Like many Chinese artists from his generation, Zhang Yu speaks to tradition and to innovation at the same time. Essentially an ink painter, Zhang shows us how he has expanded the repertoire of the artist working with ink on paper; giving up the brush, Zhang builds up marvelously intricate abstract works of art by creating finger paintings composed of thousands of dots of paint, arranged in billowing swirls across large canvases. It can be easily argued that such works represent a new mode or category of art, but some research shows us that Tang Dynasty artist Zhang Zao, who lived and worked in the late 8th century, was the one of the first Chinese artists recorded to make paintings with his fingers. Because China is a brush culture—students learn characters by painting them with a brush—the use of one’s fingers in painting might seem to many a bit extravagant or even absurd. Yet finger painting is exactly what Zhang has been doing in his recent art, ostensibly because he is a noted experimental artist. Of course, the other issue that comes to mind is the fact that these paintings are ineluctably nonobjective: they are abstract in the purest sense of that word. Clearly, abstract art has been part of the spectrum of Chinese art for at least a couple of generations; however, the techniques seen in the work of someone like Zao Wou-Ki relate closely to ink techniques, even when his canvas is awash with color. The abstract effects in traditional Chinese painting have most often been based as a part of the brush’s repertoire; as a result, one cannot really see them as purely nonobjective, even if we greatly admire the various blotches, splashes, and other stylistic consequences isolated from a clearly painted landscape. One knows that Chinese landscape painting is among Asian culture’s greatest achievements, but it has been said that in the last 100 years, no new ideas have been found in China’s ink paintings. This may—or may not—be true, but the notion that ink painting must be renewed in some way remains an issue with Chinese artists. Zhang’s method of working, which consists of his dipping his right index finger into the ink or water paint and then pressing the finger onto the paper, doesn’t seem so much a correction of brush activities as it is a demonstration of an idiosyncratic but ambitious style. Style, it has been said, defines a person, and in Zhang’s case, style is so much the consequence of a procedure specific to him, it may be understood as the particular result not only of his method but also of his physical person. We know that our fingerprints are ours alone; they are not duplicated in any other person. So, in a sense, Zhang’s fingerprint paintings radically expand around what we might describe as the small point of his index finger and the larger point of his creativity, both of which are wholly his own. A microidentity, in the shape of a finger creating dots, matches the artist’s larger self, which is responsible for the way in which the art has been made. If we consider that the overall anonymous impression of the finger paintings challenges notions of an individual maker, we must remember that the finger that made the impressions is Zhang’s and Zhang’s alone. Thus there is an interesting contrast, or tension, between the distinctiveness of Zhang’s process and its striking results, in which any sense of the individual has been exchanged for a sea of indentations no one would recognize as resulting from Zhang’s own hand—this despite the fact that the impressions are forever joined to Zhang’s actual finger. Given that much recent contemporary art in China has to do with the problems of identity in the face of change, Zhang’s abstract art could easily be seen as referencing the traditional, Confucian notion in China that the group possesses greater importance than the individual. Self-abnegation, which is a part of Zhang’s esthetic, vies with the assertion of self that art implies. One is hard put to read both notions of selflessness and contention as occurring at the same time, but it is clear in Zhang’s art that there is the double role of an invisible identity and a prominent one. This results in an art whose contingencies reflect a core conflict between the emphasis on the greater good of the group and the inherently individualistic energies of the artist. The struggle is intensely but not uniquely Chinese; variations of it occur wherever art is practiced. Yet it is true that Confucian virtue has roots deep in Chinese culture; and that Zhang’s self-expressiveness opens a gap between the ideal as it should be and the reality as it is practiced. Indeed, the pictures of Zhang’s installations of finger-painted books and hangings show that he is intent on rendering visual language abstract. Like Xu Bing, whose Tianshu remains a notable event in contemporary Chinese art history, Zhang works through a thicket of nonmeaning, so that the role of a recognizable object is nullified in the face of abstraction. As a Western writer based in New York, one of the things that most interests me is the Chinese appropriation of methods mostly originated earlier in my city. Xu Bing wrote his master’s thesis on serial repetition in the art of Andy Warhol, and when I asked him how he knew about Warhol’s method, he simply replied that the New York art magazines were available to him at the time. Now it is true that both abstraction and installation, the basic components of Zhang’s art, come from New York artists working a generation and more ago. At the same time, these methods have been internationalized, so that a specifically geographical or cultural tag can no longer be assigned to them. As we have noted, Zhang’s finger paintings have historical precedents in Chinese art, while notions of pure abstraction are closely tied to