The school of realism has more or less vanished from contemporary art. In China, during the Mao Zedong era, socialist realism deemed itself a kind ultra-realism, until the end of the Cultural Revolution, when it was criticized and eventually ridiculed following the changing political tide of the early 90s. So too was the idealism, sought by the avante guard artists of the 80s, also abandoned in the 90s. In its place, postmodernism, from the 1990s onward, became the predominant trend for Chinese artists. Traditional forms along with social realism became blended together. But amongst the works from this tradition, only a few aimed and succeeded at shedding light on real life; most were merely vulgar, sensationalized works whose aim was more entertainment than anything of substance. In such an artistic environment, to turn back to some more traditional medium or approach, such as realism, be it in painting or sculpture, seemed not in keeping with the times and completely inappropriate – something utterly inconceivable. But it was just under such circumstances and against such a background that I first came across Li Zhanyang’s sculpture. I was immediately attracted by his work, by the realism of the scenes, the energy that came out in his depictions of the less visible parts of society. I was both taken aback and excited by his work. I would even go so far as to say that I regarded his work as a sign of a kind of return to realism. I by no means, however, to say that Li Zhanyang’s realism is a return to the old realist style per se, rather it is a new approach and strategy, which, for Li, is perfectly appropriate for representing the scene of city life and Chinese modernity.

　　Having be so truly stirred and excited by Li Zhanyang’s art, I decided, along with Wang Mingxian, to involve him an exhibition in 2002, entitled, “Good Harvest: China Contemporary Art Exhibition.” At the exhibition, Li Zhanyang displayed his Life Myriad group sculpture series – a series he worked on from the late 90s to 2002. It was also Li Zhanyang’s first comprehensive and mature attempt to showcase his work since finishing a period of artistic study. The work, Life Myriad depicted the collective street life from the artist’s own neighborhood, Huangjueping-Street, in Chongqing city. Li Zhanyang’s artistic approach to realism, his technique, is indeed unique and special. While similar to other realist works in that it uses a kind of narrative and story-telling approach to represent the life, diversity and vitality of a real place (in this case the artist’s own street, Huangjueping), what stands out is Li Zhanyang’s animated, cartoon-like depiction of characters to create a scene. Each scene has the quality of being as if inside a room or box: placed on a square platform as if a floor and with a variety of details or furnishings reminiscent of something indoors. And then there are the people in the scene, so crowded together and full of life-like detail: it’s as if you can feel the noise of the bar or club being depicted. Such an approach can’t help but remind one of Rent Collection Yard, in the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, which also employs a kind of “animated” quality in its representation of people and events. That kind of group sculpture (Rent Collection Yard) is extremely representational and symbolic: it is a kind of fusion of socialism and realism. But its animated quality, the theatrical way in which people and things are placed together, is what really stands out as defining feature of the work. In the layout of all of these pieces, emphasis is laid on the form, which is at once an organic whole and seeks to be something larger than life in its representation.

　　Such a stylized approach was meant to capture the conflict between Liu Wencai, (an infamous landlord of the time) and the tenants who rented his land. The tension between the landlord and tenants, along with the anger and resistance of the latter, are stylized into something grandiose, and this in turn becomes the primary way by which the work tells a story and also the source of the conflict and tension that come out in the work. The purpose of Li Zhanyang’s animated approach to his subject, however, is something entirely different. He’s not seeking something overtly tragic or heroic; instead, he’s seeking how to best represent the “everything” of simple, everyday human life. All of Li Zhanyang’s technique, the way he works so directly and closely with his hands, along with his use of bright colors, has the effect of heightening attention to the surface of the subjects in his scenes. He’s not trying to move the audience through his works so much as he is trying to engage the viewer in “reading” his “story.” He gives the viewer something like what we see in the Song Dynasty scroll-type works, like Spring Fativel along the River (Qing Ming Shang He Tu), a city scene to be savored bit by bit. Li Zhanyang’s works are also reminiscent of the folk art tradition seen in the colorful clay figurines produced by the Zhang Family in Tianjin in the late 19th century, with their focus on street life, or the large Buddhist rock carvings depicting Hell in Sichuan Province.

