The Today Art Gallery in Beijing is showing HEAVEN.LAMP, Paintings by Yuan Wu, conceived and organized by curator Yang Wei: in and of itself it is a mandala, an altar to art. We enter, and are awed, comforted, concentrated, focused, and yet more awed; we slow down, stop, look around us, examine our inner selves, and feel still more awe... Yuan Wu's exquisite paintings break through the limitations of the exhibition space and reach out into the dark blue and snow-white world of Tibet, the Land of Snows. The spectators gradually fuse with the unmoving yet ever-moving circumambulators in each painting. Whoever sees them is reborn on an internal voyage.

　　Paintings with Tibetan subjects are hardly new. They have been accurately summed up as falling into three broad phases: first, the propaganda art of The Great Unity of the Nationalities, their distinguishing mark being singing and dancing to celebrate the Communist Liberation. Second, in the 1980s, after the Cultural Revolution, are those paintings of exotica to which is added the style of the Russian Touring Exhibitions school. Of the two, the former is clearer: those radiantly smiling faces and lively colours are in sharp contrast to the historical facts which have slowly risen to the surface, and not only do they dissemble, but they are also proof of how low art can sink into hypocrisy and sham. I will say a little more about the latter. For historical and political reasons, the artworks in the Russian Touring Exhibitions, along with Russian literature and music of the 19th century, have been revered as representing a Russian Golden Age, and this had had a profound influence in China, yet, if we carefully analyse these works of art, we can see a formula: we see second-rate copies of the profoundly beautiful artistic traditions of Western Europe (especially apparent in painting technique) to which is added, moreover, one subject, which is The Great Russian People. In painting, this formula can be seen in use from Shishkin's landscapes to Repin's historical paintings; in literature, even in that great master, Dostoyevsky; in music, it was employed from the work of Tchaikovsky to that of The Five. By comparison with the mainstream artistic traditions of Western Europe, the simple, crude technique of Russian art were compensated by the importance of literary versions of themes, so the so-called Russian Golden Age can be summed up in one phrase: Big Theme, Small Form. Apart from the 'Russian Story', they added almost nothing in the way of fundamental artistic value to the breadth of the European cultural tradition. Russia had to wait for the early twentieth century Silver Age of Kandinsky and others to genuinely find its artistic self, and that whole generation of Russian artists who rejected their motherland became, against all expectation, the source of the way the whole world now thinks about art. When I think about that period of history, I want to point out that the Big Theme, Small Form formula was enthusiastically imitated on a grand scale in China, too. Post-Cultural Revolution paintings on Tibetan subjects are simply Chinese editions of the Russian Touring Exhibitions school. (Or Tibetan editions.) The subjects of these works each and all take aim at the vast, rugged, majestic, and commanding high plateau, or the clarity of the look in people's eyes, or their immemorial sorrow, as if Siberia had shifted to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and while we are enjoying the exotic Chinese atmosphere the artists have captured, we are not without doubts: are we actually looking at art? Or is this a high plateau fashion show? The technique of the Russian Touring Exhibitions school expertly portrays external surfaces. Unfortunately, though, the high plateau red of each cheek, and the gorgeous decoration of the clothes, when rendered in thick, heavy oil paint, not only get nowhere near the inner soul of Tibet, they actually block it, exclude it. As Yuan Wu aptly says: "They've put the clothes on". Quite right. As I have said elsewhere, Big Theme, Small Form is always and everywhere the mark of weak and ineffectual art. Because the art is weak and ineffectual, it needs to amplify the subject to add value. As a third generation disciple of the Western European tradition of oil painting (Russia being the second generation), China's second phase of Tibet paintings, though it has been enormously successful in the market, is in no way equal to the artistic self-awareness the work seeks. Faced with the unique context of the Chinese market - there is a time lag between the creation of these works and their sale - this late-arriving market success is evidence only of a secular pursuit whose origins are merely skin-deep, even though, while they are creating these works, such considerations were perhaps never in the artists' minds at all.

　　So what is the third phase of painting on Tibetan subjects? Is it merely a continuation of the problematic issues of the past? Or has it solved the problem?

　　HEAVEN.LAMP presents a fitting solution.

