Images made using Xuan rice paper, ink, writing brush, and water have evolved over more than a thousand years of civilization. Regardless of how people use these materials, the images continuously accrue at varying rates. Variations of images accumulate through constant use, as people alter, improve and totally change the mutating image. Elements from different civilizations can even be included and in merging these, utterly new characteristics can appear, to the point where people later describe the characteristics of these images in utterly different terms. The cycle is often repeated, leaving a vast lexicon (words, terms, concepts or other symbols), and these things are eventually described as a new civilization.

　　Zhang Yu introduces himself as a player in the cycle:

　　I was born in the Year of the Pig, I’m blood group A, I have a strong personality, I like winning and I’m not the calm and peaceful type. I like sunny weather, and detest overcast and rainy days. I advocate life, but don’t look after my health, often suffer from insomnia, love thinking, fond of reminiscing about past events, I often think life and death, and so I’m always being woken up by nightmares. While I have a weak constitution, my heart is strong and I’m not afraid of hardships. I have endurance, persistence and all those things needed to get a task done well. I treat people hospitably, I’m sincere and love excitement, but I’m easily irritated and lose my temper because I’m emotionally fragile. I act willfully and never give in on matters of principle. Because I’m too sensitive, I’m often depressed, irresolute and anxious. I’m quiet and clean in my own environment and like sitting in my room alone and indulging my imagination. I am an idealist.[1]

　　In the artist’s summary of his own character, it is very difficult for us to read Zhang Yu’s particular cultural background. He writes about the characteristics of his personality and his taste, but what education and training does he have? For example, in the works of ancient Chinese artists we see their noblemindedness and vision and in works by Western artists we see their sensitivity to the material world, but from the outset, Zhang Yu had no opportunity to be effectively influenced by traditional civilization. As he describes: ‘I had no memories of my mother who was sent down to the Hengshui area of Hebei as part of the Four Clean-Ups political campaign of the early 1960s, and my father was so busy working that he had to put me to one side. I would doodle and scribble on paper and my father would send the scribbles to my mother in his letters to her. I can still remember the machine guns, cannons and tanks I would draw with crayons, although most were drawings of the ghost slayer Zhong Kui’. Though born in 1959, he provides a background for himself that starts in 1937, when China was cut off from the rest of the world and its own traditions by the Japanese invasion, and from 1949 onwards young people in China no longer had the opportunity even to be educated in the cultural tradition of China. He describes his home environment with relish:

　　My home was very spacious. There was a courtyard downstairs, and the courtyard walls and the corridor’s stairs were fashioned from carved stone. Flowers and potted landscapes were placed on the stairs, which made the place fragrant and alive. I often played there. Without mentioning the other rooms upstairs, the sitting room alone was fifty or sixty square meters in size and the wooden floor was Philippine timber. On the walls hung works of calligraphy and painting, including Ren Bonian’s Cinnabar Zhong Kui.

　　The furnishings in the house had a classical flavor and some foreign antiques. It was located in the Huang Family Gardens in an urban area where most well-placed households lived. The house was left to my parents after my maternal grandfather went bankrupt shortly before liberation.

　　The accuracy of the painter’s memories of his childhood environment is unimportant, as he was very young at the time. These memories are of a ‘setting sun’, because Zhang Yu was less than eight years when the Cultural Revolution began and prior to then he had no training in traditional culture. The painter acknowledges this:

　　We were this generation who grew up under the red flag and watched films like Tunnel Warfare, The Chicken Feather Letter and Lenin in October, and read books like Lei Feng’s Diary, Gao Yubao and How the Steel Was Tempered. I grew up during the ‘glorious sunny days’ of the Cultural Revolution, but I remember the time as being miserable. Political slogans could be seen everywhere and smashed up antiques were piled up in all the streets and lanes to be burned. It was surprising to start with, but seeing those people in harsh daylight with red armbands and wielding clubs ransack houses, smash things up and beat people, and remembering scenes of extreme cruelty when people were being physically struggled left those of us who were still children with terrifying deep-seated memories.

　　This was a country and an era when history and culture were being eliminated, and the traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting or the culture introduced from Europe familiar to artists of his parents’ generation were thoroughly eliminated after 1949. The legitimacy of human culture no longer existed, and the only inheritance was the political cultural fare offered up by the Russian and Chinese revolutions- socialist realism from the Soviet Union, and the combination of realism and romanticism called revolutionary romanticism from China. The incense of tradition lacked the social and political oxygen to continue burning. Zhang Yu soon realized ‘the serious implications of his family’s capitalist background’.

