Unveiling Her Self Kang Hong 2004.5. Cai Jin is a representative artist of Chinese art of the 1990s, claiming a unique position with an individual style. As a feminist artist she has also been continually influential. The rich and subtle sensitivity of her Banana Plant series, with its skillful use of red tones and powerful visual effect, have become the defining marks of the maturity of female art in this era. Childhood Experience Cai Jin was born in 1965 in Tun Xi in Anhui Province. Her mother is a teacher in elementary school, and her father the leader of the Huizhou Beijing Opera Troupe. As a child Cai Jin often lived in the country with her maternal grandmother, and was fond of staying in the house by herself. Traditional buildings are poorly lit with simple oil lamps and she always felt the place was haunted; at night she had to shut doors and windows tight before feeling safe. She eventually grew accustomed to the dimness and her imagination took flight. Water stains on the walls, complex patterns of windows and decorative details of the building, all drew attention to their tireless narration and mysterious presence. This kind of observations gradually formed the artist’s character and aesthetic taste; it also cultivated the perseverance that saw her through long periods of isolation while she insisted in articulating the sensibility she acquired as a child. Cai Jin’s father’s opera troupe was busy and for a period she used to attend every performance, squeezing onto the backstage, fascinated by the colourful costumes and the rich vocal experience. At home, she remained enveloped by the old mansion. During rainy season she would find herself mesmerised by the sound of raindrops on the roof tiles, breathing the moistness and fresh air, watching the drops. Moss patches on the courtyard suggested a sensuous smoothness, and the damp cracks between the paving stones suggested ghostly presence underneath. The damp season also enhanced the rich patterns on the walls; spreading mould spots appeared to have life, effected by some spirit. All these experiences deeply affected Cai Jin; in years to come, the refined observation gained from gazing at walls would surface all of a sudden, influencing her work even more than her favourite artists Vincent van Gogh and Albrecht Durer. Schooling Up North Cai Jin started to draw as an elementary student, at first copying illustrations in children periodicals such as the Young Red Soldier. By secondary school she was always the one asked to illustrate the blackboard notice in class. After high school she naturally applied to art school. She entered the fine art department of Anhui University in 1982. School training in realist technique did not allow much room for her to explore personal feelings even though her teachers were as sympathetic as possible under the circumstance. She was not aware of the exhilarating activities in major cities that came to be called the “85 New Wave”, and aspired modestly to a career related to art. After graduating in 1986, Cai Jin was assigned to the Fourth Engineering Middle School of Hefei Railway Department. In 1989 she went to Beijing to study at the oil painting department of the Central Art Academy. This was the first of the two major turning points in Cai Jin’s artistic career. Cai Jin entered the academy’s fifth Advanced Studies class, which was designed for young artists and teachers who had already undergone formal training. She was twenty-four years old and was seeking fresh material for her creativity. As an independent student Cai Jin had to pay her own tuition and living expenses. She was helped by the kind Mr. Zhong Han who found her a job teaching two children to paint at the rate of ten yuan per hour. Later she also started to draw illustrations for the magazines China’s Women and Youth Literature. Many of Cai Jin’s class, of which she was the youngest, eventually became active protagonists in China’s art scene. During the first year she was influenced by many famous masters, they include Vincent Van Gogh, Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud. In the second year she started to establish personal approaches based on independent observations. She started to realise what she wanted in her art and her paintings started to develop an individual style. Cai Jin’s art education was strongly influenced by her teachers in oil painting and drawing. The drawing class was not conducted in the conventional manner of studying models and still life, but took in anything near at hand including discarded newspapers, tree bark and rusty wires. Different arrangements of these objects created fresh relationships, and each one presented a new challenge to the students. Through this approach Cai Jin’s visual concepts were broadened and she learned to observe with a fresh eye. Her oil painting instructor Cao Ge is not skillful in speech, but he was always encouraging and kept on telling her that “you are doing fine; just keep going.” This helped Cai Jin to explore into the deeper significances of patterns and forms that she found intriguing, establishing her personal ties to the visual arts world. An Alternative Aesthetics The second major turning point in Cai Jin’s artistic career was in 1991 when she started to paint the Banana Plant series. In 1990 when Cai Jin went home she accidentally noticed a wilted banana plant among weeds. The large leaves wrapped around the body of the plant and exposed a flesh-like skin in red. The roots and leaves seemed to perspire with a faint breathing, and a special life appeared to linger beneath the wilted cover. This sight coincided with an unidentified sensibility in the artist and she felt irresistibly drawn to it. She took two rolls of film to record the scene, and since then these photographs have became an indispensable part of her luggage wherever she went. Before seeing this plant the artist had been trying to express herself without finding the right vehicle. The banana plant liberated her passions and for long periods after the encounter she was still enthralled by that original sensation. One day the artist began painting on a hundred centimeter square canvas and the crawling oil paint evoked a sudden pleasure. Through abstract patterns, monotonous colours and working within an insulated space the artist found the image of her soul. A cruel poetry and melancholic lyric surfaced out of the surreal terrain of her canvas. Revealing Her Self After two years at the Central Art Academy Cai Jin was hired by the Teachers’ College in Tianjin. This is when the Banana Plant series began. During that time it was very troublesome for people who held careers outside their own towns, and Cai Jin had to travel a great deal between