In the world of Chinese contemporary art, residents of Beijing’s Song Village are often spoken of as “Outlaws of the Marsh”.  In the eyes of outsiders, the fact that one’s background counts for naught in Song Village lends an air of roughness to those who live there.  Located in east Beijing, Song Village consists of ten to twenty compounds and numbers some 3,000 artists.  The fact that they are led by Li Xianting, a critic and independent curator, known as the “Godfather of Chinese  contemporary art”, makes the description “artistic outlaws of the marsh” seem particularly apt. Beyond question, Song Village is a unique phenomenon in the history of Chinese contemporary art.  Song Village had its origins in the Yuanmingyuan Painters’ Village that flourished in the 1990s.  After 1989, the Yuanmingyuan Painters’ Village became the first significant place where contemporary Chinese artists could truly gather of their own volition.  Its emergence symbolized the birth of a “vagabond world” for Chinese contemporary art.  This artistic “vagabond world” existed outside the officially sanctioned art training system, and its Utopian spirit and Bohemian lifestyle gave it wide appeal as a place of residence.  Although in 1995 the government forced the Yuanmingyuan Painters’ Village to disperse, the new lifestyle of this artistic colony lived on and became the foundation of the present day Song Art Village.  A dozen or so years later, Song Art Village has become a cultural industry and enjoys the wholehearted support of the local government.  At long last artists have become the masters of Song Village

 

The legend of Song Village perhaps coincides with Li Jisen’s aspiration and fantasy as a child.  In one of his own accounts, Li Jisen talked about how, when playing among the haystacks on the farm, he would fantasize that he was the kind of outlaw or hero found in such Chinese classic novels as Outlaws of the Marsh, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  The themes of both these literary classics revolve around large groups of men, and bear a resemblance to the many groups of men that distinguish the mature style of Li’s later work.  However it might be more appropriate to describe the gender of human figures in Li Jisen’s paintings as neuter rather than male.  Whether appearing on stage or in the water, they are all of uniform expression and move in concert.  In fact, these conceptualized human figures, each indistinguishable from the other, are also found in Li Jisen’s earlier works.                     

 

Similar human images were already present in Li Jisen’s earlier works from the mid-1990s to 2002.  In these paintings, sometimes images were painted in pairs or in groups of three, performing everyday tasks or something equally meaningless.  The signature facial expression that marks Li Jisen’s later works was already apparent in these early paintings. Starting from 2003, large groups of symbolic upturned faces began to repeatedly emerge in Li Jisen’s paintings.  It didn’t matter whether these human figures were moving in diverse ways or as a unit, they were all devoid of any quality which might set them apart as individuals.  The viewer sees only a posture of group solidarity.  Li Jisen regards this as the symbol of “unification”.  He wrote: “As human beings, it is truly amazing that we have so much in common and are alike in so many ways.  Thus, for every individual, at any one point in history, or under certain circumstances, obedience is the natural result of the numbness brought about by the leveling of differences under a single system.”  From this viewpoint, we can see that the identically masked people in Li Jisen’s paintings are either his interpretation of humanity as a whole, or a representation of our national spirit and inner quality.  Li Jisen’s replicated human figures perfectly depict the modern industrial world’s “one-dimensional man”, a theory first advanced in 1960 by the American theorist, Herbert Marcuse.  The one-dimensional world created by a prosperous modern industrial society is a system of political rule made possible by technology.  In this system, people lose those qualities which make them unique.  “One-dimensional man” indicates people who have universally lost their ability to reflect and criticize, and this quality has gradually become a picture of consumerism in China.  Viewed from this aspect, Li Jisen’s paintings are symbolic, with a tinge of satire and humor.