　　For Zhang Yu, this background would have a clearly decisive influence on his life, and if he had lacked the ‘gene’ of the traditional scholar-painter, then he would have chosen some other direction in life.Hobbies are not necessarily interests and Zhang Yu was not imbued with any sense of traditional calligraphy and painting, but he had an instinct for painting. In middle school he copied Xu Beihong’ s paintings of horses, and these showed sensitive bush work. These habits reveal that his hobby was providing him with a good training in realism. In the countryside Zhang Yu studied from the Yan’an artist Ma Da, and from 1975 onwards this revolutionary painting professor taught Zhang Yu sketching, drawing and print making. In Ma Da’s home Zhang Yu saw reproductions of Repin’s Volga Boatmen, Köllwitz’s images of warfare, Adolf von Menzel’s Steel Rolling-Mill, and Franz Masereel’s print The Poet Who Objects to War. These albums and magazines contained images that linked China’s League of Left Wing Artists, Yan’an and the Soviet Union in a revolutionary artistic tradition, which further separated Zhang Yu from traditional calligraphy and painting.In his later self-education, the training he received in sketching, watercolor and oil painting would remain with him and even when he took up the tools and materials of Chinese traditional-style painting he painted realistically from life. In 1979, Zhang Yu entered Tianjin’s Yangliuqing Painting Society. In this organization, he was not assigned to painting, but entered the wood-block printing rooms. This experience enabled him to master the techniques of printing, but even there he continued to use whatever time he could to draw Yangliuqing New Year posters and illustrations for picture-story books (lianhuanhua).

　　During the period of the ’85 New Wave art movement, Zhang Yu became art editor in the editorial departments of a number of publishers of books and periodicals, and this was important for his later experiments in black ink painting. Zhang Yu became involved in publishing some of the new art and helped initiate the production of a series of books on explorations in Chinese painting titled The World of Traditional Chinese Painting (Guohua shijie), and he paid attention to the ‘more avant-garde painters using Chinese ink and their works’, realizing that publishing can guide art movements. He likened his own work to the role played by such journals as Fine Arts in China (Zhongguo meishu bao) and Jiangsu Art Monthly (Jiangsu huakan), and hoped to ‘promote the development of ink and wash painting’. In the fourth volume of The World of Traditional Chinese Painting, he devoted more space to articles on ink and wash painting and, in his capacity as editor, expressed dissatisfaction with the negative views of ‘new scholar paintings’ (xin wenrenhua) that were being described by many critics as a ‘malady’ (bingtai) in the art scene. Until December 1989, Zhang Yu planned and presided over the editing of Chinese Modern Ink and Wash Painting (Zhongguo xiandai shuimohua), which touched on the exploratory and experimental nature of ink painting, showing that he was in agreement with the artistic ideas and interests expressed in the exhibition of ‘new scholar paintings’ held in that year. He invited the critic Liu Xiaochun to write an article titled ‘Create New Norms’ (Chuangli cin guifan). The article was limited to the habitual concept of ‘norms’, but the focus of the critic was on discarding old norms. Most critics disagreed with the position and interests of the so-called ‘new scholar painters’, believing that they represented a compromise with tradition during a ‘lull’ in the art revolution.

　　The appearance of experimental ink painting incorporating modern and abstract elements obviously represented the hope of using traditional tools to create new possibilities. Artists in different periods writing articles calling the use of ink painting traditions in combination with modern or contemporary concerns are commendable, but those experimenting with ink works at the end of the eighties wanted to put a distance between themselves and the ‘new scholar painters’, and so Zhang Yu, recalling his editorial work during this period and describing his editorial strategy at least until the early 1990s, describes how he believed ‘modern ink painting’ and ‘new scholar paintings’ did not represent, as he would discover, any absolute love for traditional tools and materials among either group of artists, although it was not of the same order as the opposition of the ’85 New Wave artists to tradition. The object of the liberation of artistic thought in the eighties was not directed at the revered traditional calligraphy and painting of the period before the late-Qing, but at the political despotism of the previous decades. Traditional style Chinese painters mourned their loss of artistic freedom after 1949 as Chinese painting was transformed by politics and ideology. In his article in the 7th issue of 1985 of Jiangsu Art Monthly titled ‘My Views on Contemporary Chinese Painting’ (Dangdai Zhongguo hua zhi wo jian), Li Xiaoshan mentioned many artists by name, but going through the painters we find that most had problems that tie in with late-Qing concerns, showing that Chinese painter were facing similar conceptual changes brought about by the times in which they lived and that they were also directing their attention at the basic characteristics of Chinese civilization. Li wrote:

　　When Chinese traditional painting had evolved to the time of Ren Bonian, Wu Changshuo and Huang Binhong, it had already entered its final hours, and the only remaining task was to synthesize the traditions of figural painting, flower and bird painting and landscape painting. … if we say that the paintings of Liu Haisu, Shi Lu, Zhu Qizhan and Lin Fengmian were moving in the direction of modernity (of course, modern concepts of painting were still only rarely manifested in their works), then, the works of Pan Tianshou and Li Keran include more rational elements and they were transcending the track of traditional Chinese painting… . We can say that the innovations of Pan Tianshou and Li Keran influenced later generations, but most of the influence was passive. Fu Baoshi had several points in common with them…. Painters such as Li Kuchan and Huang Zhou were decidedly inferior, Li Kuchan’s works being, in fact, models of pastiche.