Beijing, Tianjin and Anhui. But she always carried her painting equipment with her, eager to explore the passion roused by her artistic theme. Under this unsettled condition the Banana Plant series started to grow, centimeter by centimeter, painting after painting. In 1992 Cai Jin was invited by Chang Tsong-zung and Li Xianting to participate in the seminal China’s New Art Post-1989 exhibition. Li wrote that “among contemporary artists who employ metaphors Cai is a very special, and natural, painter…. The imagery of the banana plant surpasses sexual metaphor, or sex related sensations such as attachment and hate, conflict and masochism, but expresses the conflict between the explosion of life energy and self suppression.” Of the fifty artists invited to the exhibition, most of them were already well established, whereas Cai Jin was a new name and the only female participant among them. This is the first major contemporary Chinese art exhibition created by independent curators that travelled abroad. As a new artist on the scene, Cai Jin could not find a better opportunity to launch her career. The artist in fact did not analyse her feelings quite as much when she first started; it was just simple intuition and inner emotion. She is not the type of artist who designs the composition and hones her technique. She only has to sit in front of a piece of canvas to know what she needs to do. The art expresses pain as well as pleasure under her stubborn and sensuous approach, and it carries fresh visual messages. As a woman the art inevitably draws attention to issues of feminism. Like most feminist artists, Cai Jin’s art has eschewed the male perspective, and seeks the symbolic order of feminine nature and feminine language from the depth of primal life force. In traditional Chinese art banana plants are portrayed as a feature of nature, symbolising escape from reality. It is usually used as a decorative element. Cai Jin has embraced the plant as her central theme. The dry, writhing forms seemingly charged with desire is expressed with rich, dense colours. The sensual red paint crawls moistly on the canvas, spreading an ordour of rot and sex. Through the bodily language of a “sticky paste-like” sensation the artist reveals an inner experience of life, instilling the art with intense spirituality. One senses a warm and indescribable pain writhing and struggling in the concentrated life form of the “sticky paste”. Through her personal experience the artist has touched upon a common sensibility in contemporary life, capturing ones attention with “stickiness”, just like the female would in real life both stimulate the male and dispense with him. Cai Jin’s banana plant is a vehicle for displaying sex and reproductive power, and in the Feminine Art exhibition in 1995 she extended her painting surface to bicycle seats and bed mattresses. She feels that materials such as mattresses are related to the body, and its successful adaptation as a painting surface encouraged her to made similar attempts on chairs, bath-tubs and high-heel shoes. This feminist sensibility of Cai Jin’s gradually seeps into all aspects of life. With the colourful banana plant, what normally would symbolise power in the mundane world is thereby transformed, subverting the order of the male. Cai Jin has been hailed as a representative artist of feminism, and her works are often used to illustrate fashionable theories; but whatever the theory her paintings remain an enigmatic personal affair. Cai Jin paints what she wants to paint, and this personal approach has opened up a new visual experience. The Seduction of Red Red is Cai Jin’s emblematic colour. She explains that: “The colour red drives me crazy. In its colour field my painting brush becomes especially sensitive. The paint brush gets driven by inner need and it totally controls my sensations.” Cai Jin has been intrigued by the colour red since her early works, and by the time she found her style it has become fully entrenched, and a sensuous flesh-like red dominates her canvases. Full of the passion of life, red colour gets even more excited when laced with green shades. Born in the years of the Cultural Revolution, Cai Jin passed her childhood and years of youth under the banners of red. She may not have consciously chosen this colour, but as soon as she engages the picture frame, the need for red expresses itself, pouring forth blood-like from her brush. Shades of emotional pain and pleasure express themselves in conjunction with greens and blacks, articulating shades of emotional memory. There Is Nothing Better Than Painting In the decade since 1991 the artist has altogether painted two hundred and ten Banana Plants, made in different media and sizes. Cai Jin repeats her theme, and in repetition the permutation becomes infinite, each painting flowing naturally from her heart. The early works were colourful, then the pictures got very red, later she expanded into other colours. The early works were also more figurative, growing increasingly non-representational with the years. Each painting takes more than a month’s work, and it is not a matter of production either; rather, it is more like a routine, like eating and sleeping. Painting is her daily need. She does not start with a clear idea of the finished product, but lets it flow forth slowly, like water. From morning till night she works, completing no more than a palm size patch, crawling like a worm from its corner, eating its way through the surrounding, not repeating the ground covered. Cai Jin is happy with this routine, and starts her day every morning with music that sets the mood, not worrying about the results, not pressed to meet exhibition schedules. In 1997 Cai Jin travelled to the United States, visiting Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and New York, attending two symposia and showing at five exhibitions. She married in New York and stayed there. In New York Cai Jin completed a new work: her daughter was born. For two years from the start of pregnancy the artist stopped painting, concerned that the vapours of painting fluid might harm her baby. She took up the brush again in 2001. Until motherhood Cai Jin had only herself to worry about; she painted, smoked and listened to music, forgetting everything else. Motherhood has interrupted this routine, but Cai Jin welcomes it; she finds that it opens her up to life’s broader horizons. Constant interruptions during the painting process has shifted her attention from the composition to the touch of painting, loosening up the pictorial surface, allowing it to breathe more easily. She now sees more colours on the canvas, which document the changes in her life and reflect the steady evolution of her career. 2004.5.

作者：蔡锦