Wu: Your works of this series, in the respect of your painting languages, are a continuation of your former works. The borrowing and utilization of the system of traditional Chinese painting languages, such as, for instance, the traditional way of portraying, is, still, observable. The utilization, even, of the popular religious portraying is discoverable. The domination of lines, especially, is your emphasis. The realization of atmosphere akin to traditional Chinese landscape or flower-and-bird paintings, in addition, is detectable in your treatments of the backgrounds. From what source, I would like to know, does the persistence and inheritance in the stability of your painting languages originate?

　　Zhao: Painting language, in technique, depends upon the knowledge background, his/her living experiences and the educations that he/she has formerly received, of the painter. I myself, in my university education, was learning oil painting as my major. The object of my study, then, was the history of western paintings and, as well, the purely Western painting techniques. I began, as my study progressed, to have found, gradually, something that might reflect my inner feelings more closely, something, like a taste, which was to my likings really. And it was to be a Chinese, the thing that couldn't be sanguinely altered, or the thing that had been inherited and integrated in the vein-such is the origin of my creations, and such is the maintenance and nourishment of my thinking system. Such Eastern traditional painting languages are, to me, attractive and I find myself resorting to it when, for a certain time, the Western counterparts offer, in painting languages, to me no inspiration any more. I have been, for more than a decade, perfecting my techniques and trying to master them, in order, with them, to express my ideas more thoroughly.

　　Wu: It is reasonable for you, after more than a decade of explorations, to achieve a sudden success with your oil paintings of a particular "taste," and to impress the audiences with surprises. I still remember that the audiences were surprised by your works when you participated in a national painting exhibition. You gave the audiences a feeling of novelty and renovation by combining the Western media and materials with the Eastern system of painting languages. The appearance of your works, anyway, attracted attentions. My curiosity lies in that you were actually, voluntarily, giving up the system of painting languages as a result of your previous trainings in the Third Studio in The Central Academy of Fine Arts. The reason may lie in that you found it improper for your expressions of ideas but, then again, such relinquishment did demand courage. The extent to which you, with your knowledge background, are addicted to the Eastern painting languages are reflected, in deed, in your voluntary relinquishment.

　　Zhao: It is explicable, I believe, by the cultural influence under which I found myself when I was still young.

　　Wu: There is, in your works, as far as I feel, not only a visual display of painting languages, but also a powerful textual support, an obvious existence of a literary quality, and the latter is what I consider as a more important factor. A kind of literary taste, similar to that in The Book of Songs, is, if we are careful enough, consistently detectable in your works, even from your earliest to present ones. Such literary taste is typical of, and particular about, the pictures in your works.

　　Zhao: It is so. The influence of The Book of Songs, in particular, upon me is profound and is, still, traceable in the pictures of my works. I, in deed, have studied from The Book of Songs, through Yue Fu, to the poetries of Tang and Song. It is natural, as a result, to find in my works the consistency of such influences.

　　Wu: The usual case is that an artist, when he refers to a literary text for visual display, is, actually, paying more attention to the borrowing of the narrations. Literary narration in your works, however, doesn't dominate your description of image languages and, either, your control of the picture after you have borrowed from many literary texts as a support. Your pictures rather impress the audiences with a kind of interest and this interest, perhaps, is one of the vital factors in traditional Chinese art. It is the target of emphasis in the so called literati paintings. Your works are abundant in literariness while, at the same time, free from the narrowness, caused by literariness, in the formulae of narration. Your works, instead, exhibit an individual quality that is typical of yourself. It is, possibly, the reason that your works give, to the audiences, a sense of "novelty." What opinion do you have of the existence of a kind of interest in your works?

　　Zhao: As to the borrowing of narrations-such as that of a novel, an essay, a poem and, ultimately, philosophy, which process is one of gradation-what I borrow in the beginning is something narrative. I, however, don't wish to see my own pictures too heavily narrative so that the audiences shall not be led into a concrete plot. I am, after all, neither an author, nor only a wordsmith. I need, in consequence, to express, by means of my pictures, my feelings which transcend, in fact, any kinds of plots. It, naturally, results in my inclination to focusing upon the interest of my pictures and, then, in my freedom from the limitation of my feelings in a formula of narration.