　　As I went through HEAVEN.LAMP, I observed that Yuan Wu has a clear awareness of his own artistic stance. This 'stance' is the entire Chinese tradition of ink painting, including the accumulated wisdom of its long and deep classical tradition, as well as the possibilities it holds for the future. What Yuan Wu has done is neither simple conformity to traditional ink painting technique nor simple imitation of any technique from elsewhere. When we look at HEAVEN.LAMP our eyes and our minds are flooded with feelings, but there is absolutely nothing of simple conformity or simple imitation in therer. How did Yuan Wu do it? I have thought long and hard about this, and I must still return to the point of impact that is Artistic Self-Awareness. Yuan Wu has created a type of contemporary Chinese ink painting that embodies the spirit of Tibet. Through his art, those tough and beautiful breathing souls from five thousand metres above sea level leap off the paper and slap us in the face!

　　No-one can fail to be stunned and enthused by his Portrait series. Here each painting is a face, and far more than a face. Old, young, male, female, head up, head bowed, timeworn, pretty, sorrowful, serene...in one word: reverent. Every face has its own unique hues, giving each one its own season, their bulk like that of a gigantic boulder, their pigtails meticulously delineated, the thick ink dark as the Himalayan night: the wind scatters flying clouds from every blank space. Is this a face? Or is it an encapsulation of the entire tradition of landscape in Chinese ink painting?

　　No-one can miss those paired hands, always joined in prayer, always hovering alone in blank space. They don't belong to the faces, but echo them and interact with them to become extensions of the faces. As the faces rest in peace, the hands are raised in salutation; as the faces look single-mindedly upwards, the hands are receptively cupped. The overlap of the subjects and the simplicity of the compositions highlight the expressive power of art to reveal the formal elements that are engrossed in every pair of hands to give expression: line, colour, ink, brush, shading - the awareness of artistic creativity.

　　No-one, faced with Yuan Wu's paintings, will not find one question rising to the surface: in almost all previous painting on Tibetan subjects, what did that indispensable landscape set off and contrast? Yuan Wu has erased each superfluous item from the background and replaced it with a conspicuous blank space. The portraits of devout worshippers, the prostrate circumambulating figures, they hang in a blank space, and amplify that blankness. More subtle yet, on the margin between the person and the space, there always floats a halo, large or small, dark or pale, as though in constant dialogue with existence and non-existence. What are they discussing? The brush point sweeps deftly by, and the years blow away like smoke.

　　No-one will fail to be transfixed by each eye that is created by Yuan Wu's brush! We can't hold ourselves back from pressing forward to look at the tight-shut eyes, deep-hidden in darkness and always capable of darkening further, as if hidden in the flickering gleam of butter lamps, or entirely occupied with an inner vision in the deep dusk; is it terror in that great wide-open eye? pursuit? joy? At times, through the curtain of the pigtail, the white of an eye is awe-inspiringly interposed between gaunt wrinkled eyelids, a non-existent eye recognising non-existence at last.

　　No-one can help noticing that there are many first sketches in Yuan Wu's exhibition, and if they are amassed they will construct a meaningful itinerary. These paintings have all been grown. From life drawings to sketches, drafts and notes in the studio, first thoughts, then to single sheet originals, to a single series, the traces of the originals are the traces of his thinking, as the connections between the Portraits series, the Kneelers series and the whole of HEAVEN.LAMP are, not developed, but let's rather say deepened - the parts are interacting in every direction with the whole, in order to progress towards the completion of this polyphonic masterpiece.

　　No-one viewing these paintings will not feel in themselves the waves of Qi Energy around them: Yuan Wu has breathed that Magic Breath into each one of these works of art - it's almost like a miracle, his paintings are breathing! Whether it's the Portraits, or the Kneelers, the paintings have that genuinely alive feeling of breathing freely. This is the Qi Energy of the soul, or rather, Qi Energy has been transmitted to us through the brush and ink, and we are swaying in its breeze! Starting from the beginning with a masterpiece, the richly coloured Kneeler triptych, it is as if the same person has been magically transmuted into every Portrait, every Kneeler, until the colours fade away in the end, and they are restored to their original form of prostrate human remains. Form is void, then, and this is how humans are curbed and compelled. But, wait, Void is also form: the beauty of art is precisely the accomplishment of an enlightened awakening to the reality of life and death. Yuan Wu has brought the possibilities of ink to life, and through his excavation of that tunnel through his very self, this Tibet that so astounds us not only persists as an external object, but also transforms itself into the quintessence of art.

