Urban Hermit

Geremie R. Barmé

What need is there to be outside the city to really understand?
From a patch close at hand one can clearly have distant thoughts...

The eremitic tradition of China makes much of flight from raucous urban centers and the search for untrammelled byways and remote keeps where the cultivated could commune with the rivers and hills.  Unfettered by worldly cares other pursuits--poetry, calligraphy and painting--could temper the artistic soul and refine the spirit.

The image is a pleasant fiction that was often belied in practice, for many talented scholar-gentlemen found in the city the very kind of hideaway that would allow them to shepherd their artistic talents unhindered while not denying themselves the diversions of society.  The practice was called "reclusion in the city," or shi yin.(1)

Zhu Wei is a Beijing urban hermit.  He cultivates his lifestyle as a city recluse while pursuing his art; he also finds reclusion in artistic themes and motifs of traditional China far from the clamour of the contemporary, all the while accepting within his work the diversions of the life around him.  As an urban hermit the bustle of the marketplace, naoshi, is only as far away as his doorstep.

Being remote from the world is not a matter of physical distance, it is a state of mind.(2)  As the art historian Craig Clunas has noted when discussing the subject of "reclusion in the city," as the pursuit of urban escape became popular, even hackneyed in the 16th Century, writers would claim that "the place where one is mentally alive need not be remote..."(3)

"The place where the mind is concentrated," hui xin chu, is the artist's studio, the homeland of the creative spirit.  Zhu Wei's spartan workspace is located in an undistinguished apartment block in the northwest suburbs of the city.  It is his place of reclusion, a permanent residence benzhai, a space for repose as well as the flurry of activity that sees the artist produce a constant flow of works that record both the world in which he lives and limn a particular vision of a world beyond anything that can be lived.

Zhu Wei also occupies an uncomfortable position in Beijing.  An urban stylite (if one sees his tower block as a pillar of isolation) who does not disdain the company of his own rowdy friends, entrepreneurs and music-makers, he has but little intercourse with the alternative art world for which the city has become something of an international drawcard.  He draws in both similar and different ways.

His work is often the object of obloquy, characatured and dismissed as being too "cartoon-like" and insufficiently painterly.  Zhu supposedly creates works that are little more than manhua ("cartoons") that appeal to the foreign eye and have little to recommend them to those in the know at the cutting edge of Beijing.  His technique, style and themes are trenchantly traditional; he is backward and not sufficiently fashionable, shimao.  This last characterization is the most damning for a culture choked by neophilia.  It is especially easy for others to nullify the art of a painter who shies from dwelling in the uncomfortable embrace, the sodality, of Beijing art society.

In 1920s Shanghai, where it first appeared in the mainland media, the very expression "cartoon," manhua, was seen as being a Chinese neologism.(4)

Although the modern manhua can be identified as a loan-word from the Japanese manga, a term that had been current for some time, the expression actually has a venerable history in China.  One, if not the earliest reference to it appears in a Song Dynasty notebook by the famous storyteller and critic, Hong Mai (1123-1202), the Five Collections of Miscellaneous Notes from the Acquiescent Study (Rongzhai suibi).

In one of his essays Hong describes two birds found in the border region of Yingzhou and Mozhou (present day Baoding in Hebei Province).  The "Xintianyuan" (literally, "He who trusts in heaven's providence"), a type of stork, stands in the water all day long without moving, and waits for fish to swim between its legs.  The "Manhua"--a bird said to be akin to a wild duck-- on the other hand, fossicks around in the water, sticking its beak indiscriminately into rotting rushes and mud without a moment's respite.  "Nature has endowed them with such different characters," the author observes in wonderment.

Another noteworthy pre-modern use of man hua, this time in the sense of casual or impromptu painting, occurs in the writings of Jin Nong (Dongxin, 1687-1763), one of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou.  Mr Dongxin's Inscriptions for Miscellaneous Paintings records the following inscription:

I live on the bank of the Zhe River.  During the Fifth Month seasonal fruits come from the mountains in a veritable flood.  The most exceptional are the plums of Xiang Lake, and a basket can be had for a few cash.  Their sweet juice tingles the teeth, and one cannot get enough of them.  In comparison, the locquats of Dongting Lake are hardly worth relishing.  The season has now arrived and I find myself thinking of the flavours of my old home.  I casually paint man hua some broken branches [of the plum] -- what difference between this and "gazing at plums to quench one's thirst"?

In the autumn of 1927, a group of eleven artists in Shanghai formed the "Manhua Society."  They rejected the various popular Westernized names available to describe their art, and fixed instead on the widely-used Japanese term manga.  Huang Dunqing, one of the founding members of the association, claimed that by setting up their group this clutch of cartoonist had "officially introduced the word manhua to China, initiating thereby a process for the study of both the theory and technique of this art form."

