文/朱其
刘力国的雕塑表现了一种中国式的从革命到消费社会的自我形式，这种形式主要表现为宗教、民间、消费和毛泽东这些现代中国本土文化元素的奇异混合。粗俗、大众和民间是刘力国雕塑中自觉强调的视觉特征，这种特征也负载着关于革命的记忆、进步的欲望以及从革命到消费社会成长中的一种精神寄托的准宗教的现代形式。
在形式上，刘力国致力于从中国塑像传统中寻找一种前卫性的形式变体，这种方式最初体现在九十年代中期的“屁股”瓷瓶系列，这个系列试图表现中国在九十年代消费社会崛起后的文化的粗俗性和变革活力这种悖论的双重性。就像他自己认为，他想讽刺中国的那种强制性和人为的进步行为，“要造一个东西，今天造了明天就要出效果。”他的作品因此想表现这种倾向，这就是“狭义的民族主义者、小农意识、不服气、叫板”等现代几百年形成的现代自我特征。
对于这种中国式现代性和九十年代后意识形态文化特征的讽刺性表现，刘力国使用了反高雅、反审美和反精英的语言方式，他将恶俗得没有任何什么意义的屁股形体镶嵌在中国传统的瓷瓶形式中，在添加各种艳丽恶俗的花朵，使用黄金色和大红等浓重的民间塑像的着色。没有意义的“屁股”因为与代表高雅和精英的瓷瓶的强制性结合而开始具有意义，这在瓷瓶传统中从没有出现过，也是刘力国开始真正确立了这种个人语言方式的标志，这使他成为九十年代中期当代艺术转向中国本土和社会主题表达的艳俗艺术的代表人物，以及后现代雕塑的一个重要实践者。
“瓶子“系列的意义在于使刘力国之后的艺术形成了两条基本主线，一是视觉形式的民间性和对于中国塑像传统的改造；二是对于中国本土现代性中民族主义、农民性和大众性的文化特征的表现。前者实际上是关于形式实践的，后者则是一种对中国状态的文化征候的呈现。在形式和表现主体这两个方面，尽管刘力国使用了一种貌似讽刺和文化批判的形式，刻意颠覆中国塑像传统中的高雅和精英色彩，以及对于从革命到消费社会转变的文化正统尽失和后意识形态文化荒诞性的表达，但这似乎并不能涵盖刘力国艺术的主要倾向，这个倾向就是对于中国并不完美的甚至具有粗俗和根源混乱的现代性特征的一种真实呈现。
这一基本的出发点实际上表明刘力国的艺术表现出一种内在的双重性，它既有对于中国式的粗俗和渗透小农文化的现代性的批判和讽刺的一面，同时也有对于这种本土变种的现代性的力量感和革命性活力一种由衷的自我认同。如果看不到这种矛盾的双重态度同时存在，这实际上忽视了其中更具自我形式的一面，而只是关注在九十年代中期当代艺术对于后现代方式的使用。无论在形式或主体性上，后现代方式实际上只是刘力国最初的语言参照，真正重要的是他开始正面对待中国的现代性“缺陷”，并且自觉地对其不加掩饰和修正的呈现，并从民间塑像传统中寻找可以反映这种“缺陷”特征的语言特质和形式变体。
“屁股”对于瓷瓶文化的镶嵌的实际意义并不在于一种对精英陶瓷传统的颠覆和讽刺形式的获得，对于刘力国而言，更重要的是民间性、民俗塑像和粗俗现代性这些元素的中国现当代“缺陷”的自我表现力。在此之后，刘力国实际上也没有再进行过对于陶瓷的颠覆和改造，而是致力于对传统和现代民间塑像的变体实验。事实上，除了陶瓷属于中国雕塑传统中的精英文化，十九世纪以前的中国雕塑传统主要就是民间塑像，如佛像和民俗塑像，在二十世纪中期，还包括毛泽东像、文革陶瓷等革命塑像。
瓷瓶系列实际上标志了刘力国从精英视觉向民间性和粗俗性语言模式的转型，但民间性和粗俗性的态度还是具有一种后现代的反崇高特征。这种后现代手法在“盘子”系列中逐渐不再借用。而是开始了一种更本能和粗野的语言方式，几乎是对粗俗和消费社会的荒诞的一种彻底正面的表现。这个系列翻制了甚至色调恶心的人脚、人手、猪头、鹅、鸡的等大原型，连反讽性的美也谈不上，表现了一种生命的彻底物质化和灵魂尽失的荒诞存在。
“盘子”系列可以说是刘力国在“粗俗”主题的语言实验上走得最极端的一次，几乎完全是一种反学院派的风格，但具有极强的视觉冲击力。这个系列呈现了中国消费资本主义的极端本质，但在语言上刻意进行了一种粗俗过度的风格化。风格过度的语言实验还包括对于毛泽东和革命英雄塑像的波普化，文革塑像是中国进入现代之后的民间塑像高潮，像毛泽东、黄继光等英雄模范人物在六、七十年代都被做成各种民间陶瓷塑像，在中国社会无处不在。刘力国最初的尝试是给这些塑像穿上花衣服，使其具有消费社会的流行文化特征。
翻制真实动物和人的器官，并放在盘子上作为一种消费社会的寓言象征，或者给毛和英雄穿上花衣服，这种方式在雕塑语言的前卫实验上走得过于极端，尽管反映了刘力国试图寻找可以直接与本土的当代经验对应的一种自我形式，但这种语言实验还是表象化和形式主义的。