　　Having got this far, and going back to the comparison with previous paintings on the subject of Tibet, I must say this: Yuan Wu has not duplicated the disasters of Big Theme, Small Form. His subjects have not contracted to the Small, for through a deeply-thought and carefully chosen Few, he has achieved a dazzling intensity - he condenses the dozens of paintings in the exhibition into the two themes of Portraits and Kneelers, the concentrated essence of Tibet and the focus of its expressive power, with all the other stuff entirely omitted! Precisely because he has reduced artistic attention to the topic of conversation, he can concentrate on speaking well, speaking to perfection, and so, Small Form (simple, crude form) has become impossible! What Yuan Wu's works break through to is precisely painting itself, or more radically, I want to say that they break through to Yuan Wu's own masterly grasp of painting technique. In his hands, the very essence of the whole Chinese ink painting tradition is opened up, reorganized, recreated, and reinvestigated. Every stroke has its traditional roots, yet every stroke is different from its past tense in the tradition. There are figures in his Portraits and his Kneelers, but why can't we see them as landscapes too? In each of those faces, in the hair, in the gestures, the postures, if we examine them closely, do they not resemble rocks, mountains, mists, forests? Here, traditional ink painting's meticulous use of ink and brush, line, tone, and mood are in use every one, it is not reproducing anyone else's practice, and the artist's unique control of his effects is everything. When it's subtle, the curve of each single hair has the meticulous finesse of realist painting. When it releases the Spirit, the skin tones and the clothes show brushwork that is everywhere free and liberated. The great blank spaces in the paintings and the hollow brushstrokes that delineate the hairlines are echoing the fundamental injunction of literati calligraphy to Give as much attention to the white as the black; even the tools and materials of ink painting add expressiveness, the brushes, the fine rice-paper, the water, the ink, colour, intensity, force, shading, omission, and the extremes of skill involved in making it all seem natural, these will remind us of the aesthetics of Lake Tai porous limestone, where what us mandatory is the texture of the stone, the visibility of the finest wrinkle, ubiquitous open-work, and a particularly light agility. Yuan Wu's freely-breathing Tibetan paintings come from a conjunction of Chinese ink painting and the Tibetan spirit that seems to have been mandated by Fate and decided by Destiny, and each opens up to the other in every work.

　　Yuan Wu's revelation here is that Tradition is not an empty word, for it permeates and saturates the techniques of every discipline. If you do not reach with all your strength for technique, neither tradition nor innovation will be possible. The essence of a genuine tradition is that it must endlessly re-invent, and produce works that are unique. This is the fundamental point that distinguishes Yuan Wu's work from Chinese Tibet-themed oil painting in the style of the Russian Touring Exhibitions: he hasn't just "put the clothes on", but he has stripped Chinese ink painting naked again, completely opened it up, raised it to an entirely new plane, and at one stroke given new life to both its humanity and its artistic quality. Further, Yuan Wu takes technique seriously, because only through a consummately high level of technique can he convey the elevation of his spirit. When Tibet's unspoiled nature and the spirituality of life in Tibet flow through his every brushstroke, his heart shivers, our hearts shiver. It is the prospect of a higher being that excites Yuan Wu, leads him forward, and makes him raise people and art to an entirely new spiritual plane (another concept familiar from Chinese ink painting). HEAVEN.LAMP breathes on us a truer air, and that is the air of a holy spirit, the air of a holy harmony: with form driven by the spirit in this way, and spirit sought through form, it can be no surprise that both are present! These heights imply depths. I have repeatedly emphasised that every contemporary Chinese artist must possess depth in both thought and art. Strictly speaking, it is depth that pushes toward creativity, and it is depth that is the defining criterion for any artwork.

　　Yuan Wu's paintings lead me to read three levels of depth in them.

　　The first level is depth in life: in the 1980s, the excruciating pain of the Cultural Revolution provoked profound introspection about history and tradition, which was the fundamental sense of the so-called Roots Movement. In China, the fate of the individual has been profoundly intertwined with History, so there is an internalized historical depth in people's minds. Thus reality, very often nightmarish, will give birth to powerful creative impulses. From the 1980s onwards, I have travelled many times through Shaanxi and Gansu in north-west China, been to Sichuan in the far west, written, among other works, the long poem Norlang, which was greatly inspired by my time in the Ngawa Tibetan Region, and though the poem's language may have been na?ve, the poetic impulse it was rooted in, drawn as it was from the excitement of living in a remote wilderness region, aimed to break through the social and cultural constraints of the period. Every life, like a point of convergence, turns the grand narratives of history into the subtle internal heartbeat of the moment. Every artist has no choice but to be returned to their origins as a questioner, probing the "Whose Fault?" for external catastrophes, but being still more vigorous in chasing down the role they themselves acted in that catastrophe. It is exactly the long, slow road forward in pursuit of this questioning that gives every poem of mine, and every painting of Yuan Wu's, the profound bleakness and desolation that is in the marrow of their bones, that discloses the inner high plateau, so let us watch it, as, with the approach of globalized profit, its sea level continues to rise. We are well aware that to do anything other than make artworks appropriate for our age is to fail to live up to our destiny.

