春节期间，节日的喧闹一改平日的习惯而难以心绪稳定，只得收拾多日积累散落在地上的画册、杂志等资料打发时光。不期然却发现了我在1992年11月16日上午“苏新平版画展座谈会”上的笔记。掐指算来已是15年的光阴荏苒！那时，苏新平以一系列带有内蒙草原题材的石版画、木刻版画创作而引起画界关注。如今再翻检《躺着的男人和远去的白马》、《网中之羊》、《出生的太阳》等这些版画，依然能从他内蒙草原场景中提示出赋予哲理性思考的画面而备受触动。尽管时代的文化语境，以及生活方式、行为观念已发生了巨大变化，但我们仿佛从自由桎梏的挣脱里又陷入到资本的宰制之中。仍然孤寂，仍然重重藩篱的纠结而无以自拔。
　　苏新平早期的大部分作品，其基本的艺术特征在于表现出了内心的自我审视品格。他的创作不仅是通过心灵的感应对人生对社会的观照和破解，也是由外在现实环境的冲激而产生对自我的反省。他的油画《风景》系列作品中，大概就是他延续至今的自我审视内心景象的一些代表之作吧。风景是借助于他画室周围，或他往返于工作单位与家和画室路上的目光所及。陌生的一个人在一片灰朦的色调中，注视着苍荒的情景，潜隐出新时代勃勃生机背后萧瑟、危机的暗影，进一步聚焦的则是他生活在都市特定环境所导致的心灵的躁动、性情的无所附着。他以意象风景的手法来凸现他的记忆、他的观察和他所在处境的冷漠、单调和缺乏个性，以及现代化过程所带来的视觉上的不毛与荒凉，从而更深地延伸出他对现代生活无机品质的质疑。就像你置身于他的作品之中，混乱与嘈杂在内心感觉中是那样的惶惑不安，透现出对现实变化的既欣喜，又无奈的感伤。因此，就是在他没有人物的风景画面里，“自我”也无处不在、无处不有。但这种“自我”的塑造，不是融入现实的狂欢和暂时对自我力量肯定而得到的喜悦与陶醉，而是在冷眼旁观地思考中，赋予艺术的想象来构成了他的艺术主观的象征性寓意。同时，即刻又被一种无法挣脱的孤独感寂寞感所替代，于是“我”便希望除了“自我”的声音而外，还有其他的空谷足音。
　　上世纪90年代中期，苏新平的创作开始有所转变，其动机则主要来自于中国社会转型期产生的市场经济、商业大潮对每一个中国人的冲击与影响，它激发了苏新平强烈的社会责任感和使命感。这种社会责任感、使命感在我看来其实是一位真正社会知识分子对历史进程的态度与立场。艺术家与知识分子是一样的，只不过身份属性或从事的行当略有不同。这涉及到对知识分子概念的理解和界定。我以为知识分子是与整个社会现实的趋向保持一定的疏离关系，从某种角度就是以独立的姿态站立在社会喧嚣的边缘，时时对社会变迁、文化生态以及个人的境遇发出一个边缘者思考、质疑与批判的声音。或者说这正是知识分子肩负的历史使命和社会责任。而作为艺术家就是以一种所谓艺术家的身份和视觉的方式来表达他对现实变化的思考、判断与探究。而对当代文化的敏感与敏锐将导致艺术家在方法论，以及媒介、语言方式的改变。我们从苏新平1994年后创作的《欲望之海》、《假日系列》、《世纪之塔》，以及最近创作的《干杯》系列油画和版画就能略见一斑。《干杯》系列作品，基本上都是以一群没有明确身份的人像来展开的。作为芸芸众生的他们，在“宴会”饕餮中“干杯”的状态和处境，或许在苏新平看来这是最具有追逐物质欲望，享受生活的典型形象。他对其形象的处理，一改往昔众生贫穷、苦涩的饱经风霜模样，而在或红或黑的背景中呈现的都是一个个自足的笑脸，有着盲目可笑的意味。当我们面对他的作品时，他创作的形象、符号、色彩等等构成了他所谓的现实针对性——对虚假辉煌的揭露，对欲望无所抑制的批判。但这种反讽更多的是以一种严肃的态度与方式来给予呈现的。相对于上世纪流行的“艳俗艺术”而言，将暴发户“艳俗”的视觉形象、生活方式中器物符号的象征，运用波普的语言方式、民间传统的媒介手法和流行文化的样式，形成了艳俗艺术的潮流。而形象与符号不断地累加，以及符号之间象征性的相互作用，反映并强化了这些暴发户生活趣味的关联性，即通过真实的模仿和夸张的处理来达到对这种社会现象的讽谕，这是“艳俗艺术”在绘画语言上最凸显的“反讽”特征。而苏新平在造型上却有意虚饰了形象身份和符号的象征性明喻，剔除了简单模仿和极尽能事地夸张，以重复性的正面或侧面的一致性人物形象，提示了其中的纯粹感，并虚构了其中的感性色彩，重构和超现实地再现了他曾经的视觉观察，纯粹而有力地强化了他的绘画语言方式。从这个角度来看，他的油画艺术既是他思考的现实显影，又是在其形而上的超验表现。这种表现性因素当然得益于他多年的版画艺术创作——他是在用版画复数性、印痕性的语言方式从事着油画创作的实验，同时，又将油画转为黑白木刻版画，语言方式与媒介材料不同的相互转换，实验和寻求着一种带有个人话语特征的绘画性感觉。也来源于他与现实主义艺术的血缘关系，从中还可以扑捉到他多年学院教学的经验。严格说来，艺术的创作也是一种绘画语言的尝试与实践，而艺术家找到自己的语言方式却相当艰难。