在将毛泽东的形象和菩萨佛像的一体化尝试中，刘力国对民间塑像的语言实验取得了真正的突破，如“手拿如意”、“有五个小孩”、“戴军帽和小孩”等作品，表现为一种毛形象的菩萨化，或者菩萨像的毛化。在这个系列中，毛泽东的脸与观音或者弥勒佛的大肚子身体合在一起，毛的脸也并非完全是毛的原形，而是脸部特征似毛又似观音，具有一种肖像的模糊性，但也具有一种肖像的家族性。
与毛穿波普衣服系列相比，刘力国对于毛塑像的改造不再是一种强加外衣的外在形式的结合，而是利用了佛像和毛塑像在宗教和现代意识形态、传统和现代神像的形式相似和形象象征的内在关系。毛的观音化实际上揭示了毛塑像在毛时代的一种特定的意识形态性质，即毛在1949年以后注重将民间艺术形式改造为一种现代神像崇拜和意识形态宗教的政治工具，尤其是在神像崇拜上，尽管文革期间的毛民间瓷像没有宣示为自己是一种宗教形式，而是一种领袖纪念物，但实际上已经具有一种宗教神像的性质。
这表明了在毛的民间瓷像和民间观音像、传统宗教和现代意识形态之间并没有不可逾越的界限，尤其是在大众和民间社会领域。对于毛的民间塑像在和佛教神像在形体特征的这种游戏，使得刘力国找到了一种意识形态批判的更含蓄和本体的语言形式。在之后的“给导师掏耳朵”、“吹喇叭”等作品，他使用的则是一种超验的情景主义虚构的方式，而不仅只是用民间塑像的变体方式。“给导师掏耳朵”表现了一个小孩站在毛的巨人肩上，给毛掏右耳朵，这种情景虚构的系列实际上最终在语言上摆脱了对于毛和消费社会的反讽特征，进入一种歧异、多义和模糊性的语言表达中。
从形式上看，刘力国试图将民间塑像的形式改造成可以表达中国现代文化的自我形式，这种形式主要在于表现中国的现代性特征，更进一步而言，这种现代性实际上是一种有缺陷的现代性，但同时拥有改造中国的力量。因此，对于这种有缺陷但也有力量的现代性的表现，尽管批判和反讽仍然具有重要的意义。但更重要的是呈现其整体的真实，和我们必须接受的自我认同，不然的话，我们将丧失中国在20世纪的自我特性。就这一点说，刘力国的作品最终表达的是一种宿命。
这种宿命还反映为，它的表现只能寻找真正本土滋生的属于他自身象征特征的现代形式。在面对精英的但基本上是过于西方化的，并且在中国没有真正力量性的这一事实。刘力国宁愿选择同样具有缺陷的民间塑像进行改造，那些粗俗的民间的偶像和塑像，被最终改造成从革命到消费社会的缺陷形式。在这个基本前提下，在语言上实际上完成了从民间的前卫性转换。
2006年5月9日写于望京
ldols, vulgar and Folksy
From the Revolutionary Era to the Flawed Mode of Consumer Society,
Regarding Liu Liguo’s Sculpture
Written by: ZHU QI
Liu Liguo’s sculptures display a kind of Chinese mode of selfhood that spans the revolutionary period through consumer society. This kind of mode manifests primarily as a bizarre mixture of elements of modern Chinese indigenous culture, religion, folk culture, consumption, and images of Mao Zedong. The vulgar, the mass, and the folksy are the visual characteristics that Liu Liguo consciously emphasizes in his sculptures. These characteristics are also loaded with memories of revolution, desire for progress, as well as the modern form of quasi-religion, a kind of spirituality invested in the society’s growth from revolution to consumer society.
