It may be difficult for us to make a final judgment for an artist’s art. Just as the art of Liu Yonggang, it is still in the process of developing. However, I am fond of this batch of his paintings very much which makes me excited after seeing. Why? Because his paintings not only present the profound cultural weight, form beauty and promote them into a higher realm as well, but also have the characteristics of pureness of contemporary Chinese art.

　　From the perspective of paintings’ history, western started to be interested in line at the end of 19th century. They began to turn from oil painting having structure of chunk and surface, and classical oil paintings to modern oil paintings which liberated line. In the view of Chinese art tradition, the examples of using “line” could be seen in our early oracle bone inscriptions, ancient painted pottery.

　　Recently, as giving a class on Chinese art and Chinese culture to students from USA, I found out that “line” is the most salient characteristic in Chinese art. Loyalty to line of Chinese traditional art together with pursuit to line of western modern art is able to come together nowadays. Why could we say that “line” is needed in art? Why could the art of “line” be so attractive to artists? The reason is that artists nowadays are not required to paint like the real object after accomplishing the expression of concrete and the reproduction task of things. For the phenomenon of camera, artists don’t need to strive to paint you like yourself. At the moment, art returns to her noumenon further and further. That is, what’s the aim of art? What does painting do? I believe that art may not only be the rephenomenon of outer world, but also the expression of some inner feeling, emotion, and mood. In this sense, “line” is much better than the structure of chunk and surface, for line has the feature of substantivity, and is able to move. Through the motion of line, you are able to figure out the artist’s state of emotion and mood at that time. That is the reason why many modern artists begin to adopt line. Just like our signatures, your signature is your mark, which is difficult to be replaced. Therefore, I like this batch of “line” works specially.

　　Just as preferring the uniqueness of “line” in modern art area, nowadays, many western artists also paint by employing line. Line, just like the random feature of graffiti, owns extremely strong emotionality, some of which delivers excellent subtle feeling. However, if compared with the line in Liu Yonggang’s works, western line is a little bad in quality, for they neither have the calligraphy tradition, nor pay attention to the art tradition of “line”. Their mastery of line is more inclined to superficial mastery. Although Liu Yonggang’s line adopts the tact of expressionism, his line has more gradation. The motion and power of line in his works could remind us of a feeling and emotion which calligraphers in Han and Tang Dynasty, and Jin and Wei Dynasty, even more ancient artists or intellectuals wanted to deliver by line. Consequently, in this sense, thickness of Liu Yonggang’s works is superior to those of some contemporary western artists owing to having relationship with culture.

　　If seeing from the perspective of international context, I still classify Yonggang’s works into abstract expressionism system. First because it has an obvious characteristic of abstract expressionism; it is related to individual emotion and feeling; and it is direct expression of individual emotion and feeling.

　　However, as such an individual, he is not a private individual or a living being, but an individual having cultural meaning. He is the one who grows in Chinese traditional culture and then is related to traditional culture naturally. The thickness and connotation of such art affords more for thought than western abstract expressionism that simply embodies individual feeling, which make us become larger in the imaginary, lingering space in his works.

　　It is easily for Liu Yonggang’s art to remind me of a question: what kind of art should be pursued by Chinese artists? I object to two phenomena. The first is simple imitation of westerners. Nowadays, many artists stay in the simple imitation of westerners in our country. I just want to persuade these artists: you could have an exhibition in China, but you’d better not in western. Westerners will regard you as a student, for your work shows that you fail to become an independent artist. Such phenomena are not rare in China, especially in 1980s some people became so-called maestro when returning back through learning from a western maestro. I believe that this stage is not our aim of contemporary art although we have to experience it.

　　I particularly object to the second phenomena, that is, copy of culture. For example, some painters declare that they will paint as the style of some maestro, which is obviously wrong. Why? The reason is that he fails to embody the creativeness of contemporary people.

　　Today’s Chinese people shall have creativeness of Chinese people. Therefore, I believe that works which are able to represent Chinese art are: those that are created by Chinese people on the moment of seeing it. However, they have relationship with tradition, and transform the Chinese traditional culture creatively. The mark of traditional culture with history of thousands of years is able to be shown and transformed by individual’s creation, which I am fond of very much. Elements, temperament, and historic nature of Chinese cultural could be seen in such art. Liu Yonggang’s art is the creative transformation of Chinese traditional culture firstly. Then, he goes ahead in the road where western artist want to go. Consequently, these works which I prefer could embody the creativeness of Chinese cultural artists.