Bi Keguan, an historian of the Chinese manhua, suggests that since few of the artists in the new group had received a formal art education, their work went generally unrecognized by the established art world, one which included the new Western-style institutions.  He argues that they decided on the word manhua in response to the disdain in which they were held and as a calculated rejection of "orthodox" Chinese guohua painting and its practitioners.  By monopolising the word manhua, with all of its modern Japanese and commercial associations, they were declaring themselves to be apart from an hierarchical art scene that had no place for them.

There was, however, another school of manhua painting, one championed by both scholar-literati artists like Chen Shizeng (d. 1923) and the Japan-educated Zhejiang painter Feng Zikai (1898-1975), renowned since the debut of his art as the creator of "Zikai manhua."  Feng offered the following interpretation of the expression, and it is one worth considering as we contemplate Zhu Wei's work:

The impromptu painting is rich in the sentiment of the brush and mood of ink bimo qingqu, while the cartoon or caricature is merely concerned with satire and humour.  The former is created with few brush strokes, the latter is a detailed drawing executed with a pen...   The meaning of the term can be understood from the two characters of which it consists: man, meaning according to one's wishes; and those paintings hua which are made according to such a whim can justifiably be called manhua.(5)

And in his war-time study of the subject The Drawing of manhua, published in 1943, Zikai provided a definition of what he termed the "lyrical manhua."

[I]t is born of a sentiment that has its well-springs in the artist's own nature, therefore it is quite unlike satirical paintings which aim at social criticism, or propaganda paintings which are done with a desired effect in mind.  Such manhua are art because they create a sympathetic response in people's hearts...

I call such works lyrical manhua because they record a certain sentiment, they hint at a truth, for indeed they have no other function.  Superficially such paintings are prosaic and shallow people may find them uninteresting.  Only those with rich emotional lives can appreciate them.  So we claim these are the most artistic of all manhua.(6)

Thus if Zhu Wei is to be relegated to a school of one, to confound his critics and laud him for creating contemporary lyrical manhua would not be such a disservice.  Indeed, to do so locates him perhaps within a tradition that finds uneasy company with the makers of Political Pop, Cynical Realism and Gaudy Art, stereotyping categories that define much late-20th Century mainland commercial nonofficial painting.

End

都市隐者

白杰明

何必远离都市才索问真义？
假如身畔片土已能启发人清远之幽思……

（绝怜人境无车马，
信有山林在市城。）

中国归隐的传统促使许多人远离喧嚣的都市中心去寻觅自在的蹊径以抵达遥远的秘地，在那儿受过教育的文明人可以同山川河流互通有无心心相印。世俗的束缚从此解脱，世俗之外的追求——譬如诗譬如书譬如画——柔软了一颗艺术的灵魂，淬炼了人的心。

这是一幅多么令人愉悦的图景，可惜现实中常常落空，于是很多才华横溢的文人士绅在城市里找到了一种既能发挥艺术天分又不致切断其社会触须的归隐方式。这种方式被称为“城市中的归隐”，或曰市隐。(注1)

朱伟是一位北京的都市隐者。他追求艺术的同时也孕育了作为城市隐士的生活方式；他对艺术题材主旨的选择同样淫浸于传统中国，远离当代之喧嚣，亦孜孜将其周遭生活之脉络纳入作品当中。作为一名都市隐者，哗闹的市井即闹市距离他不过数步之遥。

远离世俗并非一个物理距离，而是一种心理状态（注2）。艺术史学者柯律格曾撰文讨论过“隐于市”的主题，冀图归隐都市一度蔚为流行，十六世纪时甚至成了陈词滥调，文人们每每不忘宣告“心远地自偏……”（注3）

“汇聚心力之所”，亦即汇心处，是艺术家朱伟的工作室，也是其创造精神的家园。朱伟这间严格自律的工作室位于城西北一个不起眼的居民区，这儿是他的遁世之所也是他定居的本宅，在这儿可以闷头大睡也可以畅然作画，流动的画笔下记录的既是艺术家置身其中的世界，也是超越这个世界自身的精镂世相。

朱伟在北京的处境也同样尴尬。作为一个都市修行者（假如把他居住的小区楼房当作孤岛核心的话）他的朋友三教九流，粗人、企业家和音乐人都受之礼遇，同时他却又与这座城市越来越具国际知名度的另类艺术世界罕有瓜葛。他的绘画在同质与异类中游走。

由于不像绘画、太过有“卡通相”，他的作品往往被诟病、轻率归类乃至被忽略。人们认为他应该画些没那么漫画（卡通）的东西，毕竟这样才能取悦外国人的眼睛，也能获得北京前卫艺术圈内人的重视。朱伟的技法、风格和主题都严重地取自传统，他太落伍，不够时髦。这最后一条定性对于一个热衷追新逐异的文化来说简直要了老命。对旁人而言，一位画家不爱在北京艺术界的冰火中摸爬打滚，那么指责他的艺术毫无价值也是轻而易举。

