A Big Flower Falling from the Sky above Chongqing: Conversat

○ In this Big Flower, this huge dust-colored flower similar to a deep and scary female vulva, like a certain unknown disaster impending in the sky above Chongqing, while the city towers determinedly, forming tremendous tension between them.  The color of this work is typical of Chongqing, and this shows Chongqing’s geography and spirit have deeply influenced your heart as a powerful force of sub-consciousness or inner motivation.  My second question is: do you think Chongqing has influenced you mostly in your feeling of color?  In which aspects has it influenced you?  Then, please tell me about your impression about Chongqing in you childhood and youth and the relationship between Chongqing and your works.

● The influence in feelings of color and form is definite.  I know you’re also from Chongqing.  Do you still love going back to Chongqing?  There have been many changes in the area of Liberation Stele, the symbol of spiritual fortress in downtown of Chongqing, however, it still keeps the impression of highest point in Chongqing in our memory.  Skyscraping buildings, narrow, rolling and crowded streets and sky divided into small pieces, all these form an extremely shocking vision.  In the 1970s and the 1980s, Chongqing had been called “little Hong Kong”, as well as “foggy city”.  I always assume that the nick names came from the night view of Chongqing, as steam, industrial waste gas and dust shrouded Chongqing, and the splendid night lighting unfitting Chongqing’s economic situation produced pale and glaring effect from the depth of gloomy and gray city, which was a weird vitality, energetic but depressing.  This memory is undoubtedly connected with impression of reality in my works.

My childhood and youth were closely connected, and the key words about that phase were violence, freedom and hero.  The memory of violence exists in some snatches.  When I was little, my family lived in the area of Liberation Stele, and you also mentioned that was the center of violence in Chongqing in my painting biography.  I saw the fighting between tank factory and ammunition plant, all shouting “down with enemy of the class for the victory of revolution and the protection of Chairman Mao”.  The tank factory used tanks, the ammunition plant used guns and cannons, and the most impressive thing was that they acted so enthusiastically on the trucks.  After fighting, the dead soldiers were pulled up by their family members to take group pictures, then they were let go and fell onto the ground again.  In one article, you wrote that one talkative buddy was suddenly shot to death by a stray bullet from the fight parties when telling you a ghost story.  I am very impressed, and clearly remember your calm tone of description, therefore, I believe you could relatively understand some of my feelings.  During my primary school, one or two of my classmates got drowned in swimming every year, which was not a big deal at that time, however, now I am quite scared of my accustomed attitude to death in childhood.  There is also the memory about freedom.  Kids in Chongqing seemed to be brought up by the whole neighborhood, so was I.  My parents were busy, so I had never communicated with them, and they also didn’t require me to live which kind of life or become which kind of person like a boss, a professor or an official, nor asked me to improve myself, neither realistically or spiritually.  My childhood was also the period of natural disasters, and the highest request was to feed oneself and keep alive.  My older brother was starved to death.  However, this freedom was absolute and unimaginable at present.  Besides, hero was the key word at that time.  The image of Yang Zirong was legendary.  As I am never a big guy, my image could not match Yang’s, whereas I couldn’t control the dream of hero.  During the period of youth, the key words were education and defiance.  All the sub-conscious things sought for evidences in education, especially after I entered art academy.  I went through middle school and college in art academy.  When entering the academy, I was 17, and I left at 24.  Studying in art academy was like withered seedlings received rain.  I also studied philosophy, as I began to consider the problem of existence’s status.  Nevertheless, the changes in ideology from 1978 to 1985 were flying, classicism, impressionism, expressionism, and every classmate was choosing, whether the new or the classic.  Now it seems like a naïve question, however, it was really a question about identity then.  I may be a real rebel, as I chose neither the classic nor the new.  I kept a respectful distance with the teachers in academy, and I couldn’t approach fresh pop art or express my attitude to profundity or sarcasm.  You may even interpret my so-called rebel into lukewarm character, as I couldn’t give myself an accurate scope, an absolute image or a clear attitude.  Later, I conclude that I am actually glad to receive uncertainty, like a mathematics question without answer, which needs a lot of formulae, some are wrong and some become right after correction, however, this question has no answer itself.  This is also like my painting, a process of life-long experimentation.

○ As everyone knows, whenever speaking of you, everybody would think of the symbol of flower, a.k.a. the rose series similar to female vulva.  My question is: how did you get the idea of flower at the first place?  How did the inspiration come?  Are you clearly aware that the theme of sex is a treasure house of modern art worthy of profound exploration?  Or, was there any other reason leading you into applying the symbol of rose?

