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DUAN Siying, University

With the heated debates on whether Chinese should keep it爷s brush and tradition at the end of 20 centuries, a serious of New Ink Art works declared their existence in a series of exhibition related to the idea of 野Tension冶. In contrast to the pursuit of a harmonic world in traditional which in- volve the freely 野walking, seeing, playing, and living冶 () of both artist and viewer, the New Ink Art works push this four-dimensional world to an extreme mo- ment of power, speed and tension by borrowing the modern technique of represen- tation including photograph and montage or the technology of light and electricity. Instead of focusing on the political background and identity arguments of the issue of Chinese New Ink Art, this paper tries to investigate the profound shift in mode of time-space perception during the radical modernization period in which fully embodied in the transformation of Chinese Ink Art. After carefully revisit some conventional painting principle compared with Merleau-Ponty爷s aesthetics, several New Ink Art works including Xu bing, Chen Shaoxiong, Yang yongliang would be examined as a reflection of the lost of 野Yi /poetic world冶 and an expression of anxious bodily experience in a globalized urban world. It is in this sense that these works regain a both historical and critical 野depth冶 and at the same time, remain their closeness to the intensity of an immediate bodily experience of their own kinds.

Chinese New Ink Art; Chinese Aesthetics; Comparative Aesthetics

t the end of 20th centuries, a school of New Ink Art works declared their exis- A tence in a series of exhibitions including 野An Experiment in Tension: An Ex- hibition of Expressive Ink Painting冶 in the year of 1994 and 野Tension and Expres- sion: An Exhibition of Ink- Painting冶 in 1995. The two constantly appearing words 野tension冶 and 野expression冶 were not commonly used in describing tradition- al Chinese artworks. This reveals a strong western influence from even just the -

Duan Siying, doctor in of Shanghai Film Academy, Shanghai University, spe- cialized on new media art and aesthetics. Publications include several articles on Chinese Media Art research, comparative aesthetics and art psychology.

窑30窑 tles of these exhibitions, no wonder what followed was a wave of heated debates on whether Chinese painting should keep its own 野brush and ink冶 tradition: The issue of 野brush and ink冶 tradition is not just a problem of art form, but more about the i- dentity crisis of Ink Art in between the heavy tradition of China and influential western culture, and the struggle as well as the confusion shared by the contempo- rary Chinese urban residents when experiencing a kind of experiential transform of their daily life. In order to fully elaborate this idea, we would first review some of the characteristics of the traditional Chinese and reconsider a seemingly simple question: what do we see when we look at a painting? In response to this question, each of us might hold different answers in our mind, including line, shape, color, composition, or the objects get depicted in the painting, such as the path and trees or the peaceful country scene composed of which, if take Meindert Hobbema爷s as an example. If a painting tries to show us something, it has to figure out how to put our three-dimensional objects, our three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface. One of the most dominant techniques used in this painting to solve this problem is Central perspective. In this painting, the trees are lined in sizes from large to small, and the avenue is in a twisted shape almost like a triangular and by this way, the painting creates a quick recession from foreground to background, give the illusion of depth, and drawing us into this wide landscape. Apart from Central perspective, there are other techniques being used to create

Figure 1 The Avenue at Middelharnis by Meindert Hobbema 1689

窑31窑 3D objects on a flat surface, or in most of cases, to create an illusive depth in the painting, for example, Oblique perspective, Shading, Chiaroscuro, Atmospheric perspective etc., but is it possible to create a landscape without such stereoscopic il- lusion at all? from traditional China would be able to show a different approach in solving this basic problem, although they would probably appear incomprehensible from a viewer who takes Central perspective for granted.

Figure 2 Early Spring 郭熙 /Guo Xi 1072

Take 郭 熙 /Guo Xi爷s 早 春 图 / as an example, there could be loads of questions from an angle of Central perspective such as, why is the path on the left hand side even bigger than the rocks and trees at the front bottom that is closest to us, What is the exact position of the little waterfall at the right hand side as it seems not quite in the same space of the left path, etc. However袁if we put the rules of Central perspective aside, just follow where the painting leads us to, we爷ll find it an interestingly lively world, and the whole view- ing experience would just feel like the experience exploring in the real mountain.