上世纪二十年代在上海，漫画这个词汇首次出现于中国大陆的媒体，当时被视为汉语中的一个新词。（注4）

尽管现代汉语中漫画这个词可视为从日本传入中国的舶来语，传入之前其日文之概念亦已风行时日，但实际上这个词在中国自有着悠久的历史。迄今为止最早提及漫画的文献之一出现于宋代，由著名的士大夫文人洪迈（1123-1202）所著的《容斋随笔》中的《五笔》。

《容斋五笔》中有《狼莫间二禽》一文，说及在瀛、莫二州（今河北保定）之境，塘泺之上有禽二种。其一类鹄，色正苍而喙长，凝立水际不动，鱼过其下则取之，终日无鱼，亦不易地。名曰信天缘（意思为相信天意）。另一种鸟叫做“漫画”，类鹜，奔走水上，不闲腐草泥沙，唼唼然必尽索乃已，无一息少休。文末作者惊叹，“二禽皆禀性所赋，其不同如此。”

另一部更为知名的早在前现代时期提及漫画的文献是扬州八怪之一金农（号冬心先生，1687-1763）所著《冬心先生杂画题记》，这一次该词始有随兴绘画之意。《题记》中金农书道：

予家曲江之滨，五月闲时，果以萧然山下湘湖杨梅为第一。入市数钱，则连笼得之，甘浆沁齿，饱啖不厌。视洞庭枇杷不堪，恣大嚼也。时已至矣，辄思乡味。漫画折枝数颗，何异乎望梅止渴也。

1927年秋，十一位漫画家在上海成立了“漫画会”。他们拒绝用各种流行的西化名称来命名他们的艺术，遂以日文中业已广泛使用的漫画二字定名。漫画会创始人之一王敦庆声称，通过把漫画家组织起来，“正式将漫画这个词引人中国，从而也创立了一套漫画理论和技法学习的办法。”

中国漫画史学家毕可官提到过，这个新组织内接受过正式艺术教育的人寥寥无几，而当时的艺术圈已经承认新式西方风格，他们的作品必然难以被这样的艺术圈所接纳。毕可官又论证道，定名为漫画，既是他们对素来所受怠慢的反击，也是对“正统”中国国画及其从业者的蓄意抗拒。对漫画这个词的垄断以及这个词天生赋予的所有对现代日本的和商业功能的联想，他们等于宣布从等级森严的艺术界退场，因为那儿素无他们的容身之地。

但有另一个地方，一个专属于漫画的领域，是身为学者、文人和艺术家的陈师曾（-1923）与留学日本的浙江籍画家丰子恺（1898-1975）所坚决捍卫的。丰子恺由于他的“子恺漫画”而一鸣惊人，他在论及漫画时提出的一个观点值得我们注意，因为这也同样适用于朱伟的作品：

但中国的急就，即兴之作，比西洋的卡通趣味大异。前者富有笔情墨趣，后者注重讽刺滑稽。前者只有寥寥数笔，后者常有用钢笔细描的。……总之，漫画二字，望文生义：漫，随意也。凡随意写出的画，都不妨称为漫画。（注5）

在战时研究漫画的著作、出版于1943年的《漫画的描法》中，丰子恺提出他定义为“感想漫画”的漫画类型。

“感想漫画”是最艺术的一种漫画。吾人见闻思想所及，觉得某景象显示着一种人生相或世间相，心中感动不已，就用笔描出这景象，以舒展自己的胸怀。这叫做感想漫画。作这种画，由于感情，出于自然，并不象作讽刺漫画地欲发表批评意见，也不象作宣传漫画地预计描成后的效用。但因为人心必有“同然”，如孟子所说：“心之所同然者何也？理也。”故倘其情感合乎理与义，则必能在看者的心中引起同样的感动，而使心与心相共鸣。……

象上述一类的画，称为“感想漫画”。因为它们只是记录一种感想，暗示一种真理，而并无其他作用。因此，这种画表面都平淡，浅率的人看了毫无兴味，深于感情的人始能欣赏。所以说这是最艺术的一种漫画。（注6）

因此假如朱伟被驱逐至这一艺术类型，便能击溃相关批评，亦能赢得“当代感想漫画创作者”之赞誉，也未必不妥。诚然，如此界定将会使他置身于与政治波普、玩世现实主义、艳俗艺术相较之不利的位置上，在崇尚时髦的风气下这些刻板的艺术样式业已瓜分了二十世纪晚期中国大陆非官方商业绘画的大部分类型。

完

注释：

（1）参见柯律格（Craig Clunas）著作《丰饶之地：明代中国的园林文化》（Fruitful Sites, Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China）（达勒姆：杜克大学出版社，1996年）p. 146。其出处文徵明的诗句在柯律格该文中亦有引用，来源同上。

此文写作于1998年10月，作者白杰明当时为澳大利亚国立大学亚太地区研究中心高级研究员，现为澳大利亚中华全球研究中心（http://ciw.anu.edu.au）创会理事兼《中国遗产季刊》杂志编辑（www.chinaheritagequarterly.org）。