　　Turn to public art again. We know that “line” is basically in plane. We draw by line; line is used for decorating in some decoration area. However, there is no sculpture using line like Yonggang’s works. The moral his sculpture Standing Characters conveys is particularly consistent with China today, for he hopes the Chinese characters are able to stand up. It is a dream of Chinese people or intellectuals hundreds of years in my opinion. We all try hard toward this direction. Through such works, Liu Yonggang expresses that Chinese culture is able to stand up, which is a good implication. The pattern of works is good as well. We could see that contemporary art has strong timeliness due to having no specific deep implication or being more related to individual emotion. Timeliness refers to the fact that it is success today while outmoded tomorrow. It is easily to be weed out because it is more related to some social events or individual emotion. In Liu Yonggang’s works, he focuses on characters with thousands of years’ history in China and turn lying characters into standing ones through creative transformation, which is creative and could withstand the test of time, for Chinese character is an everlasting theme for Chinese people.

　　I have been in many countries and investigated public art of many cities. I felt worried about public art in many domestic cities, for most of them are vulgar. Unlike art in museum, public art is not private in characteristic, for audiences could choose not to enter into it. However, public art has compulsivity on audiences; each sees the public art whenever he/she passes it. I am not particularly satisfied with recent public art in China. On one hand, these works is not exquisite but rough, which is due to the short creative time giving to artists; on the other hand, it is vulgar with little originality in theme. Consequently, I specially want to introduce artists in master class to create public art. Standing Characters of Liu Yonggang is selected as public art by Ordos City of Inner Mongolia, which represents the elegant aesthetic taste of leaders in Ordos City in my opinion. That batch of works created by Yonggang is carved by stone, which cost him many years, a long time. They could give Yonggang such a long time for designing, creating, and implementing finally, which shows that leaders also know the law of art creation. Unlike some cities, if you promise me a work, you should accomplish it in two months, or hand over in one month. In fact, these works of Yonggang is not inferior if being put into museum. He is able to turn it into public art, which could present very grandiose, spectacular momentum through size increase, permutation and combination. Therefore, from the perspective of public art, this batch of Yonggang’s works is all superior to public artistic works in most domestic cities from idea, originality and final implementation. He creates it as art rather than a work, while most public art is accomplished as a project, which is the fundamental difference. As the continuous deepening of aesthetic and art education and continuous increasing of audiences’ artistic tastes, which works are enduring, and which are transient could be seen. An artist is able to spend so much time and energy in devoting to public art creation, which is rare in China in my opinion. Therefore, I hope more and more artists could really regard it as art, like Liu Yonggang.

　　So how could we interpret the “line and phenomenon” in his works?

　　Firstly, because he uses line, especially written line whose motion is closely related to physical motion, hand motion, and spiritual mood motion, “line” is expressive. The direct expression of representation of “line” is characteristics and temperament of artist. His characteristics and temperament are embodies appropriately in this batch of Yonggang’s works.

　　Secondly, after economical development reaches a certain level, cultural will become a focus question of a country naturally. Liu Yonggang is today’s Chinese people. His feeling is closely related to reality of China’s development. He makes Chinese characters stand up, which is closely related to the continuous strengthening of Chinese comprehensive national power. Such an “phenomenon” which is revealed within the “line” not only includes the “phenomenon” of Liu Yonggang himself, but also presents the “phenomenon” of contemporary China. This batch of works is able to well present today’s image of china. I hope if possible, Yonggang will have a large exhibition in important galleries or public places abroad, which could relive the information and meaning that these works want to convey more intensively.

　　Thirdly, Yonggang’s art is related to Chinese culture, which I values very much. Because as a contemporary people, it is easily for him or her to live as a contemporary people, however, it is difficult to let people realize there is a profound culture behind it among phenomenons of contemporary people. There are spirits of Qin and Han Dynasty and a strong culture momentum in Yonggang’s works. If comparing Yonggang’s works with the spirit that China's Terracotta Army conveys, or stela of seal characters Lisi carved on Tai mountain, I believe they are similar. It conveys a culture spirit and culture power that is spread from ancient time to today, which we could see from the works.

