It is only when I went back to Beijing after my exhibition in Japan, that I discovered Mr. Gu Yuan had passed away two months ago. People all shall die. My friend told me the news calmly. But for me it’s a big news, because in my eyes, Gu Yuan is a rare excellent artist, and there seems to be a special attachment between us - this is not limited to certain incidents or artworks, but more accurately speaking, Gu Yuan and his art is a coordinate in my idea matrix, like the important “points” on a chess manual. During the several major phases of my art pursuit, whenever there’s a need to “distinguish”, Gu Yuan and his art is something I always encounter. As a question and a reference, there’s no way around them.
When I was still in primary school, I wrote an essay titled “I Love Gu Yuan’s Paintings”. I was imitating a model essay titled “I Love Lin Fengmian’s Paintings”. Imitation is the easiest thing. I can associate Gu Yuan’s Road in Beijing Suburb and Jade Belt Bridge with my spring excursions. I was especially attracted to Gu Yuan’s use of big gouge. Every gouge was agile. This is art.
My home was in the Peking University. During the Cultural Revolution, there are a lot of “Black Five Categories (heiwulei)” in our neighborhood, and I was a “son of a dog (gouzaizi)”.
But I also benefited from the misfortune. Some masters were clearing their old stuff to avert trouble. Knowing that I liked painting, they gave me their art books collected for years. Among them there were German and Russian publications, publications of People’s Arts Factory in the Liberated Area， and the New Chinese Wood Engraving collection compiled by Lu Xun. I got in touch with the early wood prints of Gu Yuan’s. They look rawer than his later works, but were engraved very modestly, just like the figures in the works.
Years went by and I went to “chadui” (live and work in the countryside as a member of a rural production team) in a northern Chinese village. It was a poor village, but the villagers were honest. Maybe because nothing serious happened, people were all very slow and simple in their behaviors, without much change in their appearance, communications or affairs. There were only a few households in the village, so many things were self-explanatory, and people were all matter-of-fact and plain-speaking. Of course there were also government and party officials, but they were “villagerized”. I didn’t bring much luggage there, but in it there were a few art books, and a self-made scrapbook of printmaking works by Gu Yuan and other artists. I still remember clearly that everything in that village reminded me of Gu Yuan’s wood engraving works.
I left the countryside and went to the Central Academy of Arts to study art in 1977. Gu Yuan is a name most frequently mentioned by teachers like Yang Xianrang. At that time, the highest pursuit was to represent the taste of life and ordinary people well. Gu Yuan’s style was especially promoted. We were worker-peasant-solider students with weakness in cultural courses, but we did have our advantages, which was that I could understand Gu Yuan’s art practically in many aspects, because I had lived in the actual environment represented by Gu Yuan. I began to study him, trying to express the detailed situations that moved me in my memories with the language of wood engraving. Mr. Gu Yuan also supported my artistic pursuit. But I discovered later that I kept failing in catching the essence, which could affect even the feeling of an earth slope at the village entrance. I could find that earth slope in Gu Yuan’s wood print, but as I tried to engrave it, it became a different slope. I began to realize how excellent and beyond our reach Gu Yuan is. Perhaps some people’s wood engraving can be learnt, because they are “knowledge”, but it’s impossible to learn Gu Yuan’s wood engraving, because it’s a “feeling” instead of a “technique”. I only knew this after making hundreds of wood prints. Looking at the 2-inch figure in his wood prints is like reading Lu Xun’s sharp language, in them are the true information about Chinese people. I think there’s rarely an artist who can compare with Gu Yuan.
Ancient literati in China were not good at painting figures, and even if they painted figures they were mostly an element of landscape. Then we introduced western techniques and began to become too good at painting figures and outlining them with our own techniques. I once lived together with Gu Yuan’s farmers, but there’s no way I could paint daily life on the farmers in western paintings. In a nutshell, they are both farmers, but very different farmers.
I became a teacher at CAFA after graduation, because I was a good “learner”. Around the year 1982, I had some chance to go abroad for further studies, but such great change would definitely influence my art creation. I was hesitated and asked Gu Yuan for advice. He said: “Your approach is suitable for domestic environment.” For me, his words mean a recognization of my art, and because of that I could carry on my work with full confidence. No matter what it is, as long as you keep digging into it, you would definitely comprehend something on another level. I’m grateful for the outcome that advice at that very moment brought out.
It took time for me realize that although I was obsessed with Gu Yuan’s art, I didn’t understand him, or only understood a part of him. Maybe it’s because you are into something too much that you are satisfied with the sight of it and won’t go deep into it. Like many other artists, I only saw the from-life-to-art approach and modest style of Gu Yuan and the artists of his generation, and tried to remedy my inadequacy with methods like “going into the thick of life”. However, the wish to inherit such approach and style intactly on the contrary metamorphose the experience, which deteriorated into a specimen collection or field investigation that has body but no soul. We took comparison between regions and the old and the new as the most reliable foundation of life, as if those who discovered the difference between northern and southern shoes were those who discovered life. Such satisfaction with partial phenomenon and interest limited creation in the shallow, trivial and narrow cage of the intellectuals, and lost its grasp of the true essence of the life and spirit of our time and the social reality. Furthermore, dependence on such experience made one an imitator of only the form: On the one hand, imitation had become a habit, and one just imitated whatever he or she appreciated, regardless of western or domestic art; on the other, without discussing the discipline and methodology of such experience on the level of culturology and sociology, we cannot apply the essence of it effectively in the new phase of art creation and the artistic revolution that will appear again. Such circumstance had also appeared on the artists themselves who created these excellent works, and we need to admit the limitation.