　　Wu: "Interest," as a word, is not one, in deed, of publicity. It needs, finally, to have a concrete individual as its embodiment. Interest, to some certain extent, reflects a kind of individual subjectivity, a kind of vivid attitude. The presence of interest, therefore, in traditional Chinese art serves as the embodiment of the particular existence of a man of letters as an individual. As to the conception of men of letters, I detect a minute change, in comparison with the earliest appearance of interest in your works. It is a change from the aspiration after a "pure taste" to the approximation to the Chinese cultural context, which, perhaps, is what you have already talked about as your knowledge system and culture background. You begin with interest, then transfer to the life, world and existence attitudes of traditional Chinese men of letters and, then, realize in your pictures the appearance of the most important factor in literati paintings: the condition of the existence of "humanities" and, as well, the description of such existence. I discover, to put it plainly, a kind of life attitude of retreat and retirement, and the exploration of the relationships between humanities and nature in the landscape conception in Chinese tradition. What do you think of your works of that period?

　　Zhao: It is possible that I was born with the addiction to nature, the spirit of hermit hidden deeply in heart, never to be erased. No matter to what stage I shall develop in the future, such spirit of hermit will always exist as a part of my mind. I, therefore, in that period, when I have freed myself from my own emotions, together with such affectations and sentiments, begin to initiate into the relationships between humanities and nature, to express, by expressing the spirit of hermit, the wish hidden deeply in my heart to come closer to nature, which, later, is summarized by all as the idea of "the harmony between heaven and men."

　　Wu: Either in painting, or in literary creation, a Chinese is not only focusing upon the relationships between humanities and nature but, more importantly, making himself expressed under the disguise of nature. Such technique, in traditional Chinese culture, is called "virtues under the disguise of mountains and rivers," which, as a topic, is available both to the Confucians and, as well, to the Taoists, to the end of realizing a balanced personality. Such attitude has, for thousands of years, been imbedded in the DNA of Chinese men of letters and is, too, in your pictures, clearly seen. The retreat of a recluse man of letters, to certain extent, results in the communion that he makes with himself. Only with nature as the media and material is such communion carried out. It is, then, when Zhao is, in her paintings, describing the existence of a certain man that she is found, in some way, to be making, by means of nature, herself expressed. Such existence, both of the body and of the spirit, is to be found, too, in your paintings. Your description is not a mere naturalist one but the presence of the concern with reality is, as well, discoverable to certain extent. The so called "virtues under the disguise of mountains and rivers," in your paintings, is both spiritually and factually significant.

　　Zhao: Every one of us has in our spirit some ideas both Confucian and Taoist. It is a question of retirement or of participation, faced by everyone, who, on the one hand, wishes to retire into the forests and mountains, drunken with nature, free from the real life and at ease to console his own spirit while, on the other hand, needs to face the question of existence and the cruel reality, which, in turn, involves participation. It is because each artist has to decide between retirement and participation that their pictures begin to differ from each other. Different men of letters, on account of the differences between their personalities, have their different ways to decide between retirement and participation, which, as a whole, results in the differences between their artistic styles and languages.

　　Wu: Therefore, I think, it is, for you, not only a question of the men of letters but, in certain light, a question of women. The subject in the pictures of Zhao, as we see, is women and there is no, or little, other possibility of descriptions. Human bodies are the important subject of your pictures. Is, then, the existence of such important subject in your pictures the mere presence of human bodies? Or, is there a deeper significance, such as you have talk about, which is an embodiment of dualities? It is possible, seen from this angle, that it results in some thinking of a certain direction. Why, then, do you never abandon feminine bodies as your subject?

　　Zhao: Feminine bodies, in each stage of my paintings, embody different objects. A feminine body, in the early stage, may embody something simple. It represents poetic and pictorial splendor. A picture gives only a quiet, beautiful form. A feminine body begins to embody more as I begin to experience more in my life. I, in addition, incline to having it represent more things so that, in the end, it may, even, embody the idea of "the unity of heaven and man." It, deprived of many external fetters and social identities, exists as a natural man and may as well embody one. It, latter, begin to embody what I, myself, have thought about society and all aspects of humanities. It is, to me, only a spiritual embodiment, no longer a feminine body. It is an expression and a container of my thoughts.