　　In a sense, Liu Yonggang’s art owns some characteristics of classical art. Why? Owing to the influences of pop art popularized in America at the 20th century, many artists prefer the type of ridicule in contemporary era. Or from other point of view, their art does not reflect the problems in a positive way but in a negative way or lateral side. In such pop art works, positive value is rarely seen. These artists dare not to confront positive value; therefore, they choose a way of ridicule to face some social events. If facing positive value, today’s artists are demanded strong personalities or culture support force for support. Otherwise in the popular, secularizing, pop, ridicule society, you will be regarded as a person who is laughed at. However, we could see that there are still many artists, just Liu Yonggang, insisting on conveying a kind of positive value, which is a particular phenomenon in such a big culture tradition country. Therefore, the classic point of Liu Yonggang’s works lies in expressing values positively rather than deconstructing negatively. From the perspective of temperament and positive expression of value, classical art will exist forever.

　　There must be clinging and perseverant artists behind the classic. Like Liu Yonggang, once he find out something important which is more significant than any other things, he would insist on it, open it up and exploit it continuously. Such artists have some religion complex, and would devote all his life to achieve the goal. Nowadays, there is less and less artist like that. However, Yonggang is the one. Compared his works with those of other artists, you will discover that he is stronger, more powerful, more easily to touch people’s inner heart, which make him different from other artists that pursues fashion. Works of those artists may seem to be more beautiful and attract eyesight temporarily but has less strength to generate the inner heart shock. Maybe because I am specialized in history of aesthetic and art, I will compare Liu Yonggang’s works with some works in history, and build some relationship. When I have established the relationship between them, I find that my spirit world has extended, extended from individual to group, to far-reaching history when appreciating his works.

　　Liu Yonggang’s art delivers a philosophy connotation. There are two kinds of philosophy, one is modal; the other is differences in realm and level rather than type. If a person’s eyesight is unique, we could regard him as a philosopher even if he has never received any training or hasn’t known any philosophy words. Why? Because the things he sees are much deeper and richer than us. The philosophy in my hope is to regard it as a kind of life style, better express unique view toward world and things, even could influence surrounding people through this kind of life style, and make their life more interesting. Liu Yonggang’s art could convey some meanings which are the boundary between philosophy and science, and are something philosophy and science fail to deliver. Why we need art today? The reason is that the meaning we pursue has different levels. Some meanings are accurate and expressed scientifically, which we call conception. Some are not so accurate, could be felt but couldn’t be expressed by accurate conception, which we call meaning. Besides science, we need to draw support from other forms, such as daily utterances, or a hint. There is also a meaning level, which is less accurate but deeper, vaguer and could be called as “connotation”. Preciousness of art lies in the level of breaking the limit of conception and going deeper into the meaning and connotation, conveying something which we could feel but fail to express. Such art is the discovery and extension of meaning world pursued by human being. He found it and expressed it, which make our meaning world richer, and open our imaginary space. So to speak, if Liu Yonggang failed to make Standing Characters, there would be no such one in our world. Therefore, he extended our meaning world. We respect such art, which is valuable art.

　　What is valuable creative art? All kinds of action art, all kinds of equipments are new to us. However, they are not new to an experienced maestro, for the equipments or action we see may have been done by others, or may be the changes of some devices or action. There is little creative element in them. Therefore, how could we treat art creation? Artists always say we need to create. Some artists say I could not create due to lacking of freedom. If freedom is given, he could not create either. Creation itself does not equal to act recklessly. Reckless action fails to constitute creation, which could not undertake the test of time. I think creation is risk ranging between labor and reckless action. Reckless action makes no sense, for it contains no labor; pure labor does not do. Creation needs a subtle and ingenious “degree”. The reason why I use the word “labor” is to declare that creation of any artist depends on the basis of labor. They have to spare no efforts, and try their best. These efforts are not only physical, but also spiritual. The spiritual efforts refer to the fact that he has to be related with tradition. The reason why audiences respect me is that my act is related to tradition, lies at the leading edge of culture tradition. Through my act, they could trace back to a history.

