个体心性与日常生活

——“花·鸟·虫·鱼”杂论

Individual Mentality and Everyday Life

­“Flower – Bird – Insect – Fish” Chimera Theory

 

管郁达

Guan Yuda

 

一、我不知道，董重何以将他的这个展览命名为“花·鸟·鱼·虫”？如果对艺术家缺乏了解的话，我们会以为这是一个中国画展。对照2004年我为他在昆明创库策划的“情色与妄想”，还有1997年在贵阳举办的、董重也参加的“重返乌托邦”……。我觉得，为事物命名的方式正在发生一种本质的变化。

I.      I don’t know why Dong Zhong chose to name his solo exhibition “Flower – Bird – Fish – Insect”. If we didn’t know the artist better, we’d have thought this was an exhibition of classical Chinese paintings. Looking back for reference, to the 2004 exhibition I held for him at the Kunming Upriver Loft, “Lust and Vain Desire”, and the 1997 Guizhou exhibition, “Return to Utopia” which he took part in, I think that there is a root change going on in how things are being named.

二、命名代表一种思维方式与观看方式。所以老子开篇即说“道可道，非常道，名可名，非常名。有名万物之始，无名万物之母。”在最源初的意义上来说，艺术即是给事物命名。海德格尔在评论梵高的文章中也表达过类似的意见，大意是说，艺术家只是给事物命名，发现、打开，使其内在的光照澄明、朗现。

II.     Naming represents a way of thinking or observation. That’s why Lao Tzu began his book with “That which can be named is not the true name, the Dao that can be uttered is not the true Dao. Names are the origin of the myriad things, and nameless is the mother of the myriad things.” In the earliest meaning, art was the work of naming things. Heidegger also expressed a similar thought in a critique of Van Gogh, and the basic meaning is that artists just give names to things, discovering, opening and allowing their inner light to emerge.

三、命名既然如此重要。它可以说明真相，也可以掩盖事实。具体就董重的艺术来说，“花·鸟·虫·鱼”是否像我们暗示了一些什麽呢？九十年代末期的“重返乌托邦”，很像是一个宏大叙事的高音喇叭，原始表现主义激情与回归终极理想的追问，是包括董重在内的三位艺术家的主调。针对的是当时画坛上喧嚣一时的泼皮现实主义和政治波普两大时尚。但事后董重对我说，他自己很怀疑当时那种高调的英雄主义呐喊。的确，他当时的《浇花》、《床》等我至今仍很喜欢的作品，与宏大叙事的命名并不同步，董重的做法是在日常生活的叙事中加入了非常主观个人的表现性情绪。只不过人物的姿势被仪式化了，看起来有种日常史诗的夸大。

III.   So, you see why names are so important. They can describe the true form, or they can cover reality. Specifically speaking of Dong Zhong’s art, does “Flower – Bird – Fish – Insect” resemble anything we’ve been hinting at? The “Return to Utopia” of the late nineties was like the high horn of a grand narrative. A primitive expressionist enthusiasm and a yearning for a return to ultimate ideals was the main tune for the three artists including Dong Zhong. They were aiming at the two great art fashions of the time, political realism (aka cynical realism) and political pop. But afterwards, Dong Zhong confided to me his suspicions about that lofty call of heroism. To be sure, his works of the time, like Watering the Flowers and Bed, works I still admire, were not in step with the grand narrative. Dong Zhong’s method is to take the everyday narrative and add some very subjective individual expression and sentiment, except that his people’s postures were ritualized, making it into an epic exaggeration of the everyday.

四、到了2004年的“情色与妄想”，人与动物想入非非的拼贴和剪辑、对色彩的炫耀、情绪的夸张，给人予身体情色的狂欢意象，尽管画面上的平涂处理与装饰性构图减弱了这种内在的表现主义情绪。但我们还是可以看出艺术家在小心翼翼地解决内在激情与日常叙述之间的矛盾。其实，就董重的性情来说，日常性在艺术中并非一个需要特别加以发现和重视的因素，它根本就是艺术家与生俱来的一种生活方式与工作态度。但是表现性的混乱情绪又需要找到一个出口，于是艺术与生活的平衡面临破坏。

IV.    By the 2004 “Lust and Vain Desire”, man and beast were closely spliced, and the flamboyant colors and exaggerated emotions gave people festive ideas about the body, even though the color swaths and the decorative structure subtracted from the internal expressionist sentiments. But we can still see the artist carefully mediating the contradictions between his internal enthusiasm and the everyday narrative. As far as Dong Zhong’s temperament goes, the everyday aspect isn’t necessarily an element that must be discovered and emphasized in his art. It is just an innate lifestyle and working attitude of the artist. But the expressive chaotic emotions must find an outlet, so the balance between art and life faces destruction.