　　Li Zhanyang’s work gives us a glimpse into life on Huangjueping Street, and is full of the tiny little details and scenes one might see there. They are the kinds of scenes increasingly hard to find in bigger cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Huangjueping Street is in a way quite special, because it is perched on the edge of the city and the countryside and serves as a kind of meeting point between these two landscapes. As such, it is a mix of all types and classes, put together in one vista. Because it has traditionally been a poor area offering little opportunity for development, few people in Huangjueping harbor the dream of changing their social status. And because there is little opportunity for ambition, there isn’t really much room for competition. Or perhaps it’s the other way around: because there isn’t much competition, there isn’t much motivation or animosity between people. In such a place, one experiences life in a simpler, truer form; and only can people who have lived in such a place be said to truly have an appreciation for the common life, for civic rights and a sense of what is populist. Li Zhanyang grew up among the rank and file lower class in the northeast region of China, Chongqing, Huangjueping in particular, has been his home since the 1990s and only given him a greater taste and appreciation for the life of a commoner. Despite any changes in his themes or subjects, the undercurrent in Li Zhanyang’s works remains focused on exploring the primitive driving life forces of the common citizen. Sex, in particular, is one such “force” explored time and again, as are populist attitudes and philosophy.

　　From a young age, Li Zhanyang developed the habit of observing the people and society around him. In his native Huangjueping neighborhood, Li Zhanyang’s acute ability to “read life” on the streets around him comes naturally. Not only is the artist able to soak up all of the lively theatrical detail of the environment around him, but he is also able to somewhat read into and reflect the complexity and conflicts found in human nature and the socialization process. Of the two, Li Zhanyang seems to view the latter as being truer or more honest, because when you learn to see the world with your own eyes you don’t need to rely on the sayings and opinions of others. Under such a philosophy, art must stay true to the world in the artist’s eyes; as an artist, it is about representing and sharing with others your own discoveries. Whether one is able to create something technically good, is a matter of ability, innate or otherwise. Being able to create something honest, something real, is a matter of integrity. Whether an artist’s work stays true to this integrity is something only the artist really knows.

　　Only by reading life, day in and day out, does one have the ability to go beyond inherited dogmas and perspectives. Li Zhanyang once commented, “If only I could freeze and transplant these people (from Huangjueping street) into my work. But they are of course real people.” Human life is the combination of both the material or physical, and the spiritual. When we observe others – their physical and spiritual being - our own body and mind are also being examined by ourselves. Human nature is not something that can be frozen and dissected. But we can assume that in the arena of everyday life, under normal circumstances, our physical and spiritual being tend to give us an accurate picture of what human nature or instinct is. In Li Zhanyang’s Life Myriad we see a world of prostitutes and their customers, employers and employees, police and thieves, all placed together in such a way that we are able to examine something of who they are as people, as humans. Li Zhanyang’s interest is not in presenting these people through some kind of moral lens or sticking to any kind of stereotypes. Confucius once commented that when it came to physical and sexual appetites, people were all equal. Similarly, wealth or poverty provide no standard for judging one’s character – these are not reflections of human nature let alone a criterion for prejudice – they are more a matter of chance or circumstance. This is why Li Zhanyang questions and examines with suspicion all moral labels and standards. We see this attitude of suspicion toward generally accepted norms in the artist’s recent works where “sex” is a theme explored time and again. In ancient times under the predominant influence of Confucianism, and more recently under Maoism, sex was inextricably linked with morality. The result was kind of general repressed sexuality. But since the 1990s, as peoples’ standard of living has improved and people are generally better off materially and live more enriched lives, people’s attitudes toward sex have also begun to open up. At the same time, an illegal sex trade has also sprung up. As China continues its modernization, it will certainly have to come to terms with a variety of issues surrounding the subject. What Li Zhanyang does in his recent works is draw from the traditions of literature and folktales as well as life in modern cities to explore the complicated relationship between human nature, morality and sex. So, for example, in his works we see characters from the well-known classic, “Jin Ping Mei”: Ximen Qing, Pan Jinlian, Wu Dalang and Wu Song . This story not only sets up all kinds of moral opposites: heroism and villainy, fidelity and adultery, uprightness and corruption, but it also sheds light on the complicated and at times conflicting impulses behind human nature. It sketches a picture of human nature by exploring the grey area between reason and passion, restraint and dissoluteness. So the Wu Song and Tang Sen that we see in Li Zhanyang’s sculptures are not entirely saintly nor without physical or sexual appetites – they are complex characters – exceptional and common at the same time.

