大概是几年前，一直从事油画艺术创作，并在油画界有一定影响的刘云，第一次请我去看他创作的水墨艺术作品。我当时的感受可以用四个字来形容：非常震惊。甚至在某种意义上对我来说，刘云突然变得陌生起来，那个我熟悉的油画家刘云，好像完全变成了另一个人，使我必须重新去认识和理解。自那之后，刘云又创作出了一大批富有艺术感染力的水墨艺术作品，这不仅体现了他笔耕不辍的勤奋，更是表现了他在水墨艺术领域非凡的艺术才能。

　　也许我们永远无法说明白刘云对水墨艺术的敏感来自何处、何时，但是，我们可以通过他的水墨艺术作品，看到他进入水墨艺术的起点在哪里，这个起点的艺术意义是什么，以及它又是怎样与在此之前的水墨艺术相连接的。我认为刘云水墨艺术创作的起点是上世纪80年代以来的水墨艺术所形成的艺术倾向，即站在现代文化的立场上，以水墨语言重新解读和表现中国古代传统文化中“自然至上”的观念。很显然，刘云作为较晚进入这一领城的艺术家，充分看到了这一取向所取得的成就，并以此为起点和基础，运用自己在水墨艺术上的才能，创造水墨山水的新形象。

　　在艺术语言上，刘云的水墨，特别是以《梦绕家园》、《翠岭》为代表的纯水墨艺术类型，特别重视笔法的单纯、统一的审美价值，以及墨本身作为一种色彩所具有的视觉冲击力。如果我们从知识谱系的角度，考察刘云的这种水墨语言与艺术史的关联，我们就会发现它来自一种深厚的传统，这种传统首先与清代金陵八家之一的龚贤相关联，因为正是他远接董源，开启了以重墨描绘山水的风气，不过在以萧条淡泊的文人画为正宗的清代，他的重墨风格并不被重视。只是到了20世纪，对四王一类的文人画的批判，才使龚贤的水墨艺术被重新发现，并显示出它的艺术魅力。黄宾虹、李可染作为龚贤艺术的发扬光大者，不仅成就了自己的艺术，也直接影响了后来许多水墨山水画家的艺术追求。如受黄宾虹影响的有龙瑞、范杨等，承接和推进李可染的艺术的则有贾又福、陈平等人。很显然，刘云的水墨艺术探索与这一艺术传统相连接，不过在策略上，他却是以上世纪90年代以来水墨艺术所取得的成就为起点的。换句话说，他不再以龚贤、李可染为其艺术创造的参照，而是直接站在上世纪90年代以来已经建构起来的水墨艺术的平台上，并以此为基础，推进水墨艺术的发展。

　　从我的角度看，刘云对水墨艺术的推进表现在两个方面：一是在把墨作为一种色彩来对待方面达到了极致，从而使他作品中的墨浓重到了能发出光辉的地步，我想这也许与他是一位谙熟色彩的油画家有关系。从唐代张彦远开始，水墨至上的艺术价值观和墨分五色的观念，开创了中国视觉艺术的新时代，但是墨分五色与表达天地万物的形象和境界是不可分离的，正是由于这一原因，把水墨作为一种艺术语言来使用的山水画，从来没有谁走到唯水墨而独尊的地步，刘云在这一点上也不例外，但是我也认为，在让墨，特别是在让重墨本身在作品中最大限度地发挥色彩的作用方面，刘云无疑走到了水墨山水这一画种所能允许的极限。二是在平面空间的构成上，刘云也比在他之前的水墨艺术往前走了一大步。在《梦绕家园》、《翠岭》系列作品中，我们能发现，满幅的直构图，并不是为了展示传统山水所崇尚的高远和深远的错觉感，而是用黑白两色对山、水、雾和天空进行分割，以创造一种几何化、平面化的构成形式。特别值得一提的是，在他那被压缩成平面空间的视觉形式中，一点也没有堵塞、不透气的感觉，原因是刘云只是在画面的整体上强调了这种平面构成的空间特性，但在许多局部区域，他又通过笔墨的浓淡干湿、笔法的错落有致和方向运动，让气韵在画中流动，这不仅使其山水生机勃勃，也使其墨色熠熠生辉。与此同时，刘云对平面空间和黑白对比的强化，也并非是为了创造一种符合西方现代主义形式的样式，而是借用现代构成的方法，打破以往山水画中固有的远景、中景和近景的透视关系，摒弃“三远”的既有成规，目的是建构一种更具视觉冲击力的山水形象。如果我们用中国古代孟子的话，来表达刘云笔下的山水所具有的美学特征，那就是“充实而有光辉”，属于“大”和壮美的审美范畴。

　　在中国自身的绘画系统中，文人画无疑是其代表，而在文人画中，山水画又是一个得到了充分发展，并取得了最高成就的画种，所以，对于后来者来说，面对无数艺术大师创造的艺术高峰，要想逾越它们，或者说哪怕是一点点推进，都不是一件轻而易举的事情。纵观刘云的水墨山水，我虽然不能说它们已经尽善尽美，但他有意识地在平面化的构成空间和墨作为一种色彩而存在的审美魅力等方面，及努力去探索和拓展水墨山水艺术的可能性上，已经迈出了重要的一步。至于他个人艺术历程中的一大步(从油画到水墨)，会不会成为水墨艺术史中的一大步，或者哪怕是一小步，则只能通过他未来的艺术发展才能得到确证，不过我希望也相信他能做到这一点。

　　　　　　　　　　　　2010年1月2日于北京望京花园

　　“Enrichment With Brilliance Means Grandeur”— About Liu Yun’s Ink Painting

　　Zhou Yuejin

　　It was about a few years ago. Liu Yun, who had been engaged in oil painting and had had a certain influence in the oil painting field, invited me to look at his ink paintings for the first time. I could only use two words to describe my feeling at that time: greatly shocked. In a sense he even suddenly became a stranger to me. That the familiar oil painter Liu Yun seemed to have turned into another person forced me to know and understand him again. Since then, Liu Yun has created a large number of infectious artistic ink paintings, which not only have reflected his diligence in his work, but also demonstrated his extraordinary talent in the field of ink painting.

