杜曦云(以下简称杜)：你当年为何要从电影专业转向绘画？

　　吕顺(以下简称吕)：与生存的境况有关。电影我一直非常热爱，而且它是我的原初专业。但电影是综合的东西，需要大量的资金以及很多人的配合，不是靠个人的力量就能完成的。在十年前那个环境下，电影业不景气，“圈子化”现象很严重，党派林立，真正想进入其中非常难。所以我就考虑暂时放弃电影，安静的思考一些东西，于是到了宋庄。在这种情况下，好像和电影暂别了，但只是说我不去进行专门的电影实践了，绘画和电影都是艺术，虽然绘画是独立完成的，但它们还是有很多相通之处的。

　　杜：这种相通体现在哪里？

　　吕：首先，它们都需要独特的风格、语言。电影，不论是小栗康平还是北野武、黑泽明，包括伊朗的阿巴斯，都有独特的风格，一看即知。绘画也一样，一看就知道是谁的作品。所以，你要形成个性化的风格，在思想性、形式、个性化方面都要有所突破，虽然绘画是静止的，电影是流动的，但其中有相通之处。

　　杜：你的作品强调绘画语言本体的力量，这是个非常显著的特点。经过这么多年的艺术实践，你认为自己的独特优势在哪里？

　　吕：每个人都应该有优势，这与个人素质有关：他的文化素养、综合素质，他对当代文化的关注程度，他对艺术的理解深度。我觉得我的优势在于：我从小喜欢画画，而且我从1980年代以来一直关注当代艺术，包括1992年也在画画。

　　杜：你当时为什么要画花呢？为什么你所画的又是一种“腐烂”的花？

　　你想传达的是什么呢？

　　吕：花在人们生活中是司空见惯的，乃至不可或缺的，因为它与人们的日常生活很贴近，大家对花的理解也就比较具有可交流性，比如花可以代表悲欢离合、美丑善恶… …所以我会选择花这个题材。

　　杜：为什么要选择猪以及青蛙这两种独特的形象呢？

　　吕：这和花是相似的道理。猪在人们心中的文化指涉是不一样的，可能西方人把猪当成一种宠物，一种非常聪明、可爱的动物。但中国人则认为猪是一种贪婪、饕餮、懒惰、肮脏的蠢物。所以，我画猪其实还是以它为隐喻，把它当成一种文化幽灵一般的形象，在当下的情境中，它的饕餮成性等欲望化特质使人产生一种无奈之感。

　　杜：你的这些以青蛙、猪、花等为母题的作品已经被被市场认可，但你又创作了一批与它们风格截然不同的作品。你如何看待市场和艺术创作自由之间的关系？

　　吕：我觉得做绘画首先要有一种责任，包括对收藏家、画廊都要有一定责任。不管别人怎么做，我个人不想生产艺术垃圾。我觉得作为艺术家，要不断去感受、去思考、去演化、去探索、去建构新的东西，拓展艺术的发展，不能在一个题材上停滞不前，无度复制。就像我说的多路思维、抽象思维。

　　杜：你正在画一批新作，是更为悲哀的宏大图景，创作这批画的主要冲动是什么？

　　吕：在当下这种巨型“摩登”都市里，每天你走在任何一个角落，都会有一种感觉，就是危机感。比如，当我开车在公路上行驶时，我有一种莫名的恐惧、可怕之感，好像随时随地都会发生危险。科技在发展，但人却变得麻木了，变得像机器一样。

　　杜：在你的作品中，我感受到一种忧伤、悲哀、绝望的情绪，这种情绪在你的作品中一直延续了下来，有时甚至更加变本加厉。那么你对当下现状是如何看待的，为什么会出现这种情绪？

　　吕：每个人的生活经历不一样，对当代文化的感知角度也不一样。可能我从小就比较敏感，我所受的教育和所处的环境使我对这种现状很无奈。人与人之间的心里距离越来越远，大“道”不见了，人心逝去了，物欲横流……我对这种现状更多的时候感到无奈，于是利用我的绘画进行一种情感的宣泄。

　　杜：在当代艺术创作中，有的艺术家长于观念的思辨，有的艺术家则主要擅长对现实生活进行敏感、深沉的体验。你认为自己属于哪一类？

　　吕：我喜欢后者。艺术发展到现在已经很多元化了，好像怎么做都可以。但是有一点我要强调：你做的东西要有针对性和尖锐性。我觉得应该秉持这种理性的创作态度，而不是一味地去犬儒式调侃或无度解构。在特定的上下文中，这些曾经是有意义的，而且也有人都已经做过了。但我觉得当务之急是致力于建构一种新的东西。后现代艺术对艺术家没有一个严格的技术规定性，人人都可以是艺术家，但是人人都应该有一种责任。

　　杜：你的绘画作品对现实持有一种尖锐的批判，那你有没有想过尝试用别的方式(比如电影)对现实生活进行一种记录？

　　吕：我前段时间拍了一些东西，但我觉得只有把一件事做到位后，才能更好地做别的事，这也是我的性格。

　　杜：那你关注的方向将是什么？

　　吕：我觉得始终是以人性的复杂、幽微为中心，无论发展到哪一步，这点是难以取代的。

　　Du: Why did you turn to painting from movie?