When I studied at CAFA, we learnt about the background of Gu Yuan’s art from Mr. Li Shusheng’s art history course, “Revolutionary Art”. But at the moment I only took it as a course, instead of something related to my own paintings. At CAFA, some teachers teach art history while others teach art techniques, but I think there must lack a link, because most students still fail to connect the two parts even after graduation. I don’t understand Gu Yuan, because I don’t understand the link, and without understanding the link I don’t understand art. Only after putting Gu Yuan in such link that we could find more information.
It’s needless to mention the staleness of Chinese art before Gu Yuan. The eastward transmission of western sciences, the social turbulence, and disputes in the art circle of the 1930s - the “borrowing from the west to develop the Chinese” branch focused on whether to borrow western classic or modern; the “borrowing from the ancient for today’s reference” branch, part of which continued the “Shanghai School” reform and another part carried out dubious experiment on applying western techniques in China. The mutual disadvantage of these two branches are the disruption between the academy and the society, and the bound in disputes between the proportions of east, west, new and old. Many artists of the Lingnan School devoted themselves to social revolution, but although there sometimes were political implications in their paintings, the artists’ political and artistic identities were mostly apart - they were refined artists when they painted - it was a rare time when radical politics and mild art are separated. The wood engraving movement that took place in the Kuomingtang Area was a special participatory force with its artistic proposition for the people and the life. This branch, due to the directness and urgency of its artistic purpose, took a “directing the knife at the wood and engraved in the blink of an eye” approach. They basically directly applied foreign wood engraving techniques in revolutionary need, without actually considering the language of the art itself. Literati like Ding Cong sharply criticized the social ills, which was basically an individual phenomenon of expressing one’s political attitude in a popular style. Among many endeavors, the Liberated Area artists represented by Gu Yuan have nevertheless made the most effective progress in their art practices which are not for the sake of art. The fundamental theme of art is never the relationship between art forms, or the relationship between art, society and culture, but the relationship between art form and society and culture. The progress of art depends on the development of perception of such relationship.
The art of the Liberated Area originates from social participation rather than the technique improvement within the intellectual circle. It is not an art of political pragmatism that tends to go into extreme details in construction and transformation of the art’s own issues. It doesn’t have the staleness of an old piece of silk, or the dyspeptic trace of a western meal. It is a brand new art that represents the most progressive people’s thought. Because the thought echoed with people’s interests, it was also an approachable art. This is not an individual phenomenon of certain smart artists, but the result of a group of artists’s common work in a period of time, which was based on a new theory. The works might still not be exquisite, but the concept was already precise and profound at its best. It had the conditions and qualities required for a successful artistic revolution. I have been keeping looking for the secret of Gu Yuan’s charisma, and I realized that the charisma lies not only in his unique wisdom and sensibility, but also the meaning of revolution by a generation of artists, represented by Gu Yuan, from the old art that had lasted for thousands of years in China. It is not only because his art reflects a revolutionary movement, but also due to the fact that the artistic revolutionary spirit shared by the valuable artists and their creations is a true “avant-garde” spirit. I never know how to name such spirit. It might strike people as unnatural to put Gu Yuan and “avant-garde” together, but regardless of the wording, there is only one core that is the reform of old art on methodological level resulted from sensitivity to social and cultural situation.
Only when I learnt this that I began to understand Gu Yuan, and what an artist ought to do and is responsible for, and started trying to do something our generation should do and asked myself the question of how to do it: Do we have the clear concept and goal as what Gu Yuan and his generation did in their time? Do we have their sincerity for society and art? I have the confidence to answer these questions, but I know I need to think about it. Only at that time my art began to change and improve. It seems to be further away from a certain being, but is closer to the soul.
The memorial article became to sound like an ideological report. All the above words can be summarized into one sentence, that is how to “inherit the good tradition of our predecessors”. It is a cliche sentence, but we haven’t really done it well, whereas loyal, emotional and formal inheritance might sometimes go off the rails. Treating the predecessors’ achievement or a new achievement with old master-apprentice relationship is a long-time problem. The history cycle may allow us to organize the predecessors’ achievements more clearly, but the profoundness of history always kept a truth in the circular ambiguity, testing people’s weaknesses and superficiality and distinguishing between the acute and the mediocre.
Mr. Gu Yuan has passed away, and my immature view of art might fall into the mist once again someday, but that coordinate in my idea matrix, whenever I need to “distinguish” it, must be there awaiting me.
Xu Bing
Written in 1996 in East Village, New York
(Translated by Lu Yufan)