　　Perhaps we will never understand where and when Liu Yun gets his sense in ink painting. However, from his ink paintings, we can find where his staring point is, what the artistic meaning of the starting point is and how it connects with the preceding ink painting. I think Liu Yun’s starting point of ink painting began from the art tendency of ink painting in the eighties of the last century. That is using the language of ink painting to re-interpret and display the ancient Chinese traditional culture “Nature First” perspective from the position of modern culture. Obviously, as a late artist entering the ink painting field, Liu Yun sees clearly the achievements of the tendency. Using it as his starting point, Liu Yun has created a new image to ink painting with his artistic talent in ink painting.

　　In the artistic language, Liu Yun’s ink paintings, especially “Dream Around the Home” “Green Hills” as the pure representative ink paintings, paid great attention to the simple, unified aesthetic value and the visual impact of ink itself as a color. If we study the connection between ink language and art history from the angle of knowledge genealogy, we will find that his style comes from a deep tradition, which first associated with Gong Xian, one of the eight Jinling masters in Qing Dynasty. It was Gong Xian who inherited Dong Yuan’s style, and began the style of depicting mountains and rivers with thick ink. But in Qing Dynasty when depression and indifference were considered authentic in painting, his thick ink style was not taken seriously. It was the criticism to the paintings of four Wangs in twentieth century that made people rediscover Gong Xian’s ink style and showed its artistic charm. Bringing a great height of development of Gong Xian’s style, Huang Binhong and Li Keran not only reached their artistic achievements, but also directly impacted a number of late ink painters. Such as Long Rui, Fan Yang and others were influenced by Huang Binhong, Jia Youfu, Chen Ping and some others undertook and promoted Li Keran’s style. Obviously, Liu Yun’s ink paintings explored the connection with the traditional art. But in terms of strategy, he took the ink painting achievements from the ninetieth of last century as his starting point. In other words, he doesn’t take Gong Xian and Li Keran as his artistic creation reference, but directly stands on the ink painting platform built up since last ninetieth and uses it as the basis to promote the development of ink painting art.

　　From my point of view, Liu Yun has promoted ink art in two aspects. First he uses ink as a color to such an extreme that the thick ink can show its brilliance in his works. I think that’s because he is an oil painter who is familiar with colors. From Zhang Yanyuan in Tang Dynasty, the artistic value of ink first and the concept of sub-colored ink opened the new era of visual arts in China. But sub-colored ink can’t be separated from the image and the realm of the universe. It is for this reason that ink has been used in landscape painting as the art language and nobody goes to the extreme to use ink only. Liu Yun is no exception at this point. But I also think Liu Yun has gone to the permitted limit of using ink, especially thick ink in his works.    Second, Liu Yun has taken a greater step forward in the composition of flat space than those before him. In his works “Dream Around The Home” and “Green Hills”, we can find the full straight lines don’t demonstrate the lofty and far-reaching sense of illusion advocated by traditional landscape paintings, but create a geometric and planar form by splitting mountains, water, fog and sky with black and white. What is particular worth mentioning is that there is no congestion and airtight feeling in the visual form of his compressed flat space. That’ s because Liu Yun only stresses the composition of the spatial characteristics of the painting on the whole, and in many particular places, he makes flavor alive by using wet and dry ink, picturesque disorder and orientation of movement in painting, which makes not only the landscape vibrant, but also the color of ink brilliant. At the same time, for Liu Yun, the purpose of emphasizing the black and white contrast in flat space is not to create a form in accordance with western modernism, but rather with the modern method of composition to break the previous inherent perspective relationships of long-range, medium-range and close-range view in landscape, and abandon the established conventions of “three ranges” to build a more strong visual impact of landscape image. If we use the words of Mencius in ancient China to describe aesthetic features of Liu Yun’s landscapes, that is “enrichment with brilliance”, which belongs to the aesthetic categories of “grandeur” and magnificence.

　　In China’s own painting system, the literati paintings are undoubtedly its representatives, and in those literati paintings, landscape paintings have developed fully and achieved its highest achievements. Therefore, for the late painters, in the face of numerous masters having achieving artistic heights, it is not an easy thing for them to surpass those masters, or even make little progress. Take a general look at Liu Yun’s landscapes, although I can’t say they are already perfect, he is conscious to explore and expand the possibility of ink landscape in the composition of flat space and taking ink as a color as an aesthetic charm and so on, which is an important step forward for him. As for that whether the big step forward in his personal art history (from oil painting to ink) will become a big step forward in ink painting history, or even a small step forward, will be confirmed by his future development in art. However, I hope and believe he can do that.

　　　　　　　　　　　　2010-1-2 Wangjing Garden in Beijing

作者：邹跃进