窑32窑 How does the painting realize such an effect? Or to ask in another way, how does the painter organize different angles and spaces in one painting that would not con- flict with each other without a method of central perspective? The painter Guo Xi has a well-known theory of 野三远说 /three types of views from afar冶, which are 高远 /the view from bottom to high-up, 深远 /the view goes deeper and further, and 平远 /the wide open horizontal view.2 And if you get close enough to the painting, all of these three views can be found in it. This painting theory has been considered by some contemporary critics as Mul- ti-point perspective. It is easy to establish a theoretical concept like 野Multi-point perspective冶 as opposed to Central perspective, but what does it mean by multiple perspective? What does it mean by perspective even? In the actual world we live in, trees are not naturally lined from bigger to small- er, path is not disappearing automatically, as Merleau-Ponty rightly pointed out in ,野quality, light, color, depth, which are over there before us, are there only because they awaken an echo in our bodies and because the body welcomes them.冶3 There are two layers of connotations here should not be neglected, on the one hand, the illusion of depth, no matter in a or in a real world, is not a property of the world itself, it just appears so to us. What central perspective do is presuming that there is a pair of eyes staring at the painting, and it twists the world according to what this pair of eyes can see from a certain point of view. What actually shown on the painting in a central perspective way of representation is a perfect frozen moment built for viewer爷s eyes. While on the other hand, the only reason for this mechanism being able to work is that the pair of viewer爷s eyes is not just a pair of eye, but a part of the body. We see the world in a certain way we ex- perience in our body. Without the thickness of the body of ourselves that we can both touch and feel from within, we would not be able to grasp the thickness of the matter at a glance. Hence Central perspective is the witness of the mutual existence of both the body of world and the body of viewer. The so-called multi-point perspective then, would not be able to exist from this point of view, in that it would be illogical or doom to cause fragmental effect if there are several body-world relationships at play in the same frame simultaneously, such as what achieved in Cubism. The key to understanding a traditional Chinese painting is the breakdown of the fundamental space-time thinking mode lurking be- hind a picture, and the introduction of 野time冶 into the painting, here the 野time冶 is not referring to the kind of narrative time as much classic historical painting would use to organize its spatial relationship, but an experiential time: The landscape gets depicted in Chinese painting tradition is not a perfect mo

窑33窑 ment but a space-time continuum; not a view awaiting a viewer, but a journey which invites the viewer to step inside. That is to say, the traditional Chinese way of representation shown in Guoxi爷s is not the split of subject爷s eye and the objective world in front of him or her, but rather the rhythmic interaction between the audience and the painting as an integral, dynamical, vital, harmonic world, which as Guoxi put it, open for them 野to walk, to see, to play and to live冶4 inside. Likewise, the possibility of the existence of this type of landscape shows a different type of understanding of 野body冶, or to put it another way, a different type of self-world relationship. Let爷s go back to our basic question, what do we see when we look at a paint- ing. What we are seeing here from the comparison of these two types of paintings, is not a problem about the form or perspective but the bodily consciousness of two different cultures enfolded in their way of painting respectively, that is, the two dif- ferent models of space-time construction showed in the painting, which is actually a reflection of the different ways people construct their idea of body-world in their daily life, how they experience the world in their body, with their body or as their body. Central perspective implies a subject-object relationship always looking at each other and at the same time being looked at, although the painter and viewers are not being depicted in the painting, the whole distorted view itself is an evidence of the existence of the painter and viewers. As Merleau-Ponty put it, 野Never are the things one behind the other. The encroachment and latency of the things do not enter into their definition. They express only my incomprehensible solidarity with one of them要my body冶5. Thus, the distorted painting is also a visual document of the e- cho between the 野subjective冶 body and the 野objective冶 world. However, in traditional Chinese Ink landscape, there is no this kind of chiasm between viewer and world, as in Chinese tradition, human body itself is the conden- sation of 野气 /qi冶, which is also the essence of the world. is a Chinese character which can be loosely translated into 野breath冶 and 野air冶, or can be also understood as 野energy冶 or 野spirit冶, and since human and the world are made from the same野气 /qi冶, they share the same body. As reflected in the realm of traditional Chinese aes- thetics, the aliveness of 野气 /qi冶, is considered the first and most important princi- ple of 野Six principles of Chinese painting冶 established by 谢赫 /Xie He in the 6th century.6 野The first principle(spirit-consonance, which is life-motion)噎implies a cosmic harmony, energy or rhythm, whose reverberations produce the movement of life...To the Chinese artist this is the force immanent in nature, to which he must subject himself, so that by an intuitive awareness he may apprehend it, and so con

