天堂放逐——有感何工的油画近作

我在1990底或者1991年初曾经看到何工的装置作品《为未来考古学设计的陷阱》，印象至深。因为，在我印象中，这件大概是“八九”后为数不多的、正面面对那场悲剧的艺术作品。如果说，20年前，何工的思想还沉浸在那刚刚发生的政治悲情之中的话，那么20年后的今天，让我看到，何工仍然保持着这样的人文关怀。当大多数人似乎已经忘却了那段历史，至少过去十几年中，中国当代艺术在资本的驱使下，已经逐渐忘却了悲情和过去的时候，何工却一如既往，依然在作品中倾注自己的忧患和悲情，而且更加深沉和复杂，其题材所涵盖的面也更加广泛。



　　过去20年，宏大叙事在后现代主义的批判声中受到极大冷落，在艺术叙事中已经完全式微，非正面的调侃和反讽逐渐成为时尚题材。我们并不否认反讽的批判性，但是，后现代反讽所付出的代价则是当代知识分子逐渐失去了承担的勇气和独立性。世故和圆滑是反讽的私生子，它可以成为游走于资本或者政治体制之中的一个策略。何工的作品虽然不乏讽刺，但是，他的作品却仍然有关宏大叙事。



　　当我看到何工的油画近作时，眼前一亮。画中透出一股久违的力量和真诚。一种悲怆，民族和国家的悲怆。悲怆来自理性的反省、命运的哀悼和社会的批判。之所以有悲剧感，是因为何工不能把自己从这个民族和国家分开。唯有把自己放到民族命运之中，才能真正体会到与国家民族不可分割的喜怒哀乐、民众的悲欢离合、国土的流离奇观。何工的画是有关宏大题材的。它涉及到宗教、全球化、物质和精神的矛盾以及文化的冲突。这宏大题材已经离我们越来越远了。但是这并不等于我们不需要宏大题材。我从画中看到何工的责任感和孤独感。绘画是他的精神家园，那是他的天国，他在其中流浪，他在其中思考并且发出呐喊和嘶鸣，通过笔触刻划出对人性罪恶的刻骨批判，倾注他对民主自由的呼唤。我站在何工的油画面前能够感到他内心的振颤!



　　我从何工的悲情绘画中看到了一种矛盾——一方面对现实世界倾注了极大关注，另一方面为了寻找精神家园又不断从现实中自我放逐。我想，在这个芸芸众生正在享受的“天国盛世”，何工的心灵必定是孤独的。他用审视怀疑的眼光看着这个充满“生产力”的世界，但是，他对参与这个世界的芸芸众生并不冷漠，相反充满了爱心。这是一种天真。真正的思想者或者执著者必定具有天真的品质。其实，在八十年代中期，我已经从何工的油画《种花人的故事》中看到了这种天真。那时我在美术杂志做编辑，何工的那幅画参加了1985年的“国际青年美展”并获奖，随即发表在美术杂志上。正是入世和自我放逐之间的矛盾，铸成了一个知识分子的良心。就像当年弘一法师曾经在泉州开元寺所写的对联一样：此地古城佛国，满街都是圣人。但是，弘一本人可能并不认为自己是圣人。



　　天堂的神话需要芸芸众生的参与。21世纪之交的天堂不仅来自大众，同时来自发达的生产力。何工的作品《雄心》不但呈现心脏组织，更是对生产力的描述。生产力来自梦想。何工说：“one heart one dream, one more heart one more dream”， 意思是 “一颗心，一个梦想。多一颗心，多一个梦想”。这让我们想到了大跃进的梦，“人有多大胆，地有多大产”。不论是共产主义的梦想叙事，还是20世纪、21世纪的全球化梦想，其实都是生产力的梦想。乌托邦精神生产力和批量工业化生产力其实都是以最大限度地覆盖人口数量和地理面积为标准的。扩大再生产是手段，无限增值是目的。在这种现代生产力的驱动下，人类付出的代价就是麻木、顺从、贪欲和庸俗化。人越来越像产品，越来越一模一样。中国人在一个世纪中经历和拥有了两种生产力的狂热，一个是意识形态的生产力，一个是物质生产力。二者共同构成了我们今天的狂热现实。但是，我们很少思考造成狂热的权力根源，我们只关注狂热的弥漫效果和天堂的歌声。然而，对于每一个有头脑的人来说，理想和理性在哪里?我想这正是何工用画笔和形象所发出的醒世恒言。



　　我从《踏歌行》中，看到了人类的原罪循环论。在《老厂之六》、《大餐》中看到了共产主义之梦。在《最后的晚餐》中，我感受到了宗教的悲情价值。宗教的价值正在于它的原始悲情，不在于它成功之后对芸芸众生布道的有效性。前者比后者更真实。



　　何工善于把文字概念、图像和肌理(texture)融为一个视觉整体，三者之间没有突兀牵强之处。无论是文字书写，图像描绘还是笔触运动都统一在一种似乎是自我表现性的线条中。然而，尽管这些线条非常敏感，足具表现力，但是它们不是为了煽情，而是为了深沉和厚重的刻画，不是具体的形体刻画，而是“言外之意”或者“超以象外”的刻画。但是，这种象外之意并非由所谓的逸笔草草的简笔画画出来的，相反，是线条的堆积，而且层次非常厚重。这一方面让我想到了清代文人画家龚贤的积墨，另一方面让我想到了基弗尔的油画肌理。积墨和肌理最后超越了物质和物象的局限，成为心灵振颤的记录。



　　高名潞

　　2010年5月31日

　Exiled in Heaven

　　——Thoughts of He Gong’s Recent Oil Paintings

　　I was deeply impressed by He Gong’s installation show Trap Designed For Future Archaeology.

