自南朝宗炳在《画山水序》中提出“含道应物，澄怀味象，言象之外，畅神而已”的美学观点，中国的山水画创作就沿着感性思维和意象表现的道路代代相传，涌现了许多杰出的山水画大家。所谓“含道应物”，是指一种审美创造的精神状态，通过对“道”的观照，进入一种心接万象，神游万物的自由状态。通过与自然界山水的目视心接，感受天地四时的宏观变化，体味山川万物的生生不息，从而澄怀观道，认识宇宙万物的本体与生命，感受到有无相生，虚实相依的形而上的根本境界。

　　在中国传统山水画中，“道”是通过“象”而为我们所感知的，我们只能通过具体的视觉形象去体味“象外之境”，通过超以象外的形而上的表现，进入无限时空，感受人生、历史、宇宙的永恒。归根结底，中国山水画所追求的，正是一种达到精神自由的畅神境界，同时在与自然的目识心会过程之中，体味人生的有限与无限，获得一种“前不见古人，后不见来者”的苍茫的人生感与历史感。

　　友人向我推荐姬子先生的水墨佳作《墨道自然系列》，观后颇以为然。姬子先生的水墨，出自传统，但又不拘传统，来自自然，但又超越自然。在笔墨方面，他能够自由运用积墨皴染，表现出生动大化的云水形象，元气淋漓。但在构图方面，他却超越了时下山水画以自然山水丘壑为构图模版的写实路线，而是自由组合山川万物，疾云劲水，冰川荒漠，其中有日月若出其里，有异光照亮洞穴，有石柱自天而垂。不仅使我感受到亘古洪荒的苍茫之气，而且还产生了现代科幻大片那种宇宙寂寥。间或有鲜艳的斑驳彩色和神秘的线条纹样出现在其中，于不和谐之中令人悚然。总之，我感觉到的姬子先生的作品，其美学意趣显然不是中国传统山水画以人为视觉主体的中观山水或近观山水，而是蕴含了现代人对宇宙认识和反思的宏观山水。进而他的意趣不在山水，而是借山水以澄怀观道，反思宇宙和人类的前世今生。这使我想到85时期的著名艺术家任戬的《元化》和谷文达的一系列抽象水墨作品。这一类作品在那个时期超越了一般意义上的社会学反思，而是将当代艺术的触角伸向远古，伸向人类面对大自然时的感叹生命的哲学反思，因此被一些评论家称之为“宇宙流”绘画。我个人对姬子先生的作品深感奇特，觉得他的作品既传统又现代，既与我们的时代保持了距离，又切入了现代人只重物质，精神虚无，淡漠历史，不思来路与去处的生存现状。

　　在今日物质至上、功利盛行的社会环境中，姬子先生的作品似乎不是那么时尚，也许不如那些批量生产的“中国符号”和“大头傻脸”能在市场上大行其道。但姬子先生的作品自有其“道”，这个“道”就是人的生存尊严，它表现为人对自然的亲近和对生命的敬畏。“道法自然”是艺术家对自然的体验过程中所生发的广阔、灵动、生生不息的精神空间，它与西方哲学家伯格森的思想相暗合，即将现实看作本质上是一个变化过程，是一种永无止境的“绵延”和“生命冲动”，是对有限空间的超越，只有领悟了“道法自然”的真谛，才能给山水画以富于生命力的境界，同时也是具有历史感的世界。

　　2009年5月25日于中央美院

THE "DAO" MODELS ITSELF ON NATURE

A Critique of Jizi's Paintings

　　Yin Shuangxi

　　Zong Bing of the Southern Dynasties in his Preface to Landscape Painting first raised the aesthetic concept that: "The sage responds to things by keeping with the Dao; worthies clarify their minds to appreciate images. Apart from discussing images, art is just a matter of an unimpeded spirit." Chinese landscape painting followed this sensuous way of thinking and displayed combinations of the objective image and subjective perception of the image from generation to generation, producing a large number of landscape painting Masters. The saying that "the sage responds to things by keeping with the Dao" indicates an aesthetically creative state of mind: by reflecting on the Dao, the artist enters a state of freedom where his mind accepts a myriad of images and his spirit wanders freely among them. By means of visually perceiving and mentally connecting with natural landscapes, an artist experiences the macroscopic changes of Heaven and earth and the four seasons, and savors the perennial nature of the life of the myriad of things. From this, the artists purifies his mind to glimpse the Dao, acknowledges the ontological nature and life of the myriad of things in the universe, and experiences a fundamentally metaphysical realm where being and non-being mutually arise, and unreality and reality are mutually interdependent.