窑34窑 vey it through his painting.冶7 Chinese painting is an output of this self-nature idea of artist, the 野energy or rhythm冶 of artist爷s life as well as nature. The composition of the painting is thus not organized in a central perspective which implies a sub- ject-object relationship, but organized by the 野energy or rhythm冶 exemplified as the dynamic fog, cloud, waterfall, river etc. in a painting. This a unique technique of Chinese painting names 野留白 /Liu bai冶, which means 野to leave a blank area in the painting冶. It is these blank areas in the painting divide and also connects the close and distant space, more importantly; they work as the 野rifts冶 inside the painting which invite and guide the viewer into the painting to explore the world inside. This is a specialty of Ink art which uses the most simple color black to incorporate an in- tegrity of everything and nothing, presence and absence based on Chinese thoughts. Henceforth, the artist 野embodies冶 viewer as well as himself in the painting爷s world which reflects the 野real world冶 or 野human-world冶 relationship culturally estab- lished. Moreover, drawing and appreciation of landscape is also a method of self-cultivation practice for both artist and viewer to feel the 野气 /qi冶 inside being at one with the larger universe. After digging into the foundational cultural difference hidden in two types of traditional landscape painting, we can now have a better understanding of contem- porary works. In a contemporary art world that both the central per- spective and the 野frame冶 of the painting having been taken down, what would the New Ink Art grew from a dynamic, holistic tradition look like? Here are some ex- amples. Imagine the feeling of stepping into a black room with a whole wall occupied

Figure 3 The Day of Perpetual Night 杨泳梁 /Yang Yongliang 2012

窑35窑 by a video of the grand scene from . Shocking from the visual impact was my feeling at that time visiting it in its exhibiting venue. Al- though at the first glance, it has a similar composition and elements we saw from the previous traditional one. Just take a closer look at the work: the seemingly eter- nal daytime is now endless late night with bright stars; where the creek used to flow is now running by cars爷 taillights; what occupying the mountains are no longer trees but the electric towers, just a second, they are even not mountain but a pile of high-rises with lighted windows. As a video, this urban landscape can be literally dynamical, but this type of dynamic, instead of a relaxing walk in the natural world, has been pushed into an eternal moment of intensity made from power, speed and restless flashing light. Now it would be interesting to compare this kind of 野intensity冶 with the kind that Fredric Jameson used as a strange new exhilaration to describe the daily expe- rience in late capitalist space, a new form of 野temporality冶 after the 野end of tempo rality冶 in post-modern time. Jameson has a claim on the 野waning of affect冶 in his famous article which in- vited controversy later8, yet he was not actually claiming an end of all kinds of feel- ings but trying to describe a turn in the 野ground tone冶, 野in which the pathos of high modernism has been inverted into a strange new exhilaration, the high, the intensi- ty冶.9 This turn is mainly caused by two intertwining phenomenon, firstly, the death of old 野subject冶, as Jameson concluded, 野the end of the autonomous bourgeois monad or ego or individual冶, 野in the period of classical capitalism and the nuclear family, has today in the world of organizational bureaucracy dissolved冶10, and sec- ondly, the 野end of temporality冶, which is the 野shrinking of contemporary (bour- geois) experience such that we begin to live a perpetual present with a diminishing sense of temporal or indeed phenomenological continuities冶, which could be char- acterized as a reduction to 野isolated body冶, locked in a 野temporal present冶 with an experience of 野global waves of generalized sensations冶.11 It is particularly paradoxical to see such a phenomenon happen in a context of contemporary China, which came from a fundamentally different historical experi- ence and thus has never established a same type of 野subject冶, yet after a radical so- cial and political reform, the urban construction and living experience in cities from China and the United States are quite similar nowadays. Perhaps this is why the in- tensity appeared in is, although also seems like an end- less 野temporal present冶, to use Jameson爷s words, but not really 野exhilarating冶, or indeed somewhat exhilarating in a complex mixture of anxiety, absurdity, and be-