 

Living in Song Village, Li Jisen’s artistic style has not only been influenced by the absence of restraint in the Village, but by his own life experience.  Li Jisen was born in a farming village and from childhood his father had been an important influence in his life.  His father, a man of scholarly tastes, was fond of Chinese calligraphy and the literary classics, and had written a District history.  Li Jisen studied in the department of traditional Chinese painting.  There his junior high school teacher had attended school with his father, and Li Jisen looked up to him as he would his own father.  At that time, Li Jisen was a great admirer of Xu Beihoing’s ink-wash paintings of galloping horses, a comparatively more traditional cultural influence.  Later, while browsing in a bookstore, he came across a sketch depicting the statue of David by Yu Hong, and he immediately began practicing basic sketching.  He even acquired a statue of Guan-yin bodhisattva for use as a sketching model.  Thanks to his love of painting, he passed the high school entrance exam to the Normal College and enrolled in the art department to began his basic art training.  Upon graduation he passed the entrance exam and was accepted by the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Teachers’ Training, where he came under the influences of Sun Jianping and other artists.  His artistic horizons having been broadened by art academy training, he turned his attention from Classical Western art and Impressionist painting to Contemporary art.  This change of interest on Li Jisen’s part marked his decision to become a full-time painter.  To this end he gave up his household registration in the farming village, a decision that had consequences for his destiny. After teaching in a secondary normal school for a short period of time following graduation, in 1994 Li began further studies, this time in the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.  This training experience opened his eyes to the possibility of becoming a professional artist.  Having obtained a better understanding of the ideas underlying new art forms and the development of contemporary art, he set off in search of his own method of artistic expression.  All his previous art training had given Li Jisen a sound foundation for his later career as a painter.    However, the true factor giving his personal art form its distinctive appearance comes from tribulations later experienced in life.  After he finished his training course at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, he returned to his former teaching position in Tianjin.  At that time his ideal was to be a teacher, and he was prepared to work with great passion and devotion.  However, in the Chinese system, ingratiating oneself with one’s superiors was much more important than hard work.  Although every year Li Jisen’s students passed the entrance exam to the Central Academy of Fine Arts, his superiors found his refusal to ingratiate himself with them distasteful and proceeded to make it difficult for him to properly carry out his work.  After 2 years of careful consideration, Li Jisen concluded he had no option but to “follow the outlaw path”, and therefore came to Song Village in 2005 in quest of his own artistic vision.       

 

The number of artists from all over the country gathered in Beijing far exceeds the number of local Beijing artists, thereby making a wider range of human resources available to Beijing’s  contemporary art scene.  This is one of the reasons why these artists are willing to leave their hometowns, endure hardship, and come to a strange city to seek their future.  Not long after Li Jisen had moved into the Daxing compound in Song Village, he nearly died one night when the electric blanket covering him caught fire while he lay there drunk.  It is clear that the life of an artist in Song Village is not one of bucolic Utopian leisure.  After more than a year in Song Village, Li Jisen began to waver, uncertain whether he would be able to survive by relying solely on his art.  However, after some time, his paintings gradually began to find buyers, thus enabling him to support himself.  Life in Song Village became stable.  This change in Li Jisen’s life is reflected most clearly in his later paintings.  Take, for example, his post-2006 paintings.  The color tones and forms have progressively become lucid, lively, and appealing to the eye, thereby strengthening the “one-dimensional man” image in his pictures.

 

These “one-dimensional men” in Li Jisen’s paintings seem to be leading a carefree, blithe, and comfortable life in a captivating, self-sufficient, fairytale world.  Perhaps this archetype is partially derived from Li Jisen’s experience living in Song Village.  The spiritual state expressed by these “one-dimensional men” bears a striking resemblance to that of our countrymen.  In a letter addressed to Kang Youwei in 1900, Liang Qichao wrote: “The disasters inflicted on China through thousands of years of corruption continue to this day.  In seeking for a cause, we need look no further than our servile nature. If we don’t rid ourselves of this trait, China will never be able to take its place with other nations in the world.” (First Draft, Vol.1).  The people who initiated China’s modern enlightenment lived during a time when dynastic rule was on the verge of collapse, and these words reverberated like thunder.  The modernization of China over the past 100 years has been challenged by many disasters and difficulties, but nevertheless China’s economic growth has managed to keep up with that of other nations.  However, when we observe the spiritual state of our countrymen, Liang Qichao’s urgent words, spoken so long ago, have not lost their power to inspire. Today China is on the road to becoming a great nation but the rights of the individual remain unprotected.  It is hard to imagine how those docile “one-dimensional men” in Li Jisen’s paintings can help China take its place among the nations of the world.  We must break free from the collective world of “one-dimensional man”, and rid ourselves of servility and restore the dignity of what it means to be human beings.           

           

Beijing, August 10, 2008

 

 

 

  

作者：Shu Yang