一

　　汤志义的艺术道路铺满了成功的鲜花，但又因他的从不满足和锐意创新而充满艰辛。近二十年一路走来，他在漆画的领域里不断探索技术工艺，变换创作题材，注入新的艺术观念，在传统漆画艺术向当代艺术的转换上独辟蹊径，闯出了一条自己的道路。

　　与其他画种相比，漆画大概是最注重技术性和形式感的。漆画家在创作过程中，都无一例外要耗费大量时间和精力用于制作。难怪有人说，要做一个优秀的漆画家，就得付出比其他画种艺术家多三倍的努力。超越技术层面进入深层的审美思考，并非不要技术，恰恰相反，更需要以异乎寻常的精到新颖的技术作为基础和支撑。只是在这种超越中，必须注入当代审美精神和艺术观念，使技术性和形式感成为作品自身有机结构的必然逻辑展开。汤志义在漆画创作中十分倚重技术，并且努力汲取新的科技元素融入自己的艺术创作中。他深知，外部世界的更新变革，肯定要向旧的思维结构和认知图式提出挑战，技术的凝固，必然使作品出现相似的结果被不断重复而失去活力。但是另一方面，随着当代艺术思潮的冲击，形式语言已有了极大的丰富，如何在传统的形式语言中注入当代元素，已成为传统艺术发展中面临的节点。这也正是多年来一直萦绕在汤志义的心中并且在他的创作实践中努力要解决的课题。

　　二

　　在汤志义早些年创作的一系列漆画器皿中，已经可以清晰地感受到他在形式语言创新上的强烈愿望，起点之高，令人惊叹。在这些作品中，漆材和器皿只是一种媒介，它们已从传统漆器中脱颖而出，摆脱了传统艺术创作思维的习惯定势，并打破了长期以来在形式感上陈陈相因的局限，开拓出属于自己的个性化形式语汇，为他日后的抽象漆画创作打下了坚实的基石。汤志义保持并强化了传统漆器的光色视觉效果，进而将一些特殊的肌理融合在光色的表现之中，在画面中以浸洇浮动的色彩组合成既有对立冲突又深蕴和谐、充满激情和张力的图式，使人从中意会出丰富的音韵、旋律和格调，传递出富有情感内涵的审美意蕴。

　　从某种程度上说，艺术的特殊魅力来源于它的特殊媒介材料和对媒介材料的特殊把握。其后不久，汤志义在渔家女人物漆画系列作品中，就是匠心独具地把漆材特有的色彩视觉效果发挥到了极致，整个画面引人注目的已非是“漆”而是“色彩”;也不是“人物”而依然是“色彩”，即在于以色彩描绘对象、表达内心情感具有无与伦比的丰富性、生动性和微妙性上。漆材本身只是色彩表现力的物质元素，重要的是艺术家所具有的色彩天赋和对漆材的娴熟驾驭。汤志义很幸运，因为这两个不同寻常的特质他都具备，并且懂得如何在自己的作品中淋漓尽致地运用。

　　汤志义善于保持并发挥自己的的优势和特长，又总能寻找到足以表现他审美情趣和艺术追求的题材，让自己酣畅淋漓地自由驰骋。他的“莲蓬”漆画系列就是这样的作品。汤志义的莲蓬，不是人们常见的“红莲沉醉白莲酣”的盛境，而是“月晓风清欲坠时”的意绪;残荷恍若烟云，枯莲奇崛标立，浮萍缀如墨痕，蓬梗兀自向天。但唯其如此，整个画面却被赋予了一种高洁淡雅的审美意蕴，让人看到画中所蕴藏着的文化意味和雅逸恬淡的书卷气。而画面的构成，则是简洁疏朗，气韵十足，力求在简约中表现力度，在单纯中体味丰富。正如郑板桥诗云：“一两三枝竹竿，四五六片竹叶。自然淡淡疏疏，何必重重叠叠。”将诗中的“竹竿”和“竹叶”换作“莲蓬”和“荷叶”，则正是汤志义的莲蓬图。这在以往的漆画作品中是不多见的。其实说到底，画家作品的文化内涵，取决于画家自身的文化素养和审美高度，来源于画家对自我情感的自由抒发和对艺术长期体悟后的厚积薄发。这是无法用单纯的技艺刻意制作就所能达到的。