　　As Li Zhanyang once commented:

　　In 2002 I created a color sculpture of Wu Song (based on the fictional character referred to in the footnote below) killing his sister in law. Wu Song stands out as a symbol of heroism. Left alone to deal with the murder of his brother, he must assume a heroic stance as he makes his way onto the stage. He must pick his mark carefully as he thrusts his sword into his sister in law’s breast. Perhaps he has never seen such voluptuous breasts; still, he must thrust his sword between them. I often wonder . . . he must have been torn apart by the whole thing. I often try to look at the story, at history, from a more human point of view. I like to retell history, to play with the idea that a hero is not something immortal. I like to consider than behind the heraldry of any hero there must be a kind of personal anguish, and then I explore that. In fact, we usually overlook or even totally ignore this anguish; we’re too used to measuring everything with a kind of rigid moral standard, when in reality, many of our truest impulses, our basic instincts, run counter to this standard. I like to try to abandon all such standards of the day when I contemplate human nature. As no one has ever been able to definitively tell me exactly what the essence of human nature is, I am left to search for the answer myself.

　　I wonder, when Wu Song ripped off his sister-in-law’s clothes before he kills her and saw her naked body before him, was he, if even for a moment, caught between conflicting feelings of lust and hateful vengeance? At the same time, I think of Ximen Qing and Pan Jinlian and their affair. Pan Jinlian must also have been torn between different emotions: on the one hand her strong feelings for Wu Song, which she kept to herself and on the other, her adulterous affair with Ximen Qing.

　　(Li Zhanyang “Reflections on Jin Ping Mei”)

　　Generally when we picture Wu Song coming to terms with his sister in law’s adultery we see him as being compelled to act out of a visceral sense of anger and desire to seek justice. But in Li Zhanyang’s treatment of this figure, under his interpretation, Wu Song’s instinctive anger exists alongside a simultaneous lustful impulse. From the standpoint of Freudian psychology, while Pan Jinlian’s infidelity and murder of her husband is simply a ruthless act of vengeance against Wu Song, Wu Song’s murderous retaliation might be seen as a kind of an explosive response to pent-up, repressed sexual feelings. While perhaps a subversion of the original work, Li Zhanyang’s telling of this story at least provides and alternative explanation of events, even if it can’t be regarded as a lone voice of truth. In fact, Li Zhanyang’s interpretation of events and life in general strongly calls into question all conventionality. What he tries to do is to take and examine these events and characters in a more human context, resulting in stories with greater depth and truth.

　　Now, if we refer to Li Zhanyang’s realism as a kind of “Grassroots

　　Realism,” we must consider what it really conveys. Or, let us ask, what do his “observations” on life and the reality of human nature mean in terms of art history and critical realism?

　　Li Zhanyang’s sculpture possesses a kind of energy that more classical, commemorative works do not. Populism is essentially at odds with the commemorative tradition and is ‘antiheroic” in nature, but it is not the embodiment of cynicism. Cynicism, by contrast, is a kind of intellectual escapism and stems from a sense of futility and self ridicule. Populism, on the other hand, essentially draws on the simplicity and primordial nature of life and more or less reflects a healthy attitude toward life. While perhaps bordering on pop culture, it is more grassroots in nature and is not the stuff of Hollywood or the like, refined to the tastes of the masses. It is, instead, more provincial or small town-like in nature and comes from folk culture. Stylistically it adheres to provincialism, naturalism and vitalism (holism). Conceptually, it is anti-center, anti-authority, anti-hierarchical as well as egalitarianism. It might be likened to the spirit surrounding the peasant uprisings of the late Ming Dynasty where the commoners, referring to their revolutionary leader, Lichuang Wang, chanted: “Welcome Chuang Wang! Welcome Chuang Wang! He won’t take our grain like those other corrupt officials.” Simple egalitarianism, then, is subversive toward central, authoritative ideology. Put simply, populism is neither philosophical nor theoretical; instead, it is judgment based on experience. It is the equivalent of civil rights and the Principles of the People . Populism is everywhere to be seen in the society around us today, especially in China, where social upheaval of one kind or another has resulted a growing gap between the rich and poor, and this, in turn, has all but heightened people’s awareness of civic life. But in terms of China’s contemporary art landscape, attempts to represent or depict this civic awareness of what I call the “Three New Principles of the People” (xin sanminzhuyi) with civic life, civic right and populism as I mentioned above, have been few and far between. Generally speaking, not only is there a growing gap between the status of artists and the rest of society, but in terms of ideals or values there is increasingly little relationship between the two groups at all. It is for these reasons that I like to refer to Li Zhanyang’s works as grassroots realism. His works are aimed at the public (both Chinese and beyond) and seek to present the kind of populist mentality I have referred to. In this sense, not only does his work stand apart from the social realism of the past 20 or so years, but it also distances itself from present pop art in general.