　　Wu: It is so well that you have such experiences. It is the reason, as I have just mentioned, that you, in the beginning, painted feminine bodies and haven't, even at present, had enough of it. Your works still impress the audiences with a sense of novelty. What matters the most in your works is feminine bodies. Its spiritual contents are becoming, incessantly, richer and fuller and are, furthermore, in the process of transcending. It is another aspect of your pictures upon which further study is needed. Feminine bodies are present, at first, as a kind of interest, as are seen in the postures, shapes and beauties of them, according to the demands of the pictures. They, themselves, are present out of the demands of a concrete man making judgment of his "me." They, as you have said, become, once again, a pure aesthetic need, a pursuit after a kind of relationship with nature, an embodiment of the inter-integration of reification and humanization. It is, therefore, right at this moment that the presence of a feminine body is found and, the more spiritual contents there are in the picture, it is richer and fuller. It is with both surprise and gladness that I, when I see your works again today, find that Zhao has advanced still a step further: the feminine body, as we have just said, as the embodiment of interest has, nowadays, become the conceptual body. That means that you have, in your pictures, developed from the description of interest and shapes in the beginning, to the reorganization of traditional Chinese cultural contexts and, then, to the exploration of the cosmopolitan spirit that begins to emerge at present. I begin to see more questionings about "existence" in the analysis of religious questions in your pictures.

　　Zhao: Now, I have, too, come to "the age of reason." The increase in age has brought about the abundance of living experiences, which help me to solve a problem from more angles. You shall have more angles from which to solve a problem as the focus of your attention begin to shift in the same way as you shall wish, when you have stayed in one place for too a time, to go somewhere else or to mount the mountain to see beyond it. It is at such moment that you begin to desire exploration. It originates in the drives of human nature, the drive to explore the unknown, the drive to seek the origin and the drive to look forwards to the future. You shall begin, in such a way, to inspect, gradually, the temporal of spatial traces with a wider perspective, to see, in retrospect, the positions occupied by humanities and to find, sometime macroscopically, sometime microscopically, that they are, in fact, in polarity. Then, you begin to think about those things. It is at this moment that I find that my previous paintings are no longer capable of meeting my spiritual demands. I need to elevate myself and to stand upon a higher point to see myself. When, then again, you have yourself in your sight from high, you will discover something different. It is like a candle in a desert. You are the guard of it when you are close to it. It is your world and it looks beautiful. When, however, you depart from it and look back at it in a considerable distance, you shall worry about its existence, a candle in an empty, barren desert, a candle of fire swaying feebly in the wind. It is, then again, its real condition of existence. You shall find that its very existence is fortunate, for it may have never existed at all. You shall see more things with those perspectives within and without. You shall find yourself lost deeply in contemplation about the existence of the flowing river of humanities. It is a kind of luck and a kind of coincidence. We are actually fortunate enough to explore the origins of humanities. I, then, begin to think more deeply and more widely about it. I cannot always be bringing visual pleasures. The achievement of an artist, the duration of his works and his art, I feel, depend upon the depth of his thoughts. Your works shall always be only a piece of pleasure without a basis of thought or the ability, on your own, to make explorations. I, therefore, begin to think about the direction that my own art needs to take, whether it should be close to the origins of art, to philosophy or to both at the same time. I should construct a spiritual kingdom in my own ways and obtain some inspirations from it.

　　Wu: It is reasonable to call the forties as the age of reason. The maturity of personalities and knowledge, in deed, is only realized with the gradual advancement of age. It can be seen from your pictures that you, too, are advancing in age and advancing, step by step, according to a certain rule: from the care for the "little me" to, later, the concern with the so called conceptual humanities. It is a progress similar to the development of which Freud has ever said, one from "id," to "ego" and to "superego." It can even be clearly seen. You have started from the line of instinct and obtained, little by little, a perspective of the so called philosophical existence. I am, however, most interested in those religious themes that begin to emerge in your works. Religious questions, in a certain light, are questions of humanities or of the ultimate meanings of the world. Your thinking, at that moment, begins, to some extent, to reach essence. The presence of a process of thinking about the similarities and comparability between Western Christianism and Eastern Buddhism begins to be sensible in your works. From the format in "L'Ultima Cena" (The Last Supper) of Da Vinci, to the conceptual explication of the "The Land of Promise" in The Bible, you are actually constructing an ideal world in your own heart. Would you like to say something about it?