　　Li Xiaoshan’s writing was quite influential, encouraging people to further liberate their thinking and ideas but, for a painter, things are much harder to implement than simply mouthing slogans. The crucial thing is that, while Li Xiaoshan was listing the faults of painters, were the works completed by these artists in different periods really only a question of artistic language or artistic conception? In fact, in the 1980s, rational knowledge of the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy in the 20th century had not been fully restored, and people felt happy and relaxed about the possibility of gaining greater freedom. Yet Zhang Yu had already dared to use the word ‘modern’ in relation to Chinese-style painting and had also dared to mention ‘the despised category of works by the new scholar painters’ as a strategy in his book editing, even though he resolutely drew a demarcation line in theory between the ‘new scholar paintings’ and modern ink paintings. He believed his book ‘would instill courage and confidence into people who were confused’.

　　Zhang Yu by no means accepted all issues raised by the ‘new scholar artists’, but he did not look back in developing his understanding of the direction in which art was advancing. During his early years, ‘film, music, dance, literature and painting from the Soviet Union’ left a very deep impression on him, and this background remained with him. On 12 June 1992, Zhang Yu left for Russia by train:

　　Before my eyes were the stands of forest, the blue sky and the white clouds, and limpid Lake Baikal that one can see to the depths in detail. I felt exhilarated. Images from Chagall and Kandinsky appeared before my eyes, and although this was the first time I had set foot in a foreign country, it was like again seeing an old friend whom I had not seen for ages, and the reality before my eyes was spliced together with scenes from films and paintings. At last I was really seeing those familiar original works of Western modern art.

　　There is no way of expressing the visual shock that these new art forms gave me. For half a year I visited all the museums and art galleries in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and savored the richness of the great masters, which further developed my Oriental idealism. On 5 August Zhang Yu saw some modernist works of the eighties exhibited in the Belyaevo Exhibition Hall in Moscow, and these works on oil became an effective means for him studying Western art and, although he was used to using rice paper and black ink, he expressed what he felt using free composition and unrestrained color. In his works of the early 1990s and late 1980s, Zhang Yu completed several expressionistic poems in images. In his work titled Holy Land (Shengdi), completed in 1987, we can see Tibetan figures, but it is very difficult for us to clearly see in the many Tibetan motifs the influence of oil paintings of the ‘stream of life’ (shenghuoliu) school, and the painter seems to still be deeply pondering spiritual and religious issues. However, the liveliness of the composition demonstrates the painter’s ability. In his paintings on fans completed up to 1989, we see many bucolic compositions, and in these works Zhang Yu has not observed any traditional norms of brush and ink painting. His knowledge of the modes of traditional ink painting was gradually and naturally acquired, but he mostly painted freely in accord with his instincts. His works titled Mountain Villa (Shanzhuang tu) and Travelling to Xikou (Zou Xikou) have something similar in artistic taste to the works of the ‘new scholar-painters’ but, in fact, it is the fan itself that provides the stable form for the taste of his own works. Such works indicate that Zhang Yu was mostly subject to outside influences in the 1980s (including Western and traditional heritages), and he still had not subjected the world of his own works to self-conscious reflection and accepted that his instincts and taste were guided by the paramount concept of freedom.

　　The works he later exhibited in Moscow’s Belyaevo Exhibition Hall were his tentative abstracts of the early 1990s titled Portrait Series: Self-portraits (Xiaoxiang xilie: Zihuaxiang). These had grown out of his earlier joyful lyrical works. In Self-portrait (Zihuaxiang), A Cup of Wine with Blood (Yibei dai xue de jiu) and Two Travelling Souls (Liangge shengling de lüxing) completed in 1989 the objects in the realm of life are greatly reduced and the souls are guided into the sky by the painter, so that the composition is emptied and the use of black ink is more prominent than in the past, while the colors are beginning to be reduced, and this trend in his work continues until 1991. Here we see the influence of Joan Miró, Paul Klee and Salvador Dali. In the works of this period, Zhang Yu used watercolor pigments, indicating that the painter had not observed the basic demarcation lines of traditional painting and that to attain an effect he would adopt any means. Ink with water spreads everywhere, unlike oils, and audiences could readily discern the cultural background of the works; this is the very demarcation line that Zhang Yu himself confirmed. In Paradise (Tiantang), a work of 1992, Zhang Yu also used silver pigment and at the same time used black ink more densely. In these works, the arrangement of the composition was influenced by his memories, art albums he had seen and books he had read, and Zhang Yu was already clear about the abstract field of his painting. But the inner poetry of superior beauty infatuated him, and it was not until 1993 that an obvious change came about.

　　In 1993, Zhang Yu completed his Anthology of Random Thoughts (Suixiang ji), and in this batch of works he reduced the complexity of his image, only allowing one figure in his composition, whether male or female. Unlike characters in his earlier works, they are not figures from a pastoral, but come from a lonely world in which they seem to be thinking, agonizing and experiencing fear or even struggling in some intangible space. From the titles of the works, we can ascertain the painter’s state of mind and the influences from what is termed traditional philosophy; he recognizes the existence of sudden enlightenment, understanding and experience. However, in his understanding of life and existence, Zhang Yu clearly mixes in the logic of another artistic language, because he uses the word ‘repentance’ as a title.

