“I use art to resolve problems. I am sensitive to the equality among all living beings. However, freedom and equality are just dreams and mankind has yet to realize them”

　　Fang Lijun is one of the most significant figures of the Chinese Avant-Garde, an important proponent of Cynical Realism (a style of painting first dubbed by this term at the beginning of the 1990s by China’s noted critic Li Xianting). While Fang’s images are rapidly becoming pop icons in the international mass media, this is the first time that he has had a solo exhibition in a People’s Republic of China ‘government’ museum.

　　Background

　　Cynical Realism constituted a radical reaction to repressive socio-political regime and to the monopoly of the Soviet-inspired form of social realist art that had become a tool of propaganda to voice the policies and interests of the Communist party elite that had dominated China for over a quarter under the rule of Chairman Mao(1949-1976). Throughout that period, China was isolated from Western culture as well as dissociated from its own feudal history, as moves were made to eradicate that element of Chinese culture during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

　　Fang Lijun, who was born in Handan, Hebei Province, in 1963, experienced and felt all of this, all the more so because he came from a prosperous, educated family that valued individualism. When the Cultural Revolution swept China, the ultra-leftists perceived his family as bourgeoisie and in need of retraining in the socialist peoples education program, which also involved physical abuse and torture. In this context Fang was forced to lean to paint in the social realist manner.

　　After Mao died in 1976 and was replaced by the very pragmatic Deng Xiaoping, dramatic changes hit China. In 1979, the Chinese Government implemented the Open Door Policy, establishing diplomatic relations with the USA and opening the gates for an onslaught of Western lifestyles, including art. Works of Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Abstraction and even Pop Art suddenly, found a presence in this communist country.

　　This sent waves of euphoric freedom through the country, allowing Chinese artists to seek new artistic pathways, resulting in the pieces one can see in the excellent and highly professional exhibition: '85 NEW WAVE: The Birth of Contemporary Chinese Art, currently being held in Beijing (See "Point of View": The Dragon that Stirred up the Art World in this issue of C-Arts for more on the '85New Wave and the exhibition). Fang took an active part in the new wave of freedom which besides being called "avant-garde art", was also named "unofficial art" or "underground art", and a bit more neutrally, “experimental art”-especially after 1985, when he studied at the Print Department of thr Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing.

　　He also experienced the renewed crushing of the spirit of freedom, hope and individual dignity when the exhibition China/Avant Garde was closed down in February 1989 and he and other artists fell under strict scrutiny, and in June of that same year, when thousands of demonstrators were mown down by military tanks in Tiananmen Square ('Heavenly Peace Garden'). Previously he bad already felt the uncertainty of die times but now uncertainty reigned overwhelmingly.

　　Fang experienced all of this because he was one of the Chinese Avant Garde artists, along with Gu Dexin, Wang Guangyi, Zhang Xiaogang, and Yue Minjun - who chose to stay in their own country, rather than emigrating. So he endured this state of uncertainty for many years until the government formally recognized the existence of the new artistic pathways in November 2002 in an exhibition at Guandong Museum of Art. For this reason Fang says, "I use art to resolve problems. I am sensitive to the equality among all living beings. However, freedom and equality are just dreams mankind has yet to realize them.

　　The Most Subversive Chinese Avant-Garde Artist

　　Compared to other Cynical Artists, such as Geng Jianyi and Yue Minjun, Fang Lijun seems the most quiet and least provocative. Fang did not Want to make posters or propagandistic paintings. Fang tended to express the issue of individuality through contemplation of things not directly concerned with social matters. Fang released himself from the domination of politics. "The individual was not respected in the powerful collective," said Fang. Yet, actually, in my opinion, Fang Lijun is the most subversive of the Chinese Avant-Garde artists.

　　For Fang depicts a longing for the acknowledgement of the individual / personal in the midst of the celebration of collective beliefs, the tension between the utopian vision of happiness and the threat of reality. He indirectly, yet unequivocally, rejected the uniformity of the collective based communism that dominated all facets of life at that time.

　　Fang rejected the language of the bureaucracy, the language of the masses all of which appeared to him as all authoritarianism that forced him into a mold acceptable to everyone and every awareness. The art that he chose was not the sort of art that shouted out a rhetoric of only one meaning, but rather all art that followed the pathway of intuition, the stuff of ambiguity. His art was lyrical in nature. His works were richly and deeply interwoven with ‘intertextuality’- ever rooted in authentic personal experience but universal in nature, standing firmly on the ground, but taking us soaring beyond the worldly realm.

　　He once commented: "Art is not important" Fang found his own limitations but because of that, his paintings became freer. He returned to a place where he could speak in a relaxed manner, regain intimacy with his audience. He felt no need to mobilize the masses or control or dictate directives to anyone. His paintings absorbed elements of American Pop Art, with its roots in Western capitalism, while simultaneously retaining the core quality and glory of classic Chinese painting, with its roots in feudal culture - two elements strongly opposed by the Mao regime.

　　But unlike many Chinese artists who imitated the American Pop Art style that had rushed in as the bamboo curtain lifted, Fang absorbed its spirit and acknowledged as well as exploited the commercial way of life it reflected for his own artistic purposes. Cases in point are his huge paintings, with their more than perfect color, which look like enlarged photos highly reminiscent of advertising billboards.