　　Zhao: Since ancient times there have been pursuits after the ideal condition in China. Those ancient mythologies and legends, Emperor Huang in a visit to the state of Huaxu, governing by doing nothing that goes against nature as proposed by the Taoists, great harmony and well-off of the Confucians-all these are the crystallizations of the pursuits of humanities after an ideal condition. Such work as The Tian Wen of Qu Yuan, too, is contemplation of, and questioning about, heaven, earth, nature, society, history, life and etc. It is the same with the Western world. Many philosophical works are a concern with the plausibility of such pursuits after an ideal condition and an attempt to explore the origins. Artists, too, with their painting brushes, are expressing what they are thinking of. Paul Gauguin's "D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous?" (Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?), for instance, is contemplation about the spiritual dilemma and ultimate problems of humanities. Everywhere in the world of humanities, from ancient times to the future, from east to west, origin has been being explored, and ways to solving spiritual problems sought. It is reflected in religion. Art, religion and philosophy begin to get related with each other. Religion and philosophy are the systematization, theorization and formalization of the pursuit. Art, however, is active and uncertain, contradicted to and unified with the other two in the same format, in the same system. Art can be said to vacillate between religion and philosophy. They restrict while, at the sane time, fulfill them three. I, therefore, as I get in touch with philosophy and religion, find something that happens to confirm my own opinions, something that I need badly. From philosophy I learn to think freely, in order to master and understand what in religion is only subjective feelings and conceptual contents. From religion I learn to make use of narrative texts, in order to think of the questions of origins. I find many similarities between Western and Eastern religions. Avalokitesvara and Jesus, for instance, are both a kind of salvation of human spirit. I find in both a kind of entrusting, a kind of opinion of life. I, then, begin, on the basis of what I have found, to construct my own works of that period, to make reference to my own languages of creations and, finally, to construct such an ideal structure. "The Land of Promise" stems out, then, consequently. It can be said to be a land of promise or, too, a peach garden, as properly. Whether it is the former or the latter, it is the embodiment of the sublime.

　　Wu: I, too, have been pondering the same question. The peach garden, the republic and, perhaps, the land of promise are, actually, in a series of gradation: "The Peach Garden" is more the addition of beauty to a picture while "The Land of Promise," to some extent, is a real thinking about the spiritual direction that humanities should take, a conclusion from the discontentment and contemplation of the real condition of existence. One word, "salvation," that you have already employed is a key word. You, in truth, when you are making use of that word, have already entered the field of sociology. You are talking about society. A conceptual expression of contemplation about the present society is found to emerge in your pictures.

　　Zhao: All of those come from discontentment about reality. It is only after dissatisfaction that the strong desire to create an ideal world of one's own begins to germinate. I, in the process of creation, would like my audiences to pay more attention to the origins of my works, such as "The Land of Promise." There is something hidden behind in the backgrounds, such as that in "The Peach Garden," that appears not to be so perfectly beautiful. What lies behind those beautiful scenes is only an appearance of the beautiful which, in turn, come out of a huge pain. Such design is meant for humanities to aspire after an ideal condition, to urge the humanities to make progress. It may have a positive influence upon human society.

　　Wu: The titles, such like "The Nirvana," "The Land of Promise," "Avalokitesvara," and etc. of your works of this series, in deed, express, to a certain extent, your own attitudes. What they make reference to and borrow from is all contemplation from a religious angle. Is it right to say, then, that your reverse thinking originates in our social condition in which a social religion is found to be lacking?

　　Zhao: It is more or less as you have said. It does play a certain role in my works. I may suffer from the lack of religion in the present society and be in need of a support for strength. I, at such moment, can be vulnerable. The process of my creating is one of repetition, one of creation, destruction and, then, again, creation. My creation, I feel, is a kind of belief. I cannot persist without a support from religion. I need it to consolidate my will, to prevent it from destruction. Artistic creation is a spiritual torment. It is in perpetual need of the appearance of new things. A few pages of paintings are far from enough. A system of one's own, something as a whole, is highly necessary. Creation itself, at such moment, becomes belief, belief supports creation and creation, incessantly, confirms, and clarifies, belief.

　　Wu: Art, belief and philosophy, then, are united together. The three, in some aspects, seem to have something similar in structure, in essence. It is a kind of solution to a question when an opinion about society is elevated to the level of artistic thinking. Such solution, then again, is different from a real one in method and plausibility. It depends rather upon a concept, upon our feelings or the relationships between it and our thinking states. Another interesting topic is that Zhao, a woman painter that has her particular characters in her paintings, has not been ranked as one among the feminist painters. Zhao, in fact, has many opinions that can be said, to some extent, to be some of her won feminist opinions. It is interesting that in some of her paintings, for instance, "The Thirteen Gentlemen," some of the feminine identities are attributed to those personae. It is inevitable for you, a woman painter, to be concerned with such feminine themes. Is a contradiction, then, discoverable between your thematic concerns and your explorations into the universal humanities in your paintings?