　　Do people East and West differ in their understanding of the world? ‘Sudden enlightenment’, ‘gradual cultivation of the self’ and ‘awakening’ and the psychological phenomena they describe do not necessarily interconnect; the complexity of human psychology lies in the self and language can only hint at this. On this question, the expression of these psychological issues only has the conjecture of the painter as its starting point, and anything that can be called a philosophical position is expressed through changes in the painter’s thinking and inner world. Small floating clusters of black ink spots (possibly resembling large drops of water or something similar) are the common characteristics of these works, and people’s heads suddenly appear among them; the painter unquestioningly accepts their legitimacy in his compositions and quite naturally takes these into account and arranges the heads in accordance with his own deeper thoughts, as in such works as the meditative Chapter Seven: Transcendence (Di qi pian: Chaoran), the suffering Chapter Eight: Coincidence (Di ba pian: Jiyuan) and the posture of Taoist mindfulness in Chapter Thirteen: Miraculous Transformation (Di shisan pian: Linghua). For Zhang Yu, this batch of works was a symbolic turning point, marking his obvious transition from expressionism to abstraction.

　　The works that highlighted the painter’s own characteristics began to appear in 1992, but the images stabilized in series titled The Black Ink Image Notebooks (Moxiang biji) in 1994. In the Portrait Series:

　　Untitled (Xiaxiang xilie: Wuti) completed in 1992, we see the square as a subject and can observe how,through the author’s application of color, the red square almost obliterates the meaning of the image of the figure’s head, while the vertical and horizontal black lines form crosses, while the top of the gradually fading red square relates the remains of the painter’s story and denotes the starting point of religious speculation. The painter used mulberry paper and silver pigment, and he seemed to want to draw further back and extend the possibilities of distance used in traditional painting. In this type of composition he succeeds in introducing a measure of hesitancy to the objects of the visual world (whether natural objects or figures) within the composition. His Anthology of Random Thoughts (Suixiang ji) of 1993 is the result of the painter making use of visual objects to display philosophical concepts, demonstrating that he is still reluctant to part with the function of objects. In fact, in 1991 Zhang Yu had embarked in three different directions in his thinking on abstraction: minimalism in 9102, retaining the possibilities generated by images in 9206, and making use of squares in 9203. The painter seemed fond of all three directions, and in later works we see these three intersect and separate at different stages.

　　Prior to his Black Image Notebooks, Zhang Yu completed his Black Soul Collection (Heihun ji) in 1994. This was the last stage in his depiction of literary narration. He retained some metaphysical concepts such as ‘holy’ (sheng) and ‘space’ (yu) but seems to have used them as isolated elements in his compositions, while the squares, circles and expanses of ink, as well as color, with the exception of the red seal impression of the painter, have all disappeared. Only in Chapter Three: Holy (Di san pian: Sheng) do we see the symbol of the cross, but compared with earlier works, this cross has the pure and simple characteristics of the symbolic. Zhang Yu soon entered the phase denoted by his work on The Black Ink Image Notebooks, and in this batch of works, the artist affirmed that the black squares form the theme of the compositions, suggestion the association of the works with the eventual disappearance of the entire material world.

　　What on earth was Zhang Yu’s purpose in these works? It is difficult to understand Zhang Yu’s rationale in continuing to pursue metaphysical questions in 1994, when Cynical Realism and Political Pop were exerting widespread influence, the most obvious characteristic of these two artistic phenomena being their focus on realism, and when the major characteristic of contemporary art in this formative period was dispelling metaphysics or art’s essentialism. In June 1994, Wang Huangsheng wrote:

　　In The Black Ink Image Notebooks and Black Soul Collection, Zhang Yu attempts to establish ink images that show the interchangeable relationship between shapes and connections that emphasize ‘empty spirit and dense matter’ and ‘extremities and limitlessness’. These works are not rich in expression like most modern ink wash paintings, and they do not emphasize structural conflicts and the delighted brush flowing in an unrestrained celebration of the language of ink and the liberation of ideas. Zhang Yu’s works tend towards a tranquil and internally restrained strength and the colliding dynamism of objects that have solidified. They seem like a periscope peering from the depths of an ancient well to see the unsurprising ripples on the surface of the deep pool. The concept of ‘awakening’ (ding shenghui) spoken of by Zhang Yu seems to be an appropriate explanation of the special features of his images. The overall characteristic of Zhang Yu’s works is that the interest of the forms and their spiritual strength incline towards ‘inner focus, introspection and inner restraint’. It is interesting to see this perspective on the modern spirit and to experience the realm of concealed mediation on the traditional spirit and aesthetics.[2] Perhaps the critic’s views accorded with the painter’s own aspirations, but to what extent such a concept accords with historical concepts depends on the effectiveness of his position in contemporary art history.