　　It was also the essence of the art form that he drew from Classic Chinese art. In the landscapes of China, the sky, earth and human beings are all perceived as a unit. The word for landscape in Chinese is shanshui which is composed of two characters: shan meaning mountain and shui meaning water, representing the unity of these two contrasting elements. The mountain is the bridge between the sky and earth. This meeting expresses a sacred visit to a great, glorious and sacred reality, one of contemplation and meditation. This is intensified by the presence of clouds or fog, as well as water, in fast flowing steams, sleepy rivers and vast oceans.

　　Fang's paintings are panoramas of nature (shanshui): sky, mountains, oceans, rivers, endless waterfalls - all eternal, without end. Lonely, silent panoramas inhabited by the masses: floating in the air or on the waves of the ocean or striding across the clouds into this limitless quietude with no beginning and no end, there may be naked babies, little children or bald adults, or maybe the flowers symbolic of happiness that often form the theme of classical Chinese paintings (camellias, yulan, and peonies).

　　At first glance, the babies appear benignly uniform and innocent. However, a closer look reveals that Fang Lijun's babies are far from naive and joyful; their faces express signs of adult worry, sadness, anger, aggression and other emotions. Sometimes their eyes stare blankly, wide open as if startled, as if something unexpected has happened although it is never clear what that something might be. At times the panorama is bright, dear blue and joyous, the very picture of happiness and peace, evoking the utopia of the early revolutionary optimism of China under Mao. However, at other times, the panorama is dark, gloomy, boring and bleak as if society's bad dreams cannot be held at bay, as if everything has been pulled up by the roots, and any emerging struggle would be only for a 'different' life. They march in a direction that flows against the mainstream, struggling to step forward, to be able to change, even though what awaits them is not clear; there is no way of knowing what they will find ahead.

　　Solo Exhibition in Shanghai

　　In his recent solo exhibition in Shanghai, Fang not only presented paintings, but also installations, sculptures, graphics and even a kind of diorama. Unlike Wang Guangyi, or the other young contemporary Chinese artists who seem never to feel uncomfortable repeating what they have already done before as long as it is accepted as good and salable in terms of market demand (what I would call 'auto plagiarism’), Fang Lijun always offers new goods, riding new waves of creativity that make him stand out with the quality of a true figure of the arts. He continuously and consistently works for culture, not just to fulfill a production quota for the art market.

　　For example, the most recent works no longer depict only himself, bald and smiling, but also his friends and his curator, Zhang Qing as well as fellow artist Ai Weiwei, along with a wrinkled old grandmother—all of them laughing heartily. The mature-faced babies continue to appear, but within new panoramas imbued with new meanings. In one painting, the babies are 'boat people' crammed together into river craft, leaving one place as the sun is setting to migrate to a better place Their tiny boats are tossed upon the waves of the wide gray seas, their faces full of anxiety and curiosity about what lies ahead.

　　Deviating from his previous works, Fang now presents panoramas that are no longer silent and meditative; they have changed to become vociferous, thunderous, droning, squeaking, howling with laughter, roaring with rage, full of flapping and splashing. The sky is no longer

　　lonely, the sea no longer at rest. All of that has been replaced by turbulence and the roar of mighty storms, an atmosphere of total chaos Where previously, the focus was on human beings, animals now swim and fly across Fang's canvases, as if emerging from traditional Classic Chinese paintings (which during the Revolution were deemed feudal trash that must be eradicated along with the very roots of the culture that bore them). There are bees and flies, dragonflies and butterflies, cranes and phoenixes, as well as bats. There are also fairies and little, chubby cherubs (known as putto and cupido) joining them from the classic arts of Europe.

　　The bald people also no longer simply float in the water and air of some vast never-never land, in a country with no name, Now, joined by all kinds of colorful fish and birds, they clearly take joy in the water and the wind (reminiscent of Taoism, where both pleasure and potential danger lurk beneath the surface; also reminiscent of Mao swimming in the Yangtze River just to show his strength) in front of the Forbidden Palace/City (with a picture of Mao at its entrance).

　　The groups of bald boys no longer meander in a situation free of limits, troubles, worries or conflicts, without the constraints of place and time. Fang's diorama shows bald humans in uniforms who can only do violence and commit crimes within the confines of a prison; outside they must carry out their daily routines in the uniform manner of today's China, in an era of industry and consumerism.

　　AS I contemplate these artworks, I am suddenly reminded of a comment by the artist Yan Peiming (who was born in China in 1960 and moved to Paris in 1979, from where he traveled back and forth to New York and China) in an interview with curator HOU Hanru that was published in the September/October 2007 edition of Art Asia Pacific: "Europe represents culture. New York represents both culture and the market. Unfortunately, fort Chinese people today, money is everything, it's the only standard in their lives. This is really tragic."

　　Perhaps Fang Lijun is delving into a realm of awareness and thoughts about another kind of pressure, one that constrains individual freedom with the desire for obedience and uniformity— like the new consumerist forces threatening China? Fang Lijun's works, although they have changed profoundly, continue to grow from analogies deeply rooted in the richness of allusion, into panoramas brimming with signs and symbols. His works consistently hone our sensitivities and sensibilities: the question in my mind now (and I truly do no know the answer) is whether there is still any use for this effort.

　　出处：《C Arts》, TANUARY-FEBRUARY 2008，P102—106.

作者：Eddy,Soetritono