苏新平语言的实验和转换，自然而然也包含了他的个人化追求。所以，看他的作品在语言感觉上能与他那副朴实的形象联系起来。而他的这种现实针对性也是昭然若揭的。就中国当下来说，传统文化处在中空状态，政治热度和敏感早已降温，中国人现实生活的经验已经相当西化，在精神上却缺乏皈依与寄托，追求物质化、娱乐化占据着我们日常生活的所有空间。他简化单纯地运用了图像的联想和明喻，创作出单纯而丰富的感觉形象，于是苏新平所反讽的欲望不再仅仅局限于金钱的功能，而成为生活在其中人们对生活无限形式的欲望，成为气派与华丽、成功与高贵的欲望，成为和影响到人们的日常生活想象和对时尚生活方式的追求之中。因此，欲望所带来的消费文化在当代消费社会无疑是一种生活方式，即将个人发展、即时满足、追逐变化等特定价值观，合理化为个人日常生活的自由选择，它构成了欲望的不间断流动，更像是20世纪以来社会自身发展的历史与逻辑在目前中国的显现。也许在苏新平看来，只有在这样的稀薄的想象和臆造中才能阐释整体的真实性和意义。因为，真实是带有主观性的解释，即重新建构现实和用虚构补充现实，强调以创作主体的角度来表现、阐释隐藏在内心的真实，一种在内心折射的抽象现实。现实中的人与整个生活世界原是一体，艺术却把人与生活世界分离开来，人便站在比生活世界更高的位置上，去冷眼看待生活世界的形式与问题，于是他不仅认识了世界，也认识了自己。获得这种审美意识中的主体超越，正是艺术家要做的事。
　　我一直很喜欢苏新平从2005年开始创作的系列肖像。仰天的形态和手势总让人与“悲天悯人”或“祈祷”联系在一起。那种总是等待、在等待中消耗了生命的惶惑不安，时时萦绕心际。“他”或许在反诘自己一生中的所作所为。痛苦自责之中，又确信未来的岁月里还不能放弃人生价值的追求。也许，重要的不在于作者运用了这种传统的表现形式，而是作者在主体与对象之间的那种艺术方式。它恰恰体现了苏新平“自我的审视与外化的关照”。看起来，“我”在创作中始终处在他艺术表现的焦点上，内心的自我审视也好，责任义务和态度立场的重新发现也好，“我”是出发点，也将是苏新平艺术与人生的归宿点。
 

Self-Examination and Externalized Concern
-On the art of Su Xinping
by Feng Boyi

During Spring Festival, the clamor of the holiday disrupts ordinary routines making it difficult to stabilize one's thoughts so that all one can do is tidy up the accumulated catalogues, magazines and other printed matter scattered about the floor. In doing so, I unexpectedly come across notes taken during the "Symposium on the Prints of Su Xinping" from the morning of November 16, 1992. In counting the time, how quickly 15 years had passed! At that time Su Xinping's Inner Mongolian grasslands lithograph and woodcut series garnered much attention from the art world.  Glancing through such works including, "Prostrate Man," "White Horse in the Distance," "Sheep in a Net," and "Birth of the Sun," the philosophical reflections embedded in the imagery are still deeply moving. Despite the cultural context of an era when lifestyles and behavioral habits have changed dramatically, it was as if we are still confined by the control of wealth even after casting off the shackles of liberty. We are still lonely, yet barricaded together without a way to free ourselves.