　　Zhao: There is no such contradiction. It is a fundamental question. I am a woman myself. The thirteen gentlemen are some of the images that I have summarized out of my own living experiences. They are no longer confined to being women only. They are, however, a spiritual embodiment of the idea of "virtues under the disguise of mountains and rivers" as I have already mentioned. They are, if seen from "my" perspective, not women painted by a woman but, rather, a human painted by a feminist painter, or a group of humans, who happen to be women in characters, but are in fact only a "container," and in it is contained "spirit." From the level of humanities, they, therefore, don't exist if to be a man or to be a woman is nature. Their external images express what they embody internally. They exist in nature but transcend nature in spirit. There is, therefore, essentially, no contradiction at all.

　　Wu: An expression obviously based upon the mastery of history of art, too, is to be found in your works of this group. You, in your pictures, show your concern with some of the classical works in Chinese and Western history of art or, rather, a concern with the existence of history of art itself. Your reference to Michelangelo's "Day," "Night," "Dawn" and "Dusk," your borrowing from Da Vinci's "L'Ultima Cena," your inspiration from Botticelli, Manet, and etc.-all of these, in general, to certain extent, reflect your estimation and understanding of the history of art. What a role, then, does the history of art, in your conceptual depiction of reality, play?

　　Zhao: The history of art is a question for every artist, who has his own pursuits and inspirations, to ponder. The history of art, as a clue, is closely interconnected with that of philosophy and religion. The three, therefore, make a tremendous system, in which artistic creation, in a sensual way, finds its existence. When we are faced those masters in art, we can only find a point with which to start and, then, out of the point, a line by which to enter a space of clues. Such understanding can only be realized with the accumulation of time. Da Vinci and Michelangelo are artists to have won my respect and admiration. What I found out of them previously is different from that at present. When I turn to the history of art once again and try to make a new understanding of it, I find something in common between them and myself. It is only at my age that I begin to find that a communion with them is possible. I, in the early stages, had been communing with the Chinese traditions. It is only the recent one or two years that I found that I, upon turning to Michelangelo once again, had obtained what I had always been wanting. Sex, to me, becomes blurred. A woman can exist like this. She should be like this. She was not born to be weak, to need protection from others and, then, to be in subordination. A woman can be as firm as a mountain. She can give, instead of getting, something to the society. "L'Ultima Cena" is, as well, a kind of contemplation. Such contemplation seldom happens to a woman. Why, then, doesn't a woman try to think of such questions of humanities and their ultimate concerns? I, therefore, change them into the lingual signs of which I make frequent use, so that "a woman" may start to think, so that "a woman" may play the role of a savior.

　　Wu: What you have already talked of is inspiring. It is risking for artistic creations to turn to classics for inspiration. "L'Ultima Cena" has been referred to many timed by all kinds of arts. I was, in fact, worrying about you when you told me that you had decided to refer to it for a painting. I, however, upon seeing your final work, wasn't directly reminded of "L'Ultima Cena" at first sight. It was more of your own creation. It shows that you have already integrated that classical work as a part of yours. It is the same with the works of Michelangelo. The images of the four statues in "Day," "Night," "Dawn" and "Dusk" have long had a hearty acceptance. It means that, when we turn to the history of art for inspiration, we get our inspirations only conceptually from, especially, those classics. Essential inspirations are neither to be achieved by every artist, nor to be realized by them at any age.

　　Zhao: I began with "Avalokitesvara" in 2011 and made a series of major changes in 2014, in order that it might express my mind more closely. I would do whatever I am willing to do and say whatever I wish to say, no matter what opinion others may have of me.

　　Wu: Are you satisfied with it nowadays? Will there be a redoing ten years later?

　　Zhao: It depends. There is really such a possibility.

　　Wu: Such, I feel, is the sign of maturity. Such is the most vivid attitude that Zhao, at her forties, have shown to us. She didn't say "I am very satisfied with those works and I will never have any doubt about them."

　　Zhao: I will never do that. My exploration follows a dynamic trace. In such process, when I realize some kind of insight, I shall change or enrich myself. I, with the increase of age, will experience a series of major changes in my attitudes towards the world and towards humanities. One stage shall be different from others and I shall seek to record such changes by means of artistic creations.

　　Wu: It is, exactly, one of my deepest understandings of you. It can be said that you are, step by step, transcending yourself. From the pursuit after an interest in the early stage, to the identification with and contemplation about the root culture as the stage of transfer, to the insight into the ultimate concerns and cosmopolitan values, you are, step by step, advancing, a process that is both real and wonderful.

　　Wu Hongbin, art critic, associate professor, Renmin University of China

作者：Wu Hongbin