　　Chinese realism of the past 20 some years can be regarded as a continuation of the greater social realism movement dating back to the 19th century. In its broader context, social realism can be regarded as something of an international phenomenon, including the Wandering of Russian artists in the 19th century, the Mexican mural paintings of the 1930s and the so called Ashcan art of America, spanning from the turn of the 20th century to the 1930s. The difference between social realism and socialist realism is that the former is free from the influence of national ideology and control; it is the result of independent thought and criticism by freethinking intellectuals. Social realism can be said to honestly reflect the concerns of the lower classes, but it is also a reflection of the populism and free democratic ideals as held by intellectuals.

　　In China, this kind of social realism can be traced back to the Woodcut Movement of the 1930s. This has been followed other movements, the “Scar Art, ” and “Rustic” movements of the 1970s as well as the “Cynicism” and “The New Generation” movements of the 1990s, which were all reflections of social conditions at the time. All of these trends have, however, tended at some point toward elitism. For example, Scar Art and Rustic Painting were movements in which intellectuals critically reflected on the period of time and events surrounding the Cultural Revolution. The Cynicism and New Generation movements, on the other hand, following political disillusionment and commercialism, resulted in a kind of nihilism favored amoung some traditional literati. Today, one may find many fashionable, different kinds of Reslism in Chinese contemporary art world. Almost all of them, however, is void of true critical meaning. Against such a backdrop, and as China remains in a state of change, Li Zhanyang’s work stands out and provides the art world with a new, grassroots approach, and as such, offers inspiration and possibility for the further development of the Chinese social realism. China’s social realism tradition, perhaps in an unconventional way, has the potential to change and develop. And this “New Social Realism,” in turn, has the potential to more truly reflect present reality in China. More importantly, Li Zhanyang’s grassroots realism or new social realism begins by critically examining Chinese society at the lower levels as it continues to modernize. Against the backdrop of China’s new social reality, he uses art to re-examine justice and human nature.

　　Also of note: because Li Zhanyang has spent considerable time living, and working in Chongqing, his art work cannot help but naturally bear some mark of its environment. This is significant because some half a century ago, the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts served as an important base for the social realist art then being produced. Li Zhanyang’s populist - social realist perspective can, in fact, be viewed as a continuation of the academy’s social realist tradition. From the art works, such as Rent Collection Yard in the Mao’s era in the 1950s, to the Scar and Rustic Painting of the 1970s, to today’s grassroots realism presented by Li Zhanyang - all can be said to employ a kind of populist, narrative quality. Althoug the Rustic Painting of the 1970s, took a rebelion against Mao’s Socialist realism after the Cultural Revolution. The artists, however, still employed Mao’s socialist monumental style in order to undermine the heroism and grandeur of the Socialist Realism. For instance, in his work called Father, Luo Zhongli potraied a peasant from the remote Ba Mountain, in the size similar to Mao’s official portrait, as critical commentary on the grand revolutionary thems of the Cultural Revolution. The result is a kind of satirical playfulness, where the work criticizes and becomes the antithesis of itself. In other words, it is still an monument with a face of ati-monumentality. Li Zhanyang’s works, however, are not “anti” in the same way, nor are they commemorative or grandiose in their story telling, and this is in keeping with the populism I mentioned earlier. Stylistically, if they can be said to be “anti” anything, his works are decidedly anti-institutional, unorthodox and anti-elite.

　　Jin Ping Mei is a very well known novel from the late Ming Dynasty (circa 1610 A.D) and tells the story of a household in the Song Dynasty (12th century AD). In the part of the story referred to here by Li Zhanyang, a lustful merchant, Ximen Qing, seduces Pan Jinlian and marries her after they conspire to kill her husband. Upon returning after some time away, the slain man’s brother, Wu Song, avenges his brothers’ murderer. For its time, the story is often regarded as a comparatively bold look into the human psyche and sexual impulses.

　　The ideological basis of the political program of the Chinese national leader, Sun Yixian (Sun Yat-sen) (1866–1925), championing the principles of nationalism, democracy, and socialism.

　　“Scar Art” refers to a movement in the late 1970s which began to critically examine the tragic events surrounding the Cultural Revolution.

作者：Gao,Minglu