The use of brush and ink on paper or silk has been as closely associated with the history of Chinese art as painting in oil on canvas has been with the development of Western art since the Renaissance. As in Europe and the United States, however, where, since the birth of photography in the nineteenth century, the death of painting has been announced despite its never having disappeared entirely, the primacy of ink in China has also frequently been challenged. In the first decade of the last century,
Kang Youwei (1858-1927) returned Wang Tiande, Round Series No. 037, 1991, xuan paper, board, Chinese pigments. to China from Europe and published Collection of Shanghai Art Museum. a scathing denouncement of Chinese literati painting in his Travels in Eleven European Countries.“Four or five hundred years ago Chinese painting was the best. What a pity it has not developed since then.”1 He continued: “If we can correct the false painting doctrine of the past five hundred years, then Chinese painting will recover and even develop further. Today industry, commerce and everything else are related to art. Without art reform those fields cannot develop.... Chinese painting has declined terri- bly because its theory is ridiculous.”2 Wang Tiande, Chinese Fan, 1996, xuan paper, ink and bamboo, mounted on linen. Collection of J. P. Morgan Bank.
Over the tumultuous history of China in the twentieth century, the position of traditional Chinese painting in modern society and its relationship to the art of the West was never straightforward. As political situations changed, attempts were made to purify painting by returning to the original Chinese sources as well as to modify it by incorporating influences from the West, but there was never any question that ink painting was an integral part of Chinese civilization that need to be preserved by all means.
To observers of the current hyperactive world of contemporary art in China, these debates may seem to be irrelevant, since the Chinese art that has become most familiar in recent exhibitions is decidedly international in style, if not always in theme. In the large international exhibitions and biennales there has been little emphasis on contemporary ink-and-wash painting. Within China
itself, however, this is not the case, and even today there is still an active engagement with issues concerning the appropriate use of ink and wash as an expressive medium.
Wang Tiande, one of the foremost exponents of experimental ink painting in China today, titled one of his most recent exhibitions Wang Tiande: Ink for the 21st Century,3 and the exhibition Made by Tiande represents the development of ideas that have become increasingly important since his appointment as China’s youngest full art professor at the Fudan Art Education Center in Shanghai. Wang Tiande, A Menu in Ink and Wash, 1996, ink on paper, tableware, writing brushes, menu. Collection of Hong Kong Art Museum.
Wang Tiande was born in Shanghai in 1960, six years before the Cultural Revolution. Coinciding with the 1978 announcement of the Open Door policy—which called for liberalization in order to accomplish the “four modernizations,”in agriculture, industry, science and technology—he enrolled in the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts. After graduation in 1981, he entered the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art), Hangzhou. In China the official art academies are as important in the development of an artist's career as they were in nineteenth-century France. Although the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts has always been the most influential arts institution in the nation, other academies have developed their own distinctive profiles, particularly since the decentralization program that began in 1958. The director of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts was Pan Tianshou, a distinguished guohua (traditional Chinese painting) painter and calligrapher who exerted a considerable influence on the agenda of the school.
Wang Tiande has not said much about his experiences as a student, but, from a statement quoted in Variations of Ink: A Dialogue with Zhang Yanyuan, it may be assumed he felt his position to be an isolated one as many of his contemporaries turned to Western art for inspiration. “I was cut off for years from the west, and developed my craft in relative isolation. I struggled to find creative inspiration from deeply rooted traditions. While my friends turned to oil painting, I redefined ink painting and calligraphy, the most value-laden of China’s art forms. By sticking with ink, it was a tremendous effort not to drift conservatively backwards.”4
This position was not an easy one to adopt, particularly at a time when the topic of the validity of traditional Chinese painting was being challenged on many fronts with a passion that rivaled the aforementioned Kang Youwei’s assault over six decades earlier . In 1985, a young artist Li Xiaoshan published an explosive article entitled “My Views on Contemporary Chinese Painting.”Arguing that “Chinese art has already reached the end of its days,”he declared that “we must abandon old theoretical systems and our ossified understanding of art, and give priority to the question of modern painting concepts.”5 This was followed by a wide-ranging debate between supporters of Li’s position and defenders of a more moderate approach. Another voice was that of the influential critic Li Xianting, whose essay “Pure Abstraction is a Logical Development for Chinese Ink-and-wash Painting” was published in 1985. He hoped that from traditional Chinese art an authentic form of
Wang Tiande, Chinese Clothes, 1996, xuan paper, ink. Private collection. Courtesy of Chambers Fine Art.
Chinese abstract art could develop, and he emphasized the significance of process in the execution of the work.
It is against this background of far-reaching theoretical discussions conducted in the academies and art periodicals of the time that Wang Tiande’s development as an artist must be seen. He came to maturity during the New Wave modern art movement in the mid-1980s, when many of the stylistic definitions that had hitherto characterized competing schools of artists were being challenged. While some artists turned to oil painting and the West, others preferred to “Make it New,”in the words that Ezra Pound borrowed from the Chinese. The New Literati developed ideas from the painting of the Song and Yuan dynasties while Wang Tiande and the group of younger artists he belonged to sought to develop ink-and-wash painting by developing its abstract potential.