● “Flower” is an accidental theme, however the earliest clue could be traced back to landscape, as landscape had sexual consciousness.  After landscape, I created some portraits of girls and friends with sense of cartoon, and some roses gradually appeared in girls’ portraits.  Adding roses to my paintings was connected with feelings, which was quite a simple reason.  Later, I decided flowers were enough for my paintings, thus I omitted the girls.  Certainly, now I could think of many reasons for my selection of theme, and “flower” always corresponds to the feature of my temperament and character, just like Chongqing fits the implication of my works.  “Sexuality” is also random.  Recently, when browsing my paintings from college till these days, I suddenly realized that the landscapes in college already showed my special fondness of fantasizing voluptuous figure.  In my youth, sex only existed in my imagination.  There were many stories about coquettish female spies in Chongqing.  When I was a kid, one female neighbor in her thirties often changed clothes with window open and smiled at the kids if she saw us looking at her.  In middle school, some older schoolmates talked about the thing between men and women to us, and I felt mysterious even adored sex then.  For my introversion, I diverted all most energy to painting during college, replacing the pleasure of sex and other entertainment with painting during the lonely youth.  I intentionally tried to unleash my loneliness and also sought for technical ways.  After graduation from college, I found that sex was no longer a private topic through my experience and observation, as both Freud and Foucault highly estimated sex’s social influence in clinical and archeological ways, while I could only use intuition plus some proof of experience and knowledge.  The way and attitude of treating sex could reflect many things, so that my painting shows the emotions of depression and sex, which are also expanding.  It was somewhat difficult for me when I began to paint rose, unaware how to more accurately unleash the emotions.  I always impress people as introversive, quiet, unsocial, suspicious, but well-behaved.  From the ancient times, the close relation between painter, literate and official has decided the painter ought to be social with more definite identity.  Frankly speaking, when painting pure roses, I have thought of person tide.  Every characteristic individual, especially an artist, needs a symbol in a certain phase, and my symbol could be rose.

○ Now it’s quite usual to compare flower with female vulva.  About symbolization of dreams, boring Freud wrote about many inevitable relations between objects and sex.  Besides, at all times and in all over the world, countless artists, poets and writers have created about the theme of comparing flower with sex.  Therefore, when creating your flowers, were you worried that people wouldn’t like such an obsolete cliché?  Or, maybe I should put my question in such a way: do you have anything new in renaming of sexual rose?  Simply speaking, where is your originality?  Indeed, you have been famous for these roses.  When reviewing these flowers, what do you think is the key point of success?  In another word, what’s the artistic charm of these roses?

● My works don’t have refreshing significance.  I don’t mean to shock the world by painting roses.  In present society, it’s untimely to obtain appreciation of surprise from others.  Anything could be repetition of the predecessors’ works, so, is it necessary to discuss the difference between significance and insignificance?  Only God knows, just like my rose, at first, there was only the resemblance in image between pistil and vulva; later, resemblance appeared in feeling, such as the creation of hallucination and lust, even a kind of pleasant sensation.  During this phase, rose or non-rose was not important any more, since it was only a role to describe the situation, whereas the adjustment of atmosphere and emotion in the painting was most important.  And the artistic charm of rose lies in the selfless pleasure, transient impulsion, extension outside sexuality, and fluidity like water.

○ Let’s make a review.  From Childhood to the series of landscape, then to the series of rose, and finally to the current series of portrait, how did the changes happen along your way?  Which resource or art atmosphere influenced your transformation?