　　When I first saw it around the turning of 1990 to 1991. To my knowledge this was probably one of the few artworks daring to confront the tragedy of 1989. Admittedly at that time He Gong was immersed by the political tragedy happened not long ago, yet after 20 years, I can still see the same humanistic care well-kept in his works. Just as most of the people seemed have forgotten that history, at least capital-driven Chinese contemporary art had turned blind eyes to past sorrow in the last decade, He Gong kept pouring his suffering and sadness into his works, with ever growing depth and complexity, and covering extensive topics.

　　Past 20 years had seen grand narrative criticized and deserted by post-modernism. Artistic narration had come to its end, while evasive teasing and irony dominated our age. We do not deny the critical power of irony, but the price paid was the gradual lost of courage and independence of contemporary Intellectuals. Sophistication and slickness, sons of irony, they can worm their way strategically among capital and political systems. Though He Gong’s works did not lack in irony, they were still mainly about grand narrative.

　　My heart was ignited by excitement when I saw He Gong’s recent oil paintings. Strength and Sincerity simply burst out of these woks. I felt a great sorrow, a sorrow rooted in our nation and our land. It was nurtured by rational reflection, lament of destiny, and criticism of society. The tragic sadness it bore came from the painter’s determination not to be parted from this nation and country. Being part of the nation’s destiny, He Gong was able to feel deeply the nation and its people’s fluctuating emotions, and witness all the changing drama staged on this land. He Gong’s paintings were all about grand topics. We found in them religion, globalization, confrontation between material and spirit, and cultural conflicts. Grandness is getting farther and farther away from us, but it does not mean we don’t need it. I saw responsibility and loneliness from He Gong’s paintings. Painting is his homeland, his Eden. His spirit roams in it, contemplates in it, and yells and screams from it. His strokes criticized sinful human nature, called for democracy and freedom. Standing in front his painting I can feel every vibration coming from his inside.

　　I read He Gong’s Contradiction from his paintings of sorrow– one side was his deep concern for the realistic world, yet on the other side he kept on exiling himself from reality in search of his spiritual homeland. I suspected his heart was lonely in this heavenly golden age of mundane people. He examined this “productive” world with caution and suspicion, but he casted no indifferent looks at the people in it, instead he embraced them with true loving heart. This naivety we only find in real thinker or wise’s heart. I actually had noticed this rare quality from He Gong’s oil painting The Story of Flowers Raiser during eighties. I was an editor of an art magazine then. That painting won prize in “International Young Artists Exhibition” in 1985, and got published in my magazine. It was exactly the contradiction between care for this world and self-exile that forged an intellectual’s conscience. Somehow it was like the couplet written by Master Hong Yi for Kaiyuan Temple of Quanzhou City: Ancient place bathing in Buddhism, living saint walking on streets. However, Master Hong Yi might not think himself as a saint.

　　Fairy tale of heavenly golden age needs commoners’ participation. This heaven at the beginning of 21st century comes not only from the public, but also the developed productivity. He Gong’s The Ambition presented the structure of organ, even more the productivity itself. Productivity was given birth by dream. He Gong wrote: one heart one dream, one more heart one more dream. This reminded us of the dream of the Great Leap Forward: The more we dare, the more the land will yield. Truth is, be it the dream of communism or the dream of globalization in 20th and 21st century, they all come down to the simple dream of productivity. Utopian imagination and the industrial mass production share the same standards of maximizing population and terrain. By the means of expanded reproduction, the goal of unlimited value-adding is achieved. Modern productivity drives people to the path of numbness, obedience, greed, and vulgarization. Human beings become alike just as their products do. Chinese people experienced two types of craziness for production in one century: one ideological, the other physical. The two together formed our crazy reality. But we rarely trace the zest back to its origin of power. We only care about the infectious effects and the songs from heaven. Where is the ideal and rationality of every individual still possessing a brain? This may be exactly what He Gong revealed to us with his brushes and images.

　　I found original sin theory in his Stepping Accompanied By Singing, and communism dream in The Abandoned Workshop and Grand Dinner. In The Last Dinner I saw value of religion. It was its first sorrow that made religion valuable, not its popularity with masses after its wide spread. The truth lies with the former one.

　　He Gong is a master of forging concepts, images and texture into one visual whole. The three come together so smoothly that wording, imaging and stroke movements all unite in some sort of self-expressing lines. However sensitive and expressive these lines are, they do not exist for sentimental flattering, but merely to carve deeper and heavier. Not the carving of realistic body, it carves further beyond words or images. This hidden meaning is not painted by careless simple lines, instead they are heavily piled-up lines with layers. They remind me of Jimo technique of water-ink painting of Gong Xian, the intellectual painter of Qing dynasty, and also oil painting texture of Kiefer. Jimo and texture both exceed limits of physical and visual world to be the records of singing soul.

　　Gao Minglu

　　May 31, 2010