　　Lv: That’s related to the situation of life. I have always been in deep love with movie, and it is my original major in college. But movie is an integrated thing, needs huge money and cooperation of many people, not individual thing. Ten years ago, movie industry was under decline, suffering a serious problem of “Circle” limitation. It’s very hard to really join in as there were so many different circles. Therefore, I decided to give up movie temporately and moved to Songzhuang to think about some things quietly. In fact, I just stopped the critical practices of movie, but movie and painting are both art. Though painting can be finished individually, they still have many similarities.

　　Du: What are these similarities?

　　Lv: First, they both need unique style and language. No matter the movie by Kôhei Oguri, Kitano Takeshi, Akira Kurosawa, or Abbas Kiarostami from Iran, all has its own style and you can tell it at the first glance. So, you have to establish your own personalized style, effect a breakthrough on idea, form and personality. Though painting is still while movie is floating, they do have similarities.

　　Du: your works emphasize the power of painting language itself, which is a very profound character. Where do you think your unique advantage lies in after so many years of art practices?

　　Lv: Everyone should has his own advatages, which is related to his personal quality of culture and in general, his attention on contemprary art, his depth of understanding art. I think my advantages are my love of painting since childhood, my attention on contemprary art since 1980s, my painting career since 1992.

　　Du: Why did you paint flowers? Why did you paint such kind of “rotty” flowers? What did you want to present?

　　Lv: Flower is a farmiliar and even unlackable thing in everyday life. The understandings of it are more communicable because it is very close to everyday life. For example, flower can represent sadness and happiness, departure and get-together, beauty and ugly, good and bad……that’s why I select this subject.

　　Du: Why do you choose these two special images of pig and frog?

　　Lv: this is similar to flower. The cultural definitions of pig are different by different people. Maybe westerners regard pig as pet, a very smart and cute animal, but Chinese regard it as a greedy, gluttonous, lazy, dirty and stupid thing. So, in fact, I use pig in my paintings as a metaphor, as an image like a kind of cutural ghost. Under circumstances today, its glutton and other orectic characters arouse a feeling of disablement.

　　Du: Your works subjected of frogs, pigs and flowers have been accepted by market, but you still created another series of totally different style. How do you feel about the relationship between market and the freedom of art creation?

　　Lv: I feel that artist should have responsibilities in art creation, to collectors and galleries also. No matter how others do, I myself doesn’t want to make art rubbish. As an artist, you must never stop to feel, to thinking over, to evovle, to explore, to construct new things, to extend art development, and never stop at one subject with unlimited repetition. This is the multiple thought and abstractive thought as I said before.

　　Du: What’s the main inspiration of the new series you are working on now? They present a grand view with deeper sadness.

　　Lv: In the giant “modern” cities today, you will have a sense of danger everyday at every corner. For example, while I am driving on the road, I always have an unknow feeling of fear and horror, like danger may happen at any time and any place. Science is developing, while man become as numb as machine.

　　Du: I feel the emotion of melancholy, sorrow and desperation in all of your works, sometimes they are even strong. Why do you have such emotion? How do you feel about the situation nowadays?

　　Lv: Everyone has his own experiences of life, and his own understanding of contemporary culture. I might be very sensitive since my childhood. My education and the environment I was in has always made me feel so disappointed. The distance between hearts is further and further; general truth is gone; public morality disappeared and human desire inflated……most of the time I feel so helpless to the reality and can only turn to painting to release myself.

　　Du: In contemporary art creation, some artists are good at the discussion of concepts, some good at deep and sensitive experience of real life. Which do you think yourself belong to.

　　Lv: I prefer the latter. Art is so multiple now, and everything seems to be okay. However, one thing I have to emphasize that your creation must have pertinence and sharpness. I feel that we should insist on such reasonable attitude in art creation, not always cynical mokery or unlimited deconstruction. Those used to be meaningful under certain context and had been done before. But, I think the most important thing now is to construct a new thing. Post-modern art has no strict technical regulation upon artsts. Everyone can be artist, but everyone should have responsibility as well.

　　Du: Your painting criticizes the reality sharply. Have you even consider to try to record the real life by other methods, such as movie?

　　Lv: I shot something before. But I think that you can only do other things better after you have successfully done one thing. This is also my personality.

　　Du: What will be your attention?

　　Lv: It will always take the complication and subtleness of human nature as the center, which is irreplaceable no matter which step it developes into.
 

作者：杜曦云