窑36窑 wilderment. In the art piece, where the areas left blank by traditional painter has been re- mained, and made actually dynamical by electronic technology. However, instead of a gentle guidance by the fog and water into the natural world inside the painting, there blank areas work more like a dazzling attack from the modern lighting sys- tem. After a period of time, a spaceship would show up in the artwork, take away one of residents in the city and then disappear silently. This little plot in the work add a sense of nothingness and absurdity via the combination of the dramatic con- tent and artists indifferent way of dealing. In so doing, the art piece depicts an im- age of modern Chinese city by incorporating both a traditional art form and modern tune of intensity. After our analysis up to now, we can understand why Liu Xiaochun, the curator of those early new ink art exhibitions named these exhibitions with the word 野in tensity冶. He stated that he used this word as 野visual impact冶 in the sense of com- mon vocabulary from western modern art, 野that is to push the spiritual intensity of Qi, potential, bone, force into visual intensity, to push the processual intensity of the emergence, continuation, turning and ending to a direct result. This means a stress on the overall effect of an expanding force imposed on viewer爷s first impres- sion captured from distance冶12. That is to say, although new ink art works have in- herited or simulated the visual effect of traditional ink art via all kinds of new medi- a techniques, the processual, experiential dimension of the painting has been shifted into an immediate, direct expression of impact. This is the artistic reaction to the living experience of the modern city. by Yang yongliang is not the only piece that - picts the kind of intense and unsettled temporality. Another experimental ink artist Chen Shaoxiong created a series of ink video, depicting his experience towards the 野postmodern status冶 of the Chinese city, mass media, and daily life. His works are first painted in ink frame by frame based on snapshots he took and collected and then assembled into anime. Although also working in a time-based media, in this case, the overall effect of his ink videos is more like a series of fleeting fragmental

Figure 4 Ink City by 陈邵雄 /Chen Shaoxiong 2005

窑37窑 moments created by photographic composition of each frame, and this effect is aug- mented with the montage way of organizing all the frames and the messy back- ground sound. The unique effect of transparency and distance of ink art connects all the pieces of the scenes, conveys a special atmosphere of alienation and estrange- ment captured by the artist from the modern way of living. In the installation work , Chen Shaoxiong physically represents this kind of experience via a set of perceptual in- stallation. Firstly, like what he did for his video series, to transform his photographs of daily life into a tranquil, reminiscent language of ink art, and then to hang all of the Ink pictures high enough to be out of audiences爷 normal vision, and lastly to have a little toy train carrying a video camera running in front of the pictures and recording the view from the train. What would audiences finally be able to see is the output video from the camera on the toy train. In this video, the details of daily life have been blurred into a series of nonstop recursion of fragmental montage which could barely recognize clearly, not to mention to feel the beauty and affec- tion of which. In this work, the train is the metaphor of the invisible mode of per- ception which every urban resident nowadays are holding in a busy urban life un- consciously.