　　三

　　从创作《河流》系列的漆画作品起，汤志义便开始了他的抽象漆画作品的创作，这是对传统漆画具有本质提升意义的一次向当代艺术的转换，是他以漆材作为媒介，将感性提炼和升华，灌注创作激情所作出的一种完美的生命表述。苏珊·朗格在《情感与形式》一书中，曾提出“艺术是人类情感的符号形式的创造”这一揭示艺术本质的著名命题。她认为，艺术作为一种特殊的表象性符号，有着自己独特的意蕴，即人类情感。艺术创作过程，是一种艺术抽象的过程，是一种能够表达动态的主观经验、生命模式和人类情感形式的过程。通过艺术抽象过程所得到的，则是一种独特的、给人以美的享受的表现形式，也即是艺术虚幻空间。汤志义在作品中向我们呈现的，就是这样的空间。充溢画面的，是几近于自然泼洒的富有张力的图式，是他凭借着自由的感觉在画面上所呈现的精神的畅游。色彩的铺排，笔触的挥洒，给人一种浑然一体的感觉，在形式语言上具有“深层结构”的特点，即画面的色块和线条的运动既富有“复调”式的音乐性，又有着“变奏”式的形式韵味。面对汤志义的抽象漆画，细察之下或远而观之，都可以在无序之中看到有序，感受到深藏在画面之中的节奏和韵律，令人信服地领略到他呼之欲出的创作热情和生命激情。

　　绘画语言过程和审美观念过程是一个同质过程。既没有无绘画语言的审美观念，也没有无审美观念的绘画语言，而且绘画语言和审美观念又总是处于一个层面之上。尽管外部世界诸多艺术思潮给予汤志义的漆画艺术语言的建立，提供了多种可能性，但是没有他自身的不倦探索和不懈开掘，没有他在艺术观念上的提高和升华，那么要实现传统漆画的本质提升和当代转换，将会是异常困难的。换言之，正是因为汤志义既植根于传统文化的精神取向，又善于捕捉纷至沓来的外来艺术的审美精髓，才使他手中的材料和工具别具一种灵性，也使他的绘画形式语言产生质的飞跃，显现出当代文化意义和语境下的审美价值。

　　四

　　值得一提的是，近年来，汤志义在继续坚持漆画创作的同时，又将他异常灵敏的艺术触角伸向了油画领域。这并不奇怪。一个优秀艺术家的创作道路，总会呈现出一种依次递进、不断变革创新的态势。当他能够自觉地超越自己，进入到自由流畅地表达个人内在情感的创作状态时，就必然会开拓出新的创作领域。只是各人的开拓形式不尽相同，对汤志义来说则是选择了油画。每一种绘画样式都有其自身的艺术特征和形式语言，漆画姓“漆”，油画姓“油”，这是不言而喻的。汤志义的油画多以静物为创作题材，画面上的物象游走在具象和抽象之间，色彩丰沛饱满，线条和大笔触具有强烈的表现性，呈现出十足的油画味。但是另一方面，与他的漆画相比照，虽然二者都在说着各自的语言，但是却有着一脉相承的文化内涵和审美观念。所谓样式各异，观念一致，犹如同一个人用两种不同的发声方法唱歌，声音各异而气质依然。

　　其实，真正意义上的艺术作品从来就是画家精神的外化，它既是精神的，也是材料的。汤志义在生命体验、语言表达和材料选择上，总是在努力寻找着最合适的媒介，这是一个不断探索寻觅的过程，也是一个蕴含着创新意味的经历。汤志义脚下的路还很长，我们期待着他不断有新的开拓和超越。

龚云表   著名评论家

　　2008年4月3日于上海

　　Intrinsic Enhancement and Contemporary Conversion of Traditional Lacquer Painting

　　- On Tang Zhiyi's Lacquer Art

　　-Gong Yunbiao (Renowned Critic)

　　I.

　　Tang Zhiyi's road of road has been paved with flowers of success, but it is nonetheless filled with hardships due to his commitment to perfection and painstaking innovation. In nearly two decades, he has constantly managed to explore new techniques, new themes, and new artistic concepts, and successfully developed a new path in the course of the conversion of traditional lacquer paining into modern art.