Examination of the inner-self characterizes the essential themes in the majority of Su Xinping's early works. His creations not only manifest an intelligent response to the social analysis and concerns of humanity, but also produce self-introspection due to external conflict within the circumstances of reality. His "Landscape" oil painting series continues to display such scenes of introspection, where images are set amidst the surroundings of his studio or sights encountered between his workspace, home, and studio. Unfamiliar lone figures rendered in dim and dusty hues gaze upon desolate and grey landscapes that conceal the thriving vitality of the new era in the shadow of crisis. Through this, the artist displays a psychological restlessness derived from his urban surroundings with an attitude of detachment. He renders his memories, observations, and his situation of cold detachment through using conceptual landscapes. He creates a scene lacking in character and one of monotony to visualize the barrenness and desolation of all the processes that modernization brings, thereby greatly emphasizing his questioning of the inorganic quality of contemporary life. If one were standing in his works, the inner feeling of chaos and noise would be confusing and unnerving, penetrating the full joys of transformed reality and the grief of helplessness. Therefore in his figure-less landscapes there is nowhere the "self" is not. But the portrayal of this "self" does not merge with the intoxication and joy obtained from revelry nor the temporary affirmation of the power of the self in reality. Instead, with a critical eye, he endows each image with the symbolic allusions of his artistic subjectivity. At the same time it is immediately replaced by an inextricable sense of loneliness, whereupon the "I" wants to hear the unexpected and to be found beyond the "self." 

In the mid-1990s Su Xinping's work began to transform. Principally motivated by a period in Chinese society when the emerging economic market and great tide in trade affected each and every Chinese person, it deeply influenced Su Xinping's sense of social responsibility and mission. This sense of social duty is the way a real intellectual is positioned to approach the course of history. Artists and intellectuals are one in the same, where only the attributions of their social status or the roles they play are different. This questions the definition of an intellectual. In my understanding, an intellectual must be estranged from the set tendencies of the overall social reality. They should step back from the societal clamor with an independent attitude and issue thoughts, challenges and critiques on social changes and cultural tendencies from the sidelines. This is exactly the social responsibility and obligation to history that intellectuals have borne. To be an artist is to express musings, pass judgment and engage investigation in the changes in reality from a so-called artist's status and vision. A sensitivity and acuteness towards modern culture result in changes in the artist's methodology, medium and language. We see this idea emerge in Su Xinping's oil painting and print works created after 1994, such as "Sea of Desire," "Holiday Series," "Century Tower," and the recent "Toasting" series. The 'Toasting' series features a group of figures whose status in indiscernible. They raise their glasses gluttonously at a banquet where perhaps Su Xinping sees this as the model image of the hedonistic pursuit of material desires and enjoying life. Using such imagery, he exchanges the poor, bitter, and weather-beaten forms of before with smug, boisterous figures laughing in front of red or black backgrounds, signifying a sense of ridiculousness and excess. In these works, his forms, symbols and colors are the focus of his reality, exposing a sense of false brilliance and a critique of unrestrained desire. But this satire is more about rendering appearances in a serious manner and method. This is a response to "vulgar art" popularized in the last century, where artistic trends react to the crudeness of nouveau riche visual imagery, the objects symbolizing lifestyle, the methods of using pop language, traditional folk craft methods, and the styles of pop culture. Continuous accumulation of these forms and symbols, as well as their interaction, are all reflected and emphasized in the interconnectivity of these nouveau riche life interests. Through the imitation of reality and the process of exaggeration, a "satire" of these social phenomena is