Notes on Painting

March 2010 Issue，Hi Art

I have written the column for Hi Art by invitation for three years. The world is changing fast, in which it seems that a lot of opportunities are available, but what have left to young people are indeed decreasing. Why? Are the old really excellent, or do the young have not enough chance to obtain a springboard and discourse power of their own? Once I said to Da Mei, chief editor of HI Art and Pang Pang, the executive editor, ‘I will not stop writing the column until the demise of your magazine.’ However, before long they left the magazine company for further development. Indeed, the so called ‘further development’ is nothing but working for other old artists, and I guess that they will come across more difficulties. Fortunately, they are still young, and suffering is the priority for young people. Few of columns I have written concentrate on art specially, because the so called ‘modern art’ has seen its death: it began blindly, experienced cooperation with overseas galleries, and witnessed various biennales as well as expositions, and consequently it has stepped into the auction phase too early. Even worse, collectors and viewers abroad, out of aesthetic fatigue, have been tired of it. Then modern artists and their works have almost experienced the whole transmigration, and they cannot control what will happen.

Artists are also not living an easy life. As the boom of modern arts, they are tortured by various reasons, excuses, theories, and so on, just like mutton roasted on fire. For example, now there are so many charts, such as auction charts, power charts, public-welfare-achievement charts, fashion charts, wealth charts, annual charts and removing charts, and any of them may throw artists into great terror, failing to defend themselves. Besides, charts are different from artistic creation in that the former will not give artists any chance of defending, with the artists also feeling embarrassed to do so, and hence they are basically under the control of others.

Whether art in a certain period is good or not and whether the artists are excellent creators or fools can only be determined by numerous demonstrations by later appreciators, experts and theoreticians after hundreds of years of settling. For shamans, no matter what manners he has adopt, his achievement is determined by the effect of his ceremony: whether he has helped others get rid of disasters, has cured their diseases and brought fortune as well as morality to them, and whether the effect is long-lasting; then only by keeping the achievement for years can people admit and remember that he was a good shaman. In some sense, artists are similar to them.

For a creator, no matter how his works change and vary, all of them can be evaluated from following three aspects: originality, technique and material, and innovation in any of them can qualify him a master. When reviewing modern art in China, all people, with the least academic knowledge and conscience, will trace it back to Europe and America. People who have exerted great influence on China’s modern art are not Chinese such as Shi Tao, Zhu Da, Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, but Warhol and Richter, with the latter having contributed more.

Since 1962, Richter began to draw using photos by selecting, copying and enlarging satisfying ones from about 1000 photos. He does not consider that his paintings are realistic as people say. By classifying abstract paintings into small abstracts, soft abstracts and big abstracts, he classes those fuzzy paintings he has created from copied photos into soft abstracts. In this way he has produced an ambiguous gray zone between reality and ideal, preventing his works from facing the real world directly. According to him, fuzzy photos are perfect paintings: they are autonomous and beyond limitation as well as style in that they have not been modified and hence are absolute; how and what photos express is just what the creator has had in his mind. He has managed to make his paintings abstract and speculative, like philosophy.

Continuing using all materials that have been used for hundreds of years, he has made no innovation in painting materials. Nor has he contributed a lot to originality, though he has created works such as Uncle Rudy and October 18th, 1978. However, on the relationship between artists and society, he has such words, ‘The best thing that can happen to art is going apart from the official.’

Richter’s success lies in his creation of a novel technique which has introduced an aesthetic method that people have not experienced before.

Zhu Wei

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

绘画笔记

《HI艺术》2010年3月号

应邀为《HI艺术》写专栏已经有三个年头了，现在世道变化快，貌似各种机会很多，其实给年轻人留下的机会越来越少。是这些老梆子真的那么优秀吗？还是年轻人还没来得及建立自己的一整套平台和话语权？我曾经和当时《HI艺术》的主编大美还有责任编辑胖胖聊天时说，我会把这个专栏一直写到你们杂志倒闭。话还没说完，他们姐俩已经人走茶凉，另谋发展了。说是另谋发展，其实是又给另外几个老梆子打工去了，我想他们一定会更不容易，好在年轻，吃苦是首要任务。在我写的这一堆专栏里，很少有专门针对创作而谈的，因为现在的所谓当代艺术基本上已经走到了最后一步。从早期的懵懵懂懂开始，到陆续和国外的画廊合作，进入各种双年展、博览会，以至于过早地进入了最后的拍卖阶段，更要命的是，国外的藏家、观众已经出现了审美疲劳，显示出了厌倦，这拨当代艺术家们和他们的作品基本上已经完成了一个轮回。是好是坏已经由不得本人了。

艺术家们也不容易，这几年随着当代艺术热，艺术家们就像是羊肉串儿，有各种由头、说辞、理论等名目被架起来烧烤。比如拍卖排行榜、权力排行榜、公益排行榜、时尚排行榜、财富排行榜、年度排行榜、搬迁排行榜，等等等等，随便哪一个排行榜拿出来都让艺术家提心吊胆有口难辩。而且排行榜不像是艺术创作，容不得艺术家本人出来辩解，艺术家本人也不好意思，所以基本上是任人宰割。

一个时代的艺术好还是坏，艺术家是一群优秀的创作者还是一帮地地道道的傻逼，那要经过几十年上百年的沉淀，再经过后来的艺术欣赏者、专家、理论家的无数次论证才得以确认。艺术家就像是跳大神的，不论怎么跳，跳得好和坏，最后要看你是不是给人家消灾灭了祸，腰弯的直起来了，牙疼的不疼了，缺钱的不缺钱了，缺德的不缺德了，而且以后也不再犯了。如此多少年传下来，才能让人们承认和记住，你是一优秀的跳大神的。

对于创作者来说，不论作品怎么千变万化，怎样花样百出，是好是坏归根结底都要从这三个方面来衡量：一创意、二技法、三材料。这三个方面哪一个有所突破，都可以算作是一个大师级的人物。回顾中国当代艺术，无论是谁，只要稍有一点学术常识和良知，都会自觉不自觉地把渊源追溯到欧美。有两位艺术家对中国当代艺术的影响极其巨大，这两位艺术家既不是石涛也不是八大，既不是马远也不是夏圭，而是不远万里来到中国的沃霍尔和里希特，其中里希特影响最大。

里希特从一九六二年开始采用照片绘画，他每次都从近千张照片中挑选一些认为满意的来复制放大。里希特认为，他的绘画不像人们所说的是一种现实主义绘画，他把抽象画分为小抽象、软抽象和大抽象，而自己所画的这些复制照片的模糊画面被他归类于软抽象。这样，他使自己的作品不那么直接针对时弊，在现实和理想当中创造了一个灰色的模糊地带。他认为，模糊的照片是最完美的画面，它没有任何改变，是绝对的，因此有自主性，没有限制，也没有风格，照片传达的方式和内容都是所想的。他力图使自己的绘画像哲学那样带有抽象和思辨的色彩。

里希特在绘画材料上没有创新，基本是沿用了几百年来油画家们所用的所有材料；他在创意上基本上也没什么突破，虽然他画过《鲁迪叔叔》《一九七八年十月十八号》这几组作品。但是他对艺术家和社会的关系曾经说过这么一句话：“对艺术而言，能发生的最好事情是与官方分道扬镳。”

里希特的成功是因为他创造了一种崭新的技法，带给人们一种前所未有的审美方式。

朱伟

2010年1月16日星期六