　　Zhang Yu was a professional editor, and this gave him the opportunity and ability to open up a debate on the question through publishing. In October 1992, he planned to produce a series of books titled Artistic Trends in Chinese Modern Ink Art at the End of the 20th Century (Ershi shiji mo Zhongguo xiandai shuimo Yishu zoushi), saying that the guiding thought in this set of books would be directed against ‘our real lack of an open, lively and optimistic academic environment’ and the fact that in the present situation ‘there are no publications in this field which have academic content, interchange and documentary value that can enable people to understand the state of development of modern ink and wash painting’. He also outlined an even more important problem:

　　With the constant opening up of China to international exchanges, more Chinese artists realize the existence of the doctrine that the West is the center of international art activity, and the experiments in modern ink wash painting are the embodiment of a positive sense of international participation. We should address the art history process and urge artists to grasp history, scrutinize reality and constantly adjust their own working positions more consciously, and create works with a contemporary quality of critique, characteristics of openness, a contemporary spirit and constructive meaning, so that artistic experiments and critique can move ahead simultaneously, allowing ink works to gradually acquire greater depth. This will lead people to go one step further and pay close attention to the development of contemporary ink painting, and make the academic discussion of the subject more lively and rich. The ranks of modern ink painting artists lack strength, and its criticism still lacks strict standards and concrete relevance. We can no longer allow the rules governing traditional ink and wash painting to apply to the criticism of modern water ink and wash painting, or rely on Western critical standards, because these are all irrelevant. Criticism should create new critical terms and research approaches, and establish serious and scientific rules and criteria governing everything from experiments in modern ink and wash to theoretical research and art criticism in this field.[3]

　　For many painters engaged in experiments in abstract ink and wash painting, the question of whether their work had significance in art history was critical. People widely discussed the contemporary characteristics of oil painting, installations, video, performance art and photography, but no-one had been concerned about the question of ink and wash painting, a phenomenon which seems to reveal that ink and wash painting faced contemporary obstacles because of historical factors related to the materials used in the genre. Experimental artists in this medium naturally disagreed with such a simplistic assessment, and they cited the example of oil painters who had not been excluded from contemporary art history because of the historical nature of the materials they used. After the mid-1990s, Chinese artists discussed questions of ‘post-colonialism’, ‘integration’, ‘identity’, and related issues, and the debate focused on the views of different artists on the doctrine that the West was the center of international art. Not surprisingly, Zhang Yu was one of those contemporary artists who disagreed with ‘the West-centered’ standard, but it was essential to define the doctrine itself more clearly. To varying degrees artists understood the history of China from the Opium War (1840-1842) onwards and knew that Westerners in different periods had determined Chinese critical standards on so many matters in the modern world, and this clash of civilizations seemed to demonstrate the crisis situation afflicting so many traditional things. However, the late-19th century, the early years of the Republic of China, the Anti-Japanese War, the 17 years of Communist rule, the Cultural Revolution and the reform and opening-up were quite different historical periods, and the impact on China of Western civilization required different responses in different periods. After the internet reformatted the whole world in the 1990s, the process of globalization that had begun around 1500 finally revealed its basic characteristics: the disappearance of the center and periphery and of changes taking place as a result of differences in time, region, environment and advantage. In terms of time, the doctrine of the West as the center was the result of the Chinese people being bullied, humiliated and insulted for a long time. In terms of psychology, the doctrine of the West as the center was the product of a lack of resources and self-confidence. The actual situation was that, as the tide of globalization gathers force, the doctrine is an outdated ghost beyond revival, and as for it providing standards for art history, there are obviously no Western standards. In the 1990s, works by Chinese artists began appearing in the world’s major exhibitions, underscoring the interaction that accompanies globalization, but some critics criticized Chinese artists saying that they were being ideological in playing the China card. At the same time, there were some international exhibitions with no ideological concerns which signaled that ink and wash painting could attract universal interest. Zhang Yu hoped to work with his colleagues to jointly establish new criteria for the experiments in ink and wash painting that had a basis in historical legitimacy but were also different from both traditional and Western artistic criteria. In later editorial work, more artists and critics participated. Zhang Yu estimated that most ink and wash painters now agreed with his views and ‘the exhibitions and forums in the pages of Artistic Trends in Chinese Modern Ink Art at the End of the 20th Century (hereafter Trends) had a more sustained and lasting influence than a single exhibition’. After publishing two volumes of Trends, a community of abstract ink and wash painters had gradually taken shape. In November 1995, Trends organized Ink and Light: An Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Abstract Ink Painting in Belgium, and published a special issue devoted to the show. In 1996 in Guangzhou, Trends held the Artistic Seminar on Contemporary Chinese Ink and Wash Painting into the 21st Century, and the topic of abstract ink and wash painting in the 1990s provided the theme for the third volume of Trends. The Guangzhou meeting which saw the participation of critics is believed to be historic, and the meeting and subsequent publication of papers ‘made the subject of experimental ink and wash painting a hot topic’. Participating in the meeting were the critics Liu Xiaochun, Li Zhengtian, Huang Zhuan, Deng Pingxiang, Pi Daojian and Wang Huangsheng, as well as the artists Shi Guo, Liu Zijian, Li Jin, Zhang Jin, Huang Yihan, Zhang Yu, Zuo Zhengyao, Fang Tu and Yan Binghui. By the year 2000, four volumes of the serial Trends had been published, and the number of artists and critics participating in the series was constantly increasing, and by 2000 the themes of the series had begun to move well away from the doctrinal trap of essentialism. Issues surrounding experimental ink and wash painting in contemporary art were being more freely elucidated by critics. The past idea of critics that there was some type of strange contradiction and contact between experimental ink and wash painting and traditional Chinese painting (guohua) was abandoned at this time. There was now agreement that the old concept needed to be discarded, and critics now entered a totally open field. As Zhang Yu stated:

　　In the new century, ink and wash painting circles should be more open to future developments, and create a brand-new scene within contemporary art circles. We should be able to address all artworks, regardless of whether they are oil paintings, ink and wash painting, installations or whatever, in our discussions of problems of art and contemporary art, so that questions concerning materials and techniques are secondary. Thus our artistic expression will not need to entail a choice of means.

　　In 1994, Zhang Yu visited Belgium, participating in a major exhibition of ‘linear art’ in Ghent, at which one hundred well known European and American galleries participated, and works by Antoni Tàpies, Palatino, A. R. Penck, Zao Wouki, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Joan Miró were displayed. Zhang Yu sold six works to collectors at the exhibition and was invited to lecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp during the exhibition period. In 1995, Zhang Yu went to Finland, Germany, Holland, France and the USA to exhibit and visited nearly one hundred museums, galleries and cultural centers in more than ten countries. He has described how these experiences ‘determined the opening up of my artistic thinking and acceptance’. Like many other artists and critics, Zhang Yu insists that ‘traditional ink and wash painting and contemporary ink and wash painting are not at all related’. He believed the traditional artistic language system and contemporary society are already decoupled, and ‘the language environment which it depended on for its existence has already been lost, and so it has lost its vigor in the contemporary culture’. However, what do modern ink and wash painting’s ‘aesthetic sense of the direction and form of the spirit of non-brush and ink quality, experimentation and non-figurative quality’ convey of the contemporary cultural spirit? Zhang Yu acknowledged that art wants to ‘propose questions on real states of existence’, but what questions and corresponding solutions have significance for art history?

　　What type of ink and wash painting is not simply ink and wash for its own sake, but becomes socialized ink and wash painting, or individualized ink and wash? Where are the criteria to test whether an artist has followed the injunction ‘to interweave the individual, society and art’ as the aim of their innovations in art? In 1999, Zhang Yu said: ‘Seen from the perspective of painting, ink and wash works can amplify many issues, giving them greater profundity, and also by creating new pictorial forms, new spaces and new visual effects’. But what types of new pictorial forms, new spaces and new visual effects have meaning for art history? It is really difficult to answer these questions. Although Zhang Yu participated in many international exhibitions after 1997, until the new century critics and artists were still discussing the question of the historical legitimacy of experimental ink and wash painting. However, Zhang Yu clearly realized after his experiences of exhibitions:

　　In today’s information age, only when ink and wash work is placed in an international macro-linguistic context and connects with individuals against the background of contemporary culture, or is placed in an equal position with other art forms where it provides counterpoint in an international linguistic context where it can probe contemporary artistic questions with other forms of art can we speak of exchange. If we treat today’s work with a narrow conception of ink and wash, the results are predictable. In my humble opinion, ink and wash painting wants to be unburdened and does not want to be hemmed in by the narrow circles of ink and wash and have to hollowly contend for space and excessively play up its ethnic attributes. In fact, we all do enough to carry on the genetic heritage of our national culture, whether consciously or unconsciously. If we interpret ink and wash to be a state created by its materials, a mode of entry to the spirit and a language form or element that affords an entry into the nature of painting itself, and proceed from the logical starting points of art history and the noumenon of painting, then we really can incorporate it within an open and accommodating contemporary art. This will greatly lessen our awkwardness and enable ink and wash to acquire truly meaningful space and further outlets for expression. Otherwise, we cannot readily throw off the dislocation in criticism and interchange that appears in artistic exchange.[4]

　　It should be pointed out that Zhang Yu, as an important member of the movement of experimental ink and wash, disagreed with the view that experimental ink and wash was abstract ink and wash. In his article titled ‘Pluralism and Restructuring: A Discussion of Experimental Ink and Wash’ (Duoyuan yu chonggou:Lun shiyan shuimo), he defended this view:

　　Among these non-figurative ink and wash works there are no pure abstract works, only a certain abstractness, abstract elements or some abstract forms. I am not concerned that the word ‘abstract’ was introduced from the West, but it is too simple and superficial to use it as a generalization to describe these experimental ink and wash works, and more critically the word ‘abstract’ cannot convey the meaning we wish to convey with our ink and wash experiments today.[5]

　　In 1995, Zhang Yu began to evolve from his series titled The Black Ink Image Notebooks to his Halo (Lingguang) works. Although the Halo series appears to be abstract works, like the majority of experimental ink and wash artists, Zhang Yu insists: ‘Our experimental ink and wash is much richer, encompassing the spirit, culture, East, West, history and reality. More importantly, the expression of these ink and wash works is intended to initiate an exploration through images; through symbolic, expressive, abstract and narrative images we reveal our thinking. It should be said that modern and post-modern concepts have greater influence on our experimental ink and wash works’. However, those critics who raise doubts concerning experimental ink and wash take issue with this type of statement. In the transition from modernist attitudes of essentialism to what is called post-modernism, people recognize that there are no more absolute truths like the spirit, culture, East and West, encompassing history and reality, left to discuss, and that a position which is arbitrary, transformed by physics and lacking in spatial and temporal distinctions causes habitual logic to disappear. There are doubts concerning the direction of all this.