● As my first thematic oil painting created independently according to the creating method of academy education, Childhood reflected my experiences of fosterage in village to avoid fighting in Chongqing in primary school.  At that time, my parents were devoted to propaganda and “revolution”, as my mother was also addicted to fighting.  They sent me to the countryside, where is now Chongqing University Town.  Everyday, carrying the schoolbag and holding the ink bottle, I spent two hours walking to school with farmers’ kids.  Later, I created this painting when the countryside style of Sichuan Art Academy was popular throughout China, however, Childhood still didn’t belong to that style, since I felt warm and tranquil during the “childhood” of fosterage, and I even didn’t have a tone to emphasize anything.  Later, China National Museum of Fine Arts collected that painting, yet I was still quite confused.  During that time, I also read many books covering almost every field, the most impressive ones were Henri Bergson’s works about spiritual positivism, and poems written by Thomas Stearns Eliot, Ezra Pound and Charles Baudelaire, but my favorite were The Count of Monte Cristo, Lu Xun’s books, and history about the legendary Chinese emperors.  I was curious about lots of things, so I played truant for the first time to see Armand Hammer’s Collection Exhibition in Beijing.  After I arrived in Beijing, I found that there was also Exhibition of German Expressionism, thus I was deeply impressed by the expressionistic style.  Returning to Chongqing, I began to experiment with some small works on paper, composing with destructive color fields which could break the harmony of classicism, but not completely destructive as there was the interesting element of construction.  Playing aspect always exists in my works, as I’m really fond of it in constructionism, however, my nature of Chongqingnese could hardly accept the elegance and delicacy of constructionism, even all the schools are limitations in my consciousness.  Then, my most thorough idea was that I had to find a way of true expression and deliverance, and the possession of assorted knowledge vaguely reminded me that there was nothing I had to obey unconditionally.  Therefore, for my graduation work, I created a series of sketches, applying the skills that I thought were most appropriate ones as the result of long-term experimentation on paper, i.e. thick brushstroke of oil paint, exquisite conflict of color, even site feeling with not-solid-black strokes broken by streaks of untouched ground.  That was a very simple series of paintings, entirely my internal feelings, however, unexpectedly they were published in “Comparison of Three Levels” in Fine Arts magazine, also regarded as one of the clues of New Wave in 1985, collected in History of Chinese Contemporary Art 1985~1989 written by Gao Minglu, and later published in the Graduate’s Works of National Art Academies, which was really fantastic for myself never having such experiences before graduation.  Completely motivated, to enhance my self-emotion to an absolute height, I spent almost ten years to create on my internal feelings after graduation, including Old House, Broken Walls.  When composing these symbols indicating and expressing my internal solitude, I was firstly obsessed with them, then I gradually reduced the size of human being and enlarged the landscape.  I may have felt that self was a tiny symbol, since the rolling hills and wide plain could wrap the small people feeling bored.  Around 1993, I intentionally transformed endless landscape into metaphor of “sex”, whereas, I got fed up with enclosed self with time elapsing.  Though positivity is not necessarily right, negativity always symbolizes mistake.  Certainly, art atmosphere in China was the important reason of transformation.  In 1996, I participated in the first Shanghai Biennale, which invited many famous and active artists then.  Among them, I was merely a new guy.  For that Biennale’s theme of Open Space, I could feel vitality and time spirit.  I would not simply follow others, however, I’d like to take others as a mirror to reflect myself.  In 1996 and 1997, I took a long time to wander around, Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing, visiting the studios and exchanging ideas with those contemporary artists.  I found that most of them were experimental like me: considering the connotation after making the effects.  Anyway, I hadn’t got any clue about which appearance or style I would take for my next phase.  I was sick of the enclosed myself, trying to make myself brighter, broader and more relaxed to resolutely break away from the past, even a little impudent.  Thus, there were cartoon-like portraits, though I had known they would be changed later.  In the cartoon series, I depicted the rotten faces full of lust and ignorance, blooming with voluptuous rotten flowers, hiding in public toilets to have sex.  Here, “sex” became the open and interesting game, and I would not paint “sex” with a feeling of adoration, which I just got rid of ten years after the end of Cultural Revolution.  Undoubtedly, I found proof for these experiences in psychology and social archeology, nevertheless, I’d better talk less about theories as an artist, besides I’m not good at talking.  I recovered the destructive visual effect in academy period, moreover, the releasing way of appropriate humor and shameless action, and I gave up the popular and profiting landscape, which should be an important phase.  Rose was the spontaneous result, as I entirely opened myself and feared nothing.  As I mentioned before, rose gradually became independent, actually, I just wanted to paint specific and striking images.  The appearance of figure was to satisfy the request for stimulation of new images, and I was again fed up with the over proficient painting skills about “sex”, so I could express new feelings with a different subject.

○ What’s the motivation of your continuous changes?  Is there anything permanent among changes?  As we all know an old saying, “It remains the same despite all apparent changes.”  This means human always changes, yet he couldn’t change his soul as the genes have already determined his invariance, unless he changes his genes.  Then, what’s the invariance of your art?  Please elaborate on it from the perspective of technique without cliché about ideology or overstatement.