the modernist period—a Western cultural development. So it can be said that Zhang’s art belongs to both Asian and Western practices, with inspiration coming both from the Tang Dynasty and from the European tradition of modernity. Can Zhang’s finger-painting series be contextualized within a Western point of view? One of the most interesting things about his art is that it records on its paper surface not only the image but also the act of painting. The impressions on the paper bear the signs of his finger as it presses against the ground of his material. The consequences of these impressions show that Zhang leaves a visible trace of his actions; his art thus becomes a performance as well as a finished painting. While the viewer stands before the final, absent-author version of Zhang’s action, at the same time he recognizes that the artist himself is documented in the art, most especially because his personal touch is retained by the ground of his material. But Zhang, an avant-garde ink painter who has been ahead of his time, does not incorporate into his work any obvious spiritual or philosophical attitude, while his writers, intrigued by the art’s performance aspect, tend to assign a conceptual bias on the part of the artist. It seems to this writer that the Western practice of conceptualism does not apply to Zhang’s art, which is true to an artisanal process. Conceptual art of course depends heavily on an idea, but this is not actually the basis of Zhang’s method. Zhang looks to a ritual purpose in some ways—in the sense that his finger-print paintings consist of a single action repeated many, many times over. The reiteration of a gesture constitutes the heart of Zhang’s efforts to offer a surface that resonates, mystifies, and changes during the time that it is watched. Indeed, it may be more accurate to say that Zhang’s works respect sacramental devotion more than anything else. Perhaps Zhang is best incorporated into a critical point of view by including him within the minimalism’s outlook, which also negates the personal (albeit in industrial terms). The single dot of paint, repeated myriad times, results in a beautiful surface that announces itself as a living fabric. Seen up close, Zhang’s finger-painting art has large movements occurring within the composition. The mosaic effect of the individual dots is quite remarkable, and appears to benefit very well from Zhang’s practiced hand. Expanding the small into the large without engaging in brush painting is quite an achievement, and we understand that Zhang is in many ways a gifted experimental artist, that is, someone determined to push the language of art to new conclusions. How are these new conclusions arrived at? For one thing, Zhang’s earlier series, entitled “Divine Light,” shows that he has been concerned with abstraction within the ink-on-paper tradition since the 1990s. The sequence observes light as a aura, sometimes surrounding a rectangle or circle. The radicalism of Zhang’s choice of imagery lies in its unapologetic use of abstraction, suitably chosen as a nimbus encircling geometric shapes that refuse to resolve into a figurative image. Inevitably, we associate the Chinese ink practice with the landscape, but Zhang has turned instead to nonobjective imagery. In light of recent developments in Chinese art, this may not be so radical, but when Zhang first made his paintings, his abstract orientation can be considered a big step away from the legacy he grew up with. Contemporary Chinese culture remains taken with the technical aspects of figurative art: many Chinese painters pursue realism while working with Western materials—oil paints. From a Western point of view, this interest seems pretty much after the fact, but the history of oil painting in China is only about one hundred years old. The freedom with which Zhang approaches his art also suggests a sensibility intent on forging new approaches to making art. While his finger paintings cannot be said to accommodate figuration in any way, at the same time the vast sprawl of his large works bring out subtle but discernible patterns, which in their cosmic play demonstrate an understanding of both visual and psychic liberties. Zhang looks for a grand view, hoping to pass it on to his audience. At the same time, he remains cognizant of his esthetic past, which is visible in the way he creates fingerprint banners that remind the viewer of unrolled scrolls as they move upward, toward the ceiling. Contemporary art in China has always been a mix of the very old and very new, expressed in ways that make use of Western techniques without being excessively in their debt. To Zhang’s credit, he implies previous accomplishments but does not dwell on them in his art, which after all is best understood as a new form, even a new medium. Art recovers from historical reiteration when it is made new, and Zhang is among the experimental ink artists who offer psychic and material transformations that look like they will last. There is a larger problem implied by the current cult of newness in art, and that is best understood in practical terms—just how far can an artist go in search of new criteria? In a world like China’s especially, the weight of 5000 years of continuous culture would seem to stifle any overthrow of historical protocol; we look at China, where the adjective “classical” is still used with living force, and the recognition occurs that the audience for avant-garde art remains small. Yet an avant-garde does in fact exist; it is made possible by the persistence of misunderstanding new art, which easily turns to dislike. Chinese artists may enjoy comfortable lives even by Western standards, but the sense of a compelling discussion between practitioner and audience appears less likely than one might