五、在西南、特别是贵州的艺术家，骨子里面都有一种与生俱来的原始生命激情，同时又兼有一种听天由命、及时行乐、活在当下的生活态度。所以董重在他的艺术中遭遇的问题，其实带有相当的普遍性。他解决这个问题的经验和挫折，也会是一个有意思的个案。

V.     In the southwest, especially with artists from Guizhou, there is a deep-rooted primal enthusiasm towards life, as well as a life attitude of listening to the heavens, spontaneous fun and living in the moment. For this reason, the problems that Dong Zhong stumbles upon in his art are rather universal. His experience in solving these issues and his setbacks will make for an interesting case.

六、中国当代艺术在上个世纪九十年代以来面临的一个主要问题是：如何本土化与日常化。所谓“本土化”就是彻底摆脱对西方现代主义的模仿，在自己的历史经验、文化经验与当下实践中重建“现代性”，使当代艺术牢牢地扎根于自己脚下的土地；而日常性就是抛弃宏大叙事的英雄救世情结和集体主义的反抗运动模式，使艺术回归于日常生活，成为生活的一部分。由新媒体艺术、行为艺术所推动的“艺术民主化”思潮即是上述问题的一种实验方式。

VI.   Chinese contemporary art in the nineties faced a core problem – how to localize and normalize. So-called “localization” means totally discarding imitation of western realism, and through our own historical and cultural experience as well as our current practices, to reconstruct “modernness” and ensure that contemporary art remained tightly rooted in the soil beneath our feet; normalization, or a return to the everyday, means totally discarding the grand narrative of heroes saving the world and fighting against collectivism, bringing art back to daily life, making it a part of life. The movement of “democratization of art” advocated through new media and performance art is a form of experimentation in the above issues.

七、艺术家的创作终究还是要回到自己的内心与日常生活体验，所以他只能选择与自己有关系的事物来加以表达。九十年代后期，包括董重在内的很多艺术家都不约而同地将艺术工作方向转移到与自己的生活方式有关的经验上来。刘小东的“具体现实主义”对生活琐事与平凡人物的描绘，还有宋冬、尹秀珍的“平民式”或“胡同式”的后现代主义艺术实验，是两个很有代表性的例子。

VII.  In the end, the work of an artist should return to his psyche and daily life experience, so he can but choose to give expression to things that are related to him. In the late nineties, many artists including Dong Zhong separately brought their artistic work towards experiences that were related to their own ways of life. Two very representative examples of this would be Liu Xiaodong’s “specific realism” in its depiction of trivial life and common people, and the “common man’s style” or “alley style” post modern experimentations of Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen.

八、如果说董重的创作在2004年前后还在日常性叙事与个人性表现图式之间犹豫的话，那么到了最近这批被命名为“花·鸟·鱼·虫”的作品，情况就发生了本质性的变化。在这些近作中，所有物象都获得了一个合理的位置，图像的组织具有一种非常令人愉悦的视觉秩序。在这里，图像资源的挪用与剪辑具有明显的中国美学精神，同时又包含了当下生活的日常体验。

VIII. If we say that Dong Zhong’s creations from around 2004 were pacing back and forth between the everyday narrative and a personal expressive image style, then there has been a fundamental change in the situation with this batch of works entitled “Flower – Bird – Fish – Insect”. In these recent works, each thing has gained a reasonable position, and the organization of the image has a very pleasing order to it. Here, the use and editing of the image resources bears a visible Chinese aesthetic spirit, and also covers the everyday experience of current life.

九、“花、鸟、鱼、虫”都是中国人在日常生活中极为欣赏的物事，在文人画所代表的闲暇生活方式与审美情趣中，以物寓情、借物抒怀，深刻地表现了中国人消遣人生、享乐生活的独特的文化视角。正所谓“一花一世界，一沙一天国”。中国人对待物象的“把玩”方式，其妙处就在于，将自我相忘于“花鸟鱼虫”、“山水草木”与“流岚烟霞”之中，寻求与天地宇宙的和谐共存、共生。

IX.   “Flowers, birds, fish and insects” are all things that the Chinese people highly appreciate in daily life. In the leisurely life and esthetic pursuits represented by Chinese scholarly paintings, things are allegories for sentiment, and this deftly illuminates Chinese people’s unique cultural point of view towards a leisurely and highly enjoyed life. This is a true embodiment of the saying “the world in a single flower, the celestial kingdom in a grain of sand”.