achieved, becoming the most prominent characteristic in the painting language of "vulgar art." In his compositions, Su Xinping is inclined to gloss over the symbolic nature and metaphor of identity and signs, rejecting simple imitation and sparing no effort in exaggeration. With repeated imagery of forward-facing forms or profiled figures, he extracts the purity of emotion within them and in the reappearance of his visual observation he perceives a reconstructed and surreal landscape. His oil painting art develops through his consideration of reality and is displayed in a metaphysical transcendence of experience. The elements of this expression in his experiments with oil painting naturally benefit from his many years of printmaking where he adopts the serial nature and the language of imprinted form. At the same time his oil painting is transformed into a black and white woodblock print. The continuous change and reciprocal experimentation with various linguistic forms and materials represent a search for an individually characterized painting language. This search can be traced to his early realist art works, which testify to his years of academic experience. Strictly speaking, the creation of art is an attempt and practice of a pictorial language, and the artist's search for his own language form is equally difficult. The experimentation and changes in Su Xinping's art naturally includes his own individualistic pursuits. The linguistic feeling in his works recalls forms of his early realist series and his focus on experimentation becomes abundantly clear. Presently in China, traditional culture is regarded in a shallow manner. Political fervor and sensitivity have cooled. The real life experience of Chinese people is assimilated to the West, and their spirits lack a sense of belonging and hope where the pursuit of materialism and amusement consumes every moment of daily life. Su Xinping simply and purely employs the association and metaphors of images to create simple and richly perceived forms. Consequently, all of the desires that he satirizes are no longer limited to the function of wealth but become manifest in humanity's passion towards the infinite forms of life. These imposing and magnificent desires of success and privilege influence the fancies of people's daily existence in the pursuit of a fashionable life. The desire of all consumer culture in contemporary society is certainly one way of living, but it is a rationalized choice made for one to pursue individual development, immediate gratification, change and other set value systems. This creates an uninterrupted flow of desire, one especially present in the historical development and logic of culture within 20th century Chinese society. Perhaps from Su Xinping's perspective, only through this kind of diluted thought and fabrication one can interpret the entirety of truth and meaning. Truth is part of subjective interpretation, a reality that is newly constructed and emphasizes creation displayed from the perspective of the subject. It is expounded and concealed in the heart of truth, a sort of abstract realist refraction of the heart. In reality, people and the entire world of life are originally one. Yet art separates man and the real world. He stands higher than life with a cool, detached view on the problems of this existence, whereupon he not only understands the world but also himself. To acquire this kind of subjectivity surpasses aesthetic consciousness and is exactly what an artist attempts to do.

I quite admire the series of portraits that Su Xinping has created since 2005. The form and gesture of the figure facing the sky communicates both a sense of "prayer" and "bemoaning the state of things." This is the waiting and waiting that consumes life and creates confusion and unease often lingering in the heart. Perhaps "he" is refuting the actions and behaviors of his own life, suffering self-reproach, but firmly believing that he still cannot abandon the future pursuit in value of humanity. The important thing is not that the artist is using a form of traditional expression, but it is the artistic device existing between the subject and the object. This coincidentally reflects Su Xinping's "self-examination and external concern." The "I" is continuously expressed as the focus of his art, which is both good in terms of internal self-examination, as well as in the new discovery of duty, obligation, and perspective. "I" is the origin, but it is also the point to which Su Xinping's art and life always returns.

作者：冯博一