　　In traditional Chinese landscape painting, we perceive the Dao by means of the image, as we humans are only capable of appreciating "the realm beyond the image" by means of a specific visual image. By means of the metaphysical expression of what is beyond the image, we enter an infinite space-time continuum in which we experience the timelessness of human life, history, and the universe. Ultimately, that which Chinese landscape painting seeks is the realm of an unimpeded spirit which achieves spiritual freedom while, at the same time, in the process of the eye recognizing and the mind knowing nature, we appreciate the limited and unlimited aspects of human life, and we obtain a sense of human life and history as boundless and "unprecedented and unrepeatable."

　　A friend recommended to me Mr. Jizi"s masterpiece "The Dao of Ink Nature Series" that, after I viewed it, I felt really was a masterpiece indeed. Jizi's ink paintings are traditional but are not confined to tradition; they derive from nature but they also go beyond nature. With regards to the brush and ink aspect, he freely uses brush strokes tinted with accumulated ink to express images of clouds and waters undergoing vivid transformations and exuding vitality. With regards to his compositions, he surpasses the realistic representations of present day landscape painting that uses natural mountains and rivers, hills and valleys, as templates for composition. Instead, he freely assembles mountains, rivers, and the myriad of things, vigorous clouds and robust waters, glacial streams and desolate deserts, that seem to have an inner sun and moon illuminating caverns with an unusual light, and that have stone pillars hanging vertically from the heavens. Not only did Jizi's landscape paintings cause me to experience an ancient and primitive boundless energy, but they also produced that kind of universal solitude that one finds in modern science fiction films. In between some of the spaces in the paintings are bright spotted colors. Mysterious linear patterns appear among these colors, making a person feel disturbed by the chaos.

　　In short, I felt that Jizi"s artworks and his aesthetic interests quite clearly differed from China's traditional landscape paintings that use intermediate or close view landscapes with humans as the visual subject. Jizi's artworks are instead macroscopic landscapes that imply modern humanity's understanding of and reflections on the universe. Further, Jizi's interest is not in landscapes per se, but in borrowing landscapes to purify the mind and glimpse the Dao, and to reflect on the past and present of the universe and of humanity. This made me think of the famous artists of the 1980's, Ren Jian with his "Creations" and Gu Wenda with his series of abstract ink artworks.  These kinds of works during that 1980's surpassed the general sense of social thinking, and stretched the tentacles of the art of that period back to the ancient, back to a time when philosophical reflections on humanity in the face of nature struck a chord. For these reasons, the works of Ren and Gu were labelled by some critics as "cosmic flow" paintings. As for myself, I deeply felt the uniqueness of Jizi's artworks, and I believe that his artworks are not only traditional but also modern. They not only maintain a distance from our own times, but also cut deeply into our modern existence where people only emphasize materialism, are spiritually empty, indifferent to history, and think about neither what came before nor what lies ahead.

　　In today's social environment where materialism reigns and the utilitarian prevails, Jizi's artworks do not appear fashionable, and perhaps they are not as good as the mass produced "Chinese symbolic" and "big and dumb" paintings that are so popular in the art market. Jizi's artworks, however, have their own "Dao." This "Dao" is the dignity of human existence, an expression of humanity's closeness to nature and reverence for life. That the "Dao models itself on nature" refers to the vast, lithe, and perennial spiritual expanse that comes from the process of artists experiencing nature. This spiritual expanse coincides with the thought of the Western philosopher Bergson in that it takes reality as essentially a process of change, a kind of never ending "duration" and "life force" that transcends the limits of space.  Only an artist who realizes the truth  that "the Dao models itself on nature" is capable of giving landscape painting a realm full of vitality that at the same time is a world with a sense of history.

　　25 August 2009, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing

　　Translated by E. F. Connelly, PhD