Liu Xiaodong Vs. Hou Hsiao-Hsien: an Interview
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Kao Tzu-chin Liu Xiaodong vs. Hou Hsiao-hsien: An Interview Kao Tzu-chin: You once called painting from life “farmers’ work.” Please Still from Hometown Boy, 2011, with Li Wu and Liu tell me whether painting from life has other implications in addition to the Xiaodong’s painting Li Wu Works the Night Shift and method of your creative practice, which has attempted to capture the daily Still Can’t Sleep by Day,colour HDCAM, in Mandarin with reality of the working class. Has painting from life helped you to reach the English subtitles, 72 mins. Courtesy of 3H Productions consistent nature of your creative approach and the content of your work? Ltd., Taipei. Liu Xiaodong: If everything about the painting were arranged in advance, it seems the painting already would have been finished at that moment. To paint from life, on site, reflects an old-fashioned attitude towards painting. It makes this “old” job even more appealing, and it is particularly a most luxurious way for a painter to paint face to face. Nothing can be more of a luxury. Such a huge canvas, such beautiful sunlight, and such a lively soul standing in front of you—that is all you need. This is the advantage of being an artist. I was born for this. [Laughs] I have no choice. Kao Tzu-chin: Your first painting in the Hometown Boy series is Li Wu Works the Night Shift and Still Can’t Sleep by Day. You said that you went home to Jincheng to paint your friends “with a mood of unease and 66 Still from Hometown Boy, instability.” You were a little nervous and couldn’t curb it. What did your 2011, colour HDCAM, in Mandarin with English friends feel when they saw your paintings? Is this one of the reasons you subtitles, 72 mins. Courtesy of 3H Productions Ltd., Taipei. decided to keep these twenty-six paintings in your own collection? Liu Xiaodong: In the early 1990s I also painted my friends. But it was simple at that time. I didn’t think too much, and I painted whoever was available. But one day I found that all these paintings were sold. It had a counter effect; I felt that I had sold these friends’ faces to make money. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. I am afraid that if the paintings of my friends become a commercial commodity, they would suspect their lives were being used by me for my own benefit. There is of course, some profit in art practice: to show your work to others, to exhibit, and to sell. That is where the contradiction lies. I would suffer a burden on my shoulders if I painted someone based only on our pure youthful bonds of friendship. But they didn’t mind this. They didn’t even think about it. Often it was I who was irritable and worried too much. Therefore I had to give up my worries. Life cannot go in reverse, but the friendship and loyalty of several decades are beautiful. I believe my work had a certain impact on their life. When they came to Beijing and saw their portraits in a massive exhibition hall, they didn’t necessarily express themselves in words, like we thought, but their body language showed evidence of what they wanted to say—that their life had never been so seriously noticed. Hou Hsiao-hsien: It is always like this. Liu Xiaodong, you became famous and went back home and realized the way everyone looked at you was different. So you knew that you should be very careful about how you handle this circumstance. I told Yao Hong-i, the director of the film Hometown Boy, “You have to listen to Liu Xiaodong because he knows well when to draw a line. There is nothing you can do in this kind of situation. You only need to stop thinking too much.” Liu Xiaodong treated his friends like brothers, with an easy and straightforward attitude. That opened everything. After one or two paintings, the awkwardness faded away—so Liu Xiaodong could concentrate on painting wholeheartedly. 67 Liu Xiaodong, Shu-Jun with His Chubby Son, 2010, oil on canvas, 140 x 150 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Eslite Gallery. Kao Tzu-chin: How did you choose the objects that appeared in your painting? Do they have special meaning for you? Or do you want to give clues about a story through them? Liu Xiaodong: This time I went home and spent a much longer time because of this particular art project. Therefore, I was able to think about many things from the past. For example, when I painted My Egypt, I was walking on the site and kicked a skull by chance. I immediately decided I would paint it; this was a cemetery when I was a kid. When people died they would be buried casually in this abandoned place, surrounded by sand dunes. But in a child’s eye, it looked like Egypt, with a kind of pyramid. This time when I went there, I found only a few piles of dirt. There was not only the contrast between memory and reality, but also the marks of my childish experience of death. Death became something you saw everywhere and always ran into. Kao Tzu-chin: Liu Xiaodong, you said, “In my current life situation those brothers are forgotten.” Can you talk about the state of being forgotten? Does your encounter with these friends now reflect in a microscopic way the meeting between big cities and remote industrial towns under globalization? Liu Xiaodong: Owing to my background and my understanding of the world, I believe the working class is the foremost power that leads society. The factories are huge, tall, and magnificent. In the farm field there are situated large tracts of lower single-story dormitory buildings. The labour of the working class can be seen everywhere. We all used to be the children of proletarians, of the working class. However, we never thought society would undergo such enormous change between our childhood and today. The high-rise buildings are overwhelming. We will all become middle-class 68 Hou Hsiao-hsien and Liu Xiaodong in Jincheng. Courtesy of 3H Productions Ltd., Taipei. Liu Xiaodong, My Egypt, 2010, oil on canvas, 300 x 400 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Eslite Gallery. and advance in the direction of a consumer society, a commercial society. Even though I went to my homeland, my village, it was not the homeland it used to be. Development has changed my homeland. My homeland was just an impression left in my memory. The titles of the Hometown Boy series are all very explicit, like telling a story. I think this makes it much closer to real life. For instance, Li Wu Works the Night Shift and Still Can’t Sleep by Day—does this sound like the title of a painting to you? But I want to pass on a little more information through the title. A worker has to change three shifts in turn. If one week is on day shift, then the next week will be night shift. An intellectual must take sleeping pills all the time. I am curious how those workers survived in their lifetime. But my parents lived in the same way. Why are they mentally so strong? When we need to adjust from jet lag, we take all kinds of medication. It was from these details that I suddenly and instinctively found a lot of my respect and admiration for these workers. 69 Kao Tzu-chin: Why did you choose Director Hou Hsiao-hsien and his team to collaborate in the making of a documentary in the first place? What aspect of his work do you appreciate in his films? Liu Xiaodong: The Director of Ullens Center for Contemporary Art is a foreigner. His request was simple. He wanted to find the biggest of “big shots.” I said that would be Hou Hsiao-hsien because his understanding of life, of the relationships among people, is very humanized. Especially, he has the attitude of equally looking at lives, both individuals and the vast majority. The Chinese have little confidence in movie-making and contemporary art, for these forms came from outside. But the emergence of Hou Hsiao-hsien has shown us a special door to enter. He has paved a way that is parallel with the development of the rest of the world. Today he is a filmmaker with camera in hand. But he surely would be at the same level if he were a writer, philosopher, or painter. I am not his fan or a scholar of his work. By just looking at a few shots from his films, I knew our choice would be right; for instance, imagine the illusion created by the words “Boys from Fengkuei”—that is enough. Kao Tzu-chin: What did you think when you saw the final result of the documentary? During the process of making it were there discussions and adjustments in terms of the direction? Liu Xiaodong: At that time I didn’t know that they were going to focus on me. I thought I was just painting, and the documentary would extend and complement that activity in many ways to bring a much wider context. The first time I saw the film was with the audience at the Ullens Center. The film had already been shown to the public. I was terribly moved when I watched it the first time. I felt that I had fallen in love with myself again.