　　Compared to other types of painting, lacquer painting is probably the one that lays the heaviest emphasis on technique and form. In the creation process of a lacquer artist, each piece requires a large trunk of time and energy, no exception. That is why people say that in order to become a great lacquer artist you have to spend three times of efforts more than other types of painters. What goes beyond the technical level is a profound level of aesthetic consideration. This does not means that techniques aren’t important, quite on the contrary, the delivery of delicate aesthetic concerns calls for extraordinary and latest techniques as the foundation and support; whereas modern aesthetic spirit and artistic concept can serve as the integral logic that incorporates technique and form into the artwork perse. For Tang Zhiyi, his painting creation relies heavily on techniques, and continues to absorb latest technological progress into his art creation. He knows it well that updates and changes in the outside world would certainly pose a challenge to the old way of thinking and cognitive schema. So if the techniques stay frozen and unchanged, art creation will be on the path and similarity and repetition, thus losing its vitality. But on the other hand, the impact of contemporary art, form of language have been greatly expanded and enriched, so how to inject contemporary elements into the traditional form of language has become a unavoidable node in the face of traditional arts' further development. This is exactly issue lingering in Tang Zhiyi's mind for years and what he has been sedulously trying to solve during his creation practice.

　　II.

　　From the Tang Zhiyi's series of lacquer paintings on wares in the early years, we can clearly tell his strong desire innovate form of language. It is amazing that he is committed to do so in such an early stage. In these works, the lacquer materials and wares are only media, and therefore distinguished from traditional lacquer wares and freed from the habitual mindset of traditional art creation and the long-standing set of routines in the art form; a personalized form of vocabulary has been created. This has become the solid foundation for his creation of abstract painting in the future. Tang Zhiyi maintains but also strengthens the visual effects of light and color in traditional lacquer wares, and further integrates some special textures into the fusion of light and color, creating an image of floating and varying color combinations that has not only conflict and confrontation, but also beauty and harmony, full of passion and tension, through which people can appreciate the rich rhyme, rhythm and style as well as the subtle emotional connotation behind this aesthetic implication.

　　To some extent, the unique charm of art lies in the special medium material and a skillful mastery. Shortly after his initial trials, Tang Zhiyi has creatively played the unique visual effects of lacquer materials to the extreme in his fisherwoman series figure. The most striking element in the whole picture is not the "lacquer" but the "color"; nor is it the "protagonist" but still the "color", that is, with special choice of colors to depict the unparalleled richness, vividness and subtlety of the protagonist and her inner feelings with on. The lacquer material itself is the material element in delivering the powers of color. The more important thing is the artist's talent and taste in color, as well as his skillful mastery of the lacquer material. Tang Zhiyi is very lucky, because he has both of these two unusual qualities, and he knows how to play them to the fullest in his works.

　　Tang Zhiyi is good at maintaining and playing a high proficiency of his strengths and expertise, and he can always find a proper theme that allows him to sufficiently express his of aesthetic values and artistic pursuit so that he can freely enjoy the ride of creation. His "seedpod" lacquer painting series is of the examples. The seedpod of lotus painted by Tang Zhiyi is not the  spectacular scene commonly preferred by people as described in a Chinese household poem line "blooming drunken red lotus accompanies by sleeping white lotus", but rather an artistic sight of "seedpod is ripening beneath crescent moon and cool breeze". The picture is more about a few and scattered lotus as lonely as a rare smoke in desert, about a single withered lotus oddly stands up alone, about a lotus leaf furnishes the dark inky water, and about the stem of seedpod looks up and signs to the sky. Only because of this, the whole picture is given a noble and elegant aesthetic implication. People look at the painting and see the cultural meaning and the tranquil scholarly simplicity behind it. As to structure of the painting, it is also simple and clear, striving to express intensity in its very simplicity, and richness in insipidity. As a famous Chinese painter from Qing dynasty, Zhen Banqiao(1693-1765), says "One two three branches, four five six leaves. Simplicity is comes natural to bamboo, why do we need the heavy-layered details." If we interpret the "branches" and "leaves" as in lotus as in "seedpods of lotus" and "leaves of lotus", this is exactly what Tang Zhiyi's lotus painting is all about, which is very rare from lacquer paintings in the past.  In the end, the cultural connotation of a painter's works depends on the artist's own cultural literacy and aesthetic level, as well as on the artist's free expression of his own emotions profound understanding gathered through time. This is something that cannot be simply attained by mere techniques.