think. Although many artists left China after the events at Tiananmen Square, many have returned to the Mainland, lured by the hope of money and artistic freedom. Sadly, both advantages are problematic—ready cash for art does not guarantee and may well undermine esthetic integrity, while artistic freedom must follow the rules that Mao cannot be satirized and sexual imagery cannot be used. These two restrictions compel artists to show their work elsewhere, especially in Europe or America. But Zhang, who has participated in shows both in Europe and North America, does not have a problem with questionable imagery. Instead, it can be argued that his abstractions demand a different kind of understanding, whereby the rupture that occurs between traditional ink painting and finger painting results from a very different conception of art. Zhang’s earlier abstractions, notably the “Divine Light” series, still were composed of black ink on paper. But the finger paintings put forth their imagery based upon a new idea—namely, that the abstraction we encounter would forego the brush in favor of an alternate system. It appears that the legacy of traditional Chinese art has become, at least for some people, a burden; the kinds of formal freedoms and spontaneity that enlivens the art of someone like the classic modernist Chi Bai-Shih is no longer active in the work of more recent artists. There is, then, a technical problem: how can the tradition be revived. In the case of Zhang, we can see his desire to bring ink painting to a new pass, so that its essential energies, if not its usual forms, are preserved. A Westerner might ask the question: Why go to such lengths to preserve the customary when the current language of art is inherently international, culturally nonspecific, and devoted to innovation above all else? But we must remind ourselves that a Chinese painter like Zhang, breaking with the past carries particular weight. The esthetic of Western modernism remains slightly foreign to traditionally oriented Chinese artists in the sense that it does not belong to them—not because they don’t understand it—they do, of course—but because they don’t own the history behind it. So an artist like Zhang, trained within his own long-continuing legacy, must struggle to arrive at an esthetic he can call both modern and his own. His determination to create a language adequate to the needs of his time is evident in his position as an editor of experimental publications; he hopes, I think, to widen the audience for exploratory ink painting. But Zhang has moved beyond the boundaries of the medium by working with a single finger alone. This is not historical; rather, it represents a more or less complete break with his background. The newness of Zhang’s art demonstrates that radical change is needed to transform his tradition into a practice that looks not only to Asia’s history, but also to Western achievements. A double-sided practice, if not a double-sided affiliation, seems more than necessary in light of the way art is practiced all over the world. Zhang needs to translate Western ideas to display his changes in a medium that stays distinct from Western forms; and this must happen in a way that concentrates the formal power of his alterations. (Interestingly, so far the emphasis has been on Chinese reinterpretations of Western contemporary art and thought; in terms of form, Westerners have not turned to China in the same numbers. But this might well change as art continues its globalization.) Esthetics aside, one of Zhang’s chief accomplishments has been his redefinition, within Asian terms, of his art even as he has made use of Western ideas. As we have seen, precedents occur within Chinese art for the practice of making art with one’s hands. Yet it has taken the kind of advances Western art has made, in modern and contemporary practice, for Zhang to have the space to change his manner of working. Innovation does not come easily; it is constructed according to the background and environment of the artist wishing to change the language of form. Zhang is particularly interesting as an artist because he has looked to precedents outside his culture, which establish him as a person of integrity and forceful creativity. As time goes on, the situation in art threatens to become monocultural—the borderlines between cultures are being erased. This should come as no surprise to those of us in the art world, especially in the urban centers, where access to information is easy and convenient. But we do not know whether the monoculture will remain fertile for those artists who wish to build an avant-garde; we cannot predict how the future will turn out, either formally or intellectually. We can, however, opt for ongoing changes; we recognize that Asian art and Western art continue to exchange concepts and designs. Zhang is very much a part of the movement toward formal discoveries in cultures one does not belong to. His single-finger paintings show that the artist need not rein himself in, and that the discovery of both differences and parallels accompanies a wide-ranging intellect and restless stance. The development of an art monoculture will inevitably place pressure upon artists to transform the clichés of their particular generation. In the case of contemporary art, there is the danger that we will favor a superficial merging of difference—at the expense of a historically rooted expression. This would be problematical, to say the least. What is needed is something that Zhang himself has done: the practice of an awareness of both the old and the new, the near and the far. His research into methodologies results in striking insights into art as it is currently occurring; his single-finger art is both formally ancient and philosophically new.

Jonathan Goodman