Figure 5 Visible and invisible, Known and Unknown by 陈邵雄 /Chen Shaoxiong 2007 Anoth er thought-provoking work worthy of taking a look here is Xubin爷s . This is one of the pictures from its 7th version exhibited in the British Museum. This installation has a sort of more stereoscopic effect with its large scale and backlight. As viewer walking towards it, it feels like stepping into the world of landscape, until suddenly, the back side of the installation reveals it- self. Such beautiful mountain scenery is actually made from different kinds of leaves and tapes. It was quite a shocking experience for me when finding out this contemporary recreation of the traditional landscape is just an illusion. What does

窑38窑 this work mean? During the artist talk held with the exhibition, some of the audience shared

Figure 6 Background Story 7 by 徐冰 /Xu Bin 2007

Figure 7 Background Story 7 by 徐 冰 /Xu Bin 2007

窑39窑 their opinions about this work, some take it as a political stance in regards of envi- ronmental issues, other ask Xubin if this work can be seen as a fragment of the ruin of historic Chinese landscape. However, interestingly, Xubin爷s own response to these comments and question was focused more on the continuity of tradition, he said that he was trying to have a dialogue with ancient painters by using contempo- rary everyday objects, for example, imitating the traditional hemp fiber texture stroke with actual hemp, this strategy of borrowing ordinary objects from daily life was called 野folk methodology冶 by him. These two sides of reading of Xubin爷s work complicated the meaning of con- temporary Ink art works. Do all of these works mean we are coming into a depth- less, eternal present post-modern world described by Jameson? Well, at least the continuous practice of Ink art brought back some part of the history, not in a way of adding some nostalgic elements into a contemporary work, but working as a disclo- sure of an unavoidable part of Chinese people爷s body-mind structure accumulated throughout thousands of years. Although it is also undeniably true that this kind of body-mind structure has been radically transformed in a global economic social re- ality, and thus also means that keeping the traditional brush and ink technique would only be a pretty fantasy. What Chinese artists currently facing with is not the argument between a pure Chinese painting and westernized painting, but how they would react to a Chinese living reality under a globalized context. Those contemporary Ink art works, instead of creating a beautiful 野other world冶 for us to dream about, they are working like a mirror, confronting us with our real situation, or an attempt to reconcile the wound caused by the radical trans- formation of Chinese people爷s experiential modes, or at least to raise the question of what a Chinese body-world relationship in a so-called postmodern world could be. It is in this sense, these works regain a both historical and critical 野depth冶 and yet at the same time, remain their closeness to the intensity of an immediate bodily experience in contemporary China.

窑40窑 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at A Body of Knowledge - Em- bodied Cognition and the Arts conference CTSA UCI. 2 Guo Xi. , see in Chinese, [宋]郭熙：《林泉高致》，济南市：山东 画报出版社，2010 年 8 月。 3 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. , The Merleau-Ponty reader, Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 2007, p.355. 4 Guo Xi. , see in Chinese, [宋]郭熙：《林泉高致》，济南市：山东 画报出版社，2010 年 8 月。 5 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Eye and Mind, The Merleau-Ponty reader, Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 2007, p.363 6 He Xie. , see in Chinese, [南朝]谢赫：《画品》，山西教育出版社， 2015 年 1 月遥 7 Michael Sullivan. , University of California press, Berkeley and Los Angeles: 1959, p.33. 8 For more on this issue, please see Massumi, Brian. The autonomy of affect. Cul- tural Critique, 31: 1995 and Grossberg, L. We gotta get out of this place: Popular conservatism and postmodern culture. Routledge, 2014. 9 Jameson, Fredric. . Duke UP, 1991. 10 Ibid. 11 Jameson, Fredric. . Verso Books, 2013, 28. See also, Jameson, Fredric. 野The end of temporality冶. , 29(4): 2003. 12 LIU Xiaochun. , see in Chinese, 刘骁纯. 张力与表现 [J]. 西北美术袁1995, 04:10.

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