　　The second level is depth in the self: if a pain is external, and has not been transformed into internal reflection on the self, no amount of spilling your guts howling about Pain will ever be effective. Yuan Wu's masterpieces announce this: on every pilgrimage, there is only one person on a solitary journey. Transcendence demands completion. Similarly, no-one can be blamed for backsliding. In Yuan Wu's paintings the ubiquitous and ever-present depth and richness (even in the broad shapes of the rough outline sketches for Kneelers) is not so much rooted in the inspiration of Tibet, but rather rooted in the power of his mind. This stubborn power, which absolutely never abandons intellectual or artistic pursuit, is what gives HEAVEN.LAMP the profound implications of a Thought-Art Project, is what it cannot substitute, what it cannot repeat, and is the only thing it can do - the tireless struggle for depth. This quality is precisely what I expect from all contemporary literature and art! So Yuan Wu's paintings are able to breathe only because his self demands that breathing; his art is redemptive only because the first to be redeemed was the artist himself. Only because he has won through to his own soul can he connect with the soul of Tibet. This reminds me of my astonishment the year I saw the Buddha's Birthday celebrations at Kumbum Temple in Qinghai, when the statues of the Buddha are washed: very heavy rain had just fallen as a Tibetan circumambulating on his knees threw himself right into the puddles on the road. In that instant, how contemptible was my hesitation compared to his confidence!

　　The third level is depth in art: Yuan Wu's own pilgrimage is building a pilgrimage route at the same time for contemporary Chinese ink painting. Any living tradition must be rooted in individual creativity, because it is first and foremost a tradition of individuals. HEAVEN.LAMP is clear proof that here man, thought and art are a single unity. Life and thought, having decided the language of art, are confirmed in the language of art - art reveals the depth invisible to our eye as alive in our eyes and in our hearts. If you have the ability to delineate Thought in every brushstroke, does it matter whether you paint Tibetan themes or not? For an artist with unlimited understanding, what place is not Tibet? Where could the artist not be able to construct a stretch of the high plateau of the spirit? One relationship has to be reversed: it is not the subject that creates the artwork, for the artwork is greater than the subject. There is a direct ratio between the challenges of art and the degree of spiritual transcendence. Art discovers reality, even creates it, and so corroborates the self's motivation. In the years I was writing Norlang, its main significance was poetic: it provided the first ever polyphonic multi-level structure in contemporary Chinese poetry, and because of this, it opened up the possibility of a contemporary epic. Yuan Wu, then, has let us see his Tibet, and further, has given us an artistic text truer than reality. The fundamental issue is that of bringing the diachronic world into a synchronic situation, where, to be free of slogans and to struggle with the illusion of time, without messing about with recyclable 'Surrealist' ornamentation, is to firmly grasp the essential Deep Reality of humanity. Like the Buddhist Patriarchs whose enlightened vision encompasses past and future, it focuses directly on the Four Empty Vanities of birth, old age, sickness and death, and sends forth a revelation comprehensible to every living soul. Art is itself a pilgrimage. Every stroke we write or paint is Self-Cultivation, a pilgrimage toward an ever-purer inner sainthood and inner beauty.

　　Having written this far, I now understand beyond all doubt that Yang Wei, the curator of HEAVEN.LAMP has arranged this exhibition so it has the profound significance of an altar. Altar - a mandala, a place of contemplation, a road to transcendence. An art space embraces all kinds of time in the artist's inner experience. In Yuan Wu's great masterpieces I have read the same compassion as in my own poem cycle Concentric Circles: every touch of the brush, every painting, the entire exhibition, the thought-universe, the layered structure, they imply a single artwork infinitely expanded: deeper absorption, rebirth, absolution, transcendence, awe - and the wheel turns full circle...until in the end each and every one of us is drawn into an ancient sorrow.

Yang Lian

18th February 2015 (begun on Chinese New Year's Eve)