　　III.

　　Starting from his creation of the river series, Tang Zhiyi began to adopt an abstract approach in his lacquer paintings, which is meaningful in that it enhances the intrinsic features of traditional lacquer painting and brings it to contemporary art. He uses lacquer materials as the media and converts his passion for creation to another level. American scholar Susan Lange, in her book Feeling and Form, put forward a famous proposition that "art was the creation of the symbolic form of human feelings". She believes that art, as a special figurative symbol, has its own unique meaning. This meaning is human emotions. The process of artistic creation is the process of art abstraction. It is a process to express the dynamic subjective experience, life pattern and human emotional forms. What we have from an art abstraction process is a unique expressive form that offers something beautiful for other people to enjoy. It is the illusory space of art. In Tang Zhiyi's works, he presents a space exactly like this. Filling the picture is a free and natural pattern infused with tensity. It is the spiritual journey that he had with his free spirit on the painting. The layout of colors and the ease of brushstrokes give observers an integral impression. In view of its form of language, it is marked by its "deep structure", which means that the movement of color blocks and lines on the picture has the "polyphonic" musicality, but also has "variation" in its form. If we look at Tang Zhiyi's abstract lacquer paintings, either by careful observation or from a distant position of view, we can see order in chaos, and feel the rhythm and rhyme hidden beneath the picture, then we can become fully convinced of his vividly portrayed passion for creation and passion for life.

　　Painting language and aesthetic concept are of a homogeneous process. There is no aesthetic concept without painting language, nor the other way around. Moreover, painting language and aesthetic concept are always at the same level. Although many art conceptual trends of the outside world provides various alternatives and possibilities to build the art language of Tang Zhiyi's lacquer painting. But without his own relentless exploration and digging, or without his understanding and enhancement of aesthetic values, then the intrinsic enhancement and contemporary conversion of traditional lacquer painting would have been extremely difficult. In other words, it is just because of Tang Zhiyi's aesthetic essence that is both deeply rooted in Chinese traditional culture and captured by foreign art, that has made the materials and tools in his hands enchanted with a magical dexterity. It is also because his aesthetic essence that his form of painting language has made qualitative leaps and bounds, showing the kind of aesthetic value under contemporary cultural significance and context.

　　IV.

　　It is worth mentioning that, in recent years, while Tang Zhiyi continues his efforts in the creation of lacquer paintings, he also stretched his ultra-sensitive artistic tentacles to the field of oil painting. This is not surprising after all. The creation path of a great artist often appears to be in a progressive and innovative pattern. When he becomes capable to get the best out of them at ease in some field, he will inevitably open up new territory for his creation. The only difference is that everyone do this in their own way. For Tang Zhiyi, he chose oil painting. Each types of painting has its own artistic style and form of language. For example, it is self-evident that the given name of lacquer painting is "lacquer" whilst oil painting is named "oil". Tang Zhiyi mostly chooses still life objects as the themes of his creation; objects on the picture are somewhere between figurative and abstract; colors are presented as abundant and bright; lines and brushstrokes have a very strong expressiveness, all of which shows typical qualities of oil paintings. But on the other hand, compared to his lacquer works, although the two are speaking their own almost totally different language, but they share an identical set of cultural connotations and aesthetic ideas. This is different style but a consistent idea, as if the same person sings in two different vocal approaches; they may sound different and but with similar deposition.

　　In fact, the true meaning of art works has always been the externalization of the artist's spirit. It is both spiritual but also material. In life experience, language expression and material selection, Tang Zhiyi is constantly trying to identify the closest medium to his heart, which is a process of ceaseless exploration but also an experience of innovative significance. There is still a long way to go for Tang Zhiyi foot, and we look forward to his continued new developments and progress.

　　April 3, 2008 in Shanghai

作者：龚云表