳笔下欧洲各国的古典宗师，当年岂不都是“地方画家”，孜孜，描绘着当地的风神与人文，从不想到域外的“世界”。他们的作品何其肥沃饱满，为盛极一时的世俗精神与文化土壤所滋养——中国眼下的情形，则世俗精神尽归之于宴乐，而文化土壤早已断失文化的根蒂，以致“风俗画”这一深植于“地方”的创作品类，尚未茁育即乏人问津，自行萎谢了。陈安健的作品不免背时而孱弱，因他的画道实在很孤单：他是对的，中国各地原该包孕多少本乡本土的风俗画；但他又是错的，在当今全国上下争相标榜的“新时代”，他的目光与思路，居然逡巡于山城茶馆的市井小民，见不到半点“与世界接轨”的踪迹。 西方现代艺术之盛，冠于世界，可是欧美诸国至今尚有千百位我们所不知道也看不起的地方画家，专注而快乐地画着自己那块小小的“地方”。我十二分厌惧怀斯的画，可是他近于病态的乡情毕竟是他作品的灵魂；实话实说，中国绝大多数地方画家的美学路数与生存处境，同欧洲前几个世纪没有什么差别——我们无不景仰的维米尔，一辈子没有走出过他的故乡。多年前，当我徘徊米勒个展，看他在自家村庄画到老死的逾百件作品，念及我两次造访高原不足一年的浮光掠影之作，万般羞惭，也才警醒中国油画百年，有哪几位油画家终其生而热情描绘着自己的故乡。 故乡不等于艺术。有时，故乡是艺术家的怨地，可是每一位艺术家都有自己的“原籍”与诞生的“地方”。中国油画原亦不过起于江南吴越的几位“地方画家”，然而时代变脸，时代太匆忙，由不得画家专情于生养之地，而今唯见众人引颈翘望子虚乌有的所谓“国际化”——我们早该开眼而博大，与人“接轨”，也使人与我“接轨”吧。可是去国久长，回归邦土，我看见中国许许多多好地方，而中国一地之大，犹胜欧洲一国，我们成千上万一时半宿跳不出地方的“地方画家”，果然在自己的地盘上无事可做么？难矣，如今遍中国星罗棋布的省、市、县、乡，岂不都在汲汲乎整容毁容，改头换面“国际化”。 我确凿记得那天在陈安健的画前这才自觉来到四川，怎么说呢，就好比去年站在维米尔画前，于是身在荷兰。这两位老兄的画境岂可相较？ !但姑且将这对照降到最低层次：借取时髦辞令，我们不是要追究艺术家的“文化身份”么，很好，什么是我们大家抹之不去的文化身份呢？咱们别谈文化吧，单论身份，那么，这两位同志就都是不折不扣的“地方画家”。 要是如此对照仍嫌牵强，或者，我们且来听听蔡国强同志怎么说，这位满世界爆破开花的福建泉州人在上海国际双年展的告示板上坦然宣称：我是一位地方艺术家！ 2002年9月 当大山子798工厂被艺术家们改造成“北京苏荷”之前，早在2001年，崔国泰即率先租用了昌平旷野间一座被废弃的大厂房——长二十五米，宽十五米，地面至屋梁高十米——他沟通烟囱，手砌壁炉，围起沙发，开响音乐，然后天天振臂作画，向数十幅大布面投掷浓厚的颜料。 恐怕有几十位流落京城的艺术家造访过他的厂房。每次，国泰在炫耀他霸占的空间时，必定点燃壁炉，得意观察着熊熊炉火怎样点燃同行们渴望大画室的雄心——虽然中央美院雕塑系部分老师较早租用了798厂房，但我愿意相信，是国泰的个案刺激了许多北京同行日后寻求厂房的想像力。 2002年，当第一批京城艺术家进驻798工厂时，崔国泰却被撵出了自己的画室：厂房所在的数百亩土地，早就卖给了开发商。 那里很快被夷为平地。一年后，在天通苑某间公寓里重起炉灶的崔国泰仍然不能忘怀他心爱的厂房，凭着记忆与照片，以他惯用的黑白二色，他在巨大的画布上重新画出他失去的宫殿——庞大、空旷、嚣张、凄凉，画架兀立着，吊灯被扯短了电源，阳光射进大窗户，一只秃鹫——也许是鹰——站立在折损的窗框上……在画了将近四年的抽象画之后，记忆与怀想将国泰带回具象，他知道，唯在具象的画面中才能重温旧梦，如鬼魂般回到厂房，继续游荡。 但那是他私人的记忆，有一天，这私人记忆在国泰心中豁然唤醒了国家的记忆：在他故乡辽宁省，远自上世纪初即由日本人、苏联人相继构建，并在1949年后由国家发展成庞大重工业基地的“铁西区”无数厂房，在新世纪之初也被时代无情抛弃：千万名工人下岗失业，亿万吨计的设施与厂房群逐年拆卸、正在拆卸，成为亿万吨废钢烂铁——制作两年，长达九小时，于去年问世并获“里斯本”、“马赛”、“南特”、日本“山型”四影展年度“最佳纪录片奖”的大型影像作品《铁西区》，率先见证了此一沉重的历史——哪位中国画家敏感到东北将近一个世纪前，被工业革命所震慑的美国左翼大作家杰克·伦敦曾以题为《铁踵》的著名长篇小说，形容现代重工业摧毁旧世界的步伐犹如铁铸的巨足，无可阻挡。一百年过去了，就像工业时代超越并告别了农业与手工艺时代，今日世界，终于是以电子与信息时代的高科技而超越了工业时代。当年被作家视为超级“铁踵”的重型器械不再担负创建的使命，而是对重型工业硬件施行规模宏大的肢解、捣毁与埋葬。 昔年的工业交响乐沉寂了。远远望去，在一片接一片的断壁石砾间，残存的厂房人去楼空，机车停止运营，烟囱默默耸立，危然而巍然，等待着分崩离析的一天——去岁，崔国泰几度寻到故乡，踯踯躅躅，在无边的废弃厂房群，以镜头或速写向着通体瘫痪的工业恐龙致以最后的注目礼，然后回到北京，在画室里为东北大地的重工业遗骸制作“肖像”。 这批庞大的“肖像画”混合着作者对新旧时代的惊异与哀悼。国泰是一位画家，画室的失落感尤甚于被遗弃的厂房，然而东北家乡重工业厂房群的命运，却为他的创作开启了新的命运：当他逐一描绘这批现代中国工业的伟大残骸时，与废弃之美迎面遭遇，并以绘画证明：消亡的事物能在艺术中获得永生。 我们或许会由这批作品联想到安瑟·基佛的影响，但基佛憬然构建的是二战后一位德国人备受创伤的心灵图景：今日德意志，山川壮美，房舍俨然，六十年前的焦土与废墟早已荡然无存；而国泰描述的不是过去的战场：我们在画布上看见的这一切，确凿无疑，正在发生——我们有理由相信，在他描绘的废墟之上，重建即将开始，但这批伟大的残骸提醒我们：什么是重建的代价。 时代的记忆总会求告艺术，予以挽留。德国人基佛由记忆引领而重现了往昔的文化废墟，崔国泰则脚踏堆积如山的真废墟，为国家工业的明天，提前在画布上确认了关于今天的记忆。 2004年5月17日