　　However, ordinary visual experience tells us the important thing is whether or not the images themselves exert a powerful influence. Zhang Yu explains how his inner spirit is experienced using language that is half technical and half analytical:

　　The Halo series uses a simple compound technique of expression, but the process is both simple and complicated. The terms simple and complicated refer to the various techniques of applying ink with the brush which are repeated from the start to the completion of the process. Of course, these all fulfill the needs of expression, and only in this way can the abundant expression and irreplaceable nature of ink and wash fully appear. What is needed to achieve this expression? What things are not needed for expression? In fact, it is the artist’s expression that provides the range.

　　In the Halo series, I insist on using strong black ink and intentionally enlarge the energy of the large black forms to search for the delicate changes that occur in the blackest black of ink and wash, to attain the sense of transparency and the sense of heaviness that is so difficult to achieve given the established norms of this layer and the sense of the quality of ink in the higher realms. Those skeptics with a stable position would ask in reply, what is the difference between such work and abstract wash and ink games? Does ink and wash really have ‘self-disciplined action’? What ‘powers of control’ does the artist have that he can attain specific goals and what is the significance of ‘random flowing change’ in ink and wash? What is the real meaning of ‘constructing a new order in the contemporary linguistic context of ink and wash painting within visual spatial relationships’?

　　In fact, it is the images themselves that can most clearly express the artist’s intention. Zhang Yu wrote in 1996: ‘Incomplete circles, broken squares and fragments in movement appear to revolve and float in the universe against the black background shrouded by sound and light. In their floating state, fissures develop in the structures of the incomplete circles and broken squares and fragments break off, colliding with the soul and creating fear and disquiet. The collisions, fission, floating and alternation articulate the complexity and pain, anxiety and uneasiness in the deep recesses of the human soul’. The important thing is not the artist’s literary conclusion, but the psychological influence on us of the images, figures, symbols and delicate changes that appear on the paper, and for anyone that influence is actual and unfamiliar. Whether the person viewing Halo feels ‘anxiety and disquiet’ is not the basis on which we judge the works, but the creation by the artist of a world placed in the comparative context of today’s cultural reality is what makes for the uniqueness of the work and creates a place for itself among all views within the ‘contemporary’. In the year 2000, Zhang Yu further announced:

　　Developments in the world are alarming and it seems that all of a sudden the world has become small like a family. Every day people are confronted by the same information and feel surprised, joyful and perplexed, or even meditative. At the same time, enjoying cultural resources in common with all mankind is in itself a joy. Are these the results of the era of hi-tech electronics? Information and media have broken through all the barriers that once existed. People can now keep abreast of the world, but the entire world too now seems to be developing similarly alarming modernized modes. The world now simultaneously faces the same problems of survival with AIDS, pollution, corruption, terror and even war … In this way, disquiet gives way to fear.

　　However, the issue that Zhang Yu hopes to resolve is peace and tranquility which are the reverse of ‘fear’. In this way, at the same time as artists familiar with traditional thought turn back and use historical resources, they also move further away from ink and wash painting. This attitude belongs to the contemporary era. We can now more clearly see the issues, and the reality of arbitrarily using resources has extricated artists from dualism and, while they might only rely on rice paper, water, ink and the writing brush, in spirit and form their works are revolutionary.The series titled The News of the Day (Meiri xinbao), which Zhang Yu began in 2001, was an attempt to test the relationships between abstract ink and wash painting and real problems. The artist explained this work as follows:

　　The premise in creating The News of the Day was that the rapid development of information relay systems in the 21st century has conveniently shrunk the world’s space, enabling us to acquire information from any area or corner of the world at any time. In other words, whatever happens anywhere can influence the world. We have witnessed the constant upgrading of tension in the Middle East and the events of September 11 shocked the entire world. Any ethnic conflict or political element can endanger the lives and security of innocent people and directly impact on the life of the entire world.(3 November 2001) The News of the Day series incorporated newspapers and magazines in the composition as in a collage, and Zhang Yu even used burlap, rice paper, spray paint, ink and wash, acrylic, plaster, pencil drawing and other elements in the works. This form was obviously derived from modernist experiments, except the artist changed the content and very naturally produced something unique and interesting in the process of working with these materials. But does the narration of the art really echo the needs and content of the work in the same way realist art with which people are familiar directly reflect reality? In fact, images and words as they are filtered by the news media have already become a form of cultural narration, and to a great extent the artist’s response to them does not correspond so much as create another narrative. People can re-examine these works naturally from the artist’s own linguistic modes, and so in what context is this shorthand ‘news’ able to structure an independent target object of value? The conclusion is that we must return to the composition itself and subject it to further scrutiny. So at the same time that Zhang Yu is concerned about the external world, it is the internality - the subjectivity, intuition and rationale - to which we must pay closer attention. He began his Fingerprint series (Zhiyin xilie) in the new century, although we see him first making use of fingerprints in works of the 1990s. The procedures in his Fingerprint series are quite simple. Following hints similar to suggestions presented by Zen Buddhism, conceptual art and even by Duchamp a hundred years ago, Zhang Yu uses only his fingers, ink or vegetable dye (red), water and purposemade rice paper to complete the works. Zhang Yu was well aware of art’s arbitrary nature as well as the boundaries on its freedom, and now only needed to clarify his mind to be able to raise ink and wash to a more conceptual realm, by dipping his fingers in the ink or color and repeatedly impressing his prints on the rice paper, being careful to leave traces of the natural hollows on the surface of the paper to reveal the special qualities of the material. With the fingerprint works, critics can naturally utilize philosophical terms to explain them, and they can draw on reasons that transcend the material world by completely relying on the artist’s working methods, procedures and background experience. In this vein we read explanations that rely on the mystic meanings attached to ancient Chinese philosophical descriptions of exponential geometric progression.

　　Zhang Yu has not written essays on ink and ink using either old or new norms, and in line with his understanding of art, he does not even discuss the unique characteristics of ink and wash, having gradually discarded the question of the expressiveness of ink and wash and its special qualities as painting. He moves instead to a central conceptual question: What is the premise for verifying our thinking? In summarizing Zhang Yu’s Fingerprint series, the critic Gao Minglu wrote in 2006:

　　The Fingerprint works are like the fragmentary records of daily meditations, from which natural random nodes of ‘meaning’ protrude. So the overall arrangement principles and the hierarchical structure, or what seems like the concept of the ‘totality’ of the overall layout, in Zhang Yu’s Fingerprint works undergo changes that are inconsequential. The works do not emphasize the opposition of the subject and object, spirit and matter, or the center and periphery, nor is there any spirit of the universe or the personal thinking of the artist himself manifested in the works, and nor are the works the product of the pure movement of matter. Every fingerprint has no clear edges, and the works record a natural, repetitive and intermittent process. Zhang Yu’s intention is to simply let audiences ‘see’ the works or simply ‘think’ about them, and to imagine each instant in which the finger touched the paper.

　　Gao Minglu applied the term ‘maximalism’ (jiduozhuyi) to characterize Chinese abstract art, and regards Zhang Yu as an important representative of this trend. Because the ‘labors’ of this artist are very time-consuming and because he incorporates so many fingerprints in these works, Gao’s ‘maximalism’ is an apt description of his work, which provides a marked contrast to Western minimalism. This is an interesting comparison, but Gao is also convinced that maximalism is more spiritual than minimalism. But what is the basis for any general acknowledgment of the legitimacy of a work’s spiritual nature? Does it merely depend on the amount of time and work expended on a piece? Anyone familiar with the intellectual history of Zen Buddhism knows that things are not so simple. Like many other experimental ink and wash artists, Zhang Yu’s artistic development affirms a return to an original point, and in the process of getting back to this origins, he drew on the fresh breezes of nature and read unfamiliar languages. He did not steer himself towards any ‘tradition’. At the outset he sought to get out and be free. But his inner logic told him that as long as he was willing, he could always return to the starting point in tradition, but his inner heart also told him, as an artist living in a civilized society, that the process of return and the results had to be matters that were all a part of contemporary art history.

　　Saturday, 30 December 2006

　　NOTES

　　[1] Zhang Yu, ‘The Forty Winters and Summers of Intersecting Reality

　　and Illusion’ (Xianshi yu menghuan jiaocuo de sishige dong-xia),

　　Black and White History: Zhang Yu (Heibai shi: Zhang Yu), Wuhan:

　　Hubei Fine Arts Publishing House, 1999.

　　[2] Wang Huangsheng, ‘One Gives Rise to a Myriad, and a Myriad

　　Returns: A Discussion Prompted by Zhang Yu’s Black Ink Images (Yi

　　sheng wan, wan gui: Cong Zhang Yu de Moxiang shuoqi).

　　[3] Zhang Yu, op. cit.

　　[4] Ibid.

　　[5] Zhang Yu, ‘Leaving Ink and Wash and Entering the Contemporary:

　　A Discussion of Experimental Ink and Wash’ (‘Zouchu shuimo’

　　yu ‘jinru dangdai’: Yu shiyan shuimo xiangguan), Artistic Trends

　　in Chinese Modern Ink Art at the End of the 20th Century (Ershi

　　shiji mo Zhongguo xiandai shuimo yishu zoushi), vol.4, Harbin:

　　Heilongjiang Fine Arts Publishing House, p.190.

　　Translated by Dr. Bruce Gordon Doar

作者：Lv,Peng