In terms of form, Liu Liguo has devoted himself to finding variation from within traditional Chinese sculpture. This method first emerged in his 1990s ceramic “Butt” series. This series showed the vulgarity of culture following the rise of 90s consumer society, its transformational energy and the duality of this paradox. As Liu Liguo sees things, he wants to satirize the forced and artificial behavior of progress in China. “I want to make something today that will have an effect tomorrow,” he says. For this reason, his works display this kind of inclination, “narrow nationalists, the peasant mentality, rebellion, challenges and provocations” and other characteristics of modern selfhood formed over the past several hundred years.
In the context of ceramic culture, the actual significance of a “butt” inlaid into the ceramic does not lie in achieving a form that subverts and satirizes the traditional essence of fine ceramics. For Liu Liguo, instead, what mattered were the self-expressiveness of elements of contemporary Chinese “flaws,” the folksy qualities and popular cultural characteristics of folk statues and their vulgar, coarse and earthy modernity. After this series, Liu Liguo did not actually undertake any more subversive remaking of traditional ceramics, but rather devoted himself to experimentation with traditional and modern variations on folk statues. Prior to the 19th century, with the exception of the ceramics that belonged to traditional Chinese elite culture, the main tradition in Chinese sculpture was folk art, such as statues of the Buddha and images from other local folkways. In the middle of the 20th century, this folk art tradition included likenesses of Mao Zedong and other revolutionary images. By integrating images of Mao Zedong and the Buddhist figure Pusa, Liu Liguo’s experiments in his artistic language made a breakthrough, with pieces such as “Buddha’s Scepter in Hand,” “With Kids, Wearing a Military Cap,” etc. These works. Expressed a Buddha-fica-tion of Mao’s lmage,” or a Mao-ification of the Pusa Buddha. In these series ,Mao’s face and the big-belly of Guan-yin, or the Maitreya Buddha, are combined into one figure. Mao’s face is not entirely his own, and the features of his face are also similar to those of the Buddha, possessing a kind of ambiguous portraiture, and yet possessing a kind of familial character to the portrait as well.
In comparison to the series in which Mao wears pop attire, Liu Liguo’s modification is no longer the sort of merger that involves forcing clothes onto the exterior of the image. Rather ,it involves the use of religious and modern ideologies of the Buddha and the Mao statue, and employs the intrinsic relationship between the symbolic imagery and formal resemblances of traditional and modern likenesses. The Buddha-fication of Mao revealed a kind of specific ideological quality to Mao statues in the Maoist era, namely, the way in which, after 1949, Mao placed great stress on the remaking of folk art images into political tools in the service of a kind of modern idol worship and ideological religion. This is especially the case with idol worship. Although the folk art ceramic figures of Mao during the revolutionary period did not explicitly proclaim a religious form, in reality, they already possessed the quality of religious idols.
This is clear from the folk ceramics of Mao and folksy Guan-yin Buddha. traditional and modern ideologies have no impassable boundaries, especially in the realms of mass and folk society. The game played with physical characteristics of the bodies of folk statues of Mao and Buddhist idols, allowed Liu Liguo to find a more implicit and veiled, as well as ontological, artistic language for ideological critique. In his later works, “Picking the leader’s Ears,” “Blowing the Horn,” and other such pieces, he used a method of fictional transcendent situationism, and not merely just the method of physical variation on the folk idol. “Picking the Leader’s Ears” involves a small child standing on Mao’s giant should, cleaning the inside of Mao’s right ear. This kind of fictional situation series has already cast off the art language characteristics satirizing Mao and consumer society, and has entered into a kind of different, Polysemous and ambiguous expressive language.
From the perspective of form and style, Liu Liguo attempts to remake the form of folk statues into something that can express China’s cultural self-formation. This form primarily expresses China’s characteristics of modernity. Going a step further, this kind of modernity is, in reality, a kind of flawed modernity, but at the same time, it has the power to transform China. Consequently, critique and satire are still of major significance in this flawed and yet forceful display of modernity. More important still, is the task of presenting its truth in entirety, and the self-identification that we must accept, without which China’s mode of selfhood characteristic of the 20th century will be lost. On this point, Liu Liguo’s work expresses a kind of fatalism.
This kind of fatalism is also reflected in the fact that its presentation can only be sought in that which is authentic, indigenously propagated, and belonging to the modernform of its own symbolic characteristics. In the face of a culture that is refined, but excessively Westernized at its base, and that fact that China has no genuine forcefulness, Liu Liguo prefers to remake folk statues that are as flawed as China-those crude and vulgar, folksy idols and statues, that were finally transformed from revolutionary forms into forms of flawed consumer society. Under these basic preconditions, this choice has in fact accomplished the transformation in his artistic language from the folksy to the avant-garde.
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