Wang Tiande finds himself drawn not only to the medium of ink and wash but to forms that have considerable resonance in Chinese cultural history, notably the fan and the robe. Following a series of works in a circular format, which he believed corresponded more closely to the Asian understanding of the cosmos than the typical rectangular frame used in the West, Wang Tiande executed a series of works from the mid-1990s onwards based on the shape of the Chinese fan. Used frequently in Chinese painting since the Song dynasty, the fan shape has deeper associations for Chinese audiences than it does for Western ones. Wang Tiande's fans are large in scale and are characterized by rugged surfaces of remarkable beauty and suggestive power. The ink is applied to heavily textured surfaces that have been folded, creased, abraded, and rubbed so as to provide a ground quite unlike the smooth and absorbent surface favoured by more traditional artists. Damaged and made whole again by the ink it has absorbed, Wang Tiande’s xuan paper suggests nature and landscape without ever referring to them directly.
In a recent interview, Wang Tiande referred to his years as a student at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, when he lived on Yu Huang Hill and developed strong feelings for nature. It is instructive to compare his attitude towards the natural world and the means available to him in
Wang Tiande in his studio. Courtesy of the artist. expressing it to that of the distinguished landscape artist Li Huayi, who was born in Shanghai in 1948, thirteen years before Wang Tiande. Coming from a privileged background, Li trained as an artist and was exposed not only to great masterpieces of the Song dynasty but also to the more recent accomplishments of Zhang Daqian and the Abstract Expressionists. By the end of the Cultural Revolution, however, he knew he wanted to be a “good Chinese painter, a contemporary Chinese painter,”and in Some Thoughts on Painting he gave eloquent expression to the traditional viewpoint:
One very important aspect of the composition of a landscape painting is movement, what the Chinese call qi,a complex term that can be translated as energy or power. Qi is like taiji exercise—it is related to movement. A Chinese landscape should have qi and should be an expression of the qi of the artist. The artist’s qi starts in his heart and flows through his arm to the point of the brush. That qi should also flow through the landscape. If the composition is not well planned, the qi does not flow well; it does not look right.
Chinese painting can be divided into two interlocked elements: brush (bi) and ink (mo). While one or the other may be emphasized, they cannot be separated. Even if artists sometimes manipulate the ink without a brush, they must be thinking how to match it to the brushwork used in the following stages or in other areas of the painting. When they are thinking of the ink, they must also be thinking of the brush; when they are thinking of the brush, they must also be thinking of the ink. All the power of the painting is in the tip of the brush, the last hair; everything flows through the arm to the brush. If any blockage, any stiffness occurs along the way, the brush stroke will not be correct and the energy, the qi, of the artist will not be communicated in the painting.6
I think it is true to say that Wang Tiande also wants to be a “good Chinese painter,”in a way that aims to capture many of the qualities sought after by Li Huayi while jettisoning most of the traditional techniques that artist used to accomplish his aims. In his thoughtful introduction to Variations of Ink: A Dialogue with Zhang Yanyuan,Wu Hung associated Wang Tiande with a group of young artists whose works, “which largely affiliate themselves with abstract and conceptual art, demonstrate a tendency to separate “ink” from “brush.”Hence they also divorce themselves from traditional Chinese painting, which consistently emphasizes the joint importance of bi (brushwork) and mo (ink). In other words, one finds in these works the deliberate dominance of ink over other
Wang Tiande working with cigarette ash and paper. Courtesy of the artist. visual elements. By pushing the role of this traditional medium to such an extreme, the artists both substantiate an ancient art tradition and subvert it.”7
During the mid-1990s Wang Tiande believed that one way out of the impasse posed by the conundrum of how to respect the traditional importance of ink as a symbol of Chinese culture and make it contemporary was to move into three dimensions. Two outstanding installations, Menu in Ink and Wash (1996) and Sealed on October 23, 1998, date from this period. In the former a large banquet table surrounded by chairs and set for eight people was covered in ink and wash. Beside the plates there are brushes instead of chopsticks and the menu is an antique book of ancient Chinese poetry. It is possible to offer many different interpretations of this ambitious work, but it seems certain that questioning the role of Wang Tiande, Chinese Clothes No. 04-D02, silk cloth, burn marks. literati painting in the modern world was one Courtesy of Chambers Fine Art. of the primary motivations. In the latter work, a casket covered in ink and wash was placed in the imperial ancestral temple adjacent to the Palace Museum in Beijing. In this case Wang Tiande’s emotional attachment to traditional ink-and-wash painting was emphasized by its display in a site symbolic of traditional Chinese culture.