● First, I will talk about changes.  I may put it in this way, art reflection comes after self perfection.  I read news papers and books everyday, communicating with artists, agents, even farmers, politicians and businessmen at home and abroad, and there is also internet, all these things are influencing and enriching the “self”.  Since “self” is changing, it must be reflected in art.  And my invariance lies in my character and history.  The depressing and conflicting geographic environment in Chongqing, my parents’ tendency of violence, my well-behaved and introversive character, all the elements lead to the present situation of my creation unlike others.  For instance, in the aspect of technique, for brushstroke, I think the smooth one is too fake, and the straightforward one is superficial; for color, I think too many colors are flamboyant, but pure black and white lack diversity or seem to be absolute; for image, I think painting without any sexuality is too insipid, however, I endeavor to weaken sexuality.  Thus, I am not too willing to define whether I am fluid or integrated in technique.

○ You told me that someone discerned religion from your works, yet, I assume you create to pursue a sort of pleasure of technique.  Common sense tells us, the nature of art is never the significance.  If an artist mainly pursues significance in his works, he must be a bad artist.  Significance is additional, nevertheless, we don’t repel it.  A good artist always follows the professional request, just as a good poet firstly looks for a sort of voice, then refines the words, eventually comes to the dispensable significance.  For a good painter, what firstly comes to his mind?  Further question: during creation, which painting languages have you used?  What kind of enjoyment in technique have you obtained?  What’s the new discovery in enjoyment?  If an artist makes a discovery, he must have great pleasure.  After all, what do you think is more important, concept or technique?

● Wassily Kandinsky said, it was to seek for a secret visual power.  When painting the flower, I considered several effects, one was to let huge flower wrap the audience with deep and serene pistil; another one was hallucination, petals wrapped themselves again and again, producing dizzy effect by freely stretching out and drawing back on two-dimensional canvas; in the series of bewitching beauty, I tried to achieve the psychological effect of misplacement.  To achieve the first effect, I needed to create with thick paint, enlarge the distance between light and shade, and sharply emphasize every petal in form, thus I had to spent lots of energy to deal with the relation of dent and protrusion with less extent of freedom.  To realize the second effect, I needed some luck, because I had to make sufficient preparation, then rapidly spread thin paint on the canvas without draft, after that wait for about one week and paint again with thin paint, altogether I should repeat five times, which was a more difficult method with higher extent of freedom, so it was still quite fascinating.  To reach the last effect was the most interesting one, that was to use some coincidence and conflict between images to break some little habits, for instance, I would paint a voluptuous female nude into a colorless one referring to solemn religious sculpture.  After all, I believe that it’s difficult to compare concept with technique.  Now, so-called technique includes “outputting” ability of concept and status, while concept is no longer cold ideology, opinion or significance.  According to my understanding, concept is a kind of tendency, like poetry-writing pursues the voice, which probably needs a certain word-selection before.  I comprehend the word-selection or tendency as concept.  Surely, my opinion of concept doesn’t necessarily fit its original meaning.

○ It’s said that you’re a very international painter.  As a Chinese painter, how do you establish your Chinese identity in painting?  Which Chinese elements have been used in your painting or not?  I also know that you like the feeling of Chinese ink painting, does this feeling show in your oil painting or not?

● First, I don’t quite agree with being international.  Certainly, I am actually concerned with international trends, as I am very afraid of being obsolete, however, what’s the definition of being international?  It’s difficult to be defined.  For post-modernism, there is an opinion: post-modernism actually belongs to anthropology, paying attention to geographic diversity.  No matter this opinion is authoritative or not, I feel it makes sense.  I’m not worried about the establishment of Chinese painter’s identity, as I am especially fond of the implicit and subtle realm.  I believe many people have observed my incomplete appearance in painting.  I always carefully keep distance with American post-war art, including still popular German expressionism, as cultivation of Chinese aesthetics is about idealized image.  Ink painting is our national legacy, if without the element of protection during the special period of present times, where is her truth or the touching resonance?  I have been always considering this question.  I really love ink painting, especially the effect of ink permeation and dyeing, therefore my works directly take the advantage of ink painting’s unique features, which also reflects the implicit and subtle effect.  We should know when to stop the paintbrush, when to stop speaking, always knowing to leave some space, as I take this as very high-level hallucination.

○ We know that painters in the 1980s preferred to pose as avant-garde and took pride in it.  Now there is another popular opinion, i.e. the more classic is more exotic, and the more obsolete is more stylish.  Art trends keep changing in China, sometimes striving to chase after the west, sometimes putting forward a countryside style.  Facing the changeful situation, what’s you consideration?  How is the consideration reflected in your works?