十、但是，董重绘画对梅花这一古代文人传统绘画元素的引用，并非一种简单的怀古情绪，而是一种解构主义式的异质嫁接，他将“岁寒三友”中代表清高、英勇的君子人格的梅花，与来自非洲的食腐、凶残、贪婪的鬣狗，还有类似猩猩一样人物、无法命名的怪异的鸟禽等匪夷所思的物象混杂在一起，这种朴素、诡异的物象观念，令我们想起中国古代民间社会中的“志怪”、“搜神”一类的野生性民间知识传统。

X.    But Dong Zhong’s use of this ancient scholarly traditional painting element in his paintings is not simply nostalgia, but a deconstructionist grafting of very different elements. He has mixed the plum blossom, representing true friendship, aloofness and heroism together with a fierce, corpse-eating hyena from Africa, a man that more resembles a chimpanzee, and an unidentifiable bird-like creature all together. This simple and strange conception of things calls to mind the ancient pantheon of strange beasts of the Chinese folk-knowledge traditions.

十一、我想，这也许就是董重建构自己的图像谱系的一个方法论吧？他先是回到了自己开始绘画涂鸦时的视觉记忆，这是一个与身体感觉有关的、也是最原始本能的图像传统；进而他有从艺术史的学习中将影像文化中的暴力、还有中国文人画的“玩物”和民间艺术传统中的“天真”，刻意地混淆在一起，在日常性经验中重新建构了自己的视觉图式与知识传统。

XI.   Could this be Dong Zhong’s methodology for constructing his own image system? He first returns to his scribbling visual memories from when he first began painting. This is related to his body’s perceptions, and is also the most primitive and instinctual image tradition. Furthermore, he has taken from his studies of art history the violence of film culture, the “play” of Chinese scholarly painting and the “naivety” of folk art traditions, intentionally mixed them together, and constructed his own visual image style and knowledge traditions within the everyday experience.

十二、回到文章开头讲的命名。我觉得董重的这组作品开始更加坚定地回归到自己“纯真”的观看之眼，同时也把自己艺术工作的根系坚实地扎进了中国文化与艺术的土壤。在日常性的前提下，重建了个人的艺术谱系。他所谓的“花·鸟·鱼·虫”，就是在为这种新的生活方式与艺术立场命名，也是力图回到胡塞尔所说的“事物本身”。

XII.  Back to names, with which I began this essay. I think that in this recent batch of works, Dong Zhong has further determined to return to his own “pure” vision, and has further rooted his artwork into the soil of Chinese culture and art. Under the perquisite of the everyday, he has reconstructed a personal system of art. His so-called “Flower – Bird – Fish – Insect” was named for this new way of life and artistic standpoint, and is also an attempt to return to Edmund Husserl’s “essence of the object”.

十三、在这里，董重的艺术叙事转变为一种独具魅力的个人话语，同时又获得日常性中的公共认同。按照雷蒙·威廉斯的说法，所谓“历史”包含了具体、细微、可感的“生活方式”的铺叙与开展，所以当艺术家放弃那些宏大、高亢、华丽、抽象的宣教式说辞，而将注意力转移到类似董重他们所关注的“花、鸟、鱼、虫”这些最基本的文化事实与生活事实时，我们的生活就被引入了开放的历史结构之中，一个更宽泛、更生动、也是更诗意、美好的生存世界与观念世界就悄悄地开始浮出地面。

XIII. Here, Dong Zhong’s artistic narrative transforms into a uniquely enchanting dialogue and at the same time gains a common recognition in the everyday. According to Raymond Williams, so-called “history” includes the bald narrative and unfolding of a specific, finite and tangible “way of life”. So when an artist discards those grand, lofty, sublime, and abstract declarations, and turns his attentions to something like the “flowers, birds, fish and insects” that Dong Zhong focuses on, these the most basic cultural and living realities, our lives are then brought into the unfolding historical structure, and a broader, livelier, more poetic and beautiful existential and conceptual world emerges from the soil.

十四、换言之，中国当代艺术的本土化进程将会在一个日常化的语境中重新起锚，在传统与当下的经验和实践中重建“现代性“，从而开启中国人心灵与精神生活的逍遥之境。

XIV. In other words, the localization process of Chinese contemporary art will weigh new anchor in the everyday context, and reconstruct “modernity” in current experience and practice, opening an unfettered realm for the Chinese spirit and soul.

2007年10月9日于昆明翠湖边上

October 9, on the banks of Green Lake, Kunming

作者：jinsegallery