Since 1998, Wang Tiande’s two-dimensional works have used the form of a Chinese robe as a symbol of Chinese tradition on the one hand and as an unconventional container for fragmentary glimpses of un-idealized Chinese landscapes on the other. These works are simultaneously robes and landscapes, garments with a pronounced surface design and craggy isthmuses receding into
the distance. While some of the works from the series emphasize the ambiguity of the presentation by depicting the landscape elements in a relatively realistic manner, others are much more abstract and calligraphic in approach. Photographs of the artist at work show how he paints on the floor, “entering” the work in a way that recalls Hans Namuth’s famous photographs of Jackson Pollock painting in his studio at Springs, Long Island. Wang Tiande’s robes, hovering between abstraction and representation, contrast sharply with the polyvinyl chloride robes of Wang Jing, the first of which dates from 1997. A unifying thread in Wang Jin’s oeuvre is his concern with the side effects of China’s rapidly growing capitalist economy. His glittering but unwearable costumes from the Peking Opera may be seen as ironic comments on the commercial- Wang Tiande, models wearing Chinese Clothes. ization of tradition for the tourist industry. Courtesy of Chambers Fine Art.
Unlike Wang Jin, who uses contemporary materials to express his dismay at social and cultural trends in contemporary China, Wang Tiande has recently seemed to bow to and accept the inevitable. Immersed as he is in the traditions of ink painting, he nonetheless lives in Shanghai, which has been physically transformed in the past decade from a rather run-down metropolis into a gleaming, sci-fi megalopolis. The world in which he lives is largely digitalized; he has explained how the method he evolved to convey his feelings about this situation came about by accident. Alone in his studio one day, he lit a cigarette and watched entranced as the ash fell on some rice paper. He felt that as the burning ash fell, it created a totally new space. Instead of burning CDs or DVDs, however, Wang Tiande burns characters into sheets of rice paper, using cigarettes rather than brushes. Needless to say, the characters that result from this unconventional approach are mostly illegible. Glimpsed through the irregular burn marks are calligraphic inscriptions executed in cursive script on a second sheet of rice paper that lies beneath. Recognizing that the art of calligraphy has become a frail presence at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Wang Tiande creates layered works that recall the great achievements of the past, yet conveys their meaning only fitfully. Perhaps there is a certain irony in his use of the word “digital” to describe this group of works, since there is nothing at all digital in their execution, although in English another meaning of that word is “of or pertaining to a digit or finger.”
This essay might suggest that Wang Tiande is in despair at the gap between the traditional means of expression to which he has devoted his life and trends in contemporary culture and society, but this is far from being the case. As already mentioned, he plays a significant role in the Fudan Art Education Center in Shanghai, and he is beginning to redefine his role as an artist in a much larger context than that of the art world in China as it exists today. No longer content to train future generations of fine artists, he is attempting to create an institution that is a center of creative thinking comparable to the Bauhaus in Germany. In its brief history, the Bauhaus (Weimar, 1919- 1925; Dessau, 1925-1933) had a profound effect on twentieth-century design in fields as diverse as architecture, theatre, typography, and industrial design. The design of a teapot was thought to be as important as the execution of a unique painting or sculpture, and artists as celebrated as Paul
Klee and Wassily Kandinsky taught students the fundamentals of artistic creativity.
Believing that academies in China have to be supplemented by more forward-looking institutions, Wang Tiande is trying to create an environment in which artists from many disciplines can work side by side to build a bridge between fine art and design. Last year he was curator of an exhibition at the museum of Fudan University—Dajia: Studying Design from Contemporary Art—in which works by artists and designers were hung side by side. In Chinese the word dajia means both “everybody” and “great master,”a succinct way of announcing the broad scope Wang Tiande, detail from the Digital series, xuan paper, Chinese ink on paper, of Wang Tiande’s ambitions. burn marks. Courtesy Chambers Fine Art.
Included in the exhibition were industrial designs by Masayuki Kurokawa and a series of works from the New Chinese Clothes by Wang Tiande that present the garments in a wearable form. Detached from their two-dimensional existence, these robes are individualized by Wang Tiande’s calligraphy and are poised to carry his message out of the study or museum and into the street. In less than twenty years, Wang Tiande has moved from a nostalgic embrace of the past to an optimistic acceptance of the present and, even more important, recognition of his role in enriching it through all the means available to him—his own creativity as well as his responsibility as an educator to encourage creativity in others. As noted earlier, nearly a hundred years ago, Yang Kouwei wrote that “today industry, commerce and everything else are related to art. Without art reform those fields cannot develop....”8 Wang Tiande intends to do something about this situation.
This text was originally published in the catalogue Made by Tiande,presented at Chambers Fine Art, September 8 to October 23, 2004.
Notes 1 From Yang Kouwei, Travels in Eleven European Countries, quoted in Michael Sullivan, Art and Artists of Twentieth-Century China (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1996), 28. 2 Ibid. 3 Wang Tiande: Ink for the 21st Century (Hong Kong: Alisan Fine Arts, April 2003). 4 Variations of Ink: A Dialogue with Zhang Yanyuan (New York: Chambers Fine Art, 2002). 5 Li Xiaoshan, quoted in The Flowering Field: Contemporary Chinese Painting (New York and Hong Kong: Kaikodo and Luen Chai, 1997), 21. 6 Michael Knight and Li Huayi, The Monumental Landscapes of Li Huayi (San Francisco: Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 2004), 42. 7 Wu Hung, “Variations of Ink: A Dialogue with Zhang Yanyuan,” Variations of Ink: A Dialogue with Zhang Yanyuan, 3-4. 8 See note 1.