● This is an interesting topic.  Fashion is about business, politics and climate, mostly concerned with business, as business promotes ideology, obviously but not absolutely, and it should be measured by some other more independent things, such as spirit reflected by poetry and art.  Art is to reflect fashion, however, because of art’s freedom and avant-garde, art should lead the fashion instead of being restricted or led by fashion.  Nevertheless, Chinese concept emphasizes the golden mean of the Confucian school.  There is also the scary saying, “the bird which takes the lead gets shot.”  Related to the geographic thinking pattern, the conclusion made by ancient people through thousands of years could not be just a joke.  I respect this tradition, then it’s quite necessary to elaborate on the relation between art and fashion not only in the background of China: not simply who leads who, but mutually control and coordinate with each other.  For my works, someone has commented, “You have always been active in the frontier of Chinese contemporary art, somewhere just around the corner.”

○ People often says, each era has its own art.  When you created Childhood in the 1980s, you were influenced by the social atmosphere at that time.  Later, your creation of flowers could also be influenced by art trends of the time.  What’s your feeling about these two completely different eras and styles?  Could I say that you keep highly sensitive to the changes of times?  In this sense, do you think you are a realistic painter?  Please don’t misunderstand, I take realism as a high estimation, as any art is realism after all, which was also mentioned by Ezra Pound and Charles Baudelaire.  Reality and sense of reality are different, reality is what it is, however, sense of reality differs tremendously with various people.  My question is: how do you treat the reality?  What’s the relation between your painting and reality?

● This question enables me to continue the previous topic.  I have talked much about background of Childhood, which was an era closely questioning the relation between ourselves and the society, yet, nobody was quite sure about the reason of close questioning, thus every artist attempted to interpret in his own way, such as Luo Zhongli’s Father and He Duoling’s Spring Breeze Already Awake.  In the times of “flower”, everybody understands that an artist needs to be recognized before being accepted by the public, and the shortest way of recognition is symbol, sign, eye-catching effect, thus, the background of “flower” is also about information.  I bought a computer in 1997, browsing internet, watching TV and hanging around everyday, with new things stimulating me at any minute, like new goods, new stars and new art concepts.  Trying to locate himself when surrounded by information, the artist has to cultivate his intelligence besides intuition, such as analysis and planning to keep his works relatively conspicuous among more and more artists, and maintaining the convincing ability and impulse of creation.  Actually, this phase is the most important one during all my life.  I may answer your question, reality is more like the temporal status, and I would keep stressing the sense of reality in my works, such as depravation, erosion, sublimation and injury with my opinion related with temporal status.  I always believe an artist without sense of reality would gradually become slow and obsolete.

○ I know that you were greatly influenced by expressionism, please name some painters.  How was the influence reflected in your paintings?  Please be as detailed as possible in technique.

● I was interested in expressionism when I was in art academy in the 1980s, mainly studying the methods of expression in painting.  In the 1990s, with new expressionism rising in the west, I knew more about the social and cultural background and its spirit.  Speaking of specific influence, it was not expressionism, but maybe some ideological trends or some painters.  From the 1980s to the 1990s, I researched and analyzed many artists, including René Magritte, Francis Bacon, Sigmund Freud, Wim Delvoye, Fernando Botero, and nowadays I am concerned with the artists at present time.  The objects that I’m concerned with and research would never influence me, not to mention being reflected in my works.  I support the exploration of new works according to my past experiences and every temporal self.  What influences me is present life.

○ Let’s return to the question of “transformation”.  Why don’t you persist on the way of Childhood and the series of landscape?  Does the times or the market force you to transform?  Or is the request of transformation from your heart?

● The environment surely changes a person.  Childhood and the series of landscape were sincere then, however, if they were continued till now, it would be stubborn and insensitive.  For myself, an artist needs independent character, with keen feelings to adjust himself to the times.  Market is a key word of the times, and nobody could avoid that.  However, even there is no market, I’m sure it will keep changing.  “Running water is never stale”, the only purpose of transformation is to express myself in a better way in the more colorful society.  Certainly, expression of painting depends on keenness instead of analysis.

○ It’s known that you like reading western modern poems, such as The Waste Land written by Thomas Stearns Eliot, Flowers of Evil written by Charles Baudelaire.  Have they influenced your creation?  Did the general spirituality’s influence or some lines directly touch you?  Let’s make a bold guess, could we say that Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil and Thomas Stearns Eliot’s Waste Land about large industrial city directly inspired you for Big Flower and the series of flower?