　　Firstly, real creation need a strong culture back ground. Then, it must be new, and put forward a step in the sequence of history. If no step is put forward, it could not be regarded as an artistic work with creative spirit. Sometimes, people ask: why does this painting worthy of so much money? I think that it is not important for the worthy of the painting. What important is that if you spend money on it, you emphasize and encourage such a creative spirit of human being. Many artists were poor all their life. If he considered how much his works would be when they created them initially, it was too vulgar for them. He just strived to make creative art which is new and could be established as well, for many new things won’t be established.

　　Consequently in this sense, creation is difficult. So many smart and intelligent genius artists have tried many times in history; then you try again. It is difficult for you to create new works if you don’t have enough brightness and enough intelligence. Therefore, an artist with creative spirit must be related with today’s society and life as artists in history haven’t experienced them. Yonggang’s works are new, which is owing to his interpretation of the context that the country--China, the culture belongs to. If there is no such a correct interpretation, it is difficult to create Standing Characters, or express such strong spirit by line. It is contemporary, especially closely related to image of China.

　　It is art that is the most difficult thing to evaluate in all areas, for art is different from science. What science faces are common problems, while problems of art are special. Each race, culture, individual has its own culture. From this point of view, it is difficult for us to judge which art is good or bad in the world by agreed standards.

　　When evaluating art, it is rarely to estimate it in technique but the pertinence of this work. What kind of problems it aims at; whether it is true; whether the contents the work expresses have reference, etc. As a result, arts all over the world are diverse with different styles, for artists from different countries confront different problems. For example, the problems Japanese face is different from those that Egyptian face, therefore, the form their works embody is totally diverse. If you understand them fully, you will feel that both arts are excellent.

　　Contemporary art in china is complex and multivariant with all kinds of things. Entering into 21th century, contemporary art in China has new phenomenon. However, we are not satisfied with them when seeing 1980s Chinese art, even some 1990s art. The reason is that our artists at that time all imitated modern art in western. Some problems are others’ problems rather than ours, but we imitate them. Art at that time is western art in China instead of Chinese art, for they didn’t aim at Chinese problems. (It is certain that not all arts were like that). After 1990s, some artists are success in international area. However, they neither have much creation nor real solve their own problem but simply removing Chinese signs. Then we could regard it as Chinese culture in western. Both the two arts are not real Chinese art but Chinese art limited strongly by western. Therefore, in contemporary art area, we fail to get rid of such a western reference or such a western background. As entering into the 21th century, with the further development of Chinese economy, culture confidence of Chinese people has become stronger. Artists began to turn to their own problems as well. Where our problems lie in? Real Chinese contemporary art may be born at that time. This art is not only used for westerners but for solving our own problems through problems of art. I regard this art as a real Chinese contemporary art, which is neither western art in China nor Chinese art in western.

　　Therefore, Chinese artists have creativity and explosive force specially, for China nowadays does provide a huge stage for artists to mould large image. As a result, artists living in China should feel lucky. The era has provided you with the stage; how to act depends on you. Artists in other countries don’t own such a huge stage. Even if they put all their abilities into use, they still get a little character rather than a hero. In this sense, I look to further increase of China contemporary art.

　　I emphasize here that today’s competition is competition of contemporary art. Confucius and Laozi is heritage of human culture, which not only belongs to Chinese, but also to the whole world. The art of ancestors has passed and doesn’t deserve advocating. When you advocate something of ancestors, you are actually inferior to others. You admit that you are not superior to others; therefore, you have to advocate something of ancestors. If you are superior, it is not necessary for you to advocate ancestors’ achievement. Consequently, we must encourage creation of contemporary art nowadays. In the international communication, once I had an opportunity to deliver a speech, what I said was all about creativeness results of Chinese contemporary artists. I just wanted to tell the whole world that there are not only valuable works created by ancestors in China, but also excellent artists as Liu Yonggang nowadays that is using his language to making a strong sound to the whole world.

　　Pengfeng:

　　Professor of Art Institute of Peking University;

　　Director of the Department of Art Studies;

　　Vice dean of Peking University Aesthetic and Aesthetic Education Research Center;

　　Executive member of International Association of Aesthetics;

　　Famous Curator

　　(Edited according to interviews on May, 2012 Edited by